Most of the time, many people have confused education with success. Well, one does not necessarily need to get a degree or graduate from school to become successful. Most people with college degrees are still unemployed, and moving forward from this frustration is difficult since they still hope to get employment. On the other hand, most successful people are the ones who either did not go to school at all or never advanced their education. These individuals are forced to become creative and look for means of making ends meet. They have greater self-drive as compared to college graduates.
10. Richard Branson
Branson is a British businessman, philanthropist, author, and investor. Richard Branson’s quotes have inspired many across the globe to be successful. He expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a younger age.
Branson is the founder of Virgin Group, which was established in 1970. The company currently controls more than 400 other companies in various fields. He ventured into a magazine business which was known as Student at the age of sixteen.
Branson loves to work in music, retail, and transport, a path that led to him becoming a prominent global figure. In 2008, Branson ventured into healthcare, hotels, and charitable guidance. Branson got support from the United Kingdom health minister, Ben Bradshaw when Virgin healthcare publicized that it would open a chain of healthcare clinics.
Branson’s success did not happen in a day. He failed various business ventures, one being Virgin Cola. He viewed failure from a different perspective and believed that failure was a motivational and inspiration tool to bounce back.
9. Henry Ford
Ford was an American entrepreneur and business tycoon who was born on 30th July 1863 and died on April 7th, 1949, at the age of 83. Ford was the president of the Ford Motor Company. He developed an automobile that many middle-class Americans could afford.
As the owner of the Ford Company, he became one of the richest and well-known people worldwide. Ford completed his self-propelled vehicle in 1896, which he named Ford Quadricycle. He took the vehicle on several test drives and thought of ways to improve his quadricycle.
Despite not going to school at a tender age, Ford did not lose enthusiasm in doing what he believed in and following his dreams. His legacy has been carried on by his successors as today we still see Ford vehicles on the roads.
8. Li Ka-Shing
Li is a Chinese business magnate and investor who was born in 1928. Further, Li was forced to leave school before the age of 15 after his father’s death. He found a job in the plastic industry where he worked for sixteen hours a day.
Further, he started his own real estate company in 1950, which became the leading investment company in Hong Kong and was listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 1971.
He is the 30th richest person as of June 30th, 2019. He has many influences in Asia and Europe as he is the world’s leading port investor, creator, and operator of the largest health and beauty retailer in Asia and Europe.
Li has a diverse portfolio of trades from real estate to financial services, transportation, and retail.
7. Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, philanthropist, and business tycoon who led to the expansion of the steel industry in America. This made him famous because he was one of the richest Americans in history, a leading philanthropist in the United States and the British Empire.
Eighteen years before he died, he donated almost ninety percent of his wealth to charities and universities. He used his wealth to improve society. He moved with his parents to the United States in 1848 at the age of 12 when he started working as a telegraph messenger boy.
Later in 1860, he made investments in railroads, bridges, and oil. Carnegie built the Pittsburgh Carnegie steel company which he later sold to J.P Morgan, and became the richest American, surpassing John D Rockefeller.
6. Amancio Ortega
Ortega left school at the age of fourteen, due to the work of his father. He was the youngest of four children. Shortly after leaving school, Ortega found a job as a shop hand for a local shirt maker, where he learned to make clothes by hand.
Ortega is a Spanish billionaire businessman who is best known for his chain of Zara clothing and accessories shop. As of September 2018, Ortega’s net worth was seventy billion dollars, making him the second wealthiest person in Europe after Bernard Arnault.
His quality clothes and brand made him well known in Spain, and he is the wealthiest retailer in the world.
5. Michael Dell
Michael Dell was born in Houston in 1965 to a Jewish surname upon migration to the United States. Dell attended Herod Elementary School in Houston. At the age of eight, Dell wanted to venture into a business early.
He applied to take on high school equivalency exam to make his dream come true. Dell also took on part-time jobs, which paid him well. In his early teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stock and precious metals.
Dell loved playing with computers at Radio Shack and at the age of fifteen, he got his first computer, an Apple II. His curiosity to know how the computer works made him disassemble the computer and studied its functioning carefully.
He dropped out of the University of Texas at nineteen. Currently, he is the founder, chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Dell technologies.
4. Walt Disney
Disney was interested in drawing and when they moved to a farm in Marceline and were paid to draw a horse of a retired neighborhood doctor. Later on, Disney became a fun of working with colors and water crayons.
He was interested in joining the army at a tender age and was rejected because he was too young. Later on, he forged his birth certificate and was employed as an ambulance driver. He drew cartoons on the ambulance for fun. His passion for drawing increased and became recognized for animation production.
Walter Elias Disney was an American businessman, voice actor, animator, and film producer. His first produced studio animator was Cinderella which earned him nearly eight million dollars after using two and a half million dollars to produce it.
As depicted in the recent world, animation films are still in plenty, and most are from Disney production.
3. Larry Ellison
Ellison was born to a Jewish mother and an Italian American father in New York. At nine months, his mother gave him up for adoption to his uncle after she contracted pneumonia. They never met again until Ellison was 48 years.
Ellison studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and dropped out of school during his third year when his adoptive mother passed on.
Ellison is known to be the co-founder and the former CEO of the Oracle Foundation. The obstacles he faced in life did not hinder him from becoming successful.
As of March 2019, Ellison was listed in Forbes as the fourth wealthiest person in the United States. Worldwide, he is the seventh wealthiest, with a fortune worth sixty-six million dollars. Success is what you make out of yourself.
2. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs began his first years in a nearby Homestead High school along with his friend Fernandez. Slowly, Jobs lost interest in class and sports. Later, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland and planned on dropping out because he did not want to spend his parent’s money on it.
As difficult as Jobs was in studying and paying attention in class, he did not just drop out and waste his time. He made something out of himself, and his journey towards success began during the pre-apple era when Wozniak, after finishing his game “Pong” gave it to Jobs and Jobs took it to Atari Incorporation.
Atari thought it was Job’s work and employed him as a technician. Steve is known to be the founder of Apple products worldwide.
1. John D Rockefeller
Rockefeller, an American oil business tycoon, is widely considered the wealthiest American and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was shaped into who he was by his con-man father and religious mother.
They had to move to different places before finally settling in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a bookkeeper at sixteen and started getting into partnerships at twenty years old.
It is evident that Rockefeller’s background did not hinder him from becoming the wealthiest person America has ever known. He knew he had to change his situation by working his way to success, which he eventually accomplished. As of 2018, Rockefeller’s net worth was US $408 billion dollars.