How a Welfare Mom Became a Billionaire by Not Doing Housework

The title of this blog post sounds crazy, but you probably already know the story.  Above we have a 2001 BBC documentary/interview with Jo Rowling, better known these days as J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author of the Harry Potter book series.  OK, technically she wasn't a "welfare mom," she lived in the U.K., so she was "on the dole" as they say over there.  If you watch this (quite interesting) program, you'll see Jo in her old flat, and at 16:34 she says that the way she got the first Harry Potter book written was by not doing housework for four years.  And then she caps it off with this line:  "Living in squalor, that was the answer."  Whether you like the Harry Potter books or not, you have to acknowledge that this one woman who had an idea for a story sparked an entire industry based on the seven books that told that story.  How big of an industry?  I've heard estimates that the Harry Potter empire has earned roughly $10 BILLION.  The books themselves have sold more than 400 million copies.  The movies turned into the highest grossing movie franchise in history.  There's a theme park in Florida.  Perhaps even more important, literally millions of kids in the last 20 years start reading really big books for enjoyment.  This one woman, once a single mom living off government subsistence, accidentally created a business empire, and turned a whole generation of kids on to reading.  Not a bad return for an idea that popped into her head while stuck on a delayed train.  

"So what?" you ask.  She had a great idea for a story and now she's a billionaire.  What does that have to do with the rest of us?  There's a huge lesson for our current society here.  A good idea, followed by a lot of hard work and persistence, can create an industry.  This is one of the main ways jobs are created in our world today.  All across the U.S., and other parts of the world, there are local government officials trying to bring jobs to their region the old school way.  That way consists of schmoozing executives at large corporations, giving them a pile of money, tax incentives, and necessary community construction projects, and getting those people to bring one of their business operations to that city.  Unfortunately, that is not working in most cases.  

Then there's a newer way to attract jobs to a city or region.  The city leverages a quality university with research capabilities, corrals venture capitalists, and tries to get entrepreneurs to launch high tech start ups.  Cities and small towns without a major research university are out of luck from the start.  Even those with a major college aren't having too much luck with this plan.  Why?  Because many of the major high tech companies are clustering in a small number of major cities.  They set up shop in these cities because that's where a large number of talented tech people are located.  Professor Richard Florida discovered this trend and explained it in his 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and has expanded on the idea in subsequent books.  But in his books, he emphasizes one thing, every single human being is creative.

Here's where J.K. Rowling fits into this.  She was a poor single mom, with an idea for a children's book.  She spent five years writing that first book.  She was incredibly determined... to simply get it published.  She found an agent.  Then the first 12 publishing companies approached turned down Harry Potter.  These were huge publishing companies who were experts in the publishing world.  They didn't like the book.  Finally, the 13th publisher decided to bring the book into print.  Jo Rowling was asked to come up with a gender neutral name, because experts didn't think boys would read a book written by a woman.  She added a relative's initial and became J.K. Rowling.  For all that work she got... drum roll please... 2500 pounds.  That's around $3500 to $4000 in the U.S..  She was working as a teacher to support herself while writing the second book.  Then U.S. publishers got wind of this odd book.  A bidding war began, and that finally earned J.K. enough money to work full time as a writer.  The whole thing snowballed from there.  

This is an extreme example, but random people with good ideas are where many of our industries come from these days.  Yet very few cities are working to find these people, help them start businesses, and see what comes of it.  This could be done for a fraction of what cities spend schmoozing large corporations.  

So now comes the question, is this practical?  Here's an example from my own life.  In the mid 1980's, I moved with my family to San Jose, California, when the nickname for that area of "Silicon Valley" was just coming into being.  Several of my mom's cousins lived there, and they were a hilarious and inventive group.  One of them, a doctor, had invented a crib for babies that made a baby feel like it was still in the womb.  It was warm, had a heartbeat, and other features to help keep babies healthy in their first months.  Another cousin told us that one day that he was looking at tea bags in the grocery store, and wondered why no one ever made a coffee bag.  We kicked the idea around, and thought it wasn't half bad.  There were definitely people out there interested in a single serving of coffee.  Now to make this more amazing, this was before Starbucks and designer coffee entered the picture.  This cousin never ran with the idea.  But now, 30 years later, single serving K-cups are in every grocery store.  Someone else had that idea, but they worked on it and brought it into fruition. My guess is that person is doing pretty well financially right now.

Coming from the actions sports world, I've seen dozens of whole industries emerge in my lifetime.  BMX started with Scot Breithaupt and a few others around 1970.  Bob Haro started doing tricks on BMX bikes in about 1977, that spawned BMX freestyle, which now includes several genres that are worldwide.  Nearly every action sport (except surfing and motocross) was born in the last 40 years.  Tom Sims, a Southern California surfer and skateboarder, made his first snowboard in his 8th grade shop class.  I've actually held that first board in my hands.  Tom wanted to surf on snow.  That's why he did it.  Now snowboarding is a huge industry and even in the Olympics.  Then, of course, we have the computer/internet/cell phone/tablet tech world.  These huge industries evolved in the last 40 to 50 years.  But there are many smaller but vibrant industries that spawned from some person's random idea.  In this area of North Carolina, a state not known for high creativity, there's another example.  Moonshiners souped up their cars in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's to outrun the police.  Then they started racing those cars.  Stock Car racing was born, which we know now as NASCAR.  

Finding decent jobs for millions of unemployed and under-employed people is one of the major issues facing our society these days.  Shouldn't we put more effort into finding and supporting those people with ideas that may spawn jobs, perhaps even whole industries?  What do you think?

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