If I had the Entrepreneurial spirit I could be so bloody successful and wealthy.
Here’s the deal throughout my 30+ years of business life, I reckon there have been no more than 4 or 5 people who I felt were way beyond me in business and they were all entrepreneurs. Self made men and not some spoilt rich kids or university hot shots.
Most of those types have worked for me! and most of them expected something for nothing or had little in the way of imagination or real world skills.
My problem is I am business smart, I see the picture quickly or I tell you I just don’t get it and suggest you get somebody who does. My sad fact of life is that I seem to lack the will to take risks and I like to stay on the straight and narrow. What that does do though is make me a safe pair of hands for running your business.
Entrepreneurs don’t just follow the same path, they forge their own and they take risks.
However, (there is always a however) if you are not entrepreneurial and are unimaginative, or indeed if you are obviously out of your depth I will piss you off very quickly because I cannot just sit back and let your piss daddies money away.
I will be pushing you with ideas, how to do things the right way and more, believe me it works for a while, your business will fly while we work together, but, eventually we will fall out and I will walk away, it can take a few years but it happens.
I am back in that situation now, I attended a sales meeting today and was shocked at pretty well everything I saw.
The pre-meeting information sent out was terrible, it would not pass muster in any business I have worked in, cheap and nasty, with pointless features and terrible presentation. The introduction of the company to the client was a joke and the rapport building non existant, the sales process itself was awful and then he told the potential client he would get them a quote by this evening. Good, you might think except he had NO idea of what the client wanted and was willing to pick a figure out of the air a few hours after the meeting.
Also at the meeting was a ‘colleague’, sadly, he is way out of his depth, has no usable sales skills or indeed the ability to interact with the client, I have NO idea what he was doing there. He, should be back at the office trying to finish the back log of work they were telling me about. Still 8 weeks down the road this ‘web design’ company still has NO website, in the same time I have set up a website and a podcast and I don’t know what the hell I am doing.
Effectively, they are THE company, all other work will be done by sub contractors. The amazing thing is I know more about their industry than they seem to. They have no idea and unlike myself they seem unwilling to try to fill the gaps of their knowledge. They also have no marketing skills and no sales skills. And believe me they don’t know shit about web site design.
