Don’t Stop Innovating Because You’re Big

Samuel Moore was born on a farm in the plains. Throughout his youth, his family moved often, as farming didn’t provide enough for them. They picked up and moved from Oklahoma to various towns in Missouri, and as he got older, Samuel eventually got a paper route and event milked the cow to help his family out.

He knew he wanted to go beyond small town farm life, so he enrolled in college and took small jobs to support himself, just scraping by. He even had to wait tables in exchange for his meals.

But eventually, Samuel graduated, moved to Iowa and got a job as a trainee with J.C. Penney. He learned enough that he bought a single store in the Butler Brothers chain. He was a flourishing entrepreneur whose store became so successful that his landlord took notice, refused to renew Samuel’s lease, and raised the rent to five percent of sales.

Young Samuel, still in his 20s, learned his lesson: he would never again be at a disadvantage against a larger, more powerful entity. From then on, he knew what he had to do to fight back as a small businessman. He determined that he would own rather than rent property, and that his stores needed to be consistently stocked with a full range of goods.

Samuel would go on to not only show those powerful franchises and lease-holders that he had the stamina and…