Roger James Hamilton's Blog, page 11
July 5, 2016
Beyoncé – The journey to being QueenBee
When Beyoncé was 16, her parents, Mathew and Tina filed for bankruptcy for the third time following a $38,845 tax lien in 1995, with her mother getting sued for bouncing checks. The same year, her parents broke up.
Tina left home with the girls and moved into a tiny house. A friend, Sha Sha Daniels said “Tina would say that they were going to cut off the water or electricity to the town house. Or she needed money for food.”
It was a few more years before Beyoncé’s band, Destiny’s Child hit ma...
July 4, 2016
What would you do if you could do anything?
What would you do if you could do anything?
Garrett Gee found out for himself at 25 years old when he sold his company, Scan, to Snapchat for $54 million.
His journey began just years earlier as a new student at BYU in Utah, when he had bought his first smartphone. He wanted an app to scan products and compare prices. So he decided to make one.
There was no app building class at the University, so he joined graphic design and computer science classes to learn the skills he needed.
He attended...
July 1, 2016
Michael Phelps made history today as the first male swimmer to make 5 consecutive Olympics.
Incredibly, Michael Phelps made history today as the first male swimmer to make 5 consecutive Olympics. Even more incredibly, he has achieved it just 2 years after hitting rock-bottom.
One night in September 2014, less than 2 years ago, Michael’s world came crashing down when he got arrested for drink driving. He says “I thought the world would just be better off without me. I figured that was the best thing to do – just end my life.”
Struggling to come out of retirement for one more Olympics...
June 27, 2016
Exactly 25 years ago the Soviet Union, came to an end. Will the same happen to the EU?
Do you remember the USSR? Exactly 25 years ago the Soviet Union, came to an end. Will the same happen to the EU?
Yesterday I gave a talk at the National Achievers Congress about our Post-Brexit world. I shared how Brexit fits into a larger 25 year cycle we’ve experience in modern history:
25 years ago, in 1991, the USSR dissolved. Something thought unthinkable during the previous decades of the Cold War, where the USSR and USA were the two big superpowers. This led to the growth in power of t...
The greatest entrepreneur speech ever
The greatest entrepreneur speech ever:
“Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt v...
June 24, 2016
UK’s vote for the #brexit. What’s next? Here’s one possible outcome
I’ve just landed in London to learn that the UK has voted for #brexit. What’s next? Here’s one possible outcome…
In a similarly dramatic referendum 50 years ago, Singapore citizens voted to leave British colonial rule and join the new Federation of Malaysia. But following race riots that ran out of control, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia and left as an island to fend for itself.
At the time, the skeptics saw a bleak future for Singapore.
At the time, the leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Ye...
June 21, 2016
Would you be willing to leave it all to come back with more?
Would you be willing to leave it all to come back with more?
Here’s the incredible story of how LeBron James traded reputation for results, going from NBA Most Valuable Player to “most hated” and back – winning the NBA finals for his home team this week.
In the 2009-10 NBA Season, LeBron won his second MVP in a row, with a career high points score. The problem? His home team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, weren’t succeeding in their attempt to beat their 2008-09 season, when they had made it to th...
June 20, 2016
What would you do if you knew there would be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050?
What would you do if you knew there would be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050?
While no grown adult has solved this problem, at 16 years old, Boyan Slat decided that he would.
“I came up with this idea when I was still in high-school. I was 16 and I was diving in Greece. I realised that there was more plastic bags than fish. I wondered why can’t we just clean this up, but then I had to do a science project for school and I decided to use that time to investigate the problem.”
“Everyo...
Mark Zuckerberg tells the story of when he asked Steve Jobs for advice
Mark Zuckerberg tells the story of when he asked Steve Jobs for advice:
“Early on in our history when things weren’t really going well. We had hit a tough patch and a lot of people wanted to buy Facebook.”
“I went and I met with Steve Jobs, and he said that to reconnect with what I believed was the mission of the company, I should go visit this temple in India that he had gone to early in the evolution of Apple, when he was thinking about what he wanted his vision of the future to be.”
“So I...
June 16, 2016
Meet Jean Liu, today her Company Didi, raised 7$ Billion.
Jean Liu is the 37 year old President of Didi Chuxing, the company that today just raised another $6 billion – just one month after Apple invested $1 billion at a $25 billion valuation. Now, with 300 million users, and 14 million rides each day, Didi is far ahead of Uber in China and is calling itself “The World’s largest mobile tech-based transportation platform.” How did Jean, at 37, get here so fast? When she was 17 years old in 1996, Jean was inspired by Bill Gates’ book, “The Road Ahead”...
