Loyalty | Entrepreneurship, Bootstrapping A Business, Bootstrap Business, Start A Business

Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

Friday, June 6th, 2008

Small businesses have a tendency to grow a little. The founders move out of the garage and into an office. Part-time and then full-time employees start to appear. Business goes well–and then it hits an almost invisible hump. Well before bootstrapping is over, the business is too big for the founders to run on their own. As the giants, the founders hunker down and brace themselves under the heft of the team standing on their shoulders. Somewhere in there, reality strikes. The team has to step forward and the founders have to roll the responsibility onto their shoulders. If the founders hold on too long, they collapse under the weight. If the team steps off early and isn’t ready, the founders watch as their fledgling company crushes their workers. When giants are working with humans, it takes maturity, balance, and vision to keep the company rolling forward.

“It’s tricky for the owners to let go,” Rich says. “You see companies where the owners can’t let go and it crashes and burns.” It takes maturity for a founder to do what is best for the business. Think of it. You’ve lost sleep over this. You’ve sacrificed family time (hopefully not all of it). Whatever it is you’ve done, you’ve poured your heart and soul into your enterprise. If the company grows, you can’t baby it forever–but by the same token, growth isn’t necessarily eternal. Walking that line means making decisions with your head as well as with your heart. You love the feel of that team standing on your shoulders. Each colossal step forward shakes the earth. But giant though you be, you’re still a mortal. Be mature enough to trust your team.

Trusting your team and shouldering the burden is always a delicate balance at first. They didn’t keep a futon in the office for six months. They have a steady income. They haven’t seen everything you have, so shifting the burden starts with little things. “A great example is this monitor,” Rich points out, one that had died a few days earlier. The team member poked his head into Rich’s office and asked what to do. Rich remembers how before, he might have dealt with the problem himself. Now? “What are you going to do about it?” he asked. Obviously the owners keep their eyes on things, but having your eyes on a project is different from being up to your ears in it. Ron adds that “one of the things we’ve also seen is that we’ve got guys . . . who’ve come from more of a corporate background. [Their] initial attitude is, ‘Those guys are the founders. They’ll take care of it.’” Ron shakes his head. “Some of it’s environmental, but some of it’s physiological.” Some team members naturally invest themselves in the survival of the business. Others need to learn. For both, there is only one way.

That way is the vision. Helping your employees catch this vision at the appropriate time keeps things rolling. “So oftentimes people look at the physical compensation,” Rich says. “Typically, that’s the smallest compensation in a company of this nature. What [our team is] using, five-year-college-grads couldn’t get the knowledge.” They need to lose sleep the way the owners lose sleep. They don’t just have to sweat deadlines; they have to sweat bullets. “Give guidance, direction, and incentive,” Ron says. Rewards or profit-sharing programs help take the team from balance to vision. For me, if I stick this out, I have a career path. If I don’t, I putter along and fizzle out. In bootstrapping, make or break is not one day or one deal. Make or break is the whole tenor of the work. Humans have to step down and race forward. Giants have to let work roll onto the team’s shoulders. When that happens, fire doesn’t belong alone to the bellies of the founders. Fire fills the office, the enterprise, and the vision of the future.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Loyalty, Bootstrap Business, Accountability, The Team, Peter V. Hilton | Comments Off

Irreplaceable

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

What a week! Sorry I have neglected the updates as of late- a little over a week ago I came down with a hearty cough (among other things) that disrupted the schedule for a few days. I came in to work Tuesday- and I must’ve looked a little frightening because I was sent home around lunchtime. The office didn’t want to risk any sort of wide-spread contamination. Thinking I just had some sort of run of the mill cold, I came in Thursday morning (just a part-timer for the moment, finishing school next week!) to give it another go. I wasn’t considering going home until I saw the looks in the team’s faces…and was invited to go home and rest. Rich, Ron and I decided to do our edit meeting for the day over the phone. (It’s harder for germs to get through that way…) When I answered the phone, however, I couldn’t even vocalize a proper greeting. My pitiful little plight was met with the response, “Hang up. Get better. We’ll see you next week.”

I know what you’re thinking. Crazy, huh?

This got me thinking about one of the chapters in the book, Climb High, Sleep Low. Rich tells a story about a business trip to England he took to meet with his boss and mentor, Dr. Peter Horne. When summoned across the pond Rich’s life had reach maximum capacity, too full for leisure time, and even too full for family. When he arrived in Peter’s office, Peter told Rich something that has stuck with him: “You can replace anything in life. You can replace a job, a car, money, anything, but you can’t replace your health, your trust relationships, or your family.”

By and large, this advice fueled the entrepreneurial fire in Rich. He wanted and needed to create businesses that reflected this ideal- to make room for his family, to allow himself and the people he works with to be human beings, and to invest in his future health and happiness. This phone call last week shows that he has achieved that balance. My health mattered to them, as much as it did to me, as does finishing my education. Because Rich and Ron created this company together, they get to make the rules. And it just so happens that the rules allow for a cold every once in awhile and a hectic finals week, for which I am very grateful.

The trouble with this kind of a human office, quite truthfully, is that it can be taken advantage of. However, I don’t like to see it from that point of view. I would like to think that trust and respect for life events and priorities would lead team members to fill a higher sense of duty and encourage them to work to their best ability because of their integrity. (Novel idea, huh?) We’ve all had (or maybe some of you haven’t…lucky you) the kind of job where they make you “clock out” to use the bathroom and where you are expected to get through the day as long as you can be on your feet, regardless of how you feel. Yes, that kind of policy will illicit long hours and the fulfillment of duty- but isn’t it preferable to be treated like an adult, be allowed wiggle room for life, and work up to your potential because you want to? I think so.

irreplaceable

Posted in Human Business, Loyalty, The office | 1 Comment »

Priority

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

A special emphasis is given throughout the book, and here in the office, on priorities. Rich and Ron believe whole-heartedly in the idea of always keeping priorities straight throughout the entrepreneurial roller coaster. Life is not constant, and never will be. But our priorities should be. There will always be something else that we could do, another opportunity or responsibility that can come up, that can cause us to push the important people and things into the background. Often we think it is just temporary, but many times it can become a permanent negligence. Especially in the world of entrepreneurship where so many sacrifices have to be made, it is so important that there are certain things we are never willing to sacrifice. For Rich and Ron, these things include the safety and security of their families, their relationships with their spouses, and very importantly, and frequently neglected in our world today, their relationships with their children. They are both so intimately involved in their family’s lives, and no matter what happens at work, continue to keep those relationships strong.
I learned personally the importance of this concept this last week, as I lost my cousin in a tragic car accident. She was only twenty-two years old, and was returning to Utah after spending Thanksgiving with her family in Seattle. The loss of someone we love seems to always cause us to re-evaluate our lives and our priorities. Seeing a life cut short so unexpectedly has made me reflect on my life, and truly face the fact that I may have neglected relationships, goals, and many things I enjoy. And what do I sacrifice these things for? It seems always to be something that is only temporarily important, but that takes priority. Maybe I don’t see an old friend because I have to study for a test. Or I have put off spending time with my brother and sister because I feel too stressed with work. As I have reflected over the last few days, the most important thing I have realized is that it should not take a loss so great for us to see the important things more clearly. We should not regret that we did not spend more time with someone only after we have lost them.
As Rich and Ron discuss in the book, the goal of entrepreneurship should not just be making money. In life we need to have a drive for the things we do. When we have pure motives for our actions, such as desiring to be successful in order to provide security to our family, or in order to participate in humanitarian causes, our most important relationships will not be sacrificed, because they are the reason we work so hard. The death of someone so close to me will never be easy to understand, but it has helped me to think about my motives for doing the things I put my time into. I have learned how important it is that I commit to keeping my priorities, no matter what comes up. The right priorities shouldn’t just be important when we have time for them to be.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Bootstrapping, The Search for Guidance, Loyalty, Bootstrap Business, Family, The office, The $5,000 Millionaire | 1 Comment »

First BIG Reward

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

A little while ago I wrote an entry about rewarding yourself. I explained our goal/ reward system here in the office, and laid out our main goals for the summer. I was excited to get some good feedback! I think it’s time to do a little checking and find out if we adhered to our own philosophy, and how it helped us out along the way.

My main responsibility is editing the book and making sure we’re making progress. Accordingly, a first stepping stone or interim goal was to have 5 chapters of the book done and the book proposal outlined and ready to fill in. We wanted to take each chapter (which, at the time, were what Rich and Ron call “mud”) and make sure the ideas were innovative, coherent, and that we were keeping our promises with regard to telling real stories, applicable to real entrepreneurs. The reward for completing that goal was lunch, on the office. The BIG goal for the entire summer was to finish 10 chapters of the book, along with the book proposal, before August 1st. When we made that goal I was to receive a BIG reward: plane tickets home for my wedding celebrations in Massachusetts on August 10th. (John and I are getting married out west, but going home to celebrate with family and friends out east, too!) Other Goals/rewards included: Getting all the office work caught up, for which I received a weekend with Rich’s Z3. Also, Ron finishing the initial white paper project of the summer, after which Rich and Ron went golfing.

The Criteria for the reward system were as follows:

1) Donâ€™t forget to reward yourself! If you set a reward and donâ€™t follow though, youâ€™ll lose trust in yourself and motivation to get things done. 2) Chose something that motivates and inspires you, and vary the rewards so that you always have something to be excited about.

The big announcement today is that YES, we got it all done! 10 Chapters, ready to be added to the first official draft our the book! Along the way we reached the interim goal, and enjoy a nice lunch at Zupas. I have to admit, at that point I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of work left ahead. It was a nice time to take a break and appreciate how far we had already come, regroup, and plan specifically how we planned on accomplishing the rest of our goal. For this final push, it was really nice to have a final goal AND a reward to shoot for. I’ve been getting all caught up in wedding preparations and could have easily been very distracted. Instead, I knew what I was shooting for. We had a clear goal outlined and an exciting (very exciting) reward planned. As a result, I was able to push through and do what I had to do to get it done. I can’t wait to fly out to Massachusetts- I can’t believe that we’re already three months down the road with this project! Time to enjoy the reward, and then gear up for another big push.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Human Business, Bootstrapping, Erin Hattaway, Loyalty | 1 Comment »

No Secrets

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

I seem to write about money a lot.Â I’m learning that in order to be successful at maintaining and growing your small business, you have to know where your money is at all times.Â Big corporations may have the advantage of having huge budgets and big backers- but they don’t have the flexibility that a small company has in managing it.Â Rich and Ron have a system for handling their accounts receivable that I’ve never seen anywhere else.Â A couple weeks ago, we updated the “board.”Â The AR board is where Rich and Ron list, in detail, the people/companies that owe them money, how much money is owed, and when it’s due.Â Right now, by simply turning my head, I can see how much money we’re meant to get and when.Â What may be scary about this system is that anyone can know at any time how many accounts the business is handling, if they’re making money or riding on reserves, or if people are reluctant to pay.Â On the other hand, I am able to properly handle different types of relationships with supplier/customers as they come in/call, and feel like a part of a team.Â The knowledge I’m entrusted with helps me to feel invested and responsible for all aspects of the business, not just my specific jobs of editing and answering phones.Â It wouldn’t work in a larger environment- but it’s a perk of being and entrepreneur and a small business owner.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Loyalty, Escalation, Bootstrap Business | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Loyalty’ Category

Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

Irreplaceable

Priority

First BIG Reward

No Secrets

Pages

Archives

Categories