i'm mr beats and i'm here in west branch iowa in front of the childhood home of president herbert
hoover of all the presidents he truly had a rags to rich's story i mean he lived in this home as
a kid you know very modest tiny house for the first 11 years of his life both his parents died
and he ended up moving to oregon with not much money at all and then grew up to be
a very wealthy man once he got involved with mining so a true rags-to-riches story
later historians called him self-made well i've been thinking a lot about that term lately in
this video we're going to attempt to answer the question what does it mean to be self-made
I’m Mr. Beat, and I’m here in West Branch, Iowa, in front of the childhood home of
President Herbert Hoover. Of all the Presidents, he truly had a “rags to riches” story. I mean
he lived in this home as a kid. Ya know a very modest, tiny house for the first
11 years of his life. Both parents died, and he ended up moving to Oregon with not
much money at all and then grew up to be a very wealthy man once he got involved with mining,
so a truly “rags to riches” story. Later historians called him “self-made.” Well,
I’ve been thinking a lot about that term lately. In this video, we’re going to attempt to answer
the question, “What does it mean to be ‘self-made?’”
Napoleon was a self-made man if there ever was one.
He’s our first self-made man. The anti-establishment self-made billionaire.
A self-made billionaire. Self-made billionaires are the
ones to find these positive spirals. The quintessential self-made man
A self-made businessman who’s very successful in his own right
Gatsby is the ultimate self-made man
His worked his way up in the world to become a self-made man
A self-made man propelling his nation forward This most self-made of self-made men
She was named the youngest self-made woman on Forbes billionaires list
I guess I find pride because I’m self-made. Nobody gave me what I have.
As it turns out, being “self-made” is a uniquely American phrase.
It was on the Senate floor on February 2,
1842, that Henry Clay first coined the phrase “self-made man.” He was arguing for a protective
tariff that he thought would help “enterprising self-made men, who have whatever wealth
they possess by patient and diligent labor.” After that, folks began describing a “self-made man”
as any person who achieved success independently, without any outside help.
A few years later, the author Charles Seymour wrote a book called Self-Made Men
that told the story of 60 such men. Among the 60 Seymour wrote about was Benjamin Franklin,
who eventually became probably the most famous “self-made man” in American history. And yeah,
Franklin apparently did have a true rags-to-riches story. He was born poor but worked his butt off
and overcame many big obstacles to become one of the wealthiest men in the American colonies.
Franklin’s story played a big role in inspiring what became known as The American Dream (sing.)
The American Dream is a phrase that describes the belief that any American, regardless of
where they were born or what class they were born into, can achieve prosperity and success,
due to the supposedly unique American ideals of democracy, liberty, and equal opportunity.
But even as early as 1872, folks began to challenge what it meant to be a “self-made man.”
That year, Frederick Douglass, the former slave who escaped and became one of the most important
social reformers in American history, gave a powerful speech that later became known as simply
Self-Made Men. In it, he said “Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men
as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can
never exist,” adding “It must in truth be said though it may not accord well with self-conscious
individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native force of character,
and no depth or wealth of originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellow-men,
and no generation of men can be independent of the preceding generation.” Dang dude.
And yet, the “self-made man” phrase only became more widely said.
Hey, wait a second…what about women? Or gender identities? Oh yeah, it’s the 1800s.
Well, the same year Frederick Douglass gave his Self-Made Men speech, a person who I would argue
could be a “self-made woman,” Harriet Beecher Stowe, published a book called The Lives and
Deeds of Our Self-Made Men, in which she told the story of 19 such men. Notably in the book,
she included her brother, the great reformer and minister Henry Ward Beecher, as a self-made man.
Well she didn’t include herself in the book, uh I guess because she wasn’t a man. But still, Stowe
was much more influential than her brother. Why didn’t anyone call her a self-made woman? Huh.
Then again, maybe Harriet and Henry weren’t so self-made after all,
as they came from a fairly privileged family.
During the Gilded Age, an era between around 1870 to 1900 that marked rapid industrialization and
economic growth, “self-made man” began to lose its luster as just a handful of super rich dudes
controlled all the markets and capital. But it was also during that period that more immigrants
arrived in the United States than at any other point in history, and nearly all of them came
for economic opportunity. More importantly, they came with hope that they could become prosperous,
too. After all, some of these super rich dudes in the United States used to be poor. Take Andrew
Carnegie, an immigrant himself that came to the country from Scotland VERY poor, only to later
become one of the wealthiest men to ever live. These success stories did continue to inspire many
Americans, especially immigrants who often came from bleak conditions in their native countries.
And then you had gurus. There are different definitions
historically for gurus, but over the past century or so,
gurus are essentially people who give advice and inspire people, usually by giving speeches.
One of the first gurus was Russell Conwell, who is best known today as the founder and first
president of Temple University in Philadelphia. However, he also was well known because of his
“Acres of Diamonds” speech, which basically sold the idea that everyone should stop searching the
world for diamonds when there were ACRES OF DIAMONDS in their own backyards and
they just needed to stop complaining and start digging man. He essentially said that ANYONE
could get rich if they just worked hard enough. So how influential WAS this speech? Well,
Conwell delivered it approximately 6,000 times and it, uh…made him quite rich himself.
Today, these gurus still exist, and many of them are considered “self-made,” like this
dude Gary Vaynerchuk, who as it turns out got a lot of help starting out from his family,
and this guru, Dave Ramsey, who, as it also turns out likely got a lot of help starting
out from his family. There’s also gurus like Dan Lok and Tai Lopez, who, well…it’s really difficult
to actually find any third party evidence about their upbringing. In fact, all that I found about
their childhoods was that they had it pretty rough and that their families barely scraped by.
One thing is for sure. They definitely want you to THINK they are “self-made.”
These promoters of being “self-made” promote themselves as being “self-made”
because it adds to their credibility.
Woah, that was quite a sentence. Let me put this differently. Most of us are not rich,
but we want to be rich, so we watch these gurus to become rich, and believe them because
they used to not be rich. I really hope that made sense.
Anyway, the success of these gurus is proof that many of us still believe in the idea
of the “self-made person.” Here in the United States, we often overestimate
our own chances of becoming millionaires.
Here’s an example of this. Every semester I taught Economics
I would have my students in class close their eyes and put their heads down on
their desks and then tell them to raise their hands if they thought that they would one day
become a millionaire. Almost every time, half of them would have their hands raised.
But economic mobility, or the ability of people to move up or down the economic ladder
in terms of their wealth, has been steadily declining in the United States for decades,
especially for people at the bottom of the economic ladder. An American
born in 1940 had around a 93% chance of earning more than their parents by
the time they were 30 years old. However, an American born in 1980 had just a 45% chance.
Yeah at the very least, the so-called American Dream is in trouble.
I think the american dream remains uniquely american in one sense we are far more likely
than residents of other countries to believe that people are rewarded for
intelligence and skill and we're less likely to believe that coming from a wealthy family
is key to getting ahead unfortunately like a lot of dreams what we're dreaming
isn't real it's called the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it
And perhaps more and more Americans are starting to realize that the “self-made person” idea might
be just a dream as well. In one 2020 Pew Research poll, 65% of respondents said a person is rich not
because they worked harder, but because they had more advantages in life than most other people.
Seeing that poll inspired me to ask some of my friends and colleagues what they thought
“self-made” meant.
for me being self-made it just means that you've sort of achieved everything
in your life on your own uh specifically i guess i would say that you haven't received
much help from your parents or your family or the government or anything like that you know
you basically started from scratch and worked your way to the top whether or not it's a real thing it
really is the ultimate assertion of human agency it ignores things like environmental factors or
pre-existing infrastructure and says i as a human used my agency to create my own success
presumably without help it means you've got your position in society without inheriting it
from your mom and dad either like financially or or through connections but it's hard to
to quantify isn't it no man is an island everyone gets help from someone you know i think we all get
help along the way but there are some people who just work harder who give more who put in the time
the effort the hours who rise above who overcome difficulties and challenges those
to me are the people who are self-made less than three years ago that's how it looked like
i was about 450 pounds i was very depressed very sad didn't like how i looked at all and now
less than three years later i'm me in the end path i never thought i'd end up taking
never thought i'd transition to be a woman but in the end being your proper self is what it
means to be self-made a self-made person does not rely on excuses and blaming other people
for his or her condition but makes proactive steps to control his or her own destiny at least to the
extent possible whenever i hear someone tell me that they're self-made self-made quote unquote
what i hear is someone who is unable to acknowledge all of the help they've had in
getting to where they are and all of the community resources and the labor of other people that's
gone into getting them where they are i also asked twitter and here are some responses i got
starting from relatively modest means and becoming fabulously successful beyond what anyone would
expect using one's own skills and no more than the expected amount of help from others this is vague
though anyone who makes a future for themselves but those who are truly self-made are anyone
who follows their dream unrelentingly i think it means you earned everything you got and nothing
was handed to you but most of the responses to be honest were much more cynical it's impossible
everyone gets help at some point could be friends family or even employees and business partners
an increasingly meaningless term the more i think about it it usually means they were born into
privilege and or they inherited money but like to tell everyone that they earned it on their own
And aha! My hypothesis was correct! Oh what’s that? I never told you my hypothesis? Well I
predicted that most of them would give different definitions of “self-made.”
I also recently came across this thought-provoking video by Veritasium called “Is Success
Luck or Hard Work?” Well let me spoil it for you and answer the question.
It’s mostly luck. But you should still watch the video.
Some of you might be wondering at this point in the video, did I, Mr. Beat, ever inherit
any wealth? Am I trust fund baby? Well no. The assets are sparse in my family. But that doesn’t
mean I’m self made with my YouTube channel. Not at all. You see, success isn’t just aided by money.
First of all, I was lucky to be born in the United States. Second, I was lucky to be born
into a loving family. My parents raised me in an environment in which I could thrive. I lived
in a safe area and went to great schools. I had the opportunity to go to college and I made some
great friends who have always been supportive. I married an incredibly supportive woman. Later on,
after I did post videos on YouTube, the algorithms eventually promoted my videos to a
broader audience for free. Without a lot of help from OTHERS, I simply would not be here today.
I mentioned at the beginning of the video that Herbert Hoover ended up moving to Oregon after
his parents died when he was a kid. Well, he moved there to be raised by his Uncle John,
John Minthorn. Minthorn was much more privileged than Hoover’s parents were, and Hoover enjoyed a
much more comfortable life in Oregon. In fact, it was his uncle and his uncle’s family who gave him
MANY educational and training opportunities that later paved the way for his success,
including going to Stanford. As it turns, maybe Hoover wasn’t “self-made” after all.
I think Arnold puts it best.
there's no such thing as a self-made man i mean when you think about it you're born and you need
your parents to raise you you need your teachers to teach you you need your coaches to do sports
i remember that everything i did always needed help think about it when someone says arnold
is the greatest self-made man i said you can call me anything you want you can call me arnie
you can call me schwarze you can call me terminator you can call me
governader but don't ever call me self-made man don't ever call me a self-made man either in
fact after making this video i've decided i'm never calling anyone self-made again
colleagues who gave me their definitions of self-made subscribe to their channels check out
their music so what do you think the definition of self-made is should we stop using the phrase
i'd love to hear from you in the comment things below you can just type some words
maybe even some sentences maybe even some paragraphs or essays thank you for watching