Five Reasons Billionaires Outperform EverybodyThese are the common traits among those who have made fortunes for themselves

I spent six years of my life travelling the world and meeting with the best entrepreneurs on the planet to find out the secret of their extreme business performance. I worked with 21 self-made billionaires to learn the inner workings of their minds, hearts and souls. Here are the five reasons why they outperform everybody else and achieve so much more in business.

Billionaires are extremely diligent

It may sound like cliché, but most self-made billionaires consider hard work to be an essential part of their business success. Especially at the beginning of their business it's not uncommon for billionaires to work every waking hour. It means up to 18 hours a day and 8 hours on weekends, no days off.

When I met the American celebrity billionaire Mark Cuban in Monaco, he told me business was an ultimate sport that is played without end, without interruption, and without rules; and there is always somebody who is trying to knock you out. So if you want to win in this game, you can't afford to stop competing even for a second.

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Billionaires take the hard route

There is no easy way to success. Doing easy things produces mediocre results. The way to great success is rather to do things that are hard.

Naveen Jain was born in India to an illiterate mother. When he graduated from a university in India, he stumbled upon the hardest aptitude test he had ever heard about. He took it as a challenge to show he can solve it and he aced it. Next morning he got a call from an American software company who wanted to employ him as a programmer and again he took the challenge even though he had never seen a computer before and had no clue about programming. They trained him in computer programming and he went to the US to work for what seem a lot of money in India but turned out to be a starvation wage in America. Once again he challenged himself to find his way in this strange country. Soon, he got employed by the burgeoning company called Microsoft. It brought him the first gold nugget when it went public. And soon, Naveen was good to start his own business. Infospace became one of the tech giants of the 1990s and made him a billionaire.

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Billionaires go full speed

Billionaires are the winners of the business race. Like in every race you need to go full speed. If you slack and take it easy, you will lose out to those who don't.

加拿大的白手起家的亿万富翁和芯片威尔逊founder of the iconic Lululemon, was a competitive butterfly swimmer when he was 10 years old. At that time people tried to save energy for the sprint at the finish to make themselves look good at the end of the race. But Chip's father said, "Why don't you go full-out right from the start? And if you can't make it, then you can't make it. But try that." And Chip did and broke the Canadian record. That lesson brought fruits not only in his sports but also in his business career. Billionaires don't hold anything back, they always give 100 per cent.

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Billionaires are passionate about what they do

Their passion helps billionaires endure through the huge work load and overcome the many obstacles that are unavoidable on the way up. Self-made billionaires are extremely driven.

Following Peter Hargreaves, a UK-based self-made billionaire and founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, loving the industry you're in is the greatest advantage you can have in business. Why? Because then you aren't working. It's almost a hobby and you don't need time to relax.

Billionaires enjoy the process, not the result

Self-made billionaires enjoy building a company more than having a company. They enjoy making money more than having money.

The path to success (and happiness) is thus to find something that you are good at and passionate about and want to do and then enjoy your life doing it.

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