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Both before and after Candler became an internationally successful businessman, he had a clear grasp of the fact that he, and every other person along with him, was in possession of a number of intangible assets that went far further in determining his potential for success than did the amount of money he had in his bank account. After all, with less than $2 in his pockets when he first arrived in Atlanta, how else could the astounding success of Candler in starting up the Coca-Cola Company be explained?
Unlike his brother, Candler never went to college. He had been interested in attending medical school, but lacked the necessary funds. What Candler lacked in formal education, he made up for in ambition. Candler had never been content to work at paltry wages for others. He knew that with enough determination, and the right connections, he could make a success of himself on his own terms.
To this end, Candler was one of the most relentless competitors in modern American business history. Although he had been taken under the wing of and given his very first job by pharmacist George J. Howard, Candler had no reservations about not only quitting, but creating his own pharmacy and setting himself up as Howard’s chief competitor. Nor did Candler hesitate when it came to his marketing campaigns, which readily questioned Howard’s professional competence. Eloping with Howard’s daughter a few months later was the icing on the cake.
However, as much of a competitor as Candler turned out to be, so too was his generosity at a level unmatched by most. Indeed, due in part to his ardent religious beliefs, Candler was ready and willing to give away much of the wealth he had accumulated over the years. After all, he knew that money had never been his most important asset.
Stemming from his Christianity, Candler believed that personal wealth was a divine trust that ought to be used for the benefit of humanity. Much like the ideas espoused in Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth”, Candler thought that the wealthy in particular had a duty to give their wealth away during their lifetime to benefit the rest of society. He opposed people who did not share his point of view.
Much like the creativity Candler displayed in growing his Coca-Cola Company, he was in fact one of the first to pioneer the concept of ‘challenge fundraising’, whereby he would pledge an amount of money to a charity if it could raise the same amount on its own. Though rare during his time, this type of fundraising has become commonplace in the nonprofit sector today.
In giving away his fortune, Candler created the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sending disadvantaged but deserving children to college to receive an education. He also helped fund the Emory University Hospital to fulfill the city’s needs as its previous institute had outgrown its fifty-bed capacity.
His economic success might have helped define his place in American history, but Candler got to where he did by using all of the assets he had available to him outside of the financial realm.
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Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. When I was a youngster I got into a number of fist fights on the school grounds. Now fighting was obviously frowned on by all teachers, but in those days kids settled diff...
