World’s Wealthiest People are Entrepreneurs

If you scour any list of the world’s or the United States’ wealthiest people, you’ll see the word “Self-Made” on there quite often.  Self-Made is another way of saying that the individual being discussed did NOT inherit the money they have.  Self-Made is also another term for entrepreneur.  You’ll also find that NO WHERE on these lists do they have a label for “Employees” or “Worked up the Corporate Ladder”.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are very wealthy individuals that are working for corporations right now that never started their own businesses.  Generally speaking, wealth is directly related to business ownership in one way or another. 

I took this from the Forbes 400 Richest Americans Article for 2006.  I’m lazy and couldn’t find the ‘08 one in the 30 seconds that I tried, but I don’t need the most updated version to make my point.  Below I’ve listed American’s 26-50 that are on the Richest American’s list (www.forbes.com <– Great Magazine for Motivation).  I’ve put an asterik (*) for the ones who are ‘’self-made” or entrepreneurs:

Rank	Name	Net Worth ($bil)	Source
26*	Kirk Kerkorian	9	investments, casinos
27*	Donald L Bren	8.5	real estate
27	George B Kaiser	8.5	oil & gas, banking
27*	George Soros	8.5	hedge funds
30*	Philip H Knight	7.9	Nike
31*	Philip F Anschutz	7.8	investments
32*	Keith Rupert Murdoch	7.7	News Corp
32*	Pierre M Omidyar	7.7	Ebay
34*	Charles Ergen	7.6	EchoStar
35*	Dan L Duncan	7.5	energy
35	Edward Crosby Johnson III	7.5	Fidelity
35*	Sumner M Redstone	7.5	Viacom
38*	Donald Edward Newhouse	7.3	publishing
38*	Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr	7.3	publishing
40*	Leonard Blavatnik	7	Access Industries
40*	Ronald Owen Perelman	7	leveraged buyouts
42*	Eli Broad	5.8	investments
43	Robert Muse Bass	5.5	oil, investments
44*	Michael Rubens Bloomberg	5.3	Bloomberg L.P.
45*	John R Menard Jr	5.2	home improvement stores
45	Robert Rowling	5.2	oil & gas, investments
45	Eric Schmidt	5.2	Google
48*	Micky Arison	5	Carnival Cruises
49*	Steven Paul Jobs	4.9	Apple Computer, Pixar
50*	David Geffen	4.6	movies, music

This is very significant to me.  Though this is the farthest possible end of the entrepreneurs spectrum, this brings up a good point.  These individuals OWN their companies OR they have very large ownership stakes.  The fact that they became entrepreneurs put them in the driver’s seat of their business’ and their financial destiny’s.  Reading Success Stories of Entrepreneurs is one of the biggest motivations for me.  Although their wealth might be out of reach, the principles of entrepreneurship and business ownership are still the same.