When we think of CEOs, we often think about their current state: their incredible, mind-blowing success, not to mention their (and their respective businesses’) highly impressive net worth. But don’t let that fool you – it wasn’t always necessarily that way, nor was it always an easy rise to success. An open letter to future CEOs: don’t let a moment of financial hardship deter your dreams and ambitions to become a CEO yourself. Behind every Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey, there was hardship and even a severe lack of funds. Relax, you’re in good company!
Here are 15 CEOs that were flat out broke at one point in their career:
1. Oprah Winfrey – Harpo Productions
Before she was the Oprah, she was just a girl born into poverty by a teenage mother in Mississippi and raised in a filthy part of Milwaukee.
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2. Larry Ellison – Oracle
After dropping out of not one but two universities after his adoptive mother died, Ellison worked one odd job after another, often with just enough to survive on fast food and purchase gas.
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3. John Paul Dejoria – John Paul Mitchell Systems
Talk about a hair-raising situation: at age nine, Dejoria went to work to help support his family. He ended up in foster care and served in the U.S. Navy and worked as a janitor. He hit his lowest point when he became part of the homeless population.
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4. Ursula Burns – Xerox
Growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side was tough – just ask Burns who recalls “when it was really bad, when the gangs were there and the drug addicts were there.” Good thing she also didn’t follow the advice of her teachers who knew she was a good student but predicted she should just pursue a career as a nun, nurse or teacher.
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5. Sean Combs – Sean John Clothing
Also known as Puff Daddy, P.Diddy and a handful of other names, the rapper was born in Harlem and, raised by his schoolteacher mother, lived in public housing.
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6. Lloyd Blankfein – Goldman Sachs Group
Born in the Bronx, NY, Blankfein was raised in a housing project by his postal employee father and receptionist mother. He started working as a Yankee Stadium vendor while still a boy.
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7. Guy Laliberte – Cirque Du Soleil
This guy has been taking gambles since he was a teen, dropping out of college at 19. Despite being strapped for cash, he did what he loved: taking to the streets in Europe and Canada as a street performer. When he took his circus group of street performers all the way from Quebec to the Los Angeles Arts Festival in 1987, Laliberte didn’t have enough gas money for the ride back.
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8. Shahid Khan – Flex-N-Gate
When Khan came to the U.S. from Pakistan, he worked as a dishwasher while attending the University of Illinois.
Photo by Forbes
9. Steve Jobs – Apple
Talk about the struggling student: the late Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and dropped out after completing just one semester, but stuck around to continue auditing classes. He survived during this period by collecting discarded soda cans, sleeping on friends’ living room floors, and even walking seven miles to get the occasional free hot meal at a Hare Krishna temple.
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10. Howard Schultz – Starbucks
The coffee chain’s chairman grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn – a neighborhood so poor, that even today it doesn’t have a Starbucks.
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11. Li Ka- Shing – Hutchison Whampoa Limited and Cheung Kong Holdings
At 15 Ka-Shing was forced to quit school after his father died of tuberculosis and eventually worked in a plastics factory for up to 16 hours a day. His current foundation focuses on medical care and education, two things he never got as a child.
Photo by China Photos/Getty Images
12. Do Won Chang – Forever 21
After moving to America from Korea in 1981, Do Won had to work three jobs at the same time to make ends meet before he and his wife Jin Sook opened their first Forever 21 in 1984.
Photo by Forbes
13. Chris Gardner – Garner Rich & Co.
While training to be a stockbroker and living off of a $1,000 a month stipend, the Chicago stock brokerage firm CEO-to-be and his son were homeless. Living in the seedy Tenderloin district in San Francisco, they sometimes found shelter in the mass transit system’s bathrooms.
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14. Francois Pinault – Kering
In 1974, Pinault quit high school because he was bullied and teased so harshly for being poor.
Photo by Rich Schmitt/AFP
15. Sheldon Adelson – Las Vegas Sands
The casino resort chairman grew up in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. His friend and business associate Irwin Chafetz explained, “Rich in our neighborhood then was having $3 in your pocket.”
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
