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Here's what billionaire Peter Thiel wishes he'd known in his 20s

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Peter Thiel wishes he could give his younger self this advice
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Peter Thiel wishes he could give his younger self this advice

If PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel could do it all over, he would start thinking big sooner.

"If you go back 20 or 25 years, I wish I would have known that there was no need to wait," the billionaire investor tells author Tim Ferriss in "Tools of Titans."

"I went to college. I went to law school. I worked in law and banking, though not for terribly long. But not until I started PayPal did I fully realize that you don't have to wait to start something."

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal Inc.
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The self-made billionaire says you should take your 10-year life plan and ask, Why can't I do this in six months?

Of course, no single path works for everyone, and "sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory," he tells Ferriss. "But it's at least worth asking whether that's the story you're telling yourself, or whether that's the reality?"

After all, thinking big is a quality that sets the ultra-successful apart from the rest.

After studying rich people for several decades, author and self-made millionaire Steve Siebold found that rich people set their expectations high. As he writes in "How Rich People Think," "No one would ever strike it rich and live their dreams without huge expectations."

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