When you look at successful, multi-billion dollar businesses like Amazon or Apple, it’s hard to imagine them as anything other than the market-dominating behemoths we know them as today.
However, Amazon launched out of the garage in Jeff Bezos’s rented home. Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in his parents’ house.
These humble beginnings seem almost unimaginable today, but surprisingly, they are the norm, rather than the exception. This is especially true for female entrepreneurs, who tend to get less funding than their male counterparts. Many of today’s most successful brands had humble starts that played a major role in why they became such major successes.
1. Keeping Costs Manageable
Cash flow is a major concern for many startup founders — as it should be. Studies indicate that as many as 82 percent of business failures are linked to poor cash flow management. If your eyes are bigger than your stomach, so to speak, you’ll spend far more than your new business could possibly afford.
This is something that many successful founders understand from the start. A humble beginning may not be as flashy, but it can greatly reduce expenses during those early stages when every penny matters. This understanding is why so many successful businesses began life in a garage or another small, unassuming space.
As Susan Ward writes for The Balance Small Business, “Depending on the commercial real estate situation in your area, you may be able to take advantage of depressed prices for office space to move your business to less expensive quarters or negotiate with your existing landlord for better lease terms. Better yet, if you don’t really need to run your business from commercial premises. why not operate from your home or go mobile? In addition to savings on office space, operating your business from home can save you money on insurance, business taxes, and utilities.”
Learning how to manage cash flow now helps founders learn valuable principles that will serve them well when they scale their business later. Maintaining a positive cash flow ensures your business will continue to thrive, even when challenging times come.
2. Focus On What Matters Most For The Business
By cutting out unnecessary expenses, founders are able to focus on what matters most for their business’s long-term success. This became especially clear during a recent conversation with Leif Ferreira, founder and CEO of Bit2Me.
He explained, “Our company started in a basement with nothing more than €150. This was a great way to eliminate the distractions that can come when starting a business. You’re not going to waste your time when you don’t have the money for office parties or catered meals. All of your attention is going to be focused on fine-tuning your strategies, making the best decisions for your business and being as productive as possible.”
This can be especially important for helping to identify outdated strategies or inadequate knowledge of your industry. With limited resources, business owners must take a deep dive into learning the strategies and skills that will have the greatest impact if they want to achieve growth.
Businesses that have a humble start develop discipline. Team members are focused on a single shared goal — one that they know is entirely dependent on their own efforts. Fun and games can come later. First, everyone involved needs to step up and do their part so the business can grow beyond the garage.
3. Humility Breeds Flexibility
Humble beginnings often require founders to reset their expectations, or even adapt the way they work so they can deal with the unusual circumstances that accompany starting their business in a garage or a small nook of their apartment.
Such circumstances teach flexibility and other valuable leadership lessons in a way that starting in a cushy office never could. After all, you’ll learn a lot more about flexibility if you’re starting out of a home where your kids can come in and interrupt you at any given hour.
This flexible mindset can also improve your creative thinking and leave you more open to new ideas. Studies have found that experts who practice humility actually become more flexible as they acquire more knowledge. The humble mindset that is established during the early bootstrapping days of a business can help founders become more agile and flexible in the future.
This leaves them better equipped to handle necessary pivots or simply accept advice and input from others after the business has grown. They become better collaborators, and far better leaders.
Writing for Idealist Careers, Liz Peintner explains that such leaders “are especially effective in cultivating strong social relationships, helpfulness, forgiveness, and social justice amongst their team members; creating teams with more satisfied employees who stay longer at the organization; leading well in unpredictable situations by using a trial-and-error approach; and minimizing negative feelings and intentions toward ‘out-group’ members, resulting in a more inclusive work environment.”
The humble, flexible beginning ultimately creates a stronger work environment where everyone feels valued and gives their best effort to ensure continued success.
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3 Reasons Many Of The World’s Most Booming Businesses Come From Humble Beginnings - Forbes
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