CHAPTER 1
Why Not Me?
‘‘Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your
windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light
won’t come in.’’
—Alan Alda, actor, commentator, and activist
If you’re reading these words, I’m going to assume that you’re doing
so because the idea of starting your own business from scratch sounds
exciting to you—now.
That’s good. In fact, it’s great. No business can thrive without
excitement and emotional engagement from the founder of that business.
And yet, my job—as someone who started a successful business
from nothing, and as someone who has worked with, and interviewed
for this book, dozens of people who did exactly the same thing—is to
let you know that being excited is not enough. There are plenty of
businesses that never achieve their potential, despite incredible initial
emotion and strong commitment from the people attempting, in vain,
to get them off the ground.
It’s easy to be excited now. But the kind of excitement you feel
right now definitely won’t see you through what is to come. When I
tell aspiring entrepreneurs this, I usually get a nod of agreement and
a stern expression of resolve.
Most of the people who nod at me obediently, though, are under
a serious misconception. They think that by saying this I mean that,
in addition to showing excitement and emotional engagement in
their businesses, they have to master the technical skills they currently
lack. What are those skills? Accounting, maybe, if they’re not
accountants; or advertising and promotion, if they’re not familiar with
those areas. Or maybe it’s hiring and personnel that they perceive as
their weak spots.
That’s not what I’m getting at.
When I tell people that their initial excitement about starting a
business is not enough, what I am saying is that their ability to bounce
back tomorrow is much more important than their initial excitement.
Resiliency, persistence, stick-to-it-ive-ness, a sense of purpose—
whatever you want to call it—is the factor I am talking about: entrepreneurs’
unique and certain knowledge that they are embarking on
the work of their lives, on their true missions, not just for today but
also for tomorrow as well and for the foreseeable tomorrows to come.
That quality is what always makes the difference between a business
that succeeds and a business that fails. You need that resiliency if you
are to challenge your own assumptions about what will and won’t
work in your business, and you definitely need it if you are to challenge
anyone else’s assumptions as well. You should know here and
now that you cannot expect to start a successful business from scratch
without that resiliency and persistence.
Why Not Me?
In my experience, there is one, and only one, way to generate that
quality of being on a personal mission, a mission that endures no
matter what happens to you today. You must get into the habit of
asking yourself: Why not me?
You must use this question daily, and probably hourly, and you
must answer it in the right way if you hope to use the ideas in this
book to your advantage. You must use those answers to overcome
every fear of failure and every ridicule, every doubt, every adversity
that enters your mind. Your own answer to this question will be the
single most important factor in your personal campaign—your mission—
to start a great business from scratch.
Contrary to what you may have heard or read, successful entrepreneurs
are not born with a personal sense of mission. They choose to
build that sense of mission into their lives. Successful entrepreneurs
know that they operate in a world that’s filled with people who have
all kinds of skills, dreams, and abilities. They make a conscious decision
to assume that they, as individuals, belong at the head of their
own personal parade through that world.
They ask, in essence, ‘‘Why shouldn’t it be me who leads the
parade?’’ And they always come up with an answer that gives them
the right—and the duty—to lead that parade.
Excerpted from YOUNG GUNS by Robert Tuchman. Copyright © 2009 Robert Tuchman. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission.
All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.