Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2013. The $90 million in annual revenue, “17 years later” and the client list, including Carolina Herrera and Vera Wang, describe Modco at that time.
After many years working for advertising agencies, and after a successful career making money for other people, in 1996 Sara Rotman decided the time had come to set up her own business, Modco (short for “My Own Damn Company”), a profitable company that started with $0 and now brings in $90 million a year.
The reasons that led her to start her own company are described perfectly in her interview with Forbes:
“I don’t mind working 1,000 hours a week, but I don’t like putting up with rules imposed by other people. Besides, back then I believed that with my experience and my vision I could do it better than the people I had been working for. So I took the plunge.”
How did Sara Rotman get started?
Sara says she started her company in her living room, because she had no money and couldn’t get funding for her idea, so, with her eyes set on her project, she decided to raise the money with her own labour. She says she worked up to 90 hours a week as a creative director at a store while she gave shape to her project.
She worked day and night until she had saved enough cash to cover a few months’ rent. The beginnings were hard: when she officially founded Modco in 1996, revenue was slow to come in, and Sara says she lived on a diet of nothing but spaghetti for a while. She had expected this. She knew it wouldn’t be easy to get off the ground.
Seventeen years later, Modco has clients of the stature of Carolina Herrera and Vera Wang, with revenue in the millions and still rising.
(Read: Sophia Amoruso: how I made my first $250 million before turning 30)
What kept Sara going through those hard early days?
Her greatest motivation was knowing that, with her own business, both the victories and the failures would be hers. No middlemen, no bosses taking the credit and no employees blaming you for the disasters; and it is the chance to apply in your own company everything you disliked about the companies you worked for before.
Her previous employers had policies such as not getting close to clients. Today Sara is proud that 9 out of 10 of her clients are friends, although she prefers to put it the other way round: 9 out of 10 of the friends she usually has lunch and dinner with are clients.
Sara says that during that time of hard work and difficult beginnings, simply striving for her own creation made the effort worthwhile, because watching others profit from her talent had been wearing her down. She simply had to do it to feel complete.
(Read: A 14-year-old entrepreneur makes her first million)
What is the best advice Sara Rotman has received?
The first great piece of advice for entrepreneurs, she says, came from her first accountant, when they were discussing the launch of her company. As they went over the business plan and the money she would need to get started, her accountant told her:
“Start with the cash you need to survive. Never so much that you get comfortable. It’s very important to be scared at the beginning, because that’s what drives us to keep going.”
Comfort is the entrepreneur’s enemy. It is at the start, and it is what brings you down once you achieve success in business. “You always have to stay hungry, because hunger pushes you to survive and grow, and it helps you evolve.”
Further reading
- 50 inspiring quotes from successful business leaders for entrepreneurs
- 10 simple products that became million-dollar ideas
- 40 of the most profitable business ideas of recent years
Featured image: unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
