JUSTIN BIEBER is worth roughly $110 million, and that's expected to DOUBLE over the next two years.  Without discovering music, and getting some MAJOR breaks, he probably wouldn't be anybody today.

He doesn't like to think about that. Justin tells the Daily Mail, "What happened was I found something I wanted to be good at.  I wasn't good at school because I had no passion for it.  If I hadn't found music my life would have been bad.

"My family are all poor, so the cycle would've continued.  My kids would have been poor, and their kids would have been too.  I feel I broke the cycle, and when you get to break the cycle, you don't go back."

He thinks he'll stick around for a while because of his talent.  He says, "That's the greatest misconception of me.  People think I'm a product, that they found this good-looking kid, cut his hair nice and put Auto-Tune on his voice, wrote him good songs, taught him how to dance and then said, 'Here is a pop star for you!' I'm the furthest thing from that. I'm a musician.  I play instruments, I write songs.  I'm a businessman. I want to create an empire."

"The education I've had you couldn't get in any school.  If I want to be good at something I will be.  I'm good at this."