As an entrepreneur and small businessperson, I enjoy stories of other entrepreneurs who overcame obstacles to realize their dreams. One such story involves Bette Nesmith Graham, a secretary in the early 1950s, struggling to support herself and a son. Frustrated with having to retype entire documents because of simple typing errors, Graham invented a white liquid paint that would cover those mistakes, dry quickly, and allow her to type over the affected area once it had dried.

According to the website Famous Women Inventors (http://women-inventors.com), Graham was inspired in her work by painters who were decorating the windows at the bank where she worked. As the painters worked, they would cover over any mistakes they made with another layer of paint — saving time without compromising the quality of the work they did. Graham wondered if the same idea could be applied to her secretarial work.

As Graham perfected her concoction and started using it at her job, the other secretaries in her building took notice and began asking her to share her liquid, which she dubbed “Mistake Out,” with them. By 1956, demand had grown so much that Graham started a company (the Mistake Out Company) out of her Dallas home. Within the next dozen years, her renamed company, Liquid Paper, was a thriving business, requiring its own manufacturing plant and selling more than a million units per year.

In 1980, Graham sold Liquid Paper to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million. That’s a far cry from the income she earned as a struggling secretary in 1951… and further evidence that a good idea and an entrepreneurial spirit can accomplish just about anything.