Want to start a business and earn loads of money? Have no money to get started, then read and be inspired!

Ingvar Kamprad

Net worth: $31 billion

World’s richest retailer and founder of furniture store Ikea.

Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish what has grown into IKEA.

The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name (Ingvar Kamprad) plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born; and the nearby village Agunnaryd.

Kamprad has admitted that his dyslexia played a large part in the inner workings of the company. For example, the Swedish-sounding names of the furniture sold by IKEA were originally chosen by Kamprad because he had difficulty remembering numeral stock-keeping units.

Reputed to be quite frugal: flies economy class, frequents inexpensive restaurants, furnishes his home with Ikea ware.

Li Ka-shing

Net worth: $26.5 billion

Li fled turbulent China in 1940 and resettled in Hong Kong. Li’s father died in Hong Kong.

Shouldering the responsibility of looking after the livelihood of the family, Li was forced to leave school before the age of 15 and found a job in a plastics trading company where he labored 16 hours a day.

By 1950, his hard work, prudence and his pursuit of excellence had enabled him to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries. From manufacturing plastics, Li led and developed his company into a leading real estate investment company in Hong Kong that was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1972.

Roman Abramovich

Net worth: $23.5 billion

Orphaned at age 4, Abramovich was raised by his uncle and grandmother. He dropped out of college and eventually made a fortune after taking over Russian oil giant Sibneft, which he later sold.

Roman, was gifted with a talent for business and being in the right place at the right time as he started his career as an entrepreneur just as Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms permitted the opening of small private businesses.

He began his business career selling plastic ducks from a grim Moscow apartment but, within a few years, Abramovich’s vast wealth spread from oil conglomerates to pig farms, and secured his place within Yeltsin’s inner circle. However, even today, his task force of bodyguards and armoured Mercedes testify to the high-risk nature of capitalism in post-Soviet Russia.

Sheldon Adelson

Net worth: $26 billion

The son of a Boston cabdriver, he borrowed $200 from an uncle to sell newspapers at age 12. Later, he dropped out of college to become a court reporter. Now a casino and hotel magnate, Adelson took his Las Vegas Sands public in December 2004.

He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was twelve. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends. He went to college at City College of New York but did not complete a degree there.

The basis for Adelson’s wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry.

Amancio Ortega

Net worth: $20.2 billion

Son of a railway worker Ortega apparently got started as a clerk in a shirt store. With $25 and help from his then wife Rosalia Mera, now also a billionaire, he began making gowns in his living room.

In 1975 he opened the first store in what would grow into the enormously popular chain of fashion stores called Zara.

Kirk Kerkorian

Net worth: $16 billion

Son of Armenian immigrants, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade and took up boxing.

Kirk Kerkorian was born on June 6, 1917 in Fresno, California, to Armenian immigrant parents. Dropping out of school in 8th grade, he became a fairly skilled amateur boxer under the tutelage of his older brother, fighting under the name “Rifle Right Kerkorian” to win the Pacific amateur welterweight champion.

After the war, having saved most of his wages, Kerkorian spent $5,000 on a Cessna. He worked as a general aviation pilot, and made his first visit to Las Vegas in 1944. After spending much time in Las Vegas during the 1940s, Kerkorian quit gambling and in 1947 paid $60,000 for Trans International Airlines, which was a small air-charter service which flew gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

He then bid on some war surplus bombers, using money on loan from the Seagrams family. Gasoline, and especially airplane fuel, was in short supply at the time, so he sold the fuel from the planes’ tanks, paid off his loan – and still had the airplanes. He operated the airline until 1968 when he sold it for $104 million to the Transamerica Corporation.

Later, he made billions buying and selling movie studio MGM. Today his MGM Mirage owns more than half the hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip.

“I just lucked into things. I used to think that if I made $50,000 I’d be the happiest guy in the world.” Kirk Kerkorian

Oprah Winfrey

Net worth: $2.5 billion

Born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenaged mother, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood, Winfrey was raped at the age of nine, and at fourteen, gave birth to a son who died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.

Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Because of the amount of revenue the show generated, Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company. By 1994 the show’s ratings were still thriving and Winfrey negotiated a contract that earned her nine figures a year.

Considered the richest woman in entertainment by the early 1990s, at age 41 Winfrey’s wealth crossed another milestone when with a net worth of $340 million, she replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although blacks are 12% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only black person wealthy enough to rank among America’s 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995.

Micky Jagtiani

Net worth: $2.5 billion

Jagtiani flunked out of accounting school in London and took up driving taxis and cleaning hotel rooms to pay the bills and support a bottle of whiskey a day habit. He then lost his entire family to illness in the span of one year.

Just 21 and alone in Bahrain with $6,000 of his and his family’s savings, he took over the retail space his brother had leased before dying of cancer and started selling baby products. Chain is now one of the most profitable retail groups in the Middle East.

Thirty years after he landed up in Bahrain the Dubai-based CEO of Landmark group has built himself one the largest and most profitable retail chains in the Middle East, with more than 280 stores, 6,000 employees and an estimated $650 million in revenues.

Richard Desmond

Net worth: $2 billion

After his parents divorced, Desmond lived with his mother in a garage apartment. Quit school at age 14 to become a drummer and worked in a coat-check room to help pay the bills.

His first job was for Thomson Newspapers, working in classified advertisements. He moved on to another company and by the age of 21 he owned two record shops. He acquired an interest in publishing and in 1974 published a magazine called International Musician and Recording World.

Started his first magazine at age 22 and now owns dozens of titles, including celebrity rag OK!.

J.K. Rowling

Net worth: $1 billion

British writer and author of the Harry Potter fantasy series.

Rowling moved to Portugal after the death of her mother from multiple sclerosis. She returned to the U.K. a single mother and lived on welfare while finishing her first Harry Potter story. Now one of the world’s most successful authors, she published the seventh and final installment of the boy wizard series last July.

Brazil is a country with a foot in two camps – part rich, mainly poor, so it’s a good place to take the financial pulse of a global phenomenon like the internet.

Brazilians love the web. Not everyone has access, but those who do spend an average of 70 hours a month online, which is more than anywhere else in the world.

Less than a third of Brazilians have a connected computer at home, so most people go online at internet cafes, known locally as Lan Houses.

There are more than 100,000 Lan Houses dotted around the country.

Winning combination

The country’s online revolution has created opportunities to establish small businesses that simply didn’t exist before.

Fabio Seixas is a 35-year-old “serial entrepreneur” whose three previous businesses went bust.

But he appears to have struck gold with an innovative way of selling designer T-shirts online, by getting his customers to do much of the work.

His website runs online competitions asking people to submit designs for T-shirts, which are then displayed on the site and people vote for the ones they like best.

He then manufactures the winning entries.

It means he only produces goods he is sure customers will like, and in internet-crazy Brazil his online design competitions have become very popular.

“With a local shop, you don’t have access to many people, but with the internet I can have customers all over this big country,” he says.

He created his company with $7,000 five years ago, and now his turnover is $1m a year.

He says that it is hard for entrepreneurs to raise money in Brazil.

“We don’t have access to venture capital and the banks are not lending money, but the internet allows us to start a business with low costs,” he says.

“You have to be innovative to attract attention. We’re doing well because people are talking about us.”

Massive growth

Fabio’s business is by no means an isolated case.

The popularity of the internet has created a platform for lots of internet businesses, many of them for online shopping.

“The growth of commerce in Brazil is not coming from the top 50 retailers, it comes from the other 10,000 retailers,” says Romero Rodrigues, founder of BuscaPe, Brazil’s first price comparison website.

He maintains that there is an ever-growing number of internet retailers, whose sales increase every year.

“Many of these companies began working from home, sometimes mom and pop businesses, and now they have 40 or 50 people working for them,” he says.

He dropped out of college to found BuscaPe 12 years ago at the age of just 21.

His site helps people find cheap deals on goods ranging from Television sets to perfume.

He started in Brazil, but now BuscaPe has expanded across Latin America and Mr Rodrigues recently sold a 90% stake in the company to a South African electronic media company for more than $300m.

But he denies that the deal made him a multi-millionaire, as the proceeds were shared with other investors who had put money into BuscaPe to finance its rapid expansion.

Christian Owens set up his first website three years ago and now has a business offering pay-per-click advertising in 86 countries.

He employs four people around the world and it is believed his website
is the 86th largest internet property in in the globe.

He was named winner of the teen category at the Enterprising Young Brit Awards, beating four other finalists to win £1,000 and a trophy.

The Brooke Weston Academy student and former Danesholme School pupil pitched his ideas to a panel of judges including director general of the Institute of Directors Miles Templeman and Penny Newman, chief executive of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation.

His business Branchr, was set up using pocket money with the idea of
making online advertising accessible to all. Now it is used by brands such as William Hill and MySpace.

Christian, who lives in Briery Close, Great Oakley, said: “I taught myself basic web design and it was something I really enjoyed so when I was about 12 I started my first software promotion company.

“Then I started Branchr which connects people who want to advertise online with people who want to make money from their website.”

Even Christian was shocked to learn his website was being used in 86 countries. He said: “We went to a statistics company who told us we were the 86th largest web property in the world.

“We employ five people now including me, two in San Francisco, one in Boston and another in France.”

Christian runs his website in the evenings and weekends. He will take 16 GCSEs this summer and is considering delaying going to sixth form so he can run his business full-time.

His mum Alison, 44, is a secretary and dad Julian, 50, is a factory worker.He said: “I don’t think they really understand the ins and outs of the business but they are supportive.

“I would say I’m richer than most 15-year-olds but it’s not really about the money.

Cyrus Adkisson doesn’t have a business plan for Trubz, doesn’t know if he’ll make a dime off it. And he’s proud of that.

At the very least, Adkisson figures his Internet application will bring him exposure in the technology start-up community, and that’s a good thing. Making money off the application would be a bonus.

The important stuff: Trubz — pronounced “truhbz” — is named after Adkisson’s dog. And it’s being unveiled today.

It’s an Internet mechanism by which Facebook users can comment on any site — whether it takes comments or not — using their Facebook sign-on. Trubz is an add-on for Firefox similar to add-ons like the popular AdBlock Plus, that users install. Users then sign in and make comments in a browser sidebar.

The advantages, said Adkisson, 29, are numerous: You can converse with other Facebook users about what they’re reading online and, if you’re the sort who tends to have comments booted off an organization’s comment board, they will have appear in the Trubz comment sidebar anyway.

“It just came to me through need,” Adkisson said. “There are all kinds of sites out there that don’t allow comments … and there are a lot of sites out there that make you create a new identity.”

“… An independent third party comment log lets you comment the truth without fear of reprisal.”

Brian Raney, founder of downtown technology incubator Awesome Inc., said the Trubz application “is a great idea. Probably the most valuable thing about this tool is it takes the ability to produce content and puts it more into the hands of the consumer. … Providers of Web sites can no longer filter your comments or delete your comments or change your comments … a pretty valuable thing on the Web.”

Web users are using such workaround technology already, Raney said, but Trubz “just makes it a little more transparent and puts it side by side with the content.”

Adkisson is having a debut party for Trubz at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Awesome Inc. at 348 East Main Street. He requests attendees bring laptops so they can see how the application works.

The application’s Web site — Trubz.com — is just a placeholder online with a picture of a cute kitten, but there’s a link that leads you to Adkisson’s Facebook page, where you can download Trubz.

The Trubz application can be described as “kind of a piggyback on Digg,” Adkisson said referring to the social news Web site that allows readers to vote stories up or down.

“You bring your Facebook friends with you,” Adkisson said of Trubz. “I’ve learned through entrepreneurship that timing is everything … People do want to talk back (and) nobody wants to create a new I.D.”

http://www.trubz.com/

CARDIFF entrepreneur Shazia Awan has been named the UK’s best female Asian entrepreneur.

The 28-year-old took the prestigious title at the annual Asian Women of Achievement Awards at London’s Park Lane Hilton on Wednesday night.

Ms Awan was nominated following the success of her start-up company Peachy Pink. Its ladies anti-cellulite and body-shaping underwear range, PeachyBody, is now sold globally.

Having signed an initial distribution deal with Debenhams last year, Ms Awan has expanded her business into South Korea and is about to sell into the Czech Republic. She has strong ambitions for growth in the coming year and is confident of establishing a £5m turnover business.

The award ceremony was attended by 700 including Princess Michael of Kent and Princess Badiya El Hassan of Jordan.

Ms Awan said yesterday; “It was an absolute thrill to win this award and I’m grateful to the people who nominated me.

“It was amazing to think that the event was attended by royalty and leading politicians and great entrepreneurs like James Caan.

“It was a wonderful evening but the best thing was that my mum and dad, my sister and close friends, including Secretary of State for Wales, Cheryl Gillian, were there with me.”

Ms Awan was shortlisted alongside Jayshree Davé, founder and director of Pipaltree; Farnaz Khan, managing director, eResponse Media; Angela Malik, chef and patron, the Angela Malik School of food and wine and Geeta Sidhu-Robb, founder of Nosh Detox.

Ms Awan received her award from Home Secretary Theresa May.

Judges of the Asian Women of Achievement Awards – chaired by British Red Cross chief executive Sir Nicholas Young and with Cherie Blair as patron – said this year’s winners were some of the most outstanding individuals ever to be honoured in the programme’s 11-year history.

Ben Terrill is bringing the milk man back to Middletown — and he’s extending the job description.

The 34-year-old father of two said he got the idea for his new business, Go Grocery Express, after working as a grocery store manager for a year. Seeing elderly customers struggle to shop for groceries and also finding himself strapped for time juggling a job and family life, Terrill said he saw a need for an easier option.

Research showed there weren’t a lot of options for ordering fresh groceries — a gallon of milk, for example — for home delivery, so Terrill decided to launch his own online grocery site.

“There is nothing local in Dayton and Cincinnati to deliver groceries. And if you order through an (Internet) grocer, you have to wait days for it to ship,” he said.

The idea behind his site, gogroceryexpress.com, is to allow customers to pick from private store brand options, which include fresh produce and meat, dairy and household options. Then Terrill or one of his hired drivers picks up the items at the store and delivers them directly to the customer the next day.

Payment can be made via Paypal or using a credit card online. Prices are a bit higher than in-store with a mark-up of about 15 percent, and there is a $10 delivery fee. However, that can be waived using an online coupon. Terrill said items do not have to be bought in bulk, and he requires a minimum order of only $5. Orders placed by 8 p.m. the night before can be delivered as soon as 10 a.m. the next day, he said.

Terrill said he expects to cater to young professionals with a busy lifestyle and older adults who can’t make it out to the store. He has drivers set up to deliver in Dayton and Cincinnati, where the bulk of his customers will likely be based. But since his base of operations is in Middletown, Butler County residents can receive the service, too.

“There are a lot of people out there looking for this service,” he said. “It’s not rocket science. I was just actually surprised no one else was doing it.”

For more information or to apply for a driver or sales position with Go Grocery Express, visit gogroceryexpress.com.

A millionaire is donating the profits from the sale of a mansion in Northumberland to charity.

Brian Burnie, 64, sold Doxford Hall Hotel and its ten-acre estate for £9 million and hopes to invest the money in funding cancer care for people in the region.

The millionaire originally bought the property, which includes a 25-bedroom hotel and spa, from Northumberland County Council in 1993, but now hopes the funds generated by the sale can be used to pay for a Macmillan cancer nurse and specialist vehicles for cancer patients.

Mr Burnie made the decision after his wife won a battle with breast cancer.

He commented that he aims to counteract the “me, me, me society” in Britain by thinking of the needs of others.

“We can all do something by leaving money to charity when we die, but why don’t we do something while we are still living?” Mr Burnie stated.

Over £45 million was donated to Macmillan Cancer Support through legacies in 2008 – more than a third of the total of £126 million donated to the charity.

Mark Bowness is a creative old chap – successfully founding Tribewanted.com he is now about to launch a new concept here in the UK called Rock Control.

Kicking off in two weeks the website is calling for talented musicians an singers to upload a 60 sec video demonstrating their talents. The public will then vote and manage the band with the intention of releasing one song into every chart around the world!

You can check out more by following Rock Controls blog here and also check out Q&A with Rock Control and participants here.

Mark’s personal website and blog is here and although it is very interesting reading back over past blogs it hasn’t been updated lately (much like mine!).

Good luck Mark! You have UKpreneur’s full support!

A UNIVERSITY student has set up a new business to bring the gadgets of the rich and famous to a wider market.

Tom Kadwill, 19, is in the early days of an online venture called Tekrux, supplying automated technology for lighting and other electrical appliances around the home.

He has two suppliers, one in the UK and another in the Netherlands. Their gadgetry enables people to use items such as a £15 keyring, which can operate lights and switch the television on or off.

Tom, of Harley Street, Leigh, said: “Usually this technology is found in rich homes, but my aim is to bring to everyone at a price they can afford.

“The keyring item can turn lights on as you arrive home at night and is more energy saving than leaving a light on while you are out.

“It’s good for older people and those with mobility problems.

“My nan uses the light and TV controller from her bed.”

Tom, a former Deanes School pupil and Seevic student, also works part time at Little Havens Children’s Hospice.

He is currently studying for a degree in economics, at the University of Hertfordshire, and is into the second round of their Flare business competition, with a £15,000 prize up for grabs.

Deven Oberoi said Oberoi Grand Interiors, at Pride Park, was fast becoming the third successful business created by the entrepreneurial family.

His wife is the boss of Derby IT company Oberoi Consulting and appeared on the Channel Four show Secret Millionaire, in which she gave some of her fortune to worthy causes.

And his father, Dayal, 71, set up the successful Mackworth lighting shop Oberoi Brothers, which Deven helped run for 20 years.

The 42-year-old left the Humbleton Drive shop last year.

He now operates his new business single-handedly from an office next door to Kavita’s.

But Deven, who lives with his wife in Hazelwood, said being in such close proximity was far from distracting.

He said: “We’re both doing our own thing and it works absolutely fine.

“In fact, we’ve started passing on each other’s businesses to clients at events.”

Oberoi Grand Interiors works with customers to design, build and fit interior and exterior furnishings to residential and commercial properties.

Deven’s role involves taking details of clients’ needs and linking them up with businesses which can complete the building and fitting work.

He said: “This really is the best thing I ever did. The recession really helped me to re-focus on what I wanted in life.

“I have suppliers beating a path to my door.”

Deven said his father had originally planned to retire and wind up Oberoi Brothers Lighting after he had left.

But Dayal continued to run the 43-year-old business while waiting for the property to sell and, when no buyer came forward, decided to keep it open.

Dayal said: “After initial concerns that Deven was leaving, I decided to carry on because I enjoy this business so much.

“Since then, we have lots of new lines and a fresh new-look showroom.”

Deven said: “We’ve now got the challenge as a family to keep three business running and we all want to do well.

“But I think we’ve got a good name, a good brand and a good reputation and, together, we’ll really help each other out.”