A SCHOOL dropout has revealed how he managed to become a millionaire at the age of 20.
Entrepreneur Wil Massara, 20, was determined to succeed on his own after his teachers told him he would never amount to anything.
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The young man from Perth who dropped out of school after he failed Year 12, aged 16, is now a millionaire thanks to his own business but says he “does not like to waste money on flashy things”.
Massara founded his company Youth Leadership Academy Australia which has now expanded to schools across the country when he was just 15.
As he wasn’t interested in formal education, he decided to drop out of school and focus entirely on his business.
He told Daily Mail Australia: “Young people are less ready to sit and be told by executives what to do and be bossed around by them.
“We are ready to take action. We are the least quiet generation that’s existed.
“Those who have no interest in learning about our generation and our values should have no input in what they expect of us.”
Massara also shared how he was told by his school principal he would never get a university degree.
Despite not having graduated High School, the 20-year-old has now almost finished his Master’s in Business Administration.
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Massara’s first business, founded when he was just 11, is called Planepidea- a website he calls the “Wikipedia of planes”.
The business led him to a partnership with Qantas and Singapore Airlines before being invited to Qantas’ first Boeing 787 flight from Perth.
He said: “I was standing there in shorts and a T-shirt surrounded by all these executives when I decided I wouldn’t let age determine what I could do.”
His current business, YLAA, runs workshops on teen resilience and leadership at schools.
He added: “The reason why we’ve grown so rapidly is that we respond with what young people need at the current stages of their lives – the education system sucks at that.”
He has said the reason why he decided to drop out of school and build his own company was that he was so “angry”.
He told news.com.au, back in 2020: “As I went into year 11 that’s when I was so angry. There’s so much pressure in the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank).
“You get told to either get great results or you’ll amount to nothing, that’s the message the education department gives.”
The 20-year-old recently enjoyed travelling around Thailand and Bali but says he doesn’t like wasting money and says he gets “less than a full year’s salary at minimum wage”.
He is now working to turn YLAA into a social enterprise where the profits would go to youth suicide prevention programs.
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