What comes to mind when you think of Subway? Many people associate this popular chain with sandwiches, meatball subs, wraps, and various other products, but many people don’t know the backstory of how this popular chain came to be a 7 billion dollar company. Going back to 1965, a gentleman by the name of Fred De Luca was looking forward college and medical school, but not paying those bills or that student loan. One day, while thinking about college, Fred had an awesome idea of starting a shop in Connecticut  that specified in sandwich making, but ultimately didn’t have the funds to forgo his dream. Thankfully, a family friend by the name of Dr. Peter Buck loaned Fred $1,000 to open his sandwich shop in Bridgeport Connecticut and little did Dr. Buck know that this shop would be a success in the future. After various name changes of the company, major fixes, and other important changes, subway ultimately came into success 1969 and in 1974, this simple subway shop started franchising and expanding.

After reading Fred De Lucas story, I can say without doubt I am extremely inspired. What is exemplary about Fred De Luca is his ability to take a small portion of money and create a sandwich shop different from the competitors. He didn’t let his start up funds stand in the way of his dreams and ultimately took $1,000 to create something incredible. After achieving minor success, he continued to expand, innovate, and grow his company until his death in September 2015. What ultimately drove Mr. De Luca, in the beginning, was to gain enough money to get to go to college and medical school, but after, another driving factor that pushed Fred to strive for more success was his personality of never striving for less. In this story, we see multiple accounts of Mr. De Luca never settling, but ultimately pushing his company toward greatness. What made this specific sandwich shop interesting and nothing like the competition was that Mr. De Luca has no formal experience in making sandwiches or even anything about food. He was just a young entrepreneur with a mind full of dreams and a pocket full of dust. Some entrepreneurial traits that Mr. De Luca demonstrated were Initiative, Persistence, Assertive, and Self Confidence. Mr. De Luca innovated the entrepreneurial market when He and his family friend Mr. Buck started an Entrepreneurial program that helps young entrepreneurs and young inventors accomplish their dreams and ideas by providing them with microloans. The name of the program is Micro Investment Lending Enterprise. Mr. De Luca inspires me to want to start up a business and not have a funding stand in the way of that dream. Of course as entrepreneurs, we need to think about funding, but most of the time, we always assume we need millions to start a successful company, but that is not true. Finally, a principle I have learned from Mr. De Luca is the principle of wealth-creating. This principle means creating wealth and benefits for my company and myself.