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It's easy to think, when you look at big and successful companies like Apple or Amazon, that they were Apple and Amazon from the start.
But of course, they weren't.
Apple started in a garage, as did Amazon. The original owners of Starbucks were content to own four dinky stores until Howard Schultz showed up. What's important to remember about these types of businesses and entrepreneurs is that they started off small, very small. It took time, patience, and energy for those entrepreneurs and their businesses to become big, very big.
Take Richard Branson of Virgin, for example. Nowadays, The Virgin Group is huge--comprising more than 200 companies, some 71,000 employees, and a value of about $20 billion. What you may not realize however is that Virgin began as a teeny, tiny record company above a shoe shop in London and Branson had to barter for his rent.
Originally, Branson started the Virgin Record Shop as a means of funding his even smaller, very first venture, Student magazine. The tiny record store found only mild success, but it was enough for Branson to take a risk and venture out on a small, next adventure, wherein he launched an actual recording studio, Virgin Music. Signing bands no one had ever heard of, his first breakthrough was with an odd, and oddly memorable song, Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells." That first blush of success allowed Branson to continue to take risks, albeit slowly and step-by-step, but eventually, bands like the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols were signed to Virgin Music.
One of the keys to Branson's success is that he paid attention to what the world needed and made a point to fill niches with multiple income streams, to wit: Branson added space travel onto the Virgin empire, as Virgin Atlantic begat Virgin Galactic.
Talk about one small step for man.
Bill Gates has a similar story. Nowadays, we automatically associate his name with massive wealth and success, but what many people don't know is that Gates's first company, started with his good friend, Paul Allen, was a dud. Traf-o-Data was supposed to analyze traffic patterns.
It puttered, stalled, and died on the side of the road.
After dropping out of Harvard and moving to New Mexico, Gates and Allen tried again, this time starting Micro-Soft. The first several years of Microsoft weren't easy. Gates and Allen struggled to make a profit and found themselves in a couple of legal battles as well. With only 25 employees, and losing money in its first few years, Microsoft relocated to outside of Seattle in 1979. It was here that Gates would eventually find success, thanks to his mom.
Gates's mother, Mary, connected Bill to her IBM colleagues, to whom Gates would eventually sell a product called MS-DOS. But even that was a huge risk--Gates sold IBM on the idea of MS-DOS before he even owned the rights to the program.
So yes, before Microsoft got big, even Bill Gates had to rely on family connections to get started.
Or what about Martha Stewart? She is another one of the great small-to-big entrepreneurial tales. Stewart grew up in New Jersey and came from modest beginnings. As a teenager, she did some modeling to make some extra money, but eventually went to Barnard and graduated in 1962.
Martha worked on Wall Street for several years until she realized that what she truly loved was gourmet cooking. She decided to put her lucrative career aside to pursue this true calling. She trained herself with Julia Child's cookbook, and soon started her own small catering company. How did she break through? Her husband was finally able to help her get a deal for her first book, Entertaining (Clarkson Potter, 1982). That in turn led to stints on the Today show.
It took about 10 years, but eventually, Martha Stewart became Martha Stewart.
The lesson? Starting small is what works; actually, it is how it works.
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
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Great Entrepreneurs Who Started Small: Richard Branson, Bill Gates, & Martha Stewart
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02.12.2023
This Entrepreneur Grew His Company Nearly 300 Percent in 3 Years by Sending Cold Emails
When and How to Curse at Work
Here Are the Top DEI Trends of 2023 -- and What They Mean for the Year Ahead
How to Better Support Mental Wellness at Work
The Biggest Business Fails of 2023
It's easy to think, when you look at big and successful companies like Apple or Amazon, that they were Apple and Amazon from the start.
But of course, they weren't.
Apple started in a garage, as did Amazon. The original owners of Starbucks were content to own four dinky stores until Howard Schultz showed up. What's important to remember about these types of businesses and entrepreneurs is that they started off small, very small. It took time, patience, and energy for those entrepreneurs and their businesses to become big, very big.
Take Richard Branson of Virgin, for example. Nowadays, The Virgin Group is huge--comprising more than 200 companies, some 71,000 employees, and a value of about $20 billion.........
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