It doesn’t matter who you are, what your upbringing is or even how much money you have. If you have the ambition, the ideas and the follow-through, then you can make it as an entrepreneur. Just ask these people, who managed to make it while lacking in many of those areas.
Kevin Plank Put Himself in Debt
The world of business is littered with stories of failing, of massive credit card debt, remortgaged homes and complete destruction. But when you believe in your product and your idea, it’s tempting to go all-in.
Such was the case with Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour. He spent every penny he had, $20,000 in total, to set up his company and when he needed more he just took out credit cards and stacked up the debt.
He came close to going bust and losing it all, but then he sold his first big contract and the doors opened. He went to the edge, but in doing so he was rewarded with one of the most successful fitness apparel brands in the world.
John Paul DeJoria Was Homeless
John Paul DeJoria was the founder of Patrón tequila, which has been at the heart of many surprising stories itself (usually ones that begin in a bar and end with several traffic cones, a casino and a DWI lawyer) and he had a rough start in life.
He was homeless on two separate occasions, living on the street even though he had a young son to care for. He was a visionary though and he maintained his ambition throughout, before eventually using just $700 in cash to found his first successful company.
These days he is a billionaire who uses his money and his power to help homeless people, showing that he has never forgotten his origins and helps many more game-changers like himself to get off the streets and get the opportunity they have been looking for.
George Soros Fled Persecution as a Teenager
Soros fled from the Nazi’s and moved to England. He was penniless, but he scraped together enough money to attend the London School of Economics and he worked hard, eventually getting a degree.
He used this degree to find work in the United States, picking up jobs with many major firms, before starting his own hedge fund. In the 1990s, he is said to have earned $1 billion in just 1 day when he went short on the British Pound, and it is moves like that that earned him the status as one of the world’s shrewdest investors.
David Daneshgar Won Startup Money Playing Poker
Daneshgar and his friends wanted to start a new company but they didn’t have the money needed. As a poker player, and one who had scooped the biggest prize in the game many years earlier he decided to use his skill at the table to fund his new business.
He had the money and he likely wouldn’t have struggled to find investors if he didn’t want to use his own cash. But they decided to try something different and it worked. He won $30,000 with a $1,000 buy-in, which just so happened to be the amount of money that they needed to form BloomNation.
