Starting Your Business: Avoiding the “Built-In Me” Syndrome
Many people who want to start a business have similar motives for their ambitions. They typically seek autonomy from an employer, freedom, or control over their own destiny, which also means they can determine their own income, work hours, job duties, and career path. However, when starting a business, it becomes immediately apparent why many entrepreneurs describe their position as “head cook and bottle washer.” This is another way of saying, in the absence of someone else to take care of all the major and minor tasks that need to be done to run the business, it is the entrepreneur who has to do it all.
Sweeping floors, taking out trash, cleaning counters, answering phones, serving customers, packing, shipping, billing, receiving, repairing, bookkeeping, marketing: performing these tasks, as well as anything else that needs to be done, is all in a day’s work for the entrepreneur. The businessman becomes a jack of all trades and also falls into a trap. This scenario bodes well for a prediction: the business will never grow. This is because in the beginning, when the entrepreneur’s imagination should have run wild with “blue sky” possibilities popping up in his head, there was only one general compulsion, which was to rush and print the headline “President.” in the new business cards of the entrepreneur. The businessman was already afflicted with the “Me Incorporated” syndrome.
The above job description also explains why some displaced corporate executives starting businesses are unprepared for their new roles as business owners. Now they have to do everything; but, they were trained as specialists who operated in silos. They never had to clean the toilet or polish the brass railings in “Behemoth Worldwide.” Their jobs there didn’t prepare them to survive on the “mean streets of Entrepreneur Town.” They cannot deal with the ambiguity and uncertainty that surrounds entrepreneurs, who must create their own destiny and fly without a manual. His job was to keep his mouth shut, fit in, and say, “Yeah, boss, that’s a great idea.” [which you stole from me, you wheezing, blundering, conniving, drooling…idiot].”
So as not to go on a full-blown rant about large corporations and the drone-like behavior they seem to thrive on (not to mention ethics breaches and other shenanigans), let me stop here and return to the main topic of this article. . . Suffice it to say that you want to start your own business and you have your own reasons.
Since I have explained the outcome of “Me Incorporated” syndrome, it would be appropriate for me to discuss cause and effect, so that the affliction can be avoided. Let’s start with how you should think about your business in the beginning. Now hang with me folks, I’m going to talk about imagination, crayons, scissors, and pasta, and you’ll consider me a little over the edge for a few moments.
Before starting a business, there are no restrictions on the thoughts you are entitled to have. When you’re in the planning stages, now’s not the time to hush up anything that comes to mind. There will be plenty of time for you to deal with the impediments after you start the business. Feel free to doodle, draw, color, paint, cut out shapes, and assemble anything you like. Draw other people a picture that’s clear as a bell and show them what you’re made of. It is your vision. Make it big and bold, and add a sprinkle of pure crazy colored sugar sprinkles. Many phenomenally successful inventions were created by people who proved to be geniuses rather than lunatics, only that was after they had been successful.
As an example, suppose you imagine, instead of a sandwich shop, starting a chain of sandwich shops across the city. These stores could benefit from efficiencies of scale. Did you know that everything you’ve printed, like napkins, menus, mugs, and sandwich wrappers in this case, is cheaper in bulk? If you print 1000 of something, for a few dollars more, you probably could have printed 2500. Most things are “cheaper by the dozen.”
A few other examples of efficiencies are worth mentioning here, to get your imagination fully engaged. I once served a group of franchise business owners who wanted to collaborate and buy publicity, acting together, rather than separately. First, I helped them draft a cooperation agreement. You should know that even though each provided the same services, customers would realistically do business with the franchise owner whose store was closest. In other words, customers who were located downtown were doing business with the downtown store; customers who were located on the east side of town did business with that store, and so on. Technically, these stores were in competition with each other, but not really.
Store owners purchased a large ad in the yellow phone book and divided it up to have plenty of space to promote not only their individual locations, but also their brand and the features and benefits associated with their services. Any given single location could not have allowed all of that to be conveyed; Acting like a bunch of blind men, they could.
Most of all advertising is local advertising. Family businesses advertise to consumers in their respective market areas. Your only sandwich shop, going it alone, definitely can’t afford TV advertising. However, with five or ten stores in a city, a chain of sandwich shops can probably do it. Television could be a great medium to show the satisfied faces of customers consuming your delicious culinary creations, if only your vision required it. Purchasing supplies, advertising, groceries, and whatever else can probably be accomplished more efficiently when you’re acting on behalf of multiple stores.
Let’s also talk about the personal. Instead of rushing to become president, you should think about becoming CEO. In that role, his job is to be the visionary and builder of the team. “What are the requirements to become a successful store manager?” is the question you should ask yourself. In case you didn’t follow my leap of reasoning, you need ten of those store managers in our what-if scenario. You’re the CEO, remember? Their role is to hire and motivate, compensate, and grow the company as a whole. His main responsibilities are planning, consulting with other team leaders, taking the pulse of the markets in which he operates, understanding the economy and meeting unmet customer needs. As an entrepreneur, by definition, meeting unmet needs is the thing to do in business.
“Where do I get the money?” You can ask. Have you ever thought about the fact that you can “sell” the notion of higher ROI more effectively when you’re driving a more imaginative and stronger plan? Many small businesses, afflicted with the “Built-In” Syndrome, will do nothing more than fight and wear out their owners, who are doing too much, for too long, and for too little. Eventually, both businesses and owners will submerge under the waters of insolvency and sink to the bottom of the corporate sea, or be eaten alive by larger, better-adapted predators.
It’s just as easy to say, “All I need is $973,000 to fund the opening of ten highly competitive, efficiently run, heavily marketed, and professionally run sandwich shops,” as it is to say, “Mom, Dad, I was hoping if you could lend me $2,000 for the first and last month’s rent at a sandwich shop.” No, it’s not a typo. I meant to say “sandwish” shop, because that’s what it is. It’s a dodgy proposition from an unimaginative would-be entrepreneur, who has already demonstrated a lack of foresight or ability to think beyond himself. It’s one thing to launch a new company, but another thing to continue without any of the creative juices flowing from it. If you think “me, me, me” all the time, then you won’t think about sharing the work, sharing the profits, or building a team.
No, you will do everything yourself. No thanks to all the other people who have let you down. There is no one who can make a “sandwish” better than you. They also can’t run the cash register, take a delivery, or do anything else as well as you can. “Oh baby, baby, you’re the best!”
To avoid the “Embedded Me” syndrome, you must create strategic and tactical plans that represent your solutions for recruiting, hiring, training, developing, compensating, and retaining people. You need to have external resources lined up to accomplish what is not done internally. You need a detailed marketing plan, including the product, price, advertising, facility, delivery, and customer satisfaction processes you will use. Similarly, you need a financial plan, an operations plan, a technology plan, and contingency plans to manage disruptions and business risk. Regardless of what you planned to write, just add zeros, because that’s what it takes to start a real business and run it correctly, so everyone gets their money back, along with a profit.
You probably won’t have time to do all this planning after being overwhelmed with the responsibilities of managing all aspects of running your business yourself. It will be too late by then, because you will already be stuck in a quagmire.
Before you take the entrepreneurial step, decide what type of business you want to create. If you ask for something bigger and justify it, you may have a chance to make it happen. What is the alternative? You’ll be in charge of your own little fiefdom, not knowing how things could have been, if only you had thought a little more, a little harder, a little bigger, and a little less about how you could do every little thing. all by yourself, either planning to keep all the winnings or avoiding reality thinking you could improvise forever.
Put down that “sandwish” and think beyond what you can do yourself, and focus on what you can imagine. The transcontinental railroad that runs the length of the United States was built one rail link at a time, but the plan was always to connect the East Coast to the West Coast (and a bigger part of this vision was to connect the East Coast to goods shipped). by traders from places like China and India). If you can imagine, articulate, sell, and implement a business concept that involves serving, employing, partnering, leading, and encouraging others, you’re probably cured.
