Pretty much, America was built on the simplest of business models: Take someone with a not-done-before or a no-one-does-it-better idea. Let that someone tinker in the back room, or the lab, or the storefront, putting that big idea to work. Watch it fly — or flop.
Been that way since way before W.K. Kellogg peddled his toasted corn flakes. Or Henry Ford rolled out his odd four-wheeler, and called it, plainly, Model A.
Oh, wait, that reminds us: Edsel.
Need we say another word?
Fact is, entrepreneurs are the backbone of the economic engine that makes this country churn and soar. Boils down to folks with brains and guts. Or maybe just wild-eyed dreamers who don’t believe in No.
We gathered up a flock of American small business success stories, picked the brains behind each tale, found out what they’d term their biggest mistake and most lasting lesson.
Listen in.
JUSTIN RASHID, PRESIDENT AMERICAN SPOON
Thousands of pounds of Early Glow strawberries ago, back in the late 1970s, Justin Rashid was a lifelong wild-food forager from Northern Michigan who’d tried his hand at New York City theater, but went racing back to the woodlands he knew inside out. He was busy picking black morels when he met up with Larry Forgione, a New York City chef.
Wasn’t long till Forgione, who’d set his sights on bringing the finest indigenous American foods to the plate, and Rashid, who basically wanted an excuse to poke around the woods every single day, decided they’d cook up the best fruit preserves in the world.
Thus was born, in 1982, American Spoon, an artisanal specialty food company based in Petoskey, Mich. Rashid and Forgione started out with two copper kettles in the basement of a candy shop, and now cook up a line of 100 award-winning spoon fruits, preserves and salsas (to skim the list);…