Often, when I look at rich people, I wonder if they made the money themselves, or if they inherited it. Many of them also do or don’t have university degrees, and met people in University that set them up or helped them get to where they are. However, it’s encouraging to see, in this day and age where everyone seems to have an obsession about employing people with a University degree, to see that some of them never got a degree at all, and still are doing amazingly well! Here are 10 of them….
1. Bill Gates – Gates founded Microsoft – which owns MSN – in 1975 and the company went on to change the face of personal computing.
2. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with the help of his roommates and computer science student Andrew McCollum. Zuckerberg dropped out of his studies to run the company. And as the chief executive is worth $15 billion.
3. Heston Blumenthal failed to gain work in the kitchens of London’s hotels and restaurants. He went on to train himself as a chef and in 1995 he opened The Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, which was named the world’s best restaurant in 2005 and the best restaurant in Britain in 2008.
4. Simon Cowell left school at 16 then rose from being a post boy to a major player in the music industry, and is best-known for the international success that the Pop Idol franchise. Cowell is also a smart businessman, making sure the winners and contestants of his show are signed to his record label. His wealth is estimated at £100 million, and he has no A-Levels, and no degree!
5. Kate Moss was 14 when she was discovered, and became a professional model at 18, made millions by the time she was 20 and has gone on to become one of the most successful models of all time appearing on more than 300 magazine covers. She only managed to pass one GCSE with anything higher than a D-grade.
6. Apple, the iPod and Pixar owe either all or a significant part of their success to Steve Jobs – but the man himself dropped out of university after one term. Jobs had already worked at Hewlett-Packard in the summer, and seemed to know what he wanted to do. At 21 – after working for Atari and heading to India for a spiritual retreat – he founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and the rest, is history.
7. But never had one. Gore Vidal, one of the most successful novelists of the 20th century, never had a degree. After army training, his first novel was published at 19 and he went on to write plays, essays and film scripts. He also entered the political arena, and became a respected political commentator and even stood as governor of California.
8. David Geffen also worked in the post room early on in his career. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin, but never finished. However, after leaving University, he went on to found several record labels, signing artists as diverse as Bob Dylan and Blink-182 and producing films including Little Shop of Horrors and Beetlejuice.
9. Ralph Lauren lasted two years at the City University of New York before dropping out and joining the army. Despite a passion for clothes he didn’t go to fashion school either – instead he worked as a salesman for American clothes retailer Brooks Brothers after leaving the armed forces. Lauren opened his own clothes shop selling ties in 1967 and in the following 40 years he has grown his fashion empire into a multi-billion pound business.
10. Not only did Delia Smith leave school without a single O-level, she also did not display a passion for cooking straight away. Delia worked as a hairdresser, shop assistant and later in a travel agency before taking up cookery. But don’t think she didn’t study -before becoming a chef, then a food writer and eventually presenter, Delia studied from cookery books in the Reading Room of the British Museum in her spare time. She has written numerous cookery books, toured doing shows, and become a virtual national hero.
So, it’s encouraging to see these strong, successful people who basically worked hard, and made money as a result. I guess I’ll never get rich from Bingo unless I play the Jackpot all the time and finally win it, but I work hard too, so that is still the avenue I pursue to wealth.
Who says hard work never paid off hey?
