5 top billionaires and their first jobs
top billionaires
Would you have imagined that many of the famous billionaires in the world had several humble beginnings that saw them start with odd jobs such as selling gums, sandwiches, flipping burgers, stocking shelves or engaging in odd jobs in the neighbourhood before amassing wealth and affluence as a result of their hard work and diligence? This article will explore some of the early jobs of today’s wealthiest billionaires such as Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos and others.
1. Michael Bloomberg
Bloomberg, renowned for his investment and political career, started first with odd jobs in the neighbourhood which included shovelling snow, cutting lawns, selling Christmas wreaths door to door and working for a small electronics company. As a student of Johns Hopkins University and born to middle-class parents, he worked his way via student loans and through working as a parking attendant.
He eventually graduated with an MBA from Harvard and got his start on Wall Street at Salomon Brothers. Bloomberg’s hard work yielded great deeds as he is now one of the wealthiest people in America.
2. Bill Gates
The founder of Microsoft had his first job as a computer programmer for TRW during his senior year in high school and was always fascinated by computers during his early days in high school. Even though computer programming was not an official or well-paying job for Gates at this point, his passion helped him continue to push. The Harvard drop-out followed his passion for tech from a young age and has now grown to emerge as one of the richest people in the world.
In 2008, he stepped down from the daily running of Microsoft to focus on his philanthropy via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which works to improve education, fight hunger, and develop vaccinations.
3. Oprah Winfrey
The renowned broadcaster started as a grocery store clerk next to her father’s Nashville barbershop and has grown from diligently serving through menial jobs to becoming one of the most popular faces on television.
Winfrey later evolved from the poor and humble beginning by making a switch to broadcasting, reading the news for the local radio station by age 16. At the age of 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Her often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place she became a media powerhouse and launched her own production company.
4. Warren Buffett
The 94-year-old billionaire started working at a young age, selling gum. His billion-dollar empire started when he was a boy.
At the age of 13, he got his first job as a paper boy, waking up at 04:30 am to deliver ‘The Washington Post’. As a budding businessman and ambitious man, Buffett even deducted his bike from his taxes. He started a pinball machine business as a teen, looking for business opportunities wherever he went and graduating college with a $10,000 profit from his business ventures.
He made his first investment (his father was a stockbroker) at age 11, and even filed his first tax return at age 13 for his paper route, claiming his bicycle as a $35 tax deduction. Today, he is worth more than $160 billion.
5. Jeff Bezos
The popular founder of Amazon and second richest man in the world worked as a grill operator at McDonald’s in his early years. Before he founded Amazon and began selling everything from books to newspaper subscriptions, he engaged in summer jobs, flipping burgers at McDonald’s where he learned to get down to business and his ambition to become a successful businessman was evident from an early age.
Bezos began working at the fast-food chain in Miami when he was 16 and often said that he learned one of his business’ most important lessons from that experience: to move things quickly from seller to customer without damaging them. “My first week on the job, a 5-gallon, wall-mounted ketchup dispenser got stuck open in the kitchen and dumped a prodigious quantity of ketchup onto every hard-to-reach kitchen crevice,” Bezos told author Cody Teets. “Since I was the new guy, they handed me the cleaning solution and said, ‘Get going!’”
Today, he is the second richest man in the world (behind Elon Musk – $311 billion) with a net worth of $216 billion, according to Forbes.
