What does it mean to be self-made?
When it comes to financials, it is about blood, sweat, tears, and hundreds of thousands of hours of hard work and dozens of rejections before finding that success. It is not about getting money inherited to you and growing it.
It’s about taking that last $2,000 in your life savings, throwing it into a modest business in your garage or spare bedroom and putting in the hours and effort to nurture it and make it your own and watching it flourish, fueled by your passion.
And when you have the right skill, excellent customer service and passion for your work, you can make a million dollars – or a billion! – through your own work.
Before you think it seems impossible, just know this – of the Forbes 400 list of richest people, two-thirds of the group (almost 275 billionaires) got their money the old-fashioned way – they earned it.
So for a little inspiration, here is a prominent list of 10 self-made billionaires.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates may not have run Microsoft for the last 20 years, but he is Microsoft. A Harvard dropout, Gates collaborated with friend Paul Allen and developed the iconic company in the mid-1970s.
Gates had been programming computers for about 10 years or so before Microsoft came into existence, as he started as a precocious 13-year-old. He began with a deal to produce what was called Microsoft Disk Operating System to be installed in IBM computers, and his continued development of other software helped the company take off.
Microsoft was started in 1975, incorporated in 1981 and became a publicly traded company five years later. He is still the largest owner of Microsoft stock, which accounts for much of his wealth, which is estimated at about $85 billion.
Continue reading Start A Business Like These Self-Made Billionaires Or Invest Your Way To Wealth?
