In 1970, at 24, Bob Williamson was in Atlanta, homeless, broke, addicted to heroin and methamphetamines. He was injured in a an auto accident and lying flat in his back he found God. He knew he was at the bottom with no schooling, a criminal record and very few prospects. He could either give up and die, or grab hold of God and turn his life around.
"I was either going to commit suicide, which several of my friends had done, or I was going turn my life around," says Williamson in an interview for Business Week this month. Bob is determined to be the best 'employee' when he lands a job with a paint company by being the first in and the last to leave. He becomes a paint expert and helps his company move into the computer age.
Like many entrepenuers, Bob experiments with improvements to his companies products and processes and has some success with his own line of paint for air brushes. By 1977, just 7 years after his "awakening", he has his own company of over 6000 art related items. Just as he's ready to take his company public, the IPO research uncovers his accounting firm has been embezzeling and he's facing bankruptcy. He spends the next 8 years working with his creditors to convince them to not sue and to give them progress reports. After his recovery, he sells all of the previous business assets and in 1992 forms Horizon International. Not on his paint formulas or past successes, but along the way, in order to manage his own companies and to avoid the accounting fiasco of his last business, he launches Horizon with his portfolio of software that had been developed in house, to help him run his own companies.
Read the whole story in Business Week
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