At some point, most entrepreneurs have said to themselves they want to be like one of people in this list, “I want to be the next Richard Branson”. We define them as success and role models for who we want to be, this post is to give credit to these amazing entrepreneurs. One thing that most of these people have in common is the fact that they all worked really hard and in the end, they were really well rewarded for that. The list is in no particular order, we all have our own opinions on who should be top dog, such as Richard Brandson who inspired me the most to start my business.

#1 Matthew Boulton

Age: 80yrs (Died: 17^th August 1809)

Birth Place: Birmingham, West Midlands UK

Industry: Entrepreneurial Manufacturer

Influence: Pioneered many manufacturing processes.

Net Worth: Unknown

Website:www.matthewboulton2009.org

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Why they made the list…

Matthew Boulton was a pioneer in manufacturing, he was far from wealthy; his father was a toy maker at the time of his birth. Matthew attended a  local school and upon leaving; he  joined his father’s business. At the age of 21yrs Matthew married Mary Robinson the daughter of a wealthy Mercer (Mercer; a silk, linen and fustian textile merchant). Eventually he took charge of his fathers business  (1757) When his father died, he later gained interest in  precious metals; leaving behind the toy trade altogether. With a new trade under his belt Matthew then travelled throughout the United Kingdom, selling his goods wherever he could. After a short period of time he negotiated with a highly regarded friend to present a sword to Prince Edward as a gift, however it was Prince Edward’s older brother; Prince George III, the heir to the throne of England and later the King of England; that was truly interested in the gift.

In 1761 after using the majority of his wealth which had accumulated from his two marriages, and the inheritance he received from his father, he bought a larger property for his growing business. He purchased Soho House a very large premises in Staffordshire, West Midlands. He began production at Soho and introduced modern production methods as well as a “pioneering insurance scheme” for his workers. He soon became widely known for his perfectionist characteristics as well as his many technological advancements within manufacturing processes. Soho House soon became a must see to the rich and powerful and he regularly had people of royal stature coming to stay with him so they could see and learn more about his work and techniques. Later in life Matthew became infatuated with science and and astronomy, and became well known for his work. He was also named as the Sheriff of Staffordshire before his death in 1809. By the time he died Matthew had become one of the wealthiest and most pioneering manufacturers and entrepreneurs in the UK.

#2 Andrew Carnegie

Age: 83yrs (Died: 11^th August 1919)

Birth Place: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, UK

Industry: Steel Tycoon

Influence: Pioneered many manufacturing processes.

Net Worth: £298.3 billion

Website: www.carnegiescience.edu

Why they made the list…

Andrew Carnegie was born into a typical lower-class family in Scotland, and lived in a weavers cottage; a very small house. The main room served not only as the living quarters but also the dining room as well as the bedroom for the family. His family were suffering from near starvation and poverty when William; his father, emigrated the family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in the USA. The area in which they lived was very poor but better than their previous community in Fife. The first job he had was that of a bobbin boy where he helped change spools for 12hrs each day. Feeling this wasn’t the career for him he went on to become a telegraph messenger for $2.50 per week; his job came with a couple of perks too, such as gaining free entry to the local theatre. He soon progressed to $4.00 per week at the age of 18yrs and through hard work and rapid development Andrew climbed swiftly the ranks. Eventually he became an investor, investing the money he had saved over the years into Adams Express Company a messenger service.

Carnegie later received shares in a car business after helping to safeguard the shares of another business for a friend; he used this to his advantage and reinvested all his money into the railway industry. During the civil war Carnegie made a fortune through investments he had made; one of which had him investing $40,000 of his own money into Story Farm; a creek rich in oil. By the end of the year the investment had paid of in dividends to the tidy sum of $1 million, as well as more profits coming in from the petrol and oil goods. After the civil war had finished Carnegie gave $40,000 to help build a library in his native Dunfermline, he also gave $50,000 of his money to a hospital college to help teach more nurses and save more lives. Now an investor in both oil and steel Carnegie was becoming very wealthy, and decided to write his first book which sold over 40,000 copies. His writing style and intelligence helped Carnegie become known as a great author and journalist which helped him earn another hefty fortune in doing so. By 1898 Carnegie was worth more than $20 million and famously offered $20,000,000 to buy the Philippines from Spain in a bid to allow them independence. By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had become famous for his investments, his oil his writings and of course his entrepreneurial streak. With the money he made from all his investments he died a very wealthy man his net worth being $350,695,653, today that figure would be nearly $300 billion.

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#3 Henry Ford

Age: 83yrs (Died April 7^th 1947)

Birth Place: Greenfield Township, Dearborn, Michighan, USA

Industry: Auto-motive manufacturer

Influence: Pioneer of Transport

Net Worth: $1.1 billion

Website: www.thehenryford.org

Why they made the list…

Henry Ford,  One of the few men that made mainstream automobiles become a reality. He was born into a family of farmers who originated from England and Ireland. Not the wealthiest of families but certainly not poverty stricken. In his teenage years, his father had given him a timepiece, which he later took to pieces just to see if he could piece it together again successfully, which he did. He then started to do the same with other peoples timepieces and eventually he started to repair them too. Henry was also a sufferer of Dyslexia, and although this was a hurdle it was by no means a reason to give up.

He went on to complete an apprenticeship with James F. Flower & Bros, and also with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1891 he met with Thomas Edison who liked his concept of an auto-mobile, so he allowed him to use his warehouses to manufacturer two vehicles. Ford was grateful but later went on to build his own company so he could build the cars on his own terms backed by William H. Murphy he founded the Detroit Automobile Company (1899). This was short lived however, as the vehicles produced lacked the quality and precision Ford wanted as well as being horribly expensive. The business went under but it didn’t stop him. Ford went on to build the Cadillac Automobile company. After almost failing a second time due to lack of sales and high debts more partners came into the business and the name was changed to the Ford Motor Company. Current sales for the Ford group are now a massive $190 billion.

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#4 Thomas Alva Edison

Age: 84yrs

Birth Place: Milan, Ohio, USA

Industry: Science

Influence: His Inventions Changed the World

Net worth: $12,000,000

Website: www.thomasedison.com

Why they made the list…

I felt obligated to add Thomas Edison to this list due to his motivation and persistence which makes him a true entrepreneur, even after thousands of failures. Now although Thomas didn’t have a terrible upbringing in terms of the money sense, he was a very poorly child. Ill a lot of his early life, he suffered from a severe ear infection that rendered him deaf in one of his ears although it has been said he was deaf in both. He also developed scarlet fever as a boy nearly dying because of it, but it didn’t stop him. After becoming a minor celebrity for saving a toddler from being hit by a train, Thomas was offered a job as telegraph operator.

Thomas went on to create thousands of inventions and patents, failing a lot more times than succeeding. However his first taste of glory came when he developed the tin foil phonograph, after working as a telegraph operator he wanted to create a way of making a telegraph transmitter to work in a more efficient way. He did this by realising that it sounded very similar to spoken words when the tape from the machine was played at a fast pace. Developing his idea further he went on to record a message through this means creating his first successful invention that lead the way for many more. Thomas Edison was a very patient and passionate man, motivated by success he went on to try and fail thousands of times before getting some of his inventions to work. Some of his inventions we still use today, and most of them are historical for changing the world.

#5 Oprah Gail Winfrey

Age: 56yrs

Birth Place: Kosciusko, Mississippi, USA

Industry: Media and Entertainment

Influence: Empowering People, Female Media Pioneer

Net Worth: $2.7 billion

Website: www.Oprah.com

Why they made the list…

Oprah Winfrey, this is not the first time I have spoken about her and it probably won’t be the last time either;  it seems she’s coming up in quite a few places. The reasons why Oprah is such an influential entrepreneurs is because of the fact that she’s been through so much and yet accomplished so much more. After being the subject of vicious sexual attack at the age of nine; she later became pregnant, losing the child at birth she was only 14 years of age at the time.In 1986 she famously revealed this to her shocked viewers on her live show. Her fame came to fruition in 1983, when her seductive character and genuine love of people gained her the job of her dreams; as a talk-show host.

The following exposure was explosive and she soon became one of the most famous, most well loved, and most professional people in the entertainment industry. However; she did not want to stop there as she felt there was another side to her, a side of which she wanted to pursue, her entrepreneurial side. In 1988 following her instincts she founded the company Harpo Studios, which for those of you not realised is simply Oprah spelt backwards. The business went on in leaps and bounds most likely due to her television career which gave her a massive amount of advertising is each and every day. The company now has over 250 employees and is currently growing every year. She also co-founded oxygen media which helps attract over 50 million viewers. Because of all of the skills she possesses, and her entrepreneurial side she’s managed to create a personal wealth $2.7 billion pretty tidy sum if you ask me.

#6 William “Bill” Gates

Age: 54yrs

Birth Place: Seattle, Washington, USA

Industry: Information Technology, Computer Science

Influence: Changed the Personal Computer Forever

Net Worth: $53 billion

Website: www.gatesfoundation.org

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Why they made the list…

Bill Gates; The second richest man on the planet, one of the most recognized names in the world, as much a celebrity as the pop stars and movie stars due to his highly public profile. Bill has always been in the lime-light since he began his career way back aged 13yrs the age of the personal computer was far from near and Bill, Paul Allen and some others from high-school started using the computers of the time, the DEC PDP-10 was one of them. Bill, Allen and their friends studied the inner workings and making notes of coding language and tried to decipher it to understand how a computer worked. They were eventually banned from the DEC PDP-10 after they were caught exploiting code “bugs” which allowed them to extend the amount of time they had been allocated on the machine. In 1973 after completing high-school with a 1600 (top score) in his SAT’s, he enrolled at the University of Harvard. While studying at Harvard Bill made a new friend in Steve Ballmer, they have continued to be friends to this day and Ballmer took over as CEO of Microsoft upon Gate’s early retirement. After spending much of his study time at the helm of the University’s computer systems Bill decided to leave Harvard in order to start his own business, this was partly due to the launch of the Altair 8800 which used Intel’s new cpu 8080 which had gotten bill excited by the prospects of what he could do with the technology.

Many people call Bill Gates a college drop-out, or that he failed college, this simply is not true at all; it was a decision he made himself, he did not fail or give in he saw an opportunity the same as many entrepreneurs and he took a huge leap of faith that eventually paid off. Having gained interest from MIT’s director Bill and Allen, created an emulator that ran on a microcomputer to simulate a computer they had no access to (but had said they had) to show to Ed Roberts (MIT). They received a deal from MIT and began working on their new business in 1975 with the company name “Micro-Soft” although in 1976 they changed it to Microsoft, dropping the hyphen. Throughout the years Bill and Allen made some amazing advancements in computer technology and partnered with some massive businesses in order to gain the capital they needed to start the manufacturing of their own products and software. IBM approached Microsoft in 1980 asking for them to develop code for their BASIC (computer language) computer the IBM PC, MS DOS was created and this made Microsoft a very big player in the industry over night. In 1985 a decade after beginning their business They launched the first ever copy of MS Windows. As we know Microsoft became the standard in computer technology and has now become the largest computer information and technology business in the world. Microsoft currently stands at $62.4 billion (2010) with Bill Gates have a personal fortune of around $53 million which he uses to help very worthy causes and charities; including his own, the Gates Foundation.

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#7 Larry Page

Age: 37yrs

Birth Place: East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Industry: I.T entrepreneur, Computer Science

Influence: Revolutionized Online Searching and Media

Net Worth: $15 billion

Website: www.google.com/larry_page

Why they made the list…

Co-Founder of one of the most recognized search engines in the world, Google. It’s no wonder why Larry became interested and later an entrepreneur within the computer science industry; his parents were both computer science professors at the University of Michigan. Being of quite a wealthy background Larry was a very lucky person. He attended the Montessori Radmoor School (formerly the Okemos Montessori School), and later completed a degree in the science of computer engineering (BA Honors Degree) as well as completing a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. In 1995 Larry met Sergey Brin, who was also a fellow Stanford student. They became close friends and eventually went into business together in 1996, forming the company Google Incorporated. Larry alongside his partner Brin ran Google Inc. as co-presidents of the company, until hiring the CEO Eric Schmidt.

Larry and Brin got their first financial backing from Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, with the sum of $100,000. It was here that Page’s “Web Crawler” was soon to become the search engine we know today. Starting from his own Stanford University home page the web crawler began to search the internet for web pages, with the home page being the only starting point. To assess the importance of the information which the Web Crawler had found; Page and Brin created a complex algorithm which the late named PageRank. In 1999 just three years since they went into business, Larry and Brin found themselves becoming hounded by investors, and they finally accepted $25 million from Kliener Perkins Caufield and Sequoia Capital. By 2001 Google, now global; was producing profits of over $100 million, and by 2003 had raised those profits to $960 million a massive amount growth in just two years! Google as of today is now worth $172,399,800,300 or there about.

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#8 Sergey Brin

Age: 37yrs

Birth Place: Moscow, Russia

Industry: I.T , Computer Science

Influence: Revolutionized Online Searching and Media

Net Worth: $15 billion

Website:www.google.com/sergey_brin

Why they made the list…

As you’ll already know (at least if you read about Larry Page, above) Sergey Brin is one of the co-founders of Google Inc. Brin immigrated to the United States of America with his family aged just 6yrs old, and although he is both Russian in terms of ethnicity and background, he is a citizen of America, with his nationality set as American. His grandfather and his father both had studied mathematics in the past and Sergey was also keen on the topic, more than likely after seeing his father and grandfather work on various equations and projects as a child. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in mathematics and computer science, he then left and began studying at Stanford University, for a PH.D in computer science, a topic Sergey was keen to explore further, here at Stanford Sergey met Larry Page, another student of computer science.

Sergey and Larry decided to work together and with their mediocre computer systems they frantically worked at developing new search engine designs and algorithms. They started doing this basically because they wanted to cause disruption to the Stanford online website infrastructure, but in doing so, they had masterfully created a search engine with massive potential, and all completely by accident. They upped their game and the inner workings of the code further and further; perfecting the algorithms and creating the unique PageRank system. The pair suspended their studies and went on to co-found the company Google Inc. the very same Google which we love and hate today.

#9 Steve Jobs

Age: 55 yrs

birth Place: San Francisco, California, USA

Industry: computer technology, computer science

Influence: Advancement in Computers and Media Devices

Net Worth: $6.1 billion

Website: www.apple.com

Why they made the list…

Steve jobs, you either love him or hate him but there’s one thing that is certain; you will definitely know who is. One thing that you might not know him about him is that he’s actually adopted, but that hasn’t stopped him becoming one the most successful people in the world and why should it. Jobs graduated from high school in 1972, one of Steve jobs, first jobs was actually as a technician the computer company Atari. Which was possibly a big turning point for Steve at the time In 1974 the same year jobs first worked with Atari, jobs went into business with his old friend Steve Wozniak. Jobs had managed to convince Steve Wozniak that it would be a good idea to start assembling computers and selling them on for a profit. It seemed to quite decent idea as they soon started making a profit from the computers they were making, and on April 1, 1976 Apple Computer company was founded as a partnership with Steven jobs and Steve Wozniak as the co-founders.

Within just 4 years; the Apple Computer Company being founded Apple became a publicly traded corporation, and in 1983 jobs managed to lure John Scully away from the Pepsi-Cola company. Jobs went on in leaps and bounds and in 1984 on January 26th jobs introduced the first Apple Macintosh. It wasn’t all pleasantries though;  in May 1985, following an internal power struggle between the board of directors; jobs lost control of the Apple computer company and was forced out; although he did still have shares in the business. He then went on to form another company NeXT computers which did amazingly well sobering fact that in 1986 he bought “The Graphics Group” which was later named Pixar Animation, the $10 million. Some time later; in 1996 Apple computers company decided to buy the NeXT company for approximately $429 million, bringing Steve jobs back to Apple as the company’s interim CEO. In 2000 Apple announced publicly that Steve jobs was to become the permanent CEO of the company. In 2007 Apple changed its name to Apple Inc. On a side note In January 2006 jobs announced the Disney had purchased Pixar in an-all stock transaction;worth approximately $7.4 billion, so as you can see Steve jobs has done pretty well for himself.

#10 Sir Richard Branson

Age: 60 yrs

Birth Place: Blackheath, London, England, UK

Industry: British industrialist

Influence:

Net Worth: £2.97 billion ($474.6 billion)

Website: www.virgin.co.uk

Why they made the list…

Richard Branson is a well-known British industrialist probably best known for his company the Virgin Group, which holds in itself over 360 different companies. Branson started his education at scaitcliffe school, in 1963 continued by his attendance at Stowe School in 1965. In 1966 Branson started his first successful business venture Student Magazine. In 1967 Branson went on to opens first charity “The Student Advisory Centre”which was a great success. In 1970, Branson decided to create another company; which was a retail business based on mail-order deals. Its first success came when Mike Oldfield signed the virgin group and had a record which went platinum very quickly. Following the success of Mike Oldfield more bands began to sign with the virgin group The Sex Pistols being one of the biggest.

In 1984 Richard Branson formed the Virgin Atlantic Airways company, or as we know today, virgin Airways; which has been a great success just like many of his previous companies before it. Probably one of Branson’s most notorious business ventures to date, is his newest venture the Virgin Galactic, where is aiming to take passengers into space which he calls space tourism. The virgin Galactic company according to rumour will be licensing the technology behind the so-called spaceship one which is being funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as well as Burt Rutan who is an American engineer well-known for his aeronautical work. Sir Richard Branson is without doubt one of the greatest entrepreneurs the UK has and possibly ever will have in its history, without him a lot of things wouldn’t be how they today, such as the music we listen to, the charities we support, and quite possibly in the near future space travel.

#11 Mark Zuckerberg

Age: 26yrs

Birth Place: White Plains, New York, USA

Industry: Social Media Mogul

Influence: Revolutionized Online Social Media and Networking

Net Worth: $6.9 billion

Website: www.Facebook.com

Why they made the list…

Mark Zuckerberg, is possibly one of the most spoken about individuals of the past year, not only is he one of the richest men on the planet, he’s just had a story portrayed by the Hollywood giants in a new movie entitled the Social Network. Zuckerberg first launched his website Facebook whilst attending Harvard University, the website was launched from his dormitory room, on 4 February 2004. It has been rumoured, but the inspiration for Facebook actually came from his former high school the Phillips Exeter Academy which had its own student directory known as”The Photo Address Book” which according to rumour, the students nicknamed the Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was joined by fellow Harvard university students Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes as he wanted to evolve the Facebook website.

To begin with Facebook wasn’t available to everybody and due to this competitors such as; MySpace and Bebo seemed to be the clear winners, in terms of social networking. However that soon changed when Zuckerberg and the co-founders of Facebook dropped out of the Harvard University in a bid to make Facebook success, which they knew was possible, due to the amount of support it had received at the University. By then the 2004 Facebook had received over 1 million users for the website. Then in 2005 capital venture firm Accel partners, invested $12.7 million into the business to help them evolve its further. Soon Facebook was being approached by massive brands and companies who wants to buy out Zuckerberg and co-tutor is obvious trendsetting capabilities and the possible revenue to be made from it. However we know that Zuckerberg didn’t actually sell Facebook and he still is CEO of it although his partners have left now, and today according to Forbes magazine Zuckerberg is worth approximately $6.9 billion. Not bad for a college dropout.

# 12 Ariana Huffington

Age: 60yrs

Birth Place: Athens, Greece

Industry: Blogging Columnist and Author

Influence: A Pioneer in Blogging and Online News

Net Worth: $115million

Website: www.HuffingtonPost.com

Why they made the list…

Ariana Huffington, born in 1950 in Athens has got to be the most influential and professional as well as successful female within the blogging industry. Some of you may not know that she is also an author of the off-line variety, writing a biography of Maria Callas in 1981 she also wrote a biography on public Picasso eight years later in 1989. To became well known in the early 90s due to her relentless support for conservative causes during her ex-husband’s unsuccessful bid for the Senate in (1994). She later founded the Huffington is which is now liberal American news websites which he co-founded with Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti.

The website itself of some mass of valuable information regarding politics, business, lifestyle, and environmental causes as well as media and entertainment news. They decided that the website could do with some localisation, so that loyal supporters of the Huffington Post could read detailed news for the area, due to this in 2000 they launched their very first local version of the Huffington post called HuffPost Chicago, very soon after came New York and Denver as well as Los Angeles. As well as writing articles for the blog herself she also has the help from many of her famous supporters such as Rosie O’Donnell and Harry Shearer. She has also won many awards through the Huffington post; such as winning the People’s Voice Award in the 2010 webby awards, she also won the 2006 and 2007 webby award for best politics blog and in 2009 the blog was named second in the best 25 blogs of 2009 in Time magazine.

#13 Peter Jones

Age: 44yrs

Birth Place: Maidenhead, Berks, United Kingdom

Industry: Telecommunications

Influence: Investing in young entrepreneurs

Net Worth: £220 million

Website: www.peterjones.tv

Why they made the list…

Peter (CBE) is probably best known by the public for his role on Dragon’s Den, a British television programme which is broadcast on the BBC network. He is a British entrepreneur whose main dealings are within the mobile telecommunication, media and leisure industries. He is also named America for his television programme the American Inventor, on which he judges businesses in an almost X-factor style show for business. His first business venture to earn him money was a tennis academy which he set up at the age of 16. His second and also successful business venture was completely different in that it was a technological company based on computers where he manufactured his own PCs however the business went bankrupt after failing to receive payment from his customers.

This led to him having to give up his three-bedroom house as well as his cars, forcing him to move back in with his parents. He then joined the company Siemens Nixdorf, and it 20 years of age he became the youngest ever head of the business unit in United Kingdom. After leaving Siemens Nixdorf he started to work within the telecommunications industry and after a year of hard saving he managed to set up his next business venture which was Phones International Group. Times were obviously hard in the beginning as he has stated he had to sleep on the office floor until his business grew enough for him to find somewhere suitable to live. His business became amazingly successful and is revenue totalled nearly £14 million by the end of his first year which more than doubled in his second year when it nearly reached £45 million. Peter James undoubtedly brought telecommunications to new heights and new levels within United Kingdom, and in doing so has made brave leaps of faith within business proving years true entrepreneur. Since starting his second business venture he has been part of many other investments through the Dragon’s Den programme on the BBC with most notable ones probably being; Reggae Reggae, Visual Talent, and more recently Worthenshaws.

#14 Michael Newton

Age: 50yrs

Birth Place: Cheshire, UK

Industry: CCTV, Retail

Influence: Brought Revolutionary CCTV to the UK

Net Worth: $504.25 million

Website: www.ad-group.co.uk

Why they made the list…

Michael Newton may not be someone most of you have heard of and you may even think he is not a historical figure, but he most definitely is in the UK. Michael changed the UK in big ways back in 1982 when he started with a CCTV system that basically monitored how long a person was at a table (in a bar). He soon introduced a line of multi-channel systems able to view across a broad range of areas all at once and not just in a singular location. He continued to add new systems to his arsenal and introduced them all to the UK. Today using Michael’s CCTV systems, over 7 million images are recorded a second!

If it wasn’t for his ingenuity and passion for what he did, it may not have been another few years until the introduction of a similar CCTV device, Not only did he make a fortune through his business; he also helped to make the UK a more secure and safe place to be. In 1994 due to his enthusiastic interest within aviation he began to learn how to fly; and soon passed his pilots license, not long after passing his pilots exam, he decided to go into the aviation industry to try his hand at a new sector. In 1998 he made the move into the commercial airline sector of the industry, which eventually led to the AD Aviation company he is now the CEO of.

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#15 Charles Kemmons Wilson

Age: 90yrs (Died debris talks 2003)

Birth Place: Osceola, Kansas, USA

Industry: Hotelier

Net Worth: $100 million

Website: www.holidayinn.com

Why they made the list…

Charles kemmons Wilson, is best known for his outstanding commitment and passion the hotelier business. Rumour has it that Charles came up for his idea of his business venture after a road trip brought to his attention the fact that many of the roadside motels, were definitely not up to scratch in both quality and consistency for that era. He decided to become a hotelier, he wanted to make hotels and motels; more friendly, consistent, of a higher quality, and be somewhere that people really enjoy coming back to again and again. He and his business partner Wallace E. Johnson named the business Holiday Inn of America, rumoured to have come from one of his architects as a joke referring to the Bing Crosby movie. They went on to create for Motorola’s in the Memphis area and it was a great success, in 1957 Wilson franchised chain and it grew dramatically. By 1958 Wilson and Johnson had managed to create 50 different Holiday Inns, all across the country, by the following year that had double to 100, and within five years the number of Holiday Inns, had reached a level of 500 (1964). Remarkably Wilson had managed to reach the magic number 1000 different Holiday Inn’s across the country by 1968, just over a decade from starting a business from scratch.

Wilson created some innovative ways to leveraged the market, which puts a lot of pressure financially, on traditional hotels as well as its bigger competitors such as Howard Johnson’s, Best Western, and even the Ramada Inn Company. There were 1400 holiday Inn hotels across the world by 1972, which funnily enough was the same year that Charles Wilson was on the cover of Time magazine. In 1979 Charles Wilson decided to retire from the hotelier business, and in doing so retire from the Holiday Inn, although this broke his heart he knew it was the right thing to do. The Holiday Inn Corporation (Holiday Corporation), was taken over by the UK-based company Bass PLC. However it wasn’t until 1990 when Charles Wilson sold the remainder of his shares to Bass PLC that the company gained full control, the company that was known worldwide. As a side note about also out that Charles Wilson also created many different businesses related to the Holiday Inn.

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#16 Simon Nixon

Age: 42yrs

Birth Place: Chester, Wales, UK

Industry: Financial

Influence: Revolutionized Online Financial Systems

Net Worth: $570 million

Website: www.moneysupermarket.com

Why they made the list…

Simon Nixon is one of those entrepreneurs that likes to keep his cards close to his chest, and his personal life private because of this up until 2008 there really wasn’t much information on Simon Nixon. If you don’t already know who he is Simon Nixon is best known as the man who founded Money Supermarket He establish the business in 1993 while still a student at the Nottingham University in the United Kingdom. Everytime he was backed by Duncan Cameron he was an off-line mortgage adviser and decided to invest a little in Simon Nixon’s idea. In 1999 Nixon took the business online providing online mortgage information as well as expanding to provide services within the credit card and personal loans sector.

With his usual excess, and his brilliant and refreshing customer service his business grew beyond his wildest dreams and in 2003 he opened up another website under the money supermarket brand called insuresupermarket.com, he also opened up travelsupermarket.com in 2004 to expand his business futher. The business was growing and Nixon wanted more of the pie, which was great seeing as in 2007 Duncan Cameron had decided to sell his share of 47% under the presumption that there was soon to be a very sharp downturn in business for them. Duncan Cameron couldn’t have been more wrong, Simon Nixon bought Duncan’s shares from approximate figure of £162 million. The company became listed on the London stock exchange in the same year, and in late 2009 Nixon managed to get the comedian Omid Djalili to star in some of his commercials.

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#17 Anita Roddick

Age: 64 yrs (Died September 10, 2007)

Birth Place: Littlehampton, UK

Industry: cosmetics

Influence: Green Product Pioneer.

Net Worth: $1.03 billion

Website: www.AnitaRoddick.com

Why they made the list…

Dame Anita Roddick created The Body Shop in 1976 with just 15 products that she had sourced herself from around the world. Anita had traveled extensively before opening up her business and with her husband and two girls in tow she set off to create something special.Faced with a massive task of getting the shoppers in the UK to part with their money for “Greener” products, but with a motivation, a dollop of passion and a pinch of luck Anita managed to succeed. Luckily for Anita just as she was halfway through her first year the UK shoppers had a change of heart and started shopping for these “Green” products she was selling.

She opened another store and another, and another, they just seemed to grow and grow. Anita had managed to build her empire to a whopping 1,980 The Body Shop stores, totaling in more than 75 million customers worldwide in 50 different countries by 2003 and was then bought out in a very controversial deal with L’Oreal it was controversial due to The Body Shop not using ANY products tested on animals, as opposed to L’Oreals company that did. The deal made her £652.3 million ($1.03 billion) better off which was more than well deserved for her fierce years of service. I hope Dame Anita managed to enjoy that money for the remainder of her life.

#18 Donald Trump

Age: 64yrs

Birth Place: New York City, New York, USA

Industry: Real Estate

Influence: Pioneer in Real Estate, Empowering Entrepreneur

Net Worth: $2 billion

Website: www.trump.com

Why they made the list…

We all know Donald Trump, and I have spoken about him in previous posts, not just because of his amount of success but also because of his amount of failure in which he overcame again and again. Donald began working for his father in the late 1960s, it was here that he truly shined and began to show the world just where was headed in the future. He started his career by successfully revamping a failing complex than appalling occupancy percentage, turning it into a fantastic complex with a 100% occupancy percentage. Succeeded again when a few years later he took on a massive project which the city of New York had failed to complete, he was given a very small budget, but most complete set and used less than a third of the remaining budget.

Donald Trump as we know has not been just a successful businessman, he’s had his ups and downs, and he’s been to a point where most entrepreneurs would have given up. In 1992 Trump was forced to sign a bankruptcy plan due to the fact that he could not make payments towards his debts which were accumulating at quite a speed. The most that his personal debt, note I said personal and not just business debt, was an incredible $900 million! Can you seriously imagine being in debt by that much money? However not want to disappoint; trump managed to not only get out of his debt and get his business out of debt, but he also managed to climb straight back up that ladder and become a multi-billionaire. It has been estimated that Donald Trump is worth approximately $2 billion.

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#19 Jeff Bezos

Age: 46yrs

Birth Place: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Industry: online retail

Influence: Revolutionized E-Commerce

Net Worth: $8.7 billion

Website: www.Amazon.com

Why they made the list…

Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and is the founder of the president and the chief executive officer as well as the Chairman of the board for one of the most popular and well-known websites/e-commerce sites in the world, Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos mother was just a teenage girl when he was born in Albuquerque New Mexico, she married his father which lasted only one year in total, and when Jeff was just five years old she remarried the man he recalls his father Miguel Bezos. They moved to Texas and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. Jeff Bezos was very interested in scientific projects at an early age and got into a lot of trouble by reading up small electric alarms to keep his siblings out of his bedroom. He managed to persuade his parents to convert their garage into his own personal laboratory, which suited him just fine.

He went on to be very highly awarded through his school and college years and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. After finally graduating from Princeton University, Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to work in computer science field and began working on Wall Street. In 1994 after a bright idea whilst on a cross-country trip from New York to Seattle Jeff Bezos came up with a business plan for what he called, is on. He managed to get some backing and started Internet business that very year and as we know it is now one of the most successful e-commerce sites in the world. Amazon.com currently has a revenue of around $25 billion not bad the saying he came up with the idea in the back of a car on a road trip.

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#20 Steve Case

Age: 52yrs

Birth Place: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Industry: Internet Services

Influence: Helped Pioneer Online Services

Net Worth: $1.0 billion

Website: www.aol.com

Why they made the list…

you may or you may not know Steve Case, he’s one of those rich and successful entrepreneurs, with a gigantic company who likes his privacy, kept private. He was born and he grew up in Honolulu in Hawaii and graduated in 1976 from a private school. In 1980 he left the Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts, with a degree in political science. In 1982 after having worked as an assistant brand manager at Procter and Gamble, he joined the Pizza Hut incorporation in Kansas, and served as one of the pizza marketing managers. In 1983 he met Bill Von Meister, who was a contact of his older brother. His company was creating a marketing service to the Atari game console which basically allowed the users to download certain games using only a phone line and a modem. This was seen as an amazing advancement in technology. Later in the same year Von Meister hired case to become a marketing consultant for a business, which at the time was almost going bankrupt.

1985 case co-founded business called Quantum Computer Services, case was soon promoted to vice president of marketing and due to his good work, entrepreneurial character, and his passion for the company he was soon promoted yet again becoming the Chairman and CEO of the company in 1991 and 1995 respectively. In 1988 his business began working with Apple as well as PC link, helping create online services for both. Later in 1991 case changed the company’s name to America online, and later that same year decided to integrate the Apple and PC services under the name AOL. Over the following years case personally made many innovative online games with his team most of them being very successful. After 10 years with amazing growth throughout the business AOL and Time Warner decided to do a merger. The mergers was worth approximately $164 billion and it was completed in year 2000. Over the course of the next five years the business seemed to take a very sudden downturn due to the recession of the dot-com boom. In 2005 case decided to leave AOL and Time Warner so that he could spend more time on his own business Revolution LLC which is a company he created in 2005.

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#21 George Eastman

Age: 77yrs (Died March 14, 1932)

Birth Place: Waterville, New York, USA

Industry: photographic

Influence: A Pioneer inPhotography

Net Worth: $100 million

Website: www.Kodak.com

Why they made the list…

Many of you will know the company Kodak, and many of you have probably used some of their products whether it be a digital camera, 35mm film, or even their processing services. What you may not know or rather who you may not know is the man he made it all happen. George Eastman was a self educated man born in Waterville, New York, and is most notable legacy alongside his massive generosity, donating literally millions of dollars of his own personal wealth to charities and hospitals, is that of the roll film. He played a massively leading role in transforming photography as a form bringing it from a very expensive hobby into the public domain so that anybody could take photographs and keep their memories forever.

The Kodak company was founded in 1884, and although Eastman had founded the business he was more intrigued with the inventions within the photography industry rather than actually running the business. Due to this he hired Henry Strong as the president of Eastman Kodak. In 1885 Eastman invented the roll film which was used worldwide for over 100 years it was also the basis for the motion picture camera film which early filmmakers such as Thomas Ava Edison used. In 1888 Eastman decided to register Kodak as an official trademark he also came up with the “phrase You Press the Button and We Do the Rest”. Easement died in 1932 but not before donating masses of his personal fortune to numerous causes, such as the University of Rochester and the Royal Free Hospital.*

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#22 Simon Fuller

Age: 50yrs

Birth Place: Dhekelia, Cyprus

Industry: Music

Influence: Television and Music Pioneer

Net Worth: $2.7 billion $4.1 million

Website: www.19entertainment.com

Why they made the list…

Simon Fuller, although born in Cyprus, is a British artist manager, he’s also the television producer and the founding creator of the pop Idol franchise. Pop Idol as you may know first appeared in the UK and has continued over 100 different versions including American Idol and Australian Idol to name just a few. Is also being a manager of many very great performers his most notable ones being Annie Lennox, the Spice Girls, and S club 7. He was the chief executive in 19 Entertainment, which is based in the three major cities of London, LA, and New York. He founded the business in 1985 after leaving the company Chrysalis Ltd and working with some of the most profound names in the music industry such as Madonna. In 1985 aged only 25 years old, he signed the musician Paul Hardcastle his first song went to number one in both the UK and the US charts with his Vietnam song,”19”.

In 1999 he got his first taste of working in television after he had auditioned over 10,000 different people to form a new band, the band was called S club 7. The band later became one of the most popular pop bands of the era taking many number one places in the UK and the US charts. Fuller later came up with the idea of Pop Idol after taking his time and thinking about how S club 7, was such a success and how the process was such a fun way to decide which musicians and singers to have within a band. As many of you will know, and as stated above, pop Idol went on to become huge success and later went over the waters to America where it was just as successful. Fuller had managed to get some of the best presenters and judges in the entertainment industry to appear on a show. This only created more of a hype and just made the program or that more successful.

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# 23 Carlos Slim Helu

Age: 70yrs

Birth Place: Mexico City, Mexico

Industry: Telecommunication

Influence: Investments and Telecommunications

Net Worth: $53.5 billion

Website: www.carlosslim.com

Why they made the list…

Carlos Slim Helu, best known as slim, is a well-known entrepreneur who is currently the richest man alive.  Carlos started in business at the age of eight when his father asked him to help with the family store. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Mexico, however his personal wealth began when he inherited a large amount of real estate from his parents. Using his capital from the real estate to make some very explosive acquisitions. In the 1970s some of his assets became part of a group called Grupo Galas S. A, which was later renamed Grupo, Carso. This business had many different departments such as restaurants, real estate, mining, tobacco, railways, and also department stores. Later in the 1980s after more than 30 different companies joined his group some of them very well known and well respected, slim took control of the majority of shares of Cigtam, a tobacco business.

Cigatam, for those of you that don’t know the manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes as well as many other brands of cigarettes. Still within the 80s Slim decides to sell a massive 50% of his shares just as the market was at its peak, making him a massive fortune overnight. He used the money to purchase a business chain called Sanborns, which again included restaurants music stores and bookshops to name a few. In the 1990s he managed to get Sears one of the country’s largest department stores to join his group, however it wasn’t until his monopolisation of the telecommunication industry in Mexico when he won a bid for the privatisation of Teléfonos de México, also known as Telmex. With Telmex he incorporated a partnership with France Telecom as well as Bella Canada which brought him great success. His business now controls 90% of all landlines within Mexico. With his fortune he has been an amazing example of what an investor should be, investing in companies such as Apple Computer Inc, MSN, as well as red Uno and Coca-Cola. It is here with his investments as well as his large share of the telecommunication business where he is made the majority of his fortune.

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# 24 Penny Streeter

Age: 43yrs

Birth Place: Zimbabwe

Industry: Recruitment

Influence: Creating Employment Opportunities

Net Worth: $117.80 million

Website: www.a24group.com

Why they made the list…

Penny Streeter is somewhat of an unknown to most of you over in the USA, and quite possibly to a lot of us here in the UK too. She was born in 1967, in Zimbabwe, and later attended the Alberton High school in Johannesburg until she graduated in 1983. She decided to leave South Africa and set her sights upon the UK. In 1989 after launching her in recruitment business she was left penniless and homeless after the business failed and she went through a divorce leaving her with nothing. Six years later in 1995 after managing to get out of the terrible situation she was in previously, she decided to set up business again, confident that she could be successful. With her confidence and passion were in the right place and a she launched the new venture funded by working evenings as a party entertainer, the business Ambition 24hours was established.

Ambition 24Hours was a business which recruited temporary staff to fulfill the need in many different sectors such as nursing, social workers, teachers, lecturers and also carers. In 2004 the company expanded into South Africa which was located there is a kind of back-office the UK as well as the South African markets. In 2004 she launched an £11 million investment plan in South Africa to initialise a South African nursing agency. Just two years later in 2006 the company made its first noticeable acquisition; the nursing services of South Africa, this was the largest agency the temporary staffing of nursing personnel. She now has a multi-million dollar recruitment agency and is currently expanding in the UK as well as South Africa to this day

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# 25 Emma Harrison

Age: 41yrs

Birth Place: Clacton on Sea, UK

Industry: Business Services

Influence: Creating Schemes to Help Employment

Net Worth: $157 million

Website: www.mya4e.com

Why they made the list…

Emma Harrison is not only a British entrepreneur, she is also the chairman owner and also the co-founder of action for employment also known as A4e. She only has a degree in engineering, but she also has two honorary doctorates from the University of Derby and the University of Bradford respectively. Her company Action for Employment has grown massively since its founding in 1991. She currently has over 4000 members of staff across a total of 250 different business centres worldwide. Action for employment is one of the prime contractors to various governments helping with services such as the Flexible New Deal and social care.

Emma’s business expertise and confidence has brought her much success and she is also high demand as a mentor or from many different small businesses and groups throughout the world. She currently serves on a number of boards and is also the chairman of Andromeda which is an events company. She also works within the People’s health plc, as well as having a role in the Bank of England regional consultations on behalf the monetary policy committee. In layman’s terms Emma is one of the most successful entrepreneurs that the UK has ever seen she is chairman of many different companies and is many different boards for other businesses, departments and industry sectors worldwide. A mentor that we can all look up to.

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#26 Linda Bennett

Age: 46yrs

Birth Place: Somerset, UK

Industry: Clothing and Retail

Influence: Inspiring Fashion and Entrepreneurs

Net Worth: $235.6 million

Website: www.lkbennett.com

Why they made the list…

Linda Bennett is truly a remarkable entrepreneur not only has she made it in a very saturated industry but she has made it by working her way from the bottom to the top. Her passion is in the clothing industry. She founded the luxury womenswear brand LK Bennett in the United Kingdom in 1990. The reason she named LK Bennett was because her middle name is Kristin and she thought it would make for a more professional sounding business name. Bennett trained at Hackney’s cordwainer’s College as well as at Reading University where she studied land management also. To this day Bennett still likes to design many of her brand items and is constantly creating new shoes for her brand.

Aged 26 she opened an accessories shop in Wimbledon with just £13,000 worth of savings and a £15,000 bank loan. She managed to turn this into one of the most stylistic and high end brands within the clothing industry creating shoes for the likes of the Duchess of Cornwall, which she wore for her wedding in 2005 to Prince Charles. With an entrepreneurial streak Bennett has managed to place all of the stores in very prime locations, just in reach of her ideal customer base. In 2004 she decided to sell the business and asked for £75 million ($117.8 million) however the asking price was never met and she kept hold of the business. Just four years on she managed to sell the business to a private equity firm called Phoenix Equity partners and Sirius Equity, the deal was for a rumoured £70 million ($110 million). However that was on top of the wealth that she had already accumulated throughout the life of the business.

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# 27 Madame C. J. Walker

Age: 51yrs (Died May 25, 1919)

Birth Place: Delta, Louisiana, USA

Industry: Haircare

Influence: Hair Care Pioneer, Empowered Female Entrepreneurs

Net Worth: $600,000

Website: www.madamcjwalker.com

Why they made the list…

Madame CJ Walker is somebody that you may very well and not know that you’d be forgiven for not doing as well but she died over 90 years ago. Although her fortune of $600,000 may not seem much the reason why she such inspirational person to have on this list is because she made herself an empire, through hard work and determination, she was also an inspiration to all other female would-be entrepreneurs. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, is known best for being America’s first African-American entrepreneur, as well as being one of the most wealthiest women of her era. A lot of the women in her era experienced hair loss for some reason. It’s thought that this was due to a lacking of indoor plumbing and electricity, making it hard for them to bathe each and every day. Walker had experienced this also (hair loss) and so she experimented with some of own home-made remedies. They work so well that she decided that it was worth investing in and creating a business out of so she did.

The products were an instant hit and soon stores all across the country were selling them, in 1908 she opened a College to train hair care trainees, and in 1910 she moved to Indianapolis and established a factory which he used as her main headquarters. Later in her life she went on to teach and lecture female entrepreneurs to help them build their own businesses and to gain their own freedom and independence. This in itself made quite a name for her and she later joined the National Association of the advancement of coloured people also known as the NAACP. She joined them in an effort to stop hate crimes and to ban lynching, making it a federal crime. She died in 1919 because of apparent kidney failure leaving behind her fortune and the manufacturing business to her daughter A’Lelia Walker. Today the business continues although not as successful as in its heyday.

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# 28 Coco Chanel

Age: 87 yrs (Died January 10, 1971)

Birth Place: Samur, France

Industry: Fashion

Influence: Fashion and  Perfume Pioneer

Net Worth: $160 million

Website: www.Chanel.com

Why they made the list…

Coco Chanel, it kind of slips of the tongue doesn’t it, it’s one of those names that we all know and probably one of those names that we associate with the world of fashion and her perfumery. Known worldwide Coco Chanel was one of the most creative and successful entrepreneurs of her era. Her first chosen career was that of a singer, although she couldn’t get the work whether that was because she had a poor voice or because there was such excellent singers at the time I’m not quite sure. However it spurred her into becoming the entrepreneur that we know her are as today. In 1910 she became a hat maker and opened up her own beauty in the Paris, France. The business was a success and in 1913 she opened a boutique in Deauville, where she began introducing a luxury line of casual clothing which were apparently suitable for leisure or sport.

In 1921 after concocting a perfume for herself, she found other people enjoyed it so much that she decided to introduce it to her boutique she called it Chanel No. 5. It is thought that this perfume was the first of its kind, by that I mean that it was the first perfume that was ever sold worldwide and not just within a singular state or country. In 1939 at the beginning of World War II, Chanel decided to close her, now many, boutiques as she believed it to be the wrong time to sell fashion. However after four years without working she decided it was time to renew her passion. 1945 after moving back to Paris (she had previously moved to Switzerland), she continued with their collections of luxury clothing and perfumes, and although her new collections at first did not have much success with the Parisians at the time, she was very successful with the British and American customers. Today her legacy, Chanel, is worth an estimated $4.5 billion.

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# 29 Martha Stewart

Age: 69yrs

Birth Place: Jersey City, New Jersey, USA

Industry: Television, magazine publisher

Influence: Health, Entertainment, Advice

Net Worth: $913 million

Website: www.MarthaStewart.com

Why they made the list…

Martha Stewart may not be very well-known to our British readers; although you probably have heard her name before. Martha Stewart, is an American television host who also has published magazines in the past. She managed to create amazing success for herself through a plethora of business ventures such as publishing, merchandising, presenting and also broadcasting. Perhaps the most recognizable thing that many of you will think of when you think of Martha Stewart is prison, or rather her prison time. In 2004 she was convicted of lying to an investigator, regarding a stock sale and served only five months in prison. Just so the British readers understand, lying to an investigator in the US, is a federal offense which is punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Many people thought that inside the prison she would deteriorate, and possibly have a mental breakdown however that did not happen and on her return from prison she bounced back massively and became even more successful than before. In 2005 she released a book which was highly publicized due to her comeback, this was received very well by her funds and became a very good seller. To them back into television with the Martha Stewart show and also appeared on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Today with all of her merchandise which is in many stores around the US, her lucrative television deals and her many books and magazines have earned her an accumulated total approximately $913 million.

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# 30 Walt Disney

Age: 65 yrs (Died December 15, 1966)

Birth Place: Samur, France

Industry: Entertainment

Influence: Pioneered Entertainment

Net Worth: $1.1 billion

Website: www.Disney.go.com

Why they made the list…

I’m 100% certain every reader today, reading this will know Walt Disney, and he is a great example of a successful entrepreneur. His first break in entertainment came when he was hired by the Kansas City film Ad Company, where he learned to make animations from cut-outs. He was then given a massive inspiration after reading the book by Edwin G. Lutz; Animated Cartoons: how they are made. Upon reading it and getting quite excited about the prospects of becoming a professional animator he left Kansas City Film Ad Company. Laugh-O-Grams his second business went bankrupt; which was mainly down to the studio costs, staff costs and and lack of business to bring in revenue to pay for them. Which meant he wasn’t a bad businessman, he was just bad with money.

Having really learned his lesson from failing so miserably, Walt and his brother Roy went to Hollywood where they managed to secure a distributor deal to help with the business. Things grew more and more successful and the business started to go from strength to strength. His unique characters and his ability to bring animation to life really brought the fans to the cinemas and theatres. Walt Disney received an Academy award in 1932 for his efforts in animation, thanks to his new found fans who were demanding more cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney continues his success for another 34 years before his death they left behind a legacy which is now called the Walt Disney Co. Today the Walt Disney business is currently worth $35 million

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It’s funny how often you hear of new entrepreneurs that have become successful overnight, or how much an entrepreneur has made from being successful but what you don’t hear about very often is their failures along the way. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs of all-time have failed at least once on their rise to glory. Although some are very lucky and born into wealth, or perhaps inherit a large sum of money which they use to invest, the majority of us like to hear about people we can more closely relate to. People that had it bad, sometimes very bad in fact, it’s a way of keeping us motivated and inspired and we all need that little boost once in a while.

By looking at the success of others who failed their first, second or even third time around it not only gives us that inspiration I speak of, it also gives us a little extra hope. Now I’m not going to say that money is made by hopes and prayers it takes a lot of determination and guts as well as hard work and the odd dose of good luck. But hope can lift us up when we need it the most, perhaps your business hasn’t gone as well as you had hoped? Maybe you have a blog that you just can’t seem to monetize to any degree of success? Well, hopefully after reading this list you will be able to not only relate to the people on it, but maybe, just maybe you will see that you haven’t got it half as bad as some of these entrepreneurs.

So grab a cup of whatever it is you drink, tea, coffee maybe a latte, and just sit back, relax and soak in all of the information before you. I hope you enjoy reading it and I hope it inspires you to go even further with whatever it is you are doing.

On with the list…

#1 Sir Richard Branson

Age: 60yrs

Birth Place: Blackheath, London, UK

Industry: Entrepreneurial Industrialist

Biggest Hold Back: Dyslexia, High School Dropout

Net Worth: £2.97bn ($4bn USD)

Website: www.virgin.com

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Why they made the list..

Richard Branson, a high-school dropout (college dropout for you UK readers) started his first business in 1966 aged 16yrs, a magazine called Student, however it wasn’t without hard work and lots of studying. Richard has Dyslexia, although at the time no one knew what Dyslexia was. He had to overcome his fears and his Dyslexia so that he could publish his magazine and sell it. There was no other choice for him, he was too highly motivated to give up and work a 9-5 job. However his battle with Dyslexia was overcome and he went on to make a great deal of revenue with his magazine.

Then in 1970 he decided to create a company, a mail order record retailer, the first of it’s kind in the UK. He named his business Virgin, due to him being very new to business. Shortly after starting his business, he opened a brick and mortar store in Oxford Street, London, with his business becoming a success, he built a recording studio with the profits he had made and signed his first “Virgin” musician, Mike Oldfield (of Tubular Bells fame). In 1977 the Sex Pistols joined Virgin Records. Richard went on to create a further 200 companies and today is one of the UK’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. So if you have Dyslexia, like myself, and you think that’s a hurdle, forget it. Richard managed to overcome it, and so have I, you can too. Believe.

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#2 Oprah Gail Winfrey

Age: 56yrs

Birth Place: Kosciusko, Mississippi, USA

Industry: Talk Show Host and Media Proprietor

Biggest Hold Back: Poverty, Abuse

Net worth: ($2.7 billion)

Website: www.oprah.com

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Why they made the list..

Now, before you all start with the fire and pitchforks hear me out, Oprah really is a brilliant entrepreneur, and not just a talk-show host. Born into poverty in Kosciusko, Mississippi, Oprah was unaware of the great hardship that she was to face later in life, only to rise from the ashes and become the star we know her to be today. At the age of nine Oprah was the victim of a ferocious sexual attack, which she revealed to shocked viewers on her show in 1986. She was further distressed when aged 14yrs she became pregnant and later lost the child. In 1983 when she found fame with her talk-show she became a huge success, and her following rapidly grew.

However by 1988 although a huge national treasure with hundreds of thousands of fans and viewers, Oprah had become weary of “Just working for someone else”. That year she founded her very own production company that she named Harpo Studios (Oprah spelled backwards). The business snowballed, probably likely credited to her television career that earned her unfathomable advertisement day in, day out. The company now has over 250 employees and is growing each year. She also co-founded the company Oxygen Media, which operates a huge network for cable and attracts over 50 million viewers. Outstanding achievements by anyone’s standard.

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#3 Donald Trump

Age: 64yrs

Birth Place: New York City, New York, USA

Industry: Real Estate

Biggest Hold Back: Went Bankrupt Several Times

Net Worth: $2 billion

Website: www.trump.com

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Why they made the list..

What do you think of when you hear the name Donald Trump? Fame, Fortune or his books? I’m betting the last thing you would think of is bankruptcy right? Donald began working for his fathers company in the late 1960′s, The Trump Organisation working in real estate from an early point in his life. He managed to completely revamp a huge complex with only a 44% occupancy rate into a thriving complex with 100% occupancy in only a year, making his father’s company a nice $6 million in profit. Trump rose yet again into glory when he took on a massive project that the City of New York had nowhere near completed after two years and after having spent a huge $12 million on it. Trump managed to complete the entire project after taking over and used less than a third of the remaining budget.

However it wasn’t always great news and success for Donald. In 1989 at the beginning of a recession Trump, was left helpless against huge debts which had piled up due to the building of his new casino, the Taj, Mahal. The Taj Mahal had cost $1 billion in junk bonds and his debts increased further than anyone could have imagined. Just three years later in 1992 Donald was forced to sign a bankruptcy protection plan because he was unable to make payments towards the huge accumulating debts. He was now in personal debt of $550 million as well as the $1 billion in junk bonds. By 1994 his personal debt had totalled a disastrous $900 million! He eventually managed to restructure his bankruptcy by reducing his shares from 56% to 27% meaning the bulk of the debt would all but disappear. With the changing hands of the company shares the business changed it’s name to the Trump Entertain Resorts Holdings. Trump is currently worth an estimate $2 billion.

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#4 Alijan Ibragimov

Age: 56yrs

Birth Place: Kyrgyzstan

Industry: Oil and mining Industrialist

Biggest Hold Back: Government

Networth: $1.9bn

Company Website: www.enrc.com

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Why they made the list..

Alijan Ibragimov was brought up in Kyrgyzstan, and was brought up in poverty for his early years. However his background did not stop him becoming a billionaire. Early in his career Alijan had decided he wanted to work for himself rather than work hard hours of manual labour, in the poverty stricken country. He and a number of his friends got together and formed aoligarchs, known as “The Trio”. The Trio includes Alijan himself, and business partners Alexander Mashkevich and Patokh Chodiev. Their business was within the oil and gas industry in which they mined for the resources.

The Trio then became major shareholders in the global group Eurasian National Resources Corporation (ENRC), which now resides in London and is in control of a plethora of assets within the Eastern hemisphere. ENRC went on to make over $1,400 million in profits, through sales of nearly $4 billion. However the government allegedly “forced” Alijan, into selling a quarter of his shares in ENRC to a fellow billionaire, named Kazakh. Alijan has been named in the Forbes list of top richest people in the world, and is still on the list to this day.

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#5 Walter “Walt” Elias Disney

Age: 65yrs (Died December 15^th 1966)

Birth Place: Chicago, Illinois, USA

Industry: Entertainment/animation

Biggest Hold Back: Bankruptcy & Told He Would Fail

Net worth: $1.1bn

Company Website: www.disney.go.com

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Why they made the list..

I’m pretty certain almost everyone (if not everyone) will know who Walt Disney is, and he is a great example of a successful entrepreneur. After dropping out of school and being refused entry to the army due to his age, Walt went on to work for the Red Cross. Upon his return to Chicago he managed to gain employment through his brothers collegue as an artist for a local business, where he created adverts for newspapers and movie theatres. After leaving his job, he and fellow artist, Ubbe Iwerks, started the Iwers-Disney Comercial Artist Company, which fell after a very rocky start. He was then offered a job by the Kansas City film Ad Company, where he learned how to create animations from cut-outs. However after reading the book; Animated Cartoons: How They Are Made, by Edwin G. Lutz, Walt decided to leave the Kansas City Film Ad Company and try once more with his own business.

Laugh-O-Grams his second business went out of business due to bankruptcy, mainly because he had studio costs, far too many staff and not enough revenue to pay everything, disaster. Walt had failed not once but twice, but he didn’t know how to give up. Having learnt very really lessons in how to fail, Walt and his brother Roy went to Hollywood in search of glory. Whilst there he managed to secure a distributor to help with his business. Things went from strength to strength, it started with his live action Alice in Wonderland stories, and then continued with his own unique characters such as Julius the cat and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. His real success came with Mickey Mouse when he made a series of animated shorts such as “Silly Symphonies” and “The Skeleton Dance”. In 1932 after popular demand for the character Mickey Mouse by all of his new found fans, Walt received an Academy Award. He had made it, thanks to help of a little fictional mouse called Mickey. Walt continued his success for a further 34yrs before his death, leaving behind his legacy which we all now know as the Walt Disney Company, which is worth somewhere in the region of $35 billion today.

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#6 Henry Ford

Age: 83yrs (Died April 7^th 1947)

Birth Place: Greenfield Township, Dearborn, Michighan, USA

Industry: Auto-motive manufacturer

Net Worth: $1.1 billion

Biggest Hold Back: Bankruptcy, Dyslexic

Company Website: www.ford.com

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Why they made the list..

Henry Ford, we all know of him don’t we? One of the few men that made the car become a reality. He was born into a family of farmers who originated from England and Ireland. Not the wealthiest of families but certainly not poverty stricken. In his teenage years, his father had given him a timepiece, which he later took to pieces just to see if he could piece it together again successfully, which he did. He then started to do the same with other peoples timepieces and eventually he started to repair them too. He quickly became know as the young watch repair man. How ever clocks, and watches were not what he wanted to be involved in as a career. After his mother died in 1876 he was left distraught and told his father he did not want to be part of the family business.

He went on to complete an apprenticeship with James F. Flower & Bros, and also with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1891 he met with Thomas Edison who liked his concept of an auto-mobile, so he allowed him to use his warehouses to manufacturer two vehicles. Ford was grateful but later went on to build his own company so he could build the cars on his own terms backed by William H. Murphy he founded the Detroit Automobile Company (1899). This was short lived however not only because the vehicles produced lacked the quality and precision Ford wanted as well as being horribly expensive, but they were so expensive that the company went bankrupt! The business went under but it didn’t stop him. Ford went on to build the Cadillac Automobile company. After almost failing a second time due to lack of sales and high debts more partners came into the business and the name was changed to the Ford Motor Company. Current sales for the Ford group are now a massive $190 billion. Wow! The rest as they say, is history.

*****

#7 Dame Anita Roddick

Age: 64yrs (Died 10^th September 2007)

Birth Place: Littlehampton, UK

Industry: Cosmetics

Biggest Hold Back: Lack of time (motherhood)

Networth: £652.3 million ($1.03 billion)

Website: www.anitaroddick.com

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Why they made the list..

Dame Anita Roddick, may not have had a poverty stricken lifestyle, but she was a mother who at the same time as caring for her family, was able to create a thriving business. Anita’s story is about motivation and passion and one I hope you all can relate to. Starting back in 1970 Anita and her husband Gordon opened up a restaurant business, however Anita wasn’t happy with this and wanted something more suited to her personality. She created The Body Shop in 1976 with just 15 products that she had sourced herself from around the world. Anita had traveled extensively before opening up her business and with her husband and two girls in tow she set off to create something special.

Faced with a massive task of getting the shoppers in the UK to part with their money for “Greener” products, but with a motivation, a dollop of passion and a pinch of luck Anita managed to succeed. Luckily for Anita just as she was halfway through her first year the UK shoppers had a change of heart and started shopping for these “Green” products she was selling. She opened another store and another, and another, they just seemed to grow and grow. Anita had managed to build her empire to a whopping 1,980 The Body Shop stores, totaling in more than 75 million customers worldwide in 50 different countries by 2003 and was then bought out in a very controversial deal with L’Oreal it was controversial due to The Body Shop not using ANY products tested on animals, as opposed to L’Oreals company that did. The deal made her £652.3 million ($1.03 billion) better off which was more than well deserved for her fierce years of service. I hope Dame Anita managed to enjoy that money for the remainder of her life.

*****

#8 Ray Kroc

Age: 81yrs (January 14th 1984)

Birth Place: Oak Park, Illinois, USA

Industry: Fast Food

Biggest Hold Back: Confidence

Net worth: $500 million

Company Website: www.mcdonalds.com

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Why they made the list..

You didn’t think I was going to leave Ray out did you ? What’s that, you don’t know who Ray is? Sure you do, you visit his restaurants at least once a month (Unless you’re a vegetarian, in which case I apologize). Ray Kroc is best known as the man behind McDonald’s. Ray, was an unsuccessful entrepreneur, and was also good friends with Walt Disney I might add. After the war ended Ray went on to try unsuccessfully a number of different career paths, a jazz musician, a pianist, he even tried to sell paper cups, but his confidence just wasn’t there anymore, he’d lost a little faith. After leaving the cups behind, he went on to sell milkshake machines, and found that he was pretty good at it. His confidence rose and he was selling them by the dozen.

Convinced with his new found confidence he sell a machine to every restaurant he partnered up with a couple of brothers by the name of McDonald. They were starting to franchise their own business, a fast food restaurant. The McDonalds brothers went on to build a fair amount of stores and were raking in the money, but Ray wasn’t happy, he was hungry, hungrier than ever now he’d tasted success. So he used all the money he had made ($2.7 million) to buy out the two brothers in a bid to franchise the business everywhere he could. Ray discovered that the way his business should work, should be almost like a production line, that way he could work quicker and serve more customers. He was right. His technique meant no customer would go from being served to having their order in their mouth in more than five minutes, hence the coined phrase of “Fast Food”. By the time of his death Ray Kroc had built an empire of over 10,000 restaurants globally and that has grown to a massive 31,000 today! McDonald’s currently makes $23 billion each year. What an achievement.

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#9 Duncan Bannatyne

Age: 61yrs

Birth Place: Clydebank, Edinburgh, Scotland

Industry: Health and Beauty

Biggest Hold Back: Lack of Start-up Funds and Community

Net worth: £320 million ($450.7 million)

Website: www.bannatyne.co.uk

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Why they made the list..

Duncan Bannatyne is a well known entrepreneur in the UK, known famously for his role in the television series Dragon’s Den (BBC). In his early life he was poverty stricken like a lot of families that grew up in the 1950′s in Scotland. Aged 15yrs he wanted a bicycle but was denied one due to lack of money within the family funds. To remedy the lack of having a bicycle, he decided to find some sort of work, asking one of the newsagents for a job, they told him “You can have you can get a list of one hundred interested people”, to cut a long story short, he knocked on hundreds of doors until he made the list, and got a job. Aged 20yrs, after years of loyal service in the Navy, Duncan was dishonorably discharged for attempting to throw an officer off a jetty, due in part to the officers abusive behavior.

Duncan spent his twenties going from one pointless job to the next, in search of something more, he craved his own business and wanted to succeed without being told what to do by others. He moved to Jersey where he met his wife. Through countless failures due to the Jersey community not welcoming business from outsiders, Duncan and his wife Joanne left the island. With only enough money to get by with, Duncan risked it all and bought an ice cream van for £450 ($714), within 2yrs he had managed to build such a successful business from it that he had bought several other vans, with employees to work them for him. He eventually left the ice cream business £28,000 ($44,430) better off which prompted him to invest the money into a nursing home, the nursing home was expanded upon and he eventually sold it for a cool £26 million ($41.2 million) and a childrens nursing chain he’d bought along the way for a further £22 million ($34 million). Since then Duncan has gone on to make £320 million ($507.77 million) through building an empire of luxury spa’s and health centers.

*****

#10 Ruth Ann Udstad Fertel

Age: 75yrs (Died April 16^th 2002)

Birth Place: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Industry: Restaurant

Biggest Hold Back: Fire destroyed her first restaurant

Networth: $235 million

Company: Ruth’s Chris Steak House

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Why they made the list..

Ruth Fertel, became the first female horse trainer in Louisiana aged just 24yrs old, whilst owning a racing stable with her Husband Rodney, who she later divorced in 1958. After realising she could not raise her two son’s on the alimony she was given. Ruth then tried a few jobs until in 1965 she saw an advert in a newspaper advertising a local restaurant that was up for sale, named Chris’s Steakhouse in. She immediately re-mortgaged her house in order to buy the restaurant in a bid to work for herself. Shortly after purchasing the Steakhouse there was a huge hurricane that left the building without power, instead of letting the food in the freezer go to waste, she managed to cook it all elsewhere and took it to her local Parish to help those in need. Chris’s Steakhouse is back up and running in no time and the business was doing well, until a fire which broke out destroyed the restaurant.

With her entrepreneurial streak not willing to give up, Ruth bought another property just a few blocks from the original restaurant, but found complications with the naming of her new business. A legally binding document stated that the name Chris’s Steakhouse could not be used or replicated anywhere other than on the plot of the original building. She renamed the business Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Then in 1976 after several failures a local customer convinced Ruth to open up his own franchise on a very busy highway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The success of this franchise was immediate and other friends, family members and associates tried to convince her to let them open their own franchise too. Her success was huge and by 1985 she had over 15 other franchises, by 1992 she was awarded the Regional Entrepreneur of the year, by 1995 she was awarded the National Entrepreneur of the year and in 2001 she won the Ella Brennan Savoir Faire Award. A very clever lady indeed.

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#11 Deborah Meaden

Age: 51yrs

Birth Place: Somerset, Devonshire, UK

Industry: Investor

Biggest Hold Back: Legal disputes

Networth: £100 million ($158.6 million)

Website: www.deborahmeaden.com

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Why they made the list..

Another Dragon from the den here, and although not as wealthy as our other entrepreneurs she has made a success of herself through hard work and determination. Aged 19yrs Deborah was enthusiastic about business and wanted to make something of herself, she did this by creating her own company selling ceramic and glass goods to stores such as Harvey-Nichols. However when her competitors saw how well she was doing they “upped” their game and tried to push her out of business, selling much of the same products as she was at a slightly lower price. Of course the stores went with the lower price and with Deborah just starting out, she had no legal understanding of what to do, and had no money to pump into a solicitor to fight the battle for her.

After getting out of the ceramics industry she went on to start a franchise with a friend in the retail industry, but it just wasn’t enough for her, she craved something larger, more satisfying. With that in mind she set up a prize concession at a Butlin’s. This taught her a lot about business and she went on to create several highly successful businesses across a couple of different sectors. Deborah has recently sold her shares in the holiday park business after it was sold on to Parkdean Holidays making a cool £83 million on top of the £33 million she previously made by selling 23% of her shares some time earlier.

*****

#12 Martin Goodman

Age: 84yrs (Died June 6^th 1992)

Birth Place: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Industry: Publishing

Biggest Hold Back: Finances and Homelessness

Net Worth: $125 million

Company Website: www.marvel.com

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Why they made the list..

During the 1920s Martin Goodman, was homeless, walking around New York City, without money or shelter, he would often stay in “hobo camps”. His luck changed when he managed to convince/land a job with a publishing company as a salesperson. He enjoyed his work but wanted more, he wanted to be a publisher not a pen pusher. He and his new found friends Louis Silberkleit and Maurice Coyne, started the Columbia Publications Company. Goodman decided to leave in 1932 as he wanted to work truly for himself with no one to push him around. Then in the same year, after borrowing some money for capital, he started the company Western Fiction Publishing. His very first publication was the Western Supernovel Magazine, which was published in 1933. However after the first copy had gone out he decided to change the name to the Complete Western Book Magazine, hoping to attract more buyers.

Goodman decided to try and use a strategy to gain more customers, he did this by using various corporate names to brand his publications one of them being the Marvel Science Stories. In 1939 after many failed attempts at gaining the following he desired he created a comic book in a bid to jump on the new trend of publications. He named the test book Marvel Comics. The first ever copy featured the human torch and the Sub-Mariner. He quickly sold 80,000 copies his largest quantity to date. He was amazed by the sudden rush just for a comic book, he created more characters and with his second serving of the comic, he sold over 800,000 copies! Goodman carried on creating comic book hearos and characters for another 40yrs. At the time of his death in 1992 he was worth an estimated $125 million.

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#13 Milton Hershey

Age: 88yrs (Died October 13^th 1945)

Birth Place: Derry Church, Pennsylvannia

Industry: Confectionery

Biggest Hold Back: Bankruptcy and a Failed Apprenticeship

Net Worth: $100+ million

Company Website: www.hersheys.com

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Why they made the list..

Milton Hershey was brought up on a farm, and was the only surviving child of the Hershey family. Milton left school aged 14yrs mainly due to the amount of times his family had moved over the years. Without any qualifications he went on to start an apprenticeship as a junior printer. However this failed when he got frustrated with working as a junior printer and he threw his hat into the rollers, destroying the print that was currently being made. He then went on to complete a four year apprenticeship with a candy manufacturer (Joseph Royer) and in 1876 he built his first business, a candy manufacturing company. This didn’t work though and he found himself without a job or a business when he couldn’t get any sales.

Later in 1883, he built a new business the Lancaster Caramel Company, this swiftly became the leading manufacturer of candy-goods. With a special caramel recipe which he had discovered whilst travelling, Milton’s business soon became the king of the candy world. A decade later he became amazed by the way in which the German’s machinery made chocolate at an event, he quickly purchased some of the machines and headed back to his company. Enthralled to be able to create the luxurious milk chocolate, Milton started manufacturing thousands of tonnes of the candies. His sales soared higher than he ever thought possible, and to this day, although Milton passed 65yrs ago, his business is still going strong, with over $5.3 billion in revenue a year, not to mention much of the traditional recipes Milton used back at the beginning. Goes to show, remember where your roots are!

*****

#14 Robert Kiyosaki

Age: 63yrs

Birth Place: Hilo, Hawaii, USA

Industry: Investments

Biggest Hold Back: Bankrupt several times

Net Worth: $80 million

Website: www.richdadcoaching.com

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Why they made the list..

Robert Kiyosaki is a Hawaiian businessman who made his name after building a company that sold velcro wallets. Although this was a great success to begin with the sales numbers dwindled as more and more stores started to import them. The company later went bankrupt and Kiyosaki was left in debt. His second business was a T-shirt company, which was very short lived, even more so than his wallet business. For the second time in his career he became bankrupt. Robert had no idea what to do about his failures as a businessman. One thing was certain he did not want to work for anyone but himself. This got him thinking and he started to realise that he could become a guru, a public speaker, someone who can teach others how to make money. He decided to set up a seminar, they quickly gained influence and popularity and were an instant success.

He became business partners with a man called Marshall Thurber, but he retired not long into their partnership, Robert decided to buy Marshall out and became partners with Marshall’s business associate D. C. Cordova. Within their first year together the pair were once again bankrupted. That wasn’t the end though, determined to get rich or at least never give up trying, Robert and Cordova battled on over the next decade until eventually took off and Robert began travelling the world speaking to people from all walks of life about money. Robert retired aged 47yrs old, but it wasn’t enough he had the hunger, so he came out of early retirement in a bid to feed his passion. He created a new company called Cashflow Technologies Inc and he created a boardgame called Cashflow 101, but it had varied success, his main moment of glory came when he wrote his book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” it was a best seller in 90 countries and in 18 languages, you can even buy the book still now if you haven’t already read it?

*****

#15 Thomas Alva Edison

Age: 84yrs

Birth Place: Milan, Ohio, USA

Industry: Science

Biggest Hold Back: Science

Net worth: $12,000,000

Biography Website: www.thomasedison.com

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Why they made the list..

That’s right we’re going old school, very old school. Thomas Alva Edison one of the greatest inventors and entrepreneurs in history. Now although Thomas didn’t have a terrible upbringing in terms of the money sense, he was a very poorly child. Ill a lot of his early life, he suffered from a severe ear infection that rendered him deaf in one of his ears although it has been said he was deaf in both. He also developed scarlet fever as a boy nearly dying because of it, but it didn’t stop him. After becoming a minor celebrity for saving a toddler from being hit by a train, Thomas was offered a job as telegraph operator. Some say this is where his career began, after he was fired after he spilled sulphuric acid onto the desk of his manager who was sitting at his desk below Thomas.

Thomas went on to create thousands of inventions and patents, failing a lot more times than succeeding. However his first taste of glory came when he developed the tin foil phonograph, after working as a telegraph operator he wanted to create a way of making a telegraph transmitter to work in a more efficient way. He did this by realizing that it sounded very similar to spoken words when the tape from the machine was played at a fast pace. Developing his idea further he went on to record a message through this means creating his first successful invention that lead the way for many more. Thomas Edison was a very patient and passionate man, motivated by success he went on to try and fail thousands of times before getting some of his inventions to work. Some of his inventions we still use today, and most of them are historical for changing the world.

Now What’s Your Reason To Not Succeed?

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Today I am very pleased to introduce you to an amazing blogger that I have been following for some time — Slavik Kaushan

Slavik describes himself as a 30 year old dude from Ukraine traveling around the North America with wife and Macbook pro

I describe him as someone who is truly living the Internet Lifestyle.

Slavik runs a number of websites, but the thing that really surprised me and made me sit up and take notice was that Slavik’s main website ( allwomenstalk.com ) is aimed mainly at a female audience. (OK, I expect his wife does help out a bit with this)

Note: The website is called: All Women Stalk (not All womens talk)

ENJOY! ~ As always I look forward to your comments

Hi Slavik

Thanks a lot for agreeing to this interview and sharing some of your secrets for success online. Can we start by describing what you do and how you make money online?

I own and manage a couple of Internet projects and I earn my living from the advertising that’s placed on my websites. The most profitable project being allwomenstalk.com

I understand you run a successful blog for women, why did you decide to start blogging?

Blogging became such an overwhelming social movement back in 2006 that we just had to become a part of it. When we got into the niche we saw that there are actually not as many blogs for women as one would think. We saw a great opportunity there and that’s how it started.

Your blog gets visited by over 100,000 people every week, what’s your top tip for other bloggers trying to drive traffic to their blogs?

During the past 3 years we tried pretty much every way to get more traffic, but it became obvious that the only way that works in the long run is having high quality content on your blog. The Internet users are no longer settling for mediocre or poorly written materials, so all you need to get the visitors is to write high quality posts. We are constantly improving and updating our old materials so that they are as good as the new ones.

All Women Stalk logo was created the old-fashioned way - the only way true stalkers would do it, naturaly

With All Women Stalk you clearly attract a large female audience – what would you say to females in particular to motivate them to get online and Blog / build a web business?

My top piece of advice would be: Believe in yourself and blog with the readers in mind. At first it might be hard, especially when you do not get enough support from your family or friends. But you just need to push yourself, listen to what readers are saying and you need to believe in what you are doing. If it’s something you are putting your heart into, it will definitely be successful, no matter what niche it is.

Out of the many interviews I have done unfortunately only a small number have been with females – What would you say is the main reason women don’t start their own Internet business up and how can they get over this?

I think the main problem girls are facing is the technical part. Thank God nowadays it’s not as important for the blog’s success as it used to be. So, all a girl needs is someone who could explain her how to work the blog, and after that with the good useful content she could conquer the World!

On All Women Stalk you have several bloggers, how has this impacted in the success of your blog? Should other bloggers consider having bloggers write for them?

It was such a huge step forward for us when we started working with other writers! It probably was the turning point of this project. Before that it was self-employment and after we hired other bloggers, it actually grew into a real business project. The more people write for you – the better content you get. At first I was so protective of the blog, I couldn’t even think of letting someone write posts there. But then I just couldn’t do it. I needed help. And when we hired our first writers, I was actually shocked at how good they were! I finally had time to do the research, to find the right topics and formats instead of thinking how many posts I wrote that day and if that was enough. So, I strongly recommend to hire writers as soon as your blog starts to make money.

Running a Internet Business gives you choices and freedom to do what you want, when you want. What would you say the Internet Lifestyle is for you?

Oh, that’s the best part! Since the website became profitable, we’ve been traveling non-stop – during the last couple of months we’ve been to Las Vegas, Los Angels, Tel Aviv, Costa Rica, Miami, now we came to New York for a month to see what Spring is like here. We are going to Paris, Rome, Venice, Madrid in summer.

What would you say is the biggest single reason for your success?

Our Readers. They are the ones who keep us going, they are the people who inspire us. You read the comments and you know what to do.

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

Just do it. Do it now. Leaving it for later is your biggest enemy. Starting online business is a leap of faith one needs to make, but it’s totally worth it. And one more thing – make sure you pick the topic you are passionate about, it will make it much more enjoyable and easy for you.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

Think about the readers, not the profit. The money will come as a consequence, if you are doing something that people need.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

If you have an idea, implement it right away.

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

Thank you for the questions We’ll try to keep up the work and make the Internet a better place. Thank you.

If you want to find out more about Slavik or All Womens Talk, visit the website here!

Women more so than men I find do not measure success by money alone but by a lot of things such as happiness, love, friendships, family and the list goes on.  So in recognition of the great numbers of female entrepreneurs out there and in particular those who are active online I have decided not to rank the 30 women listed below by wealth alone but simply  as my list of the “30 Top Female Internet Entrepreneurs”.

It is very notable that the majority of these top female entrepreneurs are bloggers and in fact some of the top bloggers in the world. No matter if you are male or female, you should definitely check out my FREE eCourse to creating and making money from blogging. Perhaps you could be added to a list like this one day!

If you enjoy this post, please share it with your friends on Twitter and Facebook.

30 Female Entrepreneurs Making Money Online

Name	Company	Founded	Why She Matters
Amanda Marcotte	Pandagon	26-Nov-01	Amanda runs one of the most talked about feminism and politics blogs. Marcotte shot to fame when John Edwards asked her to run the presidential blog.
Ariana Huffington	Huffington Post	09-May-05	Is perhaps one of the most successful female Internet entrepreneurs ever and is the founder of the top blog in the world according to Technorati!
Ashley Qualls	What Ever Life	2004	Attracting millions of monthly visitors earning the 18 year old 7 figures a year.
Barbara Feldman	Surfnetkids.com	29-Jun-05	Founder of Surfnetkids, the website attracts more than 600,000 visitors a month, her newsletter lists are over 80,000 strong, and her self-published e-books are sold on dozens of sites.
Carrie Wilkerson	The Barefoot Executive	2007	Carried founded The Barefoot Executive on August 27, 2007 and has gone from being in debt to being a 7 figure Internet entrepreneur with over 100,000 followers!
Caterina Fake	Flickr	26-Jun-05	Caterina co-founded Flickr with Stewart Butterfield which was later acquired by Yahoo! for a high 8 figure deal.
Catherine Cook	MyYearBook.com	27-Jun-05	Start 4 years ago when she was 15, MyYearBook has grown to 3 million members worldwide and rakes in annual sales in the seven figures!
Cyan Ta’eed	Eden Creative	2006	Ta’eed is the co-founder of Eden Creative Communities which attracts over 10 million visitors to their blog network every month earning her 7 figures a year.
Eileen Gittins	Blurb	26-Jun-05	Elieen is the co-founder and CEO of Blurb, a print on demand publishing service. The company’s revenue grew from $1 million to $30 million in two years.
Elaine Wherry	Meebo	01-Sep-05	Elaine co-founded Meebo, a instant messaging service you use in your browser. Meebo attracts 40,000,000 monthly users.
Erin Jansen	NetLingo.com	21-Jun-05	Founder of an Award-Winning Web Site since 1994, Erin is a Internet entrepreneur veteran.
Gina Bianchini	Ning	01-Oct-05	Gina is the Co-founder and CEO of Ning. There are 1,000,000 social networks on the Ning Platform, growing at a rate of almost 4,000 new social networks each day.
Gina Trapani	Lifehacker	01-Jan-05	Gina Trapani is a technology blogger, book author, and programmer. The founding editor of Lifehacker.com, a daily weblog on software and personal productivity, Gina authored a book based on the web site which is in its second edition: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better!
Heather Armstrong	Dooce	01-Feb-01	One of the biggest mommy blogger’s out there attracting millions of readers to her blog and has recently passed 500,000 Twitter followers.
Juliette Brindak	Miss O and Friends	22-Jun-05	Juliette came up with the idea for Miss O and Friends at just 10 years old, now 19 her business is worth over $15 Million and is visited by millions of girls every month.
Justine Ezarik	iJustine	27-Jun-05	It all started with a 300 page iPhone bill, now she is a social media rock star with millions of YouTube views and over 500,000 twitter followers!
Kim Polese	SpikeSource	25-Jun-05	Kim Karin Polese is CEO of SpikeSource, and was one of the most prominent Silicon Valley executives during the dot-com era. In 1997, she made Time Magazine’s list of “The 25 Most Influential Americans”.
Lisa Stone	Blog Her	01-Feb-05	Lisa is the founder of BlogHer which reaches more than 14 million women monthly through its conferences, Internet site and publishing networks.
Lisa Sugar	Pop Sugar	April 2006	Lisa’s blog network is funded by Sequoia – the guys who funded Google and Youtube. Now one of the biggest celeb blogs on the net, Lisa sure is a top female blogger!
Louise Wannier	MyShape	26-Jun-05	Louise runs an online women’s apparel retailer that finds clothing for women based on their physical measurements and style and fit preferences
Maria Andros	Social Media Traffic Blueprint		Maria helps people create a buzz with social media. Recently she took 100 people into her mentoring program for $2500 each.
Meg Frost	Cute Overload	2005	Although she hasn’t got a pet herself, attracts 100,000s of visitors daily to her cute animal blog.
Meg Hourihan	Blogger.com	21-Jun-05	Meg Hourihan is the cofounder of Pyra Labs, the company that launched the Blogger personal blogging software that was acquired by Google for for a 8 figure deal.
Mena Trott	Six Apart	23-Jun-05	Mena is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad.
Michelle Malkin	Michelle Malkin	June 2004	Michelle blogs about news and politics which attracts nearly 200,000 visitors a day to her site.
Penelope Trunk	Brazen Careerist	March 2006	With multiple start-ups and over 30,000 RSS readers on her personal blog, Penelope is one female to follow.
Nancy J Price	she knows	1999	Nancy co-founded SheKnows which attracts 7.5 Million Monthly Unique Visitors and 76 Million Monthly Page Views!
Natalie Massenet	Net-A-Porter	22-Jun-05	Eight years ago she’d never even been on the internet. This year Natalie Massenet turned over £37 million with Net-a-Porter, the fashion website that has become a global phenomenon.
Rachna Kingston	Entheos	30-May-08	Is a pregnant work at home mum who runs a web design resource website that attracts over a million visitors a month!
Xeni Jardin	Boing Boing	22-Jun-05	Xeni is the editor of one of the top 5 blogs in the world, Boing Boing.

To our success in 2009,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Who is your favourite female entrepreneur and why?