6 Business Success Stories That Will Inspire You Immediately

Every business has some sort of history and every founder has a story. Some successful businesspeople have started with nothing, but today, they have almost everything. Success is not always easy to achieve and it usually takes a ton of determination and handwork to finally be victorious.

Success stories of those who rose from rags to riches is always inspiring. However, some people have attained success in the most unusual ways and have experienced things some will never go through.

Here are 6 business success stories that will inspire you immediately:

1. Chris Gardner

If you happen to be a Will Smith fan and have watched the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness’, you may be familiar with Chris Gardner. The film was based on his story. He was physically abused by his stepfather as a child and was placed in a foster home. The problems and woes he had before did not leave him even as he grew up, married and become a father.

Even as a grown up, he still struggled with homelessness and at the same time, trying to be a responsible father to his son. In the movie, his struggles are all evident, but his rise to riches is inspirational. The lessons he learned from his mother became his motivation to build himself and his business tenaciously. He became the CEO of his stockbrokerage firm called Gardner Rich & Co through uncanny perseverance.

2. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most famous and influential women entrepreneurs and celebrities. She is known for her multi-award-winning talk show, the Oprah Winfrey Show. Before she became this famous, she also experienced struggles and pains. She was born into poverty to a teenage single mother. When she was nine years old, she was sexually abused. This wasn’t just a horror she faced during her childhood as it happened again when she was 13 years old. With years of suffering from abuse, she ran away from home.

While she was in high school, she became the night time radio co-anchor and was later transferred to the daytime talk-show because of her incredible ad-lib delivery. Eventually, she was discovered and offered her own talk show. Her talk show went national and had earned her a million dollars. Since then, she has created a more intimate confessional form of media communication and has earned respect and admiration of many because of her rags to riches story.

3. Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie is an American industrialist that founded the Carnegie Steel, a company that produced more steel than all of Great Britain. He was born to a poor handloom weaver in Scotland. He lived in poverty in a one-room house and often slept just to forget how hungry he was. His family migrated to the USA to fight hunger and starvation. He started working at age 13 as a bobbin in a cotton mill.

In his spare time, he read works of famous historical Scottish heroes. He also became a telegraph messenger boy and eventually became an operator because from his hard work. He ended up expanding his knowledge through reading books. He got a job in the railroad industry and learned about the business in general. It was during this time when he began investing in steel and oil companies that he began earning huge returns. Having learned the business and industry of railroad making, he founded the Carnegie Steel Corporation in 1889.

4. Dhirubhai Ambani

Not all success stories come from the USA. India also has its share of rags to riches heroes. Dhirubhai Ambani is the founder of Reliance Industries. He may be rich and the founder of a massive company today, but his road to success wasn’t easy. Even as a young boy, he already possessed the skills of a successful entrepreneur. He would buy a tin of groundnut oil on credit and sell it on the roadside at retail. He earned few rupees for profit and on weekends, he would set up bhajia (Indian snack) stalls at village fairs to make ends meet at home.

When he was 17, he worked as a dispatch clerk. A few years later, the company became a distributor of Shell products and he was promoted to manage the company’s oil filling station. During this time, he dreamt of him having his own oil refinery, which he later realized with his petrochemical ventures. When he was back in India, he ended up starting a textile mill. Later on, he realized his dream of having an oil refinery and became the founder of Reliance Industries.

5. Li Ka-shing

Li Ka-shing was considered as one of the richest men in Asia. Before he had that title, he was just a 15-year old boy who quit school. The Hongkong business magnate, investor and philanthropist once worked in a plastic trading company.

He also became a salesman just to make ends meet. Being the hard worker that he is, he controlled his own destiny, which led to success. Today, Li Ka-shing, the founder of Cheung Kong Group, is operating in 55 countries and employs 260,000 people worldwide.

6. Colonel Harland Sanders

Maybe a lot of people doesn’t recognize the name, but seeing the picture of an old man with a clean, crisp white suit, black string tie, and a walking cane, you would eventually recognize him as the famous person behind the “finger licking good” Kentucky Fried Chicken. He is none other than Colonel Harland Sanders. The people mentioned earlier may have achieved success at a young age, but the founder of KFC had achieved success when he was 65 years old.

Throughout the working years of his life, he struggled with family issues and poverty. When he retired, he received one hundred fifty dollars from social security. He used his retirement money and bought chicken wanting to share his fried chicken recipe to everyone. He had no culinary background, but his chicken recipe was loved by everyone who tried it. From there, KFC was born and it has now become one of the most well-known food chains in the world.

Conclusion

Every success story at some point began as an ordinary person. Not to mention, everyone in the world has the same 24 hours in a day. In this post, I shared with you 6 business success stories that will inspire you immediately.