My first business was started with borrowed money in a legacy industry crowded with similar companies. Yet, we succeeded in our markets far beyond any of the competition, including many international firms. One of the companies we started and sold now has thousands of employees. While there were many barriers to starting the businesses, we overcame them. There were obstacles to success that became valuable lessons to learn. When we all learn from mistakes, we become better decision-makers.
As I mentioned previously, a common thread that holds Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon together is that the opportunities envisioned by their founders were right in front of them. However, those opportunities were also right in front of millions of other people. Why did these founders see something others did not see? What was it that they saw? And why didn’t anyone else jump on those opportunities first? What did these individuals do that set them apart at the time they started and beyond? We can learn so much from their examples.
We can teach ourselves to look past the obvious and open our eyes to see opportunity, examples of which are seen throughout this book. You can train yourself to visualize, learn, and gain a better understanding of what can be ignored and what should be pursued. Always ask yourself why things are as they are.
Is there a better way?
What does the customer really need in the future?
Can we do better?
Can we find a more efficient way to do what we do?
My favorite question when I hear, “We always do it that way,” is “When did we start always doing it that way?” The more you can understand the stories behind many great businesses and their founders, the more you can build the confidence to either start your own business or have greater success in the place you work. I hope that my own success stories add to your knowledge and open your mind to better ways of achieving success.
A close business associate once remarked after a very successful new product launch, “The difference between this success and nothing changing is that the person behind it took the thoughts from the shower, acted on them, and did something great to make them happen.” In other words, the difference is in taking the initiative to take a thought a few steps beyond a dream, to investigating what could be and visualizing positive outcomes.
The founders of Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon not only saw opportunities, but they took immediate action and made something happen. Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an enormous opportunity that opened up with the advent of computerization. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw an opportunity to change the way that people buy books (and now everything). This was also made possible by advancements in technology. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, on the other hand, saw the opportunity to avail millions to a café environment with the focus on meeting, sitting, reading, and having a pastry as opposed to just selling a cup of coffee in a restaurant.
Howard Schultz recognized a need for a customer space that was so much more than just a place to get a cup of coffee. He envisioned a place to gather, offer up consistent, quality beverages; a place with a customer-focused culture and experience. I look back at the first trip to Paris my wife and I took, and distinctly remember the desire to visit a café to enjoy an espresso while sitting at a small table on the street. This was well before Starbucks started, but I never gave any thought as to why this same environment could not be replicated in the U.S. (and around the world) in a consistent and more unique way as Howard Schultz, Howard Behar, and Orin Smith (termed the H2O team) did.
The three Starbucks founders created a small coffee shop that went global in a very short time. This team started a few years after some serious coffee aficionados started the first few stores by roasting and selling seriously good coffee. But the H2O team visualized a much bigger opportunity, invested in the company, and the rest of the story is history. As Howard Behar was quoted saying, “I saw it was all about the people. We’re not in the coffee business serving people. We’re in the people business serving coffee. I knew that intrinsically; that was my personality. Those were my values. That has been constant from the beginning.”
While the three companies briefly discussed here are now household names, millions of other businesses small and large share many of the same traits and stories, as well as similar cultures and work habits contributing to their success. When they were just starting out, did any of them know the enormity of the success they would eventually see? Probably not. They could dream, and as their businesses developed, they made thousands of changes, feeding the successful directions and cutting off the ones that were failing. They simply took that leap of faith at first, and the rest is, as they say, history.
The founders of these companies were not all wealthy, highly educated, or from privileged families. They all came from vastly different backgrounds. Bill Gates’ family was wealthy, as his father was a successful attorney. His mother, Mary, was a very successful businesswoman who also served for 18 years on the University of Washington’s board of regents. She was the first female president of King County’s United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served with IBM’s CEO, John Opel, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington’s board of directors.
Bill Gates’ founding partner, Paul Allen, grew up in a very modest family. His father worked many years as a librarian in Seattle. They both shared a vision of what could be possible with a computer operating system accessible to anyone. At that time, the giant computer company was IBM, called “Big Blue.” It was an enormously successful company with a highly-educated, exceptional global leadership staff. Yet that IBM staff had focused on large, mainframe computers for business and failed to understand; failed to “see” the potential future market for a personal computer.
The rest of Microsoft’s story is now history as well. Bill Gates and Paul Allen became two of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Some might also know that the connection between Bill Gates’ mother and IBM CEO John Opel opened some doors. What’s important to note is that few people, when that door is open, take that first step or see what might be inside and act on it. When you learn to recognize the opportunity in front of you, and have the courage to act on it, you will be more successful overall.
Howard Schultz, who grew Starbucks to global fame, grew up in a housing development project for the poor, creating within him a desire to make a life for himself that he never had. In an interview, he remarked, “I wanted to climb over that fence and achieve something beyond what people were saying was possible.” Howard invested in that very small coffee shop in Seattle named Starbucks. Howard Schultz saw the potential. People were buying coffee from various restaurants and coffee shops already. What did he see? There are many, very smart people in the world—why did Howard Schultz see this opportunity that others missed? Even more interesting is how Howard Schultz and his team found the right people to invest in growing a chain of coffee shops. That story alone would fill another book. In the early 1980s, it was inconceivable that anyone would go to an investment banker suggesting an investment in a coffee shop business—inconceivable to anyone except Howard Schultz, that is. Those who shared Howard’s vision did invest, and all did very well indeed.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO and founder, is a very bright, diverse, highly-educated individual who visualized a better way for people to buy books, displacing the centuries-old way people purchased and read books. If this sounds overly simple, that’s because it is. There were already several large, successful brick and mortar stores selling millions of books. But the vision Jeff Bezos “saw” led to the creation of the world’s largest retailer. Again, more than a book could be (and likely will be) written about this company and its founder.
Today, the same opportunities are in front of us all. There are thousands of new businesses that are waiting for someone