Some people know what they want to do from an early age and focus on it relentlessly. Others reinvent themselves, changing careers and industries until they find something that works. As a reminder that the path to success is not always linear, we've highlighted what Richard Branson and 9 other fascinating and successful people were doing at age 25.

有的人很年轻的时候就知道他们想做什么，并且坚定地专注于此。有的人通过职业和行业的调整来改变自己，直到发现自己真正想做的事情。通向成功的道路不会一帆风顺，我们来看看理查德-布兰森和其他九位成功人士在25岁时都在做什么。

Richard Branson had already started the Virgin Records record label.

理查德-布兰森（维京集团创始人）已经创办了维京唱片公司

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.

20岁时布兰森开办了他的家唱片店，22岁时建立了一家工作室，23岁时创办了维京唱片公司。30岁时他的公司已经是国际级的了。

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."

最初的几年很艰难，他告诉《企业家》杂志：“我还清楚地记得那些岁月。对我来说，建立一家小型公司开始创业比领导成千上万的员工和400家公司要困难得多。白手起家创建一家公司意味着一周七天，24小时不停地工作，还有离婚，因为你很难兼顾家庭生活。那时工作非常艰苦，只有一个词最重要，那就是生存。”

JK Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series on a train.

JK罗琳在火车上想到了《哈利波特》系列故事的灵感

In 1990, Rowling was 25 years old when she came up with the idea for Harry Potter duirng a delayed four-hour train ride.

1990年，25岁的JK罗琳在一次晚点4小时的火车旅途中想到了《哈利波特》的灵感。

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.在那天晚上她开始写本书，但她花了好几年才完成这本书。罗琳曾经在国际特赦组织的伦敦办事处当秘书，但是因为总在构思《哈利波特》的故事而被炒了鱿鱼，这其实让她在接下来的几年可以专注于写作。

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。

在这些年里，她结了婚，有了一个女儿，又离了婚，还被诊断出患有抑郁症，最终她在1995年完成了她的作品，于1997年出版。

Marissa Mayer had just started her job as Google's 20th employee.

玛丽莎-梅耶尔（雅虎CEO）刚刚作为谷歌的第20位员工开始自己的职业生涯

At 24, Mayer became employee number 20 at Google and the company's first female engineer. She remained with the company for 13 years before moving on to her role as CEO of Yahoo.

24岁时，梅耶尔成为了谷歌的第20位员工，也是这家公司的位女工程师。她在谷歌工作了13年，之后就任雅虎公司的CEO。

Google didn't have the sorts of lavish campuses it does now, Mayer said in an interview with V Makers, "During my interviews, which were in April of 1999, Google was a seven-person company. I arrived and I was interviewed at a ping pong table which was also the company's conference table, and it was right when they were pitching for venture capitalist money, so actually after my interview Larry and Sergei left and took the entire office with them."

当时的谷歌还没有现在这样大的规模，梅耶尔在一次访谈中说，“我在1999年4月去谷歌面试，当时公司只有7个人。我到了以后在一张乒乓球台边接受面试，那也是谷歌的会议桌。当时他们正在试图争取风险投资。我的面试结束后拉里和谢盖尔就离开了，而且把整个办公室也带走了。”

Since everyone in the office interviewed you those days, Mayer had to come back the next day for another round.

因为时公司的每个人都要对你进行面试，梅耶尔第二天不得不再次回来进行第二轮面试。

Warren Buffett was working as an investment salesman in Omaha.

沃伦-巴菲特在奥马哈市做一名投资销售员

In his early 20s, Buffett worked as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co. in Omaha before moving to New York to be a securities analyst at age 26. During that year, he started Buffett Partnership, Ltd., an investment partnership in Omaha.

20岁出头时，巴菲特在奥马哈市的巴菲特福克公司做一名投资销售员，之后在26岁时搬到了纽约，当了一名证券分析师。在那一年他创办了巴菲特合伙人公司，是一家位于奥马哈的投资合伙人公司。

New York just wasn't for him, Buffett told NBC. "In some places it's easy to lose perspective. But I think it's very easy to keep perspective in a place like Omaha."

巴菲特在接受全国广播公司采访时说，纽约不适合他。“在某些地方你很容易失去自己的观点。但我认为在像奥马哈这样的地方就很容易坚持自己的看法。”

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook was cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.

马克-扎克伯格的Facebook实现盈利，已经吸引了3亿用户

Mark Zuckerberg had been hard at work on Facebook for five years by the time he hit age 25. In that year — 2009 — the company turned cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users. He was excited at the time, but said it was just the start, writing on Facebook that "the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone."

25岁时马克-扎克伯格已经在Facebook辛勤工作了五年。那一年，也就是2009年，公司实现了盈利，并且吸引了3亿用户。他当时非常激动，但还是说这只是一个开始。他在Facebook上写道“我们的目标是把每个人联系起来，而我们才刚刚开始。”

The next year, he was named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine.

第二年，他就被《时代》杂志评选为“年度人物”。

Sheryl Sandberg had met mentor Larry Summers and was getting a Harvard MBA.

谢莉尔-桑德伯格（Facebook高管）遇见了她的良师拉里-萨默斯，并获得了哈佛的MBA学位

At age 25, Sandberg had graduated at the top of the economics department from Harvard, worked at the World Bank under her former professor, mentor, and future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and had gone back to Harvard to get her MBA, which she received in 1995.

25岁时，桑德伯格从哈佛经济系以优异的成绩毕业，在世界银行工作，当时领导她的是她之前的教授、导师，也是后来的财政部长拉里-萨默斯。之后她又重返哈佛攻读MBA，并在1995年获得学位。

She went on to work at McKinsey, and at age 29 was Summers' Chief of Staff when he became Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary.

后来她去了麦肯锡工作。29岁时出任了克林顿政府财政部长办公厅主任一职。

Her time at HBS was a ways before Google, but that experience helped her see the potential of the internet.

在进入谷歌之前，桑德伯格就已经在哈佛商学院读书了，正是这段经历让她看到了互联网的潜力。

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was building a deep background in computer science.

谷歌的执行总裁埃里克-施密特正在计算机领域建立深厚的背景

Schmidt spent six years as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, earning a masters and Ph.D. at 27 for early work in networking computers and managing distributed software development.

施密特在UC伯克利大学读了六年研究生，27岁时已经取得了硕士和博士学位，并在网络计算机和管理分布式软件开发方面做了一些早期的工作。

He spent those summers working at the famed Xerox PARC labs, which helped create the computer workstation as we know it. There, he met the founder of Sun Microsystems, where he had his first corporate job.

他在的帕洛阿尔托研究所工作了一段时间，这有助于他建立现在我们知道的计算机工作站。在那里他遇见了太阳微系统公司的创始人，并获得了份公司工作。

In his early years as a programmer," all of us never slept at night because computers were faster at night."

在他最初做程序员的几年里，“我们在晚上都不睡觉，因为计算机在夜间的运行速度更快。”

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz hadn't even started out in the coffee business; he was a Xerox salesman.

星巴克的CEO霍华德-舒尔茨甚至还没有开始做咖啡生意，他当时是施乐公司的销售员。

After graduating from Northern Michigan University, Schultz worked as a salesman for Xerox. His success there led a Swedish company named Hammerplast that made coffeemakers to recruit him at age 26.

从北密歇根大学毕业后，舒尔茨在施乐公司做一名销售员。他在施乐公司的成功吸引了一家名叫Hammerplast的制造咖啡机的瑞典公司的注意，他在26岁时进入了这家公司。

While working for that company, he encountered the first Starbucks outlets in Seattle, and went on to join the company atage 29.

在为这家公司工作期间，他在西雅图见到了家星巴克门店，并在29岁时加入了星巴克。

On his job in Xerox, Schultz writes in "Pour Your Heart Into It": "I learned more there than in college about the worlds of work and business. They trained me in sales, marketing, and presentation skills, and I walked out with a healthy sense of self-esteem. Xerox was a blue-chip pedigree company, and I got a lot of respect when I told others who my employer was ... But I can't say I ever developed a passion for word processors."

对于在施乐公司工作的这段经历，舒尔茨在《将心注入》中写道：“在那里我比在大学里学到了更多关于工作和经营的知识。我在销售、市场、演讲技巧等方面得到了训练，让我得到了自尊自信。施乐是一家的公司，当我告诉别人我在这家公司工作时会赢得很多尊重。但我对文字处理软件无法建立起热情。”

Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer.

劳埃德-布兰科费恩（高盛高管）是一名不快乐的律师

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.

布兰科费恩进入金融界的方式与众不同。他最初是一名律师。他在24岁时取得了哈佛大学的法律学位，并在一家名叫Donovan Leisuire的法律公司工作。

"I was as provincial as you could be, albeit from Brooklyn, the province of Brooklyn, "Blankfein told William Cohen at Fortune Magazine.

“我当时眼光很狭窄，我来自布鲁克林，就在布鲁克林工作，”布兰科费恩对《财富》杂志的威廉-科恩说。

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.

当时他是个老烟枪，还偶尔去赌博。虽然他已经在那家公司成为了合伙人，他还是决定转战投资银行，在27岁时加入了J.Aron公司。

Ralph Lauren was a sales assistant at Brooks Brothers.

拉尔夫-劳伦在布鲁克斯兄弟公司做销售助理

He 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.

他出生在纽约布朗克斯区，最初的名字是拉尔夫-希茨，但在15岁时改了名。他在柏鲁克学院学习商业，之后参军，直到24岁开始为布鲁克斯兄弟公司工作。

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."

26岁时，劳伦决定设计一条欧洲风格的宽领带，这也为内曼-马库斯百货商店带来了商机。第二年他创立了“Polo”这个品牌。