It always takes me by surprise, the way people keep searching for magic potions and shortcuts to success while the only real way is to stare right back into its eyes and go all the way: real entrepreneurs who start real businesses that employ real people who provide real products and services to real customers.
Yes, it’s hard and involves a lot of work, but that’s how life is. Besides, look at the bright side: you are not answerable to anyone and can do as per your will. But there’s a catch. You have got to be smart and make sure your investments turn into profits at some point in time.
The only way I think one can get started is by learning at least one marketable skill and getting started. Also, you must make sure you’re heard by the right people and can present yourself well.
If you wish to do entrepreneurship right, here are 5 people whose companies are spoken about more than their own selves.
Pierre Omidyar
In 1995, when Pierre was 28, he first started with the coding of a personal project, an online venture which would involve person to person selling of goods, auctioned by them. He launched his website called AuctionWeb on Labour Day, 4th September 1995. He had created a simple prototype on his personal webpage. It collected so much revenue that he had to eventually hire employees for sorting the finances and fees of the company. The website had to be registered as an Internet business website. It is now popularly known as eBay. According to Forbes, his net worth was $8.5 billion, making him the 123rd richest person in the world. He became a billionaire at the age of 31 with eBay’s 1998 initial public offering (IPO). Omidyar and his wife Pamela are well-known philanthropists who founded Omidyar Network in 2004 in order to expand their efforts beyond nonprofits to include for-profits and public policy.
Howard Schultz
Howard once took a trip to Milan and was astounded by the espresso coffee all over Italy, and as they also served as meeting places or public squares. It compelled him to make sure that such coffee is present in his city too! His employer most definitely had zero interests in owning coffee shops but was pleased by Schultz’s zeal. His employer was ready to finance him and his start-up. This coffee that we all pay huge bucks for is called, Starbucks. In 2016, Forbes magazine ranked Schultz as the 595th richest person in the United States, with a net worth of $2.9 Billion.
Oprah Winfrey
Best known as the Queen of all media, the lead woman in the multi-award winning chat show—the highest rated talk show of its kind, the creator of “The Oprah Winfrey show.”
She was born in the poverty stricken rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother. She has often spoken about the hardships she faced in her childhood, and about being raped at the tender age of 9 and 13. She couldn’t tolerate the abuse further and eventually, ran away from home. She became a billionaire at 32 when her talk show went national. Forbes’ International rich list has listed her as the world’s only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in world history.
Li Ka-shing
This Hong Kong business magnate, investor, and philanthropist, is the richest person in Asia, with a net worth of $31.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
He was born in China and was forced to leave school and take his family’s responsibility after his father’s death when he was just 15. He found labor work at a plastic trading company and work there 16-hours each day, only to create Cheung Kong Industries.
Li’s business covers almost every facet of life in Hong Kong today—from electricity to telecommunications, from real estate to retail, from shipping to the Internet. The Cheung Kong Group operates in 55 countries and employs over 260,000 staff globally.
Dhirubhai Ambani
An anecdote from the founder of Reliance Industry is that, in his childhood he once bought a tin of groundnut oil on credit from a local vendor and sold the oil in retail to a pedestrian. He earned a few pennies as profit from this transaction. Apparently, whenever he got a holiday from school, he would set up food stalls in the village fair to make ends meet at home.
At 17, he visited Yemen and worked as a dispatch clerk at A. Besse in 1949. A few years later, the company became a distributor of shell products, and Ambani always wished to initiate his own oil company which he later realized with his petrochemicals venture. After returning to India, he started his first textile mill in Ahemadnagar. By 2007, the combined fortune of the Ambani family stood at $60 billion, making them the second richest family in the world.
The world is full of infinite opportunities and the doors will never close unless you close them yourself. Your career and time is extremely short, which means that you must do what you must in as lesser time as possible. This is your time, your moment. Just decide for once, and go for it. That’s how real entrepreneurs start.
