How do people actually build wealth if they can't get rich on a salary?

According to the billionaires interviewed, you build wealth by starting and selling your own business rather than relying on a salary. One entrepreneur stated clearly: "You don't get rich by working for someone else. You don't get rich by being paid a salary." Instead, the path to wealth involves starting a business, building it up over a few years, and then selling it. As another billionaire explained the formula: "Join a firm, learn the trade for a couple of years and then with a colleague or two, set up your own version using the skills you've acquired and gradually build it up over a few years... then you sell it for a multiple of that. When you sell the business, you become rich."

Beyond that, wealth is built through leveraging—either by leveraging people (building a team that works for you), leveraging time through systems and recurring revenue, or leveraging money through investments and real estate. One investor emphasized: "There's only three ways to make money. You leverage people, you leverage time, or you leverage money." The key principle across all billionaires interviewed is that you must own the outcome, not trade your time for a paycheck. As one founder put it, successful businesses involve "selling outcomes" and "selling results," taking "a percentage of what the success was on that business, not the amount of time it took."