Business Insider
What 18 Extremely Successful People Were Doing At Age 25
JACQUELYN SMITH NOV. 6, 2014, 2:53 PM 1,296,677 12
young richard branson
Courtesy of Richard Branson via LinkedIn
A young Richard Branson.
Everyone's path to success is different.
For some, it's mostly linear. Others encounter more twists, turns, and bumps along the way.
Billionaire Mark Cuban, for example, faced hardship when he first started. When Cuban got to Dallas, he "was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment," he wrote in "How To Win At The Sport Of Business." On the other hand, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a Xerox salesman dreaming of good coffee.
To prove that no two paths to success are alike, we've highlighted what Cuban, Schultz, and 16 other successful people were doing at age 25.
This is an update of a post originally written by Vivian Giang and Max Nisen.
Martha Stewart was a stockbroker for the firm of Monness, Williams, and Sidel, the original Oppenheimer & Co.
Martha Stewart was a stockbroker for the firm of Monness, Williams, and Sidel, the original Oppenheimer & Co.
Courtesy Martha Stewart
Before her name was known in every American household, Martha Stewart worked on Wall Street for five years as a stockbroker. Before that, she was a model, booking clients from Unilever to Chanel.
"There were very few women at the time on Wall Street … and people talked about this glass ceiling, which I never even thought about," Stewart said in an interview for PBS's MAKERS series. "I never considered myself unequal, and I think I got a very good education being a stockbroker."
In 1972, Stewart left Wall Street to be a stay-at-home mom. A year later, she started a catering business.
Mark Cuban was a bartender in Dallas.
Mark Cuban was a bartender in Dallas.
Daveynin/Flickr
At age 25, Cuban had graduated from Indiana University and had moved to Dallas. He started out as a bartender and then a salesperson for a PC software retailer. He got fired because he wanted to go close a deal rather than open a store in the morning. That helped inspire him to open his first business, MicroSolutions.
"When I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment," Cuban writes in his book "How to Win at the Sport of Business." "I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation."
Arianna Huffington was traveling to music festivals around the world for the BBC with her boyfriend at the time.
Arianna Huffington was traveling to music festivals around the world for the BBC with her boyfriend at the time.
tiny banquet committee via Flickr
Before she was Arianna Huffington, she was Arianna Stassinopolous, and at the age of 21, she met the famed British journalist Henry Bernard Levin while on a panel for a quiz show.
The two entered into a relationship, and he became her mentor while she wrote the book "The Female Woman," attacking the women's liberation movement. The book was published when she was 23.
For the next few years, Huffington traveled to music festivals around the world with Levin as he wrote for the BBC. Her relationship with Levin eventually ended because he did not want to marry or have children. Huffington moved to New York City at the age of 30. That year, her biography of Maria Callas was published, which she dedicated to Levin.
She told William Skidelsky at The Observer:
"[Levin] was my mentor. Our second date was to see 'The Mastersingers' at Covent Garden. Our first trip abroad was to Bayreuth to see 'Wagner's Ring.'"
Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer.
Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer.
Thomas Jefferson High School
Blankfein didn't take the typical route to finance. He actually started out as a lawyer. He got his law degree from Harvard at age 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.
J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series on a train.
J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series on a train.
WikiMedia Commons
Rowling was 25 years old 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 actually 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.
Jay Z was already in the rap scene but was relatively anonymous.
Jay Z was already in the rap scene but was relatively anonymous.
Wikimedia Commons
Born Shawn Carter, Jay Z grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn, New York, and became known as "Jay Z" at the age of 20. For the next few years he appeared alongside various other rappers, but "remained relatively anonymous" until he founded the record label Roc-A-Fella Records at the age of 27 with two other friends. The same year, Jay Z released his first album, "Reasonable Doubt."
Ralph Lauren was a sales assistant at Brooks Brothers.
Ralph Lauren was a sales assistant at Brooks Brothers.
Wikimedia Commons
He was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx, New York, but changed his name at the age of 15. He went on to study business at Baruch College and served in the Army until the age of 24 when he left to work for Brooks Brothers.
At 26, Lauren decided to design a wide European-styled tie, which eventually led to an opportunity with Neiman Marcus. The next year, he launched the label "Polo."
Marissa Mayer had just started her job as Google's 20th employee.
Marissa Mayer had just started her job as Google's 20th employee.
Hubpages
At 24, Mayer became employee No. 20 at Google and the company's first female engineer. She remained with the company for 13 years before moving on to her current role as CEO of Yahoo.
Google didn't have the sorts of lavish campuses it does now, Mayer said in an interview with VMakers, "During my interviews, which were in April of 1999, Google was a seven-person company. I arrived and I was interviewed at a ping pong table which was also the company's conference table, and it was right when they were pitching for venture capitalist money, so actually after my interview Larry and Sergey left and took the entire office with them."
Since everyone in the office interviewed you in those days, Mayer had to come back the next day for another round.
Warren Buffett was working as an investment salesman in Omaha.
Warren Buffett was working as an investment salesman in Omaha.
BloombergTV
In his early 20s, Buffett worked as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co. in Omaha before moving to New York to be a securities analyst at age 26. During that year, he started Buffett Partnership, Ltd., an investment partnership in Omaha.
New York just wasn't for him, Buffett told NBC. "In some places it's easy to lose perspective. But I think it's very easy to keep perspective in a place like Omaha."
Ursula Burns started out as an intern, but worked her way up at Xerox throughout her 20s.
Ursula Burns started out as an intern, but worked her way up at Xerox throughout her 20s.
AP Images
Burns overcame a tough upbringing in a New York City housing project to get a degree in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU and then a master's from Columbia University.
Since then she's been a Xerox lifer. She started as an intern at age 22 in 1980 and joined full time a year later after getting her master's. She rose rapidly through the ranks, working in various product development roles and was named CEO in 2009.
"When I came to work at Xerox, I just chose to work. Somebody said 'how about this?' And I said OK, and I would go do that in the lab," Burns said in an interview for the PBS documentary "Makers." "Then somebody said how about doing some business planning. Then I started leaning more towards larger global systems problems. And systems problems are the business."
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook was cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook was cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.
Zuckerberg had been hard at work on Facebook for five years by the time he hit age 25. In that year — 2009 — the company turned cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users. He was excited at the time, but said it was just the start, writing on Facebook that "the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone."
The next year, he was named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine.
Tina Fey was a childcare registrar at the YMCA before joining famed improv troupe Second City.
Tina Fey was a childcare registrar at the YMCA before joining famed improv troupe Second City.
YouTube
After graduating from the University of Virginia, Fey moved to Chicago and hung around acting workshops and even worked as the childcare registrar at a YMCA before improv troupe Second City invited her to join.
Fey told The New Yorker that she joined Second City because she "knew it was where a lot of SNL people started," and in 1997 she sent scripts to "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels, who then hired her as a writer.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a Xerox salesman.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a Xerox salesman.
YouTube
After graduating from N