After his dad was tragically killed, a Nigerian teenager made a vow to fulfill his father’s entrepreneurial dreams.
One critical meeting set him on the course to make that a reality.
Today, his Atlanta-based company pulls in $60M/year.
Here’s what happened in that meeting 🧶👇
1) Tope Awotona was raised by a pharmacist and microbiologist in Lagos, Nigeria, with 3 other brothers.
His mom came from wealth, but his dad grew up poor.
As a parental team they continually reminded the young Awotona brothers to be forever grateful for what they had.
2) One day, when Tope was just 12 years old, he saw his father come home being followed by a group of men.
As Tope watched on, the men demanded the keys to the car. As his father threw them the keys, they shot and killed him.
3) His world was shattered. Tope couldn’t eat or sleep for 6 months.
A few years ago, his father had quit his job at Unilever to build his own company. Tope decided he would now take up the torch.
For the time being, he focused his attention back to where he excelled - school.
4) He received an offer to attend a US college early, at the age of 15. But his mother thought he was too young.
Instead, she moved the whole family from Lagos to Marietta, GA, so he could attend an American high school for 2 years before college.
5) After graduating from university, Tope explored a few jobs before settling in at Perceptive Software, a growing startup in Kansas City, as a salesperson.
Tope climbed the sales leaderboards, but was still keen on starting his own company when the time was right.
6) One afternoon, Tope attended a staff meeting where Perceptive’s founder, Scott Coons, led the discussion.
Instead of talking about revenue growth, staffing plans, or quarterly roadmaps, Scott did something different.
7) He used the meeting to tell the story of Perceptive.
Scott dove into the details of how he came up with the idea for the company.
He even elaborated on the many twists and turns that the company went through, and mistakes he’d made.
8) But chiefly, Scott emphasized the team’s persistence.
They had fought through the slumps, learned from their mistakes, and eventually things turned around.
This was the first time Tope realized that companies did not always have a straight path to success.
9) “It made entrepreneurship all of a sudden more attainable. I knew if they could do it, I could too.”
Tope left that meeting thoroughly inspired.
He didn’t need to wait for the perfect time to start a company. His moment was now.
10) But at home, life seemed to have other plans.
Tope’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and he moved back to Atlanta to be there for her.
Was now still the right time?
11) Tope reflected back on the staff meeting with Scott. And in that moment, amidst all the personal hardship on the horizon, he chose to persist.
He quit his sales job and started to build.
12) Tope’s first three startup ideas failed.
A dating website that never launched. A projector company that had lackluster sales. An outdoor grill brand that he didn’t have a passion for.
But he didn't give up.
13) Tope eventually stumbled upon an idea to get rid of the back and forth emails when scheduling a meeting.
Calendly was born.
“I went for broke and put every single dollar I had ever made into it, I literally put everything on the line”
14) The same year Tope founded Calendly, his mother passed away.
He never told his mother what he had been working on, as she was very risk-averse feared it would have worried her too much.
15) Through his grieving, Tope again chose to push forward.
And over the next 7 years he built Calendly into an industry leader, with over 20M customers and revenues of $60M+.
16) Tope persisted through personal and professional hardship.
After losing the two most important people in his life, he built something that would have made them both beam with pride.
In 1959, a Swedish engineer at Volvo patented what would become one of the greatest inventions of all time
Volvo stood to make billions
But after a meeting with Volvo's President, he decided to give it away for free - and it changed the world
Here’s how that meeting went 🧶👇
1) After receiving his mechanical engineering degree from a University in his hometown of Härnösand, Sweden, Nils Bohlin joined aircraft maker Saab to work on ejector seats.
For 16 years, he continued to focus on safety and was eventually designing complete pilot rescue systems.
2) Nils was anchored to the idea of safety above all else, and brought this same mentality to a welcoming team at Volvo.
There, he focused his attention on all the driver and passenger safety systems, starting with seatbelts.
After bombing the LSAT twice, a young college grad started selling fax machines door-to-door to pay her bills.
15 years later, she became the youngest self-made female billionaire ($1.1B)
One meeting with the right person helped turn her life around, and here's how it went 🧶👇
1) Born in Clearwater, FL, Sara Blakely was raised quite differently than most.
Her father taught her that failure was not only expected, but should be embraced.
At the dinner table he'd ask: “What'd you fail at this week?” If she didn’t have an answer, he’d be disappointed.
2) So when law school didn’t work out, Sara took it in stride and devoted herself to becoming the best fax machine salesman in the greater Atlanta area. And she did.
But after 7 long years, she couldn’t help but think, is this all she was going to do with her life?
1) After growing his auto-parts empire for 20 years, Shahid Khan turned to something else he loved. Football. A sport he was introduced to by his friends in college.
He'd always dreamed of owning his own sports team.
2) In Jan 2008, Georgia Frontiere, majority owner of the St. Louis Rams, passed away. This was Shahid's chance.
Prospective buyers who wanted to take Georgia’s slot wasted no time, immediately calling her children the same day her passing was announced.
In April 2001 after his company ran out of money, a casual DJ and former Philips executive secured a last-ditch meeting to pitch Steve Jobs.
Fast forward 20 years, and he’s now worth ~$800M.
Here’s how one meeting changed his life 🧶👇
1) When he wasn’t DJing events, Tony Fadell was building operating systems for Personal Digital Assistants (back when those were a thing) at General Magic, and eventually made his way to Philips.
All the while, he was obsessed with solving a major personal problem.
2) He hated lugging around his bulky CD collection between gigs.
After seeing Audible's digital audio tech, Fadell tried to pitch a similar solution to management, but was rebuffed.
With no other option, Fadell started his own company, Fuse Systems, to create a digital jukebox.