The process, or more fitting, the mindset I recommend to individuals who want to start a business should actually be implemented long before they hang out their shingle.  Before starting a consulting firm or business that depends on your personal reputation it’s to your advantage to make sure your personal brand is already known, carries influence, and inspires trust.  That means building and nurturing your personal brand and network must be top-of-mind from the very beginning of your career, even while you are still working for someone else.

My great-great-great-great grandfather John See was in winter quarters at Valley Forge with Washington.  When John was only 8 years old his father was killed at the Muddy Creek massacre in Greenbriar Co., Virginia in a conflict with Native Americans.  My great grandfather homesteaded on the eastern plains of Colorado where my grandfather was born in a sod cabin.  My parents were raised on farms in central Iowa and northern Missouri.  Neither had indoor plumbing and my mom did not have electricity.

Is the freedom to fail a myth at your company?  Can you name one person in your organization that has had major visible failure?  If so, is that person still employed there?  If they are, is their career still on track?  If your business culture is risk adverse you may not be able to name even one person. 

Oh sure, you’ve read plenty of success stories in which the protagonist had to “overcome challenges.”  But I’m not talking about mere challenges that surfaced in a situation that ultimately was marked as an accomplishment.

When our children were young and still living at home my wife and I would “delegate” some of the household chores.  Cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, mowing the lawn and other duties were performed in exchange for allowances.  Their efforts did not always produce spectacular results, but the tasks were accomplished for the most part, and life lessons passed on.

 

 

When we became empty nesters we decided to delegate some of those chores to outsiders.

 

It was early in my sales career and I was sitting across the desk from my client, a bank president.  It was a complex solution situation that had been playing out for months.  He was finally holding my sales contract, valued at over one million.  This deal would make my numbers for the year, secure a promotion, and I was replacing a competitive system, making the win as sweet as they come.

"Go West, young man" is aphrase often creditedto the American author Horace Greeley concerning America's expansion westward, related to the then-popular concept of Manifest Destiny. My great grandfather traveled west to homestead on the Great Plains. That’s where my grandfather was born - in a sod cabin. I’m not old as dirt, but I am a trailing edge baby boomer with both pre-digital and digital world footprint. That makes me a “digital immigrant,” while my children, all born after 1980, are considered “digital natives.

Does your company encourage questioning in any substantive way? If so, does your company provide any training programs focused on guidelines and best practices for questioning?  In truth, many companies, whether consciously or not, have established cultures that tend to discourage inquiry in the form of someone’s asking “Why are we doing this?”  The impulse is to keep plowing ahead, doing what we’ve done, and rarely stepping back to question whether we’re on the right path.

According to Socrates, “Wisdom is limited to an awareness of your own ignorance.

I’m where I am today because of the 1980’s oil crash.  If not for the oil crash I may not have gone on to get my MBA.  If not for the crash I probably would not have ventured into the technology industry, first with NCR Corporation and then other organizations.  For that matter I may not have moved to Ohio.

 

I was from Iowa, in the heart of the corn patch.  But after completing my BBA in 1981 from Abilene Christian University I could see that the West Texas oil patch was booming.