Meet 20 In Their 20s: The New Influentials Class of 2016

As Arkansas Business writers were preparing last month’s well-received Business Icons features, we specifically asked some of the 10 to talk about what they were doing when they were in their 20s. I want to use some of them to introduce this week’s eighth annual The New Influentials: 20 in Their 20s feature, because their answers were instructive — and not just because most of those business legends had found their life’s work before they were 30. Some of their stories seem like products of an earlier time that would be hard to replicate in the 21st century, but they also delivered reminders of the timeless qualities that propel a young adult toward success. Bob Shell was already on his third career when he joined the Little Rock construction company that would eventually be renamed Baldwin & Shell — and he wasn’t yet 20. He had been fired from a job driving an ambulance. He had been denied a promotion from mail clerk to furniture salesman at Fones Hardware. He was, in his words, “pretty disgusted” by the setbacks when he hired on with the 4-year-old Baldwin Co., and he was determined to make himself valuable to the company’s three founders, who had taken a chance on a 19-year-old who, by his own account, “didn’t know anything about construction.” Six and a half decades later, Shell spoke of P.W. Baldwin, Werner Knoop and especially Olen Cates with an admiration and appreciation that reminded me of Eb...
Source: Arkansas Business - Health Care - Category: American Health Source Type: news