Subtle Stuff Can Kill Your Business Success, Without Your Knowledge.

Jumping At The Chance To Start Your Business Needs More Thought

Last week I bumped into a complete stranger.  We had a monster discussion about some of his business ideas.  He shared his plans about his mission, some of his creative ideas to service that mission and how he planned to make it happen.  He also shared what his limitations were.  He described the 'pitfalls' he was facing.  He got passionate about the potential he could effect.  He has internalized this heartfelt position of where he wanted his business idea to be.  It was refreshing.  It was sincere.  It was real.  I liked what I saw and heard.  I liked it a lot.

I took the time to stall where I needed to be and decided to listen closer to what he had to share.  I had another commitment that could wait a bit longer so I could take in as much information from him as he felt comfortable in sharing.  He did not recognize the burden his sales pitch presented to my committed schedule, however.  He was too involved with sharing what he felt passionate about sharing.  His posture fell off the end of the table.  He did not notice it falling.  He expressed desperation in the process of his early developments, not joy.  He could not hear those cries.  They must have been meant for my ears only.  I played cards with my eyes, expressions and ears.  I listened closely.

He made a couple of quiet promises I know he did not hear.  Sometimes when we are selling our wares we get caught up promising what we have no intention of delivering.  We are humans and we equivocate more than we expect to truly serve.  We have so much desire to get our picture sold that we easily slip away from the realities of what we truly plan to do.  We learn the art of tickling our buyers ears.  We want that pitch sold so badly that we forget to hear how we try to make that part happen.  In the end, we over promise and under deliver.  It is one of the most damaging things a small business owner can practices in their business affairs.  We seem only able to recognize it when someone else does it to us.  It is one of those funny things about human beings.    

I liked his ideas.  They have huge merit.  They are very timely and carry a great potential for consumer support.  His ideas are standing on the edge of incredible.  He seems to know some of this but does not have the capacity to recognize the magnitude of what his ideas can become.  He may agree with this perspective but lacks the fortitude to do what it takes to sacrifice what he feels he needs to hang onto.  This kind of business wisdom comes with a lot of years of bloody noses.  His business background lacks those bleeds.  His experience in business carries a lot of those illusions I carried when I first began my business career.  Reality came in so many unfriendly ways.

Learn how to take tough lessons a bit more seriously.  Listen closely to what others have to say.  Do not try to step over their suggestions as if they were already part of what you already know.  Most business beginners do not recognize what a seasoned veteran really sees.  We sometimes get so consumed by our new enthusiasm that we flop over some helpful tips without even noticing they flew by.  I am a master at this narrow path.  I have missed many great suggestions that I discovered through rough and tumbled rotten experiences.  Those suggestions came from helpful others long before I was able to feel how they could truly hurt.  Unfortunately, I was not in the listening mode when those suggestions first arrived.  I, like many, had to carve them out myself through damage and pain.

If you are building a small business look around you and witness all of the business owners you know who get this first step of listening all wrong.  They carelessly get confused and mix their ideas, dreams and plans into a bag of energy and doings that dominate their business life as well as their family time to produce what they think they will achieve.  Take stock of this pattern and look around you.  Once you quietly witness how other business owners have commonly missed the mark on this valuable tip, look at their outcomes!  Most are not good.  That has been my experience, also.

Page two.

Jumping At The Chance To Start Your Business Needs More Thought

I work with business owners that have become lost along the business trail.  They start out with big dreams, great ideas and plenty of wonderful consumer service activities.  All they want to do is please those who support how they want to do what they have chosen to do.  Unfortunately, they are very much caught up with themselves and what they plan to do.  I am as guilty of this pattern as anyone.

The trick to getting off to a good start is as much about being enthused about building it right as it is about having deeply good character.  The best business plans grow better when the leader has this distinction all figured out, long before they set foot inside the doors of their new business model.  Owning good listening skills is a minimum mark to these hidden values of good character.  Following directions is another great mark.  Doing what is right to do but feels awkward to do is another great mark.  Most new business owners love to repair cars, make cookies or build cabinets.  They love doing what they love to do.  However, the accounting stuff must also be just as important to do as the dough they use on the cookies they sell.  They must get it together to do the stuff they do not want to do.  That is exactly why so many good intentions with great efforts go awry.  Nobody truly starts a business to see it fail.  That is the last thing they dream about.

Guess what happens next?  They fail.  Even if they survive the failure patterns that lurk around every business corner, they ruin the relationships they should be building.  Their families are stressed, their children are prone to avoid what they represent, their associates, their bankers, their suppliers and institutions are bent on distrust for how they do what they do.  Life becomes a mess.  This is such a normal pattern to witness.  It comes with time and it comes with frequency.  The character is gone.  I submit that it was never there.

If I was to properly help a new business start-up, I would stress seriously how much this character means to the long term success they believe they can find.  Without this proper beginning, nothing will work long term to support what their dreams truly desired.  When the proper character is missing from the start-up design, everything that develops from there is a continuation of the troubled life they are currently living.  To change for the better means exactly that, to change for the better.  It means to do some things in life that are not currently being done.  It means to do stuff in life that are not part of the habit patterns we already know.  It means to try some things that feel uncomfortable to do.  It means to do more stuff that we have no idea in how to do it.  It means listening deeper.

Their are no luggage racks on a hearse.  Vitality, happiness, joy and enthusiasm are not automatic because we start up our own business.  They are earned reactions that come from doing something correctly.  If we do not have these things in our current patterns for life, no new business will bring them to us.  It is our duty to take these things to our own life and to our own leadership patterns of our own business.  We must produce these things.  They cannot be borrowed.  They cannot come home without a home that holds them tightly.

Good character is rare to find.  When developed properly it can help grow a business in the right kinds of ways and help that business profit well and stick around.

Listen up.  Learn how to submit yourself.  Get serious about following.  Take your hands off of the wheel of fortune.  You do not have it steered in the right direction.  Allow others with that kind of wisdom to come aboard your boat and help you repair the leaks inside.  It is of no shame to admit this lack of understanding.  It is also of no credit to remain there.  

Sometimes listening comes very quietly.  In the world of business success, learn how to say what you mean to say and mean what you say you mean.  Business success ain't casual stuff.  It is serious stuff with so many quiet determinations that helps it find the way to success.  One thing is for sure, money will always prove to be very shy.  You can try to trick money to come in a million ways but it still remains shy.  Those who have figured this truth out are the ones it follows.  You cannot feed a million people without closely allowing money to come along.  Overcome what makes it shy.  Listen to the unknown stuff that does not immediately make any sense.  If your ways were so good, how well is your current success doing?

I have a business mentor who has shared with me that assistance is not a piece of entitlement.  It is earned.  You need to get around people who understand this most important fundamental to success.  One thing I have discovered about this reality is that those who get it know exactly who does not.  It usually does not take them very long to recognize this truth.  We will five years from now be exactly the same person we are today except for two things.  One, the books we read and two, the people we hang out with.  All else will remain the same.

Every piece of business success comes from the art of solving problems.  That is all it is.  Nothing else.  Listen, learn and adapt to the things others know.  It is amazing how well your business can do when it becomes something others drive.

Have a great weekend.

Until next time...