As if becoming a self-made billionaire wasn't impressive enough, some of the richest billionaires in the world today literally took themselves from slums, factories, and the street to the highest levels of fortune, success, and power. The seven billionaire stories you are about to read prove that even the toughest challenges in life can be overcome. If you're currently struggling, or have ever struggled to make ends meet, you are not alone. Plenty of people have to borrow from the Visa bill to cover their car payment, for instance. Sometimes, even massively wealthy entrepreneurial billionaires know this pain and heartache because they started out broke just like many of us.
The old saying that it takes money to make money does not apply to these seven billionaires. They are not only self-made men and a woman; they are also true rags-to-riches tales of success. They may have started out in humble circumstances, but they are now among the wealthiest and most successful people in the world. Each of these stories shows that no matter what your circumstances are, dedication and determination can change your life and your fortunes for the better.
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Jeff Bezos
It seems hard to imagine the world's richest person, Jeff Bezos, net worth is $180 billion. As a struggling young man, the truth is that Bezos doesn't come from money and privilege. In fact, his mother was just a teenager when she gave birth to the future internet tycoon, and his birth father abandoned the family when he was just three years old.
To help support the family, Jeff spent summers and weekends vaccinating and castrating cattle at his maternal grandparents' Texas farm. After moving to a town near Albuquerque, Bezos's family maintained a fairly modest lifestyle. When he was a teenager, he worked at McDonald's during the summer. His entrepreneurial streak showed itself early when, as a teen, he launched a science camp for kids and charged $600 per child.
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Li Ka-Shing
When Li Ka-Shing was just 14 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. To earn money for his family, Li was forced to abandon school and take a job at a plastics factory. The family was so poor that Li actually had to sell his dead father's clothes for cash to pay for food.
While most of his peers attended school or played games, Li labored away for 16 hours a day making plastic watchbands. In 1950, at the age of 22, Li quit his job to start his own company that made plastic toys. The company soon shifted plans and began producing plastic flowers, which became popular in Italy. This savvy decision led to the establishment of Cheung Kong.
Howard Schultz
Starbucks' Howard Schultz grew up very poor in a Brooklyn housing project. From an early age, Schultz was encouraged to believe in himself and his ability to succeed. To distract himself from the poverty at home, Schultz threw himself into sports.
He played high school baseball, football, and basketball, earning a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University—his ticket out of his impoverished childhood. After graduation, Schultz worked at Xerox for four years before moving to Hammerplast, a Swedish manufacturer of drip coffeemakers. This led him to Starbucks in 1981, where he eventually took a job in marketing.
Guy Laliberte
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte has come a long way from his days busking throughout Europe. Laliberte earned cash as a folk singer and also by playing the accordion, walking on stilts, and eating fire. He founded Cirque du Soleil in 1984 in Montreal with another former street performer, Gilles Ste-Croix.
In 1987, he took a chance and brought their Quebec-based troupe to the Los Angeles Arts Festival. He could only afford to get the troupe to L.A., and they had no money for tickets back to Canada. Luckily, his bet paid off, and it wasn't long before the world knew about Cirque du Soleil, expanding rapidly throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is world famous today, but she grew up very poor in rural Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. Raised by a single mother, she is a survivor of sexual assault and teen pregnancy. Her family’s poverty was so severe that she wore potato sacks to school as dresses because they could not afford proper clothing.
However, her grandmother stressed the importance of education, and young Oprah excelled in her studies. She received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University to major in Communications. After college, Oprah became the youngest news anchor and first black female anchor for WLAC in Nashville, eventually launching "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Larry Ellison
Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison had a tough childhood. A bout of pneumonia when he was a toddler led his single mother to send him to be raised by an immigrant relative in Chicago. His adoptive father repeatedly told Ellison he would never amount to anything.
After his adoptive mother died when he was a sophomore in college, Ellison dropped out of the University of Illinois. He later founded Software Development Laboratories, which eventually became Oracle Systems Corporations, named after their flagship product, the Oracle database. Today, Larry Ellison is worth $64 billion.
Jan Koum
Jan Koum immigrated to the United States from Ukraine with his mother and grandmother when he was 16. They settled in a small apartment in Mountain View, California, relying on social support programs. While Koum worked at a grocery store, his mother babysat to make ends meet.
During his free time, Koum immersed himself in learning computer networking and later enrolled at San Jose State University to study programming. He landed a job at Yahoo in 1997 and co-founded WhatsApp in 2009, which he sold to Facebook for $19 billion. Koum chose to sign the acquisition papers on the steps of the welfare office where he and his mother used to obtain food stamps.
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