Esquire magazine posed the following question to fifty famous men: "Who made you the man you are today?" Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III relates how "God put a lot of people in my life that have helped me … My dad sacrificed a lot for our family. He didn't have shoes when he was growing up, so he couldn't play basketball, and he made sure I had as many shoes as I needed to play sports."

Actor Samuel L. Jackson talked about being shaped by the women who raised him, and by teachers as well: "I had English teachers in junior high and high school who encouraged me to read different things than I was reading—to read Shakespeare and Beowulf—and to expand my horizons in that particular way."

Senator Marco Rubio learned from his grandfather "to dream and aspire." Actor Kevin Bacon credits his mother with teaching him and his brother compassion and honesty. Music powerhouse Quincy Jones is grateful to Count Basie for teaching him that you have to experience the valleys of failure—where you find out who you really are—to get to the mountaintop of success. Interestingly, country music star Dierks Bentley says that his wife and children made him the man he is today: "[Fatherhood] tears away the person you were before, builds you up to become the person you have to become, makes you learn a lot of skills—a lot of man skills."