It's worth mentioning that to "excel academically" doesn't really mean much if you're still trading-dollars-for-hours. In general, people who excel academically do so within a school system that does NOT teach about building your own business. Instead schools teaches to find a really nice job working under people who didn't necessarily excel academically, working to fulfill their bosses dreams and goals instead of their own.

What's a boss again? A boss is someone who only pays you enough to keep you there, which means he decides how nice a car you'll have, how nice a place you'll have and so on. Also you must ask him "can I pwease have fwiday off?" So to excel academically isn't what it initially appears to be, and often manifests as veiled slavery to those who, instead of hitting the books, hit the bricks and took some real risks and adopted a leadership position spearheading some kind of business. The way I see it, the owner of the mom & pop hardware store downtown has more balls than any college professor, designer, mathematician, accountant, executive and so on. Not that there's anything wrong with these professions, they just aren't working for their own lives, ultimately.