Cordia Harrington, president and CEO of the Tennessee Bun Company now heads a company that produces 60,000 buns an hour for clients like McDonald's, Chili's and Pepperidge Farms.


But that's not how she started.

Listen to her story in this NPR interview with Motley Fool host David Gardner and in a recent blog post by Jeff Cornwall, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, at The Entrepreneurial Mind.

In Harrington's bootstrapping path to entrepreneurial success, she:
• Started a real estate company in the early 80's using $600 of life savings
• Bartered with a local doctor for about 600 square feet of office space for her Concept One realtors
• Leased her desk for $3 a month and her chair for $1.50 a month
• Parlayed her real estate success into a successful McDonald's franchise
• Bought her first restaurant in 1990 and built two additional McDonald's she owned until 1998
• In 1996, she built an automated bakery after learning of McDonald's need for additional facility and convinced the company to let her operate it.
• Won the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Woman Entrepreneur of the Year for 2008 on Jan. 10.