The fourth Success Story I would like to share is the story of StarBucks CEO, Howard Schultz.
Schultz was born into a poor family and he saw an escape in sports. In high school, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University.
After graduating, he worked as a salesperson for Xerox Corporation. After that, he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer. In 1981, Schultz visited a client, a fledgling
coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle which he
joined as the Director of Marketing a year later. On a buying trip to Milan, Italy
for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically
every block. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso,
they also served as meeting places. There are about 20,000 such coffee bars in Italy. But back in Seattle, the Starbucks owners resisted Schultz's plans to
serve coffee in the stores, saying they didn't want to get into the
restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz quit and started his own
coffee bar business, called Il Giornale. It was successful, and a year
later Schultz bought Starbucks for $3.8 million. As the company began to expand rapidly in the 1990s, Schultz always
said that the main goal was "to serve a great cup of coffee." But
attached to this goal was a principle: Schultz said he wanted "to build a
company with soul."
The third Success Story which I would like to share is the story of KFC founder, Harland Sanders. When Sanders was six, his father died.
His mother was forced to go to work, and young Sanders had to
take care of his three-year-old brother and baby sister. At age 10, he helped support his family by
working on a farm. Then, he moved on to become a streetcar
conductor while he was still a teenager. From there, Sanders took a job
as a fireman on the railroad. He finally ended up operating a
restaurant. Sanders utilized the recipes and the cooking skills his
mother had taught him to feed hungry travelers. His special meal was, of
course, fried chicken. Harland Sanders' cooking was such a hit,
and word of his success made its way around the state of Kentucky. His
recipes became so famous, in fact, that, in the year of 1935, when
Sanders was just forty-five years old, then Governor Ruby Laffoon named
him a Kentucky Colonel. However in the early 1950s a new interstate highway
was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing an end to his
business, the Colonel closed his operations and retired. However, the government check was small and Sanders ( at that time in his 60s) wasn't willing to
just sit still and try to make due. He believed there was an
opportunity to market his chicken to restaurant owners across the U.S. In his travels, he was rejected on many occasions, laughed at about his
attire of his starched white shirt and white pants. However, Sanders
persevered, and after a little over 1,000 visits, he finally persuaded
Pete Harman in South Salt Lake, Utah to partner with him. They launched
the first "Kentucky Fried Chicken" site in 1952. By 1964, Colonel Sanders had more than 600
franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and
Canada.
The second Success Story which I would like to share is the famous Three Feet from Gold story- Mr Darby. Back in the gold rush days, Mr Darby was caught in the gold fever. After a lot of hard
work, he found a vein of ore, so he covered up his find and came back home to raise money for the machinery that he would need to
bring the ore to the surface.As soon as he raised enough money, he traveled back to the site to resume digging. Things started well and before long, he had enough to clear
debts. He was excited, thinking that everything from here on would be profit. Then the supply of gold stopped. The vein of ore had disappeared.
he kept on digging, but found nothing. After a while, he quit in frustration and sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars. After he went home in disappointment, the junk man called in
a mining engineer who checked the mine and calculated that there was a
vein of gold just three feet from where Mr Darby had stopped
digging.The junk man went on to make millions from the mine. Darby returned home, paid back everyone who had lent him money and
was determined to learn from his mistake in quitting too soon. He went on to become a very successful insurance salesman,
more than recouping what he would have made from the gold mine.
The first success story I would like to share is the story of founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford. He was a success, because he understood and applied the principles of success, one of which is knowing what one desires. When he decided to build an engine with entire eight cylinders cast in one block, he asked his engineers to come up with a design for the engine. All his engineers said it was simply impossible to do it. But Ford told them to just build it anyway and stay on the job until they succeed. The engineers went ahead. Half a year went past, nothing happened. Another six months passed, no sign of progress was seen.The engineers tried every possible plan to build the engine Ford wanted, but it all seems impossible to get it done. At the end of year Ford checked with the engineers and again they told him that they found on way to build the engine. Ford never thought of giving up the idea. He just told them to continue working on it and he wants it done. They went ahead, and then magically the secret was discovered. Henry Ford's determination finally paid off.
