7 Billionaire Entrepreneurs Who Started Off Dirt-Poor

There is no limit to what is possible with hard work and vision.

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Billionaires make up an elite class. There are only about 2,208 billionaires in the world, with America leading the way. Many in this exclusive club had a running start on wealth thanks to affluent families and a first-class education.

But there is a tough and mighty breed of self-made billionaires who stand out from the rest. They are the ones who started at rock bottom and found a way to propel themselves beyond their wildest dreams, all through their wits and sheer force of will.

Jan Koum worked as a janitor and collected food stamps before launching WhatsApp.

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum went from living on welfare and working as a janitor to creating one of the most globally popular messaging apps. Koum was born in the Ukraine. He and his mother immigrated to the U.S. when he was 16, settling in Mountain View, California.

His mother babysat and Koum worked in a grocery store. He taught himself computer networking by reading old manuals, and eventually landed a job at Yahoo. There he met Brian Acton, who would later become a co-founder of WhatsApp. Koum was inspired to launch WhatsApp after buying an iPhone and realizing the potential of the growing app industry.

John Paul DeJoria was homeless before he found his niche in hair care.

Imagine living out of your car and selling shampoo and conditioner with the hopes of one day making it big. Sounds like a pipe dream, right? But John Paul DeJoria did just that, founding the hair-care company John Paul Mitchell Systems with his partner when the two pooled $700 to launch their business.

DeJoria went on to co-found Patron Spirits Company and the House of Blues nightclub chain, as well as having interests in a number of other businesses. He is worth an estimated $3.4 billion, according to Forbes (2018).

However, he kept getting fired, often because he didn’t fit in with the company. He and a hairdresser friend, Paul Mitchell, decided to launch a business together, with the goal of selling luxury products at affordable prices. The business struggled for two years before it started to take off. His organization became the first beauty company to take a stand against animal testing.

From a poor Mississippi farm, Oprah Winfrey became a legendary talk show host.

The woman now known as the “Queen of All Media” rose from poverty to become the most-watched daytime television show host. Oprah Winfrey was born on a small farm in Mississippi to a single mother, and was initially raised by her grandmother, who could only afford to dress her in potato sacks.

She had a difficult, unstable childhood, often with little supervision, and was molested by family members. In her teen years, her father made education a focus. She won a speaking contest and subsequently a full scholarship to Tennessee State University. She began working in local media as a teenager and eventually landed a job as an anchor on A.M. Chicago, a morning talk show.

Larry Ellison dropped out of college twice before finding his true calling at Oracle.

Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle Corporation, was born to a single mother and dropped out of college twice before he found his way. His multinational database software and technology corporation has annual revenues of over $37 billion, and Forbes estimates Ellison’s net worth to be $56.5 billion (2018). Yet Ellison began life as a sickly child. He was adopted by his mother’s aunt and uncle after he came down with pneumonia as a baby.

Ellison initially did well in college, and was named science student of the year, but he dropped out after his adoptive mother passed away. He enrolled at a different college but left after one semester.

After IBM signed on to use Oracle, the company hit a major growth spurt, doubling sales every year for the next seven years. Ellison renamed the company after his best-selling product and by 1992 the company was the leader in the database-management realm. He has been ranked the fifth-wealthiest person on the planet.

J. K. Rowling was a single mother on welfare while writing Harry Potter.

Born in the United Kingdom, J. K. Rowling was sitting on a delayed train when she came up with the idea for the Harry Potter book series. It took her seven years to finish the first book, during which time her mother died, she gave birth to her first child, she divorced her first husband and lived as a single mother on welfare. Now she is credited with being the first billion-dollar author.

After Rowling’s mother died, she moved to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. She met and married a man there and they had a daughter. But the marriage was short lived, and soon she was divorced and living back in Edinburgh, Scotland, jobless and with no money.

Do Won Chang worked 3 jobs and 19-hour days before launching Forever 21.

Do Won Chang and his wife, Jin Sook, emigrated to the U.S. from South Korea, settling in Los Angeles. Do Won immediately found jobs in a local coffee shop and a gas station, and then started his own office-cleaning business, where he worked nights.

While pumping gas, he noticed that the people who drove the nicest cars worked in the garment industry. This inspired him to take a job in a clothing store. He and his wife eventually pooled their savings to launch their own store, called Fashion 21. It became the first of about 790 stores in the successful Forever 21 chain. And now the man who used to work 19-hour days to get by has an estimated net worth of $3.3 billion (Forbes 2018).

Howard Schultz sold his blood to pay for college before launching Starbucks.

The man who revolutionized the coffee industry and is worth an estimated $2.8 billion (Forbes 2018) grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn. When Schultz was 7, his father, a truck driver, broke his ankle on the job. He had no health insurance or worker’s compensation and the family was left with no income. It was a defining moment for Schultz, who has said he saw the hopelessness and despair his parents went through during that time.

To pay for college, Schultz worked as a bartender and even sold his own blood. In the early 1980s he joined Starbucks, which had just a few stores in the Seattle area. He saw the potential for the small brand to grow nationally while maintaining a quality product.

7 Real-Life Business Lessons You Can Learn From Billionaires

The only variable you really control is how hard you work.

The “three-comma club” consists of those in industry, art and commerce who have achieved the exclusive honor of reaching a net worth of more than one billion dollars. From Rockefeller to Gates, members of the club include people who have truly altered the world. To achieve this level of success requires hard work, dedication and a little bit of luck.

Fortunately for the rest of us, these men and women have shared some of the techniques that helped them achieve membership in the exclusive billionaires’ club.

Whether your goal is to make a billion dollars or bring clean water to a billion people, the techniques of how to envision and achieve goals can be used by anyone. Here are 7 of those techniques, straight from the mouths of billionaires.

1. Look failure in the eyes.

Failure is not something that you expect the most successful entrepreneurs to have experienced much of. However, all billionaires have experienced failure, sometimes catastrophically. The difference between those who thrive and those who don’t is that those who thrive failed better. As Bill Gates said, “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Gates is a prime example of why learning from failure is key. While at his first company, Traf-O-Data, Gates, the future richest man in the world, saw his life’s work fail completely. When Traf-O-Data went out of business in the late 1970s, Gates watched his dream of success start to crumble. However, according to him and his co-founder and fellow billionaire Paul Allen, the lesson they learned from the failure of Traf-O-Data helped Microsoft succeed.

2. Insist on excellence.

Excellence for the most successful among us is a habit. Take the words of advice from Mohammad Dewji, CEO of the METL Group and Africa’s youngest billionaire at 42. He says, “Always strive for excellence in life and never make room for mediocrity. Set your standards high and your efforts shall be rewarded.”

Long-term goals can seem daunting or abstract. However, waking up every day and being consistent with one’s standards is key. A billion dollars starts with a million, which starts with a thousand, which starts with one … and that first dollar is only earned by demanding one’s best.

The most successful entrepreneurs create the right goals and achieve them daily. With time, these become the right habits. And finally, these become the right accomplishments. Insist on excellence, and maybe you could end up in the three-comma club.

3. Vision is key.

The other aspect of becoming a billionaire is setting the right goals. Coming up with those ideas that are worth pursuing means thinking outside the box and seeing value where others do not. The ideas that created billionaires have been those that pushed the boundaries. This means pursuing one’s idea and having faith in a vision when others are skeptical or even hostile.

For example, when billionaire Richard Branson started Virgin Airlines to compete with air-travel giants like TWA and American Airlines, he was mocked. Others scoffed at him for even attempting to challenge the existing airline companies. However, Branson saw there was a need for a cheaper airline, and one with customer service in mind.

He had faith in his vision, and even though Virgin Airlines struggled in its first few years, it eventually took off for Branson. When Branson sold his 31 percent stake of Virgin America to KLM-France in 2017 for $286 million dollars, his vision was vindicated.

Branson knew that others were skeptical of his idea, but he trusted his judgment and pursued a vision that few others had the will to follow. Billionaires constantly seek to see what others don’t. The fact that others don’t share the vision means only one thing: it’s a great idea.

4. Health is important.

No billion-dollar effort gets off the ground without a healthy and willing personality behind it. As fitness expert and personal trainer to billionaires Samir Becic says, “I truly believe that in the 21st century, in order to excel in the world, you have to be fit and healthy.” Billionaires from the founder of Under Armour to 86-year-old George Soros all emphasize how important personal health is to them.

Your idea won’t get off the ground if you feel sluggish and unfit. You won’t have the energy to do all the things on your list. Stress-reduction strategies, a healthy diet and consistent exercise will do wonders for your motivation and mental capacity. Remember that even in pursuing your dreams, health is key to keeping you in tip-top shape.

You may be surprised that luck is embraced by these hard-working, motivated people; however, it absolutely plays a factor in becoming a member of the billionaires’ club. As Mark Cuban, who sold his company Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in the 1990s, openly admits, “Being a billionaire requires a lot of luck, a lot of great timing.”

Now, it’s obviously foolish to depend on luck for success. However, the ability to quickly and correctly recognize opportunity when it is presented to you, the flexibility to change course if required and the preparation to rise to the occasion all are vital in taking advantage of what would be considered “luck.”

Learning to take the appropriate chances and having faith in yourself are keys to finding the opportunities that can help you along the way.

6. Keep your priorities in order.

Health, happiness and financial security, in that order, were the three top priorities of millionaires, according to a 2015 US Trust Survey of 640 high-net-worth individuals with at least $3 million in investable assets.

While the financial and professional goals we set for ourselves are crucial to success, it is also important to remember why we are pursuing them. A billion dollars will achieve financial security, and possibly fame, but you should remember the other things in life that money can’t buy.

7. Work, work, work.

The Chairman of Nissan-Renault flies more than 150,000 miles a year. Serena and Venus Williams began hitting tennis balls at 6:00 a.m. when they were 8-years old. Marissa Mayer worked brutal 130-hour weeks while at Google. These stories of grit and work ethic define the journey to becoming a billionaire.

No matter the weather, day or time, for billionaires the only thing on their mind is the task at hand. It is this willingness to work that sets those in the three-comma club apart and defines those who can achieve their dreams, no matter what it is. Luckily, with the right work ethic, all the other steps become easy. As Mark Cuban says,“Companies don’t fail for a lack of cash or attitude. Companies fail for a lack … of effort.”

Credit: Entrepreneur

URL:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309265

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