How to live the life of the rich and famous – even if you are not

Since the dawn of time there has always been some desire to become rich and/or famous. What used to be a wish has now actually become the main desire for what children want to be when they grow up.

There has been a number of studies that have shown that over half of 16-year-olds wanted to go into professions that could make them a celebrity. Unfortunately only a small amount of them will become rich or famous.

There is good news though. It is starting to become a lot easier to live the life of the rich and famous without necessarily being rich or famous.

A lot of people comment on the life that I and one of my good entrepreneur friends Chris Gray live. They think that we are so lucky and must be filthy rich to have the experiences that we do. The people who actually know us well know that this is not the case, we just take advantage of every opportunity out there.

Most of these opportunities have arisen out of the rise of the sharing economy. Amazing entrepreneurs around the world are helping the common person access things that used to be reserved for the rich and famous.

Only a few years ago, luxury black cars were only available to execs and celebs. Thankfully to Uber, we all now get to experience this great way to travel.

When we used to travel the choice used to be to stay in hotels or crash at friends’ places, now because of Airbnb we can feel like we have multiple houses around the world.

Closer to home a young entrepreneur Ian Rose is making luxury boat ownership affordable but more importantly more enjoyable. Luxury Boat Syndicates enables you to buy into a boat with a number of other people and share the cost of purchase and ongoing costs.

Let’s face it, most boats on the harbour are only used a few days a year so there is a lot of wasted capacity. I have been lucky enough to go on Ian’s boats through Chris and can only say amazing things about them. The service is so good it reminds me of being in America, not Australia, and they make the experience so much more enjoyable than if you owned it completely yourself and had to be responsible for its cleaning and maintenance. 

I really enjoy hearing about an entrepreneur’s journey and I believe we can learn a lot about Ian’s. He has an extreme passion for boats and the water so he decided to make a business out of it.

He started with a very small speed boat and pitched some people to get involved. The cash flow from that boat but more importantly the happy clients enabled him to purchase a bigger boat.

He has kept doing this and now has a fleet of beautiful boats. Why I believe Ian has been successful and will continue to be successful is that he has always focused on giving amazing customer service, he has grown responsibly and has been in touch with his numbers and he has extreme passion for what he does.

These three factors are what most entrepreneurs should really be focusing on but I am quite confident that most of us aren’t.

The reason that Chris and I can take advantage of all these different awesome experiences is that we are sensible in a lot of areas of our money management. We don’t own massive houses and we don’t waste money. We make sure that every dollar goes toward positive experiences for us.

So next time you get jealous of another person’s life why don’t you see if you are making the most of all the opportunities that are out there. 

Finn is a serial award-winning entrepreneur and investor. He is currently the co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of WE LOVE NUMBERS and WE and board member of Grow My Team.