Words: Guy Aubrey Devito
None of the world’s most successful people were born millionaires – they had to work for their wealth. Some of them had rather surprising career trajectories and started professional life working in very unpromising circumstances indeed…
BURGER FLIPPER
One of the world’s richest men, Jeff Bezos, is worth an eye watering $27.6 billion, but life wasn’t always so sweet. He started as a ‘grill man’ at McDonalds during a summer in his youth – but never made it to the cash register.
DILETTANTE
Arianna Huffington was something of a dilettante in her twenties and enjoyed a hippy-ish, transient sort of life, travelling to music festivals with her boyfriend at the time; BBC reporter Bernard Levin.
SHOP ASSISTANT
TV talk show supremo Oprah Winfrey is worth $3 billion but packed groceries in a store to support herself while studying (on a full scholarship) at Tennessee University.
INTERN
Internships are all the rage now, but there weren’t so many of them back in the 80s. Xerox CEO Ursula Burns originally started there as an intern in her mid-twenties.
BARTENDER
The sports and media mogul, Mark Cuban was something of a slow starter and in his mid-twenties, years after graduating from university, was working as bartender and a PC salesman.
CLOTHES SALESMAN
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Ralph Lauren worked as a sales assistant for a reputable men’s clothier (Brooks Brothers) as a young man. The experience reportedly inspired him to start his own brand.
INTERVIEWEE
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer had been interviewing for several jobs without success and finally landed a job with Google. She stayed there for 13 years until moving on to become CEO of Yahoo.
STUDYING
Who says that entrepreneurs can’t be scholars too? Eric Schmidt was post-graduate student well into his late twenties, studying for a masters and then a PhD at UC Berkeley.
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