Not finishing school may have positioned these entrepreneurs for later success. But that doesn't mean you don't have to go to school anymore. Finishing school and have diploma is still the most rewarding act you can do to yourself. And have these famous entrepreneurs listed below your inspiration, they have not finished school and yet they have made it, what more you can do if you have a college diploma.
Li Ka Shing: Sell his dead father's clothes for cash to pay for food
Billionaire owner of Hutchinson Whampoa; one of the largest conglomerates in Hong Kong, with operations that span over fifty countries and more than 220,000 staff worldwide. Dropped out of school at the age of 15 and started out by selling watch bands.
When Li Ka-Shing was just 14 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. In order to earn money for his family, Li was forced to abandon school and take a job at a plastics factory. The family was so poor that Le actually had to sell his dead father's clothes for cash to pay for food. While most of his piers attended school or played games, Li labored away for 16 hours a day making plastic watchbands. Sounds terrible, right?
Li work as an apprentice in a factory that made plastic watch straps. By the time he was 14, he had a full time job in a plastics trading company and was a big help in supporting his family. In 1950, at the age of 22, Li quit his job to start his own company that made plastic toys. The company soon changed shifted plans and instead began producing plastic flowers because he heard how popular they were in Italy. It was Li's first savvy business decision. He named this company Cheung Kong. Fast forward to the present and Cheung Kong is one of the largest real estate investment companies in the world.
Li work as an apprentice in a factory that made plastic watch straps. By the time he was 14, he had a full time job in a plastics trading company and was a big help in supporting his family. In 1950, at the age of 22, Li quit his job to start his own company that made plastic toys. The company soon changed shifted plans and instead began producing plastic flowers because he heard how popular they were in Italy. It was Li's first savvy business decision. He named this company Cheung Kong. Fast forward to the present and Cheung Kong is one of the largest real estate investment companies in the world.
Li's businesses cover almost every facet of life in Hong Kong, from electricity to telecommunications, from real estate to retail, from shipping to the Internet. The Cheung Kong Group's market capitalisation is HK $647 billion (US $82.9 billion) as of December 2009. (This includes some double counting of the Group's controlling stake in 12 listed companies around the world.) The group operates in 55 countries and employs over 260,000 staff worldwide.
Li advice:
Li suggests that wage-earners put their monthly salary proportionately into five sets of funds with different purposes. After setting aside for daily necessities and social activities, one should spend on books for learning, travel and invest with the rest of the money, he says.
No matter how much you earn, always remember to divide it into five parts proportionately. Always make yourself useful. Increase your investment in networking. When you increase your social investment, expand your network of contacts, your income also grows proportionately.
Increase your investment in learning, strengthen your self confidence, increase investment in holidays, expand your horizons and increase investment in the future, and that will ultimately increase your income.
Whatever happened in the past is over. Do not dwell on past mistakes. There's no point crying over spilt milk. Everybody makes mistakes. It's what you learn from the mistakes, and promising yourself not to repeat those mistakes that matters. When you miss opportunities, don't dwell on it, as there are always new opportunities on the horizon. - See more at: http://business.asiaone.com/personal-finance/news/li-ka-shing-how-you-can-buy-car-and-house-5-years/page/0/4#sthash.jYuRS6TE.dpuf
At the end of one year, a person's wealth should grow. If your income does not increase, then you have been doing it wrong and are failing to learn anything, Lee adds.
Sources: Celebrity Net Worth, business asiaone, Wikipedia
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Steve Job: Dropped out of College when he couldn't afford tuition.
Steve Job was an American entrepreneur, marketer, and inventor, who was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Wikipedia
His unwed biological parents, put him up for adoption. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a lower-middle-class couple. Young Steve Jobs grew up in a neighborhood of engineers working on electronics and other gizmos in their garages on weekends. This shaped his interest in the field as he grew up.
Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College which is an expensive college. He dropped out of college when he couldn't afford tuition after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes. In the commencement address he gave at Stanford, Jobs said that, while he continued to audit classes at Reed, he slept on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returned Coke bottles for food money, and walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. He started Apple computer in his parent’s garage in 1976.
Steve Jobs advice:
“ Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work."
"And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle."
source: wikipedia, Google items
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Socorro C. Ramos is the matriarch of National Bookstore, the Philippines’ leading retailer of books, office supplies, and greeting cards.
—Nanay Coring to family and friends—started selling bananas, vinegar, and wooden shoes at age five to help her grandmother and mother in a wet-market stall in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, her father’s hometown. The business went under, and when her father died in 1928, the family moved to Manila where she and her six siblings—she was the second youngest—worked each summer vacation to earn their school allowance. She worked in a candy factory, a cigarette factory, a factory making shorts, and then as a waitress in a restaurant.
In 1940, Immediately after graduating from High School, she started working as a salesgirl at a Goodwill Bookstore owned by the family of her present husband Jose Ramos. Because of her selling skills, Ramos was put in charge of the store.
It was only after marrying Jose Ramos that her dream of the setting up a bookstore finally materialized. The couple started the first National Book Store as a stall shop in Escolta selling supplies, GI novels, and textbooks. Unable to afford extra help, Ramos worked not only as manager but also as cashier, purchaser, saleslady, janitor (even scrubbing the floor), and helper.
In the 1948, a typhoon destroyed the store and damaged all the merchandise. But this did not bring down the Ramos couple, they decided to rebuild again. They worked harder, they slept for only three hours a day spending the rest of their time rebuilding the business. Eventually, through will and determination, the Ramos couple were able to construct a two-story building complete with mezzanine that would be their store for years. After more than a decade, Ramos acquired a nine-story building along Avenida Rizal, and in 1963, the construction of the Albecer Building (Albecer taken from Ramos' three children - Alfredo, Benjamin, and Cecilia, the 'R' stands for Ramos) began.
When their children grew, they persuaded their parents to expand beyond the Avenida branch. Initially reluctant, the couple realized the opportunity envisioned by their children and they opened a new branch along Recto Avenue. In the 1970s, they acquired space in shopping centres that had opened in Cubao and Makati, and by the 1990s had over 50 branches nationwide.
National Book Store currently has 128 branches (including NBS Bestsellers) all over the Philippines, Metrobooks—a subsidiary store in Hong Kong that opened in 2007—, severalNational Book Store-Book Express mini-outlets and also several Powerbooks specialty bookstores. Also with the pending entry of National Book Store into the Philippine Stock Exchange through the renaming of Vulcan Industrial & Mining Corp., another Ramos-owned company, into National Book Store Retail Corp. they would now also venture into wholesale, publishing, printing, manufacturing, and distribution.
Nanay Coring advice:
"You must be interested in what you are doing. You must love what you do so you will continue doing it, in spite of a lot of hardship,"
Find out what your customers want. Ask them. Ask around. Sell them what they want.
Make sure every customer feels important. Be humble and always be willing to serve them.
Buy something from one centavo. Sell it for more, but always less than the people who are selling the same thing.
Work hard, very hard. There is no express elevator to success — you have to climb the stairs.
There will always be hard times. There will always be failures. If you fall down, get back up. Never give up.
Invest in your mind. Read more. Know more. Earn more.
Buy lots of books.
Source : Wikipilinas, Wikipedia, Google items
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By the way, the above personalities eventually got their postgraduate certificates.
