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We’ve all heard of the American Dream. In the United States, many believe that any American is capable of achieving wealth, fame and success. This does not require start-up capital, it is enough to be hardworking and direct all your energy to the implementation of your plan.
There are people who have confirmed that the American dream is not just a ready-made plot for a life-affirming film. It is feasible, and the life stories of prominent personalities prove it.
10 François Pinault
The future billionaire was born into the family of the owner of a small forest farm. He enrolled at Saint-Marin College but quickly dropped out due to ridicule from classmates who made fun of his old clothes and accent.
From the age of 15, he worked with his father, never having received a higher education, then he was interrupted by odd jobs.
Realizing that he would not get rich here, in 1956 he went to Algeria. From there he returned with the money. Nobody knows how he earned them. But they were enough to create their own company, which was engaged in the timber trade.
Francois never hid that he listened to his intuition. So, in 1973, he decided to sell his company to the British for 30 million francs, and then bought it back for ridiculous money.
He did not miss a single opportunity to get rich. He profitably invested his profits, earning more and more, absorbing one company after another.
When he had money, she began to collect art, although he himself admitted that he had not been to the museum until the age of 30. He collected 2 thousand different works of artists.
His fortune for 2018 is about 27 billion dollars.
9. David Murdoch
Now he owns a company that is one of the largest exporters of fruits and vegetables.
His fortune is about 3,1 billion dollars.
And once Murdoch had nothing. After dropping out of school, he worked part-time at a gas station, and in 1943 he went to war. After it was over, young David returned to Ohio. At that time he had neither money nor housing.
Friends lent him money. With them, he bought his first diner. It was the first step towards getting a billion dollar fortune.
8. Jan Koum
His fortune is estimated at 6,6 billion dollars.
He is relatively young, he is only 43 years old. He was born in Ukraine, in an ordinary family.
At the age of 16, he moved with his mother to the United States. In a new place, they had a hard time, sometimes they survived only at the expense of the social benefits of their mother, who also had cancer.
To provide himself with the most necessary, Kumu had to work as a cleaner. But he was able to go to university and get a job at Yahoo, where Yang worked until 2007.
Kum made his fortune by inventing the WhatsApp mobile app in 2009, the same one that is now in almost every phone.
Mark Zuckerberg in 2014 offered Jan to buy his app for $19 billion, making him a billionaire. He, according to the terms of the deal, was a member of the directors of Facebook, but in the spring of 2018 he announced his departure from the company.
7. Howard Schulz
He was born into a poor family. He was 7 years old when his father broke his leg and the family was left without money. These financial difficulties will forever remain in his memory. At the age of 12, the boy was already selling newspapers.
Howard graduated from university and started working. Once, after tasting Starbucks coffee, he realized what a unique taste it had. Schultz decided to get into this campaign, and soon he succeeded, he was hired as marketing director.
At that time, almost no one knew about real coffee, and Howard understood that the company had great prospects. He hit on the idea of creating a caffeine network where people could gather to hang out with friends. But the director refused him. Then Schultz quit, collected the necessary amount and opened his first coffee shop.
A year later, he was able to buy Starbucks stores for 4 million, and as he developed, he opened more and more outlets throughout the country, suggesting to Americans that they need to drink real coffee.
In 2016, his fortune was estimated at $2,9 billion.
6. Oprah Winfrey
Her mother worked as a maid and her father worked as a miner. Her childhood was spent next to her grandmother, who often whipped her with a rod for disobedience. At the age of 6, her mother took her, but Oprah’s life did not improve from this. Uncles and brothers molested her, and at 9 she was raped.
Oprah was sent by her mother to live with her father. He paid great attention to her education. She graduated from the university. In 1986, she had her own program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, thanks to which she became one of the most famous and wealthy women in the United States.
Now her fortune is about 3 billion dollars.
5. Kevin Plank
The annual income of his company is about 2 billion a year, it employs almost 6 thousand people.
And he was born in a large family without much income. Kevin was able to enter college only because of his success in American football. During his university years, he also spent a lot of time on the field.
He moved a lot and sweated, and T-shirts, which were then made from cotton, quickly got wet and prevented him from moving. Plank chose a different fabric for his T-shirt, with lycra and polyester.
Convinced that such a T-shirt is comfortable and light, he decided to set up his own production, making an office in his grandmother’s basement. He distributed his first T-shirts among familiar players, gradually expanding his business.
4. Shahid Khan
He was born in Pakistan but went to the US at the age of 16 to study. The family raised $500 for him, but this would not have been enough for a normal living. The boy worked as a dishwasher and studied at the same time, in the dream of getting rich.
In 1970, he joined a car parts company, gradually rising through the ranks. There he was able to come up with a new type of bumper, but the management of his company was in no hurry to introduce something new into production.
Khan realized that his idea would help him get rich, and opened his own firm, taking out a loan and adding his own savings. Its bumpers attracted the attention of major automakers.
Growing up, buying up new companies, he managed to save $ 8,4 billion, and he is now one of the richest Pakistanis.
3. John Paul Dejoria
In 2016, his fortune was estimated at $3 billion.
He went to this all his life, full of difficulties and failures. John grew up in a poor family, they did not have enough money even for the most necessary things. At the age of 9, he began to earn money by delivering newspapers, but his mother still could not support him and his brother, giving them to an orphanage.
Having matured, he married, a child was born in the family. When the baby was 2 years old, his wife left him. The man was left without money and with a child in his arms ended up on the street, where he lived for several days, until he was sheltered by a familiar biker.
The next 10 years, John went through many professions until he founded his own company. He was then 36 years old. She and a partner sold shampoos and hair conditioners.
It was not easy for John: he lived in a car, learned to live on $2 a day. And only after 2 years the first profit appeared. Gradually, the company grew, and its products were already sold in 30 countries around the world.
2. Walt Disney
Walt was born into a large family so poor that they couldn’t buy pencils and paper for their son, and he drew on tar with a stick. From the age of 8, he helped his father by delivering letters and advertisements. After graduating from the Institute of Arts, he got a job in a restaurant company, where he worked for a pittance.
In 1923, interested in animation, Disney went to Hollywood, and realizing that he would not be hired, created his own company. Walt took over his uncle’s garage, borrowed money from his brother to buy paint and spotlights, and started working. Brother Roy supported him in everything.
For the first cartoon, the brothers, who became companions, received a small profit, after which the campaign began to develop.
Now the Disney company is worth about 163 billion dollars, but Walt Disney himself died in 1966 from lung cancer, he was 65 years old.
1. Joanne Rowling
The writer led an unremarkable life: a happy childhood surrounded by loving relatives, study, passion for books.
In adolescence, she faced the first problems: her grandmother died, her relationship with her father went wrong, her mother fell ill, whose disease progressed every year (multiple sclerosis).
But Joan was able to enter the University of Exeter, became a Bachelor of Arts and began to work. She soon began writing her novel. The girl’s mother died. This was a big blow for her.
Rowling went to Portugal, worked at the institute, and wrote a book in her free time. There she got married and had a child. But a couple of months after the birth of her daughter, her husband beat Joan and kicked her out of the house.
She had no family, no money, no job, only a daughter and 3 chapters of the book ready. Then a beggarly existence began, the two of them lived with their daughter on an allowance of 70 pounds.
Only the book helped her not to go crazy, she devoted all her free time to it. She rewrote her first novel 15 times. Having sent the book to publishers, Rowling received only refusals. Only a year later they agreed to publish it, and Harry Potter was a resounding success.
In 2007, she became the only English woman to make the Forbes list of billionaires. She was able to earn over $1 billion from her books.
In 2018, they calculated her income for the year, and they amounted to about 6,2 million dollars.