Motivational Moments

Thomas Edison's on Success

Success Magazine posed this question to the great Thomas Edison in 1898 on the subject of ‘What’s the first requisite for success?’. Here is Edison's timeless quote.

“The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly . . . You do something all day long, don’t you? If you get up at 7 and go to bed at 11, you have put in 16 good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things, and I do it about one. If they applied it in one direction . . . they would succeed.”

Make Something Happen

The late great literary agent, Swifty Lazar, would get up every morning, look at his calendar and see what was going on for the day. If there was nothing then he made something happen every day . . . before lunch. You make a call, you start some activity, you get an appointment. Because the activity, you create today is going to give you business tomorrow.

Broke is an Economic Condition

John Hope Bryant was raised with a “Yes I can” attitude for earning money. His only problem was his inability to hold on to his money and by the time he turned 18 he was homeless. This ‘life lesson’ would be the catalyst for his future passion of providing financial literacy for low-wealth and underserved individuals. At the age of 25, seven years after being homeless, he turned his life around and started his own private banking business. In four years, it grew to a $24 million dollar company; he later founded Operation HOPE, a non-profit, public benefit organization dedicated to empowering underserved communities. According to Mr. Bryant “Broke is a temporary economic condition; poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of the spirit, and one must vow to never, ever be poor again.”

The Real Nightmare

Boxing great and entrepreneur, George Foreman, gave advice to an inventor, who had risked all he had in hopes of bringing to life his invention for a car seat after an auto accident claimed the life of his young daughter. Foreman’s words of encouragement . . . “America is filled with dreams, you got to believe that you are touching on something. Don’t ever be discouraged-that is the nightmare . . . discouragement.”

Richard Branson Started as a Teen

Billionaire entrepreneur, Richard Branson, who started his first company as a teen recalls the time when he had to forego his beloved Virgin Record company in order to pursue his dream for his new airline Virgin Atlantic. According to Branson, “It’s much more fun in life being the underdog trying to topple Goliath. We have had a lot of fun trying to topple the big companies that have become fat an bloated-overcharging the consumer and have come in and tried to do it in a way that we can be proud of.”

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