There are a lot of things they don’t tell you in business school about running your own business. Probably because they don’t want to scare you off.
There’s a lot of talk about needing to have marketing talent, financial savvy, an analytical mind and brilliant negotiation skills. What they don’t tell you is that most of all, you’re going to need a bottomless supply of courage.
When you start a company, if you’re like most, you feel like you’re walking off a cliff. You’re doing something you believe in, but that you’ve never done before. The unknown is scary, deep and, well, unknown. After a while, you get more comfortable as you successfully overcome obstacles and grow. Then, you hit a situation that is new — a transition to the next step of the business — like hiring a management team, opening a new location, or entering a new markets.
Then you realize, “walking off the cliff” the first time was only the beginning. There are many more stomach-in-your-throat moments to face.
Standing on the edge of a cliff, especially after you’ve survived the original leap, can be a very dangerous time. You might shy away from taking new risks because, unlike the situation at the beginning, you may have much more to lose now if you are wrong. Or, you know how to run the business as it is, but not how to run it as it will be.
Most companies cannot stay where they are; the force to grow is pulls at them like the tide pulls out the moon. So, the new “walk off the cliff” has to be taken at each transition point.
Author Barry J. Moltz sums it up in the title of his book, You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Own Business. He says, you not only need courage, you actually need to be a lunatic. “You need to be a lunatic who has a steadfast long-term belief in her vision — a lunatic who will try anything, ask anyone for everything, and see everyone as a source of help. You also need to be comfortable being alone in your beliefs because the only thing others will agree with you on is that you are indeed crazy.”
Only someone who is crazy, and courageous, and an occasional cliff jumper can survive the challenges and transitions that a business brings.
On Spring Break this week, I learned something about the power of reframing your game and the power of positive reinforcement.
I went golfing with my 11 year old son. Our previous attempts to play golf together could best be described as frustrating, both for him and me. John Henry is a very competitive young man and wants to win, which is good, so he is sharply focused on the score. It gets frustrating for him because he is a complete beginner right now and keeping score merely reminds him of how many times he hits a bad shot. Talk about negative reinforcement and punishment. At the same time, I can very easily see everything he is doing wrong and was unhelpfully pointing it out to him every time, increasing his anger. Before long we are growling at each other.
Wanting to avoid this scenario, I was desperate for a way to reframe the morning. It dawned on me, probably by divine intervention, that we should keep score differently. I told him, "I’m only going to keep track of your good shots and forget about your bad ones. Fortunately for him, his very first shot was right down the middle about 100 yards. “Good shot, John!” He was excited and he proceeded to hit two more good shots (out of 8 total) on the first hole. As we finished the hole I told him he got a score of 3 good shots. On the next hole he walked out to the tee and said “I’m going to get two more good shots on this hole,” and he did. By the time we got to the ninth hole, he was determining what a good shot was, not me. And we started to discuss what a good shot would look like before each shot. He finished the nine holes with a score of 16 good shots. He was calm, and felt good about his performance and even more important, I was calm also and was able to post a 40, counting all strokes of course.
I relate this story because it illustrates both the power of positive reinforcement and the importance, especially when learning something new, of focusing on what you do well instead of mistakes. Reframing the game for John turned a previously frustrating experience into a victory.
I’m looking forward to more enjoyable rounds with John Henry, and applying the lessons learned to all the new things I learn and the things I help others learn.
Just had to write up this post after reading the March Madness issue of Sports Illustrated today. You should pick it up, if only for the insightful article “Birth of a Dynasty” about John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood and quite possibly the most successful basketball coach ever. The article, which chronicles his first championship season at UCLA, reminds us that he wasn’t so successful in his early years as the Bruins coach. We remember him mostly for the 10 national championships he won in the last 12 years of his career, not for the 16 seasons prior to that run, where while moderately successful , he lost all his NCAA Tournament Games.
To get to the gist of the article, without spoiling it for you, after a losing season in 1960, Wooden challenged himself and learned that his own inflexibility might be the obstacle to greatness. “He questioned himself and tinkered, and ultimately came to wisdom—and then victory on a scale unlikely to ever be matched.”
Three aphorisms that resonate loudly in the article:
“When you’re through learning, you’re through.”
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll ARGUE WITH YOU.”
And one more quote from a headstrong player:
"Wooden adapted to me as much as I did to him. Everyone else was afraid of him. He's admitted his stubbornness kept him from winning sooner and I was one of the people who opened his eyes because of how crazy I was."
Wooden would have been a great Inner Circle Member.
If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you know that I am becoming a bit obsessed with the idea of discovering your strengths, both personally and organizationally and using them as the building blocks for growth. Seems pretty obvious. But we continually focus on our weaknesses, beating ourselves up over them, and spending inordinate amounts of time trying to shore them up. At what cost?
Yesterday I had coffee with a cohort who is an expert at improving performance, both with individuals and organizations. Here are a few quotes from our conversation that ring home with me and gave me some insight into why we shouldn't get so worked up about our weaknesses.
“No one ever beats the competition by getting good at what they do. You beat them by getting better than they are at what you are good at.” That’s quite a mouthful. Especially when you consider this next quote.
“You only have the capacity to be good at a few things. When you spend time working on improving a weakness, you end up weakening an existing strength. That strength just might be foundation of your current success.” Ouch!
I’m still thinking through all of this. One can’t just ignore our weaknesses and the strengths of our competitors. We need to be aware of them. But I am more convinced everyday that the way to address them is to work harder on what are strengths are.
Comments?
A question that I find particularly revealing to ask an entrepreneur is, “What is one behavior in your life that regularly sabotages you as a business owner?”
The answers are varied. Some individuals can’t say “no” to any request, some have to keep their fingers in every detail even though it bogs things down, and some procrastinate on making decisions. Each sabotaging behavior is rooted in a corresponding fear: people won’t like me if I refuse them, things won’t be done correctly if I don’t control them, and I’m not smart enough to make the right choice.
These sabotaging behaviors, or flaws, are most likely to reveal themselves in stressful conditions. And, interestingly, an individual’s biggest “flaw” is often his or her greatest strength being inappropriately applied. Empathy is a strength; being a pushover is not. Gathering facts and opinions and doing what you need to do to feel confident about a decision is smart; delaying your decision for so long that fate makes the choice for you is less than genius.
A behavior that I recognized in myself when I worked in the family business was that I always stopped short of confronting people. With the behavior recognized, I was then free to imagine, “What would situations look like if this behavior wasn’t there?” It meant there would be some tougher communication and some tense moments. However, it also meant that my employees would grow and flourish because they would get more honest feedback. And, after a period of adjustment, it meant a lot less stress for me.
Once you acknowledge and name the fears governing your actions you can define strategies for changing them. And it’s like ridding yourself of any bad habit, you don’t focus on what you want to stop doing, you focus on what you want to start doing in place of that default behavior that’s standing in the way of your success.
Two weekends ago I went away for a long weekend to meet with other Inner Circle Facilitators to work on our businesses and play golf. I have a few takeaways from the meetings that I want to share:
--I need to work on my chipping and putting. Really bad. Only broke 90 once. Mostly because I chipped to the wrong places on the greens and then couldn't put away the downhill putt. Not that you are concerned about this.....
--Everyone spends too much time working on fixing what is wrong instead of working on improving what is going well. I know this seems fairly obvious, but we all fall into this trap regularly. We get so much feedback about what we do wrong that it's hard to avoid. It seems as though everyone is picking at our faults so that they get magnified so much that they become obstacles that seem insurmountable.
--The next time I get feeling this way, and it will happen, I'm going to try to follow the following steps to map out my next few weeks. This process is called "Appreciative Inquiry"
1. DISCOVER or rediscover my strengths and the things my organization does well (maybe just remind myself that these are my advantages
2. DREAM about what my business would look like if I was able to leverage those strengths to the max. (If I was really good at doing these things, what would a great day look like?)
3. DESIGN a plan to make sure you get to do the things you do well.
4. Execute the plan so that it becomes my DESTINY.
--I know that this seems awfully touchy feely for me. But I've been researching this since the symposium and I've been finding solid data that supports that organizations that work this way do much better than all the rest. I'm finding all kind of connections between this process and Jim Collins, book Good to Great which I am already a believer in. Marcus Buckingham seems to be the guru on this subject. I'm going to be working my way through his books over the next several months. Those books are: First, Break All The Rules; Now, Discover Your Strengths; and The One Thing You Need to Know. The reason I'm looking into this is that all of his books are based on solid research done by the Gallup organization, not just his own high falutin ideas.
--At the same time, we do have to look at our real obstacles, like competition and market condition, etc. But look to our strengths as the way to overcome them.
--That being said, I was a driving machine in Palm Springs. On my final two rounds, I was hitting every fairway off the tee, 220-250 yards. Building on that strength, should I be putting and chipping with my driver? ;-)
Just the other day I was meeting with a client to discuss his frustrations. All of them had to do with obstacles. His competition had more money so could get better pricing on product. The manufacturers were creating too many new products making purchasing a crapshoot. It was the slow season. An employee wasn’t making the proper effort.
Individually they didn’t seem so bad, but in total they seemed insurmountable. One by one we worked through the litany of depressing obstacles, trying to figure out what we could do about each problem. Not much, it seemed.
Totally worn out, we changed our discussion to what he and his business were good at. Seems there were one or two things he had definite advantages in. The conversation lightened up. We agreed that if he worked on doing what he did well and improving it, and then leveraging everything else off that, things didn’t look so bad. In fact they looked pretty good again.
My next conversation with him will be to ask him what his business would look like in a few years after succeeding at the things he does well. This should help him keep his obstacles under control.
Every business owner faces rejection on a regular basis. The way you face that rejection will both sap your energy and whittle away at your confidence … or it will place you in a position that remains powerful and protected.
I’ve often been credited with (or is it accused of) playing the role of the reluctant debutante when I recruit new clients or discuss renewal with existing clients, who make an annual decision about whether they want to continue enlisting my services. The essence of a reluctant debutante is to realize, and truly feel, that the client needs what you have more than you need them to buy it.
It’s based on the assumption that if I don’t care what their decision is, then I don’t suffer any loss. The attitude can come across as arrogant, so I have been forced to be very clear in my exit interviews with non-renewing clients. For example, when one of my female clients took a hiatus (which is often a euphemism for inadequate cash flow), I said, “while I respect your choice, I don’t like it, and all of us … you, I and the group will suffer from your absence. So, there will always be a spot waiting for you”.
Actually, the state of mind that I create within myself is one of “indifference” regarding the outcome, which allows my focus to be on the process alone. It relieves me of emotional attachment, which enhances my negotiating ability. Furthermore, in the prior example, I wasn’t getting paid anyway, so the loss was mitigated.
A helpful reminder is the little-used second verse of… “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. After all, while it’s your water, it’s his thirst.”
In other words, a client’s choice about whether to buy my service is almost always a function of his current situation, usually cash flow, and hardly ever about my service. Again, in the prior example, the client returned within 18 months, and all is well.
So, why get all wigged out when she decides to wait until it’s comfortable?
I recently caught an episode of Survivorman on The Science Channel. In this show Les "Survivorman" Stroud was abandoned in a remote location 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle and challenged to find his way back to civilization within seven days.
His only supplies are a broken-down snowmobile, a hunk of uncooked seal liver, a chunk of blubber for heat, a seal hook, three matches, a knife, a multi-tool, a rifle (to be used only to protect himself from polar bear attacks), 50 pounds of camera equipment and a harmonica.
Everything about the show is engrossing and, even with the fireplace on and a nice glass of Merlot poured, it’s hard not to feel his misery. A bit.
By day five, he has eaten his supply of seal meat and is chewing on the blubber that was intended to be burned as a heat source. At one point they calculate that Les has burned 35,000 calories and consumed only 1,000.
In my mind I’m assuming his biggest threat is outright starvation. Not so. A more imminent threat apparently comes from eating only lean meat without consuming any fat — it can quickly cause protein poisoning which manifests itself in the form of nausea, diarrhea, ketosis, severe debilitation and possibly death.
He had a lot of obvious things to be worried about, but I never would have thought he needed to be worried about that!
It’s the entrepreneur’s perpetual quandary — you battle fiercely against all of the elements you know, but it’s the one’s you didn’t even know where there that get you in the end.
The lessons? You don’t know what you don’t know. Eat a well balance diet, even if that means washing down your seal meat with a pinch of blubber. And figure out who your Les Stroud’s are, keep them on speed dial and check in with them even when you think you’ve got your bases covered.
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