Starting Your Business: Avoiding the "Me Incorporated" Syndrome
Many people who want to start a business have similar reasons
for their ambitions. Typically, they are seeking autonomy from
an employer, freedom, or control over their own destiny, which
also means that they can determine their own income, work
schedule, job duties, and career trajectory. However, upon
launching a business, it becomes immediately apparent as to why
many entrepreneurs describe their position as that of "chief
cook and bottle washer." This is another way of saying--in the
absence of anyone else to address all of the major and minor
tasks that must be accomplished to run the business--it is the
entrepreneur who him or herself, must do everything.
Sweeping the floors, taking out the trash, wiping counters,
answering phones, taking care of customers, packaging, shipping,
invoicing, receiving, repairs, handling the bookkeeping,
marketing: performing these tasks as well as anything else that
must be done, is all in a day's work for the entrepreneur. The
entrepreneur 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 at the onset--when the
entrepreneur's imagination should have been running wild with
"blue sky" possibilities surging through his or her head--there
was only one overarching compulsion, which was to rush forward
and print the title "President" on the entrepreneur's new
business cards. The entrepreneur was already afflicted with the
"Me Incorporated" syndrome.
The job description above also explains why some displaced
corporate executives who start businesses are completely
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 handrails at "Behemoth Worldwide." Their jobs there
did not prepare them for survival in the "mean streets of
Entrepreneur Town." They can't deal with the ambiguity and
uncertainty that surrounds entrepreneurs, who must create their
own destiny and fly without a manual. Their jobs were about
keeping their mouths shut, fitting in, and saying, "Yes,
boss--that's a great idea [which you stole from me, you
wheezing, blundering, conniving, drooling...idiot]."
Lest I go on into a full fledged rant about oversized
corporations and the drone-like behavior that they seem to
thrive on (not to mention ethical breaches and other
shenanigans), let me stop right here and get back to the primary
theme of this article. Suffice it to say that you want to start
your own business, and you have your own reasons.
Given that I have explained the outcome of the "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 in there with me folks, I'm going to be talking about
imagination, crayons, scissors and paste, and being considered
just a bit on the edge for a few moments.
Prior to starting a business, there are no restrictions as to
the thoughts that you are entitled to have. When you are in the
planning stages, it's no time to squelch anything that pops into
your head. There will be plenty of time for you to confront
impediments after you start the business. Feel free to doodle,
draw, color, paint, cut out shapes, and assemble anything that
you wish. Draw other people a picture that's clear as a bell and
show them what you are made of. It's your vision. Make it big
and bold, and throw in a dash of pure crazy colored sugary
sprinkles. Many phenomenally successful inventions were created
by people who were proven to be geniuses instead of lunatics,
only that was after they became successful.
As an example, let's suppose that you imagined, instead of one
sandwich shop, starting a chain of sandwich shops throughout a
city. These shops could benefit from efficiencies of scale. Did
you know that anything that you have printed, such as napkins,
menus, cups, and sandwich wrappers in this instance, is cheaper
in larger quantities? If you print 1000 of something, for a few
dollars more, you could probably have printed 2500. Most things
are "cheaper by the dozen."
A few other examples of efficiencies are well worth mentioning
here, so that your imagination becomes fully engaged. I once
serviced a group of franchised business owners who wanted to
collaborate and purchase advertising, acting together, instead
of separately. First, I helped them write a cooperative
agreement. You should know that even though they each provided
the same services, realistically, customers would do business
with the franchise owner whose store was closest. In other
words, customers who were located downtown did 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 competed with one another, but not really.
The store owners purchased a large advertisement in the yellow
phone directory, and they split it up so that they had plenty of
room to promote not only their individual locations, but also
their brand name, and the features and benefits associated with
their services. Any given single location could not have
afforded to get all of that across; acting as a group of stores,
they could.
The majority of all advertising is local advertising. Mom and
pop companies advertise to consumers in their own respective
market areas. Your single sandwich shop, acting all by itself,
just about definitely cannot afford television advertising.
However, with five or ten stores in a city, a chain of sandwich
shops probably can. TV might be a great medium for featuring the
satisfied faces of customers who are consuming your delectable
culinary creations--if only your vision had called for that.
Purchasing supplies, advertising, food, and anything else can
probably be accomplished more efficiently when you are acting on
behalf of several stores.
Let's talk about personnel, too. Instead of rushing to become
President, you should think about becoming CEO. In that role,
your job is to be the visionary, and the team builder. "What are
the qualifications for becoming a successful store manager?" is
the question you should be asking. In case you haven't followed
my leap of reasoning--you need ten such store managers in our
hypothetical scenario. You are the CEO, remember? Your role is
to hire and motivate, compensate, and grow the overall
enterprise. Your primary responsibilities are to plan, to confer
with other team leaders, take the pulse of the markets in which
you operate, understand the economy, and to fulfill the unmet
needs of customers. As an entrepreneur, by definition,
fulfilling unmet needs is what you are in business to do.
"Where do I get the money?" you may ask. Did you ever think
about the fact that you can "sell" the notion of a bigger return
on investment more effectively when you are wielding a more
imaginative, stronger plan? Many small businesses, afflicted by
the "Me Incorporated" syndrome as they are, will do nothing more
than struggle and exhaust their owners, who are doing too much,
for too long, for too little. Eventually, both the businesses,
and the owners will submerge beneath the waters of insolvency
and sink to the bottom of the entrepreneurial sea--or they will
be eaten alive by larger, better adapted predators.
It is just as easy to say, "All I need is
nine-hundred-and-seventy-three thousand dollars to underwrite
the opening of ten highly competitive, efficiently run, strongly
promoted, professionally managed sandwich stores" as it is to
say, "Mom, dad, I was hoping that you could lend me two-thousand
bucks for first and last month's rent on a 'sandwish' shop." No,
it's not a typo. I meant to say "sandwish" shop, because that's
what it is. It's an uncertain proposal on the part of an
unimaginative would-be entrepreneur, who has already
demonstrated a lack of foresight or an ability to think beyond
him or herself. It's one thing to bootstrap a business startup,
but it's another thing altogether to proceed without any of your
creative juices flowing. If you think "me, me, me," all of the
time, then you won't think about sharing the work, sharing the
profits, or building a team.
No, you'll do it all yourself. No thanks to all of the other
people who have let you down. There's nobody who can make a
"sandwish," any better than you can. Nor can they run the cash
register, accept a delivery, or do anything else as well as you
can. "Oh, baby, baby, you are the best!"
To avoid the "Me Incorporated" syndrome, you need to create
strategic and tactical plans representing your solutions for
recruiting, hiring, training, developing, compensating, and
retaining personnel. You need to have external resources lined
up to accomplish what is not done in-house. You need a detailed
marketing plan, to include the product, pricing, publicity,
advertising, facilities, delivery, and customer satisfaction
processes that you will utilize. Similarly, you need a financial
plan, an operations plan, a technology plan, and contingency
plans to manage business interruptions and risk. Whatever you
were planning to write down, just add zeros, because that's what
it costs to start a real business and run it right, so that
everyone gets their money back, along with a profit.
You will probably not have time to do all of this planning after
you are overwhelmed with the responsibilities of handling every
aspect of running your business all by yourself. It will be too
late by then, for you will already be trapped in a quagmire.
Before you take the entrepreneurial plunge, decide what kind of
business you want to create. If you ask for something bigger,
and justify it, you may just have a chance of making it happen.
What's the alternative? You'll be in charge of your own tiny
little fiefdom, never knowing how things could have been, if you
had only thought a little longer, a little harder, a little
bigger, and a little less about how you could do every little
thing all by yourself, either scheming to keep all of the
profits, or avoiding reality thinking that you could wing it
forever.
Put that "sandwish" down and think beyond what you can do
yourself, and focus on what you can imagine. The
transcontinental railroad that spans the United States was built
one railroad tie at a time, but it was always the plan to
connect the East Coast, with the West Coast (and a larger part
of this vision was to connect the East Coast with goods shipped
by merchants from places such as China and India). If you can
envision, articulate, sell, and implement a business concept
that entails serving, employing, partnering, leading, and
uplifting others, you are probably cured.