Grit

How Doing The Things You Hate Most Leads To Success

Author: Scott Amyx

Have you ever heard those words, or perhaps thought that they apply to you? Few things are more hurtful than believing you are worthless; the harsh words were just a small part of the difficulties "Larry" went through in his childhood. He never saw his father – an American Air Force pilot – which is a major setback for any boy. However, Larry also suffered in other ways; he contracted pneumonia when he was only eleven months old, and his mother realized she could no longer care for him. She eventually sought out relatives - Lillian and Louis Ellison - to raise her son, and she did not see him again until he was in his late forties. Larry grew up on the tough South Side of Chicago with his foster parents, who were dogmatic in their intellectual leanings, in a cramped two-room apartment. He was an intelligent and rebellious child, loving the superior left-handed baseball player Sandy Koufax and the greatest switch-hitter Mickey Mantle. Although his foster mother was affectionate and kind to him, he had a difficult relationship with his foster father. Part of this problem might have been due to the pressure on Louis, who lost everything during the Great Depression. Whatever the reason, Larry and Louis did not have a strong relationship, and life at home was not always pleasant. The bright student Larry enjoyed studying science and mathematics, relying on himself to study without anyone's help, but some more difficult challenges awaited him in life. At first, his hard work seemed to pay off; in his first year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Larry was named Science Student of the Year. The award highlighted his commitment to his studies. In his second year of university, his foster mother died, and it was unbearable; Larry failed his final exams and left the University of Illinois. Finally, Larry got back on his feet and continued his journey, enrolling at the University of Chicago, and this was the beginning of his knowledge of computers. He loved this field very much, but he did not stay in Chicago for long. Instead, he chose to leave and move to California to work in computers. Larry said in an interview with a representative from the Smithsonian Oral History Foundation: "I have never in my life attended a computer science class, yet I got a job as a programmer. I was largely self-taught; I just read one book in this field and started programming." Larry's drive led him to move between many jobs, but he never earned a good salary in any of them. He continued to live in a small one-bedroom apartment for several years with his first wife. The marriage ended in separation despite their seeking marital counseling, and Larry was alone again. Then he got a new job related to computers, and finally took the leap to open his own company. Larry's studies perhaps culminated in 1976 when he was "stunned" after reading "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks," a research paper by Ted Codd, who worked at IBM, on the relational model of databases. It was a pivotal moment in his life, and Larry later referred to it saying, "There are moments of inspiration and revelation that one experiences from time to time." These moments of inspiration – in addition to his inexhaustible drive – led to a life-changing risk. He said about it, "Based on this research, we can build a commercial system, and in fact, if we are smart enough, we can take IBM's research, build a commercial system, and beat them in the market with this technology because we believe we can move faster than they can." The difficulties Larry went through and the risks he took paid off; his tiny company developed and grew very quickly by establishing a database that could be used on any computer. Although the success index of his company, Oracle, fluctuated, Larry Ellison is now the fifth richest man in the world. Ellison's story is inspiring, not for what it included, but for what it lacked of important elements that usually define success; such as a good background combined with unique opportunities (like Bill Gates' extraordinary opportunity to use a computer when the field was new and he was young), or 10,000 hours dedicated to practice (like the masterful cellist Yo-Yo Ma), or even good luck (give an example of this yourself). So what is truly the secret to Larry Ellison's success? And what is the secret to anyone's success? You might be surprised to know that it is something you can get instantly.