FOLLOWING the “likes”
on the PLAN BIG post in Privilege Learning Systems's Facebook page, I am reminded of something nice I just read.
Some of you know that
I have been sharing on entrepreneurship in another medium.
The first biography of
an entrepreneur I read was on Thomas Alva Edison, the prolific American
inventor.
I was doing my second
year in Science (I was 19 then) and that had quite an impact on me, even though
I was more a theoretical type – not a technical type.
(I am sharing some
things about Edison in the other medium next week.)
I just read something about him this afternoon.
Edison left school at
the age of 10 and was taught by his mother (a former school teacher) the basics
of numbers and letters.
After that he learned
almost everything else on his own.
There was a time when
he was struggling and was sacked by the company he worked for for not
concentrating.
He borrowed $35 from
a friend and went to New York, the “big apple”.
Interesting things
happened there. He solved a problem for the stock exchange company there and
they made him supervisor over the operations – just like that. (He was a true problem
solver.)
While there he
continued on his private projects, including working on a stock-ticker, a kind
of counter.
Shortly after, he
almost fainted when he was paid a cheque of $40,000 (that is big, big money in
the 1800s) for the stock-ticker.
This was the first “real”
money that he received for an invention. He stared in amazement at the cheque
and walked around it for hours.
The next day, a
friend told him to deposit the money.
A few weeks later he
wrote to his parents (who were also struggling; and the mother had fallen sick).
A letter addressed to his father read: “How is mother getting along? I am in a
position to give you some cash … Write and say how much ... Give mother
anything she wants.”
He also did not
forget to pay back his friend the borrowed $35.
NOTE: It is my
personal belief, that there are inventors already here in PNG, our young. Only time will
show …
Again I say … PLAN
BIG … AND PUT IN THE EFFORT … Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment