Dead Fish Don't Swim Upstream

Real Life Lessons in Entrepreneurship

Jay Silverberg, Bruce McLean

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637421581
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Imprenditoria
• Index: Business

Business academia offers an excellent entrepreneurial foundation. Then reality sets in.

This book bridges the gap between academia and real business, to counsel by example, and to deliver timely, actionable recommendations to capitalize on opportunities, or to sidestep hidden business grenades.

Advice is best delivered by those who have successfully walked the entrepreneurial trail, but not without incurring some scars along the way. That's us.

For the university instructor or professor, this book adds another dimension to what is being taught, and facilitates the lecturers' ability to convey important business lessons in bite-size morsels.

CHAPTER 1

Great Ideas Become Great Businesses

Be a Business Castle Builder

Premise

You need to define and embrace your own success. Are you an entrepreneur castle builder?

Conventional Thinking

While at Yale University, Fred Smith wrote a term paper on his idea for an overnight delivery service for small packages that could be delivered to all cities in the United States by air. He got a “C” grade on this paper. He went on to establish FedEx and changed the world.

Castle-builder entrepreneurs are focused, inspired, stubborn, and slightly rebellious. Not all go on to build billion-dollar empires, but most work tirelessly to build their dreams. They know what they want to do and mobilize all their resources to achieve whatever level of success they define as “having arrived.”

Traditional business wisdom encourages entrepreneurs to follow a pathway, and, very correctly, lays out a process of steps to follow. However, what it does not stress is the absolute need for blind faith, for the audacity to try when others say “no you can’t,” the backbone to defy common sense or commonplace thinking, and the fearlessness to never stop trying to achieve what you alone define as your respectable level of success.

That might seem like a tall order, but baby steps can lead to giant leaps for those who do not lose sight of their bull’s eye. Keep a “vision board,” a visual collage of ideas and inspiration, and refer to it every day. It will help you stay on target and on vision.

So, what does success mean to you? It is a very personal question that only you can answer. Does business drive you? Do you consider business success as a milestone that defines your life, or do you use business merely as a tool to achieve a lifestyle choice?

When starting or growing your business, every cent you earn, or have invested, should go toward the activity that directly generates revenues. Most successful entrepreneurs spend less time shopping for leased luxury cars and more time protecting their intellectual property (IP) or strategizing how they are going to capture market share (or “steal” market share if the market is finite), or educate the marketplace about a groundbreaking product, service, or technology.

These companies started in the founders’ garage or basement: Apple, Google, Mattel, HP, Amazon, Disney, Mag Lite, Microsoft, Yankee Candle, and Harley Davidson, to mention just a few. (In fact, this very book was created in our garage in the hopes of emulating ‘the great ones’.)

Highly successful businesspeople will tell you that they work for personal satisfaction and “fun.” But money has already bought them a level of contentment. Money has satiated them, but likely not you. Not yet, anyways. You should never lose that hunger until you reach or surpass your targeted level of achievement.

What are your parameters for defining success? Here are a few markers.

• You have reached your goals (financial, personal, social hierarchy, recognition, etc.).

• You enjoy what you are doing, ranging from tolerance to loving it.

• You are maintaining a balance in your life between the things that are important to you.

• You feel mentally fulfilled.

• You have traded off what you were willing to let go of.

• You feel you have made a difference to people, to a cause, or to an industry; if that is within your goals.

• You have achieved happiness.

My Real-Life Story

When I started my first business, I too was a basement-dweller entrepreneur. I had a haughty vision for success and a difficult pathway to displace some of my “ivory tower” competitors. The difference was they were gorged on past successes, and I was hungry to taste mine.

I designed and produced the most impressive website and promotional materials. I branded myself with a healthy dose of “elastic ethics,” sounding like a player in the industry “old boys’” network.

I carried myself like a winner, while the lust for recognition gnawed within me. It was a case of playacting, and I was constantly on stage, which I relished.

I set my short-, medium-, and long-term milestones and fought to reach each one. There was more than one occasion when I needed to rethink and tweak my timeframes.

Eventually, I did “arrive” and developed a client portfolio of projects exceeding a billion dollars in capital projects. As I grew, I hired a great team, and opened offices in several large, metropolitan centers. I had finally earned the right to move my office from my dusty furnace room near my garage, into to a prestigious high-rise office tower—a setting designed to impress my high profile clients.

I had nothing left to prove, and my lifestyle, family, and other interests became my top priorities. Selling my company after a number of years of growth took care of that. I guess I had finally arrived.

And If I Were You...

1. Discover what success means to you and why it is important to you. This may take some soul-searching and inward-thinking, but it’s worth the effort. And be honest with yourself.

2. Set out a series of milestones as to how you intend to succeed.

3. Identify the potential roadblocks that may defy your progress, and how you intend to mitigate these obstructions.

4. Catalog the resources you have at your disposal, including people who can help you. People can act as stepping stones to others, or multipliers who can refer business to you.

5. Generate an acceptable timeframe for your journey.

6. Be prepared to tweak and rethink things if you encounter hiccups along the way (and you will).

7. Above all, aim very high, but probably substratosphere. There is almost nothing worse than perpetually being just out of reach of your targets.

Taking the Business Leap

The Premise

If it’s such a good idea, why isn’t everyone doing it? Because they are not you.

Conventional Thinking

We are a nation of salary junkies. It’s so true, and there is nothing wrong with it. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs¹ has “physiological needs,” including shelter and food and safety, encompassing employment and property. These are the most basic prerequisites for our survival. That basic paycheck is of utmost importance for our well-being.

Even for salespeople who work on commission, I don’t think I have ever hired one who didn’t want a base draw or salary, even willing to give up potential higher-level earnings for a steady sustenance income.

Then there’s you, the entrepreneur. You create your own security, foregoing the biweekly pay for the opportunity to create a business entity that will generate excitement, fun, challenges, and, of course, greater remuneration than any job can deliver.

Focusing on the goal is a keynote characteristic of entrepreneurs. You need to be liberated, with few other pressing issues impeding your thought process, or monopolizing your time. That focus is sometimes interpreted as unemotional or uncaring when, in fact, it’s just maintaining an unwavering focal point—your business.

Steve Jobs was a genius but often deemed unattached to anything but his work. When you think about how many years he spent doing something as “simple” as designing and redesigning the curve of the iPhone corners, you understand the dedication it takes to craft a successful venture.

This chapter is by no means about discouraging you from the entrepreneurial world. In fact, so much of the rest of this book supports those who are self-employed or go on to run successful businesses. But all of that having been said, there are warnings you need to heed before you leap.

There are pitfalls, of course, including avoiding pseudo-opportunities ads like “Change Your Life Today. Road to Financial Freedom.” If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Didn’t your parents teach you that as it pertains to, well, everything?

There are also ...