Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Business Lessons From a Graduation
I just got back from my daughter Lydia's graduation from Navy boot camp and thought I'd share with you some business insights that came up in connection with it.
Persistence wins out
I talked a couple of weeks ago about Lydia's challenge to meet the minimum physical requirements to graduate, so I won't revisit that except to say that she dug down and found the resolve and the strength to meet them.
She came out of the experience with a greater appreciation of what she was capable of. She said, "If I had passed it the first time, I wouldn't have appreciated it as much. But having to work at it as much as I did, I feel I really accomplished something."
That's something to remember when you face challenges in your business. Obstacles are NOT a sign of failure; they're a sign of what you're capable of overcoming. Keep at them, overcome them, and enjoy discovering what you were capable of all along.
You can't go it alone
Another daughter, Becca, was able to come up from San Antonio and see her sister graduate before heading out for her three-year assignment in Germany with the Air Force.
Things didn't go as planned for her, though.
All of her neatly arranged plans literally blew up in front of her when an oil tanker explosion on the freeway she was traveling on shut down all traffic for several hours and prevented her from dropping her car off for shipment to Germany and from catching her flight to Chicago.
So Becca simply shrugged it off in her nothing-can-faze-me style and started driving -- all the way to Chicago. She drove all night to make it on time. She just missed the graduation, but was there to greet her sister as graduation ended.
THEN she started to untangle the logistical mess she was in. She had missed the first leg of her flight to Washington D.C. where she was scheduled to depart for Germany. Her car was with her instead of already on a ship bound for Europe.
But in the course of a couple of phone calls, she effortlessly arranged a new dropoff place for her car in Norfolk, a friend's house to crash at on her drive from Chicago to D.C., another friend to turn in her car for shipping when she found that she couldn't make the dropoff time in Norfolk. She even slipped in a call to a friend in Germany to tie up some loose ends about her arrival there.
Within a half hour, she had calmly called contacts she had in Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and Germany to smooth out the change in plans that most of the rest of us would have seen as a hopeless disaster.
What does this have to do with business? Simply this: you can't go it alone. Becca has fostered a network of contacts around the world. Something like this happens and she doesn't have to worry. When she needs help, she has somebody wherever she needs them who can step in.
The vast majority of new business owners get into business because they think it gives them a way to get away from people. They want to get away from the office politics and the irritations of dealing with others.
But business -- and life -- don't work like that. You NEED to develop connections. There are times that they will help you and there are times that you will help them. But they sure come in handy when you have someone there when you need an extra hand.
Being in business means being creative
My son, Jon, was also there for the graduation. As usual with him being a fellow online entrepreneur (http://www.jonbaas.com/), we had our share of business discussions.
We chuckled over the insistence he had always shown while growing up that he would never have anything to do with the business world. Yet here he is earning his livelihood with a variety of income streams online.
He still does NOT want to be called a businessman, though. He prefers the term entrepreneur. To him, the word businessman implies mindless, repetitive selling for the sake of making a buck. The word entrepreneur, on the other hand, conveys to him a sense of creativity, which is what he thrives on.
I don't necessarily agree with all his impressions of business, but he has a good point about creativity. A business that simply goes through the motions is doomed. The only way to succeed in any business -- whether it is artistic or utilitarian in what it offers its audience -- is to creatively seek solutions to the problem of meeting people's needs.
Continued growth, connections, and creativity be yours in your business.
Jeff
I just got back from my daughter Lydia's graduation from Navy boot camp and thought I'd share with you some business insights that came up in connection with it.
Persistence wins out
I talked a couple of weeks ago about Lydia's challenge to meet the minimum physical requirements to graduate, so I won't revisit that except to say that she dug down and found the resolve and the strength to meet them.
She came out of the experience with a greater appreciation of what she was capable of. She said, "If I had passed it the first time, I wouldn't have appreciated it as much. But having to work at it as much as I did, I feel I really accomplished something."
That's something to remember when you face challenges in your business. Obstacles are NOT a sign of failure; they're a sign of what you're capable of overcoming. Keep at them, overcome them, and enjoy discovering what you were capable of all along.
You can't go it alone
Another daughter, Becca, was able to come up from San Antonio and see her sister graduate before heading out for her three-year assignment in Germany with the Air Force.
Things didn't go as planned for her, though.
All of her neatly arranged plans literally blew up in front of her when an oil tanker explosion on the freeway she was traveling on shut down all traffic for several hours and prevented her from dropping her car off for shipment to Germany and from catching her flight to Chicago.
So Becca simply shrugged it off in her nothing-can-faze-me style and started driving -- all the way to Chicago. She drove all night to make it on time. She just missed the graduation, but was there to greet her sister as graduation ended.
THEN she started to untangle the logistical mess she was in. She had missed the first leg of her flight to Washington D.C. where she was scheduled to depart for Germany. Her car was with her instead of already on a ship bound for Europe.
But in the course of a couple of phone calls, she effortlessly arranged a new dropoff place for her car in Norfolk, a friend's house to crash at on her drive from Chicago to D.C., another friend to turn in her car for shipping when she found that she couldn't make the dropoff time in Norfolk. She even slipped in a call to a friend in Germany to tie up some loose ends about her arrival there.
Within a half hour, she had calmly called contacts she had in Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and Germany to smooth out the change in plans that most of the rest of us would have seen as a hopeless disaster.
What does this have to do with business? Simply this: you can't go it alone. Becca has fostered a network of contacts around the world. Something like this happens and she doesn't have to worry. When she needs help, she has somebody wherever she needs them who can step in.
The vast majority of new business owners get into business because they think it gives them a way to get away from people. They want to get away from the office politics and the irritations of dealing with others.
But business -- and life -- don't work like that. You NEED to develop connections. There are times that they will help you and there are times that you will help them. But they sure come in handy when you have someone there when you need an extra hand.
Being in business means being creative
My son, Jon, was also there for the graduation. As usual with him being a fellow online entrepreneur (http://www.jonbaas.com/), we had our share of business discussions.
We chuckled over the insistence he had always shown while growing up that he would never have anything to do with the business world. Yet here he is earning his livelihood with a variety of income streams online.
He still does NOT want to be called a businessman, though. He prefers the term entrepreneur. To him, the word businessman implies mindless, repetitive selling for the sake of making a buck. The word entrepreneur, on the other hand, conveys to him a sense of creativity, which is what he thrives on.
I don't necessarily agree with all his impressions of business, but he has a good point about creativity. A business that simply goes through the motions is doomed. The only way to succeed in any business -- whether it is artistic or utilitarian in what it offers its audience -- is to creatively seek solutions to the problem of meeting people's needs.
Continued growth, connections, and creativity be yours in your business.
Jeff
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