How To Be a Billionaire

Or, not.

It’s a question you have undoubtedly asked yourself countless times: “Why, exactly, am I not a billionaire?”

I mean, when you look at photos of famous billionaires, do you see anything extraordinary about them? No. You see a group of people who appear to be regular humans, except for Mark Zuckerberg.

So what do these billionaires have that you don’t? Is it simply that they’re more intelligent than you?

Yes. Of course not. You’re plenty intelligent! The answer is that these billionaires do certain specific things that you don’t do.

Consider your morning routine. If you’re like most people, by which I mean me, your morning routine consists of very cautiously climbing out of bed, then wobbling into the bathroom and spending quite some time in there, followed by coffee. Then maybe going to the bathroom again. Then maybe some more coffee. Before you know it, your morning has flown by.

No wonder you’re not a billionaire.

For a fascinating insight into what actual billionaires do in the morning, we turn, as we so often do, to the New York Times, which on April 11 ran a major story profiling Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who is married to Jeffrey Bezos, who is not just any billionaire: He is the richest man in the world, for his height. Here’s a photo of the Bezoses arriving at the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar party, which you personally could not get into if you showed up in a U.S. Army battle tank. And yes, this is a perfectly natural way for a person to stand.

Photo by Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic via Getty Images.

What is the morning routine of the Bezoses? Here are the first 155 words of the Times profile, which I swear I am not making up:

A lot of things make Lauren Sánchez Bezos ridiculously happy. Helicopters. Fashion. Protecting the narwhal. Her little sister, Elena. Her five best girlfriends. And, of course, her new husband, Jeff Bezos.

She and Mr. Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek, an exclusive private island in Miami often called “Billionaire Bunker.” They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before.

From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer.

Notice what’s missing from this morning routine? That’s right: Billionaires don’t go to the bathroom. They have staff for that. Billionaires start their day by being grateful for things. And we’re not talking about one or two things: They’re grateful for TEN things. APIECE. Before sunrise.

You think that’s easy? It’s not. I know because Michelle and I tried, for just one morning, to come up with ten things to be grateful for at the crack of dawn, or in our case the crack of roughly 8:15 a.m., b.c. (before coffee). It was a struggle. Here, unedited, is what we came up with (we did not consult with each other):

Clearly we were both running out of things to be grateful for, and this was on our first day. The Bezoses, according to the Times, do this every single day, without repeats.

Granted, they have more things to be grateful for than most of us. Helicopters, for example. Apparently they have plural helicopters. Which is nice, but still: If every single morning the Bezoses have to come up with ten new things apiece to be grateful for, that’s 20 new things per day, which means — multiplying 20 things by 365 days — they have to generate 7,300 Unique Gratitude Units (UGUs) per year, which is more than the entire state of New Jersey. Before breakfast! Assuming they even eat breakfast. I doubt that I am physically capable of producing that quantity of gratitude, let alone having enough energy left over to protect the narwhal. I didn’t even know the narwhal was in trouble.

I was pleased to note that the Bezoses’ morning routine, like mine, includes coffee, although my personal coffee mug does not spell HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. My mug is less upbeat:

I got this mug from the excellent site Engrish.com

Also Michelle’s and my morning exercise routine is less strenuous than the Bezoses’. We don’t have a personal trainer, nor do we have a pickleball court on our compound. If I’m being completely honest, cards on the table, we don’t even have a compound. So what we do for exercise is walk around our neighborhood in an effort, usually unsuccessful, to get in the recommended 10,000 steps per day. (The Times story doesn’t mention how many steps the Bezoses get in per day, although I assume it’s in the millions.)

Michelle and I enjoy our walks, because we get to witness the natural beauty of nature, which lately has taken the form of peacock sex. We live in a peacock-intensive part of Miami, and apparently this is mating season, because the male peacocks, who usually just lug their tail feathers around in a boring horizontal clump, are raising them up and fanning them out in large studly displays to make it known that they are down to procreate by getting it on with the ladies.

During one of our walks last week Michelle and I came around a corner and there, in a driveway, looking right at us, was this peacock, whom I will call Rex (not his real name):

Rex was flashing his sex beacon, but it was not immediately obvious who his target was, since the only visible female in the area was Michelle, who belongs to a completely different species and wears a wedding ring.

But then suddenly from the bushes emerged a peahen — let’s call her Denise — who had definitely swiped hard right on Rex’s Tinder profile. What happened next happened so fast that I barely had time to record a video of it after getting the written legal consent of both parties involved.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC PEACOCK SEX AND IS INTENDED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES, WHICH, SINCE YOU’RE READING THIS SUBSTACK, CLEARLY DOES NOT DESCRIBE YOU.

Here’s the video. Watch the beginning closely, because that’s where the hot action is:

To recap: As the video begins, Rex has just pounced on Denise (not that she objected) and is wrapping his wings around her so that they can share an intimate moment, a romantic and sensuous interlude during which he physically expresses his deep, sincere and undying passion for her. This interlude lasts for approximately two seconds. Rex then briskly backs up and turns to face the garage door. At the 0:10 mark Denise crosses behind Rex, walking away but moving slowly, as if she’s giving Rex a chance to turn around and maybe ask for her phone number.

But Rex does not turn around. Rex continues to face the garage door, as if it is the most riveting thing he has ever seen, as if it’s a large-screen TV showing the deciding final seconds of the Peacock Super Bowl. At around the 0:45 mark, Rex slowly turns and takes a look around, but Denise is still in the area, so Rex turns back to the garage door. Clearly Denise is on her own now, procreationwise .

That’s how it is for peahens. A few days later, not far from where I took the sex video, I came across a mama peahen with six cute li’l peacocklets in tow:

Aww. But notice there’s no adult male around. The father — and it could very well be Rex — is somewhere else, maybe displaying his plumage to another female, or pretending to be fascinated by a garage door, or golfing. Because men are basically scum that is the way of nature.

What does this have to do with billionaires? Nothing. I just wanted an excuse to post a peacock sex video. But getting back to our topic: The narwhal is in trouble, and we all need to do our part. Thank you.

And now, speaking of trouble, let’s hear from you paying subscribers.