As a startup entrepreneur you’re always on the lookout for ways of serving more customers at each chance you get, whether it’s through marketing, generating leads, sales, or just plain ol’ helping someone else out. It’s about earning more than a starving artist’s wage. But as with any business, there is the craft of your business that you love to do and then there is the business of your craft, how to make money doing what you love to do.
Having said that, there are a number of quotes that I’d like to share:
- Never hand an ill workman good tools.
- An ill labourer quarrels with his tools.
So, what do these mean? A poor technician, i.e. workman, artist, writer, etc. makes excuses for the tools they use in getting the required results. It’s the same as saying that buying a great word processor will make you a good or even great writer. Not quite.
A good word processor (the tool) makes the task of writing easier, but it does not make your writing (your skill) any better. Whether it’s a book an author is producing or a graphic by an artist, it takes work and talent, using good brushes to do oil paintings with or using a good saw to finely and precisely cut wood. If you don’t know how to use them well, i.e. your talent or skills, it won’t make the results any better.
Apple is a tool maker
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As I have talked with numerous people regarding their businesses I am in constant discussion with others about what they do and how they do it. I had a conversation with anther small business and he stated something that reenforced what I have seen. He said, “More people only love what they do, not do what they need to do.” What does he mean?
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If you’re beginning to consider being a startup entrepreneur, you’ve often hear that 70-80% of the start ups fail in the first year and the next large bunch fail in year two so that most fail within their five years. At least, that’s what we all hear. But what is really behind these numbers.
Let’s take John C. Maxwell’s book “Failing Forward” and see where these first numbers come to. When he asked a number of millionaires how many times did it take for them to become successful the average number of failures was around five!!
So that means that while most small businesses fail, the business owners keep on trying and moving forward!!!
So, it’s not the failure that is the issue, but how you look at the failure. Do you:
Dwell on your failure and keep harking back to your failure?
Deal with the failure by learning from your mistakes and moving on?
Deny your failure and blame everyone else for your string of bad luck?
If you are in the middle of the road camp and deal with it, then you’re not a failure.
Keep on pressing on.
Here’s a great list of what NOT to do as a CEO or business owner.
What’s the answer: It’s all about YOU!
That’s why CEOs fail.
It’s not about the customer or their problem any longer, it’s all about the CEO.
You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. Paul Graham. paulgraham.com/start.html
