Ben Chestnut grew up watching his mother and sister run a beauty salon out of the family's kitchen and learned never to spend more than the cash he had on hand.

"My mother used to tell me, 'You are the only person you can depend on to put food in your mouth,'" the 42-year-old co-founder and CEO of MailChimp recalls. "So, in the early days of MailChimp, it never occurred to me to borrow money or get funding to grow my business."

Sixteen years later, his Atlanta-based email marketing firm earned annual revenue of $403 million. "If I need to make more money," Chestnut says, "I find a way to serve more customers--just like my mother taught me." Follow Ben's example and grow your business' own resources and success, so it can do great things.

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