What People Don’t Tell You About Billionaire Entrepreneurs

Is it really instant-rich?

One of my relatives joined this sales agency where they motivate their employees to be more upbeat during their sales by giving them examples like how Bill Gates or Steve Jobs quit college to pursue entrepreneurship.

They are not wrong though with these people choosing entrepreneurship instead of college, and they learned better through experience. It’s because it’s the truth.

Except that they didn't entirely reveal the whole truth about this entrepreneurial journey and it can be very misleading. I find that it sounds as if these motivators or gurus are trying to convince everyone to just be entrepreneurs without thinking twice about it.

If people jump into entrepreneurship just because everyone is doing it, it may not end well.

Here are the common things I heard from ‘motivators’ giving examples from Billionaires about taking the entrepreneurship route and I want to ‘debunk’ what they really did to be where they are now:

1) Bill Gates

What they tell you:

It’s true that Bill Gates quit college and went straight to building computers and all those programs, building Microsoft. He found at an early age what he wanted to do in life and pursue it.

What they mostly DON’T tell you:

The college that Bill Gates went to isn’t just any college you see around the block. It’s effing Harvard, a highly prestigious school that only straight-A students go to. Heck, even some straight-A students aren’t accepted there.

And yes, he did go straight to this entrepreneur journey. However, in the middle of his entrepreneurial journey, he was hired by IBM to work on their computers in 1980. The people of IBM knew his mom, Mary Gates, and remembered Bill, and that’s how he managed to get hired. Via connection. Microsoft was paid $430,000 for the job.

And that connection soon became an opportunity for Bill’s future projects and business.

In other words, his entrepreneurial journey has a stop where he had to be hired as an employee first before going solo. And when his side business managed to fly, he too stopped becoming an employee.

Later on, he became a billionaire at the age of 31.

In other words, his 20s, after leaving college, until the day he became a billionaire was a long journey. There’s no get rich quick here but dedication to their work and trusting that their progress would be fruitful.

2) Steve Jobs

What they tell you:

Bill’s best friend and rival, Steve Jobs. The Leonardo da Vinci of our time, this is entirely true. The Apple products are spectacular.

His journey was somewhat similar to Bill Gates's. He too was a dropout from Reed College and went straight on the entrepreneurial journey. He was 23 when he built the old DOS personal computers, no doubt a prodigy in engineer stuff to build all those computer microchips.

After being kicked out of his own company, he made NeXT turn his situation around. After succeeding in that, he became the leader of Apple and their designs.

Today, his legacy still lives on.

What they mostly DON’T tell you:

Despite the positive sales of Apple during its early days, it was in fierce competition with IBM, for they too were selling similar products to Apple. Apple had to sustain itself if they were to survive and securing a mature company is not simple. There must have been a lot of disagreement between the boards and Steve to the point that he was kicked out.

When he built NeXT, that too wasn’t easy. Apple tried to sue him for ‘copying’ their product model. Even Bill Gates didn’t even want to have anything to do with NeXT when Steve asked him to write software for the company.

Steve’s biggest success was when he built the iPhone, and that was when he was 52 years old.

3) Warren Buffet

What they tell you:

He’s praised by the financial gurus on social media for being the man who avoids the stock market crash during the rise of Dotcom and the financial crisis. He is also knowledgeable when it comes to investing in good businesses.

What they mostly DON’T tell you:

Warren Buffet worked a lot during his childhood. He was running a newspaper delivery service at 13 years old, doing pinball machines in his teens and kept looking for opportunities in his college. Entrepreneurship was already his first habit and hobby to this day.

There’s no instant rich going on here as well. He developed and sharpened his entrepreneurship talent for investing later on in life. It’s why he made good decision-making when it comes to investing in companies.

4) Richard Branson

What they tell you:

Similar to Warren Buffet, he too started his entrepreneurship journey at an early age (when he was a kid.) He wasn’t big in school since his focus was mostly on entrepreneurship and that led him to drop out of school at 16. This was what he was passionate about and he continued down his journey to this day.

What they mostly DON’T tell you:

Richard had to explore a lot of businesses until one of his businesses was a big boom. He bred budgies as his first job when he was 11 years old and explored a lot more entrepreneur opportunities.

He explored a lot more areas before he finally got his hit on making sustainable money and expanding his company. He started a small magazine business that interviews celebrities called “Student”. But for some reason, he changed his area again to mail-order record and that was when it got quite viral. This is later known as Virgin Mail Order Records.

In a way, he had to explore different areas before he found the key to finally begin Virgin.

Other Successful Billionaires had similar journeys were instantly rich

If you look at how people like Bernard Arnault, Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos, or even Ricky Gervais became billionaires or finally get their businesses to run successfully and sustainably, they were in their 40s by the time they reached it.

There’s a report from Harvard Business Review that the average successful startup founders are at least 45 years old. The percentage of young entrepreneurs who were able to maintain their business at a young age is very small.

Mark Zuckerberg is an exception since he managed to build a huge company at the age of 23.

However, according to Cold Wire and if you’ve ever watched The Social Network, Mark didn’t really come up with the idea of Facebook. The original idea came from Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and his twin brother Tyler Winklevoss, to which Facebook eventually paid $65 million for the lawsuits.

But other than that, Facebook managed to maintain its growth and sustainability to this day and it rebranded to Meta.

Conclusion

I’m not saying that motivating your team by using billionaires as examples is wrong, I believe it’s a great way to motivate that greatness can happen in anyone.

But what I don’t like is when the concept of instant-rich is being drilled down people’s minds. Because there is no such thing as instant-rich. If there is, it’s either a slim chance or that they are scamming.

Perhaps salespeople can explain the model on how much commission they can earn, but to mislead instant-rich doesn’t sound ethical.

Everyone’s path is different, and starting an entrepreneur journey also depends on your will as well. Are you truly committed or are you just swayed by the trends.

Please know that you have time. You don’t have to jump on the hype train like everybody else from 30 under 30, it won’t do you any good. You’re going to have to think very carefully when starting one because it truly is a long-term game that requires one to be very focused.

But most of all, for those who wish to enter entrepreneurship, please do know that you have time.