“Never Give Up” I’m always a big fan of Inc Magazine, but when they had this advice on the cover I had to say something.

It’s not that you should give up – it’s that saying “Never Give Up” makes it sound like success in business is entirely under your control. It’s not. Success is based on what you do plus how people respond to what you do then how you adapt to how people respond and what they do about that and so on. Of course, if you give up too soon you’ll miss all the shots you never take as Gretzky said. But what if you give up too late? They don’t run stories or write books about people like that. Except maybe Seth Godin and The Dip.

Take my favorite business analogy: Courtship. There are people who are in a wonderful relationship today because one of them refused to take no for an answer. But there are also people in jail for stalking (or worse) because they refused to take no for an answer. Persistence has its place but it’s only part of the equation. All too often persistence (like love) is blind.

Best Business Advice?
Understand. Learn what motivates your customers. Learn the ins and outs of your business model. Learn what gems of knowledge are hidden in your finances. Learn what makes your employees tick. Learn the difference between being lucky and being smart – then be both. Now put all that understanding into the right action at the right time. But that’s a bit more subtle and it sounds like a lot of work. Because it is. That’s why business success is worth celebrating. If it were easy, everyone would do it. And no one would be left to work for you.

Takeaways:

• Free advice is worth what you pay for it.
• Sometimes advice you pay for is worth even less.
• Sometimes advice is worth more than you could ever pay.
• It takes sensitivity and work to learn the difference.

[tags] Entrepreneur, small business, CEO Skills, management, Persistence [/tags]

Seth says: If you are willing to satisfy people with good enough, you can make just about everybody happy.

I’d say If you want to make everyone happy you’ll HAVE to be satisfied with good enough. [read the whole story - it's kind of funny in a sad sort of way - and you'll see what the picture is about]

The problem is that good enough usually isn’t. And it virtually NEVER is for a small company. It can work for a big company like General Motors (oops – they’re getting their clock cleaned by Toyota) so I mean good enough is OK for a big company like Microsoft (oops Google’s eating their lunch) how about McDonalds? (then why did they buy Chipotle?) OK I guess it isn’t good enough for the big guys either.

Takeaway:

• To make a difference you’re going to piss some people off.
• By “Make a Difference” I don’t mean change the world, though that’s fine if you want to try. Making a difference in your own life or even just your bank account is plenty of motivation for running your own company well.
• If you don’t want to make a difference, go get a job.
• Don’t use it as an excuse to piss off the wrong people – rather just make the right people happy (and ignore the others).

[tags] small business, entrepreneur, ceo, being remarkable [/tags]

– image credit:
http://www.folsom.ca.us/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=275&targetid=1