If you're feeling overwhelmed, don't be! Some of the most successful businesses in the world started small. For example, what do you think the following companies and products have in common?

• 1 800-FLOWERS
• Avon Products, Inc.
• Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc.
• EDS
• Krispy Kreme Doughnuts
• Mrs. Field's Gifts, Inc.
• Post-it Notes
• Starbucks Coffee Company
• Velcro

 Answer: All these companies and products began with fewer than three people and less than $10,000.

1-800-FLOWERS 
Founder: Jim McCann 
2005 Sales: $670 million 

McCann opened his first store in New York City in 1976 and later expanded to 14 stores in the metropolitan New York area. One of McCann's very satisfied customers made a joke about Jim's store being a one-stop shop for all flowers, calling it "1-800-Flowers." McCann researched the availability of number and as soon as he acquired it, he began his nationwide network of florists.

Avon Products, Inc. 
Founder: David McConnell 
2005 sales $8 billion 

McConnell started out selling books door-to-door to housewives, but he discovered that he had a hard time getting their attention, so he began giving out perfume samples. He quickly realized the women were more interested in the perfume samples than the books, so he began the door-to-door cosmetics business that became Avon.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc. 
Founders: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield 
2005 sales $272 million 

Cohen and Greenfield were childhood buddies who quickly discovered a mutual disdain for sports and love for food. After graduating from college, they took a correspondence course on how to make ice cream. They pooled their savings of $8000 and in 1978 started Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Scoop Shop in an abandoned gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

EDS 
Founder: Ross Perot 
2005 sales $20 billion 

While working for IBM, Perot had the idea of providing information technology services to companies for a monthly fee - allowing those companies to outsource rather than maintain their own information technology groups. IBM did not embrace the idea, so in 1962 Perot left IBM to start his own company with his life savings of $1000. He knew that this business would require discipline, so he hired the group of people who no one would hire at that time: Vietnam veterans.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts 
Founder: Vernon Rudolph 
2005 sales $707 million 

Rudolph purchased the secret Krispy Kreme recipe from a famous New Orleans chef and started making the doughnuts in his own kitchen, delivering them to local grocery stores. Very quickly, customers began asking where they could buy the doughnuts other than the grocery store. So Rudolph cut a hole in the side of his house and started selling Krispy Kremes out of it. He would turn on his front porch light in the morning to indicate to his neighbors and customers that the doughtnuts were fresh from the oven. That practice continues today in Krispy Kreme stores to indicate when doughnuts, fresh from the oven, are available for purchase.

Mrs. Field's Cookies 
Founder: Debbi Fields 
2005 sales $173 million 

When Fields wanted to open a shop that sold cookies, she was met with skepticism. How could a business survive selling only one product? But she persevered and opened her first cookie shop in Palo Alto, California in 1977. Fields certainly proved the naysayers wrong-in 1990 she began franchising the business.

Post-it Notes 
Inventors: Arthur Fry and Spencer Silva 
While working for the company 3M, Fry invented an adhesive that was supposed to be stronger than anything 3M had on the market. It turned out to be a fairly weak adhesive and actually peeled off anything to which it had been attached. While at church one Sunday morning, Arthur watched his friend, Silva, marking the pages in his choir hymnal and becoming frustrated that the markers wouldn't stay on the pages. He began thinking about his weak adhesive and how attaching it to paper could solve his friend's problem.

Starbucks Coffee Company 
Founders: Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegel
2005 sales $6.4 billion 

Baldwin, Bowker, and Siegel were friends and colleagues who shared a love of fine coffees and teas. They also loved the coffee shop atmosphere of San Francisco and decided to replicate it in a small Seattle-based coffee house. Their start-up capital consisted of $9000 that they pooled to open their first coffee house.

Velcro 
Inventor: Gordon de Mestral

de Mestral took his dog for a hike one afternoon and came home with his pants and dog covered with burrs. He had no trouble removing the burrs from his pants, but found them very difficult to remove from his dog's coat. He took the burrs to his microscope and realized that the burrs had spiked ends while the fabric of his trousers had looped ends, which allowed them to stick together, yet also separate easily. He began experimenting with the concept and realized he could create a fastener that would not require glue, buttons, snaps or a zipper. He coined the word "Velcro" from a combination of the words velour and crochet.

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