Success Mantra - Stories of Real Achievers

Larry Page

2006-10-31T08:50:00.000-08:00

. 1973 - .

Lawrence Edward "Larry" Page (born March 26, 1973 in Lansing, Michigan) is an American entrepreneur. Page studied computer engineering before co-founding the Google internet search engine, now Google Inc., with Sergey Brin.

Early life and education

Page attended a Montessori school and graduated from East Lansing High School. Page holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Masters degree from Stanford University.
According to his personal website, now archived, his office was in the Gates Computer Science Building.
Larry Page is the son of the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University.

Business
While a student in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Page met Sergey Brin. Together they ran the Google search engine, which began operating in 1998.

Google is based on patented PageRank technology, which relies on the structure of links between web sites to determine the ranking of an individual site. Page is still "on leave" from the Ph.D. program.

Page ran Google as co-president with Brin until 2001, when they hired Eric Schmidt to become Chairman and CEO of Google. Page now runs Google as a triumvirate along with Brin and Schmidt.

According to Forbes in September, 2006, Page had an estimated net worth of $12.8 Billion, making him the 27th richest person in the world, one place behind co-founder Brin. Page and Sergey Brin recently purchased a Boeing 767 airliner for their business and personal needs, which was to be, according to the words of Eric Schmidt, a "party airplane". The plane's interior was supposed to be redesigned by aviation designer Leslie Jennings, but a legal battle between the designer and the holding company that owns the plane stalled the renovation. The plane would hold about 50 passengers when refurbished, and would include a California King Size Bed.

The World Economic Forum named Page as a Global Leader for Tomorrow. The X Prize chose Page as a trustee for their board.

Long Live Larry! Long Live Google !!!

Peace

Alexander Graham Bell

2006-03-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

. 1847 -1922 .

" The most successful men in the end are those whose succeed is the result of steady accretion. "
—Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1870, Bell and his famly moved to Canada.

On March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office granted Bell a patent for a communication device for "transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically." However, on September 25, 2001, the United States Congress officially recognized Antonie Meucci as the inventor

of the telephone, denying Bell's claim to its invention.

Bell's telephone grew out of improvements he made to the telegraph. He had invented the "harmonic telegraph" which could send more than one message at a time over a single telegraph wire. Bell reasoned that it would be possible to pick up and transmit the sound of the human voice using an adaptation of his "harmonic telegraph."

In 1875, along with his assistant Thomas A. Watson, Bell constructed instruments that transmitted recognizable voice-like sounds. In 1876, three days after he received his first patent, Bell and Watson, located in different rooms, were about to test the new transmitter described in the patent. Watson heard Bell's voice saying, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." Bell had upset a battery, spilling acid on his clothing. He soon forgot the accident in his excitement over the success of the telephone transmitter. The first telephone company, Bell Telephone Company, was founded on July 9, 1877.

Bell continued his experiments in communication. He invented the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light, which was a precursor of fiber-optics. He also invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf.

Bell was granted 18 patents in his name, and 12 he shared with collaborators. He also founded the National Geographic Society in 1888. Alexander Graham Bell died in Baddek, Nova Scotia, on August 2, 1922.

Edward W. Scripps

2006-01-05T01:58:00.000-08:00

.1854-1926.

Edward W. Scripps built a media empire that includes daily newspapers in 20 markets stretching from Washington to Florida, Scripps Howard News Service, United Media, and the worldwide licensing and syndication home of PEANUTS and DILBERT.

He started the business in 1878, borrowing $10,000 to launch a newspaper in Cleveland called "The Penny Press." It was aimed at an unserved market of urban workers, and quickly became the model for the nation's first mass medium. He found a successful formula, and started to build the first chain of newspapers under common ownership.

Today, the E.W. Scripps Company is "a diversified media concern with interests in newspapers, broadcast television stations, cable television networks and other media-related enterprises."

Ethics was important to Scripps, and he strived to keep his money, business, and life in proper perspective. Learn the 23 code of conduct that E.W. Scripps used in both his life and his business in excerpts from his essay "Some Outlandish Rules for Making Money."

1. Never spend as much money as you earn. The smaller your expenditures are in proportion to your earnings the sooner you will become rich.

2. It is more blessed to pay wages than to accept them. At least, it is more profitable.

3. Never do anything yourself that you can get someone else to do for you. The more things that someone else does for you the more time and energy you have to do those things which no one else can do for you.

4. Never do anything today that you can put off till tomorrow. There is always so much to do today that you should not waste your time and energy in doing anything today that can be put off till tomorrow. Most things that you do not have to do today are not worth doing at all.

5. Always buy, never sell. If you've got enough horse sense to become rich you know that it is better to run only one risk than two risks. You also know that just as likely as not the other fellow is smarter than you are and that whether you buy or sell, in each case you run the risk of getting the worst of the bargain. By adopting my rule you will diminish by one-half your chances of loss.

6. Never do anything, if you can help it that someone else is doing. Why compete with one person or many other persons in any occupation or line of business so long as it is possible for you to have a monopoly in some other field?

7. If circumstances compel you to pursue some occupation or to follow some line of business which is being pursued by some other person, then you do your work in some other way than that in which it is done by the other. There is always a good, better and best way. If you take the best way then the other fellow has no chance of competing with you.

8. Whatever you do once, whatever way you undertake to do a thing, don't do the same thing again or don't do the thing in the same way. If you know one way to do a thing you must know there is a better way to do the same thing.

9. If you're succeeding in anything you are doing, don't let anyone else know of your success, because if you do some other person will try to do the same thing and be your competitor.

10. When you become rich, as you will become rich if you follow my advice, don't let anyone know it. General knowledge of your wealth will only attract the tax gatherer, and other hungry people will try to get away from you something they want and some-thing you want to keep.

11. One of the greatest assets any man can secure is a reputation for eccentricity. If you have a reputation of this kind you can do a lot of things. You can even do the things you want to do without attaching to yourself the enmity of others. Many an act which, if performed by an ordinary person, would arouse indignation, animosity and antagonism, can be per-formed by a man with a reputation for eccentricity with no other result than that of exciting mirth and perhaps pity. It is better to have the good will than the bad will, even of a dog.

12. Never hate anybody. Hatred is a useless expenditure of mental and nervous energy. Revenge costs much of energy and gains nothing.

13. When you find many people applauding you for what you do, and a few condemning, you can be certain that you are on the wrong course because you're doing the things that fools approve of. When the crowd ridicules and scorns you, you can at least know one thing that it is at least possible that you are acting wisely. It is one of the instincts of men to covet applause. The wise man regulates his conduct rather by reason than by instinct.

14. It is far more important to learn what not to do than what to do. You can learn this invaluable lesson in two ways, the first of which and most inspired is by your own mistakes. The second is by observing the mistakes of others. Any man that learns all the things that he ought not to do cannot help doing the things he ought to do.

15. Posterity can never do anything for you. Therefore, you should invest nothing in posterity. Of course your heirs will quarrel over your estate, but that will be after you're dead and why should you trouble your mind over things which you will never know anything about?

16. A man can do anything he wants to do in this world, at least if he wants to do it badly enough. Therefore, I say that any of you who want to become rich can become rich if you live long enough.

17. After what I have said it goes without further saying that you should save money. But no man can save himself rich. He can only make himself rich. Savings are capital. It is only by doing things that one learns how to do things. It is only the capitalist who handles capital that learns how to handle capital profitably. The more capital you have the more skillful you become as a capitalist.

18. Fools say that money makes money. I say that money does not make money. It is only men who make money.

19. There are two cardinal sins in the economic world: one is giving something for nothing, and the other is getting something for nothing. And the greater sin of these is getting something for nothing, or trying to do so. I really doubt if anyone ever does get some-thing for nothing. (Don't marry a rich wife. Women are what they are. At best they are hard enough to get along with. They are always trying to make a man do something that he doesn't want to do, and generally succeeding. When a woman is conscious of the fact that she has furnished all or any part of your capital, her influence over you will be so great as to be the worst handicap you can carry.)

20. If you're a prospective heir of your father or some other relative, you should also consider that a handicap. I would advise you to refuse to be an heir.

21. Despise not the day of small things, but rather respect the small things. It is far easier to make a profit on a very small capital invested in any business than it is to make the same proportion of profit off of a large capital. It is true that after you have learned how to make a profit on a business that shows small capital, successively, as your capital grows, you learn how to handle it profitably. Then the time will come when the greater your capital becomes in this way the greater your pro-portion of profits on it should be. And, for an added reason, as your wealth and skill grow rapidly, your so-called necessary expenses grow much more slowly and in time cease to grow at all, so that beyond a certain limit all your income and added income becomes a surplus, constantly to be added to your capital.

22. It is far easier to make money than to spend it. As it becomes more and more difficult to spend money, you will spend less and less of it, and hence there will be more money to accumulate.

23. The hardest labor of all labor performed by man is that of thinking. If you have become rich, train your mind to hard thinking and hold it well in leash so that your thinking will all be with but one object in view, that of accumulating more wealth.