Where do billionaires start from? Or better still what makes a billionaire? Well, according to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, it all comes down to focus. According to Sheldon Adelson, it all comes down to working the skin off your fingertips to make that extra dollar. Whichever of them is right, we may never know but one thing is common between all of them; they were never billionaires to begin with. Many people believe that starting in business as your own boss is always better than being employed, but sometimes you just don’t have a choice but to start small. Here are some of the richest people in the world who had crappy first jobs.
Amancio Ortega: Delivery Boy
Amancio Ortega is one of the most silent billionaires in the world which may have a lot to do with his age but he is also a very relatable figure. His humble beginnings are not known by many except the people of Busdongo de Arbas in Spain. Ortega was employed as the short delivery boy for a shirt store in the town of A Coruna Spain. He was alter promoted to an assistant tailor which exposed him to the garment industry giving him his first clientele and a better understanding of how garment manufacturing and delivering could be profitable.
Michael Bloomberg: Parking Attendant
The former mayor of New York is also one of the biggest names on Wall Street with a net worth of over $60 billion which made him the richest ever aspirant for the US presidency in 2020. He did start small though and like many average working-class children, he had a difficult time making it through Johns Hopkins University. To keep up with his expenses and pay off some of the loans, Bloomberg took a job as a parking lot attendant which is pretty humble considering the strides he has made politically and financially.
Jeff Bezos: Grill Operator At McDonald’s
Jeff Bezos is one of the coolest billionaires in the world. Everyone seems to remember that he quit his job and started Amazon out of a garage but long before Amazon, Bezos was a simple guy turning the burgers on a grill in the summer to pay bills. His time flipping burgers at a McDonalds in Miami taught him the essence of moving products from the seller to the buyer quickly without damaging them.
Peter Lim: Waiter
Peter Lim joined the billionaires club in 2019 when Forbes stated his net worth at 2.5 billion making him the 10th richest person in Singapore. Raised up in a poor family in Singapore, Lim had such a hard time growing up that he didn’t even have a bed. A scholarship to study accounting and finance in Australia came to his aid, but after graduating, he had to make a living and that involved becoming a cook and a waiter at a Red Roster branch in Australia. He made money when he move to stocks trading and now owns one if the biggest football clubs in European football.
Warren Buffet: Newspaper Delivery Boy
The oracle of Omaha never fails to remind people about his time as a newspaper delivery boy. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is one of the most successful investors of the last five decades. He had to start somewhere though and for him, selling Coca Cola and delivering newspapers was his pick. He bought his first stock using savings he made delivering newspapers and he was so good at it that he controlled an entire route at a very young age.
Oprah Winfrey: Grocery Store Clerk
Imagine going to the store and find Oprah behind the cashier’s desk! Well, many people did but they didn’t care much because it was her first job and she wasn’t even allowed to talk to them. Oprah said that it was very difficult for her because she wasn’t allowed to speak to her customers. The store was next to her dad’s barber so that may explain how the job but it must have been a great teacher for her on how to deal with people from all walks of life. She is now worth over $2.6 billion and is one of the biggest media personalities in the world.
John Paul DeJoria: Door To Door Sales Man
John Paul DeJoria always portrays a different type of billionaire who never shies away from living his real-life riding bikes and doing things other billionaires don’t do. He doesn’t look at himself as special. His life took a turn for the worst when he was just two when his parents divorced and his mother had a difficult time taking care of him and his brother. The boys had to start selling Christmas cards and newspapers from door to door when DeJoria was just nine and that taught him how to sell because being a hair products salesman at 17 is what led to the breakthrough in his career.
Mark Cuban: Garbage Bag Salesman
Mark Cuban works on the principle of selling people what they need the most and he says that his time as a garbage bag sells man taught him a lot about satisfying demand. He became a billionaire when he sold his company broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.9 billion in 1999 but that wasn’t the beginning of his success. It all started when he had to sell garbage bags at the age of 12 because his dad told him that it was the only way he would get basketball shoes. He also cut his finger when dicing meat at a deli.
Shahid Rafiq Khan: YMCA Dish Washer
Shahid Han owns Fulham FC in England and The Jacksonville Jaguars in the UK among other top sports teams and fitness clubs. He is also the richest Pakistan American with a net worth of over $9 billion. Khan has one of the humblest beginnings of any billionaire. When he came to US to study engineering, Khan had no money and nowhere to stay so he moved into a YMCA. He became a dishwasher in the YMCA kitchen to earn money for his upkeep before moving on to a mechanic’s shop where his career finally picked off.
George Lucas: Teaching Assistant
George Lucas made his billions with Star Wars but if you look at the number of film producers that made billions, you will realize that Hollywood is one difficult place to breakthrough. During his early years in LA, George Lucas signed up to teach US Navy recruits that wanted to become military cameramen. His job was to teach them how to get the best videos of war and that probably had a lot to do with why Star Wars worked out so well.