Forbex Success Stories

One of the only three people to be inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame, Seth Godin is a master marketer. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, who has founded companies such as Squidoo and Yoyodyne (which he sold to Yahoo for over $30 million in 1998). 

You know of the story about the hyena and the duck? If you don’t, then here is how it goes…

The hyena is hungry and prays for the heavens to give him something to eat. After days of searching for a meal, he stumbles upon a duck’s eggs. From experience, he knows that they are nutritious and just what he needs. So, what he does is that he eats all of them.

While he is at it, he hears the duck approaching and so he goes and hides. And something amazing happens: the duck lays more eggs and again goes on its errands. The hyena, so grateful to the heavens for providing him with a meal, goes and eats all the eggs again. This happens for some time, and that is when the hyena stumbles upon a brilliant idea!

Instead of waiting every time for the duck to lay the eggs, why not just eat the whole duck and then get all the eggs that the duck is hiding in its belly? Brilliant, right? And it made perfect sense because it is absolutely not fair for the duck to keep on keeping the hyena waiting. And so the hyena, knowing that opportunity knocks only once, goes ahead and eats the duck. It’s obvious what happens next: he dies of hunger because he never really discovered where the duck was hiding its eggs. He died frustrated because he thought that the little duck had outsmarted him!

People generally assume that the people who take shortcuts are usually greedy. The person who tries to gain an extra profit by overcharging his customers, the employee who steals from an employer, the entrepreneur who expands too fast, the establishment that tries to cut costs by reducing the quality or quantity of goods and so on. The list is endless. But all these people are not greedy. They are simply fools.

They are not greedy, because the really greedy never take shortcuts because they know that taking shortcuts is simply an easy way to get the bitter end of the deal. They are not greedy because in the end, they usually end up using far much more energy. They end up walking longer miles. They end up taking more time to get what they want.

People who are really greedy take the long route. They pay more attention to their customers, they build a better product, they treat people better and they take time to learn the hows and the whys. They never forget that the relationships and the good will that they establish, is an investment that they can cash on anytime in the future. They just don’t want what they can have now, but they want to have it all, including all there is in the future.

Let’s consider a simple case of affiliate marketers. These are the people who keep on sending you emails telling you about this great deal and that awesome product a friend just showed them. They keep on sending you these emails in the hope that you will go to check out the product and hopefully buy it. And when you do, they usually get a piece of the money you pay – more like a commission.

For the fools, once they get your email address, all they do is to send you all the emails they can and all the products they have ever heard of. They send them every day, all day. And what do you do when you see that? You mark their mails as spam, and any time you see an email from them, it sort of ruins your day. These are pure fools because they never really get what they want. They may seem greedy, but what they really are, are perfect examples of frustrated beings who want, but who never know how to get what they want.

What does a greedy affiliate marketer do? He sends you an email, probably once or twice a week. Now, that is not so threatening. And you are likely not to categorize his email as spam. Then, to endear himself to you, he sends useful information – really meaningful information that sort of helps you. This makes sure that you will read his email the next time he sends it. In between, he may even add a few freebies as an appetizer.

When he eventually sends an email telling you of a product, probably costing in excess of $5,000, you are likely not only to check it out, but to also buy it (if you can afford it). And more often than not, these products are usually useful and ones that he or she has already tested. You are now hooked, and he can get as much commissions from you as he can – probably for the rest of your life. Now that is a truly greedy person! But you won’t mind satisfying his hunger simply because it is in your best interest to give him what he wants!

And that is the difference between affiliate marketers who make millions of dollars and those who make peanuts. It is the difference between somebody as successful as Jeremy Schoemaker who makes over $130,000 by simply sending two emails; and the average affiliate who lives on the brink of bankruptcy – perpetually.

This reminds me of the story in 48 Laws of Power, about the conman who wanted to con Al Capone. If you don’t know, AlCapone was a gangster - one of the most famous and most ruthless gangsters of his time, and here was a conman wanting to pull a con. Some, far much more resourceful had tried and Al Capone had killed all of them.

So this guy goes to Al Capone and tells him that he could multiply his money for him. Capone knows that this is definitely a con, but he agrees because he could easily kill the guy later. After being given the money, this conman simply takes it to the bank, where it accumulates interest.

After expiry of the period within which he was to double the money, he simply goes to Al Capone, tells him that he failed to double the money, but to prove his honesty, he gives Capone all his money back. Al Capone was touched by the man’s honesty because he not only expected the man to con him, but also because such “honesty” was rare in the violent and rough world Capone lived in. To show his appreciation, Al Capone gave the guy half of the money – which was exactly what the conman had planned all along. He had conned Al Capone and gotten away with it!

Life is a game and it has its own rules. So is success. But unlike most games in which you get penalized, breaking the established rules of success and life may be what you need to hit a jackpot. The only problem is that, there is no guarantee that breaking the rules, following the rules or following your heart will guarantee you success in life. 

“Unless you have courage, a courage that keeps you going, always going, no matter what happens, there is no certainty of success. It is really an endurance race.”

-Henry Ford

But there is a way to totally rig the game in your favor. And that is to keep playing. You can never be certain of getting whatever you want unless you keep playing. Unless you manage to stand up each and every time you fall and unless you find your balance every time something trips you off, you can never really be sure of success.

The success stories of successful men in the world today are testament to this fact. Every once in a while people experience setbacks and more often than not, it is only by staying in the game that these people get to win big in the end. Walt Disney’s first business went bankrupt. Abraham Lincoln failed far much more times than any man could reasonably have persevered. Even Apple and Steve Jobs faced their huddles along the way. And so has Bill Gates and Microsoft – they have made super-blunders in some of the software they have come up with. Simon Cowell, after experiencing a period of initial success, became bankrupt and was forced to go back crawling to his mother’s house.

These are just but a few of some of the most successful people in the world. There are far much more success stories and many are still being written. And all of these real-life stories show that the only way to be sure of success in life and in business is to keep in the game. To keep on rolling with the punches and to keep at it.

If you fail, it doesn’t mean that it is over. If you experience setbacks, that is just but a small bump on your way to success. Don’t let the little distractions in life rob you of the success you deserve. Let them not rob you of the life that you want. Don’t, simply because if you do, then your story of success will never really be complete.

This is a game that is so full of uncertainties that is virtually impossible for normal people to win. Crazy people win it simply because making the ordinary logical choice is most of the time the quickest way to lose any gains made. Time and time again, people who are in their right minds have tried to play it, and time and time again they have always come up short… every single time. It is a game with the largest wins, and as history and statistics show, only crazy people win big in this game – the game of life.

“It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”

Somebody reasonable and sane told that to a guy who had written a story about animals. From cover to cover… animals which could actually speak. The guy didn’t listen to the “expert”. He was crazy enough not to put his manuscript in a dustbin. He persisted, and for his craziness, his book won big. The Animal Farm is celebrated as a piece of literary genius and George Orwell is known for writing it.

Against Ridicule, Rejection, War Planes And An Earthquake - He still expected to win!

Soichiro Honda’s only dream was to develop a piston which he could sell to Toyota Corporation. He therefore sold everything he had, including pawning his wife’s jewelry just to make his dream come true. After endless nights and days in his garage, he came up with what he considered a masterpiece and presented it to Toyota -  it was rejected.

Rather than giving up, he went back to work and to school. Whoever he tried to talk to about the design, either didn’t care, or ridiculed them. This included some of his instructors, but Honda never really gave up. He continued to perfect his design and when he presented it to the company, it was accepted. His dream had come true… or maybe not.

The government was gearing up for war, and while he had gotten the contract he wanted, there was really no concrete for him to use to build his factory. What had been a good success story suddenly hit a wall. He didn’t focus or protest about the unfairness of this situation, he simply looked for a way to make his own kind of concrete. He found it, and his factory was finally built.

And then the war started and the factory was bombed – twice. He didn’t give up, he simply instructed his workers to collect the gasoline cans the airplanes discarded and used them as raw materials. These he called “gifts from President Truman”.

His attitude seemed to have conquered all. And then nature intervened. An earthquake flattened the whole factory! He sold his piston operation to Toyota. But he wasn’t really done.

The gasoline shortage that resulted after the war crippled almost everyone’s life, including Honda’s. For the sake of economizing gasoline, he fixed a motor in his bicycle and soon enough everyone was asking for his “motorized bikes.”He had struck a goldmine! He decided to personally write a letter to all the 18,000 bicycle shop owners asking for an investment. Only a handful replied, and Soichiro Honda used the capital gained to reproduce his motor bike, but they never really sold as much as he had anticipated. People found them to be too big and too bulky.

Any normal human being by now would have given up, but not Honda. He decided to make various adjustments in his design and he finally came up with the “Super Cub”. Now these, were an instant hit. They not only earned Soichiro Honda an Emperor’s Award, but also served as the foundation of a billion-dollar company that has his name. He won big!

“For your own good, do not publish this book.”

This is what D.H. Lawrence was told when he tried to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Well, needless to say, it became a hit and made its writer famous through time – a complete writer’s success story.

Morris E. Goodman(The Miracle Man): A Fight To Have It All Back

He crushed an airplane. He walked from it alive, but less of a human being. He was completely paralyzed, having broken his first and second cervical vertebrae. He couldn’t eat or drink. He also couldn’t breathe because his lungs were crushed. He couldn’t eat. In fact, the only thing that he could do was to blink.

And the doctors said that he was lucky enough to be a vegetable for the rest of his life. They were the experts, and that was what research, science and medical reasoning said. But not he. He said he would walk out of that hospital on his two feet. He did! His story is expertly told in The Secret  and it has served as an inspiration to many. Only because he was crazy enough to defy science and medical facts!

When A Millionaire Taps On Crazy, What Happens?

He becomes a billionaire. At least in the case of J. Paul Getty – the billionaire. While he is famous for saying that the secret to success is: “Rise early, work late, and strike oil” and also for installing a payphone in his mansion, people usually overlook the real secret to his success. And throughout his career, this one quality is what he owes his all success.

By 1949, Paul Getty was already a rich man, but this is the year that he did something that ended up establishing him as the richest man of his time. He simply paid $69.5 million for a barren piece of land. And the land was in foreign country. Well, he actually paid $9.5 million in cash, and then promised to pay $1 million every year after that, whether he struck oil or not. Now that, is not just risk taking, it is almost madness. This is so especially keeping in mind that no oil had ever been found, and that by then, there were more and more people who had already gambled their money away in the hope of striking oil.

The first year went by, and no oil. The second, nothing came of it. The third, still nothing. Keep in mind that he was still paying the million dollars plus footing all the expenditure of exploring for oil in Saudi Arabia: but he still kept on hoping. And that unrealistic hope paid him handsomely. That barren piece of land ended up producing over 16 million barrels of oil per year. He won big!

Determined to Sing Nearer My God To Thee

“We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event . . . we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off.”

That is what Ted Turner said during the launch of CNN. It was the first 24 hour news channel in the United States, and it didn’t really make any sense to have such a channel. To make it worse, he and the original founders had “dumped” $25 million of their own money into the station. Skeptics were many and many more thought them mad… but nobody is doubting right now. And that venture that everybody thought was doomed made Ted Turner a billionaire - one who was rich enough to donate $1 billion dollars to the United Nations.

It’s A Recession, Are You Out of Your Mind?

When a recession hits, it is natural for people to shy away from taking risks. They are sensible and so, they make no investments, they start non new companies and probably sit around hoping for the better. That is what the masses do. But there are some who are crazy enough to start companies at the heart of a recession and what do they get for their craziness? Huge rewards!

Disney, CNN, MTV, Hyatt, Burger King, FedEx, Microsoft, Apple, Gillette, AT&T, Texas Instruments, 20th Century Fox, IBM, Merck, Hershey’s, IHOP, Eli Lilly, Coors, Bristol-Myers, Sun, Amgen, The Jim Henson Company, LexisNexis, Autodesk, Adobe, Symantec, Electronic Arts, Fortune, GE, and Hewlett-Packard; are just but some of the few iconic companies that were established during times of economic dark-spells. Had their founders not been crazy enough not to exploit the chaos during those periods… who knows?

The road to success is rarely smooth, and for Muhammad Yunus, it has been a long rough road. Long and rough because it is not just his success that he sought, but also that of a whole community of the poor. So far, he has achieved a lot, and although poverty has not completely been eradicated from the world, the world is a better place because this banker of the poor chose to stick to his guns. The world is  a better place because he chose to matter.

The idea to become the banker of the poor arose when he discovered that most of the loans given to the poor by loan sharks ended up making no significant impact in their lives mainly because of the high interest rates charged. And this was prevalent because most of the banks in the country weren't willing to lend to the poor because they feared that they would default on the loans. He chose to take a chance on the poor by lending $27 of his own money to 42 women. They ended up making a profit of $0.02 on the loan. That success was the start of what was to be a revolutionary economic model.

He started lending money from banks and the government to lend to the poor, and soon, diversification began. Grameen Bank, the vehicle for Muhammad Yunus’ project, started investing in underutilized fishponds, software and even in a phone company. In the end, what started out as an idea to help 42 women make a decent living ended up into a success story that is a multifaceted group of profitable and not-for-profit ventures.

Throughout his efforts of trying to change the status quo, he has encountered a lot of resistance. This is not just in the form of not having access to resources, but also political and legal opposition, with people leveling all forms of accusations at him. He has faced violent opposition from radical groups to clergy who threaten their women with not being given a proper burial if they borrowed money from Grameen Bank. There are also the accusations from the government of Bangladesh. He has been accused of “sucking blood from the poor”, despite the fact that statistics show that the bank has lent over $6.7 billion to over 7.4 million poor, most of whom have been able to make a decent living out of the money.

The small-minded people who seek to maintain the status quo have launched almost any conceivable attack on Muhammad Yunus. This includes accusations of fraud and corruption. They seemed to succeed in silencing his efforts of trying to empower women, and the poor in general, when they finally got him fired from Grameen Bank – a bank which through his will and determination he brought to life.

This is the story of a man who, late in life, became totally paralyzed. He had been healthy all his life, working hard like everyone else, and then, out of nowhere, he became paralyzed from neck to toe. Totally confined in a bed and with no way of providing for his family through farming. His success story is well told by Napoleon Hill and Clement Stone in Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude.

His name was Milo C. Jones, and he lived in Wisconsin. Throughout his life, he had worked hard and the fruits of his labor could barely provide for his family. He was an honest man who desired a better life, but to him, there really seemed to be no way out of the rut that he had found himself. He hoped one day for something better – for a better life. And then, something happened. He got paralyzed!

He was the breadwinner in the family and by now his youth was long gone. It all seemed like a disaster. Everyone was certain that there would be nothing but misery and hopelessness in the life of Milo C. Jones. Everybody pitied him, except himself.

Rather than scream at the top of his lungs about how unfair life was, or of how much he deserved better or of why his life was over; Jones decided in his mind to remain positive and to remain grateful. As you can imagine, there was really nothing easy about it because it was real-life. He started counting his blessings and being thankful for them as he looked for a way to be useful to his family.

“Milo C. Jones chose to develop a positive mental attitude. He chose to be hopeful, optimistic, happy and to convert creative thinking into reality by starting right from where he was. He wanted to be useful. And be wanted to support his family, instead of being a burden to them. but how could he turn his disadvantage into advantage? He didn't let this vital problem stop him.”

His paralysis, while it limited his movement, gave him a lot of time to think. He soon came up with a plan. Rather than plant the family land with food for his family, he decided that his family should plant every tillable acre with corn which would then serve as food for pigs. The pigs, they would then slaughter while young and tender. To quote Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude: “… And then we can package and sell them under a brand name. we'll sell them in retail stores all over the country." And then he chuckled as he said: "They'll sell like hot cakes!" And they did sell like hot cakes!”