Founder of AUREA, Raffaele Riva, on Making Things Happen and Overcoming Failure

AUREA Multi Family Office was founded by Raffaele Riva, a businessman with extensive experience in turning one success into another. After founding AUREA in 2008, he used his assets to grow multiple connected businesses, such as Milano Fiduciaria and BGB Aurea Ltd.

This expert in wealth management and trilingual professional has helped countless people get a handle on their finances, and it’s all thanks to his business acumen and discipline. As a respected member of the professional community, he’s often asked how he got to where he is. He talks more about his day-to-day agenda and how he leveraged his habits to build an empire.

All in a Day’s Work

There are a lot of different theories about success, and it’s not unusual for some to directly contradict others. To a certain extent, how to best structure a day depends on the person at the center of the equation as well as the industry they work in.

Raffaele Riva has stated that he doesn’t actually consider his days to be stereotypical, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an overarching philosophy when it comes to how he tackles his work. Before he starts, he already has a plan. Using his daily journal, he jots down what he intends to get done. From there, he goes the extra mile.

On any given day, it’s not unusual for him to go from 7:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. He gets the hard stuff out of the way first, when he’s at his most motivated. If he’s unsure about what decisions will be best for him and his company, he uses his own life experience to guide his choices and ideas.

Success isn’t just something that he wants at work, though. Every pursuit in his professional and personal life is a chance to better himself as a person. He takes this challenge seriously and strives for greatness however he can. (This doesn’t mean expecting perfection from yourself. Raffaele Riva thinks it’s much more important to learn lessons for everything you do.)

What Makes for a Good Entrepreneur

Riva’s key insight about being in a position of power came down to a leader’s attitude. As he put it, “To think always positive and to be kept up to date. To be curious to learn in any circumstance. Read a lot and everything, watch and listen to any topic of interest.” This kind of underlying ethos, one that stresses the importance of education and developing a strong work ethic, has helped catapult his core business so he could roll one achievement into the next.

When it comes to failure, he openly admits that he’s made mistakes when it comes to his priorities. This common complaint of an entrepreneur taps directly into unsolvable questions that they all face at one time or another. How can you balance your time efficiently throughout different stages of your business? How can you predict which projects are worth your time and which will waste it?

If Raffaele Riva is overcommitting himself, he’s going to start to see a drop-off in the efficacy of each project. Eventually, he had to accept that he couldn’t work on certain projects anymore. He phrased it this way: “Some of [the projects] proved to be the wrong choice, and the rapid growth was like cancer. I overcame it by understanding that ‘I don’t do it’ is completely different than ‘I cannot do it,’ and I came back to my healthy growth saying ‘no more.”

When it comes to general advice, Riva is straightforward about how aspiring entrepreneurs should get started. “Do what you like and makes you feel better, believe in it, and never fear of failure or a lack of believing in yourself if you want people to believe in you.” Staying positive, even in the midst of rapid change, can be difficult when there’s so much uncertainty hanging in the air. However, there’s no doubt that it can be done, despite the obstacles in the way. Riva has gotten to where he is today by giving himself permission to both succeed and fail and by staying realistic about what he can and can’t take on.