CHAPTER 1
THE DECISION AND DETERMINATION TO SUCCEED
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances,
but are unwilling to improve themselves.
They therefore remain bound.
—JAMES ALLEN, AS A MAN THINKETH
Contrary to a great many textbook assertions, having the best product, the better mousetrap, a whiz-bang new idea, the top location, the best market, the smartest accountant, the neatest bookkeeping system, or a ton of capital—or all of them together—does not ensure success. On the other hand, having the worst product, a mediocre mousetrap, a silly idea, a bad location, a weak market, an accountant who can’t count, a shoebox and paper bag bookkeeping system, or no money—or all of these things together—does not ensure failure.
I have seen people succeed under the most improbable conditions. I’ve also seen people who have everything going for them still manage to screw it up. In all of these cases, it’s the person making the difference. That’s why there really are no business successes or failures; there are people successes and people failures.
For an extended period of time, the incredible dysfunction and dereliction of duty of CEOs running some of America’s corporations and business institutions as well as literally hundreds of thousands of small business owners was concealed by a wildly over-generous economy fueled by stupid credit. Businesses that were manufacturing debt far more than anything else seemed to be prospering and the buffoons and criminals running them were widely accepted as successful. The inevitable bursting of multiple bubbles—unchecked, outrageous real estate appreciation, easy money and foolish credit, and public corporation values so far out of whack with incomes or legitimate assets they seemed to defy all laws of economic gravity—replaced a Santa Claus economy with a violently angry Grinch one. People who only appeared to be successful because it was just about impossible not to appear that way were stripped naked and shown to be losers. If you strip away all the layers of deceit, of stupidity, or irrational exuberance, of poor business practices, of abusing customers and investors, what you eventually get to, behind every business failure, is a person who has failed himself and those around him, by failing to adhere to fundamental principles of successful achievement.
In short, every outcome is the product of someone’s decisions.
We’ll get to the decisions about marketing, sales, and management required to make a business perform profitably, in a sustainable manner. But first, here, let’s confront the most basic of all decisions: the decision to succeed.
A Matter of Personal Decision
Entrepreneurial success, like most things in life, is mostly a matter of decision. A partnership, friendship, intimate relationship, or marriage that succeeds or fails, a book that gets written or remains a jumble of notes in a drawer, the garage that gets cleaned out Saturday or put off until next week—these are all the result of decision. Or, to be more accurate, decisions. Decisions, for example, of self-reliance and personal responsibility, or of not waiting for better or ideal timing or circumstances, help from others, or a muse’s delivery of just the right mood.
Dan Kennedy’s Eternal Truth #1
Every successful achievement begins
with decision. Most unsuccessful lives
are conspicuously absent
of decision.
Most people go through life making decisions by default, choosing only from narrow options dictated by others or by evolving circumstances. One millionaire friend of mine grew up in a very small town where, as he put it, there were two career options: working at the factory or raising pigs and chickens. With only a few exceptions, everybody he went to school and graduated with chose one of those two options. Stayed there, did one of those two things, died there. He left. Many people go through life as if confined by tall barbed wire fences and armed guards in whatever “place” they find themselves. Business owners do this too. They create and organize a business to be a certain thing and operate in a certain way, then act as if some law exists forbidding its change. In approaching their businesses this way, they might as well be stuck in that small town with a profound belief in only two options—the factory or the farm.
The New Economy mandates a much more willing and creative approach to constant change and evolution and reccurring reinvention in order to keep a business very specifically and currently relevant to the customers able and willing to support it. Agile businesses—run by mentally agile leaders—can prosper as never before. But domination purely by size or brand stature or longevity is entirely a thing of the past. The best recent object lesson: General Motors, a giant no longer relevant to its customers, run as if things like longevity or brand status mattered, as if size ensured continuation. Staying relevant requires constant change, and there is nothing less tolerated in The New Economy than the irrelevant. The economic power has returned to consumers and they know it. Consumers have been spoiled like indulgent billionaire parents’ prodigies with so many customized, specialized, niched choices that they now expect to get things that are clearly and uniquely for them. Satisfying them en masse is nearly impossible. But you are not locked into any business definition or model, any product mix, any pricing formula, any set of stay-inplace limitations, so if you decide to do so, you can be morphing to meet your customers’ greatest interests day to day.
I am often amused when traveling, and asked what I do, and I describe it as best I can, then I get the envious sigh, the gee-I-wish-I-could-do-that, and then the laundry list of complaints and dissatisfactions from the person about his present career or business or life. I’m amused because he apparently does not know he can change all that by decision. Similarly, when traveling and asked where I lived, and I answered “sunny Phoenix” (where I lived for over ten years), I’d often get the envious sigh, the gee-I-wish-I-lived-there-instead-of-in-X, then the litany of unpleasant things about their home city. This amuses me because apparently they haven’t noticed the highway signs in their town pointing the way out.
It’s amazing how people spend their lives in prisons entirely of their own making, the key dangling right there in the lock, no jailer in sight.
I find it very hard to work up much sympathy for most of these sad-sacks. I remember listening to a 40-or-so-year-old guy working behind the counter at a neighborhood convenience store where I sometimes stop for coffee complaining loudly, even poetically about his miserable job, low income, and lousy lot in life. I asked where he lived and which way he drove to work. After he answered, I asked if he’d noticed that everyday, twice a day he drove past the public library, a gigantic repository of help for changing your career, your finances, your life—all free. As you might guess, I might as well have been speaking Martian. If pressed, I assure you, he’d tell you he was too busy or too tired to read, or didn’t like to read, or had bad eyesight when he was in school, or some other pitiful excuse. Pfui.
Truths That Aren’t, That Hold You Back
Successful entrepreneurs learn to be much more assertive, proactive, and creative in making decisions to change things as they prefer, to make things happen. If you are to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to break free of your old reacting and responding mode and switch to the assertive, proactive mode. You have to reject the entire idea of limited choices.