No B.S. Business Success In The New Economy. Dan S. Kennedy
SURVIVOR AND THE APPRENTICE;
AUTHOR, JUMP IN!—EVEN IF YOU
DON ’T KNOW HOW TO SWIM
To be very candid, I am pleased that I have done most or all of my creating and building and have accumulated sufficient wealth that I do not need new earned income. One of the few good things about approaching 60 wealthy, instead of being 30 years old, is that I will not be battling to build businesses in the current and foreseeable conditions, which I view as more difficult and daunting than any I dealt with. I do not envy the entrepreneur on his way up. The New Economy Entrepreneur will, in my opinion, have far greater need—and more daily need—for extreme mental and emotional toughness and resilience than his predecessors. I pride myself in being a “stress camel”—able to endure enormous heat and keep moving forward over great distance without even a sip of relief. You’d better be. To say something encouraging, The New Economy also offers opportunities that are greater than ever, media and technology conducive to faster speed of startup and growth than anything that existed before, and a no-boundaries marketplace accessible to all. But with that comes a whole new level of threat, hazard, and pressure. How you personally respond to threat, hazard, pressure, and crisis will have a great deal to do with your success.
A while ago, one of my long-time clients had built up a $20-million-a-year-plus company, but through a sequence of misjudgments, others’ greed, partner disputes, and attempting to go public, he lost control not only of his own company but all the intellectual properties he had personally created over a decade that made the business possible. Ultimately, he was unceremoniously escorted by security guards out of his own building.
While many would panic or rail against the injustice or roll up in a ball and die, he is a true entrepreneur. He methodically went to work on the problems, but also instantly went to work creating an entirely new business, new products, new opportunities. He operated simultaneously on multiple tracks, all aimed at the same chief objectives. In only a few months, he had settled the dispute, re-acquired all his products and publishing rights, and developed a new, fast-growing, much more profitable company.
I think one of the secrets to success is that, no matter what, you have to crawl out from under, set aside, and ignore all the bureaucratic B.S., the million little irritations and problems, even crisis in order to keep the process of getting, serving, and satisfying customers as your number-one priority. This is easier said than done. There’s so much of the other that entrepreneurs and their typically small, over-worked staffs can too easily fall into the trap of viewing the customer as an interruption and obstacle to getting the necessary work done.
Sometimes, when the problems are overwhelming, resilience and determination are the only resources and pride is the only immediate reward. You’ll be hard pressed, for example, to find an entrepreneur who hasn’t had the experience of meeting the payroll by the skin of his teeth, having nothing left over to take home to the family, having to tell the kids they can’t afford this or that, taking calls at home from personal bill collectors, and then lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if, at next paycheck time, it will be any different. But pride can keep you going. And keeping going is the only way to get anywhere!
There is the axiom: it is difficult to remember your objective of draining the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators. But that is exactly what is required of the entrepreneur.
Even when I was at the helm of an ill-advisedly acquired, deeply troubled, money hemorrhaging, chaos and crisis riddled corporation, I pulled myself out of the alligator-fighting for at least one hour every day, to re-focus on the objectives, to get something done that was positive and productive and goal directed.
Take a Trip Down Lonely Street
Whether you’re winning or losing at the moment, the isolation of the entrepreneurial experience is surprising and dangerous.
For some, the loss of social community is significant. This was expressed in an article in Entrepreneur magazine by Beverly Bernstein, who left a job with Mattel Toys to start her own consulting business. After two years, her business was booming and she was earning twice her old salary, but she missed the camaraderie of the corporate workplace. “When you start your own business, you don’t have the same collegial relationships as when you work inside a company,” Beverly explained. “I missed the laughter and the interchange of ideas. I missed the energy. And I miss them.” The danger in this is hiring people you can’t really justify having, hiring friends or making employees into friends.
For many, the absence of “sounding boards” produces uncertainty, self-doubt, indecisiveness, and procrastination. The entrepreneurs in my coaching groups have always talked about the isolation they often feel. They lament having no one of like mind and common understanding to test their ideas on, brag to about their victories to or to discuss their problems with, and cite that as a great benefit of being in one of my groups. They can’t have open and frank discussions that, in any way, reveal anxiety or weakness with employees or associates, nor can they too happily celebrate their successes. Civilians, i.e., nonentrepreneurs, can’t understand them at all.
Even isolation inside a business or its industry or profession can be creatively paralytic. Too often, the owners of hardware stores only attend conferences with other retailers, only read their industry’s trade journals, only pay attention to what their direct competitors and peers are doing. If they grow their company, they tend to hire people with experience inside their industry. All this reinforces the way things are and avoids questioning it. Specific to marketing, I call it “marketing incest,” and tell people it works just like real incest; with each generation, everybody gets dumber. And dumber.
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