Henry Ford, one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history, is said to have been a curious and natural tinkerer in his early years.
Born in the Michigan state of the United States, he began work at age of 16 as an apprentice machinist. One of his first jobs was at the Flowers Brothers Machine Shop, where he earned a salary of $2.50 a week shaping brass valves on his milling machine.
In1891 where Ford, with his wife Clara, moved to Detroit where was hired as an engineer for the Edison Electric Illuminating Company. He saw the job as an opportunity to learn something different and in only two years was promoted to Chief Engineer at Edison’s company.
Backed by a team of supportive friends, his efforts culminated in his first self-propelled vehicle, the Quadricycle. While the Ford Quadricycle certainly generated interest, didn’t meet the need for a large scale production and Henry realized that he needed something that shouldn’t just be interesting but can also be mass-produced.
With a plan in place that was compact and sensible, Henry approached William H. Murphy who agreed to back the project financially. Together they created the now-forgotten Detroit Automobile Company which shut down as the idea of bringing in parts from different places for their reworked design did not seem a profitable idea.
Instead of giving up, Henry made his failure a teacher and started to look for the problems in his design and how he could correct them. The first thing he noticed is that he needed a smaller and lighter vehicle that could be quickly produced. The next concern was that he couldn’t cater to all the needs of the customers from the start. Instead, the focus needed to be on the main concerns and additional luxury items could be added in on future models.
Convincing Murphy to give him another chance, the pair again formed the Henry Ford Company. However, Murphy had his hand in everything and attempted to guide the direction of the company against Ford’s wishes. So, Ford quit. In retaliation, Murphy had Ford blacklisted from the market.
With blacklisting and two failures behind him, the possibility of finding another investor seemed bleak. Until a man from Scotland named Alexander Malcomson who made his fortune in coal came around.
Receptive to unconventional means of being successful, he agreed to give Henry Ford the money he needed for his business, without getting in the way of the vision. Ford then began to work on the Model A vehicle which was the lightest and most durable car to be made at the time. With an assembly plant set up for speedy production of an impressive fifteen cars per day, a record for the time, he opened his doors and orders for the Model A began to pour in.
With Henry Ford, his persistence to his ideals led him to failure. Instead of struggling to find his footing and giving up, he continued to chase his dreams and decided that bumps in the road weren’t something to give up over. Instead, if you hold true to who you are and learn from the mistakes in your past, you can continue to grow and to thrive and eventually, you can reach a point where you can take the reins and follow your dreams.
Because the other entrepreneur who ever truly fails in their lifetime is the one who never picks themselves back off the ground when they come into hard times.
