SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE AT 25 YEARS OLD
Highly successful people were doing at age 25
• There's no rule that says you have to become successful by the age of 25.
• Just look at what some of the most successful people out there were doing in their mid-twenties.
• Some individuals, like Beyoncé and Steve Jobs, had already made it big.
• But many other famous and successful individuals were just starting out.
Everyone's path to success is different.
For some, it's mostly linear. Others encounter more twists, turns, and bumps along the way.
Donald Trump, for example, was born into a real estate development family, and he inherited his father's business at 25, according to Bio.
J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, was still a struggling writer daydreaming about a magical world in her mid-twenties.
To prove that no two paths to success are alike, we've highlighted what Trump, Rowling, and 29 other successful people were doing at age 25.
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.
At the age of 25, US President Donald Trump was given control of his father's company, Elizabeth Trump & Son, which he later renamed the Trump Organization, according to Bio. He soon became involved in large, profitable building projects in Manhattan.
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."
Before her name was known in every American household, 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.
The former CEO of Ralph Lauren 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."
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.
At age 20, Branson opened his first record shop, then a studio at 22, and launched the label at 23. By 30, his company was international.
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."
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.
The first female US Secretary of State and current professor of international relations at Georgetown University was launching her career in politics at 25 while also raising a family with then-husband Joseph Albright, according to Bio.
Albright graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1959, where she majored in political science, and she began studying Russian and international relations while she raised twin daughters Alice and Anne in Washington, DC.
After moving to New York with her husband, Albright completed her education at Columbia University, where she earned a certificate in Russian studies in 1968 and her MA and Ph.D. in public law and government by 1976.
During that time she impressed a former professor so much he encouraged Albright to enter politics, and she joined him in the West Wing as the National Security Council's congressional liaison, according to Bio.
By the time she was 25, the actress had starred in the box-office hit "Hunger Games" trilogy and worked alongside a star-studded cast in the "X-Men" series.
At 22, she became the second-youngest winner of the best actress Oscar for her performance in "Silver Linings Playbook," and she has won many more awards for her work.
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