LESSONS FROM GREAT ENTREPRENEURS

2017]

STORIES CULLED FROM INTERNET

PACKAGED BY ANGELA IHUNWEZE

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The greatest hindrance to success is fear of failure, one man we all

should emulate his courage to start over again despite falling is

Henry Ford. In his own words “Failure is simply the opportunity to

begin again, this time more intelligently.” Read the notes to know

more. Thinking business? Call Angela Itambo

- Henry Ford: Founder of Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford, the man who dreamed of inventing an automobile for the great

masses, was born into a modest, hard working farm family on July 30, 1863, near

Detroit, Michigan. The eldest of six children born to William and Mary Ford,

Henry was raised to learn everything about the family farm so that when he

matured, it would be he who took over the family business. Bright, inquisitive,

and being, as his mother is quoted as saying, 'a born mechanic,' Henry never had

the desire to become a farmer. Rather, it was steam engines, mechanical

tinkering, and a burning desire to create that held Ford’s every waking thought

for his future.

This was proven to Ford, himself, as he recalls an early incident in his teenage

years that left him without a doubt about what he would become.

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Around thirteen, Ford and his father happened to see a steam engine driving

along the road, under its own power, as they traveled along in the family wagon.

An excited Ford jumped from his father’s wagon, and approached the engine’s

driver, asking every question he could think of about the capabilities of the

engine. The driver complied, telling Ford all he knew. Before Ford knew it, the

driver had offered him a turn at firing the engine. "It was then, at the point when

that great engine fired, I realized I was, by nature, an engineer."

It was this event in Ford’s early life, plus the inward drive to create, that

propelled the young man to dream of leaving for Detroit. After four more years

of helping his family work the farm and fields, at seventeen, Ford asked for his

father’s blessing; the blessing to leave home and head for the city of his dreams,

Detroit. When his father at last granted the blessing, Ford, ecstatic and

determined, did just that.

Ford’s first dalliance with the city of his dreams must have left him somewhat

disappointed. He took a position with the Michigan Car Company upon his

arrival. For one dollar and ten cents per day, Ford was hired on as a mechanic.

Unfortunately for Ford, his mechanical acumen, unbelievably, cost him that first

job. When Ford began fixing mechanical problems in thirty minutes instead of

the five hours the older employees took, he was fired immediately. Not one to be

daunted by failures, Ford looked onward and upward, and decided to travel

throughout Michigan, looking for bigger and better things.

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It was while traveling that Ford met the woman who was to be his wife, Clara

Jane Bryant. The couple met at a party hosted by a mutual friend, and were

married on April 11, 1888. Ford became a father when his son Edsel was born in

1893.

When son Edsel was two years old, Ford and wife Clara decided a move was in

order. Both decided that move should be back to Detroit, where Ford could

resume his lifelong dream of creating the ‘horseless carriage.’ This move proved

successful, as Ford was soon named chief engineer at the Detroit Edison

Company. This position was one that Ford had longed for, and although it was

required of him to be on-call twenty-four hours, the extra time away from the

plant garnered the engineer plenty of creative hours at home where he continued

his quest in experimentation on the automobile.

For many years, Ford had quietly experimented on gasoline-powered vehicles of

all types. The first of these to become successful, the Quadricycle, was finally

completed in 1896. Equipped with a buggy-type frame and outfitted with four

bicycle tires, Ford’s first ‘horseless’ success was sold with one thing in mind:

creating capital for further research on more technologically advanced vehicles.

With that capital, Ford resumed his experimentations. He worked diligently on

producing race cars, which he himself loved to drive. Within a few years, Ford’s

hard work and dedication paid off in the form of his first ready-to-market

automobile. In 1903, with monies contributed by the loyal citizens of Detroit,

Ford formed the company that is known still today, the Ford Motor Company.

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Five years after forming his company, the famous Model T was created. The ninth

automobile produced by Ford, the highly successful Model T was produced for

the next nineteen years, dominating sales like no other automobile.

The production of the Model T, and all other automobiles by Ford, as well, went

full-speed ahead when, in 1913, Ford introduced the labor and time saving

assembly line. The assembly line, responsible for a drastic decrease in production

time, allowed more automobiles to be made at a lower cost than before, saving

consumers hard-earned money. Its success, earning Ford an unprecedented

annual salary, was good news for the plant employees, as well. His philosophy

being that better paid employees made better employees, Ford raised the salary

to an unheard of five dollars per day for each employee of the Ford Motor

Company.

Ford’s next step was to begin work on an industrial complex, situated on the

Rouge River in Dearborn, Michigan. Throughout the late teens and early

nineteen twenties, Ford oversaw production on the plant, which included all the

necessary components of a first-rate producer of automobiles: an assembly line, a

steel mill, and factory to produce glass. By the fall of 1927, all steps had been

implemented for the production of Ford automobiles, and the Rouge River

complex was ready to begin manufacturing.

During the late nineteen twenties, the downside of automobile manufacturing,

disappointing losses due to hard-nosed competitors, faced Ford as his Model T

became outdated compared to newer productions at General Motors and

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Chrysler. The new Model A was created, along with the V-8; both received

moderately good reviews and sales numbers. Once again, though, both were

being outsold by their counterparts at the aforementioned G.M. and Chrysler.

Throughout the nineteen thirties and forties, Ford faced many problems.

Although son Edsel had, in 1919, been named President of the motor company,

Ford himself remained in strict control of the business. Known for his

authoritative and disciplinaried work style, when both G.M. and Chrysler signed

contracts with the United Auto Workers, Ford remained stubborn and refused to

follow. Using tactics such as spying on employees and even hiring company police

officers, Ford was determined to keep any such unionization out of his company.

Eventually, though, he was somehow persuaded to sign, and did so with the

U.A.W. in nineteen forty one, thus giving to his employees the same rights,

protections, and standardizations of labor as those employed by his competitors.

All went well for Ford until nineteen forty three, when son Edsel died. Ford once

again reigned at the helm of the Ford Motor Company as President until he

himself was taken seriously ill after two debilitating strokes. In 1945, he handed

over the Presidency to grandson Henry Ford II. Ford died at his home in April,

1947, leaving a lasting and impressionable legacy of hard work, determination,

perseverance, and of worldwide acclaim as the founder of the automobile

industry.

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CADBURY

"If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it."

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." John D. Rockefeller:

American industrialist and philanthropist

John Cadbury was born in Birmingham to Richard Tapper Cadbury, who was

from a wealthy Quaker family that moved to the area from the west of England.

As a Quaker in the early 19th century, he was not allowed to enter a university, so

could not pursue a profession such as medicine or law. As Quakers are pacifist, a

military career was also out of the question. So, like many other Quakers of the

time, he turned his energies toward business and began an apprenticeship as a

tea dealer in Leeds in 1818.

Returning to Birmingham in 1824, Cadbury opened a small one-man grocery

shop at 93 Bull Street. In 1831, he switched his business and rented a small

factory (an old malthouse) in Crooked Lane to begin the manufacture of drinking

chocolate and cocoa.

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Cadbury was influenced in his choice of trade by his temperance beliefs – he felt

alcohol was a major cause of poverty and other social ills, and saw cocoa and

chocolate as alternatives. As a social reformer, he also led a campaign to ban the

use of child labour for sweeping chimneys and campaigned against animal cruelty,

forming the Animals Friend Society, a forerunner of the Royal Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Meanwhile, Cadbury’s manufacturing enterprise prospered, his brother Benjamin

joined the business in 1847 and they rented a larger factory on Bridge Street. Two

years later, in 1849, the Cadbury brothers pulled out of the retail business,

leaving it in the hands of John's son , Richard Cadbury Barrow. (Barrow's

remained a leading Birmingham store until the 1960s.)

Cadbury married twice. He married Priscilla Ann Dymond (1799–1828), in 1826,

but she died two years later. In 1832 he married his second wife, Candia Barrow

(1805–1855) and had seven children: John (1834–1866), Richard (1835–1899),

Maria (1838–1908), George (1839–1922), Joseph (1841–1841), Edward (1843–

1866), and Henry (1845–1875).

Benjamin and John Cadbury dissolved their partnership in 1860. John retired in

1861 due to the death of his wife, and his sons Richard and George succeeded him

in the business. In 1879 they relocated to an area of what was then north

Worcestershire, on the borders of the parishes of Northfield and King's Norton

centred on the Georgian built Bournbrook Hall, where they developed the garden

village of Bournville; now a major suburb of Birmingham. The family developed

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the Cadbury's factory, which remains a key site of Cadbury. The district around

the factory has been 'dry' for over 100 years, with no alcohol being sold in pubs,

bars or shops. Residents have fought to maintain this, winning a court battle in

March 2007 with Britain's biggest supermarket chain Tesco, to prevent it selling

alcohol in its local outlet

Nestle

Henri Nestlé

AKA Heinrich Nestle

Born: 10-Aug-1814

Birthplace: Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Died: 7-Jul-1890

Location of death: Glion, Switzerland

Cause of death: Heart Failure

Remains: Buried, Territet, Montreux, Switzerland

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Nationality:Switzerland

Henri Nestle was born in 1814 in Frankfurt-am-Main, then a free city, was

apprenticed as a pharmacist, and practised his profession after fleeing riots in

1833 to settle in Vevey on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. He had an

enquiring mind and carried out research in such subjects as gas lighting and

fertilisers.

In the mid-1860s he began to produce ‘farine lactee’, a baby food that combined

milk with wheat flour from which acid and starch had been removed. He

established sales offices in Great Britain, France and Germany in 1868, and in the

United States the following year. He sold his company in 1874 to a consortium

headed by Jules Monnerat, and subsequently lived in retirement in Vevey.

The Nestle company introduced factory-based production of various kinds of

food in many countries, purchasing the Viking Melk (milk) company in Norway

in 1898, and the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., established by the Americans

Charles and George Page at Cham, which had several factories in Great Britain, in

1905. By 1914 the company also had factories in Germany, Spain and the United

States. Nestle was producing chocolate at its principal factory in England, at

Hayes, from 1913, and in 1929 took over the Swiss company, Peter, Cailler &

Kohler, one of whose founders, Daniel Peter (1836-1919), had pioneered the

production of milk chocolate, using Nestle’s condensed milk, at Vevey in 1875.

Nestle developed a process for making instant coffee introduced in 1938, and in

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1947 took over another pioneering Swiss food company, the soup and stock cube

enterprise established by Julius Maggi (1846-1912). Henri Nestle’s initials appear

on the wall of a factory the company established at Tutbury, England, in 1901,

which was at first a condensed milk plant, and since 1956-57 has produced

instant coffee.

KFC

IT ISN’T TOO LATE TO START SOMETHING

The company was founded as Kentucky Fried Chicken by Colonel Harland

Sanders in 1952, though the idea of KFC's fried chicken actually goes back to

1930. The company adopted the abbreviated form of its name in 1991.Starting in

April 2007, the company began using its original name, Kentucky Fried Chicken,

for its signage, packaging and advertisements in the U.S. as part of a new

corporate re-branding program;[4][5] newer and remodeled restaurants will have

the new logo and name while older stores will continue to use the 1980s signage.

Additionally, Yum! continues to use the abbreviated name freely in its advertising.

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ESTEE LAUDER

Born Josephine Esther Mentzer, Estée Lauder was raised in Queens, New York,

by her Hungarian mother, Rose, and Czech father, Max. The name Estée was a

variation of her nickname, Esty. Her interest in beauty was sparked in high

school when her Hungarian uncle came to live with her family and created

velvety skin creams, first in the kitchen, then in a laboratory in a stable out back.

From her uncle, Estée not only learned how to concoct the wonderful creams but

also how to apply them to women’s faces.

In the late 1920s Estée met Joseph Lauter. They were married in 1930 and moved

to Manhattan. Shortly thereafter the couple adopted the surname Lauder,

correcting a misspelling that dated back to when his father emigrated from

Austria to the United States. Estée got her start selling skin care and makeup in

beauty salons, demonstrating her products on women while they were sitting

under hair dryers. In 1946 she and Joseph Lauder officially launched the

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Company, and a year later they got their first major order: $800 worth of

products from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Knowing What Women Want

Estée had innate instincts for what women wanted and was the consummate

saleswoman and marketer. She believed that to make a sale, you had to touch the

consumer, show her the results on her face and explain the products. That was

the start of the Company’s personal High-Touch service.

She revolutionized how products were introduced with her now-famous “Gift

With Purchase” — later copied by other cosmetic companies and currently a

standard industry practice.

Never underestimate any woman’s desire for beauty.

Estée Lauder

Once the Estée Lauder brand began to advertise, she insisted that the print

images be both aspirational and approachable and selected one model to

represent the face of the brand at any given time. She picked the pale turquoise

color for the brand’s jars, believing it conveyed a sense of luxury and matched all

bathroom decors.

Estée attended the opening of virtually every new store and stayed for a week to

instruct her beauty advisors on sales techniques and merchandise display. Always

stylish and well dressed, she crossed the country to meet with store buyers and

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beauty editors and to talk to consumers. She was a one-person research

department.

Decades before social media became mainstream, Estée ran word-of-mouth

campaigns. Her oft-repeated mantra was “Telephone, Telegraph, Tell a Woman.”

She believed that women who liked her products would spread the word.

Pushing the Boundaries of Beauty

Estée Lauder was a skin care pioneer, but she also had a wonderful fragrance

“nose.” One of her earliest successes was Youth-Dew, a blend of rose, jasmine,

vetiver and patchouli that would bring her olfactory fame.

No one ever became a success without taking chances… One must be able to

recognize the moment and seize it without delay.

Estée Lauder

Until the 1950s, most women reserved fragrance for special occasions. A woman

would wait for her husband to give her perfume on her birthday or anniversary.

Estée wanted to find a way for women to buy their own perfume, so in 1953 she

created Youth-Dew, a bath oil that doubled as a skin perfume. This innovation

took the cosmetics industry by storm, changing the way fragrance was sold and

transforming the fledgling start-up company into a multimillion-dollar business.

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EARLY ADVERT

Estée was the quintessential entrepreneur who refused to listen to experts or

settle for anything less than the very best. She constantly challenged the status

quo and is described as someone you simply couldn’t say no to.

She oversaw the creation of five additional brands — Aramis, Clinique,

Prescriptives, Lab Series and Origins — and always insisted that the Company’s

products be made

As a visionary businesswoman, Estée Lauder was honored with many awards

during her career. Receiving the French Legion of Honor was one of the high

points in her life. She supported numerous civic and cultural programs and other

charitable causes, including the restoration of the palace at Versailles and the

building of several playgrounds in New York City’s Central Park.

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The only thing more important to Estée than the Company was her family, and

she was thrilled that her children and grandchildren joined the family business.

Estée retired in 1995 and passed away in 2004.

Her Inspiration Today

The world has changed dramatically since Estée Lauder created her brand in

1946. But the core values she embodied are more relevant and more inspiring to

women of all generations than ever before. Today the Company engages with

women in more than 150 countries and at dozens of touch points — both in stores

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and online. And each relationship consistently reflects Estée’s powerful and

authentic convictions and unique point of view.

Final words from Angela Ihunweze(Mrs) CEO of Angela Itambo

company

Get rich quick schemes are destructive and a waste of money; it is based on false hopes of instant wealth. There is dignity in labour. If you must increase your source of livelihood while starting or growing a small business. We advise you build a nest egg. (This is a sum of money set aside for future use or as a buffer while you patiently run and nurture your small business). We encourage you to either invest some of your money in real estate; securities; acting as an angel to other startup entrepreneurs in place of a share in equity(ownership). This reduces the strain of turning out profit before its time.

From the likes of William Colgate to Esther lauther, to Kiichiro Toyoda to Henry Nestle to Henry Ford; these entrepreneurs if were alive will be amazed on how successful there businesses they created has evolved to global brands.

William Colgate started the Procter Gamble Empire; with wining brands such as Colgate toothpaste, to Klin detergent .

Esther Lauther created the Estee lauder cosmetic empire

Kiichiro Toyoda started from looming machines to a brand that has evolved as one of the world biggest car companies in the world Toyota.

You by now will not need me to mention the brands synonymous with these two Henry’s (Nestle and Ford motor). Interesting, if you research about this founders, they didn’t start big, rather were small businesses. Taking it one step at a time. Considered insignificant by large companies of their time.

What we are advocating; that don’t consider it usual that you have to start small and grow gradually; rather focus your attention on improving your product or service with the customers preferences in mind and wealth will come naturally. Fortunately is that you have to your advantage is advent of technology that makes running a business easier.

What makes a small business have an edge over a larger business; which should be used by every small business owner? Is the ability to connect with your customers. Large companies have to rely on the use of

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employees and consultant; often a times due to the corporate red-tapism this information is either distort or late in arrival. As a small business your closeness to your customers should translate to you finding out what the customer expects from your brand and if per adventure there happens to be a dissonance you can rectify it as soon as possible. Faced by rivals such as the founder of Revlon and Elizabeth Arden, young Esther didn’t have funding such as the likes of big cosmetic giants, however because she could connect with potential and users of her products , her patronage soared . She even introduced the sample marketing concept (Where to know how product was before purchase and as to reward your patronage; samples of the products were handed free to them. Limitation should spark creativity for every small business owner. Money is crucial, however what makes a winning team is money plus ingenuity and creativity.

Building a small business is basically 90% personality and 10% other external factors from funding, favorable government policy, to proper infrastructure, to competent staff. However the premise has to do with you the small business owner; cultivating the following:-

A Stick skin which breeds perseverance

Teachable and adaptable

Prudent with time and money Commitment which develops to dedication, passion and enthusiasm.

Check and see any truly successful entrepreneur that started from an

opportunity to a winning brand; the underlying characteristics that

can be seen in them are what has just be mentioned above.