The Facts of Business Life (50 page)

Knowledge, as the saying goes, is power. And that's as true in business as it is in every other endeavor. As I have essentially argued throughout this book, you don't just have to know the business you're in, you have to know business. In other words, while the first six Facts of Business Life are all essential tools for you to use in starting, building, maintaining, and eventually leaving your business, the seventh fact is ultimately the one that ties them all together.

The market is a very rough place, and there's no room at the top for people who aren't willing to do what has to be done to be successful. Ultimately, though, what is comes down to is owner vs. owner, and it's the owners who have the most business skills and knowledge who will always remain standing while their competitors wonder how they are able to do what they do so well.

Conclusion

Success—it's why owners do what they do. And one of the really cool things about success is that you have the freedom to define what success means for you and your business. Unfortunately, that freedom is also a trap. The trap lies in that if you don't define success for yourself in financial terms and map out how you will achieve that success, the odds of your business failing or having limited success are significantly higher. That's just the way it is. But it's your choice.

Success, in my mind, is made up of two macro realities. First, having defined what success means to you, you need to have the courage and drive to commit yourself to achieving it. Second, in order to improve and grow your business, you have to be willing to try new and different ideas and take additional risks. It's true that when you do this, mistakes—and even failure—will sometimes result. But failure can be a bittersweet pill because by learning from your mistakes and understanding why they occurred, you can turn them into opportunities you may have never realized existed if you hadn't tried to stretch and improve your business.

For example, after nearly 100 years, Babe Ruth is still a baseball icon, especially for the home runs he hit. The truth is, though, that while he hit an extraordinary number of home runs, he had nearly twice as many strikeouts. Even so, he would never have hit the home runs he did if he hadn't stretched his talent and learned from his strike outs. Michael Jordan understood this success/failure concept as well as any athlete has. He was cut from his high school basketball team, and was not heavily recruited for college. He's even admitted that, “I've missed more than a thousand shots. I've lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed.” But like the Babe, he took his mistakes, or failures, in stride, and used them to make him a better player. And the result, of course, is that he became one of the greatest professional athletes in the history of sports. And it's no different in business. If you want to succeed, you have to continuously challenge yourself and your business to improve. And if you don't, it will leave you and your business to the not-so-tender mercies of your competitors who do.

One of the other particularly interesting things about success is that, to some extent, it is an elusive target. It's not that you can't attain it, but rather, that as your ownership career develops, your definition of success changes. This happens because once you reach your success destination, moving on to another success destination doesn't look as formidable as it once did. It's the competitiveness in you, which continually drives you and your business forward, through Levels 3, 4, and 5. In fact, when most successful owners look back on their careers, they realize that where they finished is not where they thought they would end up. This happens because in your search to improve and challenge your business, you are essentially always changing your definition of success. And this, in fact, is one of the great benefits of being a business owner—having the flexibility to create something better, if you choose, and ending up with greater success than you ever dared to dream about.

There is one last point I would like to make. On the day you welcome your first customer, you will be beginning a marathon in which you will be competing not just against other companies in the marketplace, but against time. A successful ownership career is measured in time, usually decades, and it goes by faster than you can imagine, especially when you look back on it as I have on mine. You remember the successes and how they were achieved, and you remember the painful experiences and realize what you learned from them. You remember the great partners who teamed up with you, and the great employees who helped make your dream a reality. And you realize that all of these individuals changed your life, as you hope you changed theirs, knowing that together you beat the odds and proved wrong those who said it couldn't be done.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. And enjoy the ride.

About the Author

A graduate of Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta, and the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, William (Bill) McBean began his career with General Motors of Canada Limited (GM) in 1976. After holding several management positions with GM, in 1981 he accepted a position with the Bank of Nova Scotia (ScotiaBank) as manager of a sizeable commercial lending portfolio. Two years later, however, GM approached him about opening a new automobile dealership in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and, along with ScotiaBank, offered to lend him the required capital. Accepting the offer, he started the business the following year, and it became profitable from the outset.

Although the Yorkton business became one of the most profitable GM dealerships in the region, in 1992 McBean was presented with an even greater opportunity in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he and his friend Bill Sterett purchased an underperforming automobile dealership. Applying his business expertise, McBean not only turned the company around, but bought out several additional poorly-performing import and domestic automobile franchises. Under his leadership, the company grew from $32 million to $160 million in sales and from 75 to 300 employees over a period of 11 years. During that period, the car manufacturers he represented continually awarded him and his companies honors for business excellence. Because of its success, the automotive group attracted the interest of several major public companies, and in 2003 was purchased by AutoNation, the world's largest automotive retailer.

Both before and since selling the group, McBean has started several new businesses, and he is currently general partner of McBean Management, an investment company. He is also executive director and chairman of the board of both
Our-mentor.com
, which provides mentoring to business owners (including buying and selling companies), and Net Claims Now, which provides companies in the restoration industry with invoicing, collection, and business lead-generation services. McBean and his wife, Lynnda, reside in both Texas and Florida.

Index

A-list products

Accounting and finance

Added value

Advertising

Amazon

Apollo 13 mission

Apple Computer

Ashley Furniture

Asset protection

Assets/asset sale

Automotive sales

Balance sheet

Barnes & Noble

Benchmarking

Bennis, Warren

Brands

Business acumen

Business failures

Business knowledge

Business life

Business life cycle

Business plan.
See also Planning

Business purpose

Business success

Business valuation

Cash and cash flow analysis

Cash flow statements

Caterpillar

Coca-Cola

Collins, Jim

Communication skills

Company assets

Company culture

Competitive advantage

Competitive analysis.
See also Marketplace as war zone

Competitiveness

Consistency

Control

Control balance

Core values

Covey, Steven

Creating company's DNA (Level 2)

Customer base

Customer delivery

Customer-employee-owner dynamic

Customer retention

Customers

Data mining

Decision making, on facts not emotions

Destination

Dillard's Department

Drucker, Peter

The E-Myth
(Gerber)

E*Trade

Economy, Peter

Employee-owner dynamic

Employees

Empowerment

Encyclopedia of Business and Finance
(Kaliski)

Ethical environment

Exiting a business.
See also Moving on (Level 5)

External marketing

Family business

Fannie Mae

Finance

Financial forecast

Financial statements

Ford Motor Company

“Gears of War” video game

General Motors

Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)

Gerber, Michael

Goals and objectives

Good to Great
(Collins)

Goodwill

Gross profit

Harley-Davidson

Improvement goals

Income (profit-and-loss) statement

Industry knowledge

Information

Internal financial information

Internal marketing

John Deere

Kaliski, Burton

Key jobs

Killer instinct

Killing ground

Kouzes, James M.

Kranz, Eugene

Kroc, Ray

Law of diminishing returns

Leaders

Leadership