When Extensive Paralysis Becomes A Key To Success

This is the story of a man who, late in life, became totally paralyzed. He had been healthy all his life, working hard like everyone else, and then, out of nowhere, he became paralyzed from neck to toe. Totally confined in a bed and with no way of providing for his family through farming. His success story is well told by Napoleon Hill and Clement Stone in Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude.

His name was Milo C. Jones, and he lived in Wisconsin. Throughout his life, he had worked hard and the fruits of his labor could barely provide for his family. He was an honest man who desired a better life, but to him, there really seemed to be no way out of the rut that he had found himself. He hoped one day for something better – for a better life. And then, something happened. He got paralyzed!

He was the breadwinner in the family and by now his youth was long gone. It all seemed like a disaster. Everyone was certain that there would be nothing but misery and hopelessness in the life of Milo C. Jones. Everybody pitied him, except himself.

Rather than scream at the top of his lungs about how unfair life was, or of how much he deserved better or of why his life was over; Jones decided in his mind to remain positive and to remain grateful. As you can imagine, there was really nothing easy about it because it was real-life. He started counting his blessings and being thankful for them as he looked for a way to be useful to his family.

“Milo C. Jones chose to develop a positive mental attitude. He chose to be hopeful, optimistic, happy and to convert creative thinking into reality by starting right from where he was. He wanted to be useful. And be wanted to support his family, instead of being a burden to them. but how could he turn his disadvantage into advantage? He didn't let this vital problem stop him.”

His paralysis, while it limited his movement, gave him a lot of time to think. He soon came up with a plan. Rather than plant the family land with food for his family, he decided that his family should plant every tillable acre with corn which would then serve as food for pigs. The pigs, they would then slaughter while young and tender. To quote Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude: “… And then we can package and sell them under a brand name. we'll sell them in retail stores all over the country." And then he chuckled as he said: "They'll sell like hot cakes!" And they did sell like hot cakes!”

And indeed they sold like hotcakes. They sold so well that the paralyzed Milo C. Jones lived long enough to see himself become a multimillionaire. As Napoleon Hill concludes: “… Milo C. Jones lived to see himself a millionaire. He had achieved something even more through a positive mental attitude. For he bad flipped his talisman to PMA. And thus although he was physically handicapped, he became a happy man. He was happy because he was useful.”

Mark Cuban Success Story: From Sleeping On The Floor to Over 2 Billion Dollars

“When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there.”

-Mark Cuban 

Mark Cuban rose from being the guy who got fired by bosses to become the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks. This is in addition to having a personal fortune of $2.4 billion. He is a self-made billionaire, and as is with all success stories of the self-made filthy rich, his journey to belonging to the exclusive class of billionaires was no easy feat. Here is his success story.

Mark Cuban’s success story began in earnest after he decided to move to Dallas in his 1977 Fiat X19. This was after having been fired several times. He and his friends had to share a 3 bed-roomed apartment, and since they were six, some of them had to sleep on the floor. As he puts it:

“We had only three bedrooms and three beds. I slept on the floor. I had no closet and no dresser. I just stacked my clothes in a corner. The place was a dump, and we just destroyed it even more.”

Starting out, he worked as a bartender for some time. Thereafter, he got lucky so far as his employment search efforts were concerned and got himself a job as a computer salesman. It was however not long before he got fired from the job – again!

That was the turning point in his life. He then made up his mind not to deal with bosses again. His first major venture after setting for Dallas was a business under the name MicroSolutions. In his new company, Mark started out acting as a salesperson, a trainer and also a programmer. As for the programming, he had to learn by himself on the job.

A few years down the line, his determination, effort and willingness to innovate and quickly adapt to change turned the business into a company generating in excess of $30 million in revenues. He was finally financially successful.

But the Mark Cuban success story does not end there. He later sold his company to CompuServe and the capital he got from it enabled him to start a venture that made him a billionaire. That was the founding of Broadcast.com, a company that he sold to Yahoo! for over $2 billion.

He still actively invests. He no longer looks at the big houses to admire them. In fact, he once even bought a mansion worth $15 million without even having looked at it! He also doesn’t sleep on the floor and as he says, he loves his life and loves living. Mark Cuban’s success story is a true “rags” to riches story.

Carlos Helu Slim Success Story: From The Other Side To The Top Of The World

Carlos Helu Slim’s success story is worth writing about simply because of the fact that he has not only dominated the Forbes Lists of the Richest Men in the world, but also because he is the first man from a developing country to do so. With a current net worth of $73 billion, he is a comfortable fixture in the Billionaire listings.

The pressure to start out in business started early for Carlos Slim when his father died when he was 12. He therefore started working in the family company way before he even went to study engineering. He later dabbled in stocks as a stockbroker, and his success in this field earned him his first millions. In fact, he was so successful that by the time he clocked 26, he was worth over $40 million.

His life having been a success story thus far, Carlos Helu Slim used the money he had earned to acquire businesses back in the 1980s when the Mexican economy was crumbling. He bought into tobacco companies, oil companies and most of the American divisions that had a presence in Mexico.

His timely investments over time paid off. But he did not stop there. Ever a firm believer in complete domination of any industry, he started either buying out competitors in the industries in which he had invested in, or simply drove them out by undercutting them. He also bought controlling interests in many companies, both in Mexico and overseas, with the usual cycle being that he bought a controlling stake in a company, reduced the overhead and waste and then later decided either to hold onto his interest or simply sell it off at a huge profit.

The repeated cycle of buying into businesses and driving off competitors eventually led to monopolies that have since fueled his rise to belonging to the world’s most elite economic class: the class of billionaires. His is a success story that is not just limited to one, but several industries which include investments in mining, construction, printing, food and retail industry.

Although a billionaire many times over, Carlos Helu Slim lives a frugal life. This billionaire who is the largest private employer in Mexico lives in a modest 6 bed-roomed house that is less than a mile from his office.

Carlos Slim Helu Quotes

"Work well done is not only a responsibility to yourselves and society; it is also an emotional need."

"Our concept is more to accomplish and solve things, rather than giving, that is, not going around like Santa Claus. Poverty isn't solved with donations."

“When we decide to do something, we do it quickly."

“When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out and that’s when we are interested in getting in.”

“When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.”