First Cow Business Lessons Are Not About Dairying

In the movie, First Cow, King Lu tells his emerging business partner, Cookie, his view on start-up businesses. It was something like this:

“To launch a successful business, you must have capital, a miracle, leverage…or a crime.”

It was funny to hear start-up businesses evaluated so directly. I laughed out loud at how close to the truth they were.

Now you know I’m not advocating crime. But the other three—capital, leverage and a miracle—are keys to any successful business. In the middle of a recession, it pays small business owners to rethink those terms.

Capital: Big piles of money, either our own, or preferably, money that someone gave us (grants) or lent us (debt).

Here’s where re-thinking is important. There is other capital besides money.

Social capital includes personal relationships (that life partner who said okay to your latest business idea, the family who tiptoes past your work-at-home self at all hours), and business relationships (the people you buy from, who buy from you, who don’t need your services but know someone who might).

Skill capital involves things you know how to do. Build a biolab or a farm stand. Play an instrument or play a game. Maybe you learned in school. Maybe it’s your life skills.

Leverage:  To use debt to buy something for your business, expecting the additional money you can make will pay back the debt, interest and then some. Like, your mortgage. (Note: this strategy is not foolproof.)

Again, thinking differently, leverage can also imply “to leverage yourself,” by doing what you are good at, love to do and will do. And leveraging other people by hiring them to do what they are good at, love to do and will do for you, especially if you pay them fairly. T. Harv Eker has more about this here.

Miracles: I’m going to switch over to luck here, so as not to get involved in metaphysics.

Keep a lookout for luck. When First Cow showed up to Cookie and King Lu, they saw opportunity and jumped on it, using the skills and talents they already had.

In his movie review, Roger Ebert said, “Chief among the ideas in First Cow is the notion that to really, truly secure a brighter future, you must wring every last drop (here literally) from the opportunities that present themselves…”

Remember: No crime, period. And you might risk everything you have, except self-respect.

We all have luck and opportunity and leverage. How can you capitalize on those in your business?  

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Lorette Pruden, Ph.D. coaches, consults, speaks, and writes on the transition from working for others to building a successful business. After nearly 30 years with Mobil, Lorette entered the world of the Formerly Corporate?. 

Lorette has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it. Formerly Corporate: Mindset Shifts for Success in Your Own Business.