In our podcast series ‘The Podcast For Entrepreneurs‘ we aim to bring you entrepreneur success stories as well as interviews with people who provide resources for entrepreneurs. So far we have interviewed Thomas Power, the founder and owner of Ecademy.com. Ecademy has over 400,000 members and Thomas shared with us his thought process when starting the business and where he sees the industry going. We also interviewed Trevor Steggles from the glamourous world of motorsport sponsorship.
Some of those that have caught our eye and we would like to interview are below. (hint, hint guys… invites on the email soon)
Daniel Matz and Avi Steinberg of All By Student Notebooks were graduates of the Kellogg School of Management. Their idea was simple (aren’t the best always this way?), students get loads of gumf from banks and companies from key rings to silly dolls to get their brand exposed to students. Daniel and Avi created a business that provides something use to students; notebooks. The note books can be branded and carries ads in the back of the notebooks which the guys sell to corporates. They have delivered 1.5mn notebooks at not cost to the students.
Micheal Dunlop. I listened to a podcast and found the interview with Michael fascinating. His story is a poster for the Internet generation. At the age he started his business online (16) I was making perspex pencil cases in my break times and selling them to other students. Unfortunately this was not as scalable as billions of people on the net! Check him out at incomediary.com
Mark Burnett is the guy behind “Survivor”, “The Apprentice” and other reality TV shows. Things have not been easy, however, in 1982 he arrived in the States from the UK with nothing “I’ve been here 28 years as an entrepreneur doing everything from selling t-shirts on the beach to starting my reality show company.”
In a quote that could have been written for One Life: No Fear he says “I do trace my success to that decision (..to gamble on the rights to the show ‘Survivor’), and it paid off for me,” he says. “The fear of not doing it was greater than the fear of failure.”
His latest show is “Shark Tank” which sounds a little like the UK’s “Dragon’s Den” where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to wealthy investors on national TV.
Sean Belnick founded BizChair.com an online retailer. He started to learn about business through eBay when he was 12. At 14 he posted some products from his dads firm on the web and ended up receiving 8,000 orders per month. The story goes that after 9/11 the Pentagon called to order replacement chairs for the damaged building, unaware that the CEO was 15…
Trevor Baylis, the inventor of the clockwork radio which spurned a million other clockwork products, got his idea while listening to the radio. The radio show was talking about how AIDS was spreading fast in Africa because the authorities were having trouble getting information out. Trevor figured if he could develop a cheap radio with an alternate power source to expensive batteries he could help solve their problems. He went to work and created this innovative product which sells all over the world.
He is now involved with wind-up mp3 players… progress is amazing.
James Dyson re-engineered the vacuum cleaner which had become known by a trade name ‘Hoover’. Ironically Hoover was one of the companies Dyson approached with his new cyclone technology which filters out dirt and dust without clogging or losing suction and they turned him down.
It was not an easy path for this 61-year-old, Brit. During the fifteen years it took to develop and his innovative vacuum, he was forced to temporarily lower his standard of living. He also had to pay substantial fees to renew his patents each year. This nearly bankrupted Dyson during the developmental stage. He was willing to risk everything, and it paid off to the tune of about $1bn..
The stories we read of entrepreneurs can, sometimes, be a little depressing, especially if we are struggling with our own enterprises, but much can be gained from looking into the lives of successful entrepreneurs. Many, if not all of those mentioned above, and others profiled on a million other websites, have had times when they were struggling badly. When things just seemed like everything was going wrong.
Relationships were frayed, nerves shredded and motivation low, but the one thing they all have in common is that they carried on, they kept at their goals and did not take no for an answer. Wherever you are on journey as an entrepreneur we can all learn lesson and take heart from the successful stories of others.
Hopefully we can give you a little more insight if we can tie these guys down for an interview… we are on it! I would also be interested to know who else you would like to hear us interview… be creative, we are up for a challenge!
Regards
David
@OneLifeNoFear.com
Davids Blog
