Risen From The Depth Of Poverty, Driven To Success

There is the general misconception that successful entrepreneurs/business people are those who come from money. Maybe their families are wealthy, they inherited large sums of money or maybe even got their capital from striking the lottery. In any case, they are lucky!

However, the fact is, a lot of entrepreneurs started out from less than middle-income and poor backgrounds.

Majority of the featured successful entrepreneurs in our book also started out poor. Interestingly, it is exactly because they started out being poor, it becomes a strong motivation for them to want to succeed. They were unhappy with their situation and was driven to do something about it. Instead of moping around, complaining about their poor lives, they made the decision to take concrete steps towards the lives that they want - a life of success.

Poverty becomes their push factor. And they are more hungry than the average people, that’s why they succeed.

On the other hand, there are also people who come from well-to-do background that succeed as entrepreneurs. What’s interesting is that, they are equally driven to achieve success. But a lot of times, their driving force is not based on wanting to achieve better lifestyle or get more money. Their personal goals are pull factors that make them equally driven to achieve their dreams.

So the bottom line is, whether you come from a poor or well-to-do background, what matters is that you must have a strong motivation to drive you to move forward and achieve your goals.

The specific reasons can be as varied as “making more money”, “creating better lifestyle for family”, “making a difference in the world”, “proving to others I can do it”, “to have fun”, “I want to be no. 1″, etc. It doesn’t matter. Just make sure that the reasons are big and strong enough to drive you and you’re passionate enough about them. The more strong reasons you have, the higher chances you’re going to achieve your goals.

So if you are not where you want to be yet, this maybe a good place to start. Seriously think and come up with at least 3 strong reasons that you are passionate about, that will drive to move forward towards your goal.

Another interesting point…

Literally all of the successful entrepreneurs started young! They all started in their teens or early 20s. We all know that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google founders), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) and many other very successful entrepreneurs started very young.

So if you’re still young, youth is your advantage. Make use of it!

And if you’re more mature, you’re wise enough to know that it’s never too late to start… right now. There are also many examples successful entrepreneurs who started very late in their lives. Colonel Harland Sanders who started KFC is one very well-known example.

More importantly, age is not a critical factor to success. The most critical factor is having a strong enough reason to achieve it.