For people making payroll, by people making payroll
For people making payroll, by people making payroll
November 22nd, 2009
“Successful entrepreneurs are those who have a passion for their business and the money to survive their mistakes. I’ve occasionally seen success happen without sufficient funding, but I’ve never once seen it happen without passion.” – Roy H. Williams, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads
When I first read this I thought “Right on Roy! Passion, yeah baby!”
But you know, it isn’t enough. The successful businesses I’ve started were the ones that I not only had a passion for, but fit my personality.
I used to believe that the business didn’t matter to me. I felt I would be happy running any business because it was the process I loved; making things work, the down and dirty details. I suspect I felt that way because I really do enjoy those things. But while you do have to like the business, maybe even love it, it has to “be you” – it has to fit your personality.
You may be a restaurateur, a baker, a consultant, or a writer. Or maybe part of all of them. But I doubt you are really great at more than one of them. You may be smart and hard working, and maybe passionate about all of them but is your personality such that you can successfully build a business out of more than one of them?
Ryan and I started this business at the end of some serious soul searching about what we really wanted to do with the rest of our lives. It became clear to me when I thought about the some recent experiences giving talks to potential small business owners. And talking with them afterward about their ideas and plans and giving them the benefit of my experience.
I’ve found that I love writing this blog. I love sitting across the table from someone and showing them how they can do this and be more effective or that and save some money. I walk out of most of those meetings nearly floating. It is incredible!
I think I feel that way because I’ve found the one thing I’m really good at; better at by far than anything else I do. Because it “fits”. People tell me “yeah, I can see how you’d be good at that.” They never said that about most of the businesses I’ve had in the past.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Tags: entrepreneurs, passion
Posted in Business Owner | Comments Off
November 15th, 2009
A friend of Keith’s is trying to find a job. Keith spent an hour advising him on how to fix his (really poor) resume to get more opportunities. Unfortunately, he declined to do any of it, saying “that’s just basic stuff”.
He’s right that it was mostly “basic stuff”, but he’s still not doing it. It’s “basic stuff” for a reason: while it seems really simple and obvious, he still needs to do it to be successful.
I was reminded of the Biblical story of Naaman the leper. When told what he needed to do to cure his awful disease, at first he refused because it sounded too simple for a great man like himself. (It’s a great story, btw).
Look, success is rarely easy. But sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be by overlooking the “obvious” things. Sometimes we’re trying to install a complicated triangle offense in a pickup basketball game with 2nd-graders. They don’t know how to dribble the ball, much less run the triple post.
You have to start with the basics, and keep working on just those things until you’ve got them down. Then worry about the complicated stuff. Details, details, details.
The great thing is that most people seem to make this same mistake. They try to fly before they can crawl. So if you get the fundamentals down, you’ll easily beat out other people — some of whom may even be more qualified than you — who are running around trying to launch some grand, complicated plan without “wasting time” on that piddly basic stuff. Without a foundation, they have very little chance of succeeding, no matter how talented they are.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t worry about what the other guy claims he’s going to do. Don’t worry about how good the competition could be if they just did the “basic stuff”.
You just make sure you’re doing all the basics right, and worry about the rest when there are no more “basic” things to master.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Posted in Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Productivity | Comments Off
November 7th, 2009
When you created your last ad, did you have a specific plan? Or did you just get on camera and yell “I’M CRAZY! I’VE GOT CRAZY PRICES! SO COME ON DOWN!”?
It’s so easy to create the same old ad that says “sigh, we’re here, yawn, snore.”
And sometimes, maybe that’s just what you need. But not usually. Whether you are doing a TV ad, something for a magazine, a direct mail piece, whatever – have a purpose.
This is something I just hadn’t thought much about until Laura showed me an ad map. All you have to do is ask yourself 4 simple questions:
This is one of the easier things you can do to improve your advertising, so why wait? Dive in right now!
Think about this for everything your customer sees. Are you asking those questions for how you answer the phone, your logo, letterhead, marketing materials, vehicles, business cards? Each of those should have been created while asking questions 1 & 3 and should be designed to reinforce your desired answers to questions 2 & 4.
We’d love to see some of yours! Please post a comment and tell us how it went (or even post your answers if you feel like sharing).
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Popularity: 26% [?]
Posted in Marketing and Selling | Comments Off
