10 Inspirational Quotes On Being An Entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur can be very rewarding but nobody will say that the journey is easy or simple.  Hard work is essential for success but passion is also important.  The more you love what you're doing, the simpler the process will be.  If you do have that great idea, there is no better time than now.

And a bonus quote from Steve Jobs:

10 Inspirational Quotes About Entrepreneurship

Being an entrepreneur can be pretty stressful but also very rewarding.  The freedom to do as you see fit to make your business grow can make the ensuing success all the more satisfying.  Be sure to plan ahead and learn as much as you can about operating a business.  Remember, luck often is the result of hard work meeting opportunity.

How Some Very Famous Brands Were Started

Here are some more inspirational stories about how some famous brand names were started.  They are stories about companies being started by people who found success through innovation, hard work and making the most of opportunities given to them.



BOEING

Wilhelm Böing left Germany for the United States when he was 20 and labored at menial jobs, including farm work.  After he met lumberman Karl Ortmann, Böing found made a sizable fortune by purchasing land in Minnesota for both the timber and the minerals

Böing dies at the age of 42 but his son William Boeing continued his father's business and made his own fortune in the lumber business.  In 1909, he was in Alaska and saw a manned airplane for the first time.  This led to a fascination with airplanes and a friendship with fellow enthusiast Conrad Westervelt who agreed with Boeing that they were better off building planes themselves.

After changing their company name Pacific Aero Products Co. to Boeing Airplane Company and receiving 50 orders for planes from the U.S. Navy (thanks to Westervelt), Boeing was able to literally take off.  His later focus on commercial aircraft, passenger services and airmail enabled Boeing to become the famous company that we all know today.

MENNEN

Gerhard Heinrich Mennen was another German immigrant who founded his New Jersey company in 1878.  What led to his company being formed?  It was a  bout of malaria that led to Mennen taking an interest in pharmaceuticals while he was recovering.  

His remedies included Mennen's Borated Talcum Infant Powder, which was the first talcum powder.  Of course, other products came about including Skin Bracer, Speed Stick and Lady Speed Stick along with that famous jingle "By Mennen", made popular again on Seinfeld!

COLGATE

Colgate and Mennen have a connection in that Mennen was bought out by Colgate-Palmolive in 1992.  Colgate itself was founded by William Colgate who left England in 1804 to settle in the United States and make his own fortune.  After working as a apprentice in the soap industry, he was able to open his own business two years later in New York City.

During that time, soap was traditionally made at home although the process wasn't easy (animal fat and lye were used) and the resulting product didn't have an agreeable aroma.  Colgate's soap business offered home delivery and also added perfumes to the soap.  Customers found that they preferred  buying a perfumed cake of soap as opposed to making it themselves!

Of course, Colgate eventually became most famous for selling toothpaste.  The company sold toothpaste in glass jars but then was the first to package it in collapsible tubes, an innovation which continues to this day.  Indeed, the efforts of Gerhard Mennen and William Colgate can be seen in the many products we use to keep ourselves clean!

TUPPERWARE

The iconic brand Tupperware owes its success to two people who thought outside the box, or container (to put it another way).  Company founder Earl Tupper developed the airtight plastic container that replaced glassware to store food while Brownie Wise successfully marketed the product thanks to her innovative and famous Tupperware parties.

Earl Tupper first had a landscape and nursery business that was a victim of the Great Depression.  Although a major setback, this led to his employment with the Dow Chemical Company in 1937.  Like William Colgate, Tupper saw his employment at Dow as an ideal way to learn about the industry, namely plastics.  He was able to turn polyethylene slag from an oil industry waste product into plastic containers.  Inspired by paint can lids which naturally had to keep the cans airtight, he developed the Tupperware plastic container which sealed in freshness. However, plastic wasn't popular with households yet and glassware was still preferred when consumers shopped in hardware and department stores.  How were shoppers to be convinced that Tupperware was better than glassware? Enter Brownie Wise.

Brownie Wise was a divorced single mother who made ends meet by selling brooms door-to-door.  She had a natural charm and was gifted at persuading people to buy her products. However, she wasn't able to gain a promotion to upper management at her company due to her gender.  She might have settled for being an above-average salesperson had she not been introduced to Tupperware products by a member of her sales team. Seeing the potential, she opted to use house parties to promote Tupperware rather than simple door-to-door sales.  

Gathering women together for a fun event, Tupperware reps were able to be shown firsthand how leak-proof the containers were.  Instead of a boring sales pitch, the women were treated to a fun social gathering with their friends, family and neighbors.  As Wise wrote, "The buying spirit is contagious; it is a proven fact that you will sell more to a group of 15 women than you will sell to them individually.”

Combined with innovative ways to reward top sellers, such as speedboats and exotic vacations, Tupperware and Brownie Wise's network marketing techniques have become major stalwarts that are still prominent today.

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Business Start-Up Lessons Of Some Famous Companies

In a previous article, business startup lessons were given from success stories such as Pez, Gillette and Scrabble.  Here are some more example of successful companies that were started by people with a unique vision who worked hard to see them through.

WRIGLEY

After the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, there was a huge celebration at Wrigley Field.  This brought back the moniker 'Wrigley' in a huge way, which belonged to William L. Wrigley Jr. who founded the company that bore his name more than 120 years ago in 1891.

Forming the company in 1891, Wrigley had $32 to his name and the idea of selling of selling soap called Wrigley's Scouring Soap.  Had he limited himself to simply trying to sell the soap on its own merits, his story would have turned out very differently.  Instead, he offered baking powder as a bonus to anyone who bought his soap.  He found out that the baking powder was more popular than his Scouring Soap so he sold the powder instead.

Again, his story would be much different had he simply tried to sell the baking powder on its own merits.  Instead, he offered two packages of chewing gum to anyone who bought a can of baking powder and discovered that the gum was more popular.

Figuring the third time's the charm, Wrigley decided to focus on chewing gum.  Seen more as a product for women, he introduced new flavors such as Juicy Fruit and Spearmint to appeal to men and young people.  This worked beyond anyone's expectations and, along with his innovative advertising, turned Wrigley into the largest manufacturer of chewing gum in the world.

His belief that everybody likes a free 'something extra' led him to discover that chewing gum was more popular than soap or baking powder.  In 1907, he mortgaged everything to advertise his product in every way possible to tell people 'quick and often'.  He sent chewing gum samples to everyone listed in U.S. phone books, a pioneering nation-wide direct mail venture.  His son in the 1920's advertised Wrigley's Gum on radio programs and newspaper comic pages.By advertising everywhere and anywhere, he imprinted the words 'Wrigley gum' on the public's mind.  Keep in mind that this was in the days before television and social media.

What are some of his lessons?  Believe in yourself, even if you have only $32 to your name.  Be flexible and ready to adapt if you discover that your original product isn't your most popular one.  Realize that it's pretty well a given that there's no such thing as too much advertising.  Plus, buying a baseball team and naming a stadium after yourself can pay dividends in the future!

STARBUCKS

Anyone who's been to Italy knows how much they love to sip their espresso at cafes, especially outdoors when the weather is nice.  Howard Schultz, like many others, noticed how there was practically a coffee bar on every corner during a trip in the early 1980's.

The original Starbucks location

Schultz was the Director of Marketing for Starbucks when he made this trip to Milan.  He went back and tried to sell the owners of Starbucks on the idea of setting up cafes which would sell espressos and brewed specialty coffee. At the time, Starbucks sold coffee beans, tea and spices and only brewed coffee for samples.  The owners weren't interested in the restaurant business but preferred having people making their purchases and leaving.

However, Schultz believed in his idea so much that they helped him out and eventually sold him the Starbucks name.  The end result is well-known with Starbucks having over 23,000 locations in 67 countries, including 3,400 in China.  The original owners are doing well with their company Peet's Coffee and Tea but obviously not quite as well as Starbucks.

As Howard Schultz was say, you must pour your heart into it if you want success.  As he is quoted as saying, "When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks recreated that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee."  He copied the success that he found in Italy by realizing that the same need existed in the United States.  His success was due to his vision and hard work, the results of which can been seen everywhere today.

In an interesting twist, Howard Schultz announced on February 28, 2016 that Starbucks would open its first store in Milan in 2017!

As he states in his press release, “Now we’re going to try, with great humility and respect, to share what we’ve been doing and what we’ve learned through our first retail presence in Italy. Our first store will be designed with painstaking detail and great respect for the Italian people and coffee culture."

This is definitely the proper approach, as opposed to saying "We'll show the Italians how it's done!!".  It's good to be driven when starting a business but it's better to also have humility and respect for others.




XEROX

Electrophotography is a mouthful when using a term to copy a document, and xerography isn't much better.  However, asking someone to xerox a document is universally understood and can be attributed to Chester Carslon.  Carlson invented the Xerox machine 
which performed dry copying as opposed to wet copying as in a mimeograph machine.  He persevered despite receiving 20 rejection letters by those who couldn't foresee how indispensable photocopying would become.  One letter even asked "Who wants to copy a document on plain paper?".

He experienced years of rejection before the Haloid Company purchased his idea in 1944.  From there, the first copier was sold in 1950 and Carlson went on to earn over $150 million in his lifetime.




Q-TIPS

Most everyone uses cotton swabs, or Q-Tips, to clean out their ears or other areas which require a delicate touch.  They can also be used to clean items such as laptop keyboards.

The original concept itself was simple enough - basically a toothpick with cotton attached to both ends.   Leo Gerstenzang is said to have been inspired to produce the Q-Tip back in 1923 after observing his wife attaching cotton to the end of a toothpick to clean out her baby's ears.  Since he was the owner of the "Gerstenzang Infant Novelty Company", he was able to construct a machine that made these cotton swabs.  The product was first called 'Baby Gays', then 'Q-Tips Baby Gays' and then finally Q-Tips, the brand that became popular worldwide.


ebay

Founder Pierre Omidyar wasn't even 20 years old when he developed his Auctionweb site in his living room back in 1995, little knowing that it would turn into a multi-billion dollar online auction and sales site.  It was a simply a hobby to sell some personal items, including a broken laser pointer that someone actually bought ("I'm a collector of broken laser pointers").  People were already buying and selling items through internet bulletin boards but Omidyar had the vision of a real marketplace where people could interact and make bids on items.

His side project kept growing so much that his ISP told him he had to upgrade his account due to the traffic.  Instead of thinking it wasn't worth it, Omidyar pursued this avenue and started to charge people to use his site.  When this met with little or no objection, the site grew exponentially to the ebay that we know today.  The basic model was that people could explore the site for free but would be charged for listing and selling items.  This model enabled the company to grow to a market value of nearly $30 billion in 2016.

A&W ROOT BEER

Roy Allen worked as a hotelier after World War 1 when he encountered an old soda fountain operator who convinced him to buy his root beer formula.  Told that he could make a fortune selling 5-cent root beer with the formula, Allen took a chance and opened a root beer stand in Lodi, California in 1919.

The original A&W root beer stand

Allen wasn't counting on blind luck to make his business venture succeed.  Prohibition had come into effect and sales of alcohol were banned across the country.  Allen believed that people would flock to a stand that resembled a Wild West saloon with a bar and even sawdust on the floor.  It also helped that many customers felt that 'root beer' was close enough to 'beer' to enjoy on a hot summer day!

The closest thing to a mug of beer during Prohibition!

A stand in Lodi did so well that Allen opened a second one in Stockton, California.  He partnered with one of the employees, Frank Wright, and they named their company A&W in 1922.  From there, the company grew nationwide and continues to be a success story to this day, all because Roy Allen took a chance on a formula for root beer.

Creating a business can be started through a stroke of inspiration but it does take hard work before true success can be attained.  Still, the results are very often well worth it.  If you think of an idea that might seem strange, follow through on it!  The world can be yours.

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