Dov Charney is one of the most outrageous entrepreneurs that we’ve ever profiled here at YoungEntrepreneur.com. The founder of American Apparel has earned praise for his promotion of fair wage practices and keeping manufacturing jobs in America.

He has also been the subject of four sexual harassment lawsuits and injects all of his advertisements with sexual themes. He was the subject of our Entrepreneur Profile section in March, “Be A Contrarian - Dov Charney“, and I wanted to continue the story today by going into how Dov got his start.

“America doesn’t need another faceless, institutional apparel company,” says American Apparel founder Dov Charney. “They need an apparel company that gets it and does it right.”

When Charney was in prep school, he began bootlegging garbage bags of K-Mart t-shirts from the U.S. back to his native Canada. Today, Charney heads American Apparel, the brand-free, sweatshop-free, made-in-America clothing chain he founded in 1997 that is taking the world by storm. Charney was named Ernst & Young’s 2004 Entrepreneur of the Year and one of Details magazine’s 50 most powerful people under 42. American Apparel is now the largest t-shirt manufacturer in the U.S., but Charney’s mission goes beyond creating cool clothes.

Charney was born on January 31, 1969 in Montreal, Canada to Jewish Canadian parents. A self-described “hyperactive” kid, Charney says, “I think I was just born overcharged…I was such a crazy kid in elementary school I was almost kicked out.”

In an attempt to control his behaviour, Charney’s parents sent him away to Wallingford, Connecticut, where he attended the prestigious prep school Choate Rosemary Hall. But Charney’s focus was on anything but school. Instead, he wanted to get in on what he saw as a money-making venture. “My friends were selling these great bootleg t-shirts in front of the Forum,” he says. “I was going to prep school in the States at the time and the t-shirts there were a bit different, better for the silk-screening process. So I started buying t-shirts at K-mart and bringing them to Canada in garbage bags on the train.”

Charney’s new business was flourishing, that is until he was arrested in front of his school. “They took me down to Station 10, which doesn’t exist anymore, and after a couple of hours of me yelling, ‘Monsieur, monsieur!’ they let me out and gave me back my cash and my shirts,” recalls Charney. “So what did I do? Headed straight for the Cock ‘n Bull to try and unload the rest of them.”

It was in that local pub that Charney met a Brooklyn native by the name of Bernie. Bernie placed a large order for t-shirts with Charney, who began to ramp up his business. The deal went sour, however, with Bernie going out of business and Charney losing almost $100,000. “I was barely 18,” he recalls. “So that was the beginning and I guess because I lost money I felt compelled to keep hustling.”

Charney dropped out of Tufts University in his senior year and moved to Columbia, South Carolina to begin anew. In 1989, thanks to a $10,000 loan from his father, he created another t-shirt company. But as his competition began to outsource their operations and imported clothes started to flood the market at cheaper prices, Charney found himself out of business. He was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1996.

But Charney was not ready to give up on his dreams just yet. He hired Marty Bailey, an industry veteran who had worked with the likes of Fruit of the Loom, and through a standard Chapter 11 reorganization tried to bring his company back to life.

Charney’s dreams of running a clothing company crashed in the mid-1990s, along with much of the industry. Did he waste his father’s $10,000 loan, he wondered. Was his move to South Carolina pointless? Charney wanted to make sure that his venture down south was not in vain.

After filing for bankruptcy, Charney recognized that he could not revitalize his company all on his own. He needed someone who had experience, someone who had been in the industry for some time and knew what it would take to reorganize the company and make it profitable. Charney found that person in Marty Bailey.

“I called up a guy I trust and asked, ‘Who’s the best out there at organizing a factory?’” says Charney. “He said Marty. So I called him on a Saturday and said, ‘Dude, my name’s Dov and I need help.’ He started Monday; that’s the way I operate.”

With over 20 years experience in the garment industry, Bailey came on board and immediately began to reconfigure Charney’s factory. He dramatically improved its efficiency by organizing the sewing team into groups of eight to ten people, each of whom was assigned a different task to perform to create a single garment. “Team manufacturing,” he called it.

Charney’s first design was the Classic Girl line and despite being dismissed by the likes of Haines and Fruit of the Loom, it proved a success. With that, he decided to move his business to Los Angeles, California, where he began a new business model, something Charney calls a “hyper capitalist-socialist fusion.” Today’s American Apparel was born.

Initially, the company restricted its operations to manufacturing t-shirts for designers, rock bands, corporate customers and the like. Because Charney’s shirts could hold silkscreen designs well, and they fit better than his competitors, they started becoming successful. Added to that was the fact that all of his products were produced right there in his L.A. factory. That meant that not only were they high quality, but he could capture the latest trends and create a fast turnaround. A t-shirt could go from being a concept to being in consumers’ hands in less than one week.

Because of the high quality of Charney’s clothes, he was able to charge more for them than his competitors with their Chinese imports. His t-shirts went for an average of $4 each, more than four times that of his competitors. Slowly, Charney’s customers began to increase their orders and he used the higher revenues to reinvest back into the business.

Today, American Apparel operates 155 stores in 11 different countries. The company continues to sell simple cotton clothing aimed at the market Charney calls “contemporary metropolitan adults.” It has expanded its product line from t-shirts to include skirts, bathing suits, jackets and more. However, wholesale of black and white t-shits continues to dominate, making up nearly half of all sales.

Although it is still only a fraction of the size of the likes of The Gap, American Apparel has proven to be one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry, opening 90 new stores in under two years. Indeed, Charney plans to double the number of stores over the next three years. “It’s sickening money, man,” says Charney. “We’re minting money.”

Last year, a venture capital firm by the name of Endeavor Acquisition Corporation bought out American Apparel for $244 million in new capital, and is keeping Charney on as CEO.

Now, as the single largest clothing manufacturer in the U.S. with over 5,000 employees, Charney says his concept is simple: “It’s t-shirts that look good, t-shirts that feel good, and t-shirts that are made in a non-exploitative setting.”

He turned what was once a small bombed-out department store in Tokyo into the world’s most successful consumer electronics company. Not only that but Akio Morita, co-founder of the Sony Corporation, was also one of the few entrepreneurs that helped Japan’s economy recover in the aftermath of World War II. Today, more than half a century after the company’s initial inception, and with Morita at the helm until his only recent departure, Sony remains one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, with over 158,000 employees worldwide and revenues in excess of $63 billion.

Whether it was his innate abilities or the rules he had learned, Morita was able to translate that into not only his own success, but also Japan’s. He helped put his country back on the map, while building his own reputation across the world. Indeed, in 1998, a Harris survey revealed that Sony was ranked the number one brand name by American consumers, ahead of Coca-Cola and General Electric. How did he do it?

“From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.

The most important mission for a Japanese manager is to develop a healthy relationship with his employees, to create a family-like feeling within the corporation, a feeling that employees and managers share the same fate. We will try to create conditions where persons could come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire their technological capacity.

I believe people work for satisfaction. I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it.

The American system of management, in my opinion, relies too much on outsiders to help make business decisions, and this is because of the insecurity that American decision makers feel in their jobs, as compared with most top Japanese corporate executives. 

If you go through life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice. 

I knew we needed a weapon to break through to the U.S. market, and it had to be something different, something that nobody else was making. 

The key factor in industry is creativity. There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business. 

What we in industry learned in dealing with people is that people do not work just for money and that if you are trying to motivate, money is not the most effective tool.

Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it. Don’t do market research. We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.“

Due to the popularity of our April post on Robert Kiyosaki (Play To Be First - Robert Kiyosaki), I’ve decided to dedicate another blog post to him. This time the post will cover one of Robert’s most fundamental beliefs - Make Your Money Work For You, not the other way around.

“We go to school to learn to work hard for money,” says Kiyosaki. “I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.”

When Kiyosaki was nine years old, he approached the father of his best friend, Mike, to teach him how to make money. The dad gave the young Kiyosaki a menial job in one of the convenience stores he owned. It was not exactly what Kiyosaki had had in mind. After three weeks of dusting cans and making just ten cents a week, Kiyosaki told his friend’s dad he wanted to quit. Kiyosaki had not learned how to make a fortune, but what he had learned was a lesson far more valuable, said the father. At the age of nine, Kiyosaki was beginning to understand the futility of working a job he hated for a meager salary that would not get him anywhere in life.

That lesson formed the basis of Kiyosaki’s later career, and is one of the major components in his teachings. Kiyosaki did not get to where he is today by going to work every day, being frugal, and saving his money. Instead, Kiyosaki learned to take risks – managed risks – and make his money do the working. “The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them,” says Kiyosaki. “The rich buy or create assets that work for them so they don’t have to.”

In the Industrial Age, the formula for success was to go to school, get good grades and find a secure job for life. Either the company or the government would look after your financial wellbeing once you decided to retire. Today, says Kiyosaki, times have changed: “We are in the Information Age and more than job security we all need financial security…You can no longer rely on your employer or your government to take care of you.”

According to Kiyosaki, key to achieving financial security is in understanding the difference between an asset and a liability, and learning to leverage that difference. “An asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money from your pocket,” he says. “The rich understand the difference and buy assets, not liabilities.”

In his very blunt words, “Savers are losers.” Kiyosaki sees money just sitting in a bank account as money wasted. Your financial goals should not be to save money, get out of debt, or invest for the long term, unless you are content being one of the middle class, he says. But, if you want to be a part of the rich kids’ club, that kind of thinking is obsolete.

“Today, ‘save money’ is bad advice,” says Kiyosaki, who has made most of his fortune in shrewd real estate investments, and teaching the rest of the world how to do the same. “I have a problem with too much money. I can’t reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.”

“Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want,” says Tony Robbins. For the past 15 years, Robbins has been doing exactly that. As one of the most celebrated motivational speakers and life coaches in the world, Robbins has come from humble beginnings to rise to the top of his game. He not only talks about how to achieve success; with best-selling books and seminars behind him, as well as being Chairman of five private companies that together generate over half of $1 billion, Robbins has himself become a successful entrepreneur and a model of what it takes in order to achieve your dreams.

A successful entrepreneur, a strategic advisor to world leaders, an award-winning speaker and an internationally best-selling author, Tony Robbins has become one of the world’s most recognized authorities in the life coaching industry. Through his seminars and audiotapes, Robbins is helping millions of people around the world live a more fulfilled life. How did he create the life he wanted for himself?

“You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don’t think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.

I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret.

For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent. Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thin was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

The truth of the matter is that there’s nothing you can’t accomplish if: (1) You clearly decide what it is that you’re absolutely committed to achieving, (2) You’re willing to take massive action, (3) You notice what’s working or not, and (4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.

Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.

All personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it’s costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. Then you must associate tremendous pleasure to the idea of adopting a new, empowering belief.

I also remember the moment my life changed, the moment I finally said, ‘’I've had it! I know I’m much more than I’m demonstrating mentally, emotionally, and physically in my life’.’ I made a decision in that moment which was to alter my life forever. I decided to change virtually every aspect of my life. I decided I would never again settle for less than I can be. 

Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.“

In his youth, Tom Watson was anything but the picture of success he would later come to be. He was asthmatic, shy and had few friends.

But, this loner would soon become one of the greatest and richest salesmen in the world.

As one of the most successful self-made industrialists of his time, Watson would turn the winds of fate, transforming his humble beginnings into a career whose legacy continues to this day.

When Watson decided to change the name of his company to International Business Machines, he knew that it was a big name for a small company.

But, over the next few decades, Watson would build the company to live up to its name.

From a traveling door-to-door salesman to CEO of one of the largest expanding companies in the U.S., Watson’s name has since become synonymous with not only the beginnings of the computer industry but with what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.

How did he do it?

“It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success. On the far side.

Plan for the future…Have faith in the future. Resolve to stand for something big and fine outside of your business life.

Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right.

Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Every time we’ve moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.

Too many people are waiting for someone else to give them a push. We have tried to develop self-starters in IBM.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

You must guard constantly against those who lack vision. You must guard against the reactionary mind. Always cultivate and associate with persons of vision and with persons who believe that things are going to be better. When you do this, you take on the kind of vision, backed by the right kind of inspiration that you need if you are going to grow in this business or any other business.

It is impossible for any man, I don’t care how able he may be, to do the work and attend to all the details of a business – to accomplish anything – without the support of his entire organization. This business is such that neither I nor any executive staff can run it alone. It is too big. Our company has grown each year and succeeded because everybody has been contributing to its success.

Your success will be determined by the manner in which you use the tools you have been given to work with. When practicing the art of selling use all your talents. Put everything you have into your efforts; above all put your personality into them. Never copy anybody. Be yourself.”

“I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby basically, while I had my day job,” recalls Pierre Omidyar. An unexpected success, that side hobby has today become the world’s largest personal online trading community.

The website hosts nearly four million auctions every day, with almost half a million new items being added for sale every 24 hours. Omidyar’s personal net worth is estimated to be roughly $10 billion.

“When you look at the accomplishments of accomplished people and you say, ‘Boy, that must have been really hard,’…that was probably hard,” says Omidyar.

“And conversely, when you look at something that looks easy, that was probably hard. And so you’re never going to know which is which until you actually go out and do it.”

Whether Omidyar’s accomplishments look easy or not, they are undoubtedly significant, having not only revolutionized the way people do business, but making a multi-billion dollar fortune along the way.

How did he do it?

“I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion. It is not really work if you are having fun…that was the case with me. I always wanted to be involved with computers. Like most software people, it is very much passion more than anything else. The ability to create software that could have a benefit or an impact on people that used it was what was driving me.

You’ll fail at some things – that’s a learning experience that you need so that you can take that on to the next experience. What you learn from those challenges and those failures are what will get you past the next ones…I was the pretty consistent bull and the cheerleader on eBay actually.

Whatever future you’re building, don’t try to program everything. Five Year Plans never worked for the Soviet Union – in fact, if anything, central planning contributed to its fall. Chances are, central planning won’t work any better for any of us.

By building a simple system, with just a few guiding principles, eBay was open to organic growth – it could achieve a certain degree of self-organization. Build a platform – prepare for the unexpected…you’ll know you’re successful when the platform you’ve built serves you in unexpected ways. To truly prepare for the unexpected, you’ve got to position yourself to keep a couple of options open so when the door of opportunity opens, you’re close enough to squeeze through. 

We believe people are basically good; we believe everyone has something to contribute; we believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people; we recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual; we encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated. I founded the company on the notion that people were basically good and that if you give them the benefit of the doubt you’re rarely disappointed.

So the only thing you can do is have a certain set of values that you encourage people to adopt and the only way your customers are going to adopt those values is if they see that you’re living those values as well. It’s all about treating each other the way you want to be treated yourself so that you can do business with one another.

We have to do it internally at eBay at the company as well, because if we don’t then eventually that seeps through, and customers will see that and that will harm our business. So our business is based on that. Nice guys, a responsible company that has its heart in the right place – that’s run by real human beings – it has to be successful, because if we weren’t that way, eBay would not be successful. eBay wouldn’t exist. It would not be possible. 

You should pursue your passion. If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful. You have to really believe in what you’re doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you’ll be successful.“

Donald Trump ranked #4 on our list of The Top 21 Celebrity Entrepreneurs.

“Get in, get it done, get it done right, and get out,” Trump once said. Indeed, this has been his motto from his earliest days assisting his father’s real estate business to his multi-million dollar deals in the high stakes world of Manhattan real estate.

He has earned a reputation as a ruthless, cunning and suave businessman who can spot a business opportunity a mile away. He has turned the deal-making process into an art form and he has demonstrated that he can come back swinging after even the hardest of challenges to wind up again on top.

Estimated to be worth over $2 billion, Trump has secured his name as one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century.

“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate,” says Trump. He has reacted to the twists and turns in his life with optimism, becoming CEO of the largest privately held company in New York, with over 22,000 employees and estimated revenues in excess of $10 billion. What did he use to get ahead?

“I learned a lot about discipline and about channeling my aggression into achievement. I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best. Always look out for yourself.

I was relentless, even in the face of total lack of encouragement, because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure. When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough, Just go get them.

My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want. You can’t be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens.

My experience is that if you’re fighting for something you believe in – even if it means alienating some people along the way – things usually work out for the best in the end. The most important thing in life is to love what you’re dong, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it. Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. Without passion, you don’t have energy, without energy you have nothing.

If you go for a home run on every pitch, you’re also going to strike out a lot. I try never to leave myself too exposed, even if it means sometimes settling for a triple, a double, or even, on rare occasions, a single.

If you want to sell a car and you spend five dollars to wash and polish it and then apply a little extra elbow grease, suddenly you find you can charge an extra four hundred dollars, and get it. If you want to buy something, it’s obviously in your best interest to convince the seller that what he’s got isn’t worth very much.

When I build something for somebody, I always add $50 million or $60 million onto the price. My guys come in, they say it’s going to cost $75 million. I say it’s going to cost $125 million, and I build it for $100 million. Basically, I did a lousy job. But they think I did a great job.

Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. I ask I ask I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that’s when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms.

Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they’ll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television.

Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. I like thinking big. I always have. If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.”

Home mortgages, auto loans, installment credit – they may be taken for granted today, but before this son of Italian immigrants came along, such things didn’t exist. Amadeo Peter Giannini – A.P. to his friends – revolutionized the banking world by focusing on “the little people.” Giannini passed away in 1949 at the age of 79. By that time, the bank he had founded, the Bank of America, had become the largest bank in the world, with $7 billion in assets and more than 525 branches in over 300 American cities. Today, Giannini stands out as one of TIME Magazine’s Builders and Titans of the 20th century – the only banker to make this list of the century’s most 100 important people.

He never dreamed of being a banker when he was a child, but today, there is nary a student of retail banking who does not know the incredible story of this determined entrepreneur. A son of poor immigrants, Giannini helped build the first national system of banks for the ordinary person, all the while fueling California’s economic development and inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs. What were Giannini’s secrets for success?

Giannini was born in 1870 in San Jose, California, to the son of recent immigrants from Genoa, Italy. His father, Luigi, was a farmer who had grown up in Ligure, a small village that today is home to just 500 people. His mother, Virginia Demartini, married Luigi when she was fourteen years old and he was 29. Together, the two decided to leave Italy and head to America in the hopes of making a fortune. With the little money they had collected from relatives, Giannini’s parents rented a house with a few rooms. After six months of renovations, they had transformed it into a functioning inn with over twenty rooms. It was in that inn that the young Giannini was born.

The family inn continued to grow and eventually became a hotel. Luigi sold it after a few more years and bought a 40-acre plot of land. It seemed that the family was finally living their dreams. That is until one day, when Luigi got into an argument with an employee over a simple one-dollar debt and wound up getting killed. It was a massive blow for the seven year old Giannini, who witnessed the tragic event before his very own eyes. In that instant, his 22 year old mother had become a widow.

Virginia later remarried to Lorenzo Scatena, who was both a farmer and the owner of a small produce grocery business. She convinced her new husband that produce was more profitable than farming, and so the family moved to San Francisco in 1882 in order to be nearer to the port. When Giannini was 14 years old, he left school and went to work full time for his stepfather.

For the next five years, Giannini devoted himself to the store. He took on the job of public relations, writing letters to all their potential clients and suppliers and following up in person. When he was 19 years old, Giannini’s stepfather rewarded his hard work by making him a partner in the thriving business. Giannini now owned half of Lorenzo Scatena & Co. It wasn’t until he reached the age of 31 that Giannini decided to get out of the produce business. He made an announcement that he was “retiring”, but few believed he would be gone for very long. Indeed, the next phase of his life was when his real career would begin.

At the age of 32, after making a handsome profit in produce and having stepped back from the business world, Giannini thought he would have more time to devote to his own interests – reading, traveling and the like. But, fate would have other plans. He quickly began receiving offers from other businesses eager to snap him up, but there was one in particular that caught his attention; the Columbus Savings & Loan Association asked Giannini to join their board of directors.

The Columbus S&L was a modest bank headquartered in the Italian section of North Beach. Giannini decided to accept their offer, in the hopes that the position would allow him to both hold a prestigious title and also to help society. For the next two years, Giannini devoted himself to the bank and things seemed to be progressing smoothly. That is, until he began to encounter difficulties with the association’s other directors.

Giannini wanted to help hardworking immigrants like his parents, but the Columbus S&L had little interest in extending loans to anyone except businessmen and the already wealthy. In other words, you could only get money if you already had some money. This didn’t make sense to Giannini. However, his pleas to lend to the working class fell on deaf ears. And so, in 1904, Giannini raised $150,000 from his stepfather and ten other friends, and opened the Bank of Italy.

The Bank of Italy was located in a converted saloon right across the street from the Columbus S&L; even the saloon’s bartender was kept on in the role of assistant teller. It might not have been the most professional of ventures – he solicited business door to door at a time when doing so was considered unethical – but that didn’t matter. The Bank of Italy allowed Giannini to fulfill his dream of helping the working class. Within one year, deposits to this ‘bank for the little guy’ were exceeding $700,000.

By 1906, deposits to the Bank of Italy had surpassed $1 million. Giannini seemed to be on top of the world when disaster struck. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was hit by one of the largest earthquakes in the city’s history; much of the city was destroyed. Whereas other banks took as long as one month to reopen, Giannini had reopened the Bank of Italy in just six days. He may have been operating from just a plank stretched across two barrels in the street, but for those who needed loans – and now, more than ever – that he was operating was celebration enough.

Over the next ten years, Giannini would open several other Bank of Italy branches throughout the city. In 1928, he approached the President of the Bank of America, Los Angeles, about a possible merger. When the merger was finalized, Giannini remained chairman of the new institution, but agreed to keep the name Bank of America as it was symbolic of the new bank’s broader mission.

Under Giannini’s leadership, the new Bank of America quickly became one of the only banks to reach beyond a single city. He founded TransAmerica as a holding company for his widening interests, which even included some overseas banks. TransAmerica was also the controlling shareholder of the Bank of America for a period, until the U.S. Congress stepped in to break it up.

He may have gained many opponents on his rise to the top for his use of unconventional tactics and his focus on the working class, but even as his monopoly expanded, it was hard to make the case that his actions were against the public interest. Today, as banks continue to diversify the range of services they provide, they are carrying out the legacy that was left behind by Giannini.

“Most people live and die with their music still unplayed,” Mary Kay Ash once said. “They never dare to try.” Ash was not one of those people. Raised in a time when few women were in business, let alone successful in business, Ash broke down barriers on her rise up to creating a multi-billion dollar operation.

Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc. continues to be a leader in the industry, with outlets in over 30 countries that are staffed by 1.6 million employees.

Ash once said that “people fall forward to success.” In her case, it seems she didn’t fall so much as she ran towards her dreams. With ambition and determination, Ash created not only a successful billion-dollar company but also one of the few to be featured three times in Fortune magazine’s “The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.”

How did Ash break through the glass ceiling of gender discrimination to become a household name around the world?

“Our Company was begun with only one objective, that of giving women the chance to succeed, an opportunity that simply did not exist in the early ’60s.

Many women have made the mistake of changing their beliefs to accommodate their work. It must be the other way around. Those men didn’t believe a woman had brain matter at all. I learned back then that as long as men didn’t believe women could do anything, women were never going to have a chance.

I knew that I had been denied opportunities to fulfill my optimum potentials simply because I was a woman. These feelings were not mere indulgences of self-pity, because I had personally known so many other women who had suffered similar injustices.

You can do it! So often a woman comes to us who desperately needs to hear that. Frequently she is a housewife who has been out of the job market for many years, or who has never worked outside the home. When I see a woman like this, I want to do for her what nobody did for me, in the way of providing opportunities. 

I believe that most successful people are ordinary people with extraordinary determination. You cannot keep determined people from success. If you place stumbling blocks in their way, they will use them for stepping-stones and climb to new heights. Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. If you act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic. A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one. 

You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you’re willing to pay the price. Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve. 

I was taught to put my best effort into anything I did, and I can honestly say I’ve always done that. Still, there were many times when I failed, many times when I was disappointed. We didn’t set the world on fire from the first day: disappointments, setbacks and work have created the Company as it is today. 

Every failure, obstacle or hardship is an opportunity in disguise. Success in many cases is failure turned inside out. For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have the choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to overcome you and be a loser…Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure.” 

“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way,” says Robert Kiyosaki.

With 18 books under his belt, and 26 million copies sold combined around the world, this millionaire self-help investment guru must have had a very strong dream. Indeed, three of his books have been on the best sellers lists of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times simultaneously.

From his humble beginnings in Hawaii, Kiyosaki has today become one of the most respected – and controversial – businessmen and motivational speakers in the world.

“I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii,” says Kiyosaki. He may still be from Hawaii, but Kiyosaki’s impact on the world of personal finance has been anything but little.

Today, as one of the leading authors and motivational speakers in America on strategies of achieving personal financial freedom, Kiyosaki has achieved a cult-like in the millions. Rober Kiyosaki also came in at #18 in our list of the Top The 21 Celebrity Entrepreneurs.

How did this little, fat kid from Hawaii become a big, strong player in the extremely competitive industry?

“We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them. The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them The rich buy or create assets that work for them so they don’t have to.

You need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability. An asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money from your pocket. The rich understand the difference and buy assets, not liabilities.

In the Industrial Age the ticket for success was to go to school, get good grades, and find a safe secure job for life. You did not have to worry about your financial education because the company and the government would take care of you financially once your working days were over. The rules have changed. You can no longer rely on your employer or your government to take care of you.

Today, we are in the Information Age and more than job security we all need financial security. Unfortunately, our school system teaches us little about the subject of money. Our children will be required to learn much more than we ever did, and much more than schools are prepared to teach them. Cash flow management is an essential life skill and a skill that will require more and more sophistication as we move further into the Information Age.

The single best piece of advice I can give is this: Be careful what financial advice you listen to. Most financial advice—such as “save money,” “get out of debt,” “invest for the long term” and “diversify”—is fine for the middle class or the poor. It’s not good advice if you want to be rich because it is obsolete advice. For example, in 1971 the U.S. went off the gold standard and the U.S. dollar became a currency and . . . currencies are designed to lose money. That’s why today, “save money” is bad advice.

Your business revolves around your asset column, as opposed to your income column. The rich focus on their asset columns while the poor and middle class focus on their income columns.

The Tax Code of the United States provides many vehicles for people to save on their taxes. Most of these vehicles are available to anyone but it is the rich who usually look for them and use them because they have learned to “mind their own business.” For example an individual can utilize the tax advantages and protection provided by a corporation to get rich much faster than someone who is an employee or a small-business sole proprietor.

Work to learn–don’t work for money. To become successful you must learn how to manage cash flow, systems and people. Being in the Marines taught me leadership and working in sales for Xerox taught me how to sell and how to accept rejection. All of these skills were important for my success. Look for jobs that can help you develop the skills of managing cash flow, systems and people rather than just pay you well.

Many entrepreneurs fail to grow because they lack leadership skills. And rather than look in the mirror, they find it easier to blame others. Blame is short for be-lame, and you can’t be an effective leader if you’re lame.

Most people never get wealthy simply because they are not trained financially to recognize opportunities right in front of them. The rich have learned to recognize opportunities as well as how to create them.

Remember to dream big, think long-term, underachieve on a daily basis, and take baby steps. That is the key to long-term success. If you aren’t practicing and playing to be first, then maybe you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.“