Billion-Dollar Empires: Inspiring Stories from Iconic Entrepreneurs

In our latest episode of How To Reign When It's Raining, we continue to discuss the theme of overcoming adversity through the inspiring stories of notable figures such as Oprah Winfrey, Howard Schultz, Jan Koum, and J.K. Rowling. We explore how these individuals transformed their hardships into powerful forces for personal and professional growth, demonstrating key strategies like resilience, determination and vision. The episode encourages you to stay focused on your goals, emphasising the importance of stepping out of comfort zones and taking decisive action to achieve success.

• 00:00 Introduction to Overcoming Adversity
• 01:03 Oprah Winfrey: From Hardship to Media Mogul
• 03:13 Howard Schultz: Brewing Success from Humble Beginnings
• 05:52 Jan Koum: Coding His Way to Billionaire Status
• 07:41 JK Rowling: Magic Born from Struggles
• 11:45 Common Strategies for Overcoming Adversity
• 13:25 Encouragement for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
• 14:14 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

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Transcript

 Welcome to How To Reign When It's Raining. The podcast for aspiring and current entrepreneurs who face life's toughest challenges and are ready to transform their mindset for success.

Music plays.

Hi and welcome back. You with Dolina and Abi, and we've been talking about adversity. And today's episode showcases some people that you will know who have turned their struggles into success. These approaches allow them to turn adversity, into a powerful force for personal and professional growth.  Please forgive us for the editing.  Thank you for listening.  

So these stories demonstrate that resilience, determination, and innovation can turn adversity into an opportunity for success. Each of these individuals face significant obstacles, yet they managed to overcome them and leave a lasting impact on the world.

We mentioned in our episode a couple of weeks ago, when I was interviewing mum, we touched On Oprah Winfrey, so I just wanted to start with her because she was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother. She faced extreme hardship during her childhood, including physical and sexual abuse from family members and others at the age of 14, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son who died shortly after birth.  Oprah also struggled with her identity and self worth due to the societal pressures and racism that she encountered. But despite these challenges, Oprah excelled academically and Cured a full scholarship to Tennessee state university.

She began her career in media as a news anchor, but found her calling as a talk show host, empathy, communication skills, and ability to connect with our audience propelled her to national fame with the Oprah Winfrey show. She became the first African American woman to own her own production company. She leveraged her platform to discuss important social issues and became a powerful influencer in media, publishing, and philanthropy.

Her net worth is estimated to be around 2. 5 billion, making her one of the wealthiest self made women in America. And I think she's absolutely brilliant. We follow her and she's just such an inspiration. She used her difficult childhood experiences to develop deep empathy and understanding, which became central to her success as a talk show host and media personality.

She turned her personal pain into a platform for helping others by discussing difficult topics openly on her show, which resonated with millions. Oprah also invested in her education and worked to seize every opportunity in her early career, moving from local media markets to national prominence.

She focused on self improvement, developing a strong sense of self worth and leveraging her platform to build a media empire. It's incredibly impressive what she's done, and it just shows you that anything can be achieved.  
 
Thanks, Abi, for talking about Oprah there, she's an amazing person. And now, we were also looking at, um, somebody else called Howard Schultz.

Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the name, but he actually, got Starbucks to where it is today.  He grew up, in a working class family in Brooklyn, in the projects basically in New York. And his father was a truck driver and they struggled to make ends meet. They didn't have much money and they had no health insurance.

So when anything happened to any member of the family and when anyone was injured, they had no money or very little. So, , this really  impacted Schultz's views on  on business and employee welfare.  You know what, he got a degree in communications and he worked in sales for Xerox, before joining a small coffee company called Starbucks.  And at the time they only sold coffee beans and equipment. It's quite hard to believe that actually now when you look at the size of them. And he saw the potential to turn Starbucks into a coffee house, similar to those he had seen in Italy. So he saw the potential.

When he approached the owners of Starbucks, they weren't interested in Schultz's vision. Um, and he actually started his own company and I don't know how to pronounce it properly.  Then he eventually acquired Starbucks and he began transforming it into the global brand it is today. 

He expanded Starbucks from that small local chain into a global coffee house with, I think he's got 30, 000 locations worldwide.  He introduced Employee benefits, because that was really important to him, having grown up without the insurance, um, things like stock options, health insurance, and even for part time workers as well, he gave them that.

And his net worth is estimated to be around 4 billion.  So what did he do to overcome all of these, um, things that were in his way, the adversities that had happened to him? So  growing up in poverty.  inspired him to create a company that treats its employees with dignity and respect. 

And he even did that for his part time workers. So he really viewed them as valuable and knew the importance of all of this. And he overcame Um, rejections, and by trusting his vision for Starbucks and persevering despite the skepticism he faced. 

So what an amazing man. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

And talking of an amazing man, um, another amazing man, Jan Koum, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.  If you don't know who I'm talking about, Jan Koum was born in the Ukraine and immigrated to the United States with his mother when he was 16,  they lived in a small apartment and relied on food stamps to get by. 

Jan's mother was diagnosed with cancer shortly after they arrived, which obviously added to their emotional financial stress. , but despite these challenges, he was determined to succeed in the tech industry so  taught himself programming and eventually got a job at Yahoo. Um, and  after leaving Yahoo,  co founded WhatsApp, um, which I'm sure you have heard of in 2009.

And the app gained popularity due to its focus on privacy and simplicity, but it obviously faced competition as well and there were struggles initially monetizing the platform,  but look at where it is today.  WhatsApp has became one of the most popular messaging apps in the world.

I use it, mum use it. I'm sure you use it. with over 2 billion users in 2014,  Facebook acquired WhatsApp for 19 billion pounds, making it one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. Um, Jan became a billionaire and  his early life in poverty and reliance on welfare sharpened his determination to succeed, a little bit, uh, like Howard Schultz, 

He taught himself programming, which became his ticket to a better life. 
Um, he also maintained a low key, approach to business, avoiding traditional marketing and instead letting the product speak for itself, which is incredibly brave. That's very brave, allowing the product to speak for itself, absolutely, 

yeah, exactly.  

And then that brings us on to JK Rowling, Harry Potter. Okay. So I think a lot of us have heard about the numerous challenges that she actually faced before her success. She was a single mum, she had a failed marriage and she had the death of her own mother as well to deal with. 

She battled depression, and apparently she even contemplated, contemplated, I can't say that word properly. She even contemplated suicide whilst writing her first Harry Potter book, she faced the rejection from different publishers, many, about 12 different publishers at least. 

Could you imagine if she had given up,  you know, when it finally, when she thought, right, okay, this is 12 now or however many actually was,  I'm not going to continue because it's obviously not wanted and it goes back to what we were saying on a previous episode  that there are so many instances in life where people have been so close to what they want to achieve  and if they had just kept on going,  it could have turned around. Um, the next time.  So it's that  not giving up. 

Absolutely right.

But despite all of these hardships,  she actually persisted in her writing. Her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was eventually accepted by Bloomsbury, a small publishing house,  after the CEO's daughter loved the story. 

Oh, I love that. I didn't know that. 

Yeah, that's great.  her Books quickly gained popularity. And each , subsequent release became a global success,  The Harry Potter series became a cultural phenomenon,  God, I don't know what's wrong with my words today. I'm not getting them out right.  And she sold over 500 million copies worldwide, 
and she became one of the richest authors in the world with a net worth of  Exceeding a billion and  she's used her wealth to support charitable causes. And I really love that. 

Um, well, I think, I think a lot of people in these, well, you would hope so, but a lot of people that  , are able to do that.  Like Oprah with her philanthropy, you know, it's, it's amazing. It's, yeah, it's about helping people and this is the thing,   people can be, people are scared about saying that they want to earn money. They think it's, you know, there's so much shame around admitting that you want to earn money.  Um, but ultimately earning more money can give you a wider reach and you can help more people. 

Oh, I think that's so true that, you can help more people. So her experiences of poverty, depression, and single motherhood influenced her writing and the themes in  series.  It's amazing where you're taking that and you're actually putting that into your writing. She used writing as a form of escape and therapy.  Channeling her emotions into her characters and stories. 

And wow, when you think about that, I mean, the writing , and the characters and the stories, it's just, your imagination is just incredible, isn't it?

isn't it just, the things that come into your mind are just amazing, aren't they?  
And she persisted in the face of repeated rejections, believing in the value of her work and that self belief, her resilience and determination paid off.

And Rowling's ability to persevere through personal hardship and her unwavering commitment to her vision were key to her eventual success.  I love that. Her resilience, her vision, her knowing. And  that inner belief, knowing that she would be successful and her unwavering commitment to that.

Yeah, it's brilliant. So  looking at all of those people and hearing those stories, um, you The common strategies for overcoming adversity,  are resilience. Each of these individuals. Exhibited in extraordinary ability to bounce back from setbacks. They refuse to let failures define them and instead use them as learning opportunities, their vision and focus.

They had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve and stayed focused on their goals, even  when the odds were against them. , the persistence.  The entrepreneurs and business leaders did not give up when faced with challenges, they had huge self belief and continue to push forward even through years of hard work and rejection,  resourcefulness, which is one thing that Cathy Heller talks about a lot, um, being resourceful.

They were able to think creatively and find unconventional solutions to their problems, whether it was by leveraging personal experiences, embracing failure, or finding new ways to reach their goals and learning from failure as well. They viewed failure not as an end, but as a necessary part of the journey.

By learning from their mistakes, they were able to refine their strategies and ultimately succeed.  I think it's important,  when you're looking at everything that,  the people that we can actually maybe relate to, you know, they're in the public eye, the people that people know,  or know of, then, , it's these simple things  to keep on keeping on and to have that vision, the focus, the commitment and the belief that, , if this is what you want to get to and what you want to do,  then you can do it. 

Yeah, anybody can. So for you listening, if you're thinking about starting your business,  even if you want to do a side hustle,  then You need to take the first step. Because when you step out of your comfort zone is actually when you can begin to grow and learn otherwise.  look, most  people stay in the comfort zone because it's too scary to step out of it. But it's  making the unfamiliar familiar.  So it's changing that habit to make the unfamiliar familiar. 

Yeah. And as we say,  action brings clarity,

And indecision is a decision not to do anything. 

Mm hmm. It's a decision to  keep you safe. Yes, of course it is. All these things and the subconscious are keeping us safe. 

Thank you, Reignmakers!

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