We share the following anecdotes in the spirit
of inspiration and motivation we all need from time to time. Please enjoy
each and pass them on to others in that same spirit.
UCLA law school drop
out Carly Fiorina worked as a Hewlett-Packard shipping clerk. Years
later, in 1999, she became the first female CEO of a blue-chip
company as she was appointed chief executive officer of
Hewlett-Packard.
Nicknamed Kinko by his childhood friends
because of his red Afro haircut, Paul Orfalea was a dyslexic who
failed second grade and was erroneously put in a school for the
mentally retarded for six weeks. He grew up to create Kinko’s,
the most successful photocopy chain in the United States.
Garth Brooks worked as a bouncer at Tumbleweeds, a nightclub in
Stillwater, Oklahoma, as others sang their songs. However, Garth got
the last laugh as he went on to become a world-renowned country
singer, selling more than 100 million albums in the United States
alone.
A San Francisco department store refused to exchange a pair of
Levi’s jeans for a different size for Donald Fisher in 1968.
Frustrated by the experience, the real estate developer opened his
own store specializing in jeans and called it The Gap. The
store quickly grew into one of the most successful specialty chains
in retailing history.
Dr. Seuss’s first bookwas rejected by twenty-seven
publishing houses, and Seuss considered burning the manuscript he
called And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. He
went on to author more than forty best-selling children’s books
including The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole
Christmas.
Sam Walton, the owner of fifteen Ben Franklin self-service
hardware store franchises running under the name Walton’s Five &
Dime, proposed opening discount stores in small towns in 1960,
but Ben Franklin executives rejected the idea. Undaunted, he and his
brother Bud opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers,
Arkansas, founding what would later become the largest and most
successful discount store empire on earth!
Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker
and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm
specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting
services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as
change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting,
leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries,
including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and
manufacturing. He can be reached at 800-886-2MAX or by visiting
http://www.AchieveMax.com.
Publication Date: Spring 2002
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