Here are some rags to riches stories that will inspire your own trajectory to becoming successful.
George Soros
George Soros is the type to invest in a franchise and make it into success. His humble beginnings were in Hungary, where he survived that nation’s Nazi occupation. Soros father, in fact, was instrumental in saving his son’s life by paying off a government employee. After the war, in 1947, Soros escaped his Iron Curtain and Cold War life and made it to London.
He subsequently managed to earn a degree from the London School of Economics.
But that’s hardly the end of the story. Even after graduation, Soros was still living a modest life, working at a souvenir shop. Only later did he get rich and become part of a merchant bank that sparked his career as one of the most famous investors on the planet.
John Paul DeJoria
DeJoria was born in Los Angeles, a first-generation American. He started out his business life selling Christmas cards and newspapers before he even turned 10. He also spent time in a gang. The path ahead looked like a disastrous one for DeJoria.
But, instead, he later created John Paul Mitchell Systems using a $700 loan. He lived out of his car and sold shampoo door to door. Later, he would diversify into diamonds, mobile phones and alcohol. But first it took him a long time to escape living out of his car.
Do Won Chang
Do Won Chang is the famous face behind Forever 21, who much earlier immigrated to the United States from South Korea, in 1981. Before he founded Forever 21, he worked three jobs simultaneously, as a gas station clerk, a janitor and a coffee shop employee. That period lasted for three years before he founded the company and opened its first clothing store, in 1984.
This family business grew quickly by taking advantage of the benefits of “fast fashion.” Forever 21 is now multi-national and has 480 locations across the world. It has also managed to bring in $3 billion per year. And the next generation has been taken into the company, as Chang has brought his two daughters on board.
Zdenek Bakala
Zdenek Bakala happens to be one of the leading coal entrepreneurs in the United States. Originally from Czechoslovakia, he fled that country when he was just 19. He arrived in Lake Tahoe with just $50 in his pocket. Once there, he got a job washing dishes at Harrah’s casino.
Fast-forward a few years: Bakala attended the prestigious University of California-Berkeley and acquired his undergraduate degree. That higher education credential gained him entry into the banking world. And returning to his homeland, in 1994 he opened the Credit Suisse office in Prague.
Due to his enormous wealth, Bakala has managed to acquire huge shares in both coal and iron ore, which he still holds to this day.
Mohed Altrad
Born into a nomadic tribe in the Syrian desert to a poor mother who was raped by his father and died when he was young, Altrad was raised by his grandmother, who banned him from attending school.
Altrad attended school anyway, and when he moved to France to attend university, he knew no French and lived off of one meal a day. Still, he earned a PhD in computer science, worked for some leading French companies, and eventually bought a failing scaffolding company, which he transformed into one of the world’s leading manufacturers of scaffolding and cement mixers, Altrad Group.
Li Ka-shing
He was born in Guangdong province, China. After his father’s death, he was forced to leave school to support his family before he turned 15. He found work at a plastics trading company where he labored 16 hours a day. After years of back-breaking work, he was able to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries.
Today, Li’s businesses cover almost every facet of life in Hong Kong, from electricity to telecommunications, from real estate to retail, from shipping to the Internet. The Cheung Kong Group operates in 55 countries and employs over 260,000 staff worldwide.
Ingvar Kamprad
Kamprad lived the farm life growing up. But he always had a knack for business, buying matches in bulk from Stockholm to sell to his neighbors. He later expanded to fish, Christmas decorations, and pens.
Not satisfied with the small stuff, Kamprad took money from his father (a reward for good grades) and created a mail-order business that eventually became IKEA (the name comes from his initials plus those of his village and family farm). Furniture became the company’s biggest seller, and Kamprad’s use of local manufacturers kept his prices low.
Sam Walton
Walton’s family lived on a farm in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. He had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he also sold magazine subscriptions. During his college, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. After graduating from the University of Missouri with a B.A. in economics, he joined the US Army during the World War II. After the war, he left the military and started managing a variety store at the age of 26.
He used $5,000 from the army and a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law to buy a Ben Franklin variety store in Arkansas. He expanded the chain, and then went on to found Walmart and Sam’s Club. He died in 1992, leaving the company to his wife and children.
Andrew Carnegie
This Scottish-American industrialist started to work at a cotton mill for a 12-hour, 6-days a week job in America when he was only 13 years old after his father lost his jobs as a handweaver in Scotland. Hired later as a telegraph messenger at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, he was able to climb the corporate ladder where he used his earnings to invest in ventures that led him to build an empire in the steel industry including his large-scale philanthropic legacy.
Oprah Winfrey
She was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother. She was later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has often spoken about the hardships she experienced during childhood, saying she was raped at age 9 and at 13; after suffering years of abuse, she ran away from home. She became pregnant at 14. Her son, she said, died in infancy. While in high school, she landed a job in radio and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. She got transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena because of her emotional ad-lib delivery.
She became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. She is credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication.
Chris Gardner
Born without knowing his real father, he was driven out of his home by his abusive stepfather. He enlisted in the Navy and later became a medical supplies salesman. Due to the slump in his job and with his own family to support, he became interested in stock broking after seeing a stockbroker with a Ferrari. His travails of sleeping in a subway station bathroom, being homeless, passing the licensing exam for stockbrokers, and becoming employed by Bear Sterns was documented in his memoirs, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” which became a hit movie as well.
Jim Carrey
James Eugene Carrey was born in Ontario, Canada to a middle-income family where his musician father worked as an accountant. However, things got worse for his family when his father lost his job and they all had to move to Scarborough. He worked at the Titan Wheels Factory for eight hours a day while attending school, but never finished high school. While living in a camper van, he started doing stand-up routines and eventually landed a gig in the sitcom The Duck Factory. He first gained recognition in 1990 when he became one of the casts in the sketch comedy ‘In Living Colors.’ He later moved on to movies and became one of the highest paid comedians in America.
Stélio Inácio
This text is part of the book Escaping Poverty – 5 Steps to Start your Own Business