Do you have the mindset necessary to become a billionaire? One of the things that set billionaires apart is where many people see only a problem, the billionaire mindset will identify an opportunity and have the courage to act.

In Australia, the 2008 BRW Rich 200 List identified 38 people as billionaires. The fortunes of these people come from diverse business interests including mining, property, shopping centres, technology, finance, retailing, textiles and clothing, media (television newspapers, magazines) hotels, gambling, liquid ammonia production, cardboard cartons, transport and health care.

Some of the advice from these billionaires for creating and keeping their fortunes is to remain married, work for yourself, spend wisely, invest in shares and property and gain work experience overseas.

For people with an interest in astrology you will be interested to learn that six of the 38 billionaires on the list were Aquarians, more than any other star sign, with total wealth of around $12 billion. For mere millionaires Leo is the dominant star sign followed by Sagittarius with Taurus being the least successful.

Billionaire iron ore miner Andrew Forrest, Australia's richest person, faced and overcame a range of setbacks before he became successful as the CEO of a company with a market capitalisation of only $3 million at start up. In 2003 when China's ruling party stated it wanted to quadruple the country's economy in the next 15 years, he identified an opportunity and punted on the demand for iron ore exploding and became a billionaire in the process. As with many other ideas that went on to create billionaires, Australian institutions initially refused to back the company.

Many readers will have lived in a Meriton apartment at some stage, the creation of billionaire Harry Triguboff, who immigrated to Australia from China as a 14-year old with his Russian parents. Triguboff attributes a large slice of his success to building in inner-city locations. "Why would you want to go anywhere but a few good areas?" he asks.

Probably every single person in Australia has spent some time at a Westfield shopping centre, the brainchild of billionaire Fank Lowy who arrived in Australia in 1952 at the age of 21 with only seven years of formal education and no material possessions after suffering the ravages of war in German-occupied Hungary.

Lowy is regarded as Australia's most successful immigrant and attributes part of his success to having a secure family base. His success story is well known from a delicatessen in Blacktown in what was then Sydney's outer-west, then buying surrounding farmland and creating housing estates and then modeling another builder by building a shopping centre in 1959. Westfield floated on the stock exchange in 1960 and today Westfield has more than 100 shopping centres in Australia and the U.S. Financial engineering has been an important part of Lowy's success and he also admits to his intuition being his driver. "If I have a bad feeling about something, it has to go away before I can progress." Technology is important to Lowy and he was one of the first to acquire a fax machine in the early 1980's. To maximize the use of his time Lowy always travels with a laptop and his BlackBerry on his corporate jet.

U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, the 'Sage of Omaha', is generally considered to be the world's most successful investor. His investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, is legendary. In the last 40 years, Buffett has increased the book value of the company by 286,865 per cent. Buffett has made some brilliant moves in his career, such as turning a $1 billion investment in Wells Fargo into $4 billion; making 500% profits on a massive investment in Geico and - in one of his best known and most talked about plays - turning $1 billion into $8 billion with Coca-Cola. Buffett is famous for droll quotes such as "I got interested (in business) when I was seven or thereabouts. I wasted my time before that. Buy businesses that an idiot could run, because one day one will. We really want to buy from someone who doesn't want to sell. Investors should be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."

According to respected U.S. business magazine, Forbes, while there are numerous business school courses, self-help books and magazine articles devoted to analysing a billionaire's investment strategy or entrepreneurial skills, few, if any, pay close attention to their personality traits. Forbes claims it has been observing billionaires for more than 20 years and says it has detected very pronounced similarities among the majority of billionaires which can roughly be categorised as: A. Master of the Universe; B. All Business; C. Sports Fan; D. Geek; E. Old Money.

It seems there is no common model to emulate and become a billionaire when comparing the success stories of billionaires world wide - every billionaire has had a unique route to success. Some had to face terrible tragedies and hardship, which would have destroyed many other human beings. Others did not have these hurdles to overcome but all of them had to work really hard. All of them had to integrate aspects of themselves, which could be called the 'dark side' or 'the shadow' as psychologist Carl Gustav Jung called it, into their personality and function convincingly among other human beings. The greatest effort people invest in order to become successful is with their own selves.

Self-management is the most difficult part of management skills needed to become a billionaire. Along with this skill for self-management, there are however, four additional common factors in all billionaire life stories. They all had a burning desire to be successful, and they relentlessly pursued their goals without losing faith in themselves.

Secondly, each one of them had an inner conviction. They saw themselves as successful in their mind's eye and did not give up in spite of all difficulties. This ability to first visualise success and maintain this vision seems to be a key component for success in all fields.

Thirdly, they all took major risks in thinking out of the box and acting consistently. Lastly, they all understood the value of networking and engaging other gifted people.

In Australia the road to mega-riches is paved in rust-red iron ore. The 10 richest investors in Australia's red-hot mining sector boast a combined net worth exceeding $15 billion, according to a magazine survey. The second-largest category for wealthy mining investors was coal, which is one of Australia's top two exports, along with iron ore.

While Australia may be a great place to move from being poor to being middle class, places like India and China will be the best places in the world to come up with transformative business ideas that can catapult people into billionaire status. Early in the 21st century, technology and the Internet fueled much of the wealth to create new billionaires. Recently in the US finance created 27 fortunes, real estate was the source of 16 and food and beverages created 12.

However, a good trend is that worldwide most billionaires are still self-made. That means people coming from humble beginnings around the world have the economic freedom to leap into the billionaires' club in a single generation.

You don't have to come up with the next Windows or Google or Facebook to be a billionaire. You can also do it being a supplier of potatoes to McDonald's as one man did in the U.S. Although Google is a lot more exciting to write about and learn about, you can also come up with a better business model for providing cola companies with sweetener or figure out how to become a dominant supplier of asphalt in Victoria. Don't think that the road to riches is hidden solely in these old business models.

I can do it. The first million may be the hardest. But the simple fact is Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin - did not have any more hours in their day than you, or the ability to shoot laser beams with their eyes, or help from alien beings. They made their wealth in a single lifetime using the same 24-hour days you have. If you want to do it, and become a billionaire there is no reason why you can't.

Some final advice for those wishing to achieve billionaire status. At some stage every billionaire has had to add more value in order to create wealth. One way to do that is by developing your financial education skills. These skills are. The ability to think creatively and solve problems. The ability to communicate more effectively. The ability to market an idea or concept and bring that idea to reality and commercial viability. The ability to negotiate.

Jamie McIntyre , the founder of 21st Century Education, is setting big goals for himself and last year he set a goal to become a billionaire by the time he is forty. That's in 10 years in case you were wondering.

It is not that becoming a billionaire for material means or lifestyle is what made Jamie set himself this challenge, but more so that he knows that money can be a powerful tool to serve and he knows the influence that being a billionaire can bring to creating positive change in this country.

For Jamie setting this goal came about when he personally met a billionaire some 18 months ago. He was asked by the billionaire how long it would take to become a billionaire using his current wealth strategy.

As Jamie had never seriously considered that as a goal his response was at least 30 or more years if ever. The billionaire asked Jamie "why not in 3 years?"

If the guy wasn't already a billionaire then Jamie would have said you're "on drugs or deluded" but the fact that this guy had become a self made billionaire within less than 10 years made Jamie take him seriously. And that day a seed was planted.

Since then Jamie has had several billionaires come into his life where he has personally had the chance to sit down with them for personal chats including one very famous one, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame as well as an Australian who just became one of our latest billionaires in the space of a few short years.

Jamie was recently invited to meet and speak alongside another famous billionaire - Donald Trump - to share what it takes to develop the Mindset of a Millionaire.

Jamie McIntyre is renowned for his ability to present things in down to earth simplistic language so the average person can understand and implement with ease, but until now has been reluctant to teach others the actual mechanics and strategies to become a billionaire that he has learnt first hand from meeting billionaires as he thought it too advanced for the average person to be able to replicate and apply any lessons from.

But recently this has changed as he now has figured out how an average person could actually replicate the same strategy to make a lot of money.

Of course for most people, not a billion dollars and for many not even a million dollars but certainly for many several hundred thousand dollars in assets up to several million with virtually no outlay.

Already one of his 21st Century Homestudy Members has used the exact same strategy many billionaires use to make $27 million dollars. Another business partner of Jamie's used the same strategies to make $60 million dollars - all within the space of a few years.

For details of Jamie's leading billionaire strategies
go to: www.21stcenturyacademy.com or
Online: http://www.internetsummitseminar.com.au
Phone: 1800 100 801
Email: bookings@21stca.com.au

For a free DVD go to www.21stcenturyacademy.com

21st Century Education have a range of books by Jamie McIntyre available, including:
What I didn't learn at school but wish I had
What I didn't learn from my real estate agent but wish I had
What I didn't learn from my financial planner but wish I had
What I didn't learn from Google but wish I had

These books are available from good bookshops or from:
www.21stcenturypublishing.com.au
Phone 1800 999270
email jmoulton@21stca.com.au