Selling Bananas is Selling Anything

"Sam the Banana Man" started with nothing. After his father died, he emigrated from Russia to America with his aunt in 1891. He was just a teenager when he settled in Selma, Alabama, where his uncle owned a general store.

When he struck out on his own, he had hardly any money to invest in a business. However, Sam was crafty enough to create opportunity from constraints.

He went to New Orleans where fruit shipments arrived from Central America. The local merchants purchased green bananas to take to their markets. The yellow ones were thrown out, with the understanding that they’d soon go bad (and no one wants to buy a yellow banana).

Sam got the merchants to give him the bananas for next to nothing. He then threw them on a railcar and rode it back to Alabama. At every stop, he called ahead to let people (who usually never had access to bananas) know he was coming.

By the time he got home, his cart was empty, his wallet was full, and his ambition had grown.

Over the remainder of his career, Zemurray’s outsized work ethic, creativity, and drive led him to develop thousands of acres of new land for farming, pioneer the use of refrigerated ships for fruit transfer, and topple governments that stood in his way.

No origins are too humble to build something big.