No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m a sucker for opportunities. I never let them pass. If I wasn’t qualified, I made myself qualified. If I didn’t have the time, I slept less. If I didn’t know, I learned. Don’t pass up an opportunity.
I do not fear failure. I only fear the "slowing up" of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, "Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?"General George S. Patton
When you’re a small business owner who’s selling the highest level of service possible how do you scale for continued business growth? With caution. If what your selling is service and not widgets you have to be very careful on how you grow. I’ve turned down several “opportunities” to expand my business that would have diluted the quality of service we provide. In essence, it would have changed our business model. That might satisfy costumers buying on price alone but would alienate your existing clientele who expect a higher level of service. Grow slowly and organically and never compromise what made you successful in the first place.
Time Magazine recently devoted much of a recent edition to the increasing difficulty of upward mobility in the U.S. Much of the magazine pointed out how difficult it is to achieve the so-called “American Dream” in today’s economic reality. The richest are richer and the bottom dwellers have almost no chance of “making it big.” Is it true? I’m not sure. But it definitely hasn’t stopped me from trying to achieve it. At the very least I can say the following are true:
I recently took a business trip to Las Vegas. I’ve gone there at least once a year for the past 8 years. I’ve left from cities all over the U.S. and the scene on the departing flight is the same every time. Everyone’s happy. Everyone’s hamming it up with their seat mate whether they knew them before boarding or not. Drinks are being served like it’s New Years. Contrast this with my typical business trip to any other city in the U.S. and it becomes clear that Vegas is a place people WANT to go to and ENJOY going to…even if they’re going there for business. I bring this up not because I love Vegas (which I do) or because I’m on the Las Vegas tourism board (which I’m not). I bring this up because as a small business owner I saw a lot of relevancy for what I do. I’ve tried to make my sport performance training center a destination not a place to workout. Somewhere that people WANT to come to even if it’s a little more expensive or further away than their local gym. I want people to have an experience not a workout. How can you make what you do a “Flight to Vegas” and not somewhere else.
A little more than 2 years I uprooted my family to move to a city that I’d never been within 120 miles of to start a business from scratch. The past 2 years have been a bit of validation as I love the area (we live in Cary, NC part of the Raleigh-Cary metroplex) and our business is thriving. Yesterday I received a very informative newsletter from my great commercial real estate agent, Blair Graham, with info from Forbes magazine stating that Raleigh was rated the top metro area in the U.S. to start a business. This was great to hear because I had spent the 10 months following my resignation from my previous job researching the best place to move and start the business. I had some very strict criteria both for the business as well as for quality of life. The Raleigh-Cary metroplex was in my top 5 (probably last choice to be honest) but I chose it, almost impulsively on a site visit (which was the first of what was planned to be one visit to each of the top 5 possible cities), based on a string of events and ‘opportunities’ that fortunately never panned out. Glad things turned out how they did.
Here’s what Forbes has to say about the area:
Topping our 13th annual list of the Best Places for Business and Careers isRaleigh, N.C. It is one of those locales with a strong university presence helping fuel growth in the area (albeit in an East Coast state, a rarity in the upper part of the list). Raleigh and nearby Durham (ranked No. 31) get a strong boost from three elite schools in the surrounding area in University of North Carolina, Duke University and North Carolina State.
Raleigh ranks No. 1 after dipping to third last year. Low business costs (18% below the national average) and a smart labor force (42% have a college degree) make North Carolina’s capital an attractive spot for employers like First Citizens Bank and Progress Energy. Job seekers get it: The net migration rate to Raleigh was the second highest in the U.S. over the past five years.
We recently hit our 100th paying client at Athletic Lab. Growth is good. And while we’ve had big ups and downs the overall trend is decidedly upwards. We did it 5 weeks before our 2nd year in business. While we actually have around 140 people training regularly at Athletic Lab, a handful come from professional teams and organizations and we count the organization as the client rather than the individual players. So 100 paying clients. In a little under 2 years. Certainly nothing many in our industry would be jealous of but definitely a mini-milestone for us…one which we had predicted the time lines for for the previous couple months. How did we get there. We came up with a plan, executed reasonably well, and made constant improvements on our service, facility and business approach.
A Facebook friend and fellow entrepreneur posted this on his wall and it really struck me because I’m pursuing my passion just like he is and I can definitely relate. Doing what you love makes the long hours not just bearable but enjoyable.
When we are making a living out of our passions and dreams, it leaves people wondering whether we are working or playing!
My business partner recently sent me this article he found on the net. I found it was relevant to this blog since it has an entrepreneurial slant.
You’ve either started a company or you haven’t.
”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.
I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.
I know what kind of person I am.
