In this post, I am going to compare and contrast three
different entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jim Garland. These
three successful business owners have many similarities and differences.
However, they all have one thing in common, they all turned innovation into
success.
First off, I would like to start with a brief overview of
each person, starting with Elon Musk. As a child, Elon was a stereotypical
nerd, he loved comic books, video games, reading and was extremely intelligent
for his age. To this day, the nerd still stand out in him as he excels in the
industries of computer science, engineering, and even space travel. The driving
force behind his success is that he wants to help bring about the next big
thing that benefit or make things easier for people. Some of the more famous
companies he is known for founding include: PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.
Richard Branson, most famous for the Virgin trademark which
includes companies such as: Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Media and hundreds
more Virgin titled goods and services. Throughout his life, Richard had always
wanted to create things he could be proud of, and have as much fun doing it as
possible. Like most entrepreneurs, he never had a problem putting his business,
money, or even life on the line in order to grow dreams into reality.
Jim Garland is a small business owner who founded Sharp
Details, an aircraft cleaning and detailing service. Jim was the typical
hard-working American who one day decided to be his own boss, which resulted in
the creation of Barnacle Jim’s Boat Cleaning Service. He took a risk because he
knew nothing of the industry and based his work off of a book he bought on how
to clean boats. Today his company has grown and employs 70 people. Jim highly
focuses on making a happy workplace for his employees and he even helped one
employee start her own cleaning service.
Though all three of these successful entrepreneurs took
different routes in business for different reasons, they each share several
similarities. All of them are risk takers, who spontaneously decided to put
themselves at risk to achieve their goals. Another attribute they all share in
common is that they are all leaders. Some aspects of leadership that these
three possess include: charisma, risk taking, friendly, open to new ideas, innovative,
and the ability to recruit followers.
Each of these men may have similar attributes, but they all
three used them for very different things. Of the three, Jim is the most
unalike, being content with his small business and only growing a little bit at
a time. His main focus was to be his own boss and do something he could enjoy
and share with others. Jim is also the only American born of the three. Elon
and Richard are slightly more similar because they both are looking for every
opportunity they can find to expand on what they have started. Elon wants to
use his talents to constantly innovate, be a real world “magician,” by making
space travel better, solar power affordable, and overall bringing technological
dreams into everyday reality. Richard uses his skills to turn everyday things,
such as cell phone coverage, flying, train rides, etc. into fun-filled adventures.
Of these three entrepreneurs, Richard is by far the biggest risk taker. He had
put his companies on line several times in order to achieve success, like when
he took down British Airways. Many times in the past he has also put his life
on the line in order to market some of his companies and ideas, which nearly
resulted in death on multiple occasions.
In summary, Richard, Elon, and Jim are all very successful people.
Through their similarities they were each able to reach and are continuing to
reach their goals. Though they may not share the same paths, all three had to
take a little, or a lot, of risk and were able to turn innovation into success.
