Famous Entrepreneurs

The road to personal freedom is not a simple one. As on any road through life, there are often obstacles and diversions that have to be confronted. The road is often not straight, but may have curves that have to be adjusted to. Many factors determine the destiny of an entrepreneur on his or her path to success. Education is always a good start, but in the end, it takes something special that sets you apart from the others. It takes dedication, persistence and, above all, a passion that is the driving force in your life. Walt Goodridge realized this from an early age. He developed his passion into a helping force for others and this would lead him to achieving his own personal freedom.

Walt was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and remained there for the early years of his childhood. Then, his family moved to New York where he graduated high school there and then went on to graduate from Columbia University with a B.S. in civil engineering
Although he had moved to the United States at an early age, he never forgot his influences back in Jamaica. His grandfather and grandmother both played important role models in his young life. They grew fruit trees and raised animals on their property, and he was privileged to watch how they dealt with their customers each and every day. The key to his grandparents’ success was that they always gave the customer a little more than what they purchased. This impressed and pleased the customers who would always bring business back to them. It was a practice he never forgot–he calls it “sweetening the pot”– and would utilize it years later in his own business practices.

As a young adult about to enter the corporate world, he realized almost immediately that most people lived out their lives accepting the fact that all there was to life was working a job and receiving a paycheck. This saddened him. He knew there had to be more to life than that. He believed that life was wasted unless it was utilized serving the inner passion that every human being has in his or her heart–a passion for what they are called to do, and love to do most. A passion for what makes them the happiest in life. However, he noticed, most people seemed to accept their unhappy lives without taking any decisive action to change it. He began to research ways he could change that way of thinking and offer anyone who wanted it the opportunity to pursue their own individual passion. First, however, he had to do it for himself.
For several years, even while employed as a civil engineer, he tried various other ventures in an attempt to find his own niche in life. He worked as a radio disc jockey, artist manager, and even had his own record company for a while. The most important thing he obtained from all of these was the experience he would later use to guide others in their own hopes for a better life. He then started sharing his experience in the form of books he would write about his various pursuits.

Through these books, as well as coaching and workshops, he gained the title of the ‘Passion Prophet’ and helped him express his own personal mission statement: “I share what I know so that others may grow!

In 1997, he got his first taste of the Internet and he knew it was the place to be. He realized he could reach more people in more places with the Internet than with any other approach. He wanted to share his beliefs with others in order to help them grow. He put together some websites that became very successful and went on to write even more books (20 at the time of this writing).

Walt continues to share his wisdom with others to change their lives. In the process, this “passionpreneur” (passion entrepreneur) has created the personal freedom he always dreamed of!

Barry Charles Diller was born in San Francisco in California on 2nd February in 1942 and became a billionaire by creating Fox Broadcasting and USA Broadcasting. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of the company IAC (InterActiveCorp).

He went to the University of California in Los Angeles but dropped out after one semester. He then went on to work for the William Morris Agency in the mailroom. In 1964 he started working for ABC and soon after he starting working there got started managing the negotiation of broadcast rights for feature films. In 1965 he was made Vice President of Development. In this role he established ABC Movie of the Week and by doing this he created the idea of movies that were ‘made-for-television’ by having a succession of hour and a half long films produced just for television.

In 1974 he became the Chairman and CEO of the Paramount Pictures Corporation. Under his leadership the studio created many hit TV shows like Taxi in 1878, Laverne & Shirley in 1979 and Cheers in 1982. They also produced the films Saturday Night Fever in 1977, Grease in 1978, Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984, Terms of Endearment in 1983 and Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 as well as many others.

From October 1984 until April 1992 he worked as the Chairman and the CEO of Fox Inc. which was the parent company of 20th Century Fox and the Fox Broadcasting Company. Having Diller serving in this role led to Fox taking on hits such as The Simpsons. In 1992 he left 20th Century Fox and spent $25 million to get a stake in the QVC teleshopping network. In 1995 he also resigned from QVC.

He is now the Chairman of Expedia as well as the Chairman and CEO of IAC (InterActiveCorp) which is a group of commerce companies and is the parent of businesses such as ServiceMagic, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Citysearch, Match.com, Connected Ventures and LendingTree. In 2005 the company bought Ask.com, signalising a tactical move into Internet search sites. The headquarters of IAC are located at 18th Street and the West Side Highway in the Chelsea neighbourhood in Manhattan.

Since 2002 Diller has been a member of the board of The Coca-Cola Company. In 2001 he married Diane von Furstenberg who had been his friend for years and who is a fashion designer.

Judi Sheppard Missett became a billionaire by founding Jazzercise Inc. in 1969 in Evanston, Illinois. She turned her love of jazz dance into an exercise program to help people get fit all over the world. Jazzercise is now based in Carlsbad in California and she is currently the chief executive officer and President of the company, and still teaches Jazzercise classes every week.

Judi was born in Iowa and attended Northwestern University in Chicago in 1962 and got a Bachelor’s degree in theatre and radio/television. While attending university she taught dance classes at a local jazz studio. She noticed that her classes had a dropout rate of around 90% so began to search for ways of boosting numbers. She talked to her students and discovered that many of them found the class too strenuous, and that her classes were more suited for dance professionals. She found out that the majority of her students joined the classes to lose weight and get in shape while having fun. Learning from this information, one day she decided to restructure her classes, starting “Just for fun” classes in which she kept her students turned away from the mirrors. This marked the start of Jazzercise, and the mission statement which is still used today: “We develop and market fun and effective fitness programs and products that enhance the well-being of people of all ages”.

In 1972 along with her family she moved to Southern California and five years later started training new instructors which led to the Jazzercise spreading across the whole world. Her philosophy is to “give back to the community” and accordingly she has managed to raise $26 million for a variety of charities through special large scale workout classes and by doing performances at big sporting events. She has also designed a “Kids Get Fit” workout program for children, which is free and aims to assist schools in promoting fitness. Furthermore she has released the “Cyberstretch School Giveaway Program” which has free software that shows its users how to lower tension and reduce the risk of repetitive stress injuries through energising stretch breaks.

Jazzercise has also led to the creation of numerous other successful businesses, such as JM DigitalWorks which is a full-service, video and multimedia production company and Jazzertogs which is a multi-million dollar fitness apparel mail-order catalogue company.

The company currently has over 7500 instructors and employs 161 support personnel.

Berry Gordy Jr. was born on 28th November 1929 and is a record producer who became a millionaire by founding the Motown record label along with its various subsidiaries.

Gordy was successful at song writing and used the money he made from this to invest in producing. He was the person that discovered the Miracles in 1957 and since then he began to create a collection of flourishing artists. On 12th December 1959 he borrow $800 from his family and started up the R&B label which he called Tamla Records two days later. The label went on to product Marv Johnson’s first big hit “Come to me”. Gordy also co-produced and co-wrote some of his next hits such as “You Got What It Takes”. Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s what I want)” started off on Tamla and then went into the charts on Gordy’s sister label Anna Records in February 1960. “Shop around” the Miracles’ hit helped to set up Motown as a significant independent company. In 1961 “Please Mr Postman” The Marvelettes hit continued to boost the record label.

Motown Records was formed by Gordy in 1960, another label which was merged with Tamla to become the corporation the Motown Record Corporation on 14th April 1960.

He did not take on many white artists but he employed plenty of white workers and had white managers at the company’s headquarters in Detroit which was known as “Hitsville U.S.A.” The first white artist to be signed by the company was Kiki Dee. He controlled his artists’ public images to make sure that they appealed to a wide section of the general public. This led to the company becoming very successful, signing artists like Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Commodores, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and The Jackson 5.

In 1968 he expanded the Motown offices in Los Angeles as there were riots occurring in Detroit. The whole company was then relocated to LA in June 1972. In 1973 the company got reorganised into Motown Industries which included record, television, movie and publishing divisions. In the 1970s Gordy was the producer of the film “Lady Sings the Blues” which starred Diana Ross and was very successful. Gordy later went on to produce “Mahogany” and in 1985 he was the producer of “The Last Dragon”.

In the 1970s and 1980s Motown records was not as successful as it has previously been so Gordy sold his stake in the company on 28th June 1988 to MCA and Boston Ventures for $61 million. He then also went on to sell the majority of his interests in Jobete publishing concern to EMI Publishing.

Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born on 23rd Janurary 1946 is a mathematician and is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is most well known for serving under the administration of Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s as a politician and a media tycoon. He was a member of Yeltsin’s inner circle towards the end of his presidency when he served as the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council and he was good friends with Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko.

In 1989 he worked for AutoVAZ. In 1992 LogoVAZ was set up which was a joint-stock company with Berezovsky’s AutoVAZ. Over four years it grew to become one of the biggest private enterprises in Russia and in 1994 he was made Chairman of the Board of Directors when LogoVaz was made into a holding company.

He became a billionaire during the period of Russia’s rush to capitalism where he seized state assets for low costs. He became the owner of the Sibneft oil company and was the majority shareholder in ORT, Russia’s foremost television channel which he used to put across propaganda before the presidential election of 1996. Instead of putting in money into the businesses he took over such as Sibneft, ORT, Avtovaz, the Omsk Oil Refinery, Brtsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk and the National Sports Fund, he used all of their profits. He used some of this money to fund Vladimir Putin’s party. Putin took over ORT to stop the political ambitions of people like Berezovsky who were highly disliked by the public in Russia.

When Putin became president Berezovsky fled Russia as he was blamed for making $13 million (US dollars) through fraudulent means from a regional government. He now has political asylum in the UK and has since said he wants to topple Putin “by force”. He has now been linked with Alexander Litvinenko, Akhmed Zakayev and Alex Goldfarb who are known as “the London Circle” [of Russian exiles].

He founded the International Foundation for Civil Liberties in November 2000.

In 2007 a court in Moscow found him guilty of committing massive embezzlement. He has been sentenced to six years jail time and has been instructed to repay $9 million. In addition he has been blamed for the murders of Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya who were critics of Putin’s regime.

In 1994 he survived an attempt on his life and he claims there have been numerous other attempts on his life by Russia agents.

David “Dave” Thomas was born on 2nd July 1932 in Atlantic City in New Jersey and became a millionaire by founding Wendy’s Old fashioned Hamburgers which was a chain of fast-food restaurants that focused specifically on hamburgers. He also worked as the Chief Executive Officer for the company and appeared in over 800 adverts for the company over the years 1989 to 2002 which is a greater number than any other personality in television ever.

Thomas did not graduate from high school until later on in life. He is said to have learned the value of service and respecting others from his grandmother, which served him well later in his business. His first cousin Greg Back was also influential in Thomas’s business.

Thomas first entered the restaurant business at the age of 12 when he worked for the Regas Restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee as a counterman. It has been said the he aspired to go into the hamburger business because he used to love the food from a Kewpee restaurant in Ipple, Michigan.

At the time of the Korean War he volunteered to join the U.S. Army so that he could get a choice in his assignments. He requested to go into the Cook’s and Baker’s School a Fort Benning in Georgia. He got sent to Germany where he worked as a mass sergeant and was in charge of the meals for around 2000 soldiers every day. He later said that this helped him in his accomplishment in the fast food industry. In 1953 he was honourably discharged ranking as Staff Sergeant.

After he was discharged he helped to save a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant that was in trouble. He was responsible for transforming the fast food industry by making the menu simpler. He worked with the founder of KFC Colonel Harland Sanders to reduce the amount of food on the menu, to focus on a signature dish and to introduce a trademark symbol. By 1968 the sales of four fried chicken fast food restaurants he had worked on had gone up by such a large amount that he sold the share he had back to Colonel Sanders for over $1.5 million.

The first Wendy’s was opened by Thomas in 1969 in Columbus in Ohio. It was named after his daughter. In 1982 he quit his everyday tasks but by 1985 he was urged to come back into a more significant position in the company due to dwindling marketing efforts. In 1989 he became the TV spokesman for the company. The company became America’s third most popular burger restaurant.

By the time of his death in 2002 there were over 6000 Wendy’s restaurants operating in the United States.

David Packard was born on 7th September 1912 in Pueblo in Colorado and became a billionaire by co-founding Hewlett-Packard, a technology corporation in 1939. He served as the company’s President from 1947 to 1964, as the company’s CEO from 1964 to 1968, and as the Chairman of the Board from 1964 to 1968 and 1972 to 1993. He also served as the U.S. Secretary of Defence from 1969 to 1971 at the time that Nixon was President.

Packard went to Centennial High School and in 1934 got a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University. He also went to the University of Colorado but then quit as he got a job in Schenectady in New York at the General Electric Company. He went back to Stanford in 1938 and got a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, along with marrying Lucile Salter who he had met when he first attended Stanford.

In 1939, along with Hewlett who like Lucile he met when he first attended Stanford, he founded Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard’s garage with a starting $538 investment. They decided on HP rather than PH by flipping of a coin. The product they made and sold was the sound oscillator used in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. During the Second War World the company made radio, radar, sonar, aviation and nautical devices.

The company became the biggest producer of electrical measurement and testing devices through Packard’s role as a brilliant administrator and through Hewitt’s various new technological advances. It also went on to become a key producer of computers, calculators, laser printers and inkjet printers.

HP became a corporation in 1947 when Packard became the company’s first President. He left the company in 1969 to work under Nixon’s administration up until 1971 when he came back to the company and oversaw major reorganisation. He retired in 1993.

In 1978 he created the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation and donated around $55 million in total to build an aquarium which opened in 1984. He also donated $13 million to create the Monterey bay Aquarium Research Institute. In 1964 with his wife he founded the David and Lucile Packard Foundation which now provides 90% of the Institute’s operating budget.

He and his wife Lucile had four children together called David, Nancy, Susan and Julie. Lucile died in 1987 and Packard died on 26th March 1996 at the age of 83. At this time his company was worth over $1 billion.

David Sarnoff was born on 27th February 1891 and became a millionaire by founding NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) and by leading the Radio Corporation of American (RCA) from soon after it was founded up until when he retired in 1970. He also created Sarnoff’s law.

Sarnoff was born near Minsk in Russia. In 1900 he immigrated to New York City. He assisted his family with money through selling newspapers which he did before his classes started and after they had finished.  His father got tuberculosis in 1906 so when he was 15 Sarnoff had to start working full time to look after his family. He got a job working at the Commercial Cable Company as an office boy but on 30th September 1906 went to work at the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. This was the beginning of his sixty year career in electronic communications.

After thirteen years he had been promoted to commercial manager of the company. During these thirteen years he learned on the job and by using books all about the business and technology of electronic communications. He installed wireless technology on a ship that was hunting seals near Newfoundland and Labrador in 1911. A year after this, he and two fellow operators attempted to validate what had happened to the Titanic at the Wanamaker station.

Over two years after this he got promoted to chief inspector and to the role of contracts manager for a high revenue company. He was the first person to display the application of radio on railroad which he did between Scranton in Pennsylvania and Binghamton in New York on the Lackawanna Railroad Company’s link. Through the First World War he continued working as Marconi’s Commercial Manager.

Marconi was bought by the General Electric Company and this helped Sarnoff to gain influence within the company. RCA bought its original radio station in 1926 in New York and established the NBC which was the original radio network of the United States.  After four years had passed Sarnoff became President of RCA in 1930. NBC was divided into two different networks which were called the Red network and the Blue network, the latter of which went on to become ABC Radio. Sarnoff was essential in setting up of the AM broadcasting radio business. He also formed Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) which was a film production company that also distributed films. He retired in 1970 at the age of 79 and died aged 80.

Fred Smith (Full name Frederick Wallace Smith) was born in Marks in Mississippi on 11th August 1944 and became a billionaire by founding FedEx. FedEx, originally known as Federal Express was the first express overnight delivery company on the globe and is now the largest company delivery company in America. The headquarters of the FedEx are in Memphis, Tennessee and Smith currently works as the Chairman, President and CEO of the company.

From a young age Smith expressed an immense interest in flying and so he trained to become an amateur pilot when he was a teenager. He went to the elementary school Presbyterian Day School and the high school Memphis University School. In 1962 he went to Yale University where he became friends with George W Bush and John Kerry. In an economics class he wrote a paper for a plan for an overnight delivery service to be used in a time when computer use was widespread. This paper became the inspiration for FedEx. In 1966 he got a Bachelor’s degree in economics. After he graduated he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served for four years as a platoon leader and a forward air controller (FAC). His time in the Marines allowed him to observe the military’s logistics system and to see how the procurement and delivery procedures worked.

In 1970 he bought the controlling interest in an aircraft maintenance company called Ark Aviation Sales. By 1971 he had changed its business aim to trading used jets. On 18th June 1971 Smith founded Federal Express with the $4 million he had inherited from his father who was the founder of the Toddle House restaurant chain and the Smith Motor Coach Company which was later renamed the Dixie Greyhound Lines when it was bought by The Greyhound Corporation in 1931. This amount of money is worth about $21 million in 2008 dollars. He managed to raise $91 million in venture capital (around $484 million in 2008 dollars). By 1973 the company was offering their services to 25 cities and used a fleet of 14 Falcon 20 jets. By 1980 they were offering their services to 90 more cities and by 1983 had reached $1 billion in sales.

Smith also is the co-owner of the Washington Redskins NFL team and his son is the coach to the Washington Redskins. Smith furthermore owns Dream Image Productions and Alcon Films.

Gordon Earle Moore was born on 3rd January 1929 in San Francisco in California and became a billionaire by co-founding the Intel Corporation. He is now the Chairman Emeritus of the company and he also created “Moore’s Law” which was published on 19th April 1965 in Electronic Magazine.

Moore grew up in Pescadero and achieved a degree in Chemistry from the University of California in Berkeley in 1950 and also got a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a minor in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. Before he went to Berkeley he studied at San Jose State University.

He began working at Beckman Instruments in the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division with William Shockley but left with eight other men and went on to create the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. These eight men were known as the “Traitorous Eight”.

Intel Corporation was co-founded in July 1968 by Moore and he worked as the Executive Vice President of the company up until 1975 when he became the President and the Chief Executive Officer. In April 1979 he became the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Chief Executive Officer up until April 1987 when he became the Chairman of the Board. He became the Chairman Emeritus in 1997.

He is married to his wife Betty who he met during his time at San Jose State University. Together they donated $600 million to Caltech in 2001 which is the largest amount of money ever to be donated to an institute of higher education. The library at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge University is now named after him and his wife along with the Moore Laboratories building at Caltech which has dedicated to them in 1996.

On 6th December 2007 they donated a further $200 million to Caltech and to the University of California to help them build the world’s biggest optical telescope. This telescope will have a mirror 30 metres across which is three times as big as the world’s current largest telescope.

From 1994 to 2000, Moore was chairman of the board of trustees for Caltech, and he is still a trustee today. In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He and his wife fund and support the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which has the aim of helping to develop projects that will benefit the quality of life for future generations.