Virgin Group founder Richard Branson had already started the Virgin Records record label.
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson had already started the Virgin Records record label.
At 20, Branson opened his first record shop, then a studio, at 22, and launched the Virgin Records label at 23. By 30, his company was international and Branson was a millionaire.
Those early years were tough, he told Entrepreneur:
“I remember them vividly. It’s far more difficult being a small-business owner starting a business than it is for me with thousands of people working for us and 400 companies. Building a business from scratch is 24 hours, 7 days a week, divorces. It’s difficult to hold your family life together; it’s bloody hard work and only one word really matters — and that’s surviving.”
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer.
The Goldman Sachs CEO didn’t take the typical route to finance. He actually started out as a lawyer. He got his law degree from Harvard at 24, then took a job as an associate at law firm Donovan Leisure.
“I was as provincial as you could be, albeit from Brooklyn, the province of Brooklyn,” Blankfein told William Cohen at Fortune magazine.
At the time, he was a heavy smoker and occasional gambler. Despite the fact that he was on the partner track at the firm, he decided to switch to investment banking, joining J. Aron at the age of 27.
Author J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for the ‘Harry Potter’ series on a train.
Author J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for the ‘Harry Potter’ series on a train.
Rowling was 25 when she came up with the idea for “Harry Potter” during a delayed four-hour train ride in 1990.
She started writing the first book that evening, but it took her years to finish it. While working as a secretary for the London office of Amnesty International, Rowling was fired for daydreaming too much about “Harry Potter,” and her severance check would help her focus on writing for the next few years.
During these years, she got married, had a daughter, got divorced, and was diagnosed with clinical depression before finally finishing the book in 1995. It was published in 1997.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had just graduated from Yale Law School.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had just graduated from Yale Law School.
At 23, Clinton began dating fellow Yale Law student Bill Clinton. She ended up staying at school an extra year to be with her boyfriend, and received her law degree in 1973, just before turning 25. Her boyfriend proposed marriage after graduation, but she declined.
That same year Clinton began working at the Yale Child Study Center. Her first scholarly article, “Children Under the Law,” was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973, when she was 25.
After moving to Arkansas in 1975, Clinton agreed to marry Bill. She’d go on to become the first lady of Arkansas, the first lady of the US, a US Senator, and Secretary of State.