The Only Key To Success: Every Broken Winged Bird Must Learn How To Fly

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

-Langston Hughes

Life tries to beat them out of us. Society and its expectations always succeeds in convincing us to muffle them. But they are never really beaten out. And they are never really muffled. For once we have dreams, once there is something that the soul yearns for; there is really no turning back.

If you don’t go after your dreams, they shall always be there to torment you. If you don’t go after each and every one of them, there shall always be a hole in your heart to remind you that there is a part of you that is missing. In short, you will never really know how success tastes unless you tap your dreams and let them fly into reality.

Hold onto your dreams, because they are the only light at the corner of every dark tunnel of life. They are blueprints to satisfaction and completeness in life. They are the only keys to success in life. Without them, you are nothing more than the trillions of people who simply drift through life.

The only key to true success is allowing your dreams to merge with reality. Nothing else will suffice, no matter how successful society thinks you are. Nothing else will really make you stand out. Nothing will make you special except your dreams.

If you have tried to muffle them, if you have made the mistake of letting other trample upon them, if you have tried to drown their screams, if you have tried to hide them; it is time that you stopped. It is time that you learnt to embrace each and every one of them because they are you.

It is time to learn how to fly on their wings!

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Taking Off the Gloves Is Sometimes The Only Way To Success In Life

In life, it is good to take calculated risks. That is the intelligent thing to do. Not to push too hard. Not to come on too strong. To pay the necessary respects. To observe the expected courtesies. To take the right and sure way. To be patient.

Sadly, that is not what leads to extraordinary levels of success. Giving punches the right way and taking the methodical approach to life sometimes just doesn't give it a knockout. It sometimes just doesn't work. And if you have tried it and it doesn’t, it may be time that you took off the gloves and went after the thing you want with a vengeance.

Taking off the gloves may not guarantee that you will not get hurt in the process. You may get disqualified. You opponent may take off his and it may lead to a bloody fight. It may also seem rash or irrational. But what is the fun in taking a boring route that does not give you what you want?

Sometimes letting your all out is what is necessary to get what you want. Most times, it is the only thing capable of allowing you to shine in your full glory. Because sometimes, only momentum can win the day. It is sometimes the only sure road to success.

Is there something you want? How badly do you want it?

Writing Your Success Story: When Things Don't Work Out, Do You Break?

Every great success story is usually preceded by a breakdown. Things don’t always seem to work out at some point. And the lengths of these points vary: it takes a year for some, months for others and years for most.

The only reason we usually end up talking about them though is because of the simple fact that the writers of these success stories never stopped writing when things seemed hardest.

The reason we like to see them, to hear them, to watch them and to want to be like them is simply because despite the periods of hardship that these people faced, they were always able to come back and complete their stories on their terms. That is why they are inspiring.

You have probably heard the story of Edison so many times that you don’t really appreciate what it means to try and fail 10,000 times. It is failure after failure and trial after trial. Talking about it is easy. Writing about it is also easy. But failing those many times and still having the courage to try again, that isn’t.

Failure is nasty. It’s bitter. It’s disgusting. But success isn’t. And the only way to get success is to get up and try again and again until you finally have a taste of the success that you want from life.

The Steve Jobs' success story has been termed one that can only happen in America. But we wouldn’t really be celebrating the guy as one of the greatest personalities of this century if he had stopped at building the first Apple machine. People wouldn’t be repeating his story so many times if it weren’t for the fact that he kept on investing in Pixar over and over again despite the fact that the company wasn’t making any money.

If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had the financial muscle to make a total comeback to Apple and create the bounce-back of the century. And none of that would really have happened if he had decided to simply enjoy his wealth after being kicked out of Apple.

Michael Jordan is arguably one of the greatest sportsmen ever. Years after his retirement, he still makes over $80 million a year. But what really makes his story so wonderful to read and what makes him command so much respect is the fact that he had it in him to bounce back in style.

After being kicked out from high school team, he did the work and was able to be picked the next year. After his father died, he retired; but he found himself strong enough to go back to the game he loved. That first year back he didn’t really win the title, and many people were jeering saying that he was done and that his retirement had undone him. But he bounced back. He didn’t break. He bounced back and finished up his story. Time and time again when he felt it was incomplete, he went back and completed it. That is why many people consider him a legend.

Colonel Sanders had really done much in his life. He had tried a lot and failed. His wife left him because she thought he was a loser who could hold no job. He tried many ventures which succeeded for a time and then went under. He did this until he reached his retirement age. He received his retirement check from the US government as something to keep him comfortable as he waited to die.

To all, there was really nothing more to be done. He was old, he had lived well and had enjoyed some relative successes. Only he knew that there was still something more in him. There was more to his life story other than the “normal” life he had lived. Things had seemed to come to a standstill, but that is when he picked himself up and completed his success story by establishing one of the most successful franchising enterprises in American history. A billion dollar corporation resulted just out of an old man’s determination to write the last lines of his story on his own terms.

Things won’t always work out. Good things will not always happen. Things will not always happen perfectly according to the little plans in your head. This is a fact. It is just the way life is. However, the question is: will you break? Will you let the little extended dry patches deny you the opportunity to write your life’s story on your terms? When things don’t work out, will you crumble?

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A Story Of Success: Rethinking What You Love

Seth Godin in The Bootstrapper’s Bible tells that story of a friend of his. She loved making things and she was good at it. She could use leftover clumps to create beautiful fabric. She could use almost any piece of fabric to create great pieces of art. She was good at it and she loved it.

Like everyone else, she had heard about how the secret to success lies in doing what you love. She loved this and so decided to start making toys and pieces for the toy industry. As Seth explains, she did all the right things right and avoided all the bad things. But she almost always seemed to get close but never really get a contract with the big manufacturers.

It was only years later that she discovered her mistake. She had chosen the wrong industry! Nobody really wanted her because the toy industry is cutthroat and the “big” fish don’t really like to encourage inventions and inventors. As Seth Godin observes: “… Toy companies work hard to keep inventors away, because they’re scared of lawsuits and the hassles of dealing with outsiders. They’re not overflowing with happy, Tom Hanks–like luminaries, looking for the next Big Idea. The toy industry is a business, and a cutthroat one.”

She had worked hard and none of it was yielding any fruit. She simply wasn’t becoming successful. Her story of success seemed elusive.

That is when she decided to go into publishing. She studied the market and the industry in general and decided that it was more open to new ideas. She developed new concepts based on what she loved and had learnt over the years. A few months down the line, her calendar concept was picked up by a publisher and what followed was over 2 million of copies of their work in print. She is experiencing success because she went back to the drawing board and rethought what she loved.

Are you doing what you love and yet still not experiencing success? Maybe it is time for a little bit of a rethinking exercise. Maybe the key to success in your life lies in thinking differently, in applying a little bit more of creativity.

Success Secrets: Your Special Problems Don’t Make you Special, Everybody Has Special Problems

You hear them all the time: all the special problems that people think guarantee them special treatment. Dysfunctional families, abusive parents, unsupportive neighbors, bad friends, bad luck, a bad economy, an unappreciative partner, a bad boss, homelessness… and the list goes on.

What these are, is simply petty excuses. They don’t make you special. They just make you like everyone else. They make you just part of the wider mass of normal human beings. Problems are everywhere, and yours don’t make you special!

There will always be someone with a worse problem and there will always be someone with a better problem. But none of that makes a difference. It is just how life is. None of that makes you deserve anyone’s pity. Because guess what, everybody thinks they deserve it too.

What really matters, and what really makes you special is the ability to deal with it. To forge on no matter how violently life pushes back. To keep in the game and to keep playing no matter how many times you lose. To take punch after punch without being knocked out. That… that is what makes you special.

I may not write about you. I may not know your success story. You may not experience the 15 minutes of fame. There may be no flashing lights, no accolades… no one may even know that you exist. But that sense of worth, that sense of knowing deep inside that no matter what, you are going to live. That no matter what, you are going to keep going after your dreams with a vengeance, that no matter what you are going to survive… that makes you extraordinary.

Let the masses whine. Let the masses seek for self-pity. Let the masses try hard to find excuses for not getting things done. But do not join them. Let them do what they want, let them cry as hard as they can, let them feel sorry for themselves but don’t let yourself be like every other average passerby in life.

It doesn’t mean that when it hurts you shouldn’t cry. Please do cry when you feel like. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t scream and give people your piece of mind. What’s the fun in living without that? It doesn’t mean that you should stop being human with human feelings. What it means is that when it is all said and done, you should have the heart, soul and mind to go after what you want with a vengeance. To be who you were meant to be without any compromises, apologies or excuses.

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Secrets To Success: Do What You Love Is The Worst Advice You Ever Got

It is the worst advice. It is the most stupid advice. And it will likely lead you to failure. Why? Because all successful people never became rich, successful or famous by doing what they love.

Any person who tells you that the secret to their success is “doing what you love” is simply telling you a lot of bull shit. He is telling you that because that is what looks cool and good. He tells you that because that is what success pop candy looks like. What is sad is that the majority of people get foolishly sold on this idea. They believe it and that is why there are so many miserable people in the world today.

Bill Gates did not become the richest man by doing what he loved. He loved math and he wanted to be a math professor. What led to his immense success? He stumbled upon computers, and suddenly he realized that he could do it better than most people. And with time, he ended up building a billion dollar empire. Not because he did what he had a passion for. Not because he ended up doing math all day!

George Soros, one of the most successful investors had a dream. He wanted to be a writer and a philosopher. So when he entered into the field of investing, his goal was to simply make $50, 000 so that he could concentrate on what he loved: writing and philosophy. He ended up sticking to investing because he discovered he was good at it. He also ended up making over a billion dollars in the process. And he ended up becoming one of the most successful investors of our time.

Mark Cuban started out as a computer salesman. He had been fired from several jobs before he discovered that he could sell computers and make a few dollars from them. Did he have a love for computers? Nope! He had a love for the freedom that came with money. He knew he had to work hard, and he worked hard. He learnt to code, to train and all those things, not because he had a natural love for them, but because it was at first necessary, and along the way, he discovered that he could do it better than most people. He ended up building his company into a multimillion dollar business: from ground to the top. He sold it. Started an internet company, not because he had a fondness for the internet, but because he saw an opportunity. Broadcast was born and he eventually became billionaire.

What about the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos? Did he love selling products? Did he naturally fall in love with the internet? Was his love for books so immense that he ended up forming Amazon? Absolutely not! He made a cross-country trip, discovered the increased use of the internet, heard about a Supreme Court ruling and then decided to leave his well-paying job to go to his garage and try out this little project he had. He was good on Wall Street, he loved science projects as a child, he was a good programmer and he must have had a love for these things or at least one of them. Were they the key to his success? Definitely NO!

Doing what you love is the key to success? Bullshit!

The Success Story Of The Farm Boy Who Formed A Cosmetics Empire

Success stories such as these remind us that it is possible to achieve our dreams no matter the obstacles on the way. This is the success story of a farm boy who grew up to become a teacher and a hairdresser. But that was way before he formed four successful cosmetic companies that are still an operational success over 60 years later.

While working as  a chemistry teacher, Jheri Redding worked as  a hair stylist – just to be able to pay the bills. He however grew frustrated with each passing day in his career as a hair stylist simply because the products he was using were not effective.

Rather than rant and rave, Jheri simply started experimenting with various ingredients in his kitchen. He tried mixing the hair products with vinegar, mayonnaise and many other food stuffs. The positive results and the positive feedback he got encouraged him further, and where he didn’t get it right, he tried something else.

His willingness to experiment with different products soon saw him develop a number of treatments, gels and styling creams. Since they were so successfully received, he decided to build his brand – he eventually settled on Jheri Redding Products.

Due to the success of his products, he decided to form a company. He formed his first in 1956, then another in 1960, the next in 1968 and the fourth in 1979. Through sheer will and determination, this man who spent his time styling people’s hair ended up forming an extremely successful cosmetics empire… and all these companies are still in operation to date.

His secret to success? Seth Godin, in The Bootstrappers Bible writes:

“Redding created lasting businesses through the combination of a gift for spotting long-term opportunity and his relentless drive to create significant competitive advantages in product features and distribution clout. The Illinois farm boy became a cosmetologist during the Great Depression because he saw hairdressers prospering and farmers failing. … was the first to add vitamins and minerals to shampoos, the first to balance the acidity of the formulas, and the first to urge hairdressers to supplement their haircutting income by selling his products on the slow days …There arenʼt many like Jheri Redding, who also founded Redken (1960), Jhirmack (1976), and Nexxus Products (1979).”

 

A Story About Success: Don’t Be The Hyena That Eats The Duck

You know of the story about the hyena and the duck? If you don’t, then here is how it goes…

The hyena is hungry and prays for the heavens to give him something to eat. After days of searching for a meal, he stumbles upon a duck’s eggs. From experience, he knows that they are nutritious and just what he needs. So, what he does is that he eats all of them.

While he is at it, he hears the duck approaching and so he goes and hides. And something amazing happens: the duck lays more eggs and again goes on its errands. The hyena, so grateful to the heavens for providing him with a meal, goes and eats all the eggs again. This happens for some time, and that is when the hyena stumbles upon a brilliant idea!

Instead of waiting every time for the duck to lay the eggs, why not just eat the whole duck and then get all the eggs that the duck is hiding in its belly? Brilliant, right? And it made perfect sense because it is absolutely not fair for the duck to keep on keeping the hyena waiting. 

And so the hyena, knowing that opportunity knocks only once, goes ahead and eats the duck. It’s obvious what happens next: he dies of hunger because he never really discovered where the duck was hiding its eggs. He died frustrated because he thought that the little duck had outsmarted him!

We see this happening every day. The entrepreneur who is so eager for success that he ends up over-stretching his business. There is the person who thinks that knowing all that he can about his or her business or profession is a waste of time. The start-up that is so eager to expand that it gets itself into some pretty bad contractual agreements. There is the business establishment that thinks that overcharging its customers is a great key to success. There are so many people who get “brilliant” ideas that end up causing them to crash and burn. And the success stories still continue to be written.

Why Greedy People Never Take Shortcuts And Why They Always Get What They Want

People generally assume that the people who take shortcuts are usually greedy. The person who tries to gain an extra profit by overcharging his customers, the employee who steals from an employer, the entrepreneur who expands too fast, the establishment that tries to cut costs by reducing the quality or quantity of goods and so on. The list is endless. But all these people are not greedy. They are simply fools.

They are not greedy, because the really greedy never take shortcuts because they know that taking shortcuts is simply an easy way to get the bitter end of the deal. They are not greedy because in the end, they usually end up using far much more energy. They end up walking longer miles. They end up taking more time to get what they want.

People who are really greedy take the long route. They pay more attention to their customers, they build a better product, they treat people better and they take time to learn the hows and the whys. They never forget that the relationships and the good will that they establish, is an investment that they can cash on anytime in the future. They just don’t want what they can have now, but they want to have it all, including all there is in the future.

Let’s consider a simple case of affiliate marketers. These are the people who keep on sending you emails telling you about this great deal and that awesome product a friend just showed them. They keep on sending you these emails in the hope that you will go to check out the product and hopefully buy it. And when you do, they usually get a piece of the money you pay – more like a commission.

For the fools, once they get your email address, all they do is to send you all the emails they can and all the products they have ever heard of. They send them every day, all day. And what do you do when you see that? You mark their mails as spam, and any time you see an email from them, it sort of ruins your day. These are pure fools because they never really get what they want. They may seem greedy, but what they really are, are perfect examples of frustrated beings who want, but who never know how to get what they want.

What does a greedy affiliate marketer do? He sends you an email, probably once or twice a week. Now, that is not so threatening. And you are likely not to categorize his email as spam. Then, to endear himself to you, he sends useful information – really meaningful information that sort of helps you. This makes sure that you will read his email the next time he sends it. In between, he may even add a few freebies as an appetizer.

When he eventually sends an email telling you of a product, probably costing in excess of $5,000, you are likely not only to check it out, but to also buy it (if you can afford it). And more often than not, these products are usually useful and ones that he or she has already tested. You are now hooked, and he can get as much commissions from you as he can – probably for the rest of your life. Now that is a truly greedy person! But you won’t mind satisfying his hunger simply because it is in your best interest to give him what he wants!

And that is the difference between affiliate marketers who make millions of dollars and those who make peanuts. It is the difference between somebody as successful as Jeremy Schoemaker who makes over $130,000 by simply sending two emails; and the average affiliate who lives on the brink of bankruptcy – perpetually.

This reminds me of the story in 48 Laws of Power, about the conman who wanted to con Al Capone. If you don’t know, AlCapone was a gangster - one of the most famous and most ruthless gangsters of his time, and here was a conman wanting to pull a con. Some, far much more resourceful had tried and Al Capone had killed all of them.

So this guy goes to Al Capone and tells him that he could multiply his money for him. Capone knows that this is definitely a con, but he agrees because he could easily kill the guy later. After being given the money, this conman simply takes it to the bank, where it accumulates interest.

After expiry of the period within which he was to double the money, he simply goes to Al Capone, tells him that he failed to double the money, but to prove his honesty, he gives Capone all his money back. Al Capone was touched by the man’s honesty because he not only expected the man to con him, but also because such “honesty” was rare in the violent and rough world Capone lived in. To show his appreciation, Al Capone gave the guy half of the money – which was exactly what the conman had planned all along. He had conned Al Capone and gotten away with it!

There is always a choice. You can always choose what you want. You can always choose which role to play in the world. You can be the fool. Or you can be the smart “greedy” one who knows how to get what he or she wants. You have the right choose, but choose carefully… J

The Secret To Rigging The Game Of Success

Life is a game and it has its own rules. So is success. But unlike most games in which you get penalized, breaking the established rules of success and life may be what you need to hit a jackpot. The only problem is that, there is no guarantee that breaking the rules, following the rules or following your heart will guarantee you success in life. 

“Unless you have courage, a courage that keeps you going, always going, no matter what happens, there is no certainty of success. It is really an endurance race.”

-Henry Ford

But there is a way to totally rig the game in your favor. And that is to keep playing. You can never be certain of getting whatever you want unless you keep playing. Unless you manage to stand up each and every time you fall and unless you find your balance every time something trips you off, you can never really be sure of success.

The success stories of successful men in the world today are testament to this fact. Every once in a while people experience setbacks and more often than not, it is only by staying in the game that these people get to win big in the end. Walt Disney’s first business went bankrupt. Abraham Lincoln failed far much more times than any man could reasonably have persevered. Even Apple and Steve Jobs faced their huddles along the way. And so has Bill Gates and Microsoft – they have made super-blunders in some of the software they have come up with. Simon Cowell, after experiencing a period of initial success, became bankrupt and was forced to go back crawling to his mother’s house.

These are just but a few of some of the most successful people in the world. There are far much more success stories and many are still being written. And all of these real-life stories show that the only way to be sure of success in life and in business is to keep in the game. To keep on rolling with the punches and to keep at it.

If you fail, it doesn’t mean that it is over. If you experience setbacks, that is just but a small bump on your way to success. Don’t let the little distractions in life rob you of the success you deserve. Let them not rob you of the life that you want. Don’t, simply because if you do, then your story of success will never really be complete.

As long as you can breathe and as long as you are alive, stay in the game. Keep playing. This is the only way that you can be sure of success. It is the only way to rig the game in your favor. So, keep playing – no matter what. Keep at it, and you can be sure that life will have no other option but to give you all that you want.

Only The Crazy Can Win This Game, There Is Proof!

This is a game that is so full of uncertainties that is virtually impossible for normal people to win. Crazy people win it simply because making the ordinary logical choice is most of the time the quickest way to lose any gains made. Time and time again, people who are in their right minds have tried to play it, and time and time again they have always come up short… every single time. It is a game with the largest wins, and as history and statistics show, only crazy people win big in this game – the game of life.

“It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”

Somebody reasonable and sane told that to a guy who had written a story about animals. From cover to cover… animals which could actually speak. The guy didn’t listen to the “expert”. He was crazy enough not to put his manuscript in a dustbin. He persisted, and for his craziness, his book won big. The Animal Farm is celebrated as a piece of literary genius and George Orwell is known for writing it.

Against Ridicule, Rejection, War Planes And An Earthquake - He still expected to win!

Soichiro Honda’s only dream was to develop a piston which he could sell to Toyota Corporation. He therefore sold everything he had, including pawning his wife’s jewelry just to make his dream come true. After endless nights and days in his garage, he came up with what he considered a masterpiece and presented it to Toyota -  it was rejected.

Rather than giving up, he went back to work and to school. Whoever he tried to talk to about the design, either didn’t care, or ridiculed them. This included some of his instructors, but Honda never really gave up. He continued to perfect his design and when he presented it to the company, it was accepted. His dream had come true… or maybe not.

The government was gearing up for war, and while he had gotten the contract he wanted, there was really no concrete for him to use to build his factory. What had been a good success story suddenly hit a wall. He didn’t focus or protest about the unfairness of this situation, he simply looked for a way to make his own kind of concrete. He found it, and his factory was finally built.

And then the war started and the factory was bombed – twice. He didn’t give up, he simply instructed his workers to collect the gasoline cans the airplanes discarded and used them as raw materials. These he called “gifts from President Truman”.

His attitude seemed to have conquered all. And then nature intervened. An earthquake flattened the whole factory! He sold his piston operation to Toyota. But he wasn’t really done.

The gasoline shortage that resulted after the war crippled almost everyone’s life, including Honda’s. For the sake of economizing gasoline, he fixed a motor in his bicycle and soon enough everyone was asking for his “motorized bikes.”He had struck a goldmine! He decided to personally write a letter to all the 18,000 bicycle shop owners asking for an investment. Only a handful replied, and Soichiro Honda used the capital gained to reproduce his motor bike, but they never really sold as much as he had anticipated. People found them to be too big and too bulky.

Any normal human being by now would have given up, but not Honda. He decided to make various adjustments in his design and he finally came up with the “Super Cub”. Now these, were an instant hit. They not only earned Soichiro Honda an Emperor’s Award, but also served as the foundation of a billion-dollar company that has his name. He won big!

“For your own good, do not publish this book.”

This is what D.H. Lawrence was told when he tried to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Well, needless to say, it became a hit and made its writer famous through time – a complete writer’s success story.

Morris E. Goodman(The Miracle Man): A Fight To Have It All Back

He crushed an airplane. He walked from it alive, but less of a human being. He was completely paralyzed, having broken his first and second cervical vertebrae. He couldn’t eat or drink. He also couldn’t breathe because his lungs were crushed. He couldn’t eat. In fact, the only thing that he could do was to blink.

And the doctors said that he was lucky enough to be a vegetable for the rest of his life. They were the experts, and that was what research, science and medical reasoning said. But not he. He said he would walk out of that hospital on his two feet. He did! His story is expertly told in The Secret  and it has served as an inspiration to many. Only because he was crazy enough to defy science and medical facts!

When A Millionaire Taps On Crazy, What Happens?

He becomes a billionaire. At least in the case of J. Paul Getty – the billionaire. While he is famous for saying that the secret to success is: “Rise early, work late, and strike oil” and also for installing a payphone in his mansion, people usually overlook the real secret to his success. And throughout his career, this one quality is what he owes his all success.

By 1949, Paul Getty was already a rich man, but this is the year that he did something that ended up establishing him as the richest man of his time. He simply paid $69.5 million for a barren piece of land. And the land was in foreign country. Well, he actually paid $9.5 million in cash, and then promised to pay $1 million every year after that, whether he struck oil or not. Now that, is not just risk taking, it is almost madness. This is so especially keeping in mind that no oil had ever been found, and that by then, there were more and more people who had already gambled their money away in the hope of striking oil.

The first year went by, and no oil. The second, nothing came of it. The third, still nothing. Keep in mind that he was still paying the million dollars plus footing all the expenditure of exploring for oil in Saudi Arabia: but he still kept on hoping. And that unrealistic hope paid him handsomely. That barren piece of land ended up producing over 16 million barrels of oil per year. He won big!

Determined to Sing Nearer My God To Thee

“We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event . . . we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off.”

That is what Ted Turner said during the launch of CNN. It was the first 24 hour news channel in the United States, and it didn’t really make any sense to have such a channel. To make it worse, he and the original founders had “dumped” $25 million of their own money into the station. Skeptics were many and many more thought them mad… but nobody is doubting right now. And that venture that everybody thought was doomed made Ted Turner a billionaire - one who was rich enough to donate $1 billion dollars to the United Nations.

It’s A Recession, Are You Out of Your Mind?

When a recession hits, it is natural for people to shy away from taking risks. They are sensible and so, they make no investments, they start non new companies and probably sit around hoping for the better. That is what the masses do. But there are some who are crazy enough to start companies at the heart of a recession and what do they get for their craziness? Huge rewards!

Disney, CNN, MTV, Hyatt, Burger King, FedEx, Microsoft, Apple, Gillette, AT&T, Texas Instruments, 20th Century Fox, IBM, Merck, Hershey’s, IHOP, Eli Lilly, Coors, Bristol-Myers, Sun, Amgen, The Jim Henson Company, LexisNexis, Autodesk, Adobe, Symantec, Electronic Arts, Fortune, GE, and Hewlett-Packard; are just but some of the few iconic companies that were established during times of economic dark-spells. Had their founders not been crazy enough not to exploit the chaos during those periods… who knows?

LET’S MAKE A TOAST TO THE CRAZY ONES!!!

Muhammad Yunus Accepts Forbes Philanthropy Award: The Crowning Of Banker To The Poor

The road to success is rarely smooth, and for Muhammad Yunus, it has been a long rough road. Long and rough because it is not just his success that he sought, but also that of a whole community of the poor. So far, he has achieved a lot, and although poverty has not completely been eradicated from the world, the world is a better place because this banker of the poor chose to stick to his guns. The world is  a better place because he chose to matter.

The idea to become the banker of the poor arose when he discovered that most of the loans given to the poor by loan sharks ended up making no significant impact in their lives mainly because of the high interest rates charged. And this was prevalent because most of the banks in the country weren't willing to lend to the poor because they feared that they would default on the loans. He chose to take a chance on the poor by lending $27 of his own money to 42 women. They ended up making a profit of $0.02 on the loan. That success was the start of what was to be a revolutionary economic model.

He started lending money from banks and the government to lend to the poor, and soon, diversification began. Grameen Bank, the vehicle for Muhammad Yunus’ project, started investing in underutilized fishponds, software and even in a phone company. In the end, what started out as an idea to help 42 women make a decent living ended up into a success story that is a multifaceted group of profitable and not-for-profit ventures.

Throughout his efforts of trying to change the status quo, he has encountered a lot of resistance. This is not just in the form of not having access to resources, but also political and legal opposition, with people leveling all forms of accusations at him. He has faced violent opposition from radical groups to clergy who threaten their women with not being given a proper burial if they borrowed money from Grameen Bank. There are also the accusations from the government of Bangladesh. He has been accused of “sucking blood from the poor”, despite the fact that statistics show that the bank has lent over $6.7 billion to over 7.4 million poor, most of whom have been able to make a decent living out of the money.

The small-minded people who seek to maintain the status quo have launched almost any conceivable attack on Muhammad Yunus. This includes accusations of fraud and corruption. They seemed to succeed in silencing his efforts of trying to empower women, and the poor in general, when they finally got him fired from Grameen Bank – a bank which through his will and determination he brought to life.

But they are wrong to think that they have stalled, or even stopped him. The success of his economic model has since its inception inspired a replication of the same models in over 100 developing countries. Yunus also still serves in various boards in which he pioneers the empowerment of the poor, especially women. He gives talks, he lecturers and he writes: all which serve to ensure the success of not only his idea, but also of his life’s work and legacy.