odds. She was the wrong color and the wrong sex in a racist, male-dominated society. She was the wrong class, she had no formal education, and she had no expertise in chemistry, beauty products, or business. Few successful entrepreneurs anywhere, at any time, have had as many hurdles to overcome, and I consider Walker one of my heroes. I wish I could have met her. If you could bottle what made Walker tick, you would surely make billions.
Another story that inspired me was Sir Richard Branson, whose dyslexia led to poor academic performance in school. His first business was a magazine called Student, through which he advertised discounted records for students, who typically couldn’t afford the record prices at “High Street” stores. This made Branson mad, and he later said, “There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration.”
Selling records eventually led Branson to found a record label, Virgin Records. Then, another moment of frustration led him to start an airline. About thirty years ago, American Airlines canceled his flight to the British Virgin Islands, where “a beautiful woman” was waiting for him, and Branson became incensed.
“I went to the back of the airport, hired a plane, borrowed a blackboard, and wrote, ‘Virgin Air, $39 single flight,’” he recalls. “I walked around all the stranded people and filled up the plane. As we landed, a passenger said to me: ‘Virgin Airways isn’t too bad — smarten up the service and you could be in business.’” Branson eventually married the beautiful woman, Joan, and turned his anger into a profitable airline.
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings started Netflix after he was charged forty dollars in late return fees for a video at his local Blockbuster. “I had misplaced the cassette,” he admits. “It was all my fault. I didn’t want to tell my wife about it. And I said to myself, I’m going to compromise the integrity of my marriage over a late fee? Later, I realized my gym had a much better business model. You could pay thirty or forty dollars a month and work out as little or as much as you wanted.” Hastings transformed his embarrassment and frustration into a new model for renting movies, and just as importantly, Netflix has since adapted with the times and become a global streaming sensation.
Sara Blakely was irritated by the seamed foot in her pantyhose, so she cut the toe section off. When she realized others had the same dilemma, she knew this common problem represented a business opportunity. Fearing ridicule, however, she didn’t even share her business plan with her husband or family until her company, Spanx, was well underway.
Academics might try, but I can’t find any genetic, psychological, cultural, or environmental commonalities between Ford, Walker, Branson, Hastings, and Blakely. Before starting their businesses, none had a shared identifiable talent or passion. What happened, however, what unites their stories, is that they used their experiences of frustration to do something to change and improve the world. That is where winning business ideas come from.
A Winning Idea Fills a Need or Fixes a Problem
However, the truth is, you don’t necessarily have to get mad. But if your winning idea does not fill a need or fix a problem that frustrates customers, then it won’t make a successful business, and by successful I mean one that makes millions by delighting those customers. Your business does not have to be the first to market to succeed. You don’t have to be the only company offering your product or service. But you must fill a need or delight customers in a specific way and do that one thing better than anyone else (for more on this, see “What Makes a Winning Product or Service,” pages 178–81).
For instance, Southwest Airlines was not the first airplane service, and within a year of their launch, with nothing much to distinguish it, the airline was in trouble. They had posted a net loss of $1.6 million, and the company was forced to sell one of its planes. Desperate to keep up, Southwest’s vice president of ground operations, Bill Franklin, was tasked with finding a solution. The answer he came up with was simple but brilliant: Unload and load passengers faster than the other airlines, and get the planes right back in the air. So Southwest’s “ten-minute turn,” as it came to be called, was born, and they effectively turned the planes like an assembly line. This winning idea was born of adversity, but it worked because it served customers better.
The story of Google’s founding is another tale of success born of frustration, but of a different kind. Two Stanford University doctoral students — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — had created a search engine algorithm (called PageRank), but according to Luis Mejia, Google’s associate director of technology licensing, “The inventors did not want to do a startup company — they wanted to finish their PhDs.” Mejia worked with the pair in the mid-1990s and says, “We spent half a year trying to market [the technology] and find licensees. But nobody really expressed much interest.”
After a few “road shows,” Mejia says, Page and Brin realized no one understood what they were doing. “So it was really out of frustration that they decided to start a company. . . . In that respect, it was chance.”
Mejia says the pair — who never finished their doctorates — did not have a business model, “but then a lot of things just sort of fell into place. Maybe that’s where serendipity comes in. . . .There is a chance we could have licensed it to another company for a very nominal sum of money. But it isn’t clear that they would have done anything with it. And there probably would be no Google today.”
Occasionally, moments of insight lead entrepreneurs to solve problems people haven’t yet realized they have.
Ask Yourself: What Makes Me Mad?
Once I realized the “secret” to startup success, I reviewed my life for the things that made me mad. I drafted a long list, but one in particular made my blood boil. For years I had been frustrated that the company I worked for had created a product that could successfully treat a rare disease, but then they spent no money making physicians and patients aware that this solution existed. Though this sounds callous, it is typical of a lot of large businesses. Originally a small, private company that could make scientific and patient-focused decisions, it had become so successful that it went public. Now the company had to answer to shareholders, who generally prefer to increase profits and dividends and don’t have much tolerance for potentially risky or low-revenue strategies.
The company estimated that less than two hundred people in the world suffered from this rare disease, and the cost of making all physicians aware of both the issue and the solution was considered exorbitant compared to the potential return from sales. Three times I proposed plans to justify an investment, and three times I was rejected and warned to focus on selling our other products. Yes, this made me mad.
My idea was born. I had never started a company before or raised finances, and I knew very little about research and development, but the unfairness of the situation motivated me to want to do something for patients suffering from the disease.
Take Notes: Make a List of Problems
Every time something gets under your skin, make a note of it. When you hear yourself or others complaining about something being wrong, jot it down. When someone expresses a wish for something that does not yet exist, scribble the request on a piece of paper.
Writing things down is important. Don’t be fooled into thinking that making a mental note is all you need to do. It is scientifically proven that people who physically write something down tend toward taking action, and writing aids with memory retention. It is also scientifically proven that writing by hand creates greater retention than typing.
Good entrepreneurs keep a pen and paper handy at all times. This might be the simplest entrepreneurial tip of all: Never be without access to paper and pen, whether by the bed, in the kitchen, in the car, or in your pocket
