Your 20s, regardless of generation, are likely to be the most formative years of your life, filled with self-discovery, risks, and failures. And circumstances are just as terrible for today’s 20-somethings, with student debt soaring and employment chances scarce.
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CEO of Amazon and the ostensible savior
of the Washington Post, began his career as a ‘grill man’ at McDonald’s over summer as a teenager.
The CEO wasn’t very competent in his job, according to author Cody Teets, who interviewed Bezos for her book Golden Opportunity: Remarkable Careers That Began at McDonald’s.
Ralph Lauren
To get into the business world, Ralph Lauren had to change his name. He changed his last name at the age of 15 after being born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx, New York. He told Oprah Winfrey, “My given name includes the word ‘shit’ in it.” “The other kids used to make fun of me when I was a kid. It was a difficult name to come up with. That is why I made the decision to modify it.”
Lauren walked out of Baruch College after two years of business studies, despite his boyhood aspiration to become a millionaire. According to Business Insider, he served in the army till the age of 24 before quitting to work for Brooks Brothers, his first foray into the garment industry.
J.K. Rowling
According to Business Insider, Joanne “Jo” Rowling was just 25 years old when she came up with the idea for boy wizard Harry Potter while trapped on a delayed train journey in 1990.
Rowling was working as a secretary for Amnesty International’s London office at the time, but she was soon composing chapters on her work computers and thinking about Harry Potter, which her severance pay would allow her to focus on for the next five years.
Rowling didn’t have an easy time realizing her ambitions. Rowling married, divorced, had a child, lost her mother, and was diagnosed with serious depression after being dismissed, all while living in relative poverty. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997 after she finished the first book in the series in 1995.
Oprah Winfrey
Before becoming the queen of daytime television, Oprah worked in a grocery store to support herself while attending Tennessee State University on a full academic scholarship.
Winfrey’s first foray into the media didn’t go well: she was fired from her job hosting the 6 p.m. news slot at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV in 1977 before being hired to co-host WJZ’s local talk show “People Are Talking” in 1978 when she was 24 years old.
When Winfrey first arrived in Baltimore in 2011, she told the Baltimore Sun, “I had no idea what I was in for or that this was going to be the greatest growing phase of my adult life.” “It shook me to my core, and I didn’t even realize I was being shaken at the moment.”
Winfrey remained in Baltimore until 1983 when she moved to Chicago to host A.M. Chicago for WLS-TV, where she established herself as a talk show host.