Rose Blumkin didn’t just build a business. She revolutionized retail. After fleeing Russia with $66 in her purse, she opened a basement furniture store in Omaha at 43, with no English, education, or connections.

Her formula? Sell cheap, tell the truth, don’t cheat the customer. Nebraska Furniture Mart would survive depressions, fires, lawsuits, tornadoes—and eventually become a billion-dollar empire, Warren Buffett called “the ideal business.” 

Learn how Mrs. B’s relentless focus, radical simplicity, and unbreakable work ethic built an empire from scratch—and what her story teaches us about business, resilience, and the power of earned trust.

Available now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript

This episode is for informational purposes only. The research is from “Women of Berkshire Hathaway” and oral history interviews with Rose Blumkin and her daughter, Frances.

Lessons from Rose Blumkin

1. A Taste for Saltwater: What separates exceptional people is their capacity to endure discomfort. Rose walked barefoot for 18 miles at the age of 13 to save her only pair of shoes. Later, she opened a furniture store during the Depression, rebuilt after a fire gutted half her building, and came to work the day after breaking her ankle at 97. Most people avoid pain; outliers use it as fuel.

2. High Agency: Most people see circumstances as fixed; high-agency people see them as variables. When Depression-era customers couldn’t afford shotguns, Rose didn’t complain about the economy; she created a rental program overnight. The line stretched around the block the next morning. High agency isn’t magical thinking; it’s the refusal to accept artificial constraints.

3. Bias Toward Action: While average performers wait for perfect conditions, exceptional ones create momentum through immediate action. After a devastating fire, Rose didn’t wait for the dust to settle; instead, she said, “We’re opening tomorrow” and turned disaster into a successful sale. When business slowed during the Korean War, she rented the city auditorium and cleared $250,000 in three days. Action creates options that passivity never discovers.

4. Bounce, Don’t Break: When wholesalers refused to sell to Rose, calling her a “bootlegger”. She embraced it: “You betcha. I’m the best bootlegger in town!” and she found backdoor suppliers. When competitors sued her, she turned the courtroom into free advertising. Resilience isn’t about avoiding knockdowns; it’s about how you use them as launching pads.

5. Dark Hours: Excellence happens when nobody’s watching. Rose cleaned stores before dawn as a teenager and inspected every carpet shipment personally into her 90s. She once detected yarn theft at a mill supplier just by feeling that a carpet was slightly underweight. The public sees the outcome, but never the work. 

6. Your Reputation Is the Room: Rose understood that your reputation creates opportunities before you even enter the conversation. Military officers stationed across the world would buy furniture sight unseen because “Mrs. B doesn’t lie.” A judge who ruled in her favor bought carpet the next day. Your reputation isn’t what you claim; rather, it’s the collective experience others have of you, and it determines which rooms you walk into.

7. Choose the Right Co-Pilot: Partnerships are force multipliers. Isadore balanced Rose’s intensity with steady customer service principles. Warren Buffett bought her business on a handshake with no audit because character recognition works both ways. The right partners don’t just add to your strengths; they compensate for your weaknesses while amplifying your impact.

8. It Takes What It Takes: Every exceptional achievement has a non-negotiable price. Rose worked 12-hour days until age 103, calling work her “narcotic.” At a luncheon honoring her, she stood up at 1:15 and announced, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you have jobs? I’m going back to work.” Ordinary results come from ordinary effort; extraordinary results demand unreasonable commitment.

9. Focus Is a Superpower: In today’s fractured attention economy, Rose’s single-minded concentration would be her greatest advantage. She had one tab open—her business—while competitors scattered their attention across multiple priorities. This wasn’t mere workaholism; it was the strategic elimination of distractions, creating depth of knowledge that no competitor could match.

10. Simple Scales, Fancy Fails. Rose’s entire business philosophy fit on an index card: “Sell cheap, tell the truth, don’t cheat customers.” While competitors built complex systems and layers of management, her straightforward approach eliminated friction. Complex businesses move slowly; simple ones can scale with less overhead and fewer decision bottlenecks.

The post Outliers: Rose Blumkin—Women of Berkshire Hathaway [The Knowledge Project Ep. #227] appeared first on Farnam Street.