I have written two books that are available for purchase.
“Breaking Down The Walls: Ideas For Advancing Your Business” and
“Improvise. Adapt. Overcome: More Ideas For Advancing Your Business”
Below is a chapter from one of the books so you can see if it is something you can gain from the investment:
“This is the Hardest Job I’ve ever had.”
PRECAP
1. When was the last time you learned something of significance to improve your business?
2. Are you doing just the right things or just everything?
3. Do you have other measures of success besides profit?
During the course of a day I give thanks for all that I have; in fact, I do it every night before I fall asleep. I am particularly grateful that I have my own business.
Many people I know would never even consider starting a business. I know many that have tried and were unsuccessful and then went back to working for someone else.
Having survived, prospered, and grown my business for over a dozen years, allow me to share some lessons I have learned along the way.
Learn to adapt
When you start a business, you usually have some idea as to what you will do and who the customers might be. Then, reality sets in.
What you thought was reality turns out to be something quite different. You cannot afford to be inflexible. You need to be willing to give a lot. You have to be willing and open to change.
Understand that the marketplace is constantly changing. Sure, some things never change (taxes, death, going to school). To survive and prosper, you must learn to adapt.
Keep thinking dinosaurs. Do you want to end up like one?
Be persistent
I have on the wall of my office: “Press On: Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
The mark of someone going places is persistence. I often think about and refer to Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman when I am writing my weekly articles. Each of them faced many adversities. Yet, each became successful because they were persistent. They stayed the course.
What is your course and will you stick with it?
Military Castings and Military Parts
Be a learning machine
For a short time, I had a partner in business. When we opted to go our separate ways, he moved to Atlanta and took a job with an advertising agency. He emailed me less than a year later to tell me he had resigned his position to start another business. He asked if I had any advice for him and I suggested that he “learn to sell.”
He told me that he already knew how. I heard later this business had failed and that he took yet another job, moving his family for a second time in just over a year, this time in Pittsburgh.
I heard again that he left this job and moved to Canada. I suppose he never did learn to sell. He did, however, learn to interview well.
In those intervening years, I learned that there were certain things I needed to know. Some of these I learned the hard way, others I learned without having to endure much pain.
During the course of these last eight years, I learned more about business, life, and relationships than at any other time of my life. I am wiser, kinder, more patient, and understanding than before. I also do not suffer fools gladly.
I knew before I left my safe and secure job in Corporate America that I had a low tolerance for people who didn’t “get it” and less for the people that did, and then didn’t do anything about it.
They do not teach you these things in college. I know this from personal experience; one of the ways I learn is to teach college classes.
What have you learned lately of consequence to your business or life?
Do it anyway
I was quite amused to hear a client describe how several recently downsized individuals were planning to start a business. They just assumed that they would “bring in some administrative support” to help them. In Corporate America, you can get away with that.
In your own business, you do everything. I do mean everything. I make coffee, lug bottled water, arrange pastry on plates, paint, clean carpets, take out the trash…you get the idea.
None of these things I particularly wanted to do. But I did them anyway.
I have learned that you need to “do it anyway” when it has to be done.
What do you take care of that must be done, however distasteful for your business?
Life on the edge
If you have ever had your own business, you know the feeling when a client says that last week the check was mailed, and your checking account is a little bit overdrawn.
Perhaps you have wakened in the dark and quiet of the night and you wonder what you will tell your spouse when it looks a little tight for the holidays … and the house payment next month.
When you have your own business, you live on the edge. Until you take stock of your situation and learn what you do not know so you can avoid the pain, you will be sitting on the razor’s edge.
It only hurts when you stay for more than a second, or two.
Are you on the edge and what are you going to do about it?
###
Ken Keller,
Invest 5 Hours
Super Job Information gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Zinc Die Casting Jobs look at this website. This Zinc Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for zinc castings.
