Monday, February 25, 2013

Success Stories of Daring Entrepreneurs



Making it big is the dream of almost every small business owner, catching that break that would propel a simple idea towards national—and even global—followings. With so many examples coming before us, we all know that it is not such an impossible task and almost anyone who has the passion and the perseverance may eventually get his share of entrepreneurial success. I say “may” because there never really is a guarantee, not even if you do exactly the same things as those who made it did. Still, the fact is that there are entrepreneurs who have dared and who have conquered, and while the point is not to copy what they did, there are a few good lessons to pick up from their experiences nonetheless. Let’s look at three of these daring entrepreneurs.

Ahmed Khattak Unlocks the Cell Phone Market.


Khattak’s million-dollar business was a product of his frustrations with the U.S. cell phone market, to be more specific, his frustrations with buying a cell phone. He was dismayed, to say the least, at how hard it was for him to get his hands on a phone, especially given that he came to the country having no social security number nor credit history whatsoever. Of course, just as any other brilliant entrepreneur would, Khattak saw this as an opportunity that was waiting to be harnessed, and long story short, he unlocked the U.S. cell phone market while earning millions of dollars for doing so. Here are a few lessons to be learned at how this young entrepreneur changed the U.S cell phone market:

·         Funding is important for growth.  "I think the biggest mistake we made in the early going was not having as much funding as we originally thought we needed," was what Khattak said referring to how his company grew so fast that the funding could not keep up. Obviously, money is not something that anyone can just rustle up in the blink of an eye, but this shows just how much it is important to do proper projections for when your business grows. Planning is key.

·         Capital can come from the most unlikely sources. The last thing Khattak was probably expecting when he visited a dentist, who happened to be a fellow Pakistani, was getting a $200,000 check to use for his business. It’s curious how things can turn out so well, especially since other entrepreneurs can only dream of experiencing the same thing. The kicker here is that the dentist didn’t have a particularly strong belief in the business’ growth; he just wanted to help Khattak in his venture. 

Julia Erickson and Aaron Ingley’s Nutrition Bars for Dancers.


Energy bars are not particularly delicious, and yet they are eaten by dancers and athletes all over who need to keep healthy and fit. Julia Erickson made one of the best decisions of her life when she decided to take a crack at making an energy bar herself using ingredients such as dates, walnuts, pecans, rolled oats, sea salt and cinnamon. Her creation was a big hit among her fellow dancers, and that was when she decided to team up with her partner, Aaron Ingley, and start their business, Barre. What is a good lesson to take from Erickson and Ingley’s success story?

·         Consumers make great entrepreneurs. This statement simply means that whatever demographic you target as a business owner, being part of that demographic gives you a big advantage. In this case, both Erickson and Ingley were dancers and they knew exactly what dancers would need and want in an energy bar. Getting inside consumer’s minds is easy when you know personally how they think, and evidently that makes for good business.

Megan Duckett Sews Her Way to Success.

Image from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224357

Megan Duckett was a woman who not only knew how to sew, but loved doing it too. And when her sewing skills were requested for her employer’s Halloween event, it was then that she started to realize that she had skills that not everybody has and that she could make use of these skills in order to offer something that people will pay money for. She painted herself as a specialist of sorts, and eventually her projects became bigger and bigger to the point that she was making more in a year than her salary could give her. Duckett is the very person many people aspire to be, someone who has managed to successfully make a great living out of doing something she loves. And this is what the greatest lesson from her success story is.

·         Hobbies can be businesses too. There’s a chant that goes “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” or something along those lines. But what if work and play are the same thing and that when you do what you love, you are earning at the same time? It’s a hard goal to strive for, but Duckett shows that it is entirely possible. With passion and some skills you can accomplish so much more than you would sitting in an office doing a “real job”.

Here are three great success stories that would hopefully inspire entrepreneurs and small business owners into getting big. Learn from these people and hopefully you would be writing your own success story and be the inspiration for future entrepreneurs.