The First Jobs of 10 Really Rich People

The stereo­type of rich and suc­cess­ful peo­ple is that they were all born with sil­ver spoons in their mouths. We have already learned from the most pop­u­lar post here in Ang Pere­grino, that that couldn’t be far­ther from the truth.

Given this stereo­type, it’s tough to imag­ine peo­ple like War­ren Buf­fett ever work­ing “reg­u­lar jobs” like the rest of us. How­ever, you may be sur­prised to learn that many titans of indus­try got their start in very pedes­trian posi­tions that you wouldn’t sus­pect. Today, we look back on the first jobs of 10 wealthy CEOs and entre­pre­neurs. [from MINT​.COM]

Ross Perot

Respected world­wide as one of the most effec­tive busi­ness lead­ers of the 20^th cen­tury, Ross Perot got his work­ing start ear­lier than any­one on this list. As CNN tells it, Perot’s father was “…a cot­ton bro­ker and a part time horse trader who put his young son to work at the age of six break­ing horses for a dol­lar or two apiece.” (The elder Perot also notes that “”Perot’s nose still shows the results of the falls he took.)” Once he was older, Perot enlisted in the US Navy in 1949 and helped to estab­lish its honor sys­tem, and by 1953, he was pres­i­dent of his bat­tal­ion. So began a life of lead­er­ship that would see him cre­ate and sell-off two very suc­cess­ful, inde­pen­dent com­pa­nies (Elec­tronic Data Sys­tems and Perot Sys­tems) for bil­lions each.

Wayne Huizenga

Before becom­ing a waste man­age­ment mag­nate, own­ing the NFL’s Miami Dol­phins or MLB’s Florida Mar­lins, Wayne Huizenga got early work expe­ri­ence as a gas sta­tion atten­dant dur­ing high school, accord­ing to Forbes. Report­edly, Huizenga also took a truck dri­ving posi­tion at 17 to help his mother with house­hold bills fol­low­ing her trau­matic divorce from his father. Huizenga later enlisted in the Army reserve in 1959. By 1960, Huizenga was already buy­ing his own truck and recruit­ing clients for the fledg­ling waste man­age­ment com­pany that would build most of his $300+ mil­lion net worth.

War­ren Buf­fett

Invest­ing mogul War­ren Buffett’s first job reads like some­thing out of a novel. Long before he made his­tory with his shrewd and old-fashioned-style invest­ment deci­sions, the Nebraska native earned his first “work­ing cap­i­tal” as a news­pa­per deliv­ery boy. Accord­ing to Work​ing​World​.com, Buf­fett was already, at age 13, “…savvy enough to deduct the cost of his bicy­cle on his first tax return.” So began a path of fru­gal­ity for Buf­fett that saw him amass over $140,000 by age 26 (in 1956), who would even­tu­ally became one of the rich­est men in the world at present.

Don­ald Trump

Com­mer­cial real estate tycoon Don­ald Trump got his hands dirty (lit­er­ally) for his first work­ing cap­i­tal. Accord­ing to Forbes, Trump accom­pa­nied his father to job sites and col­lected empty cans and bot­tles with his brother for the redemp­tion value. It didn’t add up to much (Trump recalls it equal­ing a “below-average allowance”) but it no doubt taught him the value of a dol­lar. Humor­ously, Trump also notes that he later accom­pa­nied dad on rent col­lec­tion jobs to scoop up bot­tles and cans that way, but quickly learned to, “…stand out of the door­way to avoid the pos­si­bil­ity of being shot”.

Sam Wal­ton

If ever an entre­pre­neur rose up from hum­ble begin­nings, it was Sam Wal­ton. The Wal­mart founder began help­ing his fam­ily make ends meet at an early age, and held many odd jobs. Among these were milk­ing the fam­ily cows, bot­tling the milk and hand-delivering it to pay­ing cus­tomers. Later, Wal­ton would take to his bike to com­plete a daily paper deliv­ery route. He also sold mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions on the side, per­haps build­ing some early sales skills that proved cru­cial later on. Upon grad­u­at­ing high school, Wal­ton was voted “most ver­sa­tile boy” in his class. Wal­ton con­tin­ued work­ing odd jobs early in col­lege, includ­ing “…wait­ing tables in exchange for meals”, accord­ing to Wikipedia.

Jim Clark

Netscape founder and mav­er­ick entre­pre­neur Jim Clark was any­thing but a “silver-spoon” case. Grow­ing up in a poor single-parent house­hold, Clark’s first job (after drop­ping out of high school) was his four years as a mem­ber of the US Navy. Michael Lewis’ book The New New Thing chron­i­cles how dis­as­trous this was for the young Clark, who con­stantly found him­self at odds with author­ity. Like so many entre­pre­neurs, Clark sim­ply could not defer to supe­ri­ors for any seri­ous length of time, and went on to found Sil­i­con Graph­ics, Netscape, and Healtheon.

Larry Elli­son

Much of Larry Ellison’s early life was marked by the per­cep­tion that he would never amount to any­thing. Achieve​ment​.org refers to the future Ora­cle co-founder as a “…seem­ingly aim­less young man” who dropped out of high school after his mother passed away. How­ever, unbe­knownst to Ellison’s father, the young boy had devel­oped a stun­ning apti­tude for math and sci­ence, which paved the way for his first job as a tech­ni­cian at Wells Fargo. His pro­gram­ming duties at Ampex even saw Elli­son par­tic­i­pat­ing in “build­ing the first IBM-compatible main­frame sys­tem”. From these begin­nings, Elli­son has risen to the point where, as Guy Kawasaki writes in Real­ity Check, “…Larry Elli­son can keep the San Jose Air­port open after-hours to accom­mo­date the land­ing of his own per­sonal jet”.

Michael Dell

Dell founder Michael Dell was hardly an instant busi­ness suc­cess. Accord­ing to Career­Builder, Dell got his work­ing start as a dish­washer in a Chi­nese restau­rant. His start­ing wage? A whop­ping total of $2.30 per hour. Dell also dis­played some early sales prowess dur­ing his high school years, when, despite not excelling aca­d­e­m­i­cally, he raked in $18,000 in Hous­ton Post sales – enough to buy a car and three com­puter sys­tems. Once in col­lege Dell wasted lit­tle time start­ing his first busi­ness (PCs Lim­ited) in a sin­gle room of a 27 story res­i­dence hall. Before long the young com­pany showed enough promise to inspire Dell to drop out at 19, tak­ing a loan from his grand­mother and re-naming the busi­ness to Dell Computer.

Ray Kroc

Ray Kroc’s first job epit­o­mizes hum­ble begin­nings. His first ever job, accord­ing to FAQs​.org, was help­ing out at his uncle’s soda foun­tain the year before he began high school. Inc’s Great Lead­ers series also reports that Kroc “…lied about his age to land a job as a Red Cross ambu­lance dri­ver dur­ing the First World War”, but the fight­ing ended before he could serve. Fol­low­ing the war, Kroc served in a ver­i­ta­ble revolv­ing door of tem­po­rary capac­i­ties, includ­ing “…a pianist, a gro­cery store bag­ger, and a paper cup sales­man” before buy­ing out the McDon­ald broth­ers for their rights to the iconic ham­burger chain.

Herb Kelle­her

Hailed by some as the great­est Amer­i­can CEO of all time, South­west Air­lines’ Herb Kelle­her was hardly born into exec­u­tive great­ness. Rather, the hum­ble New Jer­sey native got his first work­ing expe­ri­ence from his six sum­mers at Camp­bell Soup, work­ing under his father (also the gen­eral man­ager) accord­ing to Charles Blackwell’s arti­cle “Fly­ing High with Herb Kelle­her: A Pro­file in Charis­matic Lead­er­ship.” It was here that Kelle­her learned and per­fected his people-focused, con­trar­ian man­age­ment style that has remained a fix­ture in busi­ness school cur­ricu­lums for decades.