Own, Operate & Grow Your Own Business: Part I

A lot of successful small business ownership comes down to sheer tenacity. Listen in as Warren illustrates the type of mentality it takes to fuel an inviolate commitment to your dreams, as well as the important questions you will have to ask yourself to gauge your preparedness.

Changing Careers

Click here to stream the podcast!

In this short audio excerpt, Warren candidly explains a major turning point in his life when he decided to change careers.

Warren was invited by DeSai Learning to take part in this Q&A interview with Thomas R. Clifford, a Corporate Documentary Filmmaker, where they discussed making and achieving goals.

The hour long interview can be found by clicking here.

There’s No Such Thing as a Dead End Job

A pet peeve of mine is people who look down on what others do for a living. Particularly, when people call jobs such as those at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart or various non-skilled (and even some skilled) jobs, “dead end” jobs. Fortunately, history has proven these white collar snobs wrong, time and time again.

A job put in the hands of a person with the right attitude, no matter how big or small and regardless of pay or stature, is an opportunity on a number of different levels always. Whether it is:

• To “Show your stuff.”
• To create a favorable impression.
• To get much needed work experience
• To learn responsibility
• To get your foot in the door, or;
• To be in the right place at the right time (which can only be accomplished if you’re in a lot of places), because you never know when someone will say, “I could use someone with your attitude.”

If you don’t believe stuff like that happens, let me introduce you to two people that I wrote about in my book, The Best Damn Sales Book Ever: 16 Rock-Solid Rules for Achieving Sales Success. There names are Wayne Thorpe and (my sister-in-law) Brenda Romano.

Wayne Thorpe was a high school drop-out whose job was cleaning out animal cages in a pharmaceutical research lab. The “Anointed” would tell you this was a dead-end job. But Wayne Thorpe is a man who exudes positive attitude, and let me tell you something about positive attitude: it’s a magnet for other people with positive attitude.

An executive at the pharmaceutical company was drawn to Wayne’s positive attitude and began mentoring him, and eventually pushed him to reach his potential. Wayne went back to school and became a toxicologist, and he got interested in business; after retiring from the pharmaceutical company, he started four companies and is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the city of Durham, North Carolina.

My sister-in-law, Brenda Romano, never went to college. Now I agree a college degree is better than a high school diploma, but why do we send out a message that without a college degree you’re doomed to failure? Instead, she went to secretarial school and then worked as a secretary at Wrangler jeans. However, her dream was to work in the music industry at a record company.

Finally, she was able to land a job as a secretary at RCA records. Most secretaries have a very poor image of their job. How many times have you heard one say, “I’m only the secretary here.” Of course, the fact that too many of them are treated poorly adds to that self-image. But not Brenda, she looked at the job as an opportunity and because of her “No problem attitude,” she was willing to do anything asked of her: working late, working weekends, relocating (3 times) and going way beyond her job description.

Of course, she was promoted and eventually moved on to bigger and better things with other companies. Today, she is the president of one of the most successful record labels in the business and one of the highest ranking women in the music industry. By the way, still no college degree.

My son Michael is taking a year off from college and is working full time as a pizza delivery man. He’s amazed at how many people look down upon him because of what he does, but is smart enough to know they’re essentially idiots. As his father, I can tell you this is the best thing he’s ever done, because I can see the benefits he has derived.

He has learned about the importance of showing up and showing up every day. He has learned how to deal with all sorts of customers and situations, an area where way too many executives could use some improvement. He has learned responsibility and most importantly, the value of a dollar. In nine months of working full time he has saved over $10,000! And, in case you were wondering, yes, I do charge him rent. I have a feeling he will learn more in this year than in the next 3 years at college.

I wonder how many successful executives, professionals and business owners got their start in one of those dead-end hamburger flipping jobs at McDonald’s? A job, any job, if nothing else, teaches you responsibility: show up on time, show up every day and work hard. What’s so bad about that? Everybody has to start somewhere.

Remember, there’s no such a thing as a "dead end job," just “dead end attitudes.”

Doing the “Hard” in Business & in Life

In business, and in life, I believe the willingness to do “the hard” is what truly separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Most people are only willing to do the easy, or, in most cases, what’s known as the minimum.

In business, most companies would rather cut their price than deliver extraordinary quality, service, convenience and value. Most companies would rather tell you “There’s nothing we can do about it,” or, “I’m sorry, that’s company policy,” than actually go out of their way to solve a client’s problems.

Even more incredible are the companies that judge the effectiveness of their customer service departments by how many calls they handle and not by how many customer complaints they turn around.

But the amazing thing about “doing the hard,” is that most of the time it’s not that hard. Differentiating yourself from the competition very often is quite easy, simply because there’s not a lot of competition. For example:

Showing up might seem like the easiest thing to do, but the reason that “Eighty percent of success is showing up,” is that most people don’t. The average salesperson’s lack of production can easily be traced back to the fact that they don’t see enough people.

Returning phone calls promptly takes no special talent, but have you ever wondered why so many clients seem overly appreciative when you call them back? Maybe it’s because hardly anyone does. I recently left a message for a salesperson saying I wanted to purchase a piece of equipment I had spoken to him about. He never called me back. Unfortunately, his was the only company that carries that equipment, so I couldn’t go elsewhere, but I did the next best thing: I called, spoke to a different salesperson, and gave him the business.

Follow up: getting back to people when you’re supposed to or when you promised. Whenever I arrive in a city to deliver a speech the first thing I do when arriving at the hotel is to call my client and let her know “I’m here, I’m fine and what room I’m in, in case anyone needs to speak to me.” This gives the client one less thing to worry about. What amazes me is the reaction of many of my clients when they receive my call: They are so overly grateful it gives me the impression that what I’ve done, while not being the least bit difficult, is obviously not done very often.

Admit it, you’re not the least bit surprised anymore when you receive bad service or someone fails to call you back, but I’ll bet very often you’re shocked beyond belief when just the opposite happens.

Doing the hard is what separates you from your competition and makes you great. But fortunately, for those of you willing to do it, thanks to a lack of competition, doing the hard is not as hard as it’s cracked up to be.

Networking

Stream it. Download it. Share it. Warren sounds off on networking, joining organizations, generating leads, customer service stories, and how to contact clients in a non-invasive ways. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Learn specific techniques that will help to: widen your circle of influence; become important in your community or industry; and generate you qualified leads that will increase your business.
 

Small Business & Happiness

An item in the November 21st 2005 edition of the New York Post stated:

"Those unhappy in their workplace are more likely to experience emotional burnout, have reduced self-esteem and suffer anxiety, researchers say."

It also found depression and anxiety are now the most common reasons for people starting to claim long-term sick benefits, surpassing ailments such as back pain.

The ironic thing about the above item is that I experienced its validity first-hand only two days before.

My wife Linda and I had been vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida with my friend Alan and his wife, Jean. Alan and I decided to get together with Howard, an old college friend of ours who now lives in West Palm Beach.

I hadn’t seen Howard in seven years. The last time I saw him he was the epitome of the above item from the Post. He was working a job he hated with a passion and for a boss he hated even more, yet seemed unable and too frightened to do anything about it. When I asked why he just didn’t quit and find something he really enjoyed doing, he came up with every excuse in the book. His confidence and self-esteem were non-existent and he was swallowing antacids as if they were movie candies.

Yet, eight years later the caterpillar had turned into a butterfly, and why? Because not too long after I’d last seen him in 1998, he quit his job and started a pet sitting business. Seven years later, he has hundreds of clients; two employees and best of all he loves every second of it. He’s a new person: far more self-assured, confident and assertive than I ever remember him being.

So much of who we are is defined by what we do for a living. When we meet people for the first time one of the first questions we ask them is, “What do you do?” Very often you can tell a lot about a person by the attitude and tone of voice behind that answer.

Those people who really love what they do give off an energy that can be contagious and inspiring. On the other hand, those who hate what they do can bring down a room faster than a wrecking ball.