About anentrepreneurswords

R. Lee Harris grew up in Manhattan, Kansas and has lived in the Kansas City area since 1977. A 1975 graduate of Kansas State University, Harris began his career with Cohen-Esrey, LLC as an apartment manager two weeks after he graduated. Now president and CEO, he is involved in apartment management, development and investment; construction and tax credit syndication on a nationwide scale. Over the course of his career Harris has overseen the management of more than 27 million square feet of office building, shopping center and industrial space and nearly 60,000 multi-family units. He has started dozens of business enterprises over the past 40+ years. In 1991, Harris wrote a book entitled, The Customer Is King! published by Quality Press of Milwaukee. In 2012 he authored the book, An Entrepreneur's Words to Live By. He has mentored a number of business people over the years and has been a long-time participant in the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program. He and his wife Barb have two grown daughters and one grandson. They are active in their church, community and university.

The Grateful Entrepreneur

Posted on October 15, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

When I was a young lad in my formative years there was a hard and fast rule set for my sister and me. As soon as the Christmas or birthday wrapping paper was discarded, we went to our respective rooms and began writing thank-you notes. It didn’t matter how insignificant the gift (or whether it was something we wanted) a thank-you note was written. And writing something like, “Dear Grandmother – thank you for the sweater you sent for Christmas,” was wholly insufficient. Mom expected something more in the order of, “Dear Grandmother – thank you for the lovely sweater you sent me for Christmas. I can’t wait to wear it at my upcoming band concert. I’ll send you a picture of me wearing the sweater after the concert. We miss you and wish we could see you more often.” And by golly, I wore that sweater at the band concert and sent a follow-up note with the photo.

Our daughters were subjected to the same practice when they were young though I’m not sure that our grandchildren have adopted the ritual . . . which is unfortunate. It sometimes seems that expressing gratitude is becoming a lost art. I’ve written before about how living in gratitude makes our lives so much richer and rewarding. It opens the flow of positive energy that allows us to thrive in any situation. I’ve advocated for keeping a gratitude journal in which we write daily, making note of the various people and things for which we are grateful each day. I know that when I hit a rough spot in my life, focusing on that for which I am grateful always centers me and puts me back on track.

Here’s the thing. Entrepreneurs have endless reasons to be grateful. Who among us hasn’t been encouraged by someone along the way? Who among us hasn’t received a helping hand from a kind soul who selflessly made our way smoother? Who hasn’t been the beneficiary of opportunities that were created by someone else? Do we truly feel grateful for these actions, or do we take them for granted? Perhaps we have even rationalized a sense of entitlement . . . which would be unfortunate. “I know my company has assigned me some terrific projects that have been very helpful to my career, but I work long hours to make these projects successful.” What is not said (but maybe thought) is, “I don’t need to express gratitude to anyone because I go above and beyond to do my job.”

What is the proper way to express gratitude to others? First and foremost, it needs to be heartfelt. Simply going through the motions (like I did with my sweater letter) is not true gratitude. We need to think specifically about what others have done for us. This is where a gratitude journal can be helpful. It establishes a practice whereby we focus on our bounty – material or otherwise – and identify the source that facilitated it. This doesn’t take anything away from our own accomplishments. It simply completes the circle of gratitude. We acknowledge that source as well as being proud of what we ultimately accomplished.

When our gratitude is coherent with our head and our heart, we can offer an outward expression of it. Perhaps it takes the form of looking someone in the eye and telling them how much their support has meant and how appreciative we are. Maybe it’s a handwritten note of thanks. Possibly it takes the form of a gift of some sort. Regardless of the method, intentionality is the key and will be felt by the recipient.

Learning how to be grateful and expressing gratitude to others is a practice that is critical to living an amazing entrepreneurial life. And I want to say thank you to my mom in heaven for instilling in me the foundational elements of gratitude.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The Supremely Confident Entrepreneur

Posted on October 8, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

There is at least one must-have trait for successful entrepreneurs. Without confidence the road is very steep and rocky. College basketball is one of the most interesting demonstrations of how confidence or a lack thereof can impact outcomes. I’ve watched many games where the players on a team are tentative. They lack energy and they are missing their shots. Often, they are out of position and cannot rebound or chase down loose balls. A few days later the same team plays another game. This time there is fluidity in their motion. They are passing the ball crisply; players are getting nice elevation when they shoot, and the ball is going in the hole. The night-and-day difference between the two contests is that of confidence.

What is the secret to gaining and maintaining confidence? There are several elements that are required. The first is that of “mastery.” Mastery is achieved through constant practice and the repetitive patterning that occurs as our experience builds. This is particularly important for millennials to understand. Fair or not, many millennials are tagged with the stereotype that they have an incredibly high sense of urgency. They don’t want to wait for results and can be impatient at times. However, I’ve seen millennials and people of all ages try something a couple of times and believe they have mastered it. Then I watch as they try it again and bomb badly. With confidence shaken they are humbled and may become afraid to jump in the water again. All of this could have been avoided had real mastery been achieved. One of the biggest fears in society today is that of public speaking. And the only way to resolve this fear once and for all, is to practice speaking over and over and over. The fear doesn’t suddenly evaporate after a handful of gigs. It took me 50 or 60 times to reach the point that I began to feel comfortable in front of a group.

The second element is that of achieving a history of desired outcomes. It’s one thing to repeat a process enough times to master something. That helps to build confidence. But achieving the results we want is the validation necessary for us to know that we’re on the right track with our mastery. Let’s use our basketball example again. A team may be executing the basics and fundamentals properly; it may be playing strong defense, and the players are running the plays as designed. But if the scoreboard isn’t showing a W for the team on a regular basis, it’s hard to build confidence. I’ve never heard anyone profess that losing all the time builds confidence . . . but winning does. As entrepreneurs we must tweak our approach until we begin to win consistently. For example, if our sales approach isn’t working and we keep doing it the same way, it’s time to start experimenting to learn what it takes to win. After all, there’s no point in “mastering” losing!

The third aspect of building confidence is to always maintain a positive attitude – no matter what. We must believe that eventually we’ll get it right; eventually we will win. I’ve said many times that what we think in mind produces in the outer after its kind. When we believe at our core that we are going to win, eventually we will win. If we have doubts or know in our bones that we’re going to lose, eventually we will lose. I have never seen anyone become more self-confident by having a negative attitude. Attitude is critical to the success of individuals and to the team. If one member of the team is positive and the rest are negative, the confidence of the team will be adversely affected. As entrepreneurial leaders it is incumbent upon us to make sure that our team is unanimous with a positive attitude.

Developing mastery, achieving success and being eternally optimistic are the rocket fuel that will propel us to a perpetual state of self-confidence. This patterning also inoculates us from having our self-confidence shaken when from time-to-time we might stumble. We’ve been there before. We know what we must do, and we are able to re-calibrate and get back on track with ease and grace. There is no panic or desperation – we simply remember to follow the formula that has worked so well in the past.

Building self-confidence is a process much like riding a bicycle. Once learned, we may fall off on rare occasions; but when we do we get up, dust ourselves off and start riding the bike again like it never happened.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The Toxic Entrepreneur

Posted on October 1, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

Tyler is mad at Gilbert. Mad may not be an adequate description. Tyler is so livid that he doesn’t trust himself to talk to Gilbert about “the incident” for fear that he might end up in handcuffs after the encounter. I think you get the picture. Here’s the rest of the story. Tyler is an entrepreneur who has built a small but rapidly growing company that buys fledgling software projects and fully develops them into commercial products. Gilbert is a software engineer who has a terrific idea that he began to develop and talked extensively with Tyler about taking it to the next step. The two hit it off very well and a very close relationship grew over time. Negotiations had progressed to the point that documents were prepared, and a signing date was set. Then it happened. Tyler received a phone call late one afternoon from an industry analyst informing him that Gilbert had just signed an agreement with Tyler’s closest competitor, to develop the software. Tyler called Gilbert and got his voicemail. He texted and e-mailed – radio silence. Naturally Tyler feels totally betrayed, blindsided and embarrassed. Betrayed because Gilbert had committed the deal to him; blindsided because Gilbert hadn’t had the decency to call him first, and embarrassed because he heard about it from someone else.

You probably know the rest of the story. Tyler finally reaches Gilbert and confronts him about the situation. Gilbert says, “Tyler, it’s only business. I made a decision that I felt was best for me.” This only adds fuel to the fire raging inside Tyler and a long-term grudge ensues with ongoing thoughts of revenge and payback. And, at the end of the day this is the classic Entrepreneur’s Poison.

It’s understandable that Tyler is upset about Gilbert’s actions. But Tyler faces a fork-in-the-road choice at this point. He can hold a grudge for a long period of time and plot ways to get back at Gilbert, drinking the Entrepreneur’s Poison in the process. Or he can learn from the experience and move on. I emphasize the fact that this is a choice that Tyler will make. He’s in control – not Gilbert. As entrepreneurs we will likely face similar circumstances at some point in our careers – maybe we already have. Do we drink the Entrepreneur’s Poison or not?

On December 13, 1977, during an NBA game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Houston Rockets, Lakers forward Kermit Washington threw a punch that shattered the face of Houston player, Rudy Tomjanovich. The blow was so devastating that spinal fluid was leaking out of the wound as Tomjanovich was rushed to the hospital. His injuries were life threatening and it took several surgeries to repair the damage. Jonathan Feigen’s 2018 book “100 Things Rockets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die,” details how Tomjanovich felt the need to forgive Washington who had apologized to him in 1987. Feigen states, “Washington could not have known that Tomjanovich had come to believe that holding resentment is ‘a poison’ people ingest needlessly. ‘If I keep those other things, self-destructive things, a part of who I am, I’m missing a good life,’ Tomjanovich said.”

Here’s the thing. When we feel that we’ve been wronged by someone else, harboring feelings of resentment and plotting revenge takes a lot of energy – and worse, it’s negative energy. This same energy could be used in positive ways that benefit ourselves and others. Someone I know was recently betrayed by a long-time friend. She wonders how she’ll ever be able to trust this individual again. My response was to ask if deciding in absolute terms that trust is broken forever is the best perspective. She asked what I would say to this friend, and I responded, “The trust has been broken and it will take a while to earn it back.” Then we move on and live our lives without holding a grudge or resentment. It becomes the choice of the transgressor to rebuild the trust or not. Dwelling on the situation and replaying it over and over does nothing to undo what happened.

In our entrepreneurial world it’s extremely important that we operate in a positive sphere. No one can harm us unless we allow them to do so. Forgiveness is the key even though it may take time for relationships to be repaired. Taking this approach allows us to avoid drinking the Entrepreneur’s Poison.

The Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

Posted on September 24, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

This is a true story about two entrepreneurs – one who is doing it right, and the other who is not. Allow me to set the stage. One of our business units is in the venture capital space. We invest in early-stage companies that operate in agriculture, animal health, and human health verticals. Some might call us seed-stage or angel investors. Often, we are making investments in companies that are pre-revenue or are just starting to generate revenue from their product or service. So, evaluating such opportunities has a lot to do with our assessment of the founder(s) and whether they are competent and have a strong moral compass.

Two companies in our portfolio offer a terrific contrast in competency and integrity. The first company – we’ll call it Company A – is doing all the right things. The founders have a novel idea in the agriculture space that they turned into a real company that is achieving real traction. It is on track to breakeven within the next 12 to 18 months and should become quite profitable as it continues to scale. The team is focused on keeping operating expenses in line and has lowered the cost of producing the product it sells. One thing we are especially pleased with is the level of transparency that the founders exhibit. They communicate regularly with the investors and what they report is substantive and meaningful. If they have experienced a hiccup, they say so. If they achieve a milestone, they celebrate. They are receptive to our suggestions and practice good corporate governance operating with a real board of directors.

Unfortunately, Company B is at the other end of the spectrum. The founder talked a good game when we did our due diligence – and we believed this person. But things unfolded much differently than we anticipated. Shortly after we made our investment, the founder pivoted away from the initial thesis which had attracted us in the first place. The enterprise approach that convinced us to invest was abandoned and the team began focusing on a different one-off kind of model that produced a fraction of the revenue. We have board observer rights, which means that we are entitled to attend all board of directors’ meetings so that we can see firsthand the decisions that are being made. Much to our surprise some decisions that should have been made in a formal board meeting were handled by a board teleconference that we didn’t even know about. And the board of directors, in our opinion, wasn’t a “real” board with independent directors that were performing their fiduciary duties.

Company B’s founder increased his/her salary to a level that is outrageous for a company at this stage. In fact, the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for this company at the time I write this is equal to one month of its cash burn! Most founders at this early stage would be reducing their salary rather than increasing it. Meanwhile, we get weekly e-mails from the founder bragging about how many new customers they added or onboarded during the past week. But this communication is all fluff and B.S. because each customer hardly moves the needle in terms of revenue.

Company B’s founder somehow continues to find ways to convince new investors to throw more money into the pot to keep the company alive. We do not understand what these investors see in this company’s business (or its founder) that shows a clear path to success. At some point the music will stop and Company B will cease to exist, but its founder will have profited handsomely with an exorbitant salary.

Here are the lessons learned for entrepreneurs. Smooth talk may work for a while (Company B), but eventually solid performance and strong results (Company A) must prevail. Communication is a virtue but only if it provides full transparency sans fluff and B.S. Investors value good ideas and great entrepreneurs. A great entrepreneur has the integrity to always do the right thing even in the face of adversity.

We hope that the founders in Company A eventually have a successful exit where they and their investors (including us!) make a lot of money. And then we hope these founders will start another company. We’ll stand in line to invest in them again.

The Extinct Entrepreneur

Posted on September 17, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

By now, everyone knows that tens of thousands of retail stores have closed across the country over the past several years. One industry source predicts another 50,000 stores could close by 2027. Covid certainly had an impact while public access was locked down for an extended time. But the trend started well before Covid. This year, Bed, Bath & Beyond is just one of the latest chains to close the doors. At its peak, Bed, Bath had 1,552 locations. Sears at its peak had 3,500 stores and Kmart had 2,300 locations. Now both Sears and Kmart have a combined 23 stores remaining in the U.S. Bricks and mortar retailers are fighting for their collective lives. They are up against the likes of Amazon and Walmart, to name two of their biggest competitors. Amazon is open 24/7 and Walmart stores seem to be open most of the hours people are awake.

This data has gotten me to think about how some businesses simply fail to change with the times. This isn’t anything new. But by now one would think that the ability to adapt would be case study Numero Uno in the school of entrepreneurship. Let’s look at another example – this one is in the educational sector. For years, we’ve seen tuition spiking at public universities and colleges. According to Education Data.org, tuition has increased approximately 136.5% from 2000 – 2021, an annual rate of 6.8%. Meanwhile inflation has averaged 2.55% per year for the same timeframe. Why has this happened? Government-insured student loans have been a major contributor to the upward movement of tuition. Universities have known that they could just keep pushing tuition because students could borrow cheap money to finance the cost. There’s only one problem. The student loan bubble is bursting as millions of young people are questioning why they should take on debt of as much as $100,000 or more to earn a college degree. Public funding for higher education has been under pressure for years. Meanwhile, colleges and universities blithely continue to build new buildings and act like the good times will roll forever. There’s scant evidence that leadership is plotting how to adapt to what could become a very scary situation.

The landscape is littered with the carcasses of companies that failed to adapt. Besides Bed, Bath & Beyond, Sears, and Kmart, we’ve seen store closings and/or bankruptcies at Mattress Firm, Brookstone, David’s Bridal, Tuesday Morning, Party City, Serta Simmons Bedding, Rockport, Nine West, Claire’s, Toys R Us, iHeartMedia, Gibson’s (the guitar maker) and Bon-Ton to name a few. Many of these companies had accumulated too much debt. Others grew too quickly and saturated the market with stores (Mattress Firm comes to mind). Others clearly kept plodding along with a business strategy that no longer worked.

The Netflix vs. Blockbuster Video story is common knowledge. Blockbuster never came to grips with the fact that streaming services were going to be king of the mountain, pushing the business of renting videocassettes into the abyss. Eastman Kodak failed to understand that digital photography was the future – not film and photographic paper. Yahoo blew it when Google was offering everything for free; yet Yahoo thought it could charge for e-mail and file sharing.

When we as entrepreneurs become comfortable and believe that we have the best idea, we’re probably headed for a fall. Because there’s absolutely no doubt that someone else is already working on the next best idea and may roll it out as early as tomorrow. Dr. Ichak Adizes, CEO of the Adizes Institute and one of the world’s leading management experts has developed a concept he calls the Corporate Lifecycle. He identifies a “Mature” organization as one that is about to experience “The Fall.” He goes on to say, “The leaders of The Fall companies are starting to feel content and somewhat complacent. This attitude has been developing for some time. The company is strong, but it is starting to lose flexibility. It is at the top of its lifecycle curve, but it has expended nearly all the “developmental momentum” it amassed during its growing stages. The rocket is slowing down and starting to change direction and head down the lifecycle curve. The organization suffers from an attitude that says, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ The company is losing the spirit of creativity, innovation, and the desire to change that brought it to Prime (the ultimate phase of the corporate lifecycle). It has sown the seeds of mediocrity.”

There are many lessons to be learned here. As our organizations continue to grow and become rocket ships, it’s critical that we maintain our spirit of creativity, innovation, and the desire to change. Always. Every day. Forever.

An Iconic Entrepreneur

Posted on September 10, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

Right after he passed away several years ago, I wrote a blog as a tribute to Herb Kelleher. I think it’s worth sharing again.

On January 3, 2019, one of the legendary icons of entrepreneurship stepped on a rainbow. Herb Kelleher died at age 87 after living a storied life. Kelleher famously co-founded Southwest Airlines in the late 1960s. He was practicing law in San Antonio when a client brought him an idea to launch a new airline in 1967. Competing airlines did everything they could to prevent the new airline, originally incorporated as Air Southwest Company, from getting off the ground. Lawsuits were the only thing flying for several years, and at one point the board told Kelleher that the venture needed to be shut down. Kelleher offered to fight the lawsuits and pay the court costs out of his own pocket, at which point the board agreed to stay in business. It took four years and victories at both the Texas and the U.S. Supreme Courts – twice – before Southwest Airlines flew for the first time on June 18, 1971. His resilience and tenaciousness are credited for enabling Southwest to persevere and become the major airline that it is today.

Kelleher was general counsel and served on the board of directors, becoming chairman in 1978. In 1981 he became the full-time CEO and built the airline into a powerhouse because of his vision. At the time, the airline industry was highly regulated and when an airline started losing money, it would petition the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to allow for a fare increase. As a result, it became exceedingly expensive for the public to fly – something that Kelleher saw as the opportunity of a lifetime. Initially Southwest was an intrastate carrier flying within Texas, making flying between Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston affordable through ultra-low fares. Over the years the airline started flying outside the state of Texas but was hamstrung by the Wright Amendment – legislation designed to help the legacy carriers and hurt Southwest. The law required that Southwest could not fly from another state directly into Dallas’ Love Field without first stopping in an immediately adjacent state including Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. I can remember flying from Kansas City to Dallas and having to stop in Oklahoma City to change planes because of this requirement. Eventually the Wright Amendment was defeated in Congress and Southwest was able to operate like any other airline in the country.

Kelleher was a marketing genius and employed numerous outrageous stunts that endeared Southwest to its employees and to the public. He never took himself too seriously and is well known for his love of Wild Turkey bourbon and a daily dose of five packs of Marlboro cigarettes. When it came to compensation, Kelleher chose to take less in cash salary and more stock options. This approach helped considerably with the Southwest labor force (where the CEO was not receiving an exorbitant level of pay) and made him a billionaire two-and-a-half times over. He claims to have been a “flamboyant marketer but was fiscally conservative.” His shrewd financial prowess put Southwest on a path to profitability that is unmatched by any other airline – and few public companies in any industry. Since 1973, the company has been profitable every single year.

For decades, the culture at Southwest Airlines has been studied under a microscope by business schools and business leaders. It’s safe to say that Kelleher defined and sustained that culture for the 20 years he was the CEO and even after he retired in 2001 (he remained chairman of the board until 2008). He spent an enormous amount of time talking to employees and gaining understanding of what was working and what needed to be fixed. He loaded baggage onto planes every Thanksgiving Day; met technicians at 2:00 AM in a maintenance hangar; visited operators at reservation centers and spent time as a gate agent. According to Terry Maxon, in a 2015 article for the Dallas News, Kelleher dressed up like Elvis Presley, a woman, the Easter bunny, a leprechaun and a flight attendant to promote Southwest. Maxon went on to explain the corporate culture was that of a 1) scrappy underdog to the public; 2) fierce warrior to its competitors, and 3) warm, supportive, and protective atmosphere for the employees.

Herb Kelleher was a larger-than-life model for us as entrepreneurs to emulate. He had all the requisite entrepreneurial traits – vision, tenacity, resilience, marketing skills, financial acumen, a cultural leader, and a genuine love for people. Above all he had a passion for life. They broke the mold when Herb Kelleher left this planet. R.I.P.

What I Learned from a Non-Entrepreneur

Posted on September 3, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

Over the course of our careers, we entrepreneurs spend a lot of time studying other successful entrepreneurs. We try and emulate their good qualities and avoid those traits that are less flattering. This is a smart strategy and can serve us well. However, there is also much we can learn from non-entrepreneurs as well. While this may sound somewhat paradoxical, stick with me here. There is much wisdom that can be gained in our entrepreneurial world by modeling non-entrepreneurs.

My father was a college professor – a scientist who loved research and teaching. As I think back over the course of my short life with him (he died when I was 34), I realize how much I learned from him that has helped me in my entrepreneurial endeavors. My sister and I were both adopted (and we came from different biological parents), so I was not the recipient of any of Dad’s genetics and who knows what was lurking in my biological gene pool. So, I was destined to “learned behaviors” at my father’s knee.

Dad was the most patient person I’ve ever known. As a young boy, I asked him a million questions, and never once did he ever seem exasperated about my constant grilling. Instead, he would smile and remain patient as he explained things for the 40^th time. For several years, he performed extensive cancer research, injecting mice with tumor materials and then experimenting with different dosages of a formula that was designed to shrink the tumors. He even drafted my mom into returning to the lab after dinner to help him with this project. He was incredibly dedicated to iteration after iteration, always staying positive and all the while, juggling his other research and teaching assignments. My sense of urgency is extremely high. I certainly don’t have Dad’s level of patience. But by watching him, I’ve learned to be more patient over the long term – it’s patience over the short-term stuff that needs more work on my part.

Unflappable is another word for calm, and my dad was its walking definition. I’ll never forget his best demonstration of his unflappability. Way back in the day, people in my hometown would sometimes burn the grass in their yards in the springtime. The theory was that it helped kill the weeds and promoted a healthier stand of grass in a few weeks. On this particular day, the plan was to create a controlled burn to accomplish this objective. Dad asked Mom to wait for him to change his clothes and they would do this together. Unfortunately, Mom didn’t have Dad’s patience and decided to start the fire without him. A sudden gust of wind caught the flame and a cedar tree on the corner of the house ignited. If you’ve never seen a cedar tree catch fire, it’s a sight to behold. The Biblical image of the burning bush comes to mind. Mom was frantic and raced into the house looking for a fire extinguisher. She passed my dad in the basement but was babbling incoherently, and so he had no idea what was happening. Meanwhile, the next-door neighbor put out the fire with a garden hose; a fire truck showed up; a crowd had gathered, and Dad finally ambled out oblivious to what was happening. I’ll never forget how he reacted at that point. Rather than read my mother the riot act, he grinned and was amused at the commotion that had ensued. Now, some several decades later, I always remember how I never saw my dad as anything but calm. And I try and mirror his demeanor whenever possible.

Dad was an honest man. Every fiber of his being was honest. We were traveling as a family on a vacation and stopped for fuel. It was a full-service gas station – there was no such thing as self-serve gas in the 1950s and early 1960s. After the gas was pumped, there was the normal scramble of getting kids back in the car from a restroom break; taking the dog to relieve itself and making certain the trailer was still hitched properly. A few miles down the road Dad asked my mom, “Did you pay for the gas?” It was quickly apparent that we had driven off without paying, at which point Dad turned the car around and drove back to the service station and made the payment. Interestingly, the station attendant hadn’t even realized that we had left without paying. No one would have ever known that we hadn’t paid for the gas, but Dad’s integrity wouldn’t let this get in the way of doing the right thing.

My father – the non-entrepreneur who would have been 107 on September 7, 2023 – modeled many other traits that have been critical to me finding my way as an entrepreneur. His perseverance, his problem-solving abilities, his work ethic, his sense of humor and his passion were all on full display throughout the 72 years of his life. I am blessed to have been loved by him and learned valuable and enduring life lessons from him. Which non-entrepreneur in your life has made a similar difference for you?

The Fearful Entrepreneur

Posted on August 27, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

What are you afraid of? I don’t mind confessing that I have issues with claustrophobia. This manifests when I get inside an MRI machine. Even an open CT scanner gives me the heebie jeebies. My heart pounds in my chest and my blood pressure goes through the roof. I don’t know what happened in the past for me to develop this fear, but it’s a cross I bear. I’ll never forget the time I heard about a poor soul who was exploring a cave and got stuck deep inside – upside down – and no matter how hard they tried, rescuers could not get him out. Within days of that story, I found myself in an MRI machine for 45 minutes. It took every ounce of my fortitude not to completely freak out.

I don’t know of a single entrepreneur who doesn’t experience a fear of something. There is the fear of public speaking, fear of heights, fear of flying, fear of being in social settings, fear of spiders (and snakes), fear of death and a wide assortment of other phobias that we may experience at a personal level. And then there’s what I consider to be “entrepreneurial fears.” Let’s examine a few of them and their antidotes.

Competition – “I’m afraid that the competition will overtake my company. I’m also fearful that someone is going to steal my business concept and crush us.” There’s a lot to unpack here. The forward-thinking entrepreneur will see competition as a healthy factor in his or her business life. If we have the right mindset, we can use competition to make us better. How? We do this by understanding exactly what our customers need and want and tooling our product or service accordingly. We know that the competition is probably studying the customer in a similar fashion – we must do it better!
Ideas – “My ideas are no good. I’m afraid that I’m just not creative enough to win in this business.” No one knows our ideas better than do we. And it’s not so much about having fresh new ideas as it is our ability to iterate on those we already have – or that someone else has. Look at Facebook for example. Many students of the Facebook phenomenon point out that the company has rarely had a new idea. They simply steal ideas from other developers or companies and execute them better.
Failure – “I’m afraid to fail and I’m afraid of what others will think of me if I fail.” This is one of the most common entrepreneurial fears that I’ve heard during my career. Unfortunately, this fear reflects a misunderstanding about what failure is. Too many entrepreneurs confuse “failure” with “defeat.” Failure is simply an unfinished experiment in the laboratory of life. It’s part of a process that we undertake to achieve success. Success is built on failure. Without some failure along the way, how do we really know that we have succeeded in optimal fashion?
Money – “I’m afraid that my money is going to run out before I succeed.” There are entrepreneurial stories abound where the founder was down to a triple digit bank balance and somehow pulled a rabbit out of a hat and turned things around. I also know that there are many more stories of businesses that folded when the cash spigot turned off. In the entrepreneurial world we learn how to improvise. We learn how to stretch a buck. We barter and trade. Better yet, we always have a Plan B in our hip pocket . . . just in case. Having a little bit of the “cash-strapped” fear is actually a healthy thing as long as we use it in a positive way to maintain focus on scaling our enterprise.
Talent – “I’m afraid a competitor is going to steal my best people; or my best people are going to walk across the street and start their own company.” Here’s the thing. If we provide the best value for our team, they’ll stick around, which is the same philosophy we adopt with our customers. Sure, employees want to be fairly compensated, but loyalty goes beyond pay and benefits. Developing a dynamic culture goes a long way toward talent retention. So does making people feel that they and the contribution they make are genuinely valued. In the companies with which I’m involved, we don’t lock up our team members with long-term contracts or non-compete agreements. Instead, it’s incumbent upon us as leaders to show our team every single day how they are in the right place with our firm.

Being afraid can either be paralyzing or motivating. Smart entrepreneurs overcome fear to propel themselves to great success.

The Coin-Operated Entrepreneur

Posted on August 20, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

Jeff sells office equipment. He eats, sleeps, and breathes office equipment. His product line is significant – copy machines, postage meters, calculators, file cabinets, laser printers, desks, chairs – you name it, he sells it. Jeff has taken every sales training course known to mankind. He has read every book on selling techniques and attended a gazillion seminars. His lexicon includes words and phrases such as targets, sales funnel, objections, buying signals, gatekeeper, closed-end questions, open-end questions, deal flow, decision maker – you get the picture. And every day Jeff puts into practice what he has learned. But is he successful at what he does? Sure, he makes a decent living but while reaching for the stars, he’s lucky to make it to McDonald’s on the last exit out of town. While not exactly a Willy Loman, Jeff can be classified as a coin-operated salesperson.

The world is full of entrepreneurs who are really just coin-operated salespeople. They all want to be superstars and almost every single one of them will never be. They hew to the traditional basics and fundamentals of sales. The Jeffs of the world will absolutely try and close the deal seven times because that’s what the experts say must be done. They will sweat their quotas and worry that the last deal they did will be the last deal they’ll ever do. Their ultimate goal is to ring the cash register. Move that product in every increasing numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers! What a shame. It doesn’t have to be this way. Jeff and his ilk could take a much easier road – one that would be far more productive for them and their customers.

First and foremost, real “sales” isn’t about selling. It’s about helping people buy. What’s the distinction you ask? It begins with the real reason for a sales encounter. If that reason is to put money in my pocket as a salesperson, then the motivation is all wrong out of the gate. Instead, we might want to see the sales encounter as an opportunity to help someone else. To do this we need to build a genuine relationship with the customer. We need to understand what the customer needs. Far too many salespeople are unwilling to invest the time and effort that is required to really understand their customers. If they can’t get a sale quickly, they are ready to drop the customer instantly and move on to the next one. After all, they rationalize this behavior because they have a family to feed.

We can hone our entrepreneurial approach to avoid being a coin-operated salesperson. As entrepreneurs, we’re always selling. But if we adopt the attitude that we’re going to help people buy, our mindset will be so different that we’ll avoid the coin-operated traps. For starters, we are customer-centric instead of product-centric. This means that we will do whatever it takes to make sure that we are being of service to our customers. We aren’t going to try and foist our products or services on them if they aren’t interested in buying from us. And yet we’ll continue to work to build a relationship with them over time – even if they aren’t buying today. Relationships are kings of the castle.

Building lasting relationships requires a lot more than what we learn from standard sales training. It taps into our intuition and forces us to “read” people in such a way as to understand them and the complexities of their lives. Building true relationships avoids manipulation. It avoids quid pro quo. We’ll do things for our customers because we are here to serve the relationship – regardless of whether they buy from us. And as I’ve said many times, this is not a Pollyanna-ish concept. I’ve lived my life this way and have countless examples of relationships that I’ve served that never bought anything from me. But great good has come into my life as result of these relationships whether from the referral of other customers, new team members or opportunities of which I would never have been aware. I know that it’s hard not to be a coin-operated salesperson when there’s a mortgage to pay, the kids need braces, and the car is on its last legs. But that’s even more reason to dump the “paint-by-numbers” approach and focus on relationship-building and being customer-centric.

We will have much more success when we help people buy what they need than when we try to sell to them. This requires the long-term process of building and serving relationships. But the payday in the end is far greater than the coin-operated method of selling.

The World’s Winningest Entrepreneur

Posted on August 13, 2023 by anentrepreneurswords

We entrepreneurs are winners at heart. Every day is like the Super Bowl or the World Series for us. It kills us when we lose on a last second shot. We train like we’re going into battle. We sweat and bleed and play through the hurt if there’s a chance to score a touchdown. We endure winning streaks that we are convinced will never end and losing streaks that create the lowest of lows. Whenever possible we want the deck to be stacked in our favor. Here are some ideas for doing exactly that.

Admit mistakes. I’ve always said that mistakes are simply unfinished experiments in the laboratory of life. But this can be a trap for entrepreneurs. Why? Because false pride and arrogance can sometimes prevent us from quickly admitting our mistakes. We simply refuse to be wrong. And when it’s painfully obvious to others, we lose our credibility. The moral of the story is this. We admit our mistakes immediately, learn whatever there is to learn and move on. Doing so also garners more respect from our team when they see us take on this mantle of vulnerability.
Always do the right thing. We always do the right thing – even when it’s to our disadvantage. This is all about integrity, which is doing the right thing when no one is looking or will ever notice. This is all about looking in the mirror at the end of each day and knowing that we don’t have any regrets about how we treated other people.
Show appreciation for others. Here’s another trap for us entrepreneurs to avoid. There are times when we can tend to believe that we are all important and singlehandedly carry the day. In the process we may be seen by others as being arrogant. Very rarely is there a situation where the Lone Ranger effect is a reality. Instead, our success is almost always the result of a team effort. As such, it is incumbent upon us to express gratitude and appreciation for the many things that others have done to contribute to our success.
Be humble. I’ve always said that the bigger we become in terms of success and personal profile, the humbler we should be. While showing appreciation for others is part of this, there is much more to it. We do our best to shine the spotlight on others. We are as gracious as we can possibly be. Rather than crashing around with our Type A personalities, we try and walk as softly as we can – almost to the point that others aren’t even aware we are there. We have enough self-confidence and self-awareness to know that we don’t have to be the center of attention to be highly successful.
Always have a positive mindset. I have never encountered a situation where negativity produced a viable solution for anything. Positivity is contagious and is ours to model. When our team members see us remaining truly positive in the face of great adversity, they may be more inclined to do the same. Positive energy propels – negative energy repels. Who among us wants to be around a negative person? When we can adopt the belief that what seems like failure in the moment is an opportunity for something bigger and better, we are well down the road to continued success.
Persevere. The entrepreneurial game is a tough one. We get knocked down a lot. There are plenty of times that nothing seems to be going our way. But we always have a choice. We can throw in the towel, or we can live by Winston Churchill’s famous quote, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in to convictions of honor and good sense.” Endurance becomes our ability to outlast every challenge that comes our way.
Laugh and have fun. We don’t always have to be so serious . . . and we don’t have to take ourselves seriously either. Entrepreneurship is not a life sentence to drudgery and misery. We should savor every breath we take as we walk this incredible planet. Laugh, laugh, and laugh some more. And when we can laugh at ourselves that’s even better. The more our entrepreneurial journey can be fun, the more likely we are to be living our passion.

When put it altogether – admitting mistakes, integrity, appreciation, gratitude, humility, positivity, perseverance, and laughter – we are clearly stacking the deck in our favor. This “extra edge” then sets us up for the success that is ours to claim.

An Entrepreneur's Words to Live By

Lifechanging Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Author Archives: anentrepreneurswords