Tag: employees
Traffic Directors
There is nothing less valuable in startup world than people telling you what to do, while they are doing very little themselves.
Traffic Directors I call them.
These days information and ideas are cheap. The thing of great value is when people start and finish projects. It’s so valuable simply because it’s so rare. In fact that’s true leadership.
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Humans aren’t resources
Something I put on twitter referring to any business I ever run, including rentoid.com – which is certainly worth sharing with my startup blog readers:
No 1 reason being an employee sucks
The number one reason being an employee sucks is this:
You can’t sell your job.
No matter how good you are at what you do,
– you don’t own your output
– you are building other peoples brands and empire
– you are at the risk of hierarchy
– you are not servant to customers, but wage earners (the fundamental issue)
What this means is that as an employee you are not serving those who actually pay your wages – your consumers. Instead you become servant to people who are best at ‘internal politics’. So for you to succeed in this environment, you too must excel at internal politics. Which takes you always for important real world skills entrepreneurs develop. And then the final reality is that at some point in your ’employee career’ someone will not like you, and dispose of you. At this point you instantly lose any good will or employee equity which was built. Even if you are a stock holder, you still have no decision making authority.
The point is, if you want to build assets, being an employee makes it difficult because you lack control. If you want control, then you must have the courage to build something independently, like entrepreneurs do.
New York Series: Contingency Plans
It’s no secret I’ve spent some time abroad recently – the tile of recent entries has been a total giveaway.
One of the areas I reckon all entrepreneurs should cut their teeth in is a bit of gardening. The skills required for successful gardening happen to be highly transferable for entrepreneurs. I always keep my my garden in good nick. But this is the condition is was in upon my return.
My beloved box hedges are not very healthy to say the least.
Sure we had some hot weather. But I knew it was the middle of a Melbourne summer which regularly gets temperatures above 40c / 100f . So why didn’t I prepare for the resources to cater for the ‘potential challenges’ the hot weather could present to my garden? It’s pretty simple really. I assumed it would be OK for a few weeks. I assumed that things would progress as normal and we wouldn’t have the hottest temperatures on record – which we did.
I failed to prepare for the worst case scenario. Actually I failed to have an infrastructure set up so things would not only continue in my absence, but have the ability to respond to extraneous circumstances. The net result is business failure. Dead garden. Which means that my garden business is still a sole trader, a side interest or maybe just a hobby.
We only have a business when we can be absent and;
- things get done anyway
- emergencies get attended to
- our customers are unaware of our absence
- we return with no ‘noticeable’ difference
So the questions we must ask ourselves as entrepreneurs, is how we are building an infrastructure which doesn’t rely on us? It’s only once this is in place, that we actually have a business.
New York Series: the FAO Shwarz Toy Store Greeter
Here is a little Youtube Clip I took of an FAO Shawrz greeter. The greeting we received was after arriving at the infamous 5th Avenue New York FAO Shwarz Toy Store after closing. Instead of saying – Sorry were are closed. He said this (in video).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyoa6XSiTYc]
This guy is a real thespian. He puts his soul into what he does. And he kept delivering the message in this fashion when ever anyone came and asked if the store was open.
It was so cool, sincere and awesome they way he delivered this message. It’s the way, all companies would love their employees to be – that is, to be into what they do!
Big Companies, Big Lies
You need more industry experience
You need to have experience managing a team
It’s out of my control
We care, we’re listening
We have a sustainable perspective
Our interests are aligned
People are our most important asset
Open plan is for open communication
We have a long term strategy
We serve our shareholders first
We put our customers first
We put our employees first
We have a lot of first places… ?
We make stuff up so we can justify the money we extract from something we don’t own.
Make your startup the antithesis of this – mean what you say.