Over the next few months I’m going to share stories and excerpts from my new book, “Uncomplicate Business: All It Takes Is People, Time, and Money.” The book comes out in October 2015 and is available for pre-order at HowardFarran.com.
With Father’s Day being so recent, I find myself thinking of my dad and how he taught me about business. Let’s start there.
I grew up in Wichita, Kansas with six siblings. Mom stayed at home and dad drove a truck for the Rainbow Bread Company. My dad, who put in 80 hours a week just to keep the bills paid and his family fed, wasn’t able to be around much, and when I did see him, I was usually sitting in the passenger seat of his delivery truck while he drove his route to local grocery stores.
There came a day when a friend of my dad’s, who had saved up a lot of money and got a loan, quit his job and purchased a fast-food franchise. It didn’t take long before this guy was bringing in more money per month than he’d brought in the whole previous year.
My dad started asking his friend a million questions about this new business. Dad educated himself the best he could and then took the biggest risk of his life: he scraped up savings and got a loan so he could open up a franchise too.
I went from bouncing along in that Rainbow Bread truck, to watching my dad run his own business! This was an amazing opportunity to learn the risks, failures and triumphs of business early on. I learned the ins and outs of customer service and employee management, along with the importance of the numbers that make or break a business.
I also watched my dad acknowledge which areas of the business he excelled in, and which areas were a challenge. When he didn’t know something, he’d ask, and when he knew he needed help, he went out and got someone who would excel in that role. Putting the right people in the right roles at the right time was something he made look easy. To learn more about understanding what you bring to the table, read the below excerpt from Chapter 1.
Excerpt: When it comes to business, the most important question to ask yourself is: Am I really cut out to run a business? Sure, it may feel good to brag to the gang at the gym that you own and run your own business. It feels even better if you are able to say you own and run a successful business. Yet not everyone has what it takes to run a successful business. As you work with other people, you need to be aware of your personal strengths and weaknesses. Some of who you are depends on your genes, but a lot of your personality depends on where you grew up. If you are going to be a successful businessperson, you have to understand the roots of your personality.
As I said, I have the personality of a successful businessperson. I was hardwired for success from childhood. I witnessed my father’s successes firsthand. From his and my mother’s examples—for better or for worse—I learned three valuable lessons. From the strength and depth of their religious beliefs, I learned that there is a purpose and power to life that not only extends well beyond me, but also resides within me.
From the exclusionary nature of their beliefs, I learned about the separation created when love and acceptance are conditional upon sharing those beliefs. So I chose the path of acceptance and unconditional love instead. From seeing my father exploited by business partners and landlords, I learned the value of self-reliance. To borrow from the old American proverb, I learned to love many, trust few, and paddle my own canoe…
…If you want to change the biggest things about your business, you must work on the smallest things. You need to understand who you are and be willing to develop the good, positive ways of thinking that will enable you to run a successful business. You’re the business owner—you’re the spine and central nervous system of this company, so what traits do you bring to the table in order to direct your company to success?
It helps if you have a decent balance of left-brain (analytical) and right-brain (creative) thinking, but we all lean more toward one or the other. I’m very much a left-brain, critical thinker; I thrive on analytical information that can give me specific measurements on which I can base success. Whichever way you lean, it helps to bolster the “weaker” side of your brain among your employee base. As I wrote in my dedication, and will expand on later, Lorie, the president of my media company, is the perfect balance for my strengths and weaknesses.
Know the weaknesses as well as the strengths you bring to your business. I assert it is more important to know your weaknesses than your strengths—to honestly examine what skills you lack that other people can provide to help you succeed.
In any line of work, there are things we know we love to do and do well. Dentists love doing dentistry—that’s what we went to school from eight to twelve years for—but for the most part, we aren’t all that good at running our own businesses. That’s why I, and many others, have office managers to assist in the day-to-day operations of our practices.
Finally, don’t let anyone make you doubt yourself or your passion. When faced with critics, remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
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