Success Television - Great Leaders & Their Moms

Jack Welch, Jerry Yang and Howard Schultz. They are three of the world's most successful businessmen. Their business acumen and billion-dollar brilliance is legendary. But each wouldn't be where he is without the love of a good woman, his mom.

Take Welch, former CEO and Chairman of General Electric. He grew GE's market capitalization from $14 billion to $400 billion, making it the most valuable company in the world. It's a feat he accomplished largely through his ability to motivate his employees.

This power to ignite ingenuity and hard work comes from his mother, who he says, "was the master of the carrot and the stick." She continually encouraged the best from young Welch and, as his successes mounted, kept him grounded.

Welch followed in his mother's footsteps, motivating GE employees to greatness. He did this, he says, by rewarding the best and the brightest with more interesting and exciting jobs. And by "setting the bar at wild levels and not punishing shortfalls. Always creating this incredible intensity around doing better, doing more."

As co-founder of Yahoo!, a company with a market capitalization of more than $139 billion, Jerry Yang has built a career on doing more, better. It's a philosophy he inherited from his mother, and which he's passed on to every employee at Yahoo!

When Yang was just 2-years-old, his father died, leaving his mother with two young boys. Seeking to escape the strained political situation in Taiwan, she brought her children to the U.S.

It was a time, says Yang, when "people really had to make something happen out of nothing." They had to worry about necessities like feeding and educating their children.

As a result, Yang's mother taught him to seize every opportunity and to repay life's rewards by giving back to the community. "I think that's a very key part of how we develop the company," says Yang, who has said he sees Yahoo! "as an opportunity that is bestowed. I have a responsibility to make the most out of it."

And make the most of it he has. Along with partner David Filo, Yang has made Yahoo! the first Internet company to launch a commercial search engine, the first to go public and the first to be profitable.

Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz also knows what it means to make something from nothing. He first walked into Starbucks in 1979. When he walked out of the then three-store business, it was with a dream that went far beyond lattes and Frappuccinos.

Soon after he called Starbucks co-founder Jerry Baldwin to ask about job opportunities. But it took more than a year of discussions before Schultz landed a job with the coffee chain. The owners were impressed by his passion, but at the same time, thought his ideas were too risky.

But taking risks and blazing a new path for coffee beans is precisely how Schultz took Starbucks from three stores to 3,000. What made him think he could do it?

"I have to give her a tremendous amount of credit for giving me the self-esteem and the sense of my own makeup to believe that I could do the things that I've done," says Schultz. "And I don't know where it came from, that she was able to instill that in us. But, she has that gift."

Schultz has based his life on the road less traveled, he says. It's brought him into unchartered levels of success. And it's all because his mother gave him the courage to be great and face failure fearlessly.

"My mother does not have a high school education, she dropped out of high school. She had a very tough life," says Schultz. "But for whatever reason, [she] has this inner strength and was able to convey this feeling among myself, my brother and my sister, that we could do anything."