2. Earn a Few Pennies. It’s good practice before you earn those dollars.
3. Begin With an Idea. There’s probably a good one right under your nose.
4. Think Like a Visionary. Always look for the Big Picture.
5. Keep the Faith. Believe in yourself and your business, even when others don’t.
6. Ready, Fire, Aim! If you think too much about it, you may never start.
7. Profit or Perish. Increase sales, decrease costs. Anything less and your business will perish.
8. Be Positive. The School of Hard Knocks will beat you down, but not if you keep a positive attitude.
9. Continuously Improve Your Business. It’s the best way to attract customers, and generate sales and profit.
10. Believe In Your People. Or they may get even with you!
11. Never Run Out of Money. It’s the most important lesson in business.
12. Attract New Customers Every Day. Awareness, Trial, and Usage work every time.
13. Be Persistent: Don’t Give Up. You only fail if you quit.
14. Build a Brand Name! Earn your reputation.
15. Opportunity Waits for No One. Good or bad, breaks are what you make them.
Why are these lessons valuable? Because if you follow them, you are more likely to be successful in the development of your business. These are the lessons I learned while building Subway, and they’re the same lessons that many other microentrepreneurs have learned and applied, too. If you plan to grow your business beyond a one- or two-person enterprise, there will be other lessons to learn, of course. But these Fifteen Key Lessons will help you get started and keep you focused.
Start Small, Finish Big will introduce you to a variety of microentrepreneurs who, like me, began their businesses on financial shoestrings. Their stories illustrate and highlight each of the Fifteen Key Lessons. Instead of relying only on my experiences, or my interpretation of a particular lesson, you will also gain the richly instructional and personal perspectives of these microentrepreneurs. Their stories usually illustrate not one, but several of the Fifteen Key Lessons, and that’s because no one lesson is sufficient to build a successful business. It’s a combination of these lessons, if not all of the lessons, that allows you to start small and finish big.
A few of the microentrepreneurs in the book are still building their businesses. You may find their stories encouraging and uplifting. The challenges they battled and conquered, and the challenges they still struggle to resolve, serve as good examples of what you can expect should you choose to become a microentrepreneur.
Some of the other microentrepreneurs in the book have grown their small enterprises into national and international brand names, but they have not forgotten their humble beginnings, and they gladly share their stories in the hopes of helping you accomplish your dream of business ownership. In several cases, you’ll immediately recognize their company names, although you may not ever have heard of the entrepreneurs who are responsible for the company’s success. These stories, too, should inspire and motivate you as you think about starting a business, or expanding an existing business.
You’ll learn about the value of building a brand from Paul Orfalea. Mike Ilitch demonstrates how a couple of bad breaks can lead to great opportunities. Mary Ellen Sheets, a founder of Two Men & A Truck, shares her ideas about the importance of constantly improving a business. Jim Cavanaugh, who built Jani-King, the world’s largest commercial cleaning company, shows you what can happen when you look for the Big Picture. And a name that’s widely recognized for motivation and inspiration, Zig Ziglar, reveals the down-and-out story of a man who developed a positive attitude and continues to earn his stripes at the School of Hard Knocks.
Then there’s the inventor Tomima Edmark, who wondered one day if she could turn a ponytail inside out. That one creative thought sparked the idea for the TopsyTail, and Tomima has been coming up with ideas ever since. Frank Argenbright literally earned pennies before he earned his first dollar, and today his company, AHL Services, Inc., a contract staffing business, generates a billion dollars in sales annually. Tom Morales wasn’t ready to start his own business, but one day, annoyed with his job, he decided to resign. After fumbling for a while, he started TomKats, a catering business that serves the movie industry. Tom shows us that even if you haven’t done all your planning, you can’t take forever to think about your business. Sometimes you fire first, and take aim later.
When she was living in a shelter with her two children, it would have been easy for Cynthia Wake to give up her direct sales business, The Hosiery Stop. In fact, it would have made sense to quit. But Cynthia doesn’t believe in giving up, and she’ll tell you the price she’s paid to persevere as a business owner. Meanwhile, when his economics professor marked an F on his business plan for Campus Concepts, you might have thought Ian Leopold would get a job and forget his idea about launching a series of campus guides. But 100 guides later, and $10 million in annual revenue, is proof enough that it pays to believe in yourself and your business, even when no one else does.
Microentrepreneurs build businesses and people run them. David Schlessinger, who founded Encore Books when he was a college student, explains the wisdom of believing in people if you want to build an empire. Earl Tate shows you what happens when you build an empire and run out of money, as he did twice. The founder of Staffing Solutions, a temporary employment agency, readily admits his mistakes so that you might avoid them.
Terri Bowersock, founder of the world’s largest consignment furniture chain, Terri’s Consign & Design Furnishings, has mastered the course on attracting customers. Years ago, teachers and friends said Terri couldn’t have mastered much of anything. Now she’s sharing her mastery with others, and helping them build successful businesses. Ev Harlow, who became a graphic designer while he served Uncle Sam in the Air Force, has mastered the course on generating profits. With no business experience at the time he launched Art Reproduction Technologies, he quickly discovered that a business without profit will soon perish. He didn’t waste any time learning the importance of making profit and how to do it.
Whoever said it takes money to make money was dead wrong, and the microentrepreneurs in this book prove it. For example, after many years of teaching string instruments in public schools, Paulette Ensign was bored and unhappy. She spent $50 to buy two classified ads in her local newspapers and created Organizing Solutions, a little business to teach people how to organize their lives, their homes, and their jobs. Carlos Aldana was twenty-eight when he left Colombia and arrived in the United States without a job or so much as a penny in his pocket. He worked three minimum-wage jobs before he started his own delivery service. Now he owns a restaurant in New York City.
Michael and Jamie Ford were middle-class Americans before an accident forced Jamie out of work. The family had to move into a travel trailer and collect welfare to exist. If only they could start their own business, they were sure they could get off public assistance and return to their former mainstream lifestyle. When a nonprofit organization that assists microentrepreneurs loaned the Fords $250, it was all the help they needed to start a tiny business selling kettle corn. Since then, the U.S. Small Business Administration has honored the Fords as Entrepreneurs of the Year in New Mexico.
Jeremy Wiener invested little more than gas and phone money to start Cover-It, a business that provides book covers to schools in all fifty states. From so tiny an investment, his
