While a bit larger than most of our business success stories, this one truly is an inspiration.

Meet Bob Williamson, a man who went from broke and near suicide to head a multi-million dollar company in Atlanta. This is a story of not only hard work winning out, but also of seizing on chance and making the most of it (in this case, and in particular, an auto accident that led him to get clean and change his life).

Bob Williamson fled a broken home in Mississippi at age 17 to hitchhike around the country. He landed in Atlanta in 1970 at 24, homeless, broke, and addicted to heroin and methamphetamine. When he got a job there cleaning bricks for $15 a week, no one would have guessed that he would start a $26 million software company someday.

The company he founded, Horizon Software International, would go on to produce software used in the back-end of high school cafeterias, hospitals, nursing homes and military bases. Check out BusinessWeek.com for the complete article.