A UC Berkeley study shows that successful, self-made entrepreneurs tended to get into trouble in high school or even earlier.

Parents of a challenging child shouldn’t fret too much about the future: a new study of successful entrepreneurs shows that many have a trouble-making past.

After all, Bill Gates was arrested during the early years of Microsoft, and he’s far from the only successful businessman to see the inside of a jail cell.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business wanted to challenge the body of evidence that says being an entrepreneur doesn’t pay as much as holding a salaried job.

As they investigated entrepreneurs, however, they stumbled upon something interesting: people who push the boundaries of business typically start pushing other boundaries at a much younger age.

This trait, it turns out, is also a predictor of future entrepreneurial success, and their results show that entrepreneurs can earn up to 70 percent more than they would in salaried positions working for someone else.

“What we find is that a particular constellation of traits turns out to be a strong predictor of who is going to become an entrepreneur later in life and whether that person is going to be a high-earner when he or she launches a business,” lead researcher Prof. Ross Levine said in a press release.