So you feel you’ve reached your capacity?  You’ve tapped out?

Consider these folks:

Martha Stewart

Stewart had worked on Wall Street and owned a Connecticut catering firm, but her real success came after age 41 with the publication of her first book, Entertaining, and the launch of Martha Stewart Living seven years later. (Of course, she weathered some pitfalls later, before rebounding once more.)

 

Vera Wang

Wang was first known as an accomplished figure skater and a fashion editor before deciding before her 1989 wedding, at age 40, that she wanted to be a designer. She commissioned her own wedding dress for $10,000 and opened her first bridal boutique the following year.

 

Harland Sanders

Sanders was “a failure who got fired from a dozen jobs before starting his restaurant, and then failed at that when he went out of business and found himself broke at the age of 65,” according to one account. But then things worked out when he sold the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1952.

 

Duncan Hines

At age 55, he wrote his first food and hotel guides (including one that mentioned Sanders Court and Caf, the original restaurant owned by Harlan Sanders, above). At age 73, licensed the right to use his name to the company that developed Duncan Hines cake mixes; unfortunately he died six years later.

 

Samuel Jackson

Jackson 46 years old (and in recovery from addiction to cocaine and heroin) before he starred alongside John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

 

Donald Fisher

At age 41, after a series of entrepreneurial ventures, Fisher and his wife Doris Fisher founded The Gap. It’s now a $16 billion a year company with more than 3,200 locations worldwide.

 

Ray Kroc

Kroc had passed his 50th birthday before he bought the first McDonald’s in 1961, which he ultimately expanded into a worldwide conglomerate.

 

Sam Walton

Although he’d owned a small chain of discount stores, Walton opened the first true Wal-Mart in 1962, when he was 44.

 

Stan Lee

He created his first hit comic title, “The Fantastic Four,” just shy of his 39th birthday. In the next few years, he created the legendary Marvel Universe, whose characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men became American cultural icons.

 

Momofuku Ando

Cemented his spot in junk food history when he invented instant ramen at age 48 in 1958.

 

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses

Began her prolific painting career at 78. In 2006, one of her paintings sold for $1.2 million.

 

At 53, Walter Hunt, an inventor, patented the safety pin.

 

At 62, J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of his fantasy series, “Lord of the Rings.”

 

At 66, Noah Webster completed his monumental “American Dictionary of the English Language.”

 

At 72, Margaret Ringenberg (Grabill, Indiana native) flew around the world.