This is rather not my usual post on this blog, but I thought I’d share with you a slice of inspiration.
Yesterday I went to WholeFoods, looking for a French style dinner: old & creamy cheese, nuts and grapes. To my surprise, I was able to find a lot more that just a dinner: I found an idea, a slice of inspiration … on a cup.
As I was strolling down the colorful aisles, I was glancing randomly at the products on the shelves, when a black cup caught my attention. An interesting question was uncovered in less than one step around the cup: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? This got me thinking.
I stoppped for a minute and asked myself: what would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail? My first thought was: exactly what I’m doing now, but faster, better, bolder and bigger. Then, I realized that this is the only way to do something you strongly believe in.
If you have an idea grounded in a Need or a Want, go for it. There is no good enough reason not to do it — plan to succeed, be ambitious, persistent, bright, bold and fearless.
Cheers to you and a great 2009!
… Well, yes. Somebody must beautify the foreclosed residential properties before they go back into the marketplace. That’s everything from cleaning, repairs, flooring, lawn & pool services, etc. etc. etc. That’s what Cyprexx – a family owned business from Florida – decided to do back in 1999. And they did it pretty well.
From $150,000 in investments back in 1999, to almost $63 million in sales in 2008. From 6 employees to 260. Quite astonishing.
Their key to success? “The same, classic reasons for most business success: do your job well, work hard, be honest, keep trying, accept reasonable risks, and be ready when opportunity knocks.”
Well, it may be the same classic reason, but Cyprexx did all these things really well. And that is not easy.
Let’s pick one of their ingredients for success: let’s talk about reasonable risk taking. How many companies really accept taking any risks today? Risk taking sounds bold, exciting, “I-want-it-too” type of thing. But how many really go for it? The bigger a company grows, the lower its appetite for risk taking. You get the picture. It’s a fact.
Is your company stuck in the paper world, or is it moving like a cheetah?
Let’s see .. never heard of Concept One Accessories? Consider this: did you ever buy major League Baseball accessories? How about Looney Tunes stuff? If these two do not ring a bell (although … what is that hat you’re wearing?)), maybe NBA stuff sounds somewhat familiar.
If you ever bougth any of these brands along with tens of other major brands, chances are you have brought Concept One Accessories home with you. And if that is correct, then you are part of Sam’s story (no, not Uncle Sam) with Concept One Accessories.
Sam Hafif started his company back in 1999. He was 32 when that happened. Back in 1999, Sam knew what ticket to bet his money on: best of the best talent, to help him build his dream. Sam’s company was featured in 2008 in Entrepreneur’s HOT 100 The Fastest-Growing businesses in America. This is an honorable nomination and a well deserved one.
If you don’t know what that means, let me contextualize this for you: out of the nearly 21 million US businesses, only 0.3% (64,000 businesses) meet the set criteria for being considered for HOT 100. Out of 64,000, only 0.00156% makes it to the HOT 100 list. If you think percentages, one’s chance to get on that list is … well: extremely thin.
In spite of all this, Concept One Accessories is growing healthy and fast and according to Sam Hafif, the key to success is hiring the best of the best.
Is recruting the best of the best talent on top of your list of priorities?
When asked what success is for him, John Viskup brilliantly answered: “Constantly striving to achieve the goals that we have set in place; we believe that the moment we stop moving towards our goals, we become the obstacle.”
Similar with Heisenberg’s keen observation on quantum physics*, John intuitively knew that moving towards the set goals and achieving success are conjugate variables. Once one stops moving, the other one stops happening.
John Viskup and his partner – Jim Sponder – established Victory Energy back in 1999. It may seem like a long time ago, if you omit to understand what it takes to build a company in the manufacturing sector — and we don’t mean Just Any Company, but A Leading boiler supplier within the ethanol industry .
To best understand the dynamic of Victory Energy, let’s put an HR lens on. Looking through the HR lens, the growth of Victory Energy from 3 employees (back in 1999) to 320 employees (in 2008) looks like this: 317 employees hired in about 9 years, which in average means about 35 new employees per year, which further means about 3 new employees each month, which it’s not simple when we talk about manufacturing boilers. But this is only a way to look at it, the other way to look at it is: add perseverance, energy and time to a great idea and you have produced yourself a Success.
Note*: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle says that the values of certain pairs of conjugate variables (position and momentum, for instance) cannot both be known with arbitrary precision
De-Lux.TV is a new breed of marketing shop focusing on building quality transactions in the high-end real estate market. De-Lux.tv’s helps real estate brokers sell high-end properties faster, while facilitating high-end buyers’ access and comprehension of what’s out there for sale, that would meet their sophisticated demands.
We interviewed De-Lux.tv’s CEO – David Sheba and we’d like to share with you some of the thinking driving his company:
- TheFastestGrowing: What do you consider to be your biggest business opportunity in 2009?
David Shiba: I’m betting that real estate will come back in the 2nd half of 2009 and that consumers will be demanding much more from real estate professionals when both buying and selling a home. The assumption that a home is your best investment has been shattered.
- TFG: Portray A Day at Work
DS: Maintaining a disciplined schedule is important to stay productive. At 5:45am is a 10 minute dog walk, through 8:30am is research on blogs, a bit of investing and studying, the remainder is focused on building out the business model, making sales calls and networking. I enjoy cooking, so at 6pm or so, I prepare dinner for my wife and I.
- TFG: Name 3 things you would do better in 2009 to grow your company
DS: I do best when focusing on one thing at a time. For 2009 my goal is to stop tweaking my business model and to get out there and sell.
- TFG: What were the key milestones in your company’s success?
DS: Average pricing of $4,000 per-client, 5% closing rate and 100 new prospects per-month
- TFG: Was your business affected by the current recession? How?
DG: The current recession was the reason I launched my business
- TFG: What competitive advantage do you have over your main competitor?
DS: My focus is on the highest end of the market with the most expensive and comprehensive service. I service the highest 2% of the market.
- TFG: What competitive advantage does your main competitor have over you?
DS: Existing client base and playing to the typical, unsophisticated real estate agent.
- TFG: Who are your most wanted clients for 2009 and 2010?
DS: Individual sellers of homes with a value of $2 million or more.
- TFG: Do you judge a book by its cover?
DS: No, but I am attracted to a book by its cover
- TFG: Who are the 5 people you would call in case of emergency?
DS: I would likely just call the two people in my immediate family
- TGF: What are the things you enjoy most?
DS: A glass of wine with my wife with our dog beside us
Learning: Zig when other people Zag. Launch a business when you feel that the time is right, not when everybody knows that the time would have been right a while ago.
Robert Keane, CEO and Chairman of Vista print shared a while ago an interesting insight into VistaPrint’s success:“The marketing prowess we have in Janet’s (Janet Holian, VP Marketing) team and the 100-plus people doing direct marketing, we spend significantly more money on marketing and direct marketing than we do on printing. We spend about 20% of revenues on printing, low 20s and mid 30s in terms of marketing. Secondly, we have six-plus years of software developing in over 100 people in the technology and development group, and those – both marketing, tech and development, are growing roughly in line with revenues.” What can we learn from Robert’s comment of his company’s success? – having a great product is an essential, but letting people know about is paramount to your success – a product which is excellent today must be improved to remain competitive tomorrow – direct marketing works miracles – especially when you do it skillfully If you like numbers, here are some related to VistaPrint: “revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2007 surged 73% to $50 million and net income came in at $6 million, up from $2.9 million in the same period a year ago”. These are pretty impressive numbers, especially if you think about the fact that this on-line business serves small business customers, like you and me. It is even more impressive if you experience their services and notice how fast and well they respond to their customers and how their products are as good as they say they are. Is your marketing in-tune with your goals? If success is really what you want, there is only one answer to this question.
Guy is Managing Director and Chairman at Garage Technology Ventures. Above and beyond Guy’s impressive business card, he is a great thinker and an inspiration for people with great ideas. His voice inspires people not only to dream, but to go for their dreams and learn how to articulate these dreams in a way that inspire other people to follow them and make them happen.
As a general rule, Guy has a good habit of closing the gap between “what you say” and “what you do”.
Here are some of Guy’s statements and ideas:
“I made a lot of mistakes in my career”.
“This book reflects what I should have done, what I could have done, sometimes … what I did do”
“I would like to pass on what I’ve learned in many cases the hard way to you, a group of entrepreneurs and I hope that you can take this information and change the World”
“Are they (the people you are about to hire) infected with the love of your product?”
Best (3) reasons to start a company:
“Increase the quality of life”
“To right a wrong”
“To prevent the end of something good”
All these ideas and guiding principles have been actively practised by Guy – the Apple evangelizer, Guy – the co-founder of AllTops.com and Guy – the Writer.
If you feel low on inspiration, check out guy’s Art of the Start speech at: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html or The Art of the Start book on Amazon.
Get your Inspiration Fix and get to work. It’s far easier to lose than it is to succeed. Yet, it’s far more rewarding to succeed than to lose.
Treat yourself with success.
Seth is what I would call an inspired, bold and successful entrepreneur who decided that life is too short to waste it fighting corporate wars. That’s one of the reasons why I have a huge respect for him, but there is a lot more to say about Seth than just that.
Seth wrote quite a few books teaching entrepreneurs and large companies how to thrive in the XXIst century, during times when people no longer obey the TV set, they demand to be treated with respect by marketers, while they only react to ideas which are worth talking about.
The main reason why I wanted to bring Seth in the spotlight of our Blog is to share with you, our dear reader, Seth’s view on Criticism: So, why haven’t you and your team launched as many Purple Cows (great ideas) as you’d like?
Fear. Not just fear of failure. Fear of failure is actually overrated as an excuse. Why? Because if you work for someone, then more often than not the actual cost of failure is absorbed by the organization, not you. If your product launch fails, they’re not going to fire you. The company will make a bit less money and move on.
What people are afraid of isn’t failure. It’s blame. Criticism. We don’t choose to be remarkable because we’re worried about criticism”.
What you need to do is dare to go out there and talk about your ideas, you opinions, your experiences. Expose yourself to potential criticism, but also to potential success. Dare to be different. Yes, you’ll get some critique along the way but you will stand a better chance to Succeed.
Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. That’s the name of the group.
Rich Melman is the guy at the helm of 38 yummy restaurants. Magiano’s Lillte Italy, Wow Bao, Vong’s Thai Chicken, Mon Ami Gabi, and I can go on and on.
What’s unique about Rich? We think: Innovation.
“Every good idea that I ever have starts with me getting excited about a product. When I get the goosebumps, that’s when I know that that’s where I want to go”. I could have not said it better than Rich.
Goosebumps are a good indicator for great ideas. They are also an indicator for other things, but if you want to focus on entrepreneurial ideas and how to tell a great one from a bad one, the goosebumps work.
If any of the above mentioned restaurants ring a bell to you, then you know what Rich is referring to when he talks about how he feels a great idea.
Rich is my type of guy: he is opinionated and has an interesting take on Change. He shares with us his formula on how to go beyond words, and get to facts: “I have a theory that you should make a change every week in your business; even if it’s small. At then, at the end of the year, you don’t have to worry about big changes. Big changes are scary”.
Maybe this is what we all should do: implement a Bite-size Change program.
The entertainment industry teaches us the same lesson: one bite today, another bite tomorrow and when you want to quit, you realize you are hooked.
This is a neat concept: Hooked into Change.
Just start it.
One great thing has the power to fascinate us — but how about three?
Google, Chicago and Jim Lecinski.
I believe you know quite a bit about our dear companion — Google. And you may know a bit about Chicago too.
That’s why I want to focus now on Jim Lecinski’s story. Jim is a fascinating guy.
42, smart, well spoken, passionate about what he does, refreshing in his approach to business — all in all: he’s all you wish to find in a business man.
His story fascinates me for we have a connection: the World of Advertising — Digital Advertising.
Jim oversees now the Google advertising business and the Google offices in Chicago, Detroit, Denver and Dallas. He qualifies for what we would normally call: a very busy guy.
But his roots are in the word of Ad Agencies. With one exception: two weeks after receiving his MBA, he was hired by Arthur Andersen. 60 breakfasts later, Jim and his team were welcome with “Hello, you’re fired”. Quite perplexing, but so not surprising 20 years later (today).
Long story short, Jim turned a “you are fired” type of situation into a new opportunity in the World of Advertising and one lead to another, and Jim joined Google a few years ago. He is doing a great job at Google. Google is lucky to have Jim.
If you want to know Jim’s advice: “After my Andersen experience, I realized things won’t always go according to the plan. But don’t worry. Things work out.”
So, what today may be called Failure, Tomorrow could be your greatest opportunity. Think about Jim and Google. Two great stories; or better said: one great story now.
If you wan to read an interesting interview with Jim — Jim telling his story — take a look at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-path-jim-lecinski-googlejun22,0,1972245.story
What’s your story?
If you want your story to be penciled by one of our bloggers and featured on The Fastest Growing blog, ping us at services@cgadvertising.com
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