Give me some (famous) financial inspirational stories!!!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, so once again Xavier is down in the dumps with money probley-mo’s again. So I would like you guys to give examples of different people who managed to hit the financial jackpot (so to speak) and make thier millions (or billions, as the case may be).

However, it would be pointless for you to just give me examples of anyone who struck it rich. I would definately have to have something in common with those people - otherwise, for me, it just isn’t really inspiration. You could tell me something about Bill Gates, for example, but the problem there is that his parents were both pretty well-off (financially), he was close to his mother and had a decent relationship with his father (definately not me).

So I have selected the criteria under which you can make your nominations. The people you select (and hopefully inform me a little something about) should fit into these criteria relatively well.
1) They must have had at least some family trouble. This could range from being abused (either mentally or physically as a child), being orphaned, or having serious disagreements/arguments with parent(s), having a difficult/turbulent relationship with parent(s), getting kicked out of home early etc. Perhaps something to suggest that they rebelled against family. Please note that the altercation(s) need not take place only with the parents, but with whomsoever was the legal guardian of said child.
2) No (former or otherwise) drug-takers or alcoholics. I am looking for sober people who have not been through (or needed to go through) that type of rehabilitation. So please no “I used to be onnnnn de fast track headin’ down Route 101 to the middle o’ nowhere… and now I’m worth a million dollars” stories. Or at least try your best.
3) Nominees must have struggled financially early on in life, or be from no-higher-than working or lower (band)-middle class families. This does not always mean that they have to be from the shit house, but they definately cannot be from wealthy families. This may (or may not, as the cases may vary) exclude those that are from celebrity-style famous families (for e.g. the Kennedy’s).
4) Nominees must have made thier fortune after the 1960’s. Therefore guys like J.P.Morgan are out.
5) They must also have made thier money from business ventures, business transactions, and things related to the financial/corporate/business/marketing world. This one is (strictly speaking) very hard to explain, and probably even harder to define. But it would exclude people who didn’t directly make money from business deals or some type of trading/salesmanship. For example, actors would be excluded. So no Oprah Winfries please. Directors also. Pull out the Spielbergs. Let’s say that a famous sportsman makes millions off his surreal skills. He can’t be considered either. But if a so-so sportsman (in terms of wealth) markets a particular brandname or flavour and makes his millions, he’s in.

Oh and let’s not get philosophical about it and say “but acting is a type of salesmanship, it’s selling to the audience.” You know what I’m talking about.
6) Try to keep the nominees relatively young. This means that ideally these guys made thier millions (or billions) before the age of 45. Usually young guys in thier 20’s making millions is good, but that isn’t necessary. Try to at least get 'em in thier 30’s though (a piece of advice any good granma will give a young lady).
To give two examples, I would nominate Roman Abramovich (of Chelsea soccer club fame) and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

R.A. made serious billions in between the ages of 26-36. He basically pawed his way to becoming a partner in a large industrial Russian oil company, practically for free. He owned shares in various other giant corporations, and recieved massive dividends from his shares.

He was orphaned by the age of 4, and was raised by distant relatives in a remote oil-drilling province (I think in Siberia). He wasn’t a particularly bright star in his younger years, and he dropped out of college after setting up home with his (then) wife. He went on to sell plastic toys from this grim Moscow apartment, but then he left.

When he later re-appeared, he was a billionaire, having made most of his gains between 1995-2000.
A.S. is another interesting case. You might say, “wait-a-minute Xavier you dastardly fiend, you said millionaire actors were excluded!” What most people don’t know though, is that A.S. made his first set of millions through property deals in (I believe it was) California. Although you could say he may have had a strong relationship with his father, I take it there is some friction over thier views on anti-semitism (his father was an “enthusiastic” Nazi). Clean and sober, this man-mammoth gets my other vote, having made his money so young.

But then I don’t really know many people.

Who are your nominees?

–Once again I reiterate that you should attempt to stick to, as close as possible, the above selected criteria, though I grant you room for flexibility.–

2

Interesting node idea. I’ll contribute George Soros, the multi-billionaire currency speculator, who escaped Germany in the 30s and struck it big here. Somebody’s probably written a good biography of him.

3

Interesting idea, unfortunately I can’t think of any off hand.

Here’s Wikipedia’s article on George Soros.

4

It may be a bit older than the OP is looking for, but Royal Little (founder of Textron) wrote a very funny and interesting book, How to Lose $100,000,000 and Other Valuable Advice. In the intro he writes that since his successes were already famous, people could probably learn more from his mistakes and failures, which he figures cost him over 100 million dollars.

5

While reading Xavier’s list, I was also thinking “Soros, check… Soros, check…”.
You might also want to consider Sam Walton, and the founder of IKEA. All these men came from very humble backgrounds. All these men are in the billion$ league. I don’t think any professional athlete has made it to that league yet.

6

Your name makes me think of Xavier Roberts, founder of the Cabbage Patch dolls. He earned gazillions after starting Cabbage Patch in 1978, but I don’t know anything about his background. I also don’t know anything of the family life of Michael Dell, but I do know that he started Dell Computers with $1,000 that he scrimped together and today it sells more than $35 million worth of computers everyday.

Ted Turner is an interesting story. He came from a famously fupped uck family (his father and grandfather committed suicide, and that’s the least of it) and while technically he inherited a large estate from his father he didn’t really- his father left him a billboard business that generated a lot of revenue BUT was so deeply mortgaged that in a good month it broke even, plus he had to support his mother. Today in addition to CNN & his other media holdings is the largest individual landowner in the U.S.- he’s diversified enough that regardless of what happens to his Time-Warner stock he’ll be able to live lavishly for the rest of time. It would have been one helluva lot easier for him to have wound up in the local Waffle House talking about how his daddy used to own a billboard company way back when than to become a multibillionaire.

7

Fuqua, also.

8

Steven Jobs…ever hear of Apple Computers? Created in a garage with some old spare parts.

I don’t remember his name, but the founder of Sony was interviewed in Playboy decades ago. He said he was once embarrassed by a guy in the US who was trying to be nice and pointed to an umbrella in his drink and said, “that was made in Japan.” He became determined to make Japan known for other things. One day he was walking down the street and heard all the noise and wished he had a personal music machine in his ears. Voila…The Walkman was invented. And Sony has done pretty well over the years since.

Rumor has it that one day Cecil decided he wanted to be able to afford a new Ford Fiesta, and now I am a paid charter member of SDMB!

There were also pet rocks, hula hoops, Silly Putty…you name it, someone has an idea that might cost 5 cents to make and becomes a hit.

9

That’s not exactly how Sony got started. As a matter of fact that’s not at all how it got started or became big. Sony started out in 1947, 30 years before the walkman came out. It used to be called Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute.

Sony became big by being the first to manufacture tape recorders and, later, transistor radios in Japan. By the time they released the walkman in the late 70s they were already pretty damn huge.

Even though Sony did have really, really humble beginnings, I’m not sure Masaru Ikuba (the founder) would qualify for the OP. In absolute terms he wasn’t exactly rich, for sure. But then again, not too many people were in Japan at that time. He had enough money to hire a few people and get his company started which was a lot more than most people had.

It’s true, though, that Sony was instrumental in shifting the view that things “made in Japan” were cheap and shitty to being cheap, cool and cutting-edge.

There’s an extruciatingly detailed history of the company here.

10

I’ll go with Sir Ken Morrison, chairman of William Morrison Supermarkets Plc, the fourth-biggest U.K. grocery chain. He took over a small market-stall business in northern England in the 1950s or '60s (don’t know the exact date) that had been established by his father and built it into a company that has a market cap of about £6.5 billion ($11.5 billion) today following its takeover of Safeway Plc*, which closed last month. Don’t know any details on the family history, but I’m guessing that running a few market stalls wasn’t making them millionaires. Last month William Morrison said full-year profit rose, the 37th straight year of higher earnings.

*Safeway Plc was originally part of Safeway Inc., the U.S. supermarket chain. Safeway Inc. sold its British business to a company called Argyll in 1987 that later changed its name to Safeway.

Is it just me, or is there a note of incompatibility here? While Roman Abramovich is plenty loaded beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’d argue that his fortune stems more from a chaotic selloff of assets owned by the Russian government and associated influence-peddling than from business ventures or transactions in the more conventional sense.

11

Erm, by node, I of course mean OP. By Germany I mean Hungary, and by 30s I mean 40s. Oy.

The story of my dad’s company is pretty interesting. Not exactly what you were looking for–started with a small plumbing business in 1881 and the family evolved it into an enormous construction company, but you might pick something up.