You may be considering how you can get your project off the ground right now, but in 2019, with technological advances in your control, it’s never been easier to grow your concept and get your brand into the heads of potential consumers. Don’t panic if you’re looking for any ideas. Simply take inspiration from the following ten well-known pioneers and their fascinating life stories.
- John Paul DeJoria
John DeJoria is a self-made entrepreneur. He is best known for being the creator of the Paul Mitchell hair-care collection. However, his early years were not marked by wealth: he worked as a truck driver, janitor, and even sold Christmas cards door-to-door. While employed for Redken Laboratories, he was fired from his first haircare job. Then, with a $700 loan, he founded John Paul Mitchell Systems with hairdresser Paul Mitchell in 1980. He currently possesses a net worth of $3.1 billion!
What are his views on success? The greatest stumbling block is rejection, Dejoria said. Be prepared for any company you launch. The distinction between good and ineffective people is that successful people do all that unsuccessful people fail to do. When the first ten doors slam shut in your face, rush to door number 11 with a grin on your face. To everybody, these seem to be smart words.
- Jan Koum
Will you be able to work without Whatsapp? No, neither could we. Thank goodness, the contact software was created in 2009 by Jan Koum, a Ukrainian emigrant to the United States. Koum started learning about computing after he was born into poverty. He had high-level qualifications at the age of 18, and in 1997, he started working for Yahoo! as an infrastructure engineer. After purchasing his first smartphone and coming up with the idea for the device, which allows users to share messages between cell phones through the web regardless of where they are in the world, he introduced Whatsapp to great acclaim. The platform was recently acquired by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion. “Do one thing, and do it well,” he suggests.
- Howard Schultz
Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, is known for his entrepreneurial achievements, but things weren’t quite so bright for him. He was born and raised in a housing estate and his family was poor. He charged for education with a combination of federal grants and earnings from part-time work. In addition, he was the first in his family to attend college. Schultz first came into contact with the Starbucks brand while working with a coffee firm. He paid a visit to the new company’s Seattle office. He was appointed as the company’s managing officer shortly after. Schultz quit Starbucks in 1985 and decided to start his own coffee store. He collected the $500,000 he wanted to open his first shop and got his company up and running. Starbucks as we know it currently was born two years after the original Starbucks management agreed to sell its distribution unit to Schultz. Schultz is currently worth more than $2.9 billion — not bad for an empire born over a cup of coffee in the afternoon!
As a result of his experiences, he has developed a philosophical outlook on life. He once said in a statement, “I believe life is a series of near-misses.” He added that a number of what they attributed to chance isn’t always lucky. It’s about seizing the day and taking care of your own fate. It’s doing what others don’t see and going for the vision.
- Do Won Chang
Won Chang might not be well-known, but his Forever 21 clothing store surely is. When Won Chang first came to America from South Korea, he worked as a security guard, at a gas station, and in a coffee shop before starting the supermarket empire in 1984. His first store, in Los Angeles, was 900 square feet, and he and his wife opened it with just $11,000 in savings, putting it all into the market. The store was initially known as Fashion 21, and the bulk of its clients were Korean Americans. However, the client base grew quickly, and the company took off following a name change to Forever 21. Do Won Chang is currently a $3.2 billion multinational conglomerate with 790 branches.
His best piece of advice? Never lose track of your heritage. Won Chang told the Los Angeles Times that Forever 21 brought hope and inspiration to people who arrived with almost nothing… The fact that, like me, immigrants arriving in America could step into a Forever 21 and realize that it all began with a simple Korean immigrant with a dream.
- Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
It is well-known that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak established Apple Computers in a garage in Los Altos, California. In Jobs’ parents’ garage in California, the two had dropped out of their respective college courses and started designing consumer computer products. Steve has previously held a variety of low-paying positions, including one with Hewlett Packard when he was 13 years old. After working on a few different models with Wozniak, the two realized they’d need more money. As a result, Jobs wanted to seek a guarantor in order to secure a $250,000 bank loan. Yet he was a huge success: at the time of his death in 2011, he was estimated to be worth $10.2 billion. He’d accumulated this over his lifetime. He had a million dollars in 1978 when he was just 23 years old. What is his legacy? It’s in our bags, on our phones, in the 2015 film Steve Jobs at the theater, and everywhere over us.
What is his advice to you? When things get tough, keep going. Every now and then, life will slap you in the face with a rock. He is quoted as saying, “Don’t lose faith.”
- Sam Walton
When Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, one of the largest superstores in the United States, opened his first grocery store in 1945, he had only returned to civilian life after serving in the US army during World War II. His father-in-law lent him $25,000, which he used to open his first store, and he was a big hit almost instantly. Walmart was worth more than $176 million in the mid-1970s. It currently has more than 11,000 stores around the world with a turnover of more than $21 billion in 2019.
What are Walton’s performance tips? Those are detailed in his book Made in America, but one of his core beliefs is to take your own direction rather than the path of others. He once said, “Ignore the conventional wisdom”. He also suggested that if someone else is going in one direction, you would be able to find your niche by going in the opposite direction.
The Most Important Points To Remember
Thus, what do we learn from these experienced individuals??
- First of all, no idea is too tiny to start with. In 2019, a student publication does not seem to be a moneymaker, but it did not seem to be one in 1966. Richard Branson, on the other hand, thought that students needed to read something different from what they’d seen before, so he introduced his magazine, which catapulted him to business success and, later, extreme fortune. From a little vision for the student body, it’s not bad.
- You don’t need a lot of money to start-up. Yes, you might need a small loan. Alternatively, you might get some working cash from the bank to cover your bills and purchase a new laptop. However, investing tens of thousands of dollars in money isn’t enough for a company to succeed. Getting too many sponsors, on the other hand, will place too much pressure on you and your project. Alternatively, start tiny and see what you can do with a small budget. You may be happily shocked.
- Higher education can be beneficial, but it should not be a hindrance to entrepreneurship. Why not study business before making your own life-changing plans, using tuition-free degrees like those provided by UoPeople? For those who want to take a closer look at today’s corporate world, we offer associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs in Business Administration.UoPeople is the first non-profit, fully online university that insists that education is a fundamental right for all, regardless of personal, environmental, or social circumstances.
As these inspirational stories illustrate, the background does not have to determine the future. Any of the individuals included in this story were adopted or born into poverty, were raised by single parents, or were arrested for shoplifting as adolescents. Despite this, none of them permitted their perceived “disadvantages” to hold them back later in life. The only way to really understand and progress is to take initiative, as successful entrepreneurs knew. In certain ways, a lack of resources has proven to be a motivator for those who want to create a better future. But don’t let your own setbacks or obstacles hold you down. Use them as a source of inspiration to propel you further on your own entrepreneurial path.
