business or a direct sales business.
4. Be optimistic as well as brutally honest with
yourself. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins does an excellent piece on this need to be brutally
honest. He writes about his interviews with Admiral
Stockwell, one of the longest-held POWs from the
Vietnam War. When Jim Collins asked the admiral
which type of person died in their cells, the admiral answered without hesitation, “The optimists.” The
POWs who did survive were those who could
handle the brutal facts about their situation. On the
flip side, know the difference between being brutally honest and being pessimistic. I know
people who will tell you why something will not
work even if it’s working. I know people who store
in their mind every piece of negative news possible.
Negative people, or pessimistic people, are not the
same as brutally honest people.
5. How are you at spending money ? Too many people struggle financially because they do not
know how to spend their money. Too many people spend their money and it never comes back. An
entrepreneur needs to know how to spend money
and have more money come back. It is not about
being cheap, tight, or frugal. It’s about knowing
when to spend, what to spend on, and how much to
spend. I have seen too many entrepreneurs go broke
saving money. For example, when business drops
off, instead of spending money on more promotions
the entrepreneur cuts back hoping to save money.
When this happens business continues to drop off.
This is an example of the wrong action, at the
wrong time.
6. Start a business to practice on. No one can learn to ride a bicycle without a bicycle and no one can
learn to start, build, and run a business without a
business. Once you are familiar with the different
parts of the B-I Triangle, stop planning and start
doing. As I have always said, “Keep your full-time