I asked Manny Stul, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, what advice he would give to young people around the world who dream of becoming a winner. His answer was about passion and love for what you do, and “the commitment, the sacrifices you have to make. In sport, for example, it’s training; if it’s a business, it’s long hours. You can’t be half-pregnant in this. You’ve got to be fully committed to it. So the advice to young people: find something that you love doing, be passionate about it, and commit to it totally.”
You need to put yourself in a situation where you are challenged to succeed. This is what Jack Cowin did. His early life had been taking place within a 100-mile radius of where he had lived in Ontario, Canada. And then he went to Australia, to a far-away continent, to start a business. This was a great challenge but also a big commitment.
Cai Dongqing says “If you set a goal, there is no other choice than to achieve it.”
You can’t be half-pregnant in this. You’ve got to be fully committed to it.
— Manny Stul #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Be Willing to Compete, Fight!
Nobody will give you anything in this world. You need to fight for what you want but also fight for your right. So you should not only dare to dream big, but also dare to fight for your dreams.
Have a strong will and know what you want.
This is how Frank Hasenfratz got his first contract and started his own business:
I worked at Sheepbridge Engineering. I went to our general manager and said, “I want you to fire my boss. I can’t work with him. He is intelligent, and I admire a lot of the things he does, but he doesn’t recognize when he’s wrong.”
Stubbornness is good, but not to the point where it’s detrimental to your job. And my boss was so stubborn. We were manufacturing a part for Ford Motor Company, and we machined it the wrong way. But you’ve got to do it like this because my boss wanted so.
I said to the general manager, “I want you to fire him, or I quit.” He said, “I guess you quit.”
Frank knew a much better and cheaper way to manufacture the part.
I said, “Contract me with the job for the cost of the scrap you have.” He said, “Not a bad idea.” It was my first contract. In the basement I set it up. At my house, and the garage and basement. He supplied the material, I bought a machine. So we were in business.
Put yourself in a situation where you are challenged to succeed.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
If you want to win, you better be strong.
I asked Sergey Galitskiy about his success secret.
The most important thing is that you are stronger than your competitors. Business is a game of minds.
As Petter Stordalen points out, it’s not physical, but mental strength that helps you prevail.
If you set a goal, there is no other choice than to achieve it.
— Cai Dongqing #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
So, develop strength and never let others put you down.
Cho Tak Wong, the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2009, sees the business environment as a never-ending battle:
Sometimes you will be criticized or even taken advantage of by other people. Such is life; it all belongs to life. That’s how people are. If somebody is a little bit more advanced than other people, then he tries to put you down and it’s very normal. If you are small, you’ll be put down by big people. It’s not easy to stay up, as they will put you down again. You can get up, but you can’t stay up all the time. Before, we were being put down by some big people, and then we started to work very hard, we started to build ourselves until we were really doing well and those people will not put us down anymore.
The most important thing is that you are stronger than your competitors. Business is a game of minds.
— Sergey Galitskiy #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Don’t shy away from competition.
Frank Hasenfratz really likes to compete. I asked him what he dreams about.
I want to win a card game. I want to win in golf. I want to win at everything. That sounds egotistic, maybe, but competition is good. We shouldn’t shy away from competition. Competition makes us stronger, makes us think “how can we do things better?” So I like competition.
It’s not physical, but mental strength that helps you prevail.
— Petter Stordalen #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Billionaires not only are competitive, they first of all like to win.
Manny Stul, later the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, always had fun competing.
I won a scholarship that was available to all students, and it was based on your exam results when you were 15. I wasn’t good at school but I did study for that, because I wanted to win the scholarship, for no other reason. I know it sounds crazy. I did it for no other reason than the competitiveness. I wanted to be one of the few kids in our state that had the scholarship. It was prestigious. Like if an athlete went to competition, he’s held in high esteem by other students, girls, etc. I wanted to have a scholarship because I wanted to be a winner.
Only 1% of the students were granted the scholarship.
Then, at the university, instead of studying, his competitiveness could only be satiated by billiards, snooker, and five-card stud.
Never Accept a “No”
Petter Stordalen is probably one of the most tenacious people I know. And it means something. I am an ultra marathon runner myself. He is proud that he never in his life took “no” for an answer. The two of us were having lunch at his fabulous hotel The Thief in Oslo, when he told me the story of how he was fighting for his future wife Gunhild.
I was trying for two years, but she didn’t want to date me because she had read so much in the tabloids about me. Then I said, “Okay, you need to give me something. One chance.” Then she said, “Okay, if you beat me in running, you will get a dinner date.” I said, “That’s fair.” She was thinking, “Petter is this short, chubby guy,” and she is tall, she runs like a gazelle. She runs every day. She thought, “I’ve been running all my life. This will be easy. He is 16 years older than me.”
So we started to run, and she started very, very fast. Very fast. I thought, “OK, I’m about to lose.” But not today. I was running, and in the beginning, I thought, “I just have to keep on the same pace.” I was following her half a meter behind, and she had the same pace.
Then there was a small ascent, and I thought, “Okay, I have to test how much capacity there is.” I was increasing the speed slightly, and then I heard the breath was coming like.… Then I thought, “Okay. You start to feel it.” Then I told myself, “When the longest hill is coming, start to increase the speed a lot in the bottom.”
So we were coming down and then it starts, it’s not very steep, but it’s like 400 meters long, a nice size. I am starting with a quite high speed, and then I hear her breathe heavily. So I increased quite a lot in the middle of this uphill, and suddenly she just started to slow down. Then I turned around, jogging backwards, and said, “Is something wrong? Do we have problems to follow here?” She said, “Okay, I’ve lost.” [laughs] It was maybe 6 kilometers into the race and we were going for 10.
So I won. But the thing also was that she didn’t only give me the date, because I said, “The dinner, you have to lose something. Because if I lose, I will not get the dinner date. But if you lose, you need to lose something. So she had to follow me as my secret fiancé to a wedding in Finland two weeks later. [laughs]
She has asked me a few times, “Petter, honestly how much longer could you go?” My answer is always the same. “I don’t know.” I only knew one thing: “I just have to win. Doesn’t matter what it takes.”
But she was rock hard. She gave everything. You could hear it in her breath. She really was at the limit. A red zone. She had been red zone for the last one, two kilometers. I was saying something like “Now I like the speed. Now it started to be the speed I like,” even if I thought I was clos
e my red light as well. But I thought I could manage to be in that red zone at least two maybe three kilometers. If I really go to the bottom, I can be there. It will hurt like hell, but I can manage.
I was in the red zone myself. But I said, “Yeah, speed is good. Feeling good.” And then you literally take out the energy from the people you are competing with.
If you want to read the story in full detail, go to:
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Lirio Parisotto has had spectacular success in almost everything he did.
I asked him about the secret of his success. His answer: “Never accept a no.”
If you accept, you lose. When you hear “no,” don’t just accept. You need to find another way.
When I started the business, I came from the province into the biggest city of Brazil to do business with the studios from Hollywood. Can you imagine it?
It wasn’t easy. I didn’t know anybody. The people were a little arrogant. I was a salesman, and it was difficult to arrange an appointment because people didn’t want to talk to me.
Lirio wasn’t deterred by this.
One client I wanted very much when I started was Warner, and the guy who worked there was a Brazilian man, very complicated, arrogant. So I heard a lot of no’s, for years. But one day I convinced him. He worked with me; until I closed the recording business last year, he was here. But at the start it was very difficult.
At the end, Lirio managed to convince all six major film corporations to work with him exclusively, thus holding over 90% of the Brazilian market in his hand.
He told me it helps to understand “no” as “maybe.”
Never accept a no.
— Lirio Parisotto #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Persevere with Grit and Resilience
It’s easy to have ideas; it’s very hard to turn an idea into a great business. It requires long years of grit, determination, and resilience. In our interviews, billionaires often compared business to a marathon.
And there is a great advantage in it, as Hüsnü Özyegin points out:
You have to believe and then work very hard and not give up. These days I give young people the example of a marathon runner, because life is a marathon, not a 100-meter dash. You can fall and still win the race in 42 kilometers. I tell them these things because that’s my life also. It’s been a roller coaster, a marathon.
Life is a marathon, not a 100-meter dash. You can fall and still win the race.
— Hüsnü Özyegin #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Going from zero to billions is a long process. There are many turns on the road, and when you start, you don’t see the road behind the next turn. You don’t even realize how long the road is. The task at hand seems unsurmountable. It’s like eating an elephant. Petter Stordalen asked me:
Do you think you can eat an elephant? You can, but take it piece by piece. Don’t think about that big freaking monster of an elephant. Piece by piece.
Mainstream media always present shiny events and dramatic turning points that lead to spectacular success in billionaires’ careers. But the reality is that success on that level rarely comes from these dramatic breakthroughs. It comes from many, many small steps in the right direction.
Becoming a billionaire is a process; it’s never an overnight success. It’s doing the right thing over and over again for long periods of time. So prepare for decades of hustle.
Frank Stronach puts it in simple words, “You don’t get success overnight. You’ve got to work, you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work.”
Business success does not come to you; it needs to be built. As Mohed Altrad points out, “You should have to produce what’s necessary to succeed. Success is not something that will fall from the sky. It’s not something you wake up one morning and you have success. It’s not like this. It’s something to be built. This is one thing. The other thing is, to build a successful organization, it takes a really long time. Successful, sustainable, brilliant organization. Nevertheless, this same organization could fall very quickly. That is the rule of the game.”
You don’t get success overnight. You’ve got to work, you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work.
— Frank Stronach #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
This long-term performance is what makes it so difficult. This is what most millionaires don’t manage to sustain. So be persistent and keep watching the ball.
I asked Michał Sołowow how his business attitude is now different from the one at the beginning of his career.
Back then I fought daily for survival and for life, and today I continue doing it. In some way that has not changed. Every day in the morning, I come here into my office to do something and use my time to the max. Back then, at the beginning, it was the same.
Asked about the message he would like to give to the readers, he said:
Have plans, dreams, and make an effort to realize them consistently; don’t give up easily; fight above all else, with your weaknesses and limitations.
Success does not come to you; it needs to be built.
— Rafael Badziag @BillionairePal #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Jack Cowin stresses how important it is to keep showing up.
You show up every day. You show up. For the average guy, eventually it gets too hard. Over time, most people failed. They didn’t show up. They didn’t make it.
Success is not something that will fall from the sky. It’s not something you wake up one morning and you have success. It’s not like this. It’s something to be built.
— Mohed Altrad #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
There is a difference between a failure and the final defeat. You can only be defeated if you give up after a failure. Don’t do it. Don’t take the easy way out; instead—persevere. The difference between defeat and success is the thin line between giving up and continuing to move forward. In case you fall, don’t sacrifice your goal; just choose another way. If you failed once, try again until you succeed. As long as you don’t give up, you haven’t really failed.
I asked Naveen Jain about his attitude toward failures.
First of all, failures are such a wrong way of looking at it. It’s about the things that you’re trying and may not work. Failure only happens when you give up. Everything else is just simply a pivot. So when things are not working out, it’s not a failure; it simply says that particular idea is not working.
Have plans, dreams, and make an effort to realize them consistently.
— Michał Sołowow #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
Resilience is necessary not only in the later stages of your business, but also at the start, where you have to endure through harsh beginnings.
And the conditions were even harsher for the entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, when the socialist system fell apart. Sergey Galitskiy, who now reigns over an empire of 17,000 supermarkets in his Magnit, remembers:
In the first years, we were not making money and I had to feed the family, so I had a lot of stress. You’re young, this is your first life experience, and you’re always concerned whether you can manage or not. So from time to time I was giving up and thinking, “I can’t make it. I overestimated my abilities.”
Distribution business at the time wasn’t a very profitable thing. Because we paid taxes and had to compete with players who didn’t. And we also made a lot of wrong decisions, which of course did not improve the condition of the company.
In Russia, there was no entrepreneurial culture, no examples. What is left for you is to learn from your own mistakes. Additionally, at the time, the atmosphere was very complicated. When society is breaking, then here we’ve got gangsters, and sometimes the government and authorities behaved like gangsters too.
On one occasion, somebody put a funeral wreath at Sergey’s door, on another somebody fired a grenade into his office, and in yet another case people appeared with automatic weapons at one of his shops.
So, briefly, that wa
s not an easy time at all. But youth can overcome everything. You are not smart enough to be scared.
Failure only happens when you give up. Everything else is just simply a pivot.
— Naveen Jain #BillionDollarGoldNuggets
You just have to hang in until you succeed.
Naveen Jain, before becoming a serial entrepreneur and a billionaire, had been an early Microsoft employee. In these early days of Microsoft, he was able to spend time with its founder, Bill Gates, who later became the wealthiest person in the world. When we met in Dublin, Naveen shared with me his personal perspective on Bill that is very different from the stories known from the mainstream media.
Bill was a man who I knew, who’s self-made, somebody who created the whole industry out of nothing, who was able to see something that other people would laugh about.
Everyone knew the main frames and mini frames and he was the guy who was saying, “The computer can be on your desk.” And you looked at these large companies that were in the marketplace, and they were all asking their customers, “What do you want?” And the customers were just saying, “I want better, faster, cheaper of what you built, not something different.”
But breakthroughs never happen that way. And every smart person will tell you, every great idea is a crazy idea until the breakthrough happens, then it becomes obvious. Duh, of course, everybody knew this is going to happen.
So point is, here was this guy who was able to push through all that and create a totally new industry. And he was very down to earth. Obviously, in the early days of Microsoft I was able to spend time with him, and I found him to be driven, passionate, and full of belief.
Most people would have given up on many of the things that he pursued relentlessly. When Windows came out, Windows 1.0 was a total flop. Windows 2.0 was a total flop. Windows 386 was a total flop. He didn’t give up until the version Windows 3.0, and life never looked the same again.
“Never give up” is the life motto of several self-made billionaires I interviewed.
Mohed Altrad’s life always was an uphill battle
All my life is adversity, from the start. You have a lot of areas where life could stop for you. My life is a sort of miracle, and if you look at the origin of my life, a Bedouin in the desert, you have nothing. The number of days is enormous where you wake up in the morning and have nothing to eat, nothing to drink, in the middle of the desert. But you survive.
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