Scale That Wall And Win

• Sonja Carberry
• On 5:40 pm EDT, Thursday August 27, 2009

It can be a tough climb to the top. Having someone point 15ut key footholds helps, but winners don't let anything hold them back. How they reach the success summit:

Gut it out. Talk about resistance. In the early 1960s, Perry Ellis CEO George Feldenkreis was a newly arrived Cuban selling Japanese motorcycle parts to Florida jobbers. It wasn't just his accent that made sales slip out from under him. Pearl Harbor remained a sore subject with Americans.

"They'd say, 'Get out of here. We don't buy Japanese,'" Feldenkreis told IBD.

The future boss of the apparel and accessories giant simply kept trying. "You just have to be persistent," he said. "The reality is that hard work is what counts."

Learn the terrain. Feldenkreis eventually gained traction in the clothing industry by importing school uniforms. His winning approach was to offer the specific colors that different regions wanted -- a new idea at the time.

"You have to tailor a product for a particular market," he said.

He next earned the Guayabera King moniker by finding a Japanese firm to make the embroidered, four-pocket guayabera shirts popular in Latin cultures after the embargo cut off Cuban trade with the U.S.

It was an early interest in Japan that gave Feldenkreis a leg up.

"I've been in Asia since 1963," he said. "I was fortunate to be there in the beginning."

Add soft skills. If you put your head down and work hard, you're guaranteed to make it. Right? Not always, says John Rice. He founded Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that helps black, Hispanic and American Indian students learn about business.

"They have limited access to people who've been down the path," Rice told IBD.

Using mentoring, coaching and boot camps while teaming up with corporate partners such as PepsiCo , Rice's outfit teaches future executives how to make connections and build business relationships.

"These ingredients ... are not things you get in the classroom," Rice said.

Plan routes meticulously. To land that dream job, Rice tells his proteges to look at professionals who already hold such positions.

"What do those people look like (as far as experience goes) and how do I look like them in five years?" Rice said. "You have to think with more rigorous structure."

Follow your leaders. Women are becoming entrepreneurs in record numbers, but a much smaller percentage reach million-dollar status compared with men.

Business consultant Nell Merlino founded MakeMineaMillion.org to help her gender tally higher numbers. "The most popular thing on our Web site is the stories of women who've done this," she said. "It's important to see someone who looks like you that's pulling this off."

Lighten the load. When Merlino asks women who's on their team, a common response is: "It's just me."

You can't do it all, she tells them. To prove it, Merlino polled women whose businesses were seven-figure successes.

"They all used a grocery delivery service," she said. "It told us that delegating jobs to other people was one of the key indicators of women who were able to hit a million in revenue."

Buzz up!