The Idol Life

Quick. Think of the word "entrepreneur." Who comes to mind? Whether you look back in time and think of innovators such as Henry Ford or Nelson Rockefeller or look at today's headlines, each generation has just a handful of names that stand out as examples of the entrepreneurial spirit. We recently talked to five of today's entrepreneurial icons-people whose names are synonymous with success, risk-taking and independent thinking. How have they changed from their early days in business through today's volatile market, ever-changing technology and the always-crowded business landscape? And how has their entrepreneurial spark endured? Let's find out.

Michael Dell

As a college student, Michael Dell declared that he wanted to beat IBM. In 1983, he began conducting business out of his dorm room at the University of Texas in Austin, selling custom-made PCs and components. A year later, with $1,000 in startup capital, Dell officially set up his business and left school. "Being an entrepreneur wasn't on my mind," insists Dell. "What was on my mind was the opportunity I saw ahead, which was so compelling."

He had no idea how big that opportunity really was. Dell Computer Corp. is now a $31.9 billion behemoth. Though Dell himself had "no idea the Internet would come along," his company now sells approximately $50 million worth of products on the Net daily, making it one of the world's largest Windows-based e-commerce sites. These days, Dell spends most of his time planning company strategy. "Strategy is the biggest point of impact I can have as the company is much, much larger-it has 40,000 employees," he says. "So my ability to make an impact on anything else is pretty small."

Unless you're talking about the September 11 terrorist attacks. Dell's company did its part, shipping more than 35,000 computer systems to affected customers in New York and Virginia. Because the company already knew the configurations of customers' machines, replacements were ready to go.

Dell says he feels as entrepreneurial now as when he started. "There are plenty of markets to discover," he says, "and each new venture requires tenacity and a willingness to take risks."

Related Books

• Find out firsthand how Michael Dell built his business from a dorm-room startup into an industry powerhouse in his book, Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry .
• In Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust From Wedgwood to Dell , Nancy Koehn looks at how six entrepreneurs-including Michael Dell-earned consumers' trust and built their brands into household names.
• Entrepreneur Press' own Radicals & Visionaries: Entrepreneurs Who Revolutionized the 20th Century by Thaddeus Wawro includes a section on Michael Dell, along with several stories of other entrepreneurs who have left their indelible mark in business history.

Anita Roddick

As a young girl, starting a business was the last thing on Anita Roddick's mind. "I wanted to be an actress," she says.

Even when she began to pursue what would become The Body Shop, her environmentalism-minded skin- and hair-care company with more than 1,800 stores in 49 countries, Roddick's goal was not to be an icon. "My business was a response to the extravagance and waste of the cosmetics industry," she says.

Roddick opened her first shop in 1976 with 25 hand-mixed products, eventually franchising The Body Shop and then going public in 1984. The Body Shop now offers more than 1,000 items and reached sales of more than $1 billion in 2000/2001.

Though she no longer sits on The Body Shop's executive committee, Roddick still serves as co-chair, finds new products and keeps the company active in human rights, environmentalist and animal-protection issues.

In 1997, Roddick helped launch a master's degree program in conjunction with Bath University in England, with the aim of making business education more socially responsible. More recently, she established The Body Shop's Human Rights Award, which recognizes individuals and organizations that focus on social, economic and cultural rights.

The biggest challenge has been people's cynicism. "People feel there has to be an ulterior motive to The Body Shop's activism, as though our principles are a marketing ploy," Roddick laments.

Have the challenges affected Roddick's feelings about entrepreneurship? Not even slightly. "I don't think being an entrepreneur is something you question," says Roddick. "It's just something you are."

At press time, The Body Shop was considering buyout offers, but hadn't reached any decisions.

Related Books

• More than just a history of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick's Business as Unusual: The Triumph of Anita Roddick explains Roddick's motivation for creating a business that doesn't rely on "business as usual" practices.
• In the same vein, Roddick's Take it Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World calls on business leaders and consumers alike to eliminate practices that harm workers, children, animals and the environment.
• Learn about the early years of Anita Roddick in Anita! The Woman Behind The Body Shop by Jules Older and Lisa Kopper

Ben & Jerry

Jerry Greenfield was trying to become a doctor. Ben Cohen was trying to become a potter. They joke that their foray into entrepreneurship re-sulted from being failures at what they were trying to do in their careers. Today, Ben and Jerry's names are synonymous with socially responsible business and all-natural ice cream in innovative flavors.

Starting with one ice cream shop in a reno-vated Vermont gas station in 1978, by 1999, Ben & Jerry's had more than $237 million in sales from nearly 200 shops and a vast array of products sold in grocery stores and other outlets.

More than just a monetary success, however, the pair brought to entrepreneurship a responsibility-to be a good business, not simply do good business. "The prevailing thought had been that [being] a business engaged in social activities would take away from your ability to make money," says Jerry. "The more our company was involved with social interests, the more profitable we became."

As entrepreneurs, Ben and Jerry are complementary opposites. Says Jerry, "I'm more of a supportive person. Ben is a visionary. He would rather fail at something new than do something that has already been done before. Sometimes you just have to let someone go with something."

In 2000, Ben and Jerry struggled with letting go in a different sense. Under pressure from their board, they sold their company to a major conglomerate, Uni-lever. "It was a very difficult time emotionally," says Jerry. Neither will discuss the selling of their company further, preferring to talk about their current work.

Ben, no longer with the company bearing his name, is enthusiastic about his main projects: The Priorities! Campaign, focusing on education and health care for children, and several VC funds for social-minded entrepreneurs (see October's " Money Buzz ").

Jerry is still employed by his former company, working with the Ben & Jerry's Foundation to fund nonprofit organizations dealing with grass-roots democracy and various globalization issues.

Looking back, Jerry says he and Ben worked well together because of the different qualities each brought to the business. "If either of us had started it on our own," he says, "we would have failed-or not been as successful."

Related Books

• The title of Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Meredith Maran's book Ben & Jerry's Double Dip: How to Run a Values-Led Business and Make Money, Too says it all. Run your business without compromising your values, and you'll find more than profits-you'll find loyal consumers and a wildly successful business.
• Written by Fred Lager, Ben & Jerry's former CEO, Ben & Jerry's: The Inside Scoop: How Two Real Guys Built a Business With a Social Conscious and a Sense of Humor offers unique insight into the beginnings of the ice cream company's colossal success.

Richard Branson

Richard Branson echoes the feeling of the rest of our icons: He didn't mean to become a world-class entrepreneur-he just wanted to make his dream come true. "I wanted to edit a magazine aimed at young people [in] schools," says Branson. "I wanted to put the world right, as you do when you're 15 and believe you can do it. I only became an entrepreneur to make sure my magazine, Student, survived."

After publishing his magazine for a while, Branson observed that mail order discount music companies were doing well. In 1970, Branson started his own mail order record company, and the same year, he and several friends opened the first music discount store in England, calling it "Virgin." Over the years, Branson has tackled numerous businesses, mostly out of frustration with how particular industries were run. "Some of those industries I would never have dreamt of going into," he says. "In the end, when they've worked, they've worked pretty spectacularly."

Virgin took on the airline industry, going head-to-head with British Airways, which eventually led Branson to sell his music company in 1992 to provide his airline with much-needed funds. Today, Virgin Airways Ltd. brings in 51 percent of the revenues for Virgin Group Ltd., its parent company, with sales of more than $2.1 million in fiscal-year 2001.

Other industries Virgin companies are tackling include modeling, bridal services, financial services, book publishing, music stores, electricity and gas, British rail, and even a new music company-V2. Today, there are nearly 170 companies under the Virgin umbrella.

While Branson says his favorite part about being an entrepreneur is the freedom it gives him to do what he wants with his time, the reverse is also true. Being a successful entrepreneur means he doesn't always have the freedom to do whatever he wants. The responsibility is great, particularly with more than 50,000 people working for him.

Branson strives to live by his own business advice every day. "Make sure that anything you do," he says, "you create the best."

Related Books

• Find out why having fun made Richard Branson a billionaire in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way .
• Learn more about the philosophies of Richard Branson and other powerful leaders in The New Global Leaders: Richard Branson, Percy Barnevik and David Simon by Manfred F.R. Kets De Vries and Elizabeth Florent-Treacy.

This story appears in the January 2002 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »