This is by Julian Vasquez Lustig.

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When billionaires step onto a stage, release a book, or tweet some glossy piece of wisdom, the world pays attention. They are the icons of achievement, the proof that extraordinary success is possible. Their words are repeated in classrooms, boardrooms, and commencement addresses. Yet, beneath the glimmering surface of motivational sound bites lies an uncomfortable truth: the advice that billionaires and other ultra-successful people give is often bad advice. Not because they are foolish or malicious, but because they are the rare exceptions who won a game that is stacked against nearly everyone else. They are the one percent of their peer group that made it through a gauntlet designed to fail the other ninety-nine percent. Listening to them as if their stories are blueprints is like studying lottery winners for financial planning tips. It feels inspiring, but it will not work for most of us.

Survivorship Bias and the Mirage of Wisdom

The core problem with advice from billionaires is a concept called survivorship bias. We hear from those who made it to the top, but we never hear from the countless others who tried the same strategies and failed. A billionaire might tell you that the key to ultra success is “never giving up,” but for every person who refused to quit and made it, there are thousands who refused to quit and went bankrupt. We do not see their stories on magazine covers. Their podcasts are not downloaded millions of times. Survivorship bias distorts reality because it magnifies the voice of the rare survivor while erasing the experiences of the much larger group that followed the same path without ultra success.

Consider Silicon Valley. Every venture capitalist loves to repeat the story of the scrappy founder who dropped out of college and built a multibillion-dollar company in a garage. Yet for every Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, there are thousands of college dropouts and founders who ended up with crushing debt and no safety net. Their advice is missing from TED Talks because failure does not sell. This imbalance creates the illusion that ultra success is a formula when in reality it is often a combination of timing, luck, privilege, and structural advantage. The myth of meritocracy hides the role of chance.

The Myth of Hard Work Alone

Another favorite refrain from ultra successful elites is that hard work alone is the ticket to prosperity. “Just work harder than everyone else” sounds noble and egalitarian. It reassures us that anyone can achieve greatness if they put in enough effort. But this ignores the countless people who already work harder than anyone else and remain trapped in poverty. The night shift nurse who juggles two jobs, the farmworker under the blazing sun, the single parent hustling to make rent—these are some of the hardest working people in society, yet their labor is undervalued, underpaid, and unprotected. Hard work matters, but it does not guarantee the kind of upward mobility that billionaires attribute to it.

When billionaires say hard work is everything, they obscure the role of systemic inequality and priviledge. If you dig deep enough into the origin story, they often inherited advantages such as family wealth, elite education, insider connections, or the safety net to take massive risks without catastrophic consequences. Elon Musk can glamorize risk-taking because his family’s wealth and resources gave him a parachute if he failed. That is not advice most people can realistically follow. For the majority, betting it all could mean losing everything.

Privilege Disguised as Insight

The most dangerous kind of bad advice from ultra successful people is when privilege is disguised as insight. When a wealthy hedge fund manager insists that “anyone can make millions if they just invest smart,” they erase the reality that starting capital, financial literacy, and access to networks are not distributed equally. When a celebrity entrepreneur insists that “school is useless,” they may have forgotten that their own elite connections and early financial backing insulated them from the consequences of not having a degree. Advice like this is seductive because it sounds rebellious and bold, but for most people it is reckless. Following it can lead to ruined finances, broken careers, and wasted years.

Privilege does not make billionaires and other ultra successful people evil, but it does make their advice incomplete. They cannot fully see the barriers that others face because those barriers were either removed for them or never existed in their path. What they call wisdom is often just the story of their privilege told through the lens of personal genius.

The Cult of the Outlier

Society loves outliers because they represent the dream of transcendence. We want to believe that anyone can become Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, or Warren Buffett. This cultural obsession is why their advice is treated like sacred scripture. But outliers are outliers for a reason. They represent rare, extreme cases of success that cannot be generalized. Their paths are not scalable or repeatable. It is like training for the NBA by copying Michael Jordan’s exact workout from 1993. Even if you followed it perfectly, the odds of becoming Jordan are infinitesimal. And yet, billionaires often present their paths as replicable roadmaps. They suggest that if you mimic their habits, you too can join the club. What they do not emphasize is that luck, timing, and a supportive ecosystem were critical to their rise.

What We Should Be Listening To

If billionaire advice is unreliable, where should we turn? The answer is not to ignore all successful people, but to recalibrate who we listen to. Instead of only amplifying the voices of the one percent who succeeded spectacularly, we should also be listening to the ninety-nine percent who tried and failed. They often have far more practical wisdom. The entrepreneur who started three businesses and lost them all may have a better understanding of risk, resilience, and humility than the one who got lucky on their first attempt. The worker who juggled jobs and still could not escape poverty can tell us more about the structural flaws of the system than the billionaire who insists that anyone can “make it” with hustle. Failure teaches lessons that success often obscures.

We should also turn to research. Social science gives us evidence-based insights into what actually works for economic mobility, personal growth, and societal well-being. Studies on inequality, labor markets, education, and social capital reveal patterns that are far more trustworthy than anecdotes from billionaires. When policies and practices are built on data rather than inspirational slogans, they have a greater chance of improving lives on a broad scale.

Why We Fall for It Anyway

Despite the flaws, society will likely continue to idolize the advice of billionaires. Their stories are intoxicating because they promise that the American Dream is still alive. We want to believe that there is a formula we can follow, that success is within our control, that if we just wake up at 4 a.m. and drink green smoothies like our heroes (man, I hate celery in my smoothies), we too will ascend. Hope sells. And billionaires, whether consciously or not, are in the business of selling hope. The media reinforces it because audiences crave inspiration more than sobering reality. Failure is boring. Success sells tickets and earns views.

The danger is that while we are busy idolizing bad advice, we neglect the real work of fixing broken systems. We focus on mimicking habits instead of dismantling structural barriers. We chase dreams built on exceptions rather than building policies that benefit the majority. The billionaire tells us to think positive, but what we need is collective action to change the rules of the game to be fairer for all.

Conclusion: Advice We Can Trust

Billionaires are fascinating to study, but their advice should be taken with heavy skepticism. They are the one percent of their peer group that survived, while the other ninety-nine percent fell by the wayside. Their wisdom is shaped by survivorship bias, privilege, and the myth of meritocracy. Following their advice blindly is like planning your retirement by studying Powerball winners. The odds are not in your favor.

I know this because my own journey has been shaped not by shortcuts, windfalls, or gilded safety nets, but by decades of teaching, researching, and advocating in communities where inequality is lived every day. In classrooms in Detroit, in university leadership roles, and in my work on education policy, I have seen firsthand that opportunity is not evenly distributed. The “bootstrap” stories billionaires sell rarely account for the systemic barriers—poverty, discrimination, underfunded schools, precarious jobs—that most people face.

The better path is to look for advice grounded in evidence, humility, and lived experience that reflects those struggles. We should value the lessons of failure as much as success. We should demand policies and structures that make opportunity more widely available, instead of glorifying the rare individuals who managed to escape the gravity of inequality. My life’s work has convinced me of this: progress comes not from idolizing billionaires, but from expanding opportunity for everyone.