08 TPE Part I - Chapter 3-converted

The main ideas from this information are: - The importance of passion and finding a business idea that aligns with your values. - The need to consider market demand and financial sustainability when starting a business. - The concept of immutable laws, which are personal values that should guide every aspect of your business. - Reflecting on past experiences to identify your own immutable laws and ensuring your business aligns with them. Catch a man a fish and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish and you will ruin a wonderful business opportunity. Karl Marx. The foundation to any TPE success is listening to and following your heart, traveling where it insists she go. Your heart is simply the map to your company's destiny. Your head is the navigation system. When nature sends a rumble through your stomach, you move quickly and deliberately to the bathroom. When you arrive, you spend a few moments preparing for the work at hand. This is your mind navigating the situation. What is the chance of interruptions? Pretty high? Not good. Does the door lock? Shit, it doesn't. Son of a bitch. The door doesn't even close completely. Time's ticking. Gotta move faster. Gotta think. How about wedging the magazine rack and some bath towels behind the door to slow down any unexpected guests? You must prevent being caught mid-maneuver. Now, with the door addressed, is there proper ventilation to take care of any periphery issues? Most importantly, is there adequate noise to cover up any unexpected music? Maybe it's smart to do a few practice runs clearing your throat just in case there's a need for cover-up sounds. All systems checked. Time to go to work. Oh, crap. You forgot to check for a roll of TP. Sure enough, a mere three dangling sheets are waving in the breeze. You're caught again with your shorts around your heels. But you're a toilet paper entrepreneur. This is an easy one to navigate. Time to start limbering up your leg. What to do. What to do. Do something that you want to do because you love it. You're passionate about it and because it has a positive impact. What could he do? Very freaking noble, right? Doing what you love is a great starting point, but that won't necessarily bring home the bacon. I could spend months talking about high-performance cars because I love them. I'm passionate about them and they are exhilarating. But unless I can make a comfortable living at it, it's just an expensive hobby. Passion is the starting point. There's no question about it. If you aren't passionate about your vocation, you'll have a real tough time sustaining a startup, let alone living through the dark days. If you are passionate about what you do, someone else who is passionate is going to kick your ass into next Sunday. Your long-term success requires a growing number of customers, consistent cash flow, and your ability to outmaneuver the competition every step of the way. Before you dive in with your heart, first dive in with your head and make sure you can say a resounding yes to each one of these questions. One, can you make significant money doing this? Meaning, is it realistic that this business will bring in enough bacon for you to cover all your expenses and stash a lot away into savings? Two, can you make money consistently? Meaning, is it realistic that this new venture will yield a regular, predictable, and growing flow of cash into the company? Three, can this venture be started with little or no money? Four, do you want this venture to be for an entrepreneur instead of a freelancer? If you want to be a freelancer, you are simply an employee without a boss. A freelancer focuses on mastering a craft, while the entrepreneur focuses on building the systems that support the craft. Five, do you want to consume this product or service desperately, but can't find it? If you do, you are the focus group. Six, do you know people who aren't friends and have the same interests as you? They also really want this product or service and they can't find it either? Seven, is this business consistent with your values? For example, Frugal Types would be better off starting the next Old Navy rather than the next Polo. Eight, are people polarized on your concept? Meaning, do some people think it's a great idea and others think it stinks? Polarizing people is a major key to success because it brings recognition from both sides. The side that hates you talks about it and the side that loves you defends it. See how polarizing concepts can get both sides talking about your business? And nine, is your business a one-shot, make-or-break deal or can it be flexible and change as it grows? You may not get it perfectly right on the first go and may discover new things about yourself. A little flexibility in the business offering can go a long way. Building your business on a foundation of passion is clearly the most important part of sustained entrepreneurial success, but passion alone won't make you successful. Backing it up with positive answers to all these fundamental market demand questions increases your chance for success tenfold. With passion and potential on your side, it's time to back them up with conviction, a set of immutable laws that form the backbone of your company. What do you stand for? There is a business located right outside Sydney, Australia called Gorgeous Things. Its founder, Leslie Ann Trow, struggled for years with her company. While she had always made enough money to live, she never really prospered and she never really felt energized about her vocation. Her passion for her was a kind of tunnel that seemed to have no light at the end. It all changed in a moment when she recognized that her personal values were regularly being compromised, downplayed, or ignored in order to deliver what the customer wanted. Her wow moment came when she conceded that the constant change to her values was a result of her own activities and beliefs. She immediately took action and her business changed radically. Leslie Ann identified her own five immutable laws that she had always had but never really acknowledged, let alone documented. She wrote down everything she stood for and everything she did not. Then she changed her business. Everything in the company had to comply with her immutable laws or it was removed. If a product was not consistent with her values, even though it was a big seller, it was removed. If a vendor did not share values, even though it was an inexpensive source of products, the relationship ended. She no longer tried to sell products, electing instead to share stories about her immutable laws and how her products supported these values. Business started to increase exponentially. Old products that were consistent with her immutable laws started to sell like never before. A redesigned website that spoke entirely to her values now drew over 50 times the amount of traffic it previously had. In other words, sharing the same immutable laws came back more frequently and bought more. Most importantly, she is now happy, very happy. In Leslie Ann's own words, having your own company that mirrors your personal value system is just like having a soulmate. I couldn't imagine anything better. Her business is out of the tunnel and the sun is shining brightly. Immutable laws, a filter for everything. I value and believe in go-givers. If someone wants to take, take, take from me, I push them away as fast as you can say blood-sucking, life-draining bastard. But if someone genuinely is out to help others, to help her common man, I applaud her and want to associate with her. I too go out of my way to help others. When someone tries to take advantage of me, watch out. It is totally inconsistent with my beliefs and I will be pissed. I thrive in making, building, and participating in clear-win situations because that is my internal rule. We all have our own mix of unique internal rules we abide by. It is these values that we consistently adhere to, deviating from them with rare exception that I call our immutable laws. When we do deviate from them for some reason, our emotions punch us dead center in the face and remind us how bad it is to compromise our own internal laws. Like the long arm of the law, every time we break our own laws, our conscious catches us and punishes us. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you must abide by your own immutable laws. Your values say a lot about who you are, which in turn says a lot about the type of business you will create. You must ensure absolute consistency between your values and your business. Everything you do in your company is consistent with your values, you will be happy and always inspired to work. But immutable laws are far more than the resources of your inspiration and emotional satisfaction. They are the filters for every consideration in your business. Who should you hire? What should you sell? How should your customer service function? What vendor should you work with? Who are the customers you want to service? Any question you have about your business must pass through the filter of your immutable laws. If they don't match, don't do it. The immutable laws are the spine of your business. If your spine gets out of alignment, your ability to progress will be greatly compromised and your company will be hunched over, limping along instead of striding forward. If you break your spine, you will be paralyzed and your company will fail to survive. Your job, TP entrepreneur, is to be the chiropractor for your business. You must keep your company's spine in perfect alignment by ensuring that every part of the company's body is consistent with your immutable laws. Now that you know how absolutely critical they are, it's time to discover your own immutable laws. The good news is that you already know them. The bad news is that they still exist at an emotional level and are not conscious thought. To find them, you need to reflect on your past and consider every situation that pissed you off and every situation that made you feel happy. What is the common thread in the situations that upset you? What were the reasons behind the reasons you got pissed? Which values were compromised? Ask similar questions about the situations that have made you happy. What were the common threads and situations where you were happy? What were the real core reasons you were happy? What is it about those situations that naturally made you happy every time? What values of yours were elevated during those situations? Some common values many entrepreneurs discover and use to set the stages for their companies include risk-taking, independence, honesty, leadership, teamwork, helping, security, trustworthiness, artistic creativity. This list is good, but not nearly good enough. It's boring. Would you want to work for a company that has sterile values like that? These filters are way too broad. They don't make clear visuals in your head and they are way too lame. If they are not invoking strong, visceral emotion in you, you need to dig deeper, much deeper to find your own immutable laws. Once you define your values, document them in a way that sings with your soul. Don't write them down to comply with what your mother likes or what you think customers want to hear or what your lawyer friend said is most professional. If you water them down, you will only hurt yourself and over time your emotions will rise up and punch you in the face again. Your immutable laws need to raise the hair on the back of your neck every time you read them, every time you speak, and every time you hear them. Since you are still listening to this book, you are clearly the edgy type and would likely be as bored by the prior values as you are excited by these. No dry-humping. This is a value of Hedgehog Leatherworks, a TPE company that never dry-humps its customers with spam, sales literature, or cold calls. Blood money. The TPE company, Action Figure Woman, treats its money as if it were blood, filling a constant blood reserve so that if there is ever an emergency, it can survive. My company uses this immutable law, too, with its own spin. Positivity or death. The value of my mentor, Howard Hirsch, this immutable law is about choosing to work only with people with a positive attitude. Howard once ran a help wanted ad that read, experience irrelevant, positive outlook on life mandatory, and the right candidates with the right values apply for the job. Howard Hirsch, unequivocally, is a toilet paper entrepreneur. Dive on the grenade. This immutable law is about cultivating a company wherein everyone supports each other. When there is a problem, the person closest to it, be it the president or an intern, is expected to jump on the problem and fix it. No dicks allowed. This is one of my values. Life is too short to deal with people who are curt, rude, or just out for number one. In plain English, life is too short for dicks. Just like Budda, this is a value from Roof Deck Solutions, LLC, a company that installs high-end outdoor patios for apartments in New York City. Every project they are engaged in involves extremely complicated logistics. In order to keep the customer worry-free, the project must run as smooth as butter. So, Roof Deck Solutions only works with vendors and only hires employees who thrive under extreme pressure and share in the value of having things run just like butter. Give to give. Another value of my company, this immutable law is about giving for the joy of giving without expecting anything in return. Likewise, we work hard for the joy of working hard. Oddly enough, it all comes back to us anyway. Good enough ain't good enough. Another Hedgehog Letterworks value stating that every product and customer experience must be great. Not good, but great. This immutable law hangs on the wall in their St. Louis workshop, reminding everyone that each product must be perfect. Turn the Turtles. Matt Cutler, the president of Restockit, articulated this immutable law. Any time a customer is struggling with a problem or question, the team at Restockit jumps into action to get things right. Just as with a turtle on its back, a little effort will get the customer on their feet again and moving forward. Matt Cutler is a toilet paper entrepreneur. We do know Jack. Another carryover value from my former company, this immutable law is about knowing the customer inside and out. We routinely received tech support calls and our team was required to know the answer and the customer, sometimes named Jack, extremely well. Now we're cooking with gas. These immutable laws speak to me in awakening a strong curiosity about what they mean. They speak as clearly to what they are as to what they aren't. They absolutely make vivid, clear pictures in my head. Don't ask me about the dry-humping one. And they will absolutely resonate with a select few people and be rejected by many. That's what you want. The most manageable number of immutable laws is three to five, while technically you can have 10 or hundreds. That many are way too detailed and too hard to remember. Boil them down to your core values, the essence of what you believe. Once you identify your handful of immutable laws, focus on your gut emotional response to those words. When a value has a strong emotional tie to you, it is a critical value and a perfect immutable law. If you don't feel it, ditch the law. But I want to have values that everyone can understand, you say. Wrong. Boiling down your core values is a mistake. Listen, not everyone will share your values, nor should they. The world would be a boring place if they did. Some people do share your values. Those are the people whom you want to reach out to. They will be your best colleagues, your best vendors, and your best customers. Be true to yourself and the right people and opportunities will filter to you. Consistent application of your immutable laws will build a healthy company and you will be happy, guaranteed. The why guy finds his why. In the fall of 2005, Simon Sinek hit rock bottom. He felt like a failure and was intimidated by everyone he met. Simon craved the feeling of success more than anything else. He didn't know exactly what was missing, simply that something was missing. Simon started to look to the people and the companies that inspired him, fascinated by how these companies inspired others. Steve Jobs and Apple, Richard Branson, Martin Luther King Jr. It was in studying these people and companies that Simon made an amazing discovery. It didn't matter what they did, what mattered was they knew why they did what they did. Simon set out to know unequivocally why he did what he did. After looking back over his whole life, Simon saw a pattern to his success. He realized that he felt the most successful when he was most inspired and when he inspired those around him. Simon had discovered his calling, his purpose. Today, Simon Sinek is the leading authority for entrepreneurs who seek their purpose, for those who want to discover their why. His business and his life are far from rock bottom. In fact, he's felt more successful and enjoyed more success every day since he's discovered his why. Simon Sinek is a toilet paper entrepreneur. Your ideal customers will be attracted to your business because it speaks to them. They share the values of your business. They want what it stands for. They buy the why. Your company is a reflection of you. Serving your life's purpose ensures the success of your company. As Simon Sinek says, you must live and serve your why. Take action now. Part two is but a page away, but if you don't stop and complete these three exercises now, you'll miss out on something crucial, and no, I'm not just saying that. One, what do you stand for? What standards do you uphold in your personal life? What do you expect from yourself and others in your life? In what aspects of your life do you waffle a bit? What are the areas where you will not move a muscle that you need to loosen up or have more conviction? Two, your set of immutable laws is the backbone of your company. Building on your own values and ethics, what are the immutable laws of your company? How do these immutable laws benefit you, your staff, your investors, and your customers? Three, what's your why? Why are you an entrepreneur? Why did you choose your specific industry? Why, why, why? Keep asking until you get to the heart of the matter.