Customer Reviews

The Outsiders' Edge

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The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires is an unabridged audiobook analysis of seventeen modern billionaires who earned their fortune under their own power, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Steve Jobs, Ralph Lauren, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and more. Close study reveals a remarkable common personality trait - all seventeen are outsiders, whose advantage comes from marching to their own drummer outside of the lockstep synchronicity of everyone else. Combining that unique quality with determination, intelligence, and ambition proved to be their catalyst to wealth. Read aloud by voice artist Adrian Mulraney, The Outsider's Edge is an excellent motivational audiobook that encourages the listener to hone his or her individual strengths. 12 CDs, 13 hours 40 minutes.

This is a very good book that looks at the background of 17 billionaires who are all 'self made.' It finds the common ground and attempts to find the links between those backgrounds and how they ended up being such sensational performers in the financial sense. It can be said that if you suffered from a difficult background or had a life changing experience or experiences, that this is often a catalyst for achievement (where one gets over those experiences of course!)

All in all an interesting read. I'd like to be a billionaire anay difficulties I had in my childhood might not be significant enough to give me the push I need to achieve like these people - but you never know!

It is encouraging to find that the real story of wealth and making money is analysed in this easy to read book. The big money is made by people who follow different rules and to do that you have to be different. Being different is caused mainly by what happens to a kid before they leave school. This is good news for the Outsiders, particularly those who had a hard time at school. The author gives a great little test for whether or not a person has what it takes to be a billionaire on [...] The Creative Edge: 17 Biographies of Cultural IconsOutliers: The Story of Success

Again, like The Creative Edge, this well written book makes the case that it is the kids at the back of the class or the roudy unengaged ones that end up with that critical difference that can make them great and maybe wealthy. Dyslexics and other kids with learning disabilities rate highly among the super rich.

This is a good book about extereme achievers - billionaires in this case, because their achievement can be easily quantified in financial terms. The conlusion of the author would apply to any extreme achiever in politics, science, arts, sports, entertainment...

17 mini biographies of billionaires, for each about 10 pages, make up around 2/3 of the book. Readers can easily pick those they are interested and skipping some without losing the context.

The theme of the book is exciting for anyone interested in the field of extreme achievements. Basically, if you were looking for only one attribute (intelligence, fearlessness etc), what would it be? The author hypothesis is that extreme achievers are all `outsiders', i.e. they all have an edge of being different.

Before reading the book, I was convinced that extreme achievers are outsiders. But I was convinced that being an outsider is an effect, not a cause. That those extreme achievers thought and behaved differently, that's what made them outsiders. Not the other way around.

I'm not that sure anymore. The author makes a very strong point why outsiders become different. In particular why people who have had significant failure in the 3 great domains of family, school and friends usually don't have a rich choice of things to focus in life. So they are often left with one thing only to focus on and excel in it. The same logic of outsiders explains why involvement in school sports works against extreme achievement in any other field. And finally, being an outsider means that they are less influenced by conventional wisdom and social expectations.

Like the book OUTLINERS, THE OUTSIDER's EDGE helps us `understanding' extreme achievement. Unfortunately, it helps us little in improving ourselves. Thus, for an intellectual pursue, it's a good book. For a `self-help' it fails.