The Eventual Millionaire: How Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur and Successfully Grow Their Startup

Chapter 9

Stories of Millionaires Before They Were Millionaires

I love a good rags-to-riches story, but I before I started talking to millionaires personally, it seemed like they were a different type of person than I. Like I said before, I thought that they must have had a special mind-set, or that they knew the right people, or that they were smarter than me. They made it look so easy. One day they were broke, and a year later they were rich! That is how it seemed.

Success stories are easy to tell when you just talk about the positive things. People usually skip over the hard parts, the waking up at 3 A.M. in a cold sweat because you don’t know how you are going to afford your bills. Even now, when I ask millionaires about the failures and hard parts, the pain is subdued because of the passage of time. But those hard times, those doubts, those thoughts of “I’m not good enough” or “Can I really do this?” are all there.

One thing that I have learned after all of these interviews is that no matter what walk of life we are from, we are all just people, money or no money, success or no success. We are just people trying to make sense of the world and do our best. And if you have a desire to do more and better things with your life, all you need is that desire. Everything else you’ll encounter is just a series of obstacles to overcome. Lacking money, time, or knowledge does not stop someone with the desire to improve his or her life and the lives of others.

Here are the stories from ...