Source: www.robertishere.com
I am a sucker for entrepreneurial stories, especially ones with interesting seeds. By “seeds” I mean how they got started. Here are three stories with seeds from childhood, immigration, and an inspirational mom.
Robert is Here. My colleague, Susannah, passed along a story about a terrific farm stand in Homestead, Florida called Robert is Here. This successful business, known for its key lime milkshakes, got started in the 1950’s when a young man named Robert sat beside the road selling his father’s cucumbers.
Since six-year old Robert had to go to school, the cucumbers were sold using the honor-system during school hours (customers deposited money in a tin can.) Every afternoon, though, the school bus would drop Robert off at the stand. Robert was a very friendly boy and Dad noticed they sold many more cucumbers when Robert was there. So they made a big sign that said “Robert is Here,” which Robert put out after he got off the bus.
Robert took this business seriously and the product offerings grew as neighboring farmers entrusted Robert to sell their fruits and vegetables. Robert hired people to operate the stand while he was in school. Fifty years later Robert still owns the business. Check them out if you are traveling south of Miami toward the Florida Keys.
Sosi Setian – SOS International. With all the recent controversy regarding immigration, I thought the story about Sosi Setian published this week in Fortune magazine was very compelling. Sosi was born in Bulgaria to Armenian parents during WWII. After the war Bulgaria was part of the Soviet Union. Her father, a small businessman, could hardly stay in business because of the huge sums of money the Soviets extorted from him. Facing this and other discrimination, the family left Bulgaria and went to Beirut, Lebanon, which was the only place that would accept Armenian immigrants. Sosi was a teenager at this time.
Source: Fortune Magazine
Sosi and her family wanted to come to America and after two years in Beirut they finally got the chance on the 4th of July in 1961, understandably this is Sosi’s favorite holiday. Sosi was very bright and spoke many languages and eventually graduated from UCLA. As a Ford Foundation fellow she traveled to Paris and then Cairo. By 1975 she had married, had two children, and was teaching English back in Beirut at American University. When the civil war started there at that time, she separated from her husband and came back to the States with her children.
She got a position at Columbia University and enrolled in a Ph.D. program. To support herself and family she took a part-time job as an interpreter in the New York City courts. As luck would have it, she met DEA agents in this job and they asked her to translate a tape from allegedly Armenian drug dealers. This led to a job translating narcotic messages from the Middle East.
The demand for Sosi’s services grew and so she hired others. Her son later joined the business and helped with expansion planning. Today the business, SOS International, generates $200 million in annual revenue and in addition to court and DEA translation services houses 3,000 military personnel in the Middle East. Another great example of how immigration helps our country.
Source: Fortune Magazine
Life is Good – The Jacobs. The story of how Bert and John Jacobs built the Life is Good brand into a $100 million company is very inspiring. How can you not love their mission, spread the power of optimism? Early in their lives their whole family was in a near fatal car accident and their father lost the use of one hand. He became a very negative person and the household stress was difficult – except their mom kept things positive. At dinner every night she would ask the six children to share something good that happened during the day. During this time the whole atmosphere changed.
That was how their seed of optimism and entrepreneurship was planted.
I’m sure you have seen their clothing products around. If you want more inspiration you can check out their new book How to Live with Passion and Enjoy the Ride. I also recommend these two articles in Business Insider and Fortune Magazine (My picture source. If article does not come up, search Life is Good.)
I have always been curious about where the seeds of entrepreneurship come from and I seem to see two common threads – early childhood experiences (Robert and the Jacobs) and experiential serendipity (Sosi). If you learn about other cool entrepreneurial stories with interesting seeds, let me know and send me a link.
