Quest for Success

2 Students attending an entrepreneurial and collaboration theme field trip to Teespring, a highly successful start up company in Providence. Teespring helps their clients sell T-shirts online.“Teespring sold 6 million t-shirts in 2014. Hundreds of its customers make more than $100,000 a year selling the t-shirts they design on the TeeSpring web site. At least ten customers have become millionaires selling their t-shirts through Teespring!” according to Forbes Magazine. Hope ‘Life Skills’ students were asked to form their own groups to design, market and hopefully sell their own t-shirt creations on the Teespring web site. The Quest For Success: part one 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. SUCCESS: REFLECTIONS: - pages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 2. SUCCESS: PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION - page 14 • history’s role in introducing and developing ‘success’ • A Physics Formula for Lifetime Success 3. SUCCESS: THE RECIPE AND THE INGREDIENTS - page 22 4. SUCCESS: STUDENT SURVEY - page 45 5. SUCCESS: HISTORICAL CONTEXT - page 46 • Post Civil War America to America’s Entry into World War I 6. SUCCESS: PROFILES • Leon Czolgosz - page 72 • Edwin Vare - page 82 • Jane Addams - page 98 • Henry Ford - page 108 • Jack Johnson - page 120 • Sissieretta Jones - page 128 • Sitting Bull - page 136 • William Magear “Boss” Tweed - page 146 • Booker T. Washington - page page 158 • John D. Rockefeller - page 170 • Frederick Law Olmsted - page 182 • Charlotte Perkins Gilman - page 192 • Calvin Coolidge- page 200 • William Randolf Hearst - page 218 • Madam CJ Walker- page 240 • Samuel Tilden - page 262 • John Marshall Harlan -page 278 7. SUCCESS PRE-TEST - page 294 5 “The difference between a successful person and others is NOT a lack of strength, NOT a lack of knowledge, but, rather, a lack of will.” Vince Lombardi, legendary football coach of the Green Bay Packers 6 “Success is a choice.” Jeshua Zapata, Founder and President of Xzito 7 “ 85% of your professional success is due to your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate and lead.” Carnegie Institute of Technology 8 Success is often “a premature proclamation, overused and misunderstood. For true success is not measured by the size of the prize or in the perceptions of others; rather, success is a peace of mind “ one hopes to find following an honest assessment of one’s own deeds. Moi 9 Interesting perspectives from interesting people on achieving ‘success’: “in the 6th grade, Bill Gates was underperforming in school, disagreeing with his mother, and generally struggling with life. Once he found his passion for software, he took off and became very successful”. -Richard St. John writing about the importance of passion in his book “The 8-Traits that Lead to Great Success”. “yes, I’ve made a lot of money from my books, but I’ve never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it….. I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing.” -Stephen King Author “we always wrote a song a day, whatever happened we always wrote a song a day…I think we eventually got so strong( as songwriters) because we wrote so much through the early days of our careers.” -Paul McCartney The Beatles “Sergey and I started working on Google 8 or 9 years ago when we were at Stanford (University). Since then, we’ve worked on it really hard, 24 hours a day. You can’t just have inspiration. It’s maybe 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration!” -Larry Paige Co-Founder of Google 10 “I wasn’t the funniest guy growing up, but I was the guy who worked on being funny the hardest.” -Chris Rock actor and comedian “People would say to me, ‘you’re so lucky to be talented’ and I was always puzzled by that because every single drawing was a struggle for me. I spent a lot of time learning to draw.” -Robin Budd animation film director “It’s persistence. Failing doesn’t stop you. Quitting stops you. Persevere and don’t be afraid to fail. You can afford to fail over and over again, because there will always be many, many more opportunities to succeed.” -Gerry Schwartz CEO of Onex Joachim de Posada’s ‘key to success’ experiment: 11 “Network for success ! This means get to know as many people as you can who like the real you, who know your story and can support you in your career.” Tom Dowd, executive director at the Careeer Center of Muhlenberg College 12 “60% to 85% of jobs are obtained through networking.... it’s not about what you know or how amazing your resume is......it’s more about whom you know and how much they like you.” Tom Dowd, executive director at the Careeer Center of Muhlenberg College 13 “There are no secrets to success! It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure Colin Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. Powell was born in Harlem as the son of Jamaican immigrants. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993) 14 P History is a great tool for teaching everyone about ‘success’, what it is and what it takes to reface achieve it. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and numerous others before and since have stated, history shares her life lessons with anyone curious enough to listen. History’s the lit candle in the dark room bringing clarity to the present and anticipation to the future. She confesses her sins so we don’t repeat them and, in the process, points out alternative paths to travel. History’s sins, her mistakes and failures, are gifts of confidence to encourage, not intimidate, our risk taking. Success rarely happens without risk. Not the reckless risk on the brink of disaster, but, measured risk, to The ‘American Bridge Period’ and The Pursuit of ‘Success’ 15 bring us closer to our goal. History’s first lesson There is a momentum building through history. is “success never happens without hard work!” Just as the early American history ‘Founders’ pe- The second is “destinations aren’t found and riod of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Frank- goals are never reached without perseverance“. lin, Abigail Adams, Alexander McGillivray, the Creativity is the most valuable tool in your kit, invaluable in most situations and carried by all of history’s most successful people. Finally, history’s most successful players have the best networking skills; clearly, the best networkers get the best opportunities. As we study throughout American history, we quickly realize as the world constantly changes, future jobs and ‘opportunities’, yet to be created, can be exploited in advance! The more curious and prepared we are for this our future, Constitutional Convention, the 3/5s Compro- the better our chances mise, Alien and Sedition Acts, the business for ‘success’. partnership of Moses Brown and Samuel Slater, Eli Whitney and his cotton gin, Robert Fulton‘s Sound crazy? What do you think? commercial steamship, the Louisiana Pur- chase, and Lewis and Clark’s expedition affected America’s Middle Period, so did the people and Do you agree the future can be exploited to- events living during America’s Middle Period day? (1804 - 1860) like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, DeWitt Clinton, and Samuel Morse. Periods of history ARE NOT insulated. After completing our study of Jordan Gatling, the Events and people of yesterday Cheyenne Long March and Navajo Long Walk, shape today. the Indian Removal Act, The Mexican American War, the building of America’s railroads, New 16 The Quest For Success Bedford and Nantucket whaling, the discovery While our past of oil in Pennsylvania, Samuel Kier‘s refineries, shapes our present, and Cyrus McCormick’s farm reaper, people re- it does not have to determine alize the affects of the early 19th century Bridge our future. Period on today’s America. History repeatedly reveals the consequences You, like the rest of us, are shaped by people and of our curiosity, perseverance, risk taking, net- places, the successes and, more so, the failures, working, the development of our personal brand, our past has on us today, and, of course, our hard work; faint whispers ultimately become earth shattering roars! As The ‘American Bridge Period’ and The Pursuit of ‘Success’ 17 technology, industry, territorial expansion, and Washington, even John D. Rockefeller personi- cheap labor elevated the American economy to fied this attitude. History constantly presents world supremacy, the voices of disenfranchised her life lessons to shape our aspirations for OUR and downtrodden Americans pushed back. future if you’re curious enough to listen. From America’s women to the country’s newest immigrants, African Americans to American Are you curious enough and willing to work Indians, once faint voices eventually roared for hard enough to be successful? ‘change’. Quite predictably, these other ‘Ameri- cans’ from the Founders, Middle, and Bridge Pe- History will riods, up to the inner city public school students ultimately reveal of today, began to fight back, their discontent your success rumbling like thunder and lightening across the western frontier, through the streets and back al- was leys of America’s cities, onto the front pages and dependent cartoons of America’s innumerable newspapers, upon the and eventually into the hollow halls of our in- ‘attitude’ ner city public schools and the nation‘s capitol. you brought to These once peripheral voices to America’s privi- each choice leged took center stage screaming for ‘change’ you made.

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