Many years ago I started my own small business with $0. For the first year I worked up to three additional jobs to make ends meet at the end of which the business had earned $15K after taxes. Eventually the business fails for reasons too numerous to mention here.
Fast forward a dozen years later, I'm working for this wiener named Chuck Lukaszewski Jr, and he's trying to make a go of some web thing called eWatch. I find out around the office that he's the son of some Wall Street investor (which probably explains how we end up with Leslie Stahl in our office doing a segment for 60 Minutes.)
At one point I get assigned to a cube outside the boss's office. There I hear him on the phone, every week, calling his dad for another $15K to make payroll while he waits for this web idea to take off (spoiler: it never does, it's stupid.)
Every week he's getting handed to him as much money as me and half a dozen other people busted our asses to earn in a year.
In the end he sells the company for a couple million, which probably constituted a tax write-off for his old man.