Some Successful People

[Caraccioli]

[Editor's Note: This was split out of the Gas Prices Thread. I read a lot about successful people and I thought it might be an interesting thing to discuss on its own merits.]

There was a study, and I forget who did it, but the results showed vast majority of the very successful people throughout US history came from the most desperate circumstances - deaths in the family at a young age, every malady you can think of, desperately poor beginnings - you name it. Yet they rose above their situations to succeed.

If you want proof that you can succeed despite whatever you're facing, take your problems and find someone who had the same problems that you're complaining about and succeeded in spite of them. Read the life story of Helen Keller. Read Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Read the life history of Napoleon Hill. Read how Andrew Carnegie went from being a nearly penniless immigrant to one of the richest men in the world. Read about the life of Nido Qubein who went from having no money and the inability to speak English to being a well paid speaker on the topic of speaking.

If other people can succeed despite the odds being stacked so mightily against them, so can you. Believing otherwise is defeating yourself before you even start. And that is a choice.

[Dorian Lasseter]

show me someone in this day and age.... not of the early 20th century and earlier...

[The Doctor]

William Gates. No college degree, and little money in his pocket.

But we need to reopen the Texas wells, and drill in the ANWAR. OPEC successfully got us to cap our wells in the early 80's (thanks, Pres. Carter, you dope!). Let's get our wildcatters back out there!!

[Caraccioli]

Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak (built a company from their garage), Cindy Klassen (set world records in speed skating despite losing use of her right hand - although she gained much of it back eventually), Katherine Graham (took over the Washington Post after the suicide of her husband and brought it back to profitability), Julio Palmaz (invented the stent despite 10 years of rejection from the medical community), Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, Tony Hawk (created a sport and an industry from a hobby that was not considered a sport at all when he began), Frederick Smith (created FedEx from a paper that received a C minus in school). And Nido Qubein came here in the 60s.

Those are just some I've read about recently - there's tons of examples. Most successful people start from or face bad situations and just choose not to focus on that. Sure, people can do things to sabatoge you in the short run, but no one keeps you down in the long run other than yourself.

Besides, the times have nothing to do with succeeding. Many of the principles of success were written down by Aristotle, Demosthenes and Marcus Aurelius. The ideas haven't changed, only our perception has. (I'd say our excuses have changed, but even that isn't really true.)

"For myself I am an optimist- it does not seem to be much use being anything else." - Sir Winston Churchill

[Caraccioli]

I was reading about Doris Christopher, founder of the Pampered Chef in IBD this morning and was moderately inspired by her story of modern success. It reminded me of this discussion, so I am splitting this mutant discussion out and starting a new thread.

Excerpted from the March 22nd, 2007 IBD, "Her Home Cookin' Pays Dividends " by Kathleen McKernan in the Leaders & Success Section, p. A3:

"When her youngest daughter started school, Pampered Chef founder Doris Christopher had a problem.

She wanted to work again so she and her husband could afford their two daughters' college education.

At the same time, she wanted flexible hours so she could be home when Julie and Kelley left for school and returned. She didn't want to work holidays, weekends or nights, and she wanted to have time to do volunteer work and to care for her daughters if they got sick.

Her husband told her that the kind of job she wanted didn't exist; her requirements to own her own time made her unemployable.

Faced with this challenge, Christopher realized what she had to do: She cooked up her own business, one in which she could work on her terms and from home.

Christopher had a bachelor's degree in home economics and had taught in schools and through county extension offices. She enjoyed cooking and realized that many of her friends didn't know about or have the kind of tools that made cooking fun, plus quick and easy.

She wanted to help her family, but she also wanted to help other women enjoy mealtimes with their families as much as she did.

With $3,000 borrowed from a life insurance policy, she bought kitchen tools and aimed to show other women how to use them through home parties - following the direct sales model.

At first, she stored all her inventory in her basement, and most of the home parties took place in basements of other homemakers.

From those humble beginnings in basements all around suburban Chicago, The Pampered Chef was getting warm.

That $3,000 in 1980 was the first and only outside cash infusion to the business. As it turned out, that was just chicken feed. By 2002, when Berkshire Hathaway bought the company, The Pampered Chef's sales were over $700 million."

[Silent]

The founder and owner of Starbucks use to live in a 1 room apartment with a father that had a very bad job and had no health care. Thats why now-a-days they spend more money on employee health care then they do on there coffee. See it isn't that evil of a place.

[Red Cat Jenny]

I wish I could think of something as simple as the fortunes made by

The twist tie

paperclips

dry cleaning hangers

sigh....

[Caraccioli]

The Post-It note is an example I frequently use in some of my success trainings. Art Fry came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to keep the bookmarks from falling out of his songbook at choir practice. He had seen a glue that Spencer Silver had invented that allowed two pieces of paper to stick together but to also be easily pulled apart...and then re-stuck. Fry got the idea of spraying it on his bookmarks for his songbook.

When it worked, he started using it on slips of paper in his office to stick notes on his cubical wall. Other people saw it and asked him to make them up for them as well. Pretty soon, 3M execs got curious about the line of people hanging around Art Fry's cubical... (It's a little more complex than that, but that's the gist of it.) Fry did pretty well off that little invention and now gives lectures and presentations on creativity.

BTW, being rich is not equal to being evil. Most millionaires are not the sorts of people you see portrayed in movies and on TV that drive expensive cars and live in big houses. In fact, it's frequently the opposite - those people are often living well beyond their means through the magic of extended credit. In fact, there's someone on this very board whom I believe has skillfully planned their route to riches and is far from the much-touted "evil rich person" bill of goods we've all been sold. Read The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind for more info if you're interested.

[oderlesseye]

but no one keeps you down in the long run other than yourself.

While I agree with this I often wondered

( donnot personalize on the question..this is a general statement on my part)

Why some folks out in the in the Get rich industry ~ in there own personal life have nothing? Are Unhappy? Or get rich only to loose it all..

Think of the demise of 90% of all lottery winners.

Ive heard they end up alcholics, divorced, become reckless in living,

and even suicide. Whats that say about sudden wealth?

[Capt. Sterling]

BTW, being rich is not equal to being evil.

Being rich is not always equal to being successful either... I've known too many very wealthy people who are absolutely miserable because their families are falling apart, their kids are spoiled rotten, ect...

[Rumba Rue]

I'll be famous some day....probably after I'm dead....

[Red Cat Jenny]

Ahhh well let me explain...Wealth for the sake of wealth interests me not.

I see money like a ring of keys. Each one able to open a door. I'll probably never have a lot of it saved, but I will jhave saved up a wealth of memories and experiences.

[Caraccioli]

BTW, being rich is not equal to being evil.

Being rich is not always equal to being successful either...

I never said it was. It's just a frequently used marker for success in Western society, albeit sometimes erroneously. (Wealth does often follows personal success, mastery and the discovery of personal, truly meaningful work.) However, my point is that most wealthy people are not at all like what you think they are. This is why I suggested those books - they're based on statistical studies of hundreds of millionaires in this country by the author. The results were extremely interesting and quite contrary to the popular image of the media-presented prototypical "rich person". Also note that neither wealth nor success necessarily equate with happiness.

As for lottery winners...you can't very well keep what you haven't learned how to manage. The same thing goes for heirs (spoiled rich kids) and so forth. Managing wealth is a skill that must be learned like any other skill. Now this isn't to say that a lottery winner or heir can't learn what is required to manage great wealth. However, it seems to be more of an exception than a rule from my reading and observation.