This time we will discuss the success stories whose incredible work ethic paid off.
It's easy to look at successful people and explain their achievements as the product of luck — being in the right place at the right time or being born with extraordinary talent. But there are many people who get lucky in one or both of those ways that don't go anywhere.
What distinguishes the merely talented from the truly great is drive — the willingness to get in earlier, stay later, and do more than everyone around them.
Whether it's staying up until 2 a.m. while working another job like Mark Cuban did to learn software or personally following up on customer complaints like Jeff Bezos does, many of the most successful people worked incredibly hard on their way up and continue to do so today.
If you find yourself about to hit the snooze button again or dragging in the middle of your workday, look here for some inspiration.
1. Mark Cuban
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban didn't take a vacation for seven years while starting his first business.
At first glance, Cuban's amazing success looks like a stroke of luck. He sold his first company at the peak of its value and got into technology stocks at exactly the right time.
Cuban writes on his blog that it took an incredible amount of work to benefit from his luck. When starting his first company, he routinely stayed up until 2 in the morning reading about new software, and went seven years without a vacation.
2.Maria das Graças Silva Foster
4.Tim Cook
6. Li Ka-Shing
It's easy to look at successful people and explain their achievements as the product of luck — being in the right place at the right time or being born with extraordinary talent. But there are many people who get lucky in one or both of those ways that don't go anywhere.
What distinguishes the merely talented from the truly great is drive — the willingness to get in earlier, stay later, and do more than everyone around them.
Whether it's staying up until 2 a.m. while working another job like Mark Cuban did to learn software or personally following up on customer complaints like Jeff Bezos does, many of the most successful people worked incredibly hard on their way up and continue to do so today.
If you find yourself about to hit the snooze button again or dragging in the middle of your workday, look here for some inspiration.
1. Mark Cuban
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban didn't take a vacation for seven years while starting his first business.
At first glance, Cuban's amazing success looks like a stroke of luck. He sold his first company at the peak of its value and got into technology stocks at exactly the right time.
Cuban writes on his blog that it took an incredible amount of work to benefit from his luck. When starting his first company, he routinely stayed up until 2 in the morning reading about new software, and went seven years without a vacation.
2.Maria das Graças Silva Foster
Her work ethic earned her the nickname "Caveirao," slang for the armored vehicles used by police in Brazil.
The current head of Brazilian Oil Giant Petrobras spent her childhood in a favela collecting cans to pay for school. She started as an intern in 1978, but quickly became the company's first female head of field engineering.
Bloomberg reports that her tireless work ethic has earned her the nickname Caveirao, for the armored vehicles police use to clean up crime ridden Brazilian neighborhoods.
3.Jeff Bezos
Amazon CEO's high school classmates gave up when he decided he wanted to be valedictorian
Bezos always had a relentless work ethic. A former classmate told Wired that once Bezos had made it clear that he intended to be high school valedictorian, "everyone else understood they were working for second place."
The early days at Amazon were characterized by working 12-hour days seven days a week, and being up until 2 or 3 in the morning to get books shipped.
Now that Amazon's a giant, Bezos personally emails teams about customer service issues and has them present directly to him about how they're going to solve them, according to an excerpt from Brad Stone's upcoming book
4.Tim Cook
Apple CEO begins emailing employees at 4:30 in the morning.
Steve Jobs left incredibly big shoes for Cook to fill. However, the man got the top job for a reason. He's always been a workaholic, and Fortune reports that he begins sending emails at 4:30 in the morning.
A profile in Gawker reveals that he's the first in the office and last to leave. He used to hold staff meetings on Sunday night in order to prepare for Monday
5.Carlos Ghosn
Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn flies more than 150,000 miles a year.
Carlos Ghosn runs two of the world's largest automakers, which should tell you something about his work ethic. A profile in Forbes describes how Ghosn works more than 65 hours a week, spends 48 hours a month in the air, and flies more than 150,000 miles a year.
His turnaround of Nissan is the subject of many case studies. Within a month he deployed a system that completely changed ingrained practices, helping save a company many thought irredeemable.
Hong Kong business magnate became a factory general manager by age 19
One of the richest men in Asia and a dominant figure in Hong Kong's economy, Ka-Shing started outworking everybody as a teenager en route to building a $21 billion empire.
By age 15, Ka-Shing had left school and was working in a plastics factory. He told Forbes how he quickly became a salesman, outsold everybody else, and became the factory's general manager by 19. In 1950, he started his own business and did almost everything, including the accounting, himself.
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