"With no training in art or design, in 1979 Paul Ruitenberg started a business that moved from decorating store windows to crafting interior displays for thousands of supermarkets, including Giant Foods and A&P. By 2007, Ruitenberg Displays had topped $18 million in revenue, and Ruitenberg had bought a Martha’s Vineyard vacation home and an 85-foot yacht and was socializing with Ted Danson and Carly Simon. But after his wife left him and he lost his operations chief to cancer, Ruitenberg made a disastrous business decision, merging with a partner who forced him out of the company. He lost his homes, his car and his yacht and spent his savings on a legal fight that he couldn’t afford to keep pursuing. After a two-year battle with depression, he remarried and with financial help from his wife’s family, he started over, acquiring a store-display business from a competitor. Today, Ruitenberg Lind Design Group in Jamesburg, NJ, designs supermarket interiors for 500 customers in the New York metro area and in Seattle, Hawaii, Florida and the Caribbean. In 2016, revenue reached $10 million and the company is on track to gross $20 million this year. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, Ruitenberg, 59, describes what it was like to go from two homes and a yacht to being out on the street."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/03/16/how-a-college-drop-out-built-an-18m-store-display-business-lost-everything-and-started-over/#6211274a1e4c
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/03/16/how-a-college-drop-out-built-an-18m-store-display-business-lost-everything-and-started-over/#6211274a1e4c