Overnight Success is a Myth

When someone tells you to think of the most successful person in the world, who comes to mind? Warren Buffett? Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerberg? When someone tells you to think of the most successful person, why is your first instinct to think of the richest people in the world? Our society measures success by how much money or fame you have, but in reality, success isn't measured by any of those things. It's measured by how far you've come from and what you endured and persevered through in order to get there. We grow up with the idea that you aren't allowed to make mistakes and that successful people live the perfect life, but that's about as far from the truth as you could get. Success requires great amounts of perseverance, patience, and resilience. Take it from these guys. In our eyes they live(d) a perfect, wealthy life, but what many don't know and what we don't see is what they went through in order to get there.

Milton Hershey

Milton Hershey, a boy that grew up in farm country of Pennsylvania and dropped out of school at the age of 13, began working as an apprentice under a master confectioner to learn about the candy making business. Four years later after borrowing $150 from his aunt, he had his first attempt with a candy business that was shut down soon after because it wasn't making enough money. 

He then ventured out to Denver, Colorado where his father lived to learn how to make caramels using fresh milk. He took this new learned skill up to first Chicago then New York where he found himself selling candies on the streets; yet again more failed business attempts. After this, he turned back to his home town in the countryside. Here, he decided to utilize the nearby dairy and sugar resources and began to once again sell candies, this time both chocolate and caramel candies. 

By 1893, he was netting upwards a million dollars a year selling candies and decided to upgrade on his self produced chocolate. After much experimentation, he found out how to make delicious chocolate using sweet condensed milk and decided to sell his caramel factory (Lancaster Caramel Company) for $1 million and strictly focus on his chocolate business. In 1905, he built a large factory and a town around it including schools, a library, a community center, and much more. 

Today, Milton Hershey is seen as a mogul in entrepreneurship and philanthropy and as you can see, it wasn't an overnight success for him. It took many years and many failed ventures to become the role model he is seen as today.

Steve Jobs

Beginning with Jobs' childhood, he was an especially bright kid. His passion for mechanics was flamed by his father's likewise abilities. When he was 13, he was offered a job at Hewlett-Packard after cold-calling Bill Hewlett asking for spare parts for a project he was building. He was a social outcast in the early years of school, transferring different schools to escape the crowd and to join a larger community of engineers. It was after moving that he met two important friends, Bill Fernandez and Steve Wozniak. 

While Wozniak attended University of California, Berkeley, Jobs went to Reed College. He soon dropped out because it was an expensive school and he didn't want to spend his parents money, but he still attended classes to audit them. So he returned back home and landed a job with Atari with the help of Wozniak. 

After some time at Atari, he took a seven month trip to India to seek spiritual enlightenment and came back a new man. When he returned to work at Atari, they presented him with a job that required Wozniak's help, and the results astonished Atari. They then worked to create a digital "blue box" which made free long-distance calls available and managed to sell many which motivated the two to start selling them aggressively. They were convinced this success would reflect the success they would attain in business together.

With Wozniak's electronics skills and Jobs' marketing abilities, they created the first Apple computer and started up the company we know today as Apple. The company found much success and grew like wild fire. Jobs was a millionaire by 23, and was worth over $100 million by 25. But when the company decided to appoint positions, he was becoming less powerful and left the company.

After leaving Apple, he then started NeXT, inc. with $7 million, but soon ran out of money. This didn't stop Jobs. He then found investor Ross Perot and was able to turn NeXT into a successful company. In 1996, Apple bought Jobs' company for $427 million and he was once again a part of the success at Apple.

Steve Jobs was a very smart and successful entrepreneur. While he was very motivated and determined to make a name for himself, he never let anything pass him by. As opportunity presented itself to him, he jumped on it right away and reaped the benefits.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was born on a farm in a small town in Michigan. Ford's passion for mechanics was sparked in his teens when his father gave him a pocket watch. When he was 15 years old, he started taking apart the watches of his friends and neighbors, which got him the reputation of the town's watch repairman. Young Henry was crushed when his mother died in 1876. His father pressured him to take over the family farm, but Henry did not share this vision.

Ford then left home to work as an apprentice to a machinist in Detroit. After a few years of this, he returned to the farm. Now, he learned to work a Westinghouse portable steam engine, which was used to power farm equipment. He was then hired by Westinghouse to repair their steam engines. At the same time, he was also studying bookkeeping at Goldsmith, Bryant & Stratton Business College in Detroit.

After years of hard work, Ford finally found himself in a position to chase his passion. At the age of 28, he took a position as an engineer at Edison Illuminating Company. Two years later, he was promoted to Chief Engineer, and he began experimenting on gasoline engines. Through several years of failures and experimentation, Ford finally created the Ford Quadricycle, which was a self propelled vehicle. While this was a huge breakthrough, the vehicle was still not practical for public use. 

Ford began working to improve the Quadricycle. He was invited to a meeting of the Edison companies executives where he was introduced to Thomas Edison. Edison saw Ford's vision, and pushed him to continue with his experimentation. Ford then created and released a second vehicle. At this point he was making a considerable amount of noise as a pioneer in the industry, and through the financial support of William H. Baron, Ford resigned from Edison Illuminating Company and founded the Detroit Automobile Company.

While Ford initially had high hopes for this company, he was disappointed when the automobiles they were putting out were below average in quality and costed too much for the everyday family. The company failed, and Ford was back on his own again.

Ford did not let this failure slow him at all. He rebounded by creating and racing a 26 horsepower vehicle. After this, stock holders from the Detroit Automobile Company supported him to found the Henry Ford Company. However, Ford only held a position of chief engineer in this company, and when a superior was brought in he left the company. The Henry Ford Company would later become Cadillac Automobile Company!

Ford simply would not stop building cars, and he began focusing on racing vehicles. The horsepower and practicality of his cars just kept getting better, and after joining forces with a few old acquaintances and receiving backing from the Dodge Brothers, Ford Motor company was created.

Now Ford finally had the means to accomplish his career goals of creating a practical, reasonably priced car for normal people to drive. Ford accomplished this through his Model T and Model A model vehicles, which became massively successful. 

Nothing came easy for Henry Ford, but by staying strong through adversity he made his incredible dreams a reality. The work of Ford as a pioneer in the automobile industry will never be forgotten, as his name lives on through his company to this day.