Question about Finance career dilema

Hello, I am a college student who will be graduating in a year. Before asking my question, I will describe my situation. I am a middle class male in my early twenties. Over the past three years, I have become extremely interested in investing and finance, and have been not only researching trading methods heavily, but also making a little money trading myself(There are opportunities in both bear and bull markets if you know where to look)

Sometime ago, I have become friends with a woman my age who comes from a very wealthy family with a large charitable and business empire. They are extremely classy and astute, with a net worth in the nine figures(100mm plus) i admire their tradition of building their empire abit each generation and their position in this world. My friend is a brilliant and poised woman who is very assertive and a dynamic speaker. She, also having an interest in finance, is likely to take over the Family empire which has evolved into a kind of hedge fund( the family financial empire seems to cover both Hedge fund style investing as well as some Private Equityish/ Real Estateish stuff). While I am good at certain specific forms of investment analysis, she is much better at the big picture.

I would love to one day be employee within her empire. Nothing would make me happier than to one day be her top analyst. Many of my friends think that it is more "manly" to aspire to build ones own empire and that it is Un-American to want to be a "lackey" to a rich family. However, I would be proud to follow in the footsteps of my father, who had a great employee career, while she would probably be proud to follow in the footsteps of her father who build up the family empire. She woukd make a great upper class leader/fund manager and I would be great as one of her analysts.

My question is the following: Do you think it is old fashioned, if rather than wanting to be a megarich CEO/owner like my friend will be(which would mean building my own fund), I instead aspire to remain roughly in the class that I was born into and have a great career as an analyst for her company? Our country places so much emphais these days on rising out of one's class and being an "entrepreneur." I would tremendously appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks very much

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