REAL-LIFE ENTREPRENEURIAL STORIES
There are thousands of amazing stories about entrepreneurs starting and building their businesses. I highly recommend that you read as many as you can. They will give you incredible insights and inspiration to take your leap. Along with the following list I will provide you in the chapter, a quick internet search of “entrepreneurial success stories” and the list of resources at the end of this book will give you many more.
FAMOUS ENTREPRENEURS
You probably already know some of the stories about big-name entrepreneurs who started and built business empires. Here are a few that show the upper end of what an entrepreneur can create:
Steve Jobs cofounded Apple with Steve Wozniak to sell Wozniak’s Apple I Computer. He went door-to-door looking for a retailer to sell their computers. They made their first sale when the owner of a computer store in the San Francisco Bay area ordered fifty. This is how the Apple empire started, a company in the computer industry that expanded into phones, music, and apps and became the first company worth more than one trillion dollars.
In an earlier era, Henry Ford democratized the automobile, failing multiple times before finally starting the Ford Motor Company and creating a car—the Model T—that appealed to the masses. Ford Motor Company is still going strong over a hundred years later, a multibillion-dollar company and one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world.
Walt Disney cofounded the Walt Disney Company with his brother Roy in the 1920s. Walt started as an innovative cartoonist who eventually created the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He began creating and distributing animated short films and then animated feature-length films. He added live-action motion pictures, TV shows, and theme parks to ultimately build the Disney empire.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos started an online bookstore in his garage. He built it to become the largest online retailer in the world. He became the world’s wealthiest person in 2017 when his net worth exceeded $90 billion.
LESS - FAMOUS SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS
Those big-name entrepreneurs are one in a million, though. You might be just as encouraged by the huge crowd of lesser-known entrepreneurs who are incredibly successful, wealthy, and happy. They chose not to build multibillion-dollar public companies, but still make a huge impact on their employees, families, and communities.
Here are eight of those lesser-known stories:
Story One: Sam Simon’s energy-distribution company, Atlas Oil, does $1 billion in revenue and has a thousand employees.
Sam and his family moved to America from Iraq with no money and owing $200 to their church. They lived in the basement of Sam’s dad’s best friend, who owned a gas station. Sam, his dad, and his brothers all worked at the gas station.
Before long, they noticed the owner wasn’t making maximum use of the ice machine in the gas station, so Sam’s dad made his friend an offer to sell the ice and split the profits fifty-fifty.
Sam, his dad, and his brothers quickly grew the ice business to the second largest ice distributor in the state, distributing ice to bars, party stores, gas stations, drugstores, and marinas. They then sold the business. They also took over running a gas station that was closed. Once they turned it around, they started buying other gas stations. They grew that business to forty gas stations. At age sixteen, Sam had twenty-two employees who reported directly to him.
Then Sam saw a huge opportunity present itself in the fuel-distribution business. He left the family business when he was in his early twenties and started Atlas Oil Company to distribute fuel to gas stations. In the last thirty-five years, he has bought and sold over six hundred gas stations and has built his energy-distribution company to the $1 billion company that it is today.
Story Two: By the time Francy Lucido of Michigan Staffing and Aspen Search Group was twenty-six, she was creating, managing, and conducting training programs for economically disadvantaged youth and single moms.
Her father, Frank Lucido, was a successful manufacturers rep in the automotive industry when one of his clients offered him an opportunity to become a sales rep for their staffing needs. Frank, seeing a great business opportunity, approached his daughter Francy, who he knew had the entrepreneurial gene.
“Do you want to try this?” he asked, and after some research, they jumped into the staffing business and became partners. Frank’s brainchild was born. He financially backed the endeavor and provided Francy mentorship and advice; the rest is history.
Francy built the firm to a $20 million company, diversifying out of the automotive industry and focusing on placing administrative, light industrial, and technical workers in multiple industries. Her mom (who managed finances for the company before retiring) and dad are still partners in the business, along with Francy’s sister, who is the CFO.
Story Three: Todd Sachse of Sachse Construction started his story by saying, “You are either wired to be an entrepreneur or you aren’t; it’s in your chromosomes.”
When Todd was twelve years old, in seventh grade, he would ride his bike two miles to a candy store, where he bought Fireballs for three cents apiece, and then sold them to his fellow students for twenty-five cents. He said, “The margins were great.”
He also had a pottery/ceramic business that sold pottery to stores and gave pottery lessons to school kids paid for by their parents.
At age sixteen, Todd and a friend took over his brother’s small window-washing business and grew it all through college.
He also started a maid service in his junior year of college and continued to grow both businesses. In his senior year of pre-med, as he was about to go off to medical school, he called his mom to inform her that he “wasn’t going to medical school and was instead going to wash windows and clean toilets.”
He continued to grow both businesses until he sold them at age twenty-eight. He let them go because he had become enamored with real estate and construction. That’s because he began buying and renovating real estate starting at age twenty-four.
After he and a friend bought a ten-acre piece of land and built a hundred-unit apartment building, he was hooked. He went fully into the construction business, starting with a $25,000 line of credit from his bank and calling everyone he knew to find anyone who would let him build them a building.
Twenty-seven years later, Sachse Construction is a $175 million construction company with 165 employees. Todd also owns four other companies, and his five companies combined employ over three hundred people.
Story Four: Mike Nehra, of Vintage King Audio, was a rock musician. He moved to New York City at age twenty-one to join a band with a recording contract.
He found that New York was expensive and the money he was making in the band wasn’t enough to live on. In his search to make extra money, he realized he had a knack for buying and selling high-end recording studio equipment for a nice profit.
He would find equipment advertised for sale in The Village Voice that was undervalued, buy it, and then with a gift for wordsmithing, would advertise and sell the exact same equipment in the Village Voice a few days later. At twenty-five, he moved back to his home city to join a band with his brother that had a recording contract with RCA, Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. They released two successful albums and toured successfully for years.
While on the road, Mike continued to sell equipment from his cell phone at truck stops. With the success of his equipment sales, he and his brother, Andrew, started Vintage King Audio. They realized that the exchange rates in Europe were so good that they could buy equipment overseas on credit cards for half the price they could sell them for in the United States.
They made good profits doing this while touring, until Mike turned forty and he and Andrew decided to get off the road and make a full-time commitment to Vintage King Audio. Twelve years later, Mike and Andrew have built it into a $50 million company with ninety-five employees.
Story Five: Steven Carse was working as an analyst at AIG when the great recession of 2008 hit, and unfortunately, due to layoffs, he lost his job.
With $7,000 in savings and a passion for popsicles, he took his entrepreneurial leap. He wanted to open a retail brick-and-mortar location but realized it was far too expensive, so he bought $6,000 in equipment and started selling frozen treats out of a pushcart at a gas station. He quickly created a raving fan base and decided to grow the business.
At the time Steven’s brother, Nick, who had a secure job as an attorney, was helping Steven on nights and weekends making pops. Steven asked Nick to join him full-time. They became fifty-fifty partners, and their company, King of Pops, was born. They sold uniquely flavored pops (e.g., chocolate sea salt, raspberry lime, cookies ‘n’ cream, banana puddin’) out of carts in parks, at parties, farmers markets, and so on. The business continued to grow. They hired friends to help them as they did everything they could to meet demand.
Eight years later, King of Pops now has over a hundred carts and sells its products online and through retail channels such as Whole Foods and in sports stadiums. They have expanded to eight cities with 60 full-time and 350 part-time employees in their peak season and generate $9 million a year in revenue.
Story Six: Necole Parker-Green, founder, principal, and CEO of The ELOCEN Group, worked for a government contractor that managed a range of program- and project-management government contracts. At the age of thirty-six, she was generating 70 percent of the company’s revenue, but after a performance review meeting that didn’t go well, she became fed up with the way she was being treated and decided to quit. The next day, she handed her employer two letters—a letter of resignation and a letter of consultancy, offering to serve as a consultant for the company. Although caught off guard, her employer accepted the deal. Simultaneously, she started her own program- and project-management business within the construction industry. Because of her integrity, Necole told her former employer that as a consultant, she wouldn’t take away any existing deals, but anything new she turned up was fair game.
Over the next eleven years, Necole built a successful business, generating over $100 million in revenues, employing a team of fifty professionals, and having three of her previous large employers becoming subcontractors of hers. Her achievements have also included receiving the US Small Business Administration’s highest entrepreneurial Small Business Person of the Year award and numerous other commendations for her success as a female in the predominantly male construction industry.
Story Seven: Shawn Stafford grew up in a tough part of Detroit, Michigan. He found himself going down the wrong path when, in eighth grade, three life-changing events happened to him: He was robbed at gunpoint, one of his friends went to prison, and another was murdered.
He was failing school, and his mom, whom he respected very much, saw the road he was on and said to him, “I thought you were a leader?” These words stuck with him, and he decided from that day forward he was going to lead and not follow.
In eleventh grade, a teacher took an interest in him and inspired him to go to college. He worked hard and was accepted into Michigan State University.
After graduating college, he got a corporate job working at Chrysler and then Ford Motor Company. His job enabled him to travel the world and make a six-figure income. While working at Ford, he read Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich, and Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money—That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! These two books gave him his light bulb moment, and he decided he didn’t want to work for someone for the rest of his life. He began buying rental properties on credit cards. Once he started to reach a level of success, his boss became aware of what he was doing and forced his hand.
He left Ford Motor Company to take his entrepreneurial leap as a real estate investor. He began buying apartment buildings, networking and building a name for himself, and today, at age forty-six, he owns just under five thousand apartment units and has 120 employees, and his commercial real estate company generates $50 million a year in revenue.
Story Eight: Not all entrepreneurs make revolutionary discoveries. Starting a great company can involve no more than besting your competition. Joe Haney, for instance, had always wanted to be an entrepreneur by the age of thirty. I shared Joe’s story about clearing the fallen concrete wall for his dad earlier in this book. At the age of twenty-nine, he was working in a car dealership as the finance and insurance manager when he learned that the owner of the dealership wanted to bring more services in-house to provide a “complete solution” for their customers. This endeavor would entail a strategic alliance with an insurance company and other vendors.
Joe agreed to take on the project and assemble the strategic alliances. When meeting with potential insurance companies, Joe was unimpressed and had a light bulb moment. He would start his own insurance agency.
He spent months putting together his vision and worked tirelessly to find an insurance carrier to underwrite his company. After finding a carrier, he convinced the dealership to make him their insurance company. He quickly added more carriers and clients, and two years later, he added a fifty-fifty partner, Paul Mattes. Together they have built Sterling Insurance Group into one of the top ten largest agencies in their state and top two hundred nationwide out of thirty-nine thousand insurance brokers.
These not-so-well-known entrepreneurs may not get the accolades their better-known, multibillion-dollar peers receive, but that doesn’t make them any less successful or happy. In every case, big name or not, the story is the same. An entrepreneur-in-the-making, like you, with the six essential traits, sees an opportunity and takes the leap. Whether you want to be a high-profile or low-profile entrepreneur is your choice. Either way, you’re a success.
SUMMARY
None of the above stories include the obstacles, barriers, and failures these entrepreneurs experienced. Getting your ass kicked is also part of the process, and every one of these entrepreneurs has experienced many setbacks. There aren’t enough pages to list every issue those entrepreneurs faced, nor is it necessary. Because the point of this chapter was to show you examples of what’s possible. Once you lock on to your idea, your six essential traits—your vision, passion, problem-solving, drive, risk-taking, and sense of responsibility—will come into play, and you’ll overcome whatever is thrown at you.
These entrepreneurs had to make literally hundreds of course corrections, as well as thousands of minor decisions, for their businesses to succeed. There’s no playbook for how to solve these issues, because every product, service, competitor, and customer is unique. If you have passion for your product or service and obsess about what your customer needs, the answers will come in the heat of the crisis.
Anyone who tries to tell you there’s a universal solution to every business issue is lying. There are hundreds of possible solutions to setbacks or specific problems in business when you take into account the industry, type of business, specific product or service, level of quality, type of customer, vision, plan, core values, growth trajectory, and the specific issue you’re facing. If you’re fully engaged and have the six traits, the right solution will appear.
Before we go on to take a look at a day in the life of an entrepreneur, please take a few minutes to write down what you learned in this chapter. I urge you to focus on what excites, what scares, and what inspires you. Just write exactly what you’re thinking right now. What can you improve on, or what doesn’t yet exist?
WORKSHEET
What action does this chapter inspire you to take in the next seven days that will help you get closer to taking your entrepreneurial leap?
You can download all worksheets and tools at e-leap.com.