What separates the billionaires from the millionaires? Hard work, persistence, humility, luck, credit-sharing, integrity, and the ability to accept and shake off failure. But there's more to these five billionaires. SPYSCAPE reveals the secrets of the world’s richest men.

1. Elon Musk (net worth fluctuates, apx $200bn)

SpaceX and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk snatched away the title of the world’s richest man from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in early 2021. What’s his secret? It is not about the money, Musk said. Pursue your passions and don’t be afraid to think big or take risks. ’Enjoy yourself,’ is another of his mantras. (Of course, that was before he bought Twitter.)

Sure Musk wants to colonize Mars and revolutionize the car industry, but he’s just as happy when one of his companies wires up a monkey's brain to play video games: "One of the things we're trying to figure out is whether we can have the monkeys playing mind pong with each other. That would be pretty cool.”

Musk also advocates reading (he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica as a child) and told Forbes that burning the midnight oil and ‘creating rather than complaining’ are positive habits. It also helps to love your shareholders like your family, create trends rather than follow them, ignore the critics, ask for feedback, and always think about how you can do things better, he adds. 

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2. Jeff Bezos (net worth around $120 bn)

Jeff Bezos had a great idea for a company back in 1994. He planned to call it ‘Cadabra’, like the magic trick, until his lawyer told him it sounded like ‘cadaver’. ‘Relentless’ was also in the running (which is why relentless.com takes you to his online shopping site) but he settled on Amazon, named after the largest river in the world. The rest is online shopping history. 

Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2020 and became executive chairman at the height of his success. So what’s his secret? Having a vision, organizing his time, and focusing on the next two to three years. “Vision is absolutely important, but it doesn’t deserve your day-to-day attention,” Bezos told New York’s Yale Club in 2019. “Mostly your time should be spent on things that are happening today, this year, maybe in the next two or three years.”

Also, don’t be afraid to be inefficient sometimes. “Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency,” Bezos said in a letter to shareholders. “You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries - the ‘non-linear’ ones - are highly likely to require wandering.”

Focusing on customers rather than competitors is also key, Bezos told Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: “If you want to get to the truth about what makes us different, it’s this: We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented, and we genuinely like to invent. Most companies are not those things.”

Bernard Arnault (net worth $220bn or so)

French businessman Bernard Arnault is the head of LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton SE, the world's largest luxury goods company with brands including Christian Dior, and Tiffany & Co. So how did he get to the top? “I am competitive. I always want to win.”

The person Arnault admires most in business is Warren Buffett (number six on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index at $114 bn), who he describes as a long-term investor with brilliant ideas that he sticks to. Arnault also has a keen eye for detail and quality which allows him to see the value in failing brands and invest in hidden value.

“I think in business, you have to learn to be patient. Maybe I’m not very patient myself. But I think what I’ve learned the most is to be able to wait for something and get it when it’s the right time.”

Just because Arnault is at the top of his game, he doesn’t believe in sitting back. “I often say to my team that we should behave as if we’re still a startup. Don’t go to the offices too much. Stay on the ground with the customer or with the designers as they work. I visit stores every week. I always look for the store managers. I want to see them on the ground, not in their offices doing paperwork.”

Bill Gates (net worth about $105 bn)

Bill Gates, who reads about 50 books a year, believes that being open to new opportunities and ideas drives success. So does being surrounded by a great team and knowing when to delegate. So what does Gates find most helpful in business?

“The quality that has helped me in lots of things is a kind of measurement, scientific framework, where I go in and say ‘Did anybody handle this well? What are the very best practices? Do we have numbers on that?’ And let’s get everybody measuring what they are doing so they can strive to match what the best achievement is.”

Gates had a few additional words of advice for students when he visited his old Seattle prep school, Lakeside School, in 2019 (the only school he’s graduated from, as he dropped out of Harvard). In an ever-expanding world of technology and AI, Gates told students they would do well to remain curious and optimistic, and to realize what they are and aren’t good at doing.

Gates also advocated a strong educational foundation, ideally including sciences, and a willingness to keep learning. Refreshing knowledge through podcasts or online learning has never been easier, he added. The billionaire philanthropist has also said that, as he gets older, he has discovered the benefits of sleeping. The book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker has had a great deal of influence on Gates.

Larry Page (net worth around $87 bn)

Google CEO Larry Page believes companies should make products that are 10 times better than their rivals if they want to succeed in business. He doesn’t believe in keeping his eyes solely on his rivals, however, preferring ‘moon shot’ ideas to identify and implement once-impossible sci-fi fantasies: "It’s hard to find actual examples of really amazing things that happened solely due to competition," Page told Wired.

Page is known for his famous phrase: “When a dream appears, take it.” He was just 23 when he initiated the Google project as part of a PhD. (Fun fact: His first search words typed into Google were “Gerhard Casper”, the former president of Stanford University.)

Page follows a few rules to ensure he stays on top. He constantly strives to improve. Google’s search engine algorithm changes almost daily. Page prefers to have ‘too few’ managers than too many, believing that less is more. He pays attention to trends to see where markets are going in the fast-changing tech environment.

"Don't be evil" used to be Google's unofficial model - which meant avoid conflicts of interest, and maintain objectivity and an absence of bias. The motto was updated by the search engine’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., in 2015 to “Do the right thing.”