I'd bet everyone who has either invested in ASX shares, or wants to, has one goal in mind: making money. Or, to put it in a more palatable way, building wealth.
Everyone knows that it's possible to build wealth using ASX shares and the share market (as well as lose it). But that's where the commonalities end.
Some 'investors' like to bet big on penny stocks, trying to find that lottery ticket that will deliver a 1,000% return in a week.
Others like to invest only in dividend shares, enjoying the slowly-rising stream of passive income these can generate.
Some investors like to find fast-growing growth companies to hitch their wagon to. Others enjoy having a mix of growth and dividend shares.
There's no right answer when it comes to the question of 'how should I invest?'. Warren Buffett has built his wealth by steadily assembling a portfolio of other successful businesses under his own umbrella company Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B).
Berkshire is famous for investing in mature, quality companies like Coca-Cola Co (NYSE: KO) by buying and holding.
In contrast, Masayoshi Son, of Japan's SoftBank, has built up his company by investing in fast-growing tech businesses. Businesses like Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE: UBER) and Doordash Inc (NASDAQ: DASH). Different paths, same result.
Successful investing has many doors
All successful investors have something in common: they have a goal and a method that works for them. And they stick to it.
This is something all investors might want to consider adopting.
There are some investors out there who just stick with dividend-paying shares. They know the companies that fund dividends, and what it takes for these companies to grow their dividends over time. It might make sense to them in a way that investing in other kinds of companies might not.
By contrast, other investors like finding companies that are in the early stages of their development but can go on to prove big winners. To these investors, dividend companies might seem boring.
Growth investors pride themselves on being able to sniff out a developing business that has the secret ingredients necessary for it to rapidly grow from a small company to a large one.
Finding the strategy that resonates with you, your personality, and your investing style is of utmost importance. Warren Buffett probably wouldn't be any good at start-up tech investing, and Mr Son likely wouldn't be adept at 'Buffett-style' buying and holding'.
Part of these investors' genius is that they fully understand their investment strategies and they stick to them.
That's something we can all aspire to do when attempting to become successful investors.
