On Topic Sources

On topic: The myth of the self-made

Entrepreneur, operation of a company, Start up business, wealth, accumulation of wealth, profits, money produces money

Scholarly Sources:

Rakhmanov A. B. “Billionaires and Millionaires of the Baltic Sea Region: A Comparative Analysis of National Business Elites.” Baltic Region, no. 4, 2017, p. 53. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5922/2079-8555-2017-4-4.

This article focus on the research of the business elites in the Baltic region countries.  I learnt that “self-made” is one of the best representative world of the quality of a business elite, it shows the talent and entrepreneur skill of an elite. A person would have high level of abilities if he/she gain wealth and power without the heritage from the family. Also, this article also introduced the value of “self-made indicator”, which is evaluated by Hurun. The result shows that Russia has the highest self-made indicator, and the previous passages says that the commodity and finance sectors are the fields which the Russian business elites focus on. Referring to the statistic results, industrial technology, finance and natural resources are the sectors that have most of the billionaires.

Oswald Mhlanga. “Identification of Personality Traits Affecting Entrepreneurial Performance in the Hospitality Subsector: A Five-Factor Personality Model.” Acta Commercii, no. 2, 2019, p. e1. EBSCOhost, doi:10.4102/ac.v19i2.651.

This article studies the important traits of entrepreneurship, in the specific field of the hospitality sector. After viewing this article I found that these traits should be commonly seen from the personality of successful businessmen/businesswomen. Extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience are the features that will have positive impact on the business. Extraversion means good skills of sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and ambition; conscientiousness describes the behaviours of planning, following rules and thinking before implement; openness to experience is to have positive attitude toward the imaginative, innovative and re ective ideas and experience. However, what is negative to the operation of a business is neuroticism, which describes the “darkness” and “contrary feelings” of the personality.

Non-scholarly Sources:

1. How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built A $900 Million Fortune In Less Than 3 Years This journal tells Kylie Jenner’s method of starting up and operating her cosmetic business. Although there are disputes about whether Kylie Jenner can be defined as a self-made billionaire or not, she did become the wealthiest person among her sisters. Her influence on social media attracted millions of fans, and most of them are the potential consumer of Kylie Cosmetics. Cooperation with a larger e-commerce platform also increase the sales volume. Her name is an important factor that build this achievement, she is a successful talented marketer. Kylie knows how to use her fame to gain profit, maybe her starting point is better than most of the self-made people, but she expands her empire of wealth by her own efforts, with the use of her own resources.

2. An entrepreneur who spent 5 years interviewing 21 self-made billionaires asked every single one how they made their first million dollars — here’s what they said There are some brief summarization of 21 self-made billionaires’ field where they earned their first million dollars. Most of their business cover the fields that related with our daily life. It’s interesting that you don’t have to start up a business as the first step, but you have to have the ability to earn the original capital from your’ boss’ big company, then the next step is to invest and make money produce money. Among these 21 billionaires, most of them own their own company, and they have expanded their business sectors, or their business have become the leading enterprise in a specific field. They never be stingy to invest and gain extra profit.

Cultural/ Artistic Artifacts

This statue gives a very clear and direct sense of “self-made”. It shows how difficult it is for someone to be successful by his own effort. As he is getting closer to the success, he is becoming stronger, his ability is growing, which is the same for the self-made businessmen. They had nothing at the beginning, they accumulated the original capital, gather and use every source they have and build up the business empire step by step. It also shows that a self-made man needs to be ambitious and can’t give up halfway. Additionally, like the statue is sculpturing the parts of himself, what he’s doing should be correct; like a self-made businessman, every decision is a key point, success or failure is decided in a moment.

Experiential Research

The self-made is not rare in life. Although I don’t know any billionaires in my life, but people who start up a successful business from zero can be regarded as a self-made businessman. From my observations to my father and some of his friends, the features of the normal self-made businessmen can be summed up. Firstly, starting from the small business such as restaurants and teahouses. Secondly, they never stop expanding their social network, and it’s important for them to maintain their relationships. Thirdly, when they spend time on the new project, they have to make all the efforts.