Page 7 - Midas Touch

times into ever more modest surroundings. Ironically, while still working
his day job, inspiration came from his iconic employer, a man he had
idolized from childhood and had the honor to meet one day, just for a
moment. In a few quick strokes, he sketched his innovation. The man

before him pounded his fist on the table and said, “Young man, that’s the
thing. You have it. Keep at it.”

“That bang on the table was worth worlds to me,” the entrepreneur told his
patient wife. “You won’t be seeing much of me for the next year.” In truth,
success took more than a year. It took decades.

Answers rarely come through a eureka moment, and they didn’t for Henry
Ford. He observed the world around him and slowly arrived at his
opportunity and his purpose. He demonstrated that an entrepreneur need

not be the inventor of a new technology. His wild success came through
something more valuable—a brand. Custom-made cars, the standard of the
time, didn’t align with Henry Ford’s view of the world. He wanted to give
everyone a luxury only the rich could then afford.

He wanted to change the world and believed the secret was an automobile
with a gas combustion engine, assembled in a factory, where one car was
the same as the next. His hero and famous employer, Thomas Edison,

believed that too. That’s why he pounded his fist on the table,
reinvigorating Henry and prompting him to keep going through many
years and many failures.

Henry dared to dream big. One Sunday he heard his minister preach,
“Hitch your wagon to a star,” and he told his sister, “That’s what I’m going
to do.” That was in 1893. Ten years later, on July 23, 1903, Chicago dentist

Dr. Ernst Pfenning bought Ford Motor Company’s very first Model A.

Henry Ford had done it. No longer a dreamer, he was an entrepreneur.