I came across a post recently.
It said:
75% entrepreneurs, 15% investors, 7% athletes, 3% artists, 0% employees.
And the moral?
👉 “Nobody got rich with a salary.”
At first glance, it hits hard.
Especially for people like us… who have seen both sides of life.
But something didn’t feel right.
Is it actually true?
Short answer: No. It’s oversimplified.
Let’s break it down.
If you look at global wealth data (like Forbes Billionaires list):
- Yes, a majority of billionaires are entrepreneurs
- Many are investors (Warren Buffett type)
- Some are athletes and entertainers
But saying 0% employees? That’s simply not true.
👉 People like:
- Sundar Pichai (CEO, Google)
- Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft)
They started as employees.
Even today, they are technically salaried professionals—yet extremely wealthy.
So what is the real truth?
The difference is not salary vs business.
The real difference is this:
👉 Ownership vs Effort
🔹 Employees trade time for money
You work → you get paid → cycle repeats
🔹 Entrepreneurs build systems
They create something → it works even when they sleep
🔹 Investors grow money
Money starts working instead of them
A small realization from my life
I didn’t go behind a salary.
In fact, I resisted it.
There were phases when my mother and even my wife insisted that I should take up a job—for stability, for predictability.
But I kept saying to myself:
👉 “Once an entrepreneur… always an entrepreneur.”
At the same time, life slowly pushed me towards income stability.
That’s how I ended up building studio apartments and service apartments.
Not just as a business idea…
but as a way to ensure steady income every month.
So while I didn’t choose a salary,
I did choose stability in income.
The real lesson (not the viral one)
The truth is not:
❌ “Employees will never get rich”
The truth is:
✅ “Salary alone rarely creates wealth”
A quote that stayed with me
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
— Warren Buffett
Final thought
You don’t have to quit your job.
You don’t have to become a startup founder overnight.
But you must ask yourself:
👉 Am I building something beyond my income?
Because wealth is not about how you earn
It is about what you build while you earn.
AnandNataraj 