At first I thought this video would be another boring biography of a business person, and I would shortly forget about it after watching it. I was wrong, I found my self rewinding the tape to watch parts of it again. Milton Hershey was a visionary thinker not only for his time, but also for today. Rather than being a robber baron and building a fortune off the blood and sweat of others as the other "industrialists" of his time did, Hershey lived a modest life well below his means and worked almost every day of his life. Hershey was not a person to accept failure in his life. One of the most important life lessons I learned from this video is don't give up after you fail at something. Hershey failed at almost everything he tried in his young life, he almost failed even in what would become his legacy, chocolate. If Hershey would have given up he may have made a living doing odd jobs or some other way, but he didn't, he persevered and became hugely successful. That is not where the true lesson of his life lies though. The thing that struck me about Hershey is not his business success, nor his work ethic. The thing I find truly great about Hershey is his generosity and his compassion for destitute youth. Hershey was not like the other industrialists of his time, he did not amass a great fortune and live in an ivory tower as the others did. Hershey stayed right on the factory grounds in a house that for a man of his means was certainly paltry. Hershey was always thinking about what he could do to help others and not what he could do to make more money. I am not saying that Hershey was not a businessperson out to make a profit, he was. I think Hershey wanted more money so he could help more people with it. There are many lessons we can learn from Hershey's life, and these lessons are what our society as a whole and our corporations should strive not only to learn, but to implement into our lives.
