“I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.” – Michael Bloomberg.

As a politician, Michael Bloomberg breaks the mold. He does not appear to attract the traditional mudslinging barrage and when he does find himself to be the target he appears to be able to just brush off the dirt and continue. Befitting the great city that often seems to defy generalization and champions the unusual, New York’s mayor treads a fine line of political astuteness along an enviable path of success through economic, social and cultural minefields.

Michael Rubens Bloomberg was born in the dead of winter 1942 to middle-class parents in Massachusetts. A solid work ethic and an inquiring mind were evident from an early age and he progressed through Johns Hopkins University to Harvard where he received his MBA. He was intrigued by the process and distribution of information and zeroed in on technology’s role in distribution during his time with the investment banker, Salomon Brothers.

Now an enthusiastic New Yorker, Bloomberg applied his theory to practice by founding Bloomburg LP in 1981. This financial news and information service is today a household name and is a trusted source of information for over a quarter million subscribers worldwide.

With his thriving company on course, Bloomberg devoted a lot of his spare time to philanthropic causes. He used his not inconsiderable presence and Rolodex lists to help charities and institutions make an impact in the name of a variety of causes. He was becoming increasingly better known in New York political circles and civic affairs.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 shook the city to its very core and while many people initially turned to “America’s Mayor,” the then leader Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg was waiting in the wings for his chance to bring his style and vision to bear. When Giuliani came to the end of his term, Bloomberg mounted a considerable campaign based on a reconstruction of the spirit of the city.

Perhaps surprisingly, Bloomberg was a lifelong registered Democrat before he decided to run for mayor, yet switched his allegiance to the Republican Party and was successful, a feat he repeated in 2005. In 2007 he decided that he would leave the Republican Party and became an independent. He had successfully switched allegiance twice, a move that has rarely been successful for politicians at any level before.

Bloomberg’s self-effacing attitude and willingness to “get in the trenches” has endeared him to many New Yorkers to this day. He’s been very successful in combating crime and particularly illegal gun possession and use. He continues to incorporate philanthropy and has been able to reach across party aisles successfully throughout his terms in office. Indeed, he has so much presence that he was able to successfully campaign to amend New York City’s long-running term limits law, allowing him to run for an unprecedented third term in 2009.

In addition to being the mayor of New York City, he is estimated to be the richest resident and the eighth richest person in the world, with a fortune of $16 billion. He is still a majority owner of Bloomberg LP.

While he did not run for election during the recent presidential campaign despite persistent rumors to that effect, Michael is in the running for the mayoral nominations of both Republican and Independent parties in his beloved New York. He has considerable political power within one of the most diverse, demanding and critical political environments and retains a list of admirers across the spectrum and from billionaire to pauper.

His business ethics are unquestionable and his political success may be attributable to the fact that he is able to get within the psyche of what makes New York the place it is – “and because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you. This is the city of dreamers and time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.”

Adam Toren

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re running, you must be able to adapt as you go. Nobody has taken this philosophy to a higher level than Judi Sheppard Missett, who combined a love for dance with a need to achieve fitness, back in the day when it was not so trendy to look after yourself. 40 years later her invention “Jazzercise” now oversees more than 7500 instructors and has a burgeoning support staff at corporate HQ in Carlsbad, CA.

Sheppard Missett always had a love for the bright lights and toured on Broadway during her adolescence, starring in productions of “West Side Story,” “Funny Girl,” “Coco” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” She loved to dance and was enrolled in dance class back at home in Iowa. “I was pigeon-toed and my mom thought it would be good for me to be in a dance class to help with my inward rotation. I loved it, and everything came naturally to me.” Even at that young age she felt a natural enthusiasm for her passion and taught dance classes to her local friends in the neighborhood.

Following a bachelor’s degree in theater and radio back at Northwestern University in 1966, she found that while teaching traditional dance she felt motivated to introduce her students to a special class, “just for fun” as she put it. She realized that most of the students were there to get in shape and have fun and did not have any particular aspirations to be in front of the footlights. Soon her new methods were gaining critical acclaim and she found that her classroom attendance was packed.

Shortly after moving to California her concept really started to take off and word spread far and wide. So popular were her classes that the city department responsible for overseeing class attendance in Carlsbad restricted participants to those who lived locally. Enterprising women signed up for PO boxes at the local post office, just so they could attend the classes. One of her students suggested that she was combining jazz music with exercise and should call the concept “Jazzercise” and this stuck.

As additional instructors were recruited the new technology of the time, the VCR, was used to train them. Further embracing this technology, a production company was commissioned to produce tapes and distribute to clients nationwide. From there it seemed natural to sell franchise opportunities and these were snapped up both across the nation and in a variety of countries overseas.

Judi has ensured that she moved with the times and, as people’s taste for music evolved, she and her company evolved as well. She puts down her longevity to consistency. “They know they’ll do a little yoga and Pilates, burn some calories and get out of the door in an hour. Sometimes in a health club, they don’t know what to expect and they can feel lost. That’s when class attendance can take a big hit.” By adapting to the market, Jazzercise has resisted the decline felt by some other health clubs. Combine this with the creativity of the franchise, where new routines are established every 10 weeks or so and there is a recipe for the success that has been enjoyed for four decades.

Judi Sheppard Missett has managed to affect millions of people by introducing them to fitness in a fun way. She has been honored by numerous lifetime achievement awards and induction into halls of fame. Her persistent philosophy of giving back to the community has resulted in donations of more than $26 million to a wide range of charities over the years.

Matthew Toren

Steve Case is at the same time a very personal man and one whose ambitions have carried him into a very public spotlight, some times more often than he would like. The softly spoken 51-year-old will probably be best remembered for his role in the catastrophic failure of AOL Time Warner, the company which he chaired during the much maligned “dot com” era. Indeed, to this day, ramifications of what was intended to be a media conglomerate megadeal, but which turned into an unmitigated disaster, reverberate.

To remember Steve Case for the AOL Time Warner fiasco would be very unfair. He was one of the most enlightened entrepreneurs of his generation, when the Internet boom was only just beginning and played a major role in the development of America Online, a portal that provided millions of consumers with their first taste of the World Wide Web. As we look at the importance of the Internet today we have Steve Case to thank in no small proportion.

Case was born in 1958 and grew up in Hawaii before moving to the mainland to pursue an education in political science. “I enjoyed high school and college, and I think I learned a lot, but that was not really my focus. My focus was on trying to figure out what businesses to start.” He immediately moved into marketing upon graduation and in early 1983 got his first taste of the communications revolution that was ahead. Centered around the ubiquitous Atari videogame console, his startup company, Control Video Corporation, tried to develop a concept whereby games could be downloaded via your phone line and an associated modem. Quantum Computer Services rose from the ashes of that failed company when, in 1985, Case and an influential friend Jim Kimsey oversaw what was ultimately to become America Online. The name change did not take place until 1991 as technology and applications started to catch up with the theory of online communications.

AOL really took off and became the platform for many individual online revolutions. “I think it took us nine years to get one million subscribers to AOL, and then in the next nine years we went from one million to 35 million.” As an example of innovation, the first truly automated multiplayer online role-playing game emerged as part of a decade of unbelievable growth. “Most of the people who had PCs did not have modems and could not use those PCs as communicating devices. They really were using them for spreadsheets or word processing or storing recipes or playing games or what have you.”

2001 will be remembered for a number of bad reasons, including what we now know as the dot com recession. A number of ill thought out conclusions and a number of managerial and accounting faux pas ruined a spectacular $160 billion merger between the then dominant AOL and media giant Time Warner. Much has been written of the AOL Time Warner disaster as something that had, in theory, so much potential started to unravel. Within two years Case had resigned as chairman but stayed on the board of directors for some additional time. By early 2005 he admitted that the merger should be unraveled, allowing AOL to set off on its own path.

AOL never recovered from its once heady heights. It surely did not help that the very business model itself was forced to change; AOL was unable to charge for access through its service, as access to the World Wide Web was becoming much more mainstream and widely available.

By 2005, it appeared as if Steve Case had picked himself up and dusted himself off when he launched Revolution. The company’s mission is to partner with entrepreneurs to build businesses seeking to give people more control over their lives. This venture reflects a lot of the philanthropic backbone that Steve is perhaps less well known for. Revolution seeks to help develop programs in the health and wellness fields, an area particularly close to his heart following the death of his elder brother Dan in 2001 from brain cancer.

In his spare time, Steve is the chairman of two nonprofit organizations and is often involved with strategies to help businesses succeed within America. He has been honored with the National Mentor in Partnership Leadership Award. Back in his native Hawaii, he is also an investor in companies that seek to develop new operating models within the agriculture industry.

“If you’re doing something new you’ve got to have a vision. You’ve got to have a perspective. You’ve got to have some north star you’re aiming for, and you just believe somehow you’ll get there, which kind of gets to the passion point.” Many people may still be bitter and refer to the estimated $135 billion in stock losses that occurred following the disintegration of AOL Time Warner, but Steve Case continues to believe that he can contribute greatly to the lives and well-being of Americans off-line as well as online.

Adam Toren

Howard Hughes was probably the first truly famous, controversial, wealthy extrovert. When you think of an archetypal billionaire his name probably comes to mind. He lived his life his own way and was by any definition, completely unorthodox. In later life he became a recluse which only served to accentuate the mystique surrounding him.

Hughes was born on Christmas Eve 1905 in the lone star state of Texas, which seemed a fitting location for someone who was to go on to be larger than life. The entrepreneurial spirit existed in the family as his father was at the helm of the Hughes Tool Company. Howard did not apply himself and despite the fact that he was enrolled in private school, seemed to want to concentrate more on golf than anything else. Education was abandoned altogether when father Howard Sr. died when his son was just 18. Howard dropped out and inherited the family estate.

As he matured into adulthood, Hughes’ interest became very diverse and his ambition and ego plain to see: “I intend to be the greatest golfer in the world, the finest film producer in Hollywood, the greatest pilot in the world, and the richest man in the world.” Family quarrels ultimately led to him turning over operation of the family business and beginning his successful focus on the movie industry. With assistance from his uncle Rupert, who worked for Samuel Goldwyn, Howard and his first wife moved to Hollywood to start making movies. Academy Awards and controversy followed, as he was never shy about pushing the boundaries. Even in those early days there were rumors about his involvement in espionage and “behind the scenes” activity.

As his burgeoning movie industry career unfolded, he also founded an aircraft company which, like his movie business, was also a subsidiary of the family tool business. Hughes again broke boundaries and never shied away from being controversial. Despite several clashes with authority he was an aviation pioneer, setting speed and endurance records. In July of 1938 he piloted a special Lockheed plane around the world and cut the previous New York to Paris record, set by Lindbergh, in half. This industry was his true pride and joy, as “I want to be remembered for only one thing – my contribution to aviation.”

As the second world war approached, Howard become embroiled in one of his most famous controversies. He was contracted by the government to build three “flying boats” in short order and only produced one, which itself flew only once. He was ridiculed by the public, who labeled the plane “the Spruce Goose.” The goose remains to this day one of Howard’s lasting legacies.

Socially, he never seemed to want to settle down, often dating Hollywood actresses, especially Katherine Hepburn. He seemed to be ever on the move and his empire peaked, postwar. Through all this expansion the boundaries between right and wrong became increasingly unclear and his huge empire was often linked with organized crime and the Central Intelligence Agency. Members of the Hughes staff were implicated in plots to assassinate Cuban leader Castro, a controversy that trailed all the way up to the White House.

Hughes became more and more embroiled in the seedy side of politics and scandal. “Every man has his price, or a guy like me couldn’t exist,” he once said, unveiling his modus operandi for all to see. By the time of the infamous Watergate break-in of 1972 he was right in the middle of the forces that linked the conspiracies leading to the ultimate downfall of both the Kennedy brothers and the Richard Nixon administration.

Major deals and controversy continued to follow. Hughes became a primary stockholder in Trans World Airways but sold his stock in the company when it faced numerous lawsuits in the ‘60s. Later he was to take over Air West and placed himself in the midst of another row.

Towards the end of his life he moved to Las Vegas and became more reclusive. As news began leaking about the CIA assassination plots he could not be contacted, yet the Hughes Tool Company was still front and center in clandestine operations and was indeed contacted by the CIA to help in a Soviet spy mission.

In 1972 Hughes sold his remaining stock and ended his business dealings. His health was deteriorating markedly and he traveled to various different cities, including London, seeking treatment. Howard Hughes died April 5, 1976 and there followed a nasty battle for his estimated $2 billion estate, a controversy which seemed fitting in death for a man who was truly larger than life itself.

Adam Toren

Fortune magazine probably summed him up appropriately. They called Harvey Mackay “Mr. Make Things Happen,” and this accurately describes this powerhouse of a man. Mackay has been at the helm of a highly successful self-made corporation for some 50 years now and he relates to his experience within many of the media engagements and products that have made him famous.

Harvey Mackay was born in his beloved state of Minnesota in 1932, to newspaper correspondent and schoolteacher parents. He enjoyed a public education and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1954. Right out of college, Harvey went to work in the shipping department of an envelope company, gradually rising to the role of salesman. His entrepreneurial spirit came to the fore and he left to develop his own envelope manufacturing company, the Mackay Envelope Company, which thrives to this day.

Mackay is most famous as a columnist, motivational speaker and best-selling author. His unique style has endeared him to many and has inspired countless numbers of people to succeed. He has the ability to tone every subject with a human touch, as witnessed by the titles of his New York Times number one bestsellers – Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition (Collins Business Essentials), Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt: Do What You Love, Love What You Do, and Deliver More Than You Promiseand Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty : The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need. Each title reflects a vital business anecdote and gives you an idea how colorful and inspirational he can be.

Mackay’s bestsellers have been translated into 35 languages and distributed to 80 countries through more than 10 million copies. His philanthropy extends to over 20 nonprofit boards dedicated to the assistance of others and his motivational speaking talents are in great demand.

Harvey dedicates a lot of his success to his experiences with the envelope company. Today the business employs over 600 people and is worth over $100 million. His philosophy is ingrained – “do what you love, love what you do and deliver more than you promise.”

The master of networking, Harvey Mackay believes in a regular interactive relationship with his network and is convinced that it should be a lifelong practice. He believes in gathering as much information as he can about anyone that he comes into contact with for social networking reasons. He reasons that the more he knows about you, the better able he will be to treat you as you would want to be treated. “If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.”

Harvey has managed to stay competitive in the cutthroat world of business whilst maintaining a high degree of personal integrity. His skill at relationship building has served him well, as has his ability to relate to the aspiring business person & entrepreneur.

Adam Toren

The story of the French fashion designer Coco Chanel is quite remarkable. She can be credited with making a significant impression on female fashions and is treated as an icon in the industry. She continued to innovate and contribute all the way up to her death at the age of 88.

Born on August 19, 1883 in Saumur, France, Chanel – whose given name was Gabrielle – endured a troubled childhood. She was placed in an orphanage by her deadbeat father and was raised by nuns. However, as the nuns taught her how to sew, this paved the way for significant achievements ahead. Trying to find her way in life she briefly became a club singer and this is where she assumed the name “Coco.” This name was a “shortened version of Cocotte, the French word for “kept woman”” according to Chanel.

As she passed from her teen years, Chanel became involved with a couple of wealthy society figures in Paris. This association allowed her to start a millinery business and achieve reasonable success, expanding to other cities. She soon started making clothes and her offbeat style became an instant hit.

It was in 1922 that Coco Chanel introduced one of her iconic products – the perfume, Chanel Number 5. This was indeed the first product to ever feature a designer’s name and it is popular even to this day. Perfume “is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion… that heralds the arrival and prolongs your departure,” she explained. It was around this time that she met her business partner, Pierre Wertheimer, whose family still has an element of control in the perfume company today.

Revolutionary designs continued through the 1920s, including the legendary Chanel suit, which borrowed elements from men’s wear and helped liberate women from the restriction of corsets. “Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury,” she once said. The black dress, once reserved for mourning, was developed for evening wear and became very chic within society. Chanel had a natural eye and an entrepreneurial touch. “Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.”

The devastation of World War II had a significant impact and Chanel closed her business. A controversial affair with a Nazi officer heralded a very negative period during her life. Indeed, after the war ended, Chanel was interrogated about her affair and it is rumored that only the intervention of her friend Winston Churchill saved her from serious repercussions.

After living a relative life of exile in the postwar period, Coco Chanel emerged back into the public eye at the age of 70. Once again, her natural and casual clothing became a hit with women and she’s credited with introducing bell bottom pants and pea jackets into common culture.

Whilst she passed away in 1971, her legacy lives on to this day. Chanel never married, saying that “I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.”

The accomplished designer Karl Lagerfeld took the reins of the company in the ’80s and the organization honoring her name continues to thrive today. Numerous biographies have been written about her life. Katherine Hepburn starred in a 1969 Broadway musical “Coco” and in more recent times the acclaimed actress Shirley MacLaine starred in a television production focusing on Chanel’s career resurrection.

Adam Toren

Lorenzo Borghese may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he was soon to spit this out and relinquish his noble Italian ancestry by moving to the United States when he was just five years old. Apart from a few years studying in central Florida, the “Prince” has lived in the Northeast, and in his beloved Manhattan since 1997.

37-year-old Borghese can trace his ancestry all the way back to Pope Paul V and his family name is steeped in Italian history and folklore. He spends little time focusing on his background and is largely Americanized with a poor command of his native tongue.

One thing that he did pick up from his family however is the entrepreneurial bug. Grandmother Marcella Borghese founded her own cosmetics company which was to became part of the giant Revlon in the ‘eighties. Lorenzo applied a twist to this idea and founded a line of luxury pet care products using all natural ingredients. In 2003, after he had received his MBA from Fordham University in New York, he founded Royal Treatment which has since grown to offer almost 100 products for your pampered pets. “People spend so much time and money dressing their dogs in outfits, but I realized that the multi billion dollar pet industry was void of bath and body pet products. The way I see it, any problem creates opportunities. If you see a problem, fix it”.

Borghese believes in a hands on approach and is heavily involved in the day-to-day operation of the company. “I’m working 7 days a week. Even if I’m on vacation, it can be difficult to relax because I can never let go of my company. Whether I’m approving art work or ingredients, I’m involved with everything”. He firmly believes that you have to stand out to succeed and believes that he has filled a much needed niche in the marketplace. Major expansion plans include the creation of private label products for various pet stores and an expansion into the far east. “Tough situations happen every day. There’s always something new that happens that’s a problem.”

Whilst Borghese is involved in several successful ventures, including GTE Partners (a private label Italian cosmetics concern, headquartered in New Jersey) and Multimedia Exposure Inc. (television direct marketing and distribution) he has achieved some notoriety from his appearance on the television show The Bachelor. This ABC TV production is a popular reality show and pitted him against 25 women through a search to find true love.

Despite his TV fame Borghese has his nose firmly to the entrepreneurial grindstone and has recently expanded his love for pets through the foundation of a social networking site, nuzzleplanet.com. When not working he can often be found helping numerous animal shelters throughout the country.

He firmly believes in doing “what you love to do” and being passionate about your work. Much of his business endeavors surround pet care as this is clearly one of the loves of his life. “People who complain all day and hate their jobs are not usually doing something that they love. Do what you’re good at doing. I have a friend who recently decided to open a car wash and now he can enjoy it and grow his business because he likes what he is doing.”

Matthew Toren

The lumbering, sleeping giant awakes. What will soon become the world’s largest economy is very much on the radar screen as it emerges from centuries of sleep. China’s potential for growth and its likely impact upon the economies of the Western world cannot be underestimated. Several homegrown entrepreneurs are riding that wave and one of their most notable nationals is Jack Ma, who founded the business-to-business website alibaba.com. After a meteoric rise, Ma’s company went public and now has a valuation of more than $30 billion.

Ma is certainly a child of China’s Cultural Revolution. He learned English when he was 12 and was able to interact with a number of foreign tourists. In his own words his eyes were opened. “China was opening up and a lot of foreign tourists went there. I showed them around as a free guide and practiced my English. Those eight years deeply changed me. I started to become more globalized than most Chinese. What I learned from my teachers and books was different from what the foreign visitors told us.” A visit to Australia in the early ‘eighties reinforced his vision.

Ma was not a model student and flunked university several times. Upon graduating with a degree in English he took a mundane teaching job at a university, but his passion had been fueled and when the business environment started to open up in the mid-nineties he started searching in earnest for ways to get into the corporate world.

During a visit to the United States in 1995, Ma discovered the Internet. Showing significant entrepreneurial skills he decided to set up a search engine centered on his own country. “I borrowed $2000 to set up the company. I knew nothing about personal computers or e-mails. I’d never touched a keyboard before that. That’s why I call myself “the blind man riding on the back of the blind Tiger.””

During the next few years his skills improved considerably and his business venture attracted a lot of interest from other emerging enterprises within China. But it was in 1999 that things really started to take off. “My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company.” In fiction, the words Ali Baba conjure up visions of the command that the character of the same name gave in order to open doors to hidden treasures. The choice of name is an inspired one.

Ma contends that the company survived in the initial years only because they were very prudent, but they were able to expand considerably when they received investment dollars from companies such as Goldman Sachs. The vision of the company is to help small and medium-sized companies to interact and make money. He wanted a business model that worked. “It has to be – click and get it – if I can’t get it, then it’s rubbish,” he observes.

Like all expanding businesses, Alibaba suffered through its ups and downs. Ultimately, they developed a product for Chinese exporters to meet US buyers online and from there the business-to-business site really exploded. A new site taobao.com did so well that in 2006 eBay shut down its own similar site in China. Revenues for Alibaba exceeded $440 million in 2008.

“My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online. We are going into search with Yahoo and have launched online auction payment businesses.” Ma maintains that he wants to create 1 million jobs in his own country, to change China’s social and economic environment and make it the largest Internet marketing place in the world.

This softly spoken 44-year-old calls himself a purist. He wants to be able to influence many people in the development of his beloved home nation. “When I am myself, I am relaxed and happy and have a good result.” It seems that Ma must be relaxed and happy all the time.

Adam Toren

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have ice cream in their veins. These two unlikely entrepreneurial heroes rose to pop culture status by following different paths. Jerry is more of the joker, always ready with a quick quip, who landed his first job in the industry as an ice cream scooper in college. He tried moving through medical school without any success and reverted to work as a lab technician, whilst Ben drove an ice cream truck in his senior school year, but also dropped out of college.

The pair first met each other when they shared a Manhattan apartment following graduation, but they did not explore their entrepreneurial possibilities until they became reunited in upstate New York and decided to go into the food business.

Ben and Jerry’s could just as easily have been a bagel bakery, but they deemed that option too expensive and decided to make ice cream instead. In the equally-as-funky Burlington, VT., they opened their first scoop shop and started churning out their off-the-wall ice cream creations.

Ben and Jerry realized the power of social networking in 1978 and started off by hosting a free film festival and by establishing several traditions, including a give away of free ice cream on the anniversary of the founding of the first store. “We measured our success not just by how much money we made, but by how much we contributed to the community. It was a two-part bottom line.”

Through the 1980s, business was great and they expanded out of state within New England. By 1987, annual sales totalled $32 million and even President Reagan became a Ben & Jerry’s fan in 1988, when he awarded them the prestigious US Small Business Persons of the Year award.

Ben & Jerry’s was, and still is, known for its creativity. Flavors such as “Chunky Monkey” and “Rainforest Crunch” featured unique flavor combinations, unusual packaging and colorful marketing methods. By the end of the 1980s, the company was operating in 18 states within the USA.

Their rapid growth was not without growing pains and they had to further innovate and sometimes capitulate as they grew. They were forced to relinquish some of the firm’s informal hierarchy and more established players, such as Dreyers and Haagen-Dazs, were putting up stiff competition.

Through the 90s, however, the firm continued its growth, with sales approaching $175 million towards the end of the decade. Perhaps inevitably, the brand was purchased by the food giant Unilever in 2000, although a unique arrangement allowed Ben and Jerry’s to continue to feature its unique operating style.

Since the outset, the duo had always been on somewhat of a social mission and this trend continues to this day. They have a solid commitment to recycling and conservation at all facilities and they use hormone-free milk in all products. “Now, when we face a problem like global warming, and you understand that the biggest impacts on global warming come from business and industry, I think business needs to take a leading role,” observes Jerry.

Ben & Jerry’s is very much the quintessential American success story, but they have always maintained their strong social and community values. “Neither of us could have anticipated twenty years ago that a major multi-international would some day sign on, enthusiastically, to pursue and expand the social mission that continues to be an essential part of Ben & Jerry’s and a driving force behind many of our successes.” I’ll lick an ice cream to that.

Adam Toren

If any of you have flown easyJet, stayed in an easyHotel, or rented an easyCar, then you know this serial entrepreneur. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou defines the entrepreneurial spirit, both by his success in developing businesses and in giving back to the community. He offers a multitude of best practices that I think all entrepreneurs, whether just starting out or in business for years, will find beneficial.

As the son of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon, it would have been easy for Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou to sit back and take it easy. But instead, he worked to amass his own fortune by establishing a business empire that continues to expand and succeed. His first endeavor was at age 25 with the shipping company Stelmar, funded in part with a loan from his father. With its success, Haji-Ioannou founded easyJet, now a well-known budget airline throughout Europe. The multitude of easyGroup companies soon followed.

“I was just lucky with easyJet. I took an enormous risk with my family’s fortune back in the 90s and I was lucky to have been in the right place and at the right time when the European airline industry was deregulating and with the right father to give me a lot of money to bet on new aircraft. And it worked.”

Haji-Ioannou is of the strong belief that once you’ve built a successful venture and want to move on to other opportunities, then you need to put your trust in a manager to carry on your vision. “Entrepreneurs mess around, once you’ve proven the business model leave it alone and get a manager in, and hire a proven manger.”

For entrepreneurs working towards developing a brand, Haji-Ioannou’s model is one to use as a guide. “Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you.” As the owner of easyGroup.com, Haji-Ioannou created a business empire with easyBus.com, easyCar.com, easyCinema.com, easyCruise.com, easy4men.com, easyHotel.com, easyInternetcafe.com, easyJet.com, easyJobs.com, easyMobile.com, easyMoney.com, easyMusic.com, easyOffice.com, easyPizza.com, easyValue.com, easyVan.com and easyWatch.com.

The Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur revels that his secret to success is to “Look at companies where the consumers are paying out of their own pockets and give them a product at the right price and they will take it; Choose a product/service where when you reduce the price more consumers buy; Look at the yield management, which is the same product given at different prices; Eliminate the frills; Under promise and over deliver; and Don’t expand too fast.”

During these challenging economic times, Haji-Ioannou, like other entrepreneurs, is trying to position his companies to make it through the uncertainty. “Remember, risk and reward is asymmetrical. You can’t risk having to raise debt or equity in a deep recession. I believe that the competitive landscape will not be as benign as we think it will be. I think we are entering an era of big government.”

Haji-Ioannou, who is worth over $700 million, is committed to giving back to his community and helping other entrepreneurs. He provides over 200 scholarships to his alma maters, the London School of Economics and Cass Business School in London, to support young, exceptional scholars; he created the Disabled Entrepreneur of the Year award to recognize entrepreneurs who have overcome limitations to start their businesses; he co-founded CYMEPA to preserve the marine environment in Cypress; he established the Stelios Award for Business Cooperation in Cyprus; he supports the Pendeli Reforestation project in Greece; he established the Stelios Haji-Ioannou Award for Entrepreneur of the Year in Greece; and he established the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation to recognize far-reaching aspirations, innovative ideas and measurable change.

It is for his services to entrepreneurship that Haji-Ioannou received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2006. “I am very passionate about encouraging and recognizing entrepreneurial spirit, and seeking out and celebrating business ability.”

His advice to budding entrepreneurs is threefold: “Pay attention to the detail of a business, those mistakes in the business model may be small now but they are compounded by growth. Don’t overestimate what consumers will pay for something that saves them time. Don’t bet the farm on your business, put enough in to have enough skin in the game, an amount that is meaningful but leaves an amount small enough for you to survive.”

Adam Toren

Photograph courtesy of easyGroup