Biographies of real estate moguls who started with nothing

In many cases, extremely wealthy individuals already come from wealth. After all, it is a whole lot easier to start your own company if you have a super-sized trust fund as capital, or possible to make a few wise investments if you have an inheritance to wager in the stock market. Wealth can help individuals obtain even more wealth, and allow them to add to the family fortune.

There are many, many examples of entrepreneurs and businessmen who started without two pennies to rub together, and through hard work and dedication managed to build themselves hugely successful businesses. They started with nothing and are now worth millions, or even billions, of dollars. And, of course, they all started from very humble backgrounds and had to raise themselves up by their bootstraps in order to make it — and make it they did.

Here are 15 extremely successful people who started with nothing. Talk about inspirational! Schultz actually grew up in a low-income housing complex, but he always aspired to raise himself up from his surroundings. He grew that chain to the international phenomenon it is now with tens of thousands of locations. Nowadays Oprah Winfrey is an absolute legend, someone who managed to take a daytime talk show and transform it into a hugely profitable brand including a magazine, a television network, and countless other business ventures.

Best real estate business to start

Eventually, the determined Winfrey snagged a scholarship to Tennessee State University, and at just 19, was the first African-American television correspondent in the state. In the early 80s, she moved to Chicago to further her career on an AM talk show, and in , got her own show — The Oprah Winfrey Show. The rest, as they say, is history.

DeJoria was a first-generation American whose parents immigrated to America when he was just a baby. As his family struggled to make ends meet, DeJoria tried to help out the household by selling newspapers and Christmas cards when he was just a child.