5 stories – how did ordinary people succeed?

Popular hereditary businessmen or celebrities who use their parents’ considerable resources for their development are not too interesting to a wide audience.

Many are fascinated by the success stories of ordinary people who stay in ordinary (and sometimes worse) conditions. You will find out who has managed to achieve wealth, fame and respect on their own, only through their hard work and the right direction.

5 examples – how ordinary people have achieved success

Jan Koum

 We wrote more about the success story of the creator of the world popular messenger WhatsApp in a separate article. However, it is worth mentioning once again that Jan Koum was born in Kyiv and grew up in Fastov in a family not rich. After the death of his father, Jan and his mother decided to move to the states, wherein between school he worked as a janitor in a shop, and the family survived on food coupons.

Moving to the U.S. allowed Jan Koum to study programming, so a self-taught teenager at 18 became a member of a hacking group. He was then taken to Yahoo!, from where the developer soon quit developing his project – WhatsApp. The first version of the application was downloaded by only 100 people, but the development of technology and confidence in the idea made the messenger crazy and popular.

Cheri Schmelzer

Cheri’s success began at the age of 40 with the rearing and household of three children. To entertain herself and her children, the woman decorated the Rubber Crawlers, which are ubiquitous among the pool and beach lovers. With the help of strasses and handy materials, Cheri was able to create a truly original design, greatly diversifying the dull and ridiculous slippers. In 2005 her husband offered to launch a website to sell handmade décor and the couple founded the company Jibbitz.

About 10 attempts were needed to select quality materials that would provide the strength of new patterns and satisfaction of customers with modified Crocks. But by 2006, the annual revenue from the sale of accessories reached 2.2 million. Six months later, the manufacturer of Crocks bought Jibbitz for 10,000,000 dollars. Schmelzer’s have not invested a dollar in advertising and marketing, their family business has grown “by itself.”

Jen Flown

At the age of 30, Jen (now head of PJ Care), who had not graduated from school, took nursing courses and began working in the hospital to care for people with mental disabilities. She did not like the conditions provided by public institutions, so once in the Ministry of Health, she unsuccessfully tried to change something by using legal methods.

Realizing that it would not be possible to implement the idea at the legislative level, Flown decided to open his medical center. She needed more than a million dollars to develop the case, so for a long time could not get a loan. Only in 2001 in Milton-Keins hospital was opened for 22 patients, and the network later expanded to three centers. The cost of rehabilitation in PJ Care is twice as high as in other clinics, but the quality of care is appropriate.

Howard Schultz

Did you know that the founder of the world-famous Starbucks network was born and raised in Brooklyn’s municipal development? His father worked as a driver, so he couldn’t even educate Howard, but Schultz was able to earn a sports grant to study at the University of Northern Michigan and still get his degree.

His education allowed him to work at the then-booming Xerox and get the resources to open his first coffee point under the now-famous Starbucks brand. In 1987, Harvard quit his job and headed Starbucks, which then owned 60 retail outlets. Currently, the network operates internationally and collects under a single name from about 16,000 coffee shops, and Schultz is on the list of billionaires.

Ingvar Kamprad

If you think the people in the countryside are not on the road to success, read the story of Ingvar Kamprad. The guy was born and raised in the countryside but always showed an entrepreneurial spirit – as a teenager he used to buy small things like matches, pens and Christmas decorations in bulk and resell them to his neighbors.

When his father gave Ingvar a sum of money as a reward for his good education, the guy opened a mail order service without hesitation. Since the goods were provided to him by local manufacturers, furniture, which later became the company’s business card, was in greatest demand. The new company received the name IKEA – an abbreviation of initials, the name of a village and a family farm in Kamparov. Ingvar is currently in the fortune of $6,000,000,000.

The best success stories begin not in the expensive office on the 300th floor of a skyscraper in New York City, they are created in simple houses, the same ordinary people who do not even know that they will become world-famous. History knows thousands of examples when the original idea, tenacity and hard work brought to unprecedented heights housewives, janitors or office managers with mortgages and cars on credit. So if you have a goal – do not waste time!