Unstuck (eBook)

How Businesses Get Stuck & How Your's Can Get Unstuck

Kenyon Blunt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Yorkshire Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-942451-28-0 (ISBN)

Infos

In his new book, Unstuck, Kenyon Blunt shares with readers some of the greatest challenges that businesses face, and the strategies they can use to get Unstuck. Whether your business has stalled due to your own decisions or you just hit a rock wall that's common to all growing companies, getting Unstuck is crucial. Backed with case-studies, interviews and decades of experience, Unstuck will guide a reader through the process of recognizing whether their organization has a problem as well as ways to overcome and adapt. Kenyon is a former CEO who started his consulting practice after founding several companies and doing turnaround work at a marketing services company. He works with business owners who are disappointed with stalled or inconsistent growth. He is a certified Gazelles coach and a certified Topgrading coach. Kenyon works with many different organizations including the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO).

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

YOU

Iwas lying on one of those inflatable air mattresses in my swimming pool. It was one of those blistering hot days in the Midwest. The cool water, a couple of beers, and a day of solitude should have felt good. It was a Monday and I wasn’t used to being at home with nothing to do.

This day should have been awesome. I had just sold my company to my business partner. The marketing firm I started twelve years earlier had ceased being fun about ten years before that. As I look back, the bad days were actually the fun days. I had challenges like most entrepreneurs: The notes came due to my original investors, and I didn’t know how to pay them back, or I had to get a home equity loan to make payroll. Could it have been these difficult times were what I needed to keep my juices flowing?

My entrepreneurial dream had become my personal nightmare. I was running in place. I was making good money, but revenues were flat. The marketing industry was changing rapidly with the advent of new media, technologies and competitors, but we didn’t change. We just kept doing the same old thing, and I got really bored. I tried a lot of different things to rejuvenate myself and my business. I tried to find fulfillment in a lot of different ways. I bought a vacation home, a nice boat, a fancy car and a dream house. None of it worked. I just kept getting into a deeper and deeper funk.

Believe it or not, it got worse from there. I told myself that I’d take a year off and recharge my batteries. During that time, I learned that all the money and the toys can disappear very quickly. Worse yet, my wife and I split after 23 years of marriage. Friends, business colleagues, and my family thought that I had gone off the deep end. Perhaps I had.

I tell this story not to solicit sympathy. I learned that business ownership can take a huge toll. It’s definitely not as glamorous as it is on Shark Tank or in the trade publications. There’s a dark side to being stuck.

Later events added to the gloomy circumstances, and so I became intrigued with studying how small businesses get stuck (either through their own fault or from things completely out of the owner’s control). For example, once a business’s revenues start trending down, only 4% of those companies reverse the trend. (McKee, 2009)

I started looking for the best practices for growing smaller companies, particularly those that experience some bumps in the road. There are a variety of “best practices” out there. In fact, I wish I had found some of these practices many years earlier. Maybe I could have avoided these unpleasant times. Many of these so-called “best practices” are geared for larger companies, but, I wanted to help small and medium-sized companies (SMBs), so I began working with business owners and applying these ideas. My conclusion was that most of these concepts are a little too complex for the overworked and harried SMB owner.

What I have done in this book is explore how small and growing businesses get stuck. Unlike me, you may be able to avoid some of these pitfalls. More importantly, I’ve researched some of the best business ideas for growing companies and scaled them to smaller businesses. The ancient Mayans said, “Out of darkness comes the light.” Who knew the Mayans understood small businesses so well?

THE FOUR EMOTIONAL PHASES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

You may have heard the analogy that businesses are like a bottle of wine; the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle. Just like a bottle of wine, the person at the top of the company could be what stops it from growing.

Businesses go through certain phases of growth which we will explore in Chapter 4. What you may not be so familiar with is that CEOs and business owners also go through different emotional phases. This emotional roller-coaster is one of the reasons why many business owners get stuck. Andrew Jensen is a business growth consultant who has devised four phases of emotions that entrepreneurs pass through: the Busy Phase, the Second Thoughts Phase, The Self-Doubt Phase and the “Been There, Done That” Phase (Jensen, 4 Phases of Entrepreneurship, 2014).

The Busy Phase — When a company first starts, entrepreneurs experiences exhilaration because they have just taken the biggest leap of their lives. Once the excitement wears off, however, the next emotion is usually loneliness. Old jobs and old friends have been jettisoned in favor of their new life. It’s not unusual for this feeling of loneliness to change to feeling over-committed. New business owners begin doubting their abilities to handle their time, finances, family, and friends.

The Second Thoughts Phase — After the business has succeeded in getting off the ground, many entrepreneurs feel lost, and search for a new identity as a business owner. They soon realize that there’s little chance of going back to their former jobs, and decide to plow ahead. The initial enthusiasm for the business fades and is replaced by self-doubt. Entrepreneurial experts Arbarnel and Freeman say, “You now know enough to realize just how much you don’t know about what you want to do.” (Jensen, The Second Thoughts Phase of Entrepreneurial Emotions, 2014)

The Self-Doubt Phase — The doubts that started creeping up in the second phase can now turn into full-blown self-doubt. This happens pretty quickly. It’s in this stage where the entrepreneur loses one of their original clients or investors balk at their lack of returns. Entrepreneurs are thoroughly committed at this point, so the concept of quitting hasn’t entered the picture (yet).

The “Been There, Done That” Phase — The business now defines the entrepreneur’s life. Fatigue sets in from all the long hours getting the company to this point. Sometimes the fatigue even morphs into discontent or depression. The question many ask is, “Will I always have to work this hard?” Another problem in this phase is boredom. All those things that used to cause sleepless nights are now not so difficult, but the routines and processes they’ve established to run the business also make it less exciting. The good news, however, is that success often lets them feel simple contentment from a job well done.

BEING STUCK — EMOTIONALLY & PSYCHOLOGICALLY

It’s hard to know if the “stuck” feeling described in the fourth phase of entrepreneurship is from stress, or if you’re really burned-out. CEOs often try cures that aggravate the problem rather than fix it. Steven Berglas, writing in Inc. magazine said:

Stressed chief executives, exhausted by confronting threats, need a two-week vacation. Burned-out CEOs, bored and doubting that they still have the vitality they once had, go stir-crazy on a “relaxing” vacation.

(Berglas, 1996)

FEELING STUCK

Since this book is about how entrepreneurs get stuck, I will mostly be dealing with the “been there, done that” phase. It’s what I call “entrepreneurial boredom,” and it leads to feelings of being trapped. I also like the term coined by Steven Berglas, which he calls “the provider paradox.” It’s when you feel duty-bound to others, like your spouse, employees or business partners, because you’ve achieved a certain level of success, and you don’t want to let them down.

Some business owners are like Sisyphus in ancient Greek mythology. He was the King of Corinth who pushed the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again.

Many small business CEOs feel like Sisyphus. Every day they go to work and keep doing the same familiar things so as to not disappoint others in their lives. Stressful feelings lead you to strike out against those whom you believe have forced you into this rut.

Psychologists call this an “impasse,” when we try to get away from these feelings of being stuck and sinking. The first step in breaking out of this emotional malaise is to admit that you have a problem. Most recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Celebrate Recovery say the admission of a problem is the first step. It’s the same for entrepreneurs who are feeling stuck or paralyzed in their company. Admit there is a problem.

REMOVING THE GOLDEN HANDCUFFS

Here are a few ways that you can start breaking out of this rut:

•   Reduce the “stuff” in your life. Do you really need that boat that you only use a few times each summer? Is that vacation home worth the worry and upkeep? Do your kids really need that private school education? All of this “stuff” can lead you to feeling stuck.

•   Become an expert. Craftsmen over the years have been fulfilled by the art and skill required for their craft. If you can find a way to become an...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.1.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 1-942451-28-8 / 1942451288
• ISBN-13: 978-1-942451-28-0 / 9781942451280