8 In­spi­ra­tional Entrepreneurs

Pas­sion, tol­er­ance for un­cer­tainty and the de­sire to make a change are qual­i­ties shared by all great entrepreneurs.

But there is no fixed rule in be­com­ing a suc­cess­ful entrepreneur.

If you are think­ing about start­ing your own busi­ness, here are 8 sto­ries that can in­spire you to over­come the ob­sta­cles cur­rently stand­ing in your way.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Ap­ple Inc. 

Steve Jobs al­ready achieved great suc­cess at a young age. In his twen­ties, Jobs started Ap­ple in his par­ents’ garage. Within a decade the com­pany blos­somed into a $2 bil­lion dol­lar empire.

But at age 30, Apple’s Board of Di­rec­tors de­cided to take the busi­ness in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, and Jobs was fired from the com­pany he cre­ated. How­ever, Jobs took ad­van­tage of his free­dom and founded the soft­ware com­pany NeXT and an­i­ma­tion com­pany Pixar.

As he later said, be­ing fired from Ap­ple was the best thing ever hap­pened to him, be­cause it al­lowed him to think more cre­atively and re-ex­pe­ri­ence the joy of start­ing a new company.

J.K. Rowl­ing, au­thor of Harry Pot­ter series 

The leg­endary au­thor of Harry Pot­ter books is cur­rently the sec­ond-rich­est fe­male en­ter­tainer on the planet, be­hind Oprah.

How­ever, do you know that when Rowl­ing wrote the first Harry Pot­ter book in 1995, it was re­jected by 12 pub­lish­ers? Even Blooms­bury, the pub­lish­ing house that later pur­chased Rowling’s man­u­script, told the au­thor to “get a day job”. At the time she wrote the book, she was go­ing through a di­vorce and lived in a small flat with her daugh­ter, sur­viv­ing on gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies – but she turned all these neg­a­tives into a pos­i­tive through writing.

The re­sult is a brand name worth nearly $15 bil­lion. Not bad at all.

Mil­ton Her­shey, founder of The Her­shey Choco­late Company 

Her­shey dropped out of school in the 4^th grade and took an ap­pren­tice­ship with a printer. Af­ter be­ing fired, he be­came an ap­pren­tice to a candy-maker in Lan­caster, PA. Af­ter 4 years study­ing the busi­ness, he started three candy com­pa­nies in Philadel­phia, Chicago and New York, all of which failed.

His suc­cess started with the es­tab­lish­ment of Lan­caster Caramel Com­pany, when his unique caramel recipe made the busi­ness a huge suc­cess. Al­ways look­ing ahead, Her­shey be­lieved that choco­late prod­ucts had a greater fu­ture than caramel. There­fore he sold the caramel com­pany and started the Her­shey Com­pany, which brought milk choco­late – pre­vi­ously a Swiss del­i­cacy – to the masses.

Her­shey cre­ated hun­dreds of jobs for his home­town, and he also used some of his money to build churches and schools, ce­ment­ing his sta­tus as a leg­end in the Key­stone State.

Walt Dis­ney, Co-founder of Walt Dis­ney Productions 

The man who started with a draw­ing of a mouse has in­flu­enced en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try and be­come an in­spi­ra­tion to both kids and adults alike.

He has cre­ated a multi-bil­lion dol­lar em­pire through film, theme parks and screen­writ­ing. With his pas­sion for an­i­ma­tion, Dis­ney be­lieved in the power of imagination.

His slo­gan, “if you can dream it, you can do it” later in­spired nu­mer­ous followers.

Muham­mad Yunus, banker and No­bel Peace Prize recipient 

Pro­fes­sor Yunus be­lieves that peo­ple can end the vi­cious cy­cle of poverty if they are given small loans and lessons on fi­nan­cial responsibility.

In 1983, he started the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, pro­vid­ing mi­cro fi­nanc­ing to lo­cal peo­ple with the goal of end­ing poverty. Since then, the Grameen Bank model has been es­tab­lished in more than 100 coun­tries world­wide, help­ing mil­lions of fam­i­lies al­le­vi­ate them­selves from poverty.

Dr. Yunus also re­ceived the No­bel Peace Prize in 2006 for be­ing a “Banker to the Poor”.

Jes­sica Jack­ley, CEO of ProFounder 

In­spired by Muham­mad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, Jack­ley moved to East Africa and cre­ated Kiva.org with Matt Flan­nery in 2005.

This is a mi­cro fi­nanc­ing web­site that con­nects lenders to po­ten­tial busi­ness own­ers in third world coun­tries. The loans start at $25 and the en­tre­pre­neurs re­turn 98% of the loans.

To­day, loans that to­tal $225,552,550 have been given to as­pir­ing entrepreneurs.

George Stein­bren­ner, owner of Yankees 

Stein­bren­ner is known for his shrewd busi­ness tac­tics, but he is also not afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

The Yan­kees now have the high­est pay­roll in base­ball, and they have been in con­tention every year since the mid-90s. Even when the Cleve­land Pipers went bank­rupt, Stein­bren­ner of­fered to pay back the in­vestors, a promise he even­tu­ally made good on.

Oprah Win­frey, host of The Oprah Win­frey Show 

Oprah has been called the most in­spi­ra­tional woman of our era, time and time again.

She rad­i­cally changed her own life from hard­ships and mis­for­tunes as a child, and built an em­pire based on her passions.

From host­ing her talk show to build­ing her school in Africa, she has been proven a pow­er­house in all the busi­ness en­deav­ors she has ever encountered.

[rms] Ralf Skir­r’s com­ment: I love this ar­ti­cle, es­pe­cially how it brings to­gether peo­ple who suc­ceeded in very dif­fer­ent ways, not only -as many such ar­ti­­cles- big en­tre­pre­neurs who built global tech com­pa­nies, like Ap­ple or Dell.

It may res­onate with more people.

On a side­note: the by­line makes me smile. Funny, how au­thors cre­ate the most un­usal (eu­phemism!) by­lines to slip in their pro­mo­tional links. No of­fense in­tended. This one is ac­tu­ally one of the more cre­ative by­lines. I of­ten re­ject oth­er­wise good ar­ti­cles for the sim­ple rea­son of hav­ing the most stu­pid and un­re­lated by­lines ever cre­ated by mankind.

I plan on de­vel­op­ing this blog to be a place with real au­thors, who care more about pro­mot­ing them­selves than slip­ping in (pre­sum­ably paid) pro­mo­tional links.Probably not easy, given that guest blog­ging is dom­i­nated by SEO com­pa­nies. Ach, I’m gonna need some in­spi­ra­tion from the en­tre­pre­neurs above! :-)