Business Gurus

These businessmen and the companies they founded are today known around the world, but as these stories show, their beginnings weren’t always smooth.

Henry Ford: While Ford is today known for his innovative assembly line and American-made cars, he wasn’t an instant success. In fact, his early businesses failed and left him broke five times before he founded the successful Ford Motor Company.

R. H. Macy: Most people are familiar with this large department store chain, but Macy didn’t always have it easy. Macy started seven failed business before finally hitting big with his store in New York City.

Soichiro Honda: The billion-dollar business that is Honda began with a series of failures and fortunate turns of luck. Honda was turned down by Toyota Motor Corporation for a job after interviewing for a job as an engineer, leaving him jobless for quite some time. He started making scooters of his own at home, and spurred on by his neighbors, finally started his own business.

Akio Morita: You may not have heard of Morita but you’ve undoubtedly heard of his company, Sony. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker that unfortunately didn’t cook rice so much as burn it, selling less than 100 units. This first setback didn’t stop Morita and his partners as they pushed forward to create a multi-billion dollar company.

Bill Gates Gates didn’t seem like a shoe-in for success after dropping out of Harvard and starting a failed first business with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data. While this early idea didn’t work, Gates’ later work did, creating the global empire that is Microsoft.

Harland David Sanders: Perhaps better known as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, Sanders had a hard time selling his chicken at first. In fact, his famous secret chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it.

Walt Disney: Today Disney rakes in billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt Disney himself had a bit of a rough start. He was fired by a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn’t last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure. He kept plugging along, however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked.

Scientists and Thinkers

These people are often regarded as some of the greatest minds of our century, but they often had to face great obstacles, the ridicule of their peers and the animosity of society.

Albert Einstein:Most of us take Einstein’s name as synonymous with genius, but he didn’t always show such promise. Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. It might have taken him a bit longer, but most people would agree that he caught on pretty well in the end, winning the Nobel Prize and changing the face of modern physics.

Charles Darwin: In his early years, Darwin gave up on having a medical career and was often chastised by his father for being lazy and too dreamy. Darwin himself wrote, “I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.” Perhaps they judged too soon, as Darwin today is well-known for his scientific studies.

Isaac Newton: Newton was undoubtedly a genius when it came to math, but he had some failings early on. He never did particularly well in school and when put in charge of running the family farm, he failed miserably, so poorly in fact that an uncle took charge and sent him off to Cambridge where he finally blossomed into the scholar we know today.

Socrates: Despite leaving no written records behind, Socrates is regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the Classical era. Because of his new ideas, in his own time he was called “an immoral corrupter of youth” and was sentenced to death. Socrates didn’t let this stop him and kept right on, teaching up until he was forced to poison himself.

Inventors
These inventors changed the face of the modern world, but not without a few failed prototypes along the way.

Thomas Edison: In his early years, teachers told Edison he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Work was no better, as he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Of course, all those unsuccessful attempts finally resulted in the design that worked.

Orville and Wilbur Wright: Wright brothers battled depression and family illness before starting the bicycle shop that would lead them to experimenting with flight. After numerous attempts at creating flying machines, several years of hard work, and tons of failed prototypes, the brothers finally created a plane that could get airborne and stay there.

http://www.onlinecollege.org/2010/02/16/50-famously-successful-people-who-failed-at-first/#top

The Ford family had its roots in Ireland though they had traces of English and Scottish blood in them. Its main occupation was agriculture.

In 1862, a young couple moved a house located at some distance to the south of the other Ford families. They were William and Mary Ford. ‘Grandma’ Holmes, was directing affairs and it was with her help, that this male child was born into the household. The infant was named Henry after his uncle. Henry was one of the eight children.

The Eternal Habit

The first few years of Henry’s boyhood were spent at home under his mother’s watchful eye. When he commenced school for the first time, he was eight years old. The Little Red Brick school in the Scot Settlement was a mile and a half away from the farm. Pretty Miss Emilie Nardin, the nineteen years old teacher, punished the young boy many times. He had to stand up in the corner for misbehaving, or to sit with a girl as punishment for whispering or passing comments during school. Ford attended a one-room school for eight years, when he was not helping his father with the harvest. Henry was naturally fast at figures and one of his teachers, F. R. Ward made him do sums in his head instead of on the blackboard. Thanks to him, Ford in later years, seldom had to put pencil to paper when working out a problem.

Mechanical Bent of Mind

Science, physics and chemistry – those were subjects too remote for the rural scholar. Mechanical knowledge had to be gleaned from experience, which was where young Henry got his. His first experiment was water – wheel, connected with an old coffee mill, which had been made fast to a nearby fence. A rake handle was the shaft and power was obtained by blocking the country ditch. Another early experiment was the operation of a turbine from a boiler. From a very early age, engines fascinated him. He often rode on his father’s wagon to the carding mill at Plymouth, hauling loads of wool, or he made a daylong trip to Detroit with loads of hay and grain. On such one trip, he met a traction engine chugging along the road. While the other men drew up to quiet the horses and chat, Henry studied the mechanism. It was his first glimpse of a self-propelled vehicle; it took him into automotive transportation later on. Many years later,

In Search of Fortune

After his mother’s death at a very young age of 37, Henry’s preference for engines and machinery instead of the endless round of chores and farm work continued to grow, and finally at the age of sixteen, he decided to leave home and seek his fortune in the city. He went to Detroit and got a job in a machine shop. After three years, during which he came in contact with the internal-combustion engine for the first time, he returned home, and worked part-time for the Westinghouse Engine. In spare moments, he did experiments in a little machine shop, which he had set up. Eventually, he built a small ‘farm locomotive’, a tractor that used an old moving machine for its chassis and a homemade steam engine for power.

Back To Detroit

Henry moved back to Detroit again nine years later as a married man. His wife, Clara Bryant, had grown up on a farm not far from Ford’s. Nineteen years old Henry met the dark, attractive girl, Clara, one New Year Eve, and fell in love, that eventually led to their marriage. Clara followed her husband’s experiments with deep interest on his farm locomotive and with a steam road carriage. Her poise, her modesty, and her unassuming friendliness were her characteristics, which made her the right partner for Ford.

One day, as Clara played with the piano keys. She asked “What did you see in Detroit today, Henry ?”. In answer, he launched into a description of a new kind of engine, which was so compact and didn’t need steam to move pistons – no boiler.

Henry drew a diagram of it on a piece of paper so that his wife might understand its operation. Then he revealed the secret of his heart. “I’ve been on a wrong track,” he admitted honestly. “What I would like to do is an engine that will run by petrol, and have it do the work of a horse.”

He concluded, “but I can’t do it out here on the farm, I need other tools and money to pay for things. It would mean moving into Detroit.” The announcement was implicit. Clara made up her mind to leave the comfortable home and independent country life for the crowded quarters and the unknown hazards of the city, with only one intention to support and encourage her husband’s ambitious dream.

Foray Into Automobile Industry

During the next seven years he had various backers, some of whom formed the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899, which was later named as The Henry Ford Company. But all eventually left him in exasperation, because they all wanted a passenger car to introduce in the market, while Ford insisted always on improvement of model, saying, ‘it was not ready for customers’.

During these years, he also built several racing cars, including the ‘999’ racer driven by Barney Oldfield, which set several new speed records. In 1902, he left The Henry Ford Company, which later on was re-organized as The Cadillac Motor Car Company. After a year, he incorporated ‘The Ford Motor Company’, at that time with a mere $ 28,000 in cash put up by ordinary citizens, for Ford had, in his previous dealings with backers, antagonized the wealthiest men in Detroit. Ford was not a licensed manufacturer. He had been denied a license by the ‘Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers’, which threatened him to put him out of business. Ford fought back by the gathering the evidence and the court hearings took six years. He lost the original case in 1909, which he appealed and won in 1911. His victory had wide implications for the automobile industry, and the long fight made him an ‘American Hero.

Birth of ‘T‘ Model

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude”, he announced at the birth of Model ‘T’ in October 1908. In 19 years, he sold 15,500,000 cars in the United States, almost 1,000,000 more in Canada, and 250,000 in Great Britain, a total production amounting to half of the auto output of the world ! The motor age had arrived, thanks to Ford’s vision of the car, it was now an ordinary man’s utility, rather than a the rich man’s luxury.

Sharing Profits & Benefits

Ford Motor Company announced that it would pay eligible workers a minimum wage of $ 5 a day compared to an average of $ 2.34 paid to the other industrial workers. The year was 1914. Ford reduced the working day-hours from nine hours to eight, and implemented three-shift schedule. Ford became a worldwide celebrity overnight. People admired him as a great humanitarian; while some others criticized him as a mad socialist.

On the other hand, he continuously reduced the price of Model ‘T’, which used to cost $ 950 in 1908 to $ 290 in 1927. Such innovations changed the very structure of the society as a whole

Blossoming of a Dream

During its first five years, The Ford Company produced eight different models. By 1908 its output was 100 cars a day. The stockholders were ecstatic, but Ford was not satisfied and looked toward turning out 1,000 cars a day. The stockholders seriously considered court action to stop him from using profits for the expansion. The court said in 1919, “while Ford’s sentiments about his employees and customers are nice, a business is for the profit of its stockholders.” Ford, irate that a court and a few shareholders, whom he likened to parasites, could interfere with the management of his company, determined to buy out all the shareholders. He resigned from the post in December 1918 in favor of his son, Edsel Ford.

In March 1919, he announced a plan to organize a new company to write new chapters in the history of the industry.When asked what would become of the Ford Motor Company ? He said, “Why I don’t know exactly what will become of that, the portion of it that does not belong to me cannot be sold to me, that I know.” After that, he planned a huge new plant at Rouge river in Michigan. At the height of its success, the company’s holding stretched from the iron mines of northern Michigan to the jungles of Brazil, and it operated in 33 countries across the globe. Most remarkably, not one cent had been borrowed to pay for any of it. It was built out of profits from the ‘miracle’ Model ‘T’.

A Strict Controller

A similar pattern of authoritarian control and stubbornness marked Ford’s attitude towards his employees. The $ 5 a day that brought him so much attention in 1914, was no guarantee for the future, when in 1929 Ford increased the wages to $7 a day, and suddenly after three years, as a part of fiscal stringency imposed by falling sales and the great depression in the industry, it was cut to just $4 a day, below even to prevailing industry wages.

Ford freely employed company police, labor spies, and violence in a protracted efforts to prevent unionization and continued to do so even after General Motors and Chrysler had come to terms with UAW [United Automobile Workers].When UAW finally succeeded in organizing Ford workers in 1941, Ford once considered even shutting down everything before he was persuaded to sign a union contract.

An American ‘Hero’ Depart

After the death of his only son, Edsel, Henry resumed the presidency of the company. In spite of old age and infirmity, he held it until 1945, when he retired in favor of his grandson, Henry Ford II. At the time of his retirement his estimated wealth amounted to $ 700 million.

Ford died at his home ‘Paradise’ on April 7, 1947, exactly 100 years after his father had left Ireland for Michigan. His holdings in Ford stock went to the Ford Foundation.

http://www.worldofbiography.com/0081-Henry%20Ford/