Curtis Jackson (Left) with Eminem (Right) during his induction to the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

Everyone has heard of 50 Cent and can objectively say that he has had a very influential impact on the hip-hop/rap industry, however, not many are aware of who he was before the fame and how he got there.

Curtis Jackson was born and raised in the South Jamaican boroughs of Queens in New York City in 1975. Not much is known about his absent father, and his mother, Sabrina, worked as one of the top drug dealers in Queens until she was murdered when Jackson was 8 years old. After that, Curtis moved in with and was raised by his grandmother. With the onset of the 1980’s inner city crack epidemic life was tough and unforgiving, and Curtis had to adapt to his harsh environment. At the age of 12, Curtis Jackson began selling narcotics because his family was too poor and he was too young to get a legal job. 

Jackson’s early schooling career (elementary to high school) mostly consisted of messing around in school, boxing/sparring, and selling crack-cocaine on the side. As a dealer, Jackson would bring paraphernalia, guns, money, and drugs to school, and he was able to successfully avoid the law for a few years until he was caught by a metal detector at Andrew Jackson High School in Queens. Up until this point in his life, Jackson had kept his drug dealing secret away from his grandmother, but after the embarrassment of getting arrested in school Curtis came clean and openly spoke with his grandmother about selling drugs. 

Album cover for “Get Rich or Die Tryin'”, which was released as 50 Cent’s debut album

Despite selling drugs, Curtis tried his best to stay away from addiction as he knew that his obsessive personality would not mix well with drugs, and he has even stated that he would not just get high, but get to a point at which he wouldn’t come back as himself. Three years after his first arrest, Curtis was again arrested for drugs after selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. Then, only a few weeks later, he was arrested again when the cops did a house raid and found guns and narcotics. Jackson was facing a sentence of 3-9 years in prison for his drug-related escapades, fortunately he was able to plead down to 7 months in a youth work boot camp in upstate New York. While anyone in this situation would not have a very good outlook on life, those 7 months would be the most important and impactful young Jackson would ever experience. Within those 7 months Jackson became a changed man. He earned his GED, gained a resolve to join the music industry by any means possible, and gave himself the nickname ‘50 Cent’ to literally spell out his change in life.

With this Jackson turned his life away from drugs and began to pursue his dream of making music. In the beginning, 50 Cent worked with producers and friends to learn how to write music properly and after many mixtapes, he was successfully signed to Columbia Records. Then, after being shot nine times in a drive-by by Darryl Baum (Who was later killed), he was in the hospital and was dropped from the label and blacklisted from the American Music industry because of his song “Ghetto Qur’an” that portrayed the life of drug dealers in the 1980’s. Instead of quitting music, 50 Cent moved to Canada and began working again after his full recovery from the shooting. Then in 2002, he released a track Guess Who’s Back that caught the attention of Eminem who then signed a record deal with him and eventually gave him his own label. 

If Curtis never realized he wanted more out of life, didn’t get away from drugs, or continue to pursue his musical passion he would not be who he is today. The point is that there are countless paths in life and taking one does not guarantee anything, but what we can do is take the one that fosters the most passion and happiness and never let go.

Charles Darwin

We have all heard of Charles Darwin in one way or another. Whether it be from his genetic research, Galapagos escapades, theory of evolution, or the theory of natural selection, Darwin is widely known and his contributions to the natural and biological sciences have made profound impacts on the way we view the world. As much as we value and accept his work today, his contributions weren’t always welcomed.

Charles was born in 1809 in England to a very wealthy family of doctors. He was the fifth of six children, and he was expected, like his brothers, to follow his father’s career of choice. Unfortunately for Charles, all he wanted to do was dive head first into the natural sciences. He was introduced to the wonders of nature very early on in his life and he quickly picked up many collections of various plants. When he was sixteen, he spent the summer of 1825 as an understudy to his father, and Charles helped him with the care of the poor of his hometown. Then in the fall, Charles and his brother were sent to the University of Edinburgh Medical School to become doctors. 

While in University, Charles learned that he had little interest in his medical studies, and he promptly ignored them in favor of his obsession with the natural sciences. His father, disappointed with Charles’s lack of application in the medical field, begrudgingly sent Charles to Christ’s College in Cambridge to study this time to become an Anglican parson. Again Charles neglected his studies and he picked up a passion for beetle collecting, which led him to discover the world of entomology. Despite his neglect for his studies, Charles was still able to earn his ordinary degree. So far in his life, Charles Darwin has been struggling against the well wishes of his father in order to pursue his passion, but now he will have to struggle with tradition and opposing viewpoints of the scientific community.

Professor John Stevens Henslow

After his graduation, Charles was approached by one of his professors, John Stevens Henslow, about a two-year planned voyage to chart the coast of South America that was leaving in four weeks. His father opposed the trip, but his brother in-law helped fund and convince Charles to go. After three months of delays, the voyage began and lasted for approx. five years. During that time, Charles would diligently send back notes, journals, and specimens of most if not all of everything he found. As Charles saw more and more of the natural world, the more he questioned  and found contradictions to the current scientific theories. This then culminated in the inception of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, where the origin of a new species could be explained by genetic variation across generations in a genealogical tree. That, over time, one species changes into another. This opposed many current views of the time, where species had independent lineages where one species could evolve into a higher form or that there was divine influence in creation. In response to his publication of “On the Origin of Species”, many critics attacked Charles’ beliefs and friends, as they felt that their ideas of divine intervention and many felt insulted that Charles proposed the possibility that humans came from monkeys. Many of Charles’ friends supported his publication, but were not convinced of his theory.

As time went on, Charles’ ideas gained more acceptances and with each publication came less and less opposition. Through continuous scrutiny and criticism, Darwin became an extremely popular and respected scientist. Who would commonly engage in public discourse and lecture halls when he could. Charles Darwin’s life choices were heavily influenced by his passion for the natural sciences, he made sure that he followed his passions, and he worked within his passions with a standard so high that eventually caused health concerns.

Chris Gardner

Now here is a person you all probably know the story of, or at least you heard of, as per the Academy Nominee performance by Will Smith in the film The Pursuit of Happiness. This was a film from 2006 that more or less chronicled the hardships of Chris Gardner as he struggled with homelessness while trying to raise his infant son. 

Chris Gardner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin into a severe set of conditions. His mother was living off of welfare, his step-father was an abusive alcoholic, and his biological father was living in Louisiana and wanted nothing to do with him. By the time he was eight, Chris had been placed into foster care for the second time when his mother was arrested and convicted of attempted murder of his step-father. Then a year later, when he was nine years old, his closest foster father figure, Uncle Henry, drowned in the Mississippi River. All of these trials and tribulations only lead to further steel Chris’s resolve to avoid all of the issues he saw in his early life. From child abuse to alcoholism, Chris wanted to make a name for himself that entirely excluded these horrific behaviors.

So, following the best example he could find, Chris enlisted in the US Navy after being influenced by Uncle Henry’s stories in the Navy. While there Chris became acquainted with a highly skilled and influential San Francisco heart surgeon, Dr. Robert Ellis, who offered him a laboratory position at the University of California after his enlistment. Years passed and Chris eventually got married and had plans for a medical career ten years in the making. However, due to the time frame, Chris deterred from his medical career and, along with an affair and a child he subsequently lost his marriage as a result.

When Chris’s son Chris Jr. was born in 1981, Chris was still a lab assistant making a couple thousand a year, which could not support his girlfriend or his child forcing Chris to find better paying work. For years he was able to get by but just barely, and on one fateful sales call to the San Francisco General Hospital, Chris spotted a man with a fancy red Ferrari and he asked the man what his profession was. He responded with “stockbroker” and Chris suddenly knew what he wanted to be. That man, Bob Bridges, would then go on to help Chris set up numerous meetings between branch managers at many of the major stock brokers that were offering training programs. While attending these meetings, Chris neglected his most recent salesman job as well as his car’s parking eligibility, which ended up amassing $1200 worth of tickets. Chris kept this up for two months on end and he finally was accepted into a training program for E.F. Hutton. 

Chris Gardner and his son, Chris Jr. 1980s

Then everything hit the fan when Chris had a very emotional incident with his girlfriend Jackie that resulted in the police being called. Everything was actually fine between Chris and Jackie as there was nothing of this incident that could get Chris arrested unless Jackie pressed charges, however, during this the police checked his car’s registration and he was arrested for his outstanding parking tickets. Being unable to pay them, Chris was sentenced to ten days in jail and during which Jackie left for the east coast with Chris Jr. and Chris was left with nothing but the same suit he had on when he was thrown in jail and his unpaid internship. Chris was already broken but he was far from rock bottom.

Jackie came back to give Chris sole custody of his son, and Chris then continued in his passion of becoming a stock broker and spent the next five or so years of his life juggling homeless and fatherhood. Eventually he got a legitimate job position where he would always be sure to get to work early and leave late. He would sleep wherever he and his son could, and he always relied on his own strength and perseverance to not only survive but to flourish. 

Eventually Chris was able to save up for a house and his homeless troubles were over, but his dreams were not. Chris continued to work hard for years and in 1987 Chris Gardner created his own brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co. He started with ten thousand dollars in his pocket and a single wooden desk that was often used for family dinners. Chris sold his share of his firm in 2006 for millions and bought himself his very own Ferrari (from Michael Jordan).

Charlie Chaplin as “The Little Tramp”

Charlie Chaplin was an English comedic actor who wrote, filmed, and composed many of his silent era films. Chaplin was best known for his onscreen persona “The Tramp”, and is considered to be an ageless icon in the film industry. With a career spanning more than 75 years, Chaplin has made his mark as one of the most influential and skilled actors, producer, and director of all time. While Chaplin can now be unequivocally seen as a staple in the film industry, it was not always the case, and nor was his early life anywhere near as glamorous as the latter. 

Growing up on the streets of London, Chaplin learned to deal with an absent father figure and copious amounts of financial instability. His single mother could often barely take care of him and by the time he was nine, Chaplin had been sent to a workhouse to provide him with labor and food so that he may survive. Chaplin had to learn very early on that the world does not care if you live or die, but simply if you learn to fight against the inevitable struggle you can come out successful. He was subjected to child labor as the only alternative to death, and on top of that, by the time he was fourteen, his mother had been committed to an insane asylum. Unfortunately this was the late 1800’s early 1900’s and mental health was akin to insanity and they could not help her. Eventually her health deteriorated further into a dementia-like state and she died when Charlie was only 21. 

Despite his financial situation and the health of his mother, Chaplin spent the better part of his childhood and teen years pursuing his dream in the performing arts. He would do tours of music halls and work as a stage actor and comedian. As a nineteen-year-old, Chaplin’s efforts had paid off and he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, which gave him free passage to the United States where his success would go far beyond that of many peoples’ dreams. By the time he was 25, Chaplin began to appear in well established studios, and by the time he was 29, Charlie Chaplin was the most recognizable name in the industry. 

Chaplin as a teenager in the play ‘Sherlock Holmes’

Chaplin would go on to produce many more hit films, and occasionally he would get into trouble with the politics of the time. During the 1940s, Chaplin was labeled a communist and a man of unsightly character, and due to federal investigations and lawsuits Chaplin eventually had to move to Switzerland as his popularity sharply declined. Despite his unpopularity, Chaplin continued to write, produce, and star in several very successful films until a year before his death in 1977. 

Chaplin was dealt a very unforgiving hand at birth, but he took the opportunities available to him and refused to let an entire country cancel him. Chaplin did not care who he impressed or insulted, he simply did his craft to the best of his ability and tried to make the most out of it.

Walt Disney in 1946

So as it turns out I lied. I will be continuing this blog series for the foreseeable future and I am looking forward to writing about even more stories of inspiration. Today the topic of that story is Walt Disney.

Disney has been a household name in animation, business, and theme parks for nearly the past 100 years from when he founded The Walt Disney Company in 1923. One of the more impressive things about Walt Disney is the fact that this company is only one of many great successes. Walt by himself has the record for the most Academy Awards earned by an individual, with 22 Oscars and 59 nominations under his belt. Walt has also been given 2 Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. He is widely known as a pioneer of early American animation and is considered to be a very important historical figure. But as you can probably piece together, this did not happen overnight and nor was it without any hardships.

As a child, Walt discovered his love for drawing and was always supported and encouraged by his family. He would copy front page cartoons and do some small commissions as practice. Throughout high school he drew cartoons for the school paper often depicting patriotic images of WW1 where he also took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In September of 1918, Walt joined the Red Cross and was eventually deployed to France in November, after the armistice on the 11th.

After returning from his short and relatively uneventful time in France, Walt got his first apprenticeship at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio where he met Ub Iwerks, his lifelong friend and business partner. Unfortunately the art studio had a steadily declining revenue and was forced to lay off both Disney and Iwerks. Instead of simply finding another job to replace the one he lost, Walt and Ub decided to start their own business called Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. This was a career defining moment for young Walt who decided to take matters into his own hands and let his fate be decided by his own will. 

But like many things in life, it was a short lived venture that failed to gather even an ounce of attention from the general public. After understanding their revenue issue, Walt and Ub decided to take work elsewhere and earn some money to support their venture at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was here that Walt wanted to integrate the newer “cel animation”, but the company refused to change from their “cut-out style animation”. In response, Walt simply left the company and made another business called Laugh-O-Gram with a fellow co-worker, Fred Harman. Disney was not about to let some two-bit company exec tell him his idea was trash, especially when his own opinion on the matter was starkly in opposition. Disney knew what had to be done to further his own passions and reach the visions he had set out for himself. 

With this new company Walt would produce a short film series called Alice’s Wonderland based off of the ever so popular books. Unfortunately he could not get it to sell and had to close down his animation studio. But by some stroke of luck, Walt was able to find New York film distributor, Margaret J. Winkler, who contracted Walt for this animated series with the potential for two additional seasons to be produced, and Walt subsequently founded The Walt Disney Company to produce these upcoming seasons. 

A few years later, Mickey Mouse was created and the rest is history. Walt had finally created his animation empire all based off of his passion for drawing and cartoons. An empire that would rise to the power of a monopoly worth billions. There are quite a few things that could’ve changed this outcome, and who knows how much luck he needed for his plans to work. The point is that if Walt never even gave himself a chance and gave up early Disney would not be called Disney. Walt didn’t know if he was going to be successful or not, he simply did what he wanted to do because he loved to do it and as a result he somehow finagled his way to the 1%.

Director Steven Spielberg and his father Arnold

I am happy and sad to say that this will be my last blog post on this topic. So, for such an occasion I thought the analysis of Steven Spielberg’s life would be appropriate as he was on my list to write about and I never got around to it. Spielberg is considered to be one of the best movie directors of all time and is currently the highest paid director beating out the likes of Michael Bay, the Russo brothers, and many more. As you can probably guess, he didn’t get there overnight. He held a sustained passion for which he would not let go under any circumstances. 

As a young child, Spielberg had practically no ambition, like most children, but at the age of 12 he made his first film. A home movie production of a train wreck, in which he used his very own toy trains. Spielberg continued on to then film more of his amateur 8mm films. As a boy scout, Spielberg completed his photography merit badge by filming a nine minute cowboy 8mm film called The Last Gunfight. It sounds very cheesy, however, this can be considered the start of a very fruitful career. He took the opportunity to apply his passion to his current “work” by adapting a merit badge for photography to the big screen. A year later, Spielberg created another film, a forty minute long war film called Escape to Nowhere that was solely composed of his high school friends. He had entered the film into a local film festival and won first prize, which in turn motivated him to make several more 8mm films throughout his teenage years. 

During his senior year of high school, Spielberg and his family had moved from Phoenix, AZ to Saratoga, CA where his parents would get divorced, leaving Spielberg to move to LA with his father. At this point in his life, Spielberg had become hard set on becoming a movie director, so moving to LA gave him the opportunity to pursue this goal through higher education. Unfortunately passion and school work often do not intersect as one is usually given up for the other, and in this case nothing would stop Spielberg from pursuing his dreams. So he applied to his dream school, University of Southern California’s film school, where he was promptly rejected for his C average in high school. He could’ve given up and said that fate has concluded his own ineptitude as a director, however something as simple as being rejected from a school should not be the reason for failure and Spielberg understood this. He then applied twice more to the same school with the same outcome: rejection.

Steven Spielberg (left) on the set of Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks (Right)

He then later applied and got accepted to California State University, Long Beach. During his time there he would take up an intern position at Universal Studios’ editing department, where he was given the opportunity to write and direct a short film for theatrical release, a twenty-six minute 35mm film called Amblin’. The film had won a number of awards and had caught the eye of studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg. Sheinberg then offered Spielberg a seven year contract, which was eagerly accepted. Making Spielberg the youngest director ever to be offered a long term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Spielberg dropped out of college and the rest is history. 

We will never know if Spielberg would be the same man today if he had gotten accepted into his dream school, but we do know that he found the place where his talents were recognized and appreciated by his peers. He didn’t let his high school bullies, or college board, or anyone else dictate his actions or his passions. He knew what he was passionate about and simply persevered in the face of failure. If you were to take anything away from these ten blog posts it should be the common theme across all of my posts, perseverance is the greatest ally to success.

Thomas Edison, American Inventor

Thomas Edison is one of the most recognizable names in all of innovation. He holds more than a thousand patents (1084 to be exact) and has developed many life altering technologies that can only be described as an evolution of life. The only person to succeed Edison is Lowell Wood, who in 2015 obtained his 1085th patent at the age of 74.  Edison may sound like a guy who has it all figured out and he is. He is that very person. However, he still has faced and overcame failure to achieve success over and over again, more than a thousand times. His failure is different from the others because for him failure is part of the driving process behind innovation.

Failing forward is a common theme of keeping your head up and pushing through while learning from your mistakes and failures. Thomas Ava Edison took this to the extreme in an era where this was not common knowledge. Many times he would be working on one project and sees a problem to be fixed by simply inventing something else to make his other invention run better, smoother, or just work in general. Iron extracting was one of those issues. Many of Edison’s inventions in the 1880s relied heavily on iron and Edison became very distraught at the cost of it. So he sought to create his own solution to the problem, a low grade iron pulverizing plant to mass produce the element of value. Unfortunately before he could get it to work efficiently, new iron mining regions opened up reducing the price of iron and losing Edison a hefty sum worth time, equipment, and money. But just like with failing forward, Edison went on to utilize aspects of this failed plant for concrete production which became one of his major entrepreneurial successes. 

Thomas Edison’s First Lightbulb

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” A quote that effectively surmises Edison’s mindset. He doesn’t see failure as actual failure, but rather as a note from the universe that you simply need to change something before continuing. He was a man who faced constant failure in his day to day life and his profession. He tinkered with something until it worked and never considered every time it didn’t work to mean failure. Every single one of his inventions more or less followed this pattern of failure until success, and many people would’ve given up when they could not engineer their own solution. Edison spent tens of thousands of hours creating revision after revision just for one invention and then proceeded to do this a thousand more times. He was a man with a great aptitude for learning and a tenacity or stubbornness that would constantly thwart failure till the day he died.

As Edison once said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” So whatever you do, never give up on your dreams and always find a way to succeed because that is the very secret many people overlook. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”

Jerry Seinfeld performs at New York’s Beacon Theatre during his Netflix special “23 Hours to Kill.”

Jerry Seinfeld is a world renowned actor and comedian who was the pinnacle of comedy for quite sometime during and after the release of his hit comedy show about “nothing”, Seinfeld, in the 1990s leading into the 2000’s. Jerry’s success is very apparent, but his life before Seinfeld is very much an enigma for many people. Like many successful people, Jerry Seinfeld had pursued his career and passion through thick and thin to get to where he is today. He had to face his own mistakes and failures and come out the other side having learned from the experience. Now, his career in comedy might seem distant and unrelated to the passions of a great multitude of people, however, the attitudes and mental state of Jerry during his series of drawbacks can help us glean useful feedback for our own passion journey.

Jerry had always enjoyed comedy ever since he was a little kid who would follow his dad around continually writing jokes. He just loved to make people laugh and he found a lifelong passion for doing so. Like many comedians, Jerry Seinfeld got his start by doing stand-up for various comedy clubs around New York City. And as you can probably guess, it didn’t go so well at first. The night of his college graduation, Jerry didn’t celebrate with a party, but rather he spent the night doing his first ever stand-up routine at a local comedy club in NYC. When he got on stage, he completely crapped the bed. He had forgotten all of his lines and proceeded to stand there dumbfounded, and eventually he was able to force some random words that were kindly received by the audience. Although many would consider this to be the defining moment that would show the world and oneself that this may not be the right career, Jerry took it as inspiration to do what he couldn’t the first time. He dedicated himself to the proper preparation and lifestyle of a stand-up comedian.

Jerry Seinfeld on an episode of “Benson”

Jerry went on and continued to perform at club after club, which miraculously led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. This was a great resume booster, but unfortunately it was nothing more. A few years later in 1980, Jerry got a part in the scripted comedy show Benson, and he was promptly fired after four episodes due to creative differences. He only found out when he showed up for a script reading to discover they had removed him from the show and neglected to tell him. For Jerry this was very disheartening and rightfully so. He had finally made it to stage and was told he had no place there as his lack of acting and comedic skill was overwhelmingly apparent. Instead of quitting or taking time off, Jerry began the plans for a new show that he would be able to write for and act in, but for the time being, he steadily continued his stand-up work.

Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”

Throughout the 1980s, Jerry would go on to slowly grow his career with increasingly frequent appearances on late night shows and eventually his first comedy special on HBO. Then using this momentum, Jerry was able to bring his new show, Seinfeld, to fruition in 1988 with the help of co-writer Larry David. Ever since then, the rest is history as Jerry blew up and became one of the largest comedians at the time and continues to be today. Looking back, if Jerry had thought his first night of stand-up was one of failure rather than a successful learning experience to further push his skill development, we might have never had the generational trauma of people constantly trying to impersonate Jerry or recite lines from the show. Jokes aside, Jerry became extremely successful by simply doing and working on his passion at a slow and steady pace, and by mitigating his failures by just looking at them from a different angle. Of course not everyone’s dreams will work out in the end, but you’ll never know if you turn away at the first sign of failure.

Colonel Sanders late 1970s

Although Colonel Sanders has sadly passed away in 1980, he remains as a pop culture icon for his restaurants and his legacy is strongly carried on. Many people know and recognize Colonel Sanders as the face and founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, but they have no idea about the story behind it nor the state of his life prior to founding KFC.

Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 near Henryville, Indiana. His father passed away when Sanders was 5 years old and his mother then had to take up a job at a cannery to provide for the family. This left young Sanders to feed and take care of his two younger siblings. The young kids often had to forage for food during their mother’s multi day work shifts and learn to survive on their own. By the age of 7, Sanders was reportedly excelling at cooking for his siblings. He had become very skilled cooking with bread and vegetables, and he was quickly learning with meat (haha funny sentence lol). 

By the age of 10, Sanders had gotten himself a job as a farmhand to support his family, and when his mother remarried two years later, Sanders had developed a tumultuous relationship with his stepfather and promptly dropped out of 7th grade the next year to live and work on a nearby farm. At age 13, he left home for Indianapolis to work painting horse carriages, and then at 14 he went to work on a farm in south Indiana. In the first few years of his life, Sanders had worked many different labor intensive jobs and would further continue this sporadic and diverse career.

For the next 25 odd years of his life, Harland Sanders would jump from job to job and venture to venture in hopes of only having a stable job to pay the bills. He would be fired for insubordination multiple times and ended more than one gig (including his law career) through beating the living crap out of people he did not agree with. To be fair he also left many jobs on his own volition in order to seek better opportunities. Finally in 1920, Sanders had established a ferry boat company that became an instant success. A few years later, he decided to cashout his shares in the company to fund a venture manufacturing acetylene or carbide lamps that was promptly dismantled after Delco introduced the electric lamp. Sanders then went on to find yet another job that would let him go when they closed their doors. 

Colonel Sanders’ North Corbin Restaurant

Then what happened next was probably the most important thing ever to happen to Sanders, in 1924, he would be very lucky to randomly meet the general manager of the Standard Oil company of Kentucky. This man gave Sanders the opportunity to manage a service station (a gas station and restaurant combo) in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Unfortunately this only lasted for 6 years as the service station went under as a result of the Great Depression. Sanders was then approached by the Shell Oil Company to run one of their service stations in Corbin, Kentucky, where he would be involved in a shootout, commissioned as a Kentucky colonel (and recommissioned in 1950) because the Governor loved his fried chicken (how he became Colonel Sanders), and continually tried to perfect his fried chicken recipe all while gaining local popularity at an unnatural rate. Sanders moved on to acquire a motel as well and, as fate would have it, both the motel and his restaurant were destroyed in a November 1939 fire. 

Sanders rebuilt the motel with a 140 seated restaurant add-on, and during this time he would finally perfect his secret fried chicken recipe. Unfortunately World War 2 had started and as gas was rationed and the tourism industry dried up forcing Sanders to close his motel in 1941. For the next 12 years, Sanders worked managing cafeterias for the government, and it was only until 1952 that any mention of a fried chicken franchise escaped Sanders’ lips. This was the founding of the first KFC in South Salt Lake, Utah. Within the first year, the restaurant reported more than triple its average annual sales and it was clear that this was the result of Sanders’ chicken. Soon after, many other restaurants heard about the success and decided to join the franchise. By 1964, 12 years later, KFC had expanded to more than 600 locations and became one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally as well, with stores in Canada, Mexico, UK, and Jamaica. At the age of 73, Colonel Sanders was finally successful and accomplished, and he sold the KFC Corporation for around $2 million (~$16.5 million today) and kept the Canadian KFC Operation for himself.

Sander’s life was full of bumps, bruises, and hardships. He had spent the first sixty years of his life hopping from one thing to the next as he was met with seemingly every failure and economic mishap possible. Yet by chance, Sander’s golden goose finally fell into his lap and he proceeded to become successful in the one thing he had been proficient at as a kid: making food. This should serve as a lesson to not let your age define your success. Just because you spent the first 30 years of your life accomplishing nothing does not mean it too late to start or that the next 30 years will be just more of the same. You are never too old for success as long as you persevere.

Elon Musk at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018

Welcome back to another successful story of failure. For the past few posts, I had focused on some rather dated, last generation examples and I thought I would cover someone more current. Elon Musk may seem like he had it all since he was a child, and with his almost 94 Billion dollar net worth, alongside his many companies, it may seem like he just got lucky and everything fell into place for him to succeed. However, this is not a feat done without great effort and tenacity.

As a child, Elon was born and grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 9 and he chose to live with his dad in the Suburbs of Pretoria, a decision he subsequently regretted. Elon would then go on to spend 5 months in academia at The University of Pretoria, while waiting for his Canadian Passport to leave his estranged father and seek greater opportunities in North America. Once in Canada, Musk attended Queen’s University and then later attended the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. 

In his business ventures, Elon Musk had originally tried to join many emerging tech start-ups and companies but he was promptly rejected every time. Despite these constant rejections, Elon decided to hire himself and start his own innovative tech company, ZIP2, along with the help of his brother, Kimbal Musk, and Greg Kouri. ZIP2 was all about putting everything in a phone book online for ease of use. This idea did not gain very much traction with investors until Musk implemented a very early form of google maps to act as an internet city guide for tourists and non-tourists alike. This is when the big bucks started rolling in and Elon took this as an opportunity to become the company’s CEO. Unfortunately, Elon was ousted by the board of directors and was subsequently given a much smaller role in the company. Deciding to cut his losses, Musk left the company after it was sold three years later in 1999 and he received a handsome 22 million dollars for his seven percent share. 

Elon Musk, Maye Musk (Mother), Kimbal Musk (Brother) and Tosca Musk (Sister) at Kimbal’s Wedding

Despite his apparent success, Musk wanted more and proceeded to invest nearly half of his ZIP2 money into a new project called X.com, only one month after the sale of ZIP2. This new company was yet another innovative, new way of interacting on the internet. It was a financial and e-mail payment company that would eventually become one of his greatest early successes, PayPal. At first PayPal was considered to be one of the worst business ideas ever and it was even voted the worst business idea of the year in 1999. But Elon and his business partner, Max Levchin, began to focus on the idea of an electronic wallet and eventually gained enough investors to go public in 2002. Unfortunately, Elon was ousted as CEO yet again by the board over disagreements about the future platform of PayPal, but this time he was allowed to remain on the board. Despite being dethroned as head of the company, Elon still received 165 million dollars from the sale of PayPal to Ebay.

Musk would also go on to create Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) with an initial 100 million dollar self investment from his PayPal money and would again be ridiculed by critics about the feasibility of such a project. Many considered what Elon Musk was trying to do was simply out of his reach and many expected the company to fail within a few years. Musk’s electric car company Tesla was in the same boat when it started out. The experts and prominent figures in the auto industry were very vocal about their disdain for Tesla and were certain that the company would fail. On both accounts the critics were nearly right about Musk’s enterprises when the 2008 stock market crash happened and both SpaceX and Tesla had lost all profitability. Instead of choosing one company over the other, Elon decided to risk it all and poured all of his fortune into the two companies. A risky move that left him bankrupt, but would ultimately pay off. During this time, Musk resorted to his infamous 20 hour work days and would sleep on the factory floor until both companies had survived the economic peril. Leading to two of the most innovative companies today that are currently changing the world as we speak. One in commercial space flight and the other in creating affordable electric cars to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Elon had faced many challenges and obstacles on his path to be where he is today, and he is still facing challenges and obstacles as he continues to grow his entrepreneurial empire. Elon was not afraid to abandon a project and let it tie him down as he was undercut by board members as he knew that we would be able to recreate success at increasingly larger intervals. Elon was not about to walk away from his projects at the first sign of failure, but rather he doubled down and persevered his way to success. We can learn a lot from Elon Musk’s past escapades and potentially even more from his future ones.