Sometimes I think I did less with more than anyone on the planet.
I'm reasonably intelligent, tall, and generally considered good looking but up until a few years ago I had basically accomplished nothing in life. I was accepted into and attended NYU for three semesters (which my parents paid for) until I flunked out then moved back home and bounced around from minimum wage job to minimum wage job.
Being a loser isn't that big of a deal when you're young. Lots of people in their early 20's still live at home with their parents and since I didn't have many bills my minimum wage jobs were just fine. That started to change in my mid 20s and by the time I went to my high school reunion it was clear I had fucked up. It was just humiliating seeing the people I used to be friends with living such great lives while I made up bullshit to seem like less of a loser.
At the time I was working for a small medical supplies company doing a little bit of everything in the office. I helped out with the billing, shipping, ordering, etc. Wanting to get a better job I approached the owner about getting into sales. He was a nice guy but when I asked him to move into more of a sales role (with higher salary) he was really condescending about it. I thanked him for his time and then silently vowed to steal his business.
Over the next couple of weeks I saved every invoice from Quickbooks as a PDF and dropped it into my Dropbox. I made lists of customers, vendors, etc. I had access to everything we bought, who we bought it from, what we bought it for, who we sold it to, what we sold it for, and most importantly WHEN they ordered. I Google'd everything and found most of it could be purchased cheaply on Ali Baba. Once I found that I quit my job and never looked back.
I had business cards and flyers made up, bought a fax machine, set up an Amazon Sellers account, then splurged on a nice suit on sale at Macy's. For about $500 I was in business for myself.
Knowing when they placed their orders, I would start faxing them flyers under cutting my previous employer's prices days before then show up in person with flyers, order forms, and instructions how to order from my Amazon account. It's unsurprisingly easy to make a sales call when you know what the person needs and what they generally spend on it. Not everyone went with me but I started making good money right away.
This was eight years ago and my business and life in general is thriving now.