To grow a business, you must be a storyteller. Learn to turn your dull widget into a fascinating oracle of the industry. If you are new to the business, show fire and enthusiasm that will be welcomed by the established players on the field. Let them find renewed fun in the industry from you by mentoring and showing you the path. These existing players can cut years off your learning curve and provide contacts and venders that you would stumble past in your ignorance. The existing firms in the space are all going through their own life cycle, and who knows how you could fit into their grand plans? You could be a pawn on their board and not even know it. They could be looking for a hard-charging heir to their throne. You could be someone to unload product lines on, or your fledgling organization could become a vehicle for their marketing and sales. Do not try to show off how smart you are but, rather at times, consider using the old “Uncle Buck” or “Mickey the Dunce” syndrome to endear yourself to all.
Making a world-shaking start in a new game is to awaken your potential rivals and put them on guard about your entrée into the arena. Better to let them eye you with wary but benign interest and not try to block you when you’ve hardly advanced the ball! Business is fierce competition, and until your strategy starts impacting the marketplace, keep your plans and strategies to yourself and your key players.
One of the best courses I ever took in graduate school I thought was a lark and would be an easy A. This course, “Work, Love, & Play,” actually turned out to be a fascinating depiction of how we must continually strive to balance our lives. Entrepreneurs and business owners with their helter-skelter lives truly are at risk of falling out of kilter. Maintaining balance makes sense, but as business owners operating in the unregulated and self-driven world of entrepreneurship, we must set boundaries, or off the tracks we go!
Keeping the balance between work, love, and play is a tough task for folks with an unregimented life. For those hard-driving men and women in the driver’s seat of their own business, work always has to come first, to the detriment of all else. As an owner, you have no off switch at the end of a day’s labor. Our minds keep grinding on, switching through multiple scenarios as the evening hours wear on. For many of us, the later at night, the more ominous the indicators are for doom and disaster. Winston Churchill called these hours “the black dog.”
Burning the midnight oil, entrepreneurs work long hours.
It’s hard work being an entrepreneur—they work on average 63 per cent more than other workers …
Ed Reeves, co-founder of Penelope, says … “Being the owner and operator of a micro business means taking on multiple roles and being everything to every customer.
“Many micro business owners are both time and cash-strapped …”
However, 60 per cent [of surveyed entrepreneurs] would prefer more money than more time.1
As Jessica Bruder says in “The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship,” “No one said building a company was easy. But it’s time to be honest about how brutal it really is—and the price so many founders secretly pay.”2
Would-be entrepreneurs have to do a self-check to see if they have the fortitude and even keel to navigate choppy times. Having a smooth life on the home front with no static or backlash for your long absences is a must for longevity. Sharing the exhilarating highs of the business should be paramount to a relationship. Too much talk about the business and ill tidings, on the other hand, can rock the boat of your partners or loved ones. Share the good news and mute the bad! Bad news oftentimes is over blown and dissipates, so let time run by before you alarm others. The captain of the ship must be serene and confident at all times, even though you are racked with inner turmoil. Today’s fears are tomorrow’s forgotten memories. Why share the pain before it becomes reality?
Do you have the primal work ethic to undertake buying and building an enterprise? Outside of an act of God or just blind good fortune, business owners work more hours than any other category of employment. You really have to critique yourself physically for the rigors ahead. We often recommend an actual physical before an acquisition that assists you in evaluating your health. Many people’s life energy starts waning at fifty, while others rip well into their mid-sixties. As your own boss, you can come and go as you please, so always find the time for exercise.
Stress is a killer! Entrepreneurs swap stories all the time of crippling health scares or even tragic collapses of business owners. This road less traveled becomes a test of how much pressure one can bring upon oneself and still function. Weight loss, false heart attacks, and other equally frightening incidents can beset an embattled entrepreneur. Most times, these events are in the beginning of business ownership when stress is the highest. Once a business reaches some level of operational equilibrium, it seems our bodies adjust to this new atmosphere, and the signs of pending health disasters recede. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!
— CASE STUDY —
When I initially purchased a small pet-supply company in New England, there were five smaller distributers my size, three larger regional players, and three nationals. I instinctively understood that I immediately needed to drive out of business or acquire my three like-size competitors and, once I had a bigger regional footprint, had to prep my company to be acquired. It was easier to compete than buy these competitors, so I eventually absorbed two of these companies. But the third small competitor eluded me. The remaining company had a new CEO and was hidden up in Maine. I spoke with him once and understood immediately he was a threat for the long term since he was lying low and gathering momentum, as my firm was. I eventually exited, but this third competitor, a relative newcomer, grew to twenty-five million dollars in sales before merging with another industry player. He is an example of staying out of sight, out of mind until bursting on the stage with a large merger. As an epilogue—or more fitting, his epitaph—he become the CEO of a fifty-million-dollar business that, for reasons covered later in this book, never successfully integrated and eventually crashed and burned.
NOTES
1 Jack Torrance, “Entrepreneurs work 63% longer than average workers,” Real Business, August 13, 2013.
2 Jessica Bruder, “The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship,” Inc., September 2013.
Chapter 3
Assessing Your Entrepreneurial CapabilityBy Nancy Parsons
Nancy Parsons is president of Tulsa-based CDR Assessments Group, Inc., which offers breakthrough leadership development and talent management assessments and services for global clients. Nancy provides coaching services for C-suite executives and key leaders, facilitates strategic executive team development and custom authentic leadership workshops, and trains and mentors executive coaches. In 1998, Nancy and co-founder Kimberly Leverage, PhD, developed CDR 3-D, which reveals insights about leaders, character-risk factors for derailment, and drivers/reward needs. The suite is in five languages and is used for coaching, development succession, custom training, teams, staffing decisions, research, diversity, and more. Nancy can be reached at [email protected].
Tou may be surprised to learn the real reason that only about 10 percent of entrepreneurs succeed is because very few people have the hard wiring to succeed. Many people have some of the inherent capabilities needed, but very few have the whole package. Before investing your life savings and your blood, sweat, and tears in a new venture, consider two things: 1) your inherent suitability as an entrepreneur and 2) your team’s make-up and balance.
Your entrepreneurial capability cannot be evaluated by considering your educational pedigree, skills, and experience as sufficient data for this all-consuming business leap.
Whether someone is the “right person”