In 2009 Heath Hall & Brett Thompson came to Shark Tank with The Pork Barrel Barbecue, a business which at that moment had 100k behind them. With the investment of 50k from Barbara Corcoran they were off to the races. Now five years latter this family business has soared to being one of the greatest barbecue businesses in the country. This tale speaks of how one great product in the right hands can become very successful very fast.
It is truly astounding to see bold people at work; that is why the story of Saria Blair has strongly captivated me. This eighteen year old college freshman recently won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates, making her the youngest legislator in United States history.
While attending West Virginia University for economics, Saria decided to run for office. She spent her days attending classes and her nights working on her campaign, in which she reportedly sent out 3,500 hand written letters. Her intention is to sit in the House for the spring, and then continue schooling in the summer months.
After her victory in West Virginia, she returned to her families home to see her parents and discuss the road ahead. While home sorting mail from her campaign campaign victory, her father Craig Blair, a sitting state senator, gave advice on opportunities in political scene of the state capitol.
Saria holds a strong pro-family, pro-life, and pro-second amendment stance. She believes that you do not need to be in your 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s to understand the benefits of conservative principles. The average age in Congress is 57; in running, she hopes to bring awareness to our generation to show that we can be involved now. It is a lesson I hope is well learned.
Courtesy of Facebook.com/electblair
Success stories come in all shapes and sizes. For Sophia Amoruso it came in the form of vintage women’s clothing. This one time dumpster diver has managed to transform herself into a very successful, yet very down to earth, entrepreneur through sheer guts, tenacity, and innovation.
This brilliant story starts with a very common occurrence in the lives of many entrepreneurs, a side project. Sophia Amoruso managed an Ebay page named Nasty Gal that sold vintage clothing that were salvation army rejects. Eventually she dropped her day job scanning ID cards at the local community college and started to focus on Nasty Gal. Her business toke off. When the time came to move to her own site, www.shopnastygal.com, she had her Ebay page suspended for promoting the new site. Regardless of this minor hick-up she sold out of merchandise on the first day.
How did Sophia create such a demand so early in her career? She found a fabulous niche market for what she had, vintage. During her Ebay days she also discovered an interesting phenomenon in humans: they prefer to see an article of clothing on a human being rather than lying on the ground. It may sound simple to us now, however, in the day she was working it was very common for no model to be used to sell a piece of clothing. With this competitive advantage and a thoroughly fantastic niche market she was able to drive the demand that she saw on the opening day of her new site.
What has Sophia done since that first day? Simple, she has grown her company into a multimillion dollar company, one that reaped 100 million dollars in last year- profitable, and has had one of the single most explosive growth rates in the last decade. She has published #GIRLBOSS a hybrid memoir and business text. The vast majority of this text is devoted to her adolescence with common sense business lessons sown in like stitching on a sweater. Sophia Amoruso is certainly a #GIRLBOSS.
What if the history of music we know is wrong? What if all of the hits we knew and loved growing up sounded just slightly different? This is the alternative history of pop music that Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox plays.
When Scott Bradlee was young he was thoroughly inspired when he listened to Gerswin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He taught himself how it to play this on the piano, however, he was unsatisfied stopping there. He quickly picked up the steps of 1920’s ragtime music; fast, reckless, and fantastically loud. It captivated him. His comprehension of what made pop music from all ages truly great enabled him to slur together various styles of music, yet, he was still able to contain the core meaning of each song he recomposed. This is the brilliance of the man.
What can an artist do to make a name for himself? Bradlee made the traditional move aspiring artists make. He moved to New York City. Sadly for Bradlee, Jazz pianists, which he was marketing himself as at the time, were everywhere in the Big Apple. Refusing to break from his dream Bradlee made the sensible move and went to Astoria, a far less populated area with cheaper rent. While he was there he started making videos for YouTube. His first hit was a hit was a ragtime themed medley of 1980’s pop music that scored over a million views, and thus began his true career.
With the assembling of Post Modern Jukebox Bradlee finally had a crew of all shapes and kinds to help him achieve that truly spectacular sound he had always dreamed of. Since their forming, they have taken hits from the 1970’s to this very day and rewritten them in the full spirit of Postmodernism. At this moment Scott Bradlee has a following of 844,00 subscribers and approaching 150,000,000 views on his YouTube videos. Starting this year they are scheduled to tour North America and Europe. Thankfully, for those completely hooked on his videos, he shall still be making them while on tour.
His History
This man, this entrepreneur, has impacted each of the people reading this post whether they know it or not. I am speaking of Blake Ross, the co-creator of Mozilla. When Ross was very young, ten years old to be specific, he created his first website. At fifteen he left his sunny home in Miami Florida and moved to California to take an internship at Netscape, which may have been a bad idea since the company was getting the tar beat out of it by Microsoft’s internet explorer. Regardless of the planning this proved to be a very fortunate move for the young Ross. While at Netscape Ross consorted with Joe Hewitt and decided to create a new animal in the realm of internet browsers, this new predator’s name was Firefox. Firefox lead its charge with simplicity as its vangaurd. It took all of unneeded, clunky extras which Netscape had incorporated into its system and threw them out of the window. The result was amazing, the browser loaded pages faster and in turn it was a hit.
His Company
With more than 100 million downloads in the first year this open sourced program quickly started to pull the carpet out from under the feet of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (which at the time held a 95% market share). Then in a very aggressive advance Firefox took hold of almost a 30% market share. It launched a phenomena of browser simplicity which people craved and Google used in their Chrome. He had succeeded in his initial endeavor.
His Path
Parakey, a social page company Ross started after he left Mozilla was purchased by Facebook in 2007. Upon this acquisition Ross came to work for Facebook as their Director of Products. This arrangement lasted for a time until Ross decided to leave. Now Ross is supposedly working on a new project, one which I am personally looking forward to seeing.
Oculus, a company run by the energetic Palmer Luckey, has raised 90 million in venture funding and is currently employing half a hundred people to bring this tech to you. How do they intend to do this though? Recently the team has been partnering with Samsung in an attempt to develop a headset that is compatible with the Galaxy Note, which would make this a very reachable piece of technology.
What to say of the pioneer of gadgets, this John Smith of technology? He has the creativity for this calling. When he was eighteen he assembled his first proto-type out of his discontentment for the current headsets on the market. During his journey he developed a widened range of vision and even make this young model wireless.
What could a pair of nifty virtual reality goggles do for someone though? Let’s consider the possibilities. It has the capacity to be a private movie player for someone who’s constantly traveling, add a spicy touch for those hardcore gamers out there, or even showcase an area before someone goes on vacation; the possibilities are virtually endless.
