A self-made man or a self-made woman got rich or successful by their own work, starting with nothing — no rich family, no money handed to them. The most common phrase by far is 'a self-made millionaire'. It is warm and admiring: it says the person built their own life. It goes in front of the noun, so 'a self-made businessman' is normal, and 'he is self-made' is also fine. Notice how narrow it is in practice. It nearly always means money or business success, not art or study. A famous poet who came from a poor village is not usually called self-made; a shop owner who now has forty shops is. Also notice the quiet argument inside the word. People often use it to say 'so anyone can do it, if they work hard' — and other people push back, saying nobody is truly self-made, because everyone had teachers, luck, a country, a family who fed them. So in newspapers and online you will meet 'so-called self-made' or the joke that a self-made man built himself out of a loan from his father. The word carries pride, and it invites that argument. There is a separate, much rarer use — self-made in the sense of homemade, made by yourself, like a self-made cake — but that is unusual in modern English, and 'homemade' is what people say.