And what about you?  How many ways do YOU find to avoid the obvious?  The obvious being that your business is your product, your only product, the product every single entrepreneur has invented to distinguish himself or herself in the world.

Like Starbucks is.  Or McDonald’s.  Or Apple.  Or Walmart.

I’ve got Howard Schultz’ book, ONWARD, on my desk, and have been dipping into it on and off.  Of course, if you don’t know who Howard Schultz is, he’s the Chairman and CEO and Founder of STARBUCKS, whose coffee I’m also drinking as I write this missive to you.

Mr. Schultz book is as entertaining (and potentially enlightening) as his coffee is dependably stimulating every morning.

I would suggest you read it.

It’s the story about how Mr. Schultz went back into STARBUCKS, the company, to readdress what was missing in his stores.

And how he did it.

And the reason I’m telling you that is because his is a perfect example of how asleep an entrepreneur can get when everything that’s going on in the world, and in the way his company is responding to it, gets all screwed up.

Anything going on in the world today that has the potential to screw up your company?

Well, of course there is.

Lots.

More than either of us can possibly deal with.

But, deal with it we must.

Yet, there are so many ways to avoid the obvious.

The distractions that keep you from working ON your company, rather than what you typically do every day – go to work IN it.   Doing all the little things that you just know NEED to be done, and of course, because you’re so damned good at doing all of them, that’s what you do.  Ignoring, at the same time the essential lesson of this column, that an entrepreneur – a true entrepreneur – doesn’t do anything OTHER than work ON his or her company, because working IN it won’t get you anything but what you already have.

I received an email from one of my young business mentees this morning.  He said to me, “Mr. Gerber, how am I supposed to remember how to do the entrepreneurial work you are constantly telling me I need to do, when everything my business is telling me is different?”

Great question, isn’t it?

My mentee believes that his business is telling him one thing, and I’m telling him exactly the opposite.

What a predicament!

But, the fact is actually quite different.

The fact is that my young mentee is listening to something he BELIEVES he’s being told, not what he is ACTUALLY being told.

What I’m telling him is, unless and until he persists – every single day! – in working ON his business, rather than IN it, his business will never improve, never produce anything more than what it’s producing today, and he, my mentee, will unfortunately live to pay the price for it.

His business won’t have to pay the price for it, because his business is the product of my mentee’s imagination.

His business isn’t alive, isn’t real, isn’t anything other than an idea, that has been put into motion by my mentee’s imagination, and is now doing what my mentee programmed it to do.

The BUSINESS isn’t talking to him; his TECHNICIAN is!

His TECHNICAN is telling him to go to work IN his business, not ON his business, because his TECHNICIAN doesn’t know how to do anything different from that.

So, listen to me, and stop listening to your own stupid voices.

Listen to me, rather than listening to your TECHNICIAN.

Listen to me, and stop avoiding the obvious.

That your business needs a wake-up call.

Just like STARBUCKS did!

And that wake-up call can ONLY come from you.

The entrepreneur within you.

The one who truly understands what Howard Schultz understands only too well.

That the life blood of every great company is the heightened imagination of its leader.

So, dear readers all, let’s wake it up!!

The leader within you.

And tell me what happens when you do!

-Michael E. Gerber 

 

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2 Comments for There Are So Many Ways to Avoid the Obvious | Working ON the Business

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