Madame CJ Walker

Hello my dear readers, i am going to share some information about my favorite interpreneur Madame CJ Walker, she born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta Louisiana to former slaves, Owen and Minerva Breedlove. Her parents died during a yellow fever epidemic when she was 7 years old. When she was ten years old, her older sister and her moved to Vicksburg to obtain work. At 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape her sister’s abusive husband. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Lelia, and two years later her husband died. She moved in with her brothers in St. Louis, Missouri and worked doing laundry for a dollar a day. While living in St. Louis, she joined St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church; this helped develop her speaking, interpersonal and organizational skills. She remarried in 1894 to John Davis, this marriage lasting until about 1903.

In the early 1900s, Sarah claims to have had a dream that inspired her to start her own business. She would tell reporters, her dream was of a large black man that appeared to her and gave her a formula for curing baldness. The early 1900s lacked indoor plumbing and consequently, many people only washed their hair once or twice a month. This caused dandruff and other scalp afflictions that soon caused problems such as baldness.

Sarah, being inspired by this dream set out to become what the Guinness Book of World Records would later call, the first woman to ever become a millionaire. In 1905, Sarah moved to Denver, Colorado, to work as a sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Sarah, mindful of her dreams, took a sample of Malone’s formula to a Denver pharmacist who helped her formulate her own “Wonderful Hair Grower” products.Soon afterward she met and married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman. In 1906 she changed her name to “Madame C. J. Walker”, and started the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products for Black women. Critics claimed she was trying to match the black woman’s hair to the white styles, to which she retorted, “My products are simply to help black women take proper care of their hair and promote growth.”

         Madame Walker and her husband began touring the country to promote her new products, while daughter, Lelia, maintained the mail-order business in Denver. In 1908 to they opened a beauty training school, the ‘Lelia College for Walker Hair Culturists’, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. In 1910, they moved their operation to Indianapolis, the country’s largest manufacturing base at the time, so they could have access to the eight major railway systems located there, for shipping their products all over the USA.

         Later in 1910, her husband and her divorced, and Madame Walker turned over operations to some trusted key principles, while still maintaining ownership. By 1917, Madame C. J. Walker’s hair care and cosmetic company became the largest business in the United States owned by a black person.

        A notable quote by Madame Walker:  “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there, I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”And probably the most inspirational “There is no royal, flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard.” She became active as a philanthropist and in the NAACP, helping to make lynching a crime after the St Louis riots of 1917. Her company thrived providing jobs to many black women as sales people. Her inspiration and generosity was resounded through organizations like the YMCA, YWCA, orphanages, churches, and the NAACP. On Sunday, May 25, 1919, Madam Walker died at Villa Lewaro, her mansion in New York, from kidney failure, and the result of hypertension. Her daughter Lelia succeeded her as president of the C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Lin Rong San

There are a lot of people in this world who have had the good fortune to become millionaires or billionaires. These people have made their money in a lot of different ways. They may have been just born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They have made some good investments. Or maybe it was that great idea that they had for a product. Some have started businesses that took off like lightening and made them rich. And some have none several things to earn their riches. Lin Rong San is one of these people. This is probably the reason why he was named the seventh richest person in Taiwan.

So what makes him and other millionaires and billionaires different from other people? Why do they get rich and others do not. Because entrepreneurs like this one, have something different then the average person does. They have determination. They have persistence. And they have faith in their dreams. They have the ability to go out there and make their dreams a reality. They do what it takes to get things done. Entrepreneurs like this billionaire from Taiwan do not listen to the words, not possible, or your crazy. They believe in themselves and take that belief and run with it. Exactly what this entrepreneur from Taiwan did.

He came into this world in 1939. His family was living in Taipei.  He was a child destined to do great things. He began by producing vegetables and selling rice to make a living. But it did not take him long to move on to better and bigger things. He started generating property before he was thirty. He founded the Union Bank of Taiwan. He still has holdings in the bank today.  He also published the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times. Both of these are newspapers that focus on the Pan-Blue coalition. This is a political alliance of the Republic of China. These were all very successful business ventures. He was soon known and recognized all over Taiwan and even into the United States.He eventually found himself involved in the political side of life. He eventually became a legislator for Taiwan. He was an advisor for two past presidents. He also gave money to different foundations and actually started the Lin Rong-San Foundation of Culture and Social Welfare.

He is married and has 4 children. But what is most known about him is, today, at the age of 70, he is worth over one billion dollars. Definitely a pretty good chunk of money for a man that started out working selling vegetables and rice. Obviously he made a great choice when he decided to go into real estate. Because if he had not went for his dreams, where would he be today. Maybe still selling vegetables, just getting by. Would he still have been happy, maybe, but he would not have filled his destiny or lived his dreams. 

Uday Kotak

There are quite a few more billionaires in the world than you may think.  Every country seems to have their fair share.  Even though this is the case the economy has been rough on everyone, including the billionaires.  They lost money as well but perhaps they did not feel it as much.  India boosts a very successful entrepreneur who drudged up the determination and passion to take a business and turn it into a billion dollar operation.  His name is Uday Kotak.  He is 50 years of age and he is a self-made billionaire.  He made his money in one of the most risky businesses of all, investment banking.  He became the pride of Mumbai and turned finance in India upside down and inside out.  This young man who grew up in India living on hopes and dreams became a magnate in banking and achieved success beyond his wildest dreams.          

       He attended Bombay University where he obtained his four-year degree.  He also received a Masters in Business Administration from UOB Science.  After college he joined with a tycoon who made his fortune in tractors and created a finance company.  Over the years the company would adapt to offering new financial options such as bill discounting and auto finance.  In 1991 his company took control of FICOM a major marketing network in retail.  The very next year they jumped into Funds Syndication.  By 1995 the company began to divide into divisions.  The Banking division for investments became Kotak Mahindra Capitol Company.  Many more separate branches were to follow.

         In 1998 he begins the mutual market fund in an asset management company.  A few years later and they were in the life insurance business as well.  The same year they launched their first brokerage site online.  In 2003 the finance company changes over to a commercial bank.  He holds the honor of being the first company in India to accomplish this.  The next year he creates the India Growth Fund.  This is a private equity program.  In 2005 a real estate fund is incorporated.  He continues to maintain a wide range of financial options for those who desire it.

Along the way he was able to get married and have a few children.  His dedication and persistence has won him admiration throughout the Indian financial society.  His financial empire has won numerous awards over recent years.  Some of the awards were for being one of the best employers in India.  Others were for being the best local bank.  He took a small finance company and turned it into a financial conglomerate.  That is why he is considered one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his generation.  He was part of the financial change in India and he paved the way for many of the alterations.  His passion for finance was equaled for the last quarter of a century in his country.  He introduced the world of investments and financial options to India in an entirely new way.  In the end he is the true definition of success.

Joyce Hall

                            

           Joyce Clyde Hall was born on August 29th 1891 in David City in Nebraska. He disliked the name Joyce so usually adapted the name “J.C”. His father was a minister and from the age of 8 started working small sales jobs to help out with the family income. In 1905 along with his brothers, he decided to spend $150 on postcards which he sold to the salespeople that sold books to the shop in which he was working. In 1908 he set up the Norfolk Post Card Company in Norfolk, Nebraska, and he later went on to found The Hallmark Card Company which led to him becoming a millionaire.

          When he was 18 years old, with a couple of shoe boxes full of postcards, Hall moved to Kansas City in Missouri in 1910, the time at which the Hallmark Cards Company was founded. By 1913 along with his brothers he was running a store that sold postcards and greetings cards. In 1915 the store got burned, but later this store went on to become the current Halls department store in Kansas City.

        After the store got burned down Hall went on to buy an engraving business. After this he started to print his own cards that were marketed with the brand name of Hallmark. His business was better than it had ever been and was successful even during the period of the Great Depression, a time of serious economic hardship. His business was going so well that not one worker had to be laid off during this period. It was in 1928 in which the company began using the name Hallmark. They named their company after the hallmark symbol that goldsmiths used in London in the past. They began printing this name on the back of all the cards they produced. In 1931 William E. Coutts Company Ltd, a major Canadian card making company became affiliated with Hall Brothers.

In 1954 the name Halls Brothers was changed to Hallmark, and in 1958 the William E Coutts Company Ltd was taken over by Hallmark, and until the 1990s the Canadian section of the Hallmarks Company was called “Coutts Hallmark”.The Hallmark cards company is currently still based in Kansas City, and is the biggest manufacturer of greetings cards in America. In fact it is estimated that around 50% of all greetings card that are sent in America are manufactured by the Hallmark Company. Hall retired in 1966 and died in Kansas City in 1982.

Boris Berezovsky

Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born on 23rd Janurary 1946 is a mathematician and is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is most well known for serving under the administration of Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s as a politician and a media tycoon. He was a member of Yeltsin’s inner circle towards the end of his presidency when he served as the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council and he was good friends with Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko. In 1989 he worked for AutoVAZ. In 1992 LogoVAZ was set up which was a joint-stock company with Berezovsky’s AutoVAZ. 

       Over four years it grew to become one of the biggest private enterprises in Russia and in 1994 he was made Chairman of the Board of Directors when LogoVaz was made into a holding company.He became a billionaire during the period of Russia’s rush to capitalism where he seized state assets for low costs. He became the owner of the Sibneft oil company and was the majority shareholder in ORT, Russia’s foremost television channel which he used to put across propaganda before the presidential election of 1996. Instead of putting in money into the businesses he took over such as Sibneft, ORT, Avtovaz, the Omsk Oil Refinery, Brtsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk and the National Sports Fund, he used all of their profits. He used some of this money to fund Vladimir Putin’s party. Putin took over ORT to stop the political ambitions of people like Berezovsky who were highly disliked by the public in Russia.

       When Putin became president Berezovsky fled Russia as he was blamed for making $13 million US dollars through fraudulent means from a regional government. He now has political asylum in the UK and has since said he wants to topple Putin “by force”. He has now been linked with Alexander Litvinenko, Akhmed Zakayev and Alex Goldfarb who are known as “the London Circle” of Russian exiles. He founded the International Foundation for Civil Liberties in November 2000.

                  

In 2007 a court in Moscow found him guilty of committing massive embezzlement. He has been sentenced to six years jail time and has been instructed to repay $9 million. In addition he has been blamed for the murders of Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya who were critics of Putin’s regime. In 1994 he survived an attempt on his life and he claims there have been numerous other attempts on his life by Russia agents.

William S Paley

William Samuel Paley was born on 28th September 1901 and became a billionaire through his leadership as the chief executive for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). He helped what originally started off as a small radio network turn into the one of the leading radio and television network operations in America. Paley moved to Philadelphia in the early 1920s due to his father’s success at managing a cigar company which led to him becoming a millionaire. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and achieved a degree afterwards expecting to go into his father’s cigar business. However in 1927 his father along with some business partners bought a Philadelphia radio network that was struggling called the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. This network had 16 stations and it was the intention of Paley’s father to use the network for advertising. The network helped to double the sale of cigars made by his company and by 1928 the family had majority ownership of the network. Over the next ten years the network grew to have 114 affiliate stations.

During the Second World War Paley became friends with Edward R. Murrow who was the head of CBS’s European News. This led to him realising the potential amount of money that could be made through radio. He realised good programming was essential to selling advertising time and therefore create profit for the network. He therefore changed broadcasting business model through successful programming and by realising that advertisers were the most important factor in broadcasting. He gave network programming to affiliate stations at the best prices which allowed for the widest available distribution for programming and advertising. This consequently allowed him to charge more for the advertising time. His ability to use broadcasting to its best ability led to CBS growing into a leading world communication empire.

                       

      In 1946 CBS expanded into television and was highly successful. They also owned the Columbia Record Company and CBS Laboratories who invented vinyl discs and colour television. Over the years Paley sold off some of his stock in CBS to help expand his other interests so that when he died on 26th October 1990 he only owned nine percent of the outstanding stock. Five years later the company was bought by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and in 1999 by Viacom. Presently CBS is owned by the CBS Corporation and National Amusements is the majority owner of the company.

Pierre Omidyar

Pierre was born in Paris, France to Iranian parents. At the age of six his family left Paris and moved to the United States. Throughout high school Pierre developed an interest in computers and in 1988 graduated from Tuft’s University with a degree in Computer Science.After graduation he worked for Claris a subsidiary of Apple Computer. His expertise during this time was in software development. He, along with three friends, co-founded Ink Development Corp. which later was renamed e-shop. In 1996 the company was sold to Microsoft, but he remained fascinated by the technical challenges of online commerce.

One night, during dinner with his fiancée, she mentioned that she enjoyed collecting and trading Pez candy dispensers. Her sadness was in the lack of availability for trade in their area. This inspired Pierre to create a simple prototype on his personal web page launching an online service called auction web. The business flourished as people began to register trade goods of an unimaginable variety. The site was kept running through a small fee maintained from a sale. As expansion continued Pierre added a feedback form allowing members the ability to rate one another in 1997 the name was changed to eBay and aggressive advertising began. The company was not only a service of convenience; Pierre showed its members an incredible level of respect. His attitude shone through during a time of service interruption in which Pierre directed company managers to personally call the top 10,000 users apologizing for the inconvenience.

His unique charisma carried over to the development of the Omidyar Network. Originally the site was created as a tool to share news, information, discuss different ideas and viewpoints, collaborate on documents, post announcements, synchronize business calendars, and, in general, keep informed. At birth membership was limited but this soon changed as Pierre recognized the usefulness of its service. The rules to the site are simple; membership’s open to those who believe in making the world a better place. It’s insisted that each member show respect. Lastly, and most importantly, it is believed that everyone has something to contribute.

It can’t be denied that Pierre’s high quality ethics have greatly contributed to his success. According to Forbes Magazine, Pierre is listed as number 43 in financial worth. There is no doubt that if you factored this accompanied with moral value Pierre Omidyar would be listed within the top ten.