Selling same business to same person. Twice.

Mrs. B was kicked out of her own company at the age of 95. So she started a new startup at 96. This is the story of Mrs. B, which I find very inspiring.

Rose Blumkin was born in 1893 in a poor Jewish village near Minsk (in present-day Belarus). Even as a child, Rose's tenacity was evident. She started working in her mother's grocery shop at the age of six and was managing a team of grown men by her mid-teens.

At 23, with no money, little education, and not a word of English, Rose bravely journeyed to America to reunite with her husband. Arriving in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919, Rose brought with her an unshakable work ethic.

Amid the Great Depression, with four children to care for, Rose saw opportunity where others saw despair. In 1937, at the age of 43, she borrowed $500 from her brother and opened a tiny furniture store in the basement of her husband's pawn shop. She named it Nebraska Furniture Mart(NFM). Business was tough in the early days – so tough that at one point Rose sold every appliance and piece of furniture in her own home just to pay off a $2,000 debt to suppliers .

Her family returned to a house stripped bare; even the refrigerator was gone. When her children came home and cried at the empty rooms, Rose comforted them, explaining it was more important to honor her debts.

Rose ran her business by a simple credo: "Sell cheap, tell the truth, don't cheat nobody."  That motto became the DNA of Nebraska Furniture Mart. She earned a reputation for undercutting every competitor in town – if rivals sold a sofa for $100, She would sell it for $65. The world slowly started calling her Mrs. B and that's how she was known to the world.

"If you have the lowest price, customers will find you even at the bottom of a river" she liked to say. Her aggressive discounts infuriated competitors and even ran afoul of Depression-era "fair trade" laws that tried to set minimum retail prices. Manufacturers, pressured by bigger Omaha retailers, refused to sell to her. Undaunted, Mrs. B took the train to cities like Kansas City and Chicago to buy inventory from other dealers, then hauled it back to Omaha. And she still undersold everyone.

Her philosophy was to take tiny profit margins and make it up on volume. "Everybody was selling 50% above cost. I would sell 10% above cost — never lie, never cheat," she said of her strategy.

Her rivals' frustration peaked when a carpet manufacturer took Mrs. B to court for violating minimum price rules. The tiny Rose Blumkin – barely 4 feet 10 inches tall – marched into court alone without any lawyer and made an impassioned plea to the judge.

"I don't have any money for a lawyer… I sell everything ten percent above cost, what's wrong in that? I don't rob my customers," she told the judge . The courtroom fell silent. The judge immediately dismissed the case. The next day the judge himself went to Mrs. B's store and bought $1,400 worth of carpet from her. The news media covered this and that brought even more people to Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Soon, Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) grew into the largest single furniture store in America , drawing customers from hundreds of miles away to its vast showroom of bargains.

By the early 1980s, Mrs. B's business had caught the attention of Warren Buffett. He, had been a loyal customer of NFM and admired Mrs. B's operation for years . He marveled at how this elderly immigrant woman with no formal education was outperforming corporate retail giants. In 1983, Mrs. B was 89 years old and still working 7 days a week on the sales floor and she was finally warming up to the idea of selling her store.

Buffett purchased 90% of Nebraska Furniture Mart for roughly $55 million in 1983 .

He praised Mrs. B in his characteristically colorful style: "I'd rather wrestle grizzlies than compete with Mrs. B."  In Buffett's eyes, the 4'10" grandmother was not to be taken lightly.

The acquisition made Rose the first female business manager in Berkshire Hathaway's family of companies. She was nearly 90 years of age . But nothing really changed at the store. Mrs. B remained president and could still be found in the carpet department every day, cheerfully showing rugs and cutting deals on the sales floor.

"She runs rings around the competition," Buffett wrote admiringly a few years later in his 1987 letter, quipping that at the rate Mrs. B was going, she might only hit her "full potential in another five or ten years." Therefore, he deadpanned, "I've persuaded the board to scrap our mandatory retirement-at-100 policy".

Buffett wasn't just joking; he was genuinely in awe of Rose's tireless drive. In 1984, not long after the purchase, he told a reporter, "If I had to choose between hiring MBA grads or Mrs. B, I'd pick Mrs. B. There aren't any others like her."   Such was Warren Buffett's esteem for Mrs. B – he considered her one of a kind.

After the 1983 sale, Mrs. B stayed true to form – working full-time as the energetic matriarch of NFM. She famously refused to take vacations, saying work was "her oxygen" and that "there is no substitute for work. It is the most wonderful thing in the whole world." .

Incredibly, she continued clocking 60-hour weeks well into her 90s . But in 1989, at the age of 95, Mrs. B finally faced something that truly upset her. For the last 40+ years she had been bossing her sons and her grandsons. They got tired of working hard. She would often scold them in front of customers if they were lazy at work or refused to do specific tasks, considering it beneath them. So they forced her out of her own company. Well, it was no longer her company since she had sold it.

Reluctantly, Mrs. B "retired" as chairman of NFM in 1989 at 95 years old .

The retirement didn't last long. Mere months after leaving, Mrs. B's indomitable entrepreneurial spirit rebelled. Bored by inactivity and dissatisfied with how her family had treated her, the 95-year-old decided to start a new company.

As Mrs. B put it bluntly, "I want to be my own boss. Nobody's going to tell me what to do." 

When Buffet made a deal to buy NFM he didn't put any non-compete agreement. So Mrs. B was free to start another furniture company. And that's what she did.

The thought that anyone could compete with what was now a very large and successful NFM was ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous that a 96-year-old lady would decide to compete. But she was undeterred.

Mrs. B at the age of 96, started a new furniture business directly across the street from Nebraska Furniture Mart. She called it Mrs. B's Clearance and Factory Outlet, and it was essentially a scaled-down version of NFM, focusing on bargain carpeting and furniture.

The audacity of Mrs. B coming out of retirement to challenge her own family's business made headlines – but Mrs. B saw it as another day's work. Donning her trademark floral dresses and thick glasses, she took up her post at the new store, personally greeting customers and quoting prices from memory. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. B's Outlet became profitable within two years . By 1991–92 it had grown into the third-largest carpet retailer in Omaha.

The competition between Mrs. B and her descendants was fierce but also motivated a reconciliation. In 1992, Warren Buffett once again offered to buy out Mrs. B's new store and fold it back into the Nebraska Furniture Mart family. At 98 years old, Rose Blumkin sold her second business to Buffett for a substantial sum.

This time, the deal came with a condition: Buffett joked that he would never again let Mrs. B retire without signing a non-compete clause . He had learned his lesson – nobody could stop Mrs. B when she set her mind on something.

With the feud healed, Mrs. B returned "home" to NFM, triumphant. As part of the agreement, she also retained her beloved role as chief salesman-in-residence. In truth, even approaching 100, Mrs. B had never really stopped working anyway. "Why retire and wait for death? It will come one day sooner or later anyway, and certainly sooner if you do not do anything," she once mused . And so, Mrs. B kept rolling down to the store each day, eager to sell.

Incredibly, Rose Blumkin continued coming to work at Nebraska Furniture Mart well past her 100th birthday. Her family insisted she use a motorized golf cart to get around the massive showroom in her later years – and Mrs. B would zoom through the aisles, a tiny figure with a giant presence, often startling customers as she pulled up to ask if they needed help finding anything .

"Her greatest thrill is being at work… it's her oxygen," her daughter Frances once said of Rose's refusal to slow down . Mrs. B finally stopped working at age 103, after over 80 years in business . As Buffett quipped, that set a new standard: he now had a "yardstick" for retirement age in the Berkshire Hathaway family! Rose Blumkin passed away in 1998 at 104 years old, sharp and feisty to the end  .

Warren Buffett never forgot the lessons he learned from Mrs. B. He often held up Rose Blumkin as an exemplar of what an honest, high-energy business owner can accomplish. "She was smart – she knew what her customers wanted and exactly how to give them value," Buffett said, noting that her unbeatable low-cost operation was a moat no competitor could breach.

Despite her tiny stature and lack of formal schooling, Buffett regarded Mrs. B as a true business giant . Their friendship grew over the years; Buffett cherished her frank humor and called her on her birthdays, marveling as the years ticked by.

To this day, Nebraska Furniture Mart remains a Berkshire Hathaway-owned company run by the Blumkin family, and it stands as a monument to Rose's "sell cheap" philosophy and relentless drive. Rose donated millions to Omaha charities in her later years, but perhaps her greatest gift was the example she set for aspiring entrepreneurs.

In an age of high-flying MBAs and tech billionaires, Mrs. B proved that grit, honesty, and hard work never go out of style. As Warren Buffett plainly put it, "If I was starting a company and could pick a 25-year-old hotshot M.B.A. or Mrs. B, I'd take Mrs. B. There aren't any other Mrs. Bs."