As mentioned in my previous blog, over the next few weeks, I’ll be presenting the key strategies for small business success that I’ve discovered through the years. But the strategies themselves are not nearly as important as the attitude you’ll need to assume in order to properly implement them. In organizing my thoughts, I came up with seven categories of lessons. But the overarching theme within all categories is “passion.” There’s no way I could have succeeded without a passion to the point of obsession. Every day seems to bring about challenges that, at times, can seem overwhelming. I, for one, could not have persevered had I not possessed an incredible drive, confidence, and self-belief to keep on pushing against the wind, no matter how difficult things became. “Passion” is the word that most closely describes my driving force. So, if you’re passionate about what you do, does that make it “Good to be the King?” In some cases, “possibly.” In other cases, “no.” But, if you’re not passionate about what you do, you probably won’t be King for long.
So how and where do you apply “passion?” In putting this blog together, I wanted to make it easy to summarize and remember my conclusions. I felt this could be most easily accomplished by coming up with a series of words that rhymed. In that there are virtually no words that rhyme with “passion,” I decided to change that term to “desire.” “Desire” rhymes with lots of things and certainly describes the attitude I assumed in attempting to overcome the majority of my challenges…..But “desire” alone might not have gotten me over the hump when the going really got tough….So I added the phrase “to the extreme,” thereby arriving at something synonymous with “passion.”
The keys I came up with for success in small business are:
Hire, Fire, Inspire, Wire, Perspire, Prepare to Retire, and Light Your Fire.
If you possess a profound belief in your mission; coupled with desire, to the extreme; and you implement key strategies in each of the aforementioned categories, you’ve got a shot at making it “Good to be The King.” If you don’t possess these driving forces, my suggestion is to go to work for someone else.
Barry Sea Siegel has over 35 years’ entrepreneurial experience in both large corporate and small business environments. He is President of Houston based Barry Siegel LLC as well as CEO Focus of Greater Houston, which provides peer advisory groups for small business leaders. Barry can be reached at barrys@ceofocus.com
