What Entrepreneurs Do on a Snow Day

I never had the privilege of participating in the undergrad high jinx of my alma mater’s annual Groundhog Day celebration. (Being a commuter student on a live-in campus is serious non-fun.) I’m told the festivities consisted largely of drinking beer on a wooded lot near the campus, but these days it seems to have turned into a full-fledged, capital ‘e’ Event. I remember with fondness and a little jealousy the enjoyment I saw my academic colleagues having every year on this date as they stumbled into class wearing watch caps and muddy shoes. There was little or no discussion of Punxsutawney Phil, but something unusual had definitely happened in that ever-so-serious environment.

Even then, though, holidays were something I tended to overlook in the task list. Holiday? Snow day? Time to catch up on the pre-reading and maybe log some overtime on the night job. Heck, there was never so much snow in Texas that you couldn’t work someway if you were committed to it.

The Groundhog Holiday (or “Observance,” if you prefer) also makes me think of the wonderful movie, “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray. Now, this one is never going onto the classics lists with “Citizen Kane” or “Gone with the Wind,” but it does convey a message of doing and redoing what matters until you get it right to which a lot of us – especially the entrepreneurs – relate.

So, what do entrepreneurs do on a snowy Groundhog Day? We re-do things!

During the last few weeks of inclement weather, the Coach and I have been making hay while the sun fails to shine.When you work for yourself, you may run short on time but you never run short on potential improvements. Providing a better and better place for accomplishments to happen is key to the environment we want for our clients as well as for ourselves. It’s this relentless, fanatical commitment to and fascination with what you do that makes the risks of owning your own business plausible and, in the end, supremely rewarding. So, rain or shine, we do and re-do what we do, always striving to produce a place for excellence to happen.

Over the last several weeks, we have been busily at work revamping the JUMProductions website. Clients have always known there was good stuff there, but if you go there, you’ll see that the look has changed a lot. More visual thanks again to our contributors and a little better layout. We’d been told we weren’t making what we actually do for people obvious enough, so we’ve re-worked it. We hope this is better.

So what about the Groundhog?

The bigger Groundhog message, for me, is that if you find yourself reworking and revising and tweaking stuff, if people who aren't of the same mindset as you wonder why you don’t just “give it a rest,” don’t argue with them, but don’t give yourself any grief over your personal desire to produce something astonishing either. You’re not alone. That burning desire for the best from ourselves can make the work a reward in itself and our achievements confirmations of time well spent. We know many people like that, and we like them a lot.

As to the site, if it’s not just right, we’ll just do it again!

(By the way, in case you missed it, this was the soft rollout of the new site.)

When the World is Not Flat: Attitude vs. Altitude

I just got a well-thought out and insightful email from my good friend, Richard at the Minker Company Richard D. Minker Company. It referenced The World is Flat by Tom Friedman and the story therein of Jet Blue Airlines. Here's a snip from his note to me:

Anyway it spoke to the fact that all airlines pretty much fly at the same altitude. Jet Blue's philosophy is that it is "Not the Altitude, but the Attitude" that is the reason for their success.

This is the kind of Top Down thinking I believe is the tipping point in becoming a great company.

It begins with who you are, what you stand for (i.e., your values) and the vision you have for the world and your place in it. My recent reading and thinking has lead me to the conclusion that the idea of "brand" is passe, maybe even irrelevant. Why? Because it speaks to a superficial rendering of the core of a company; the mere manifestation if you will - the perception. What really matters is the Vision/Mission/Values.

When I think of the great business leaders I always have an experience of someone defining how things are or should be, i.e., A Vision. It is usually huge, outrageous, and amazingly appealing and attractive. It pulls you into it. And it also has a special magical effect - it compels action. Because of the energy that it provides (to those who are drawn to it anyway) putting legs on the mission (the how, the action plan) becomes compelling, even an obsession.

You get the right people on that bus (sharing the values and drawn to the vision) and they will do anything humanly possible to get it to its destination. And along they way they may just redefine what "humanly possible" means.

The View Back and Forward

For several days we have been working diligently planning the next year of our life. This type of planning used to be a solitary undertaking in which I would lock myself away to try to figure out the meaning of life and how I am supposed to manage my part in it for the next trip around the sun but this time I have my partner working it with me.

This is a mixed blessing.

We are two very different people, The Muse and I. She fastidious, patient, detail-oriented versus my impulsive, controlling,I'm-the-center-of-the-universe-so-c'mon-let's-get-on-with-it style. Which is probably more information that you wanted, but I am committed to candor in this blog.

Which brings up an interesting point.

In a recent blog post Jennifer Rice at mantrabrand.com questions the very idea of purpose and passion in business and branding. In a beautifully written article she examines some great companies with great "brands" that are really just passionate visions of what someone knows the world is supposed to be. The article instigated several comments challenging the concept of passion in business. Perhaps the word has been so over-used it seems hackneyed. Passion is not a term I think of often, let alone use. But candor - now that really rings with me.

Candor is the fire in the belly, the vision for the future, married with undaunting commitment to what is true and right.

Rice states:

"I believe that over-commercialization is leading to the demise of our society, and yet I’m in a profession of helping companies sell stuff that people don’t really need."

Yep, I get where she's coming from. Frankly, as we have reviewed many of the relationships we've worked with over the last year we were struck by the number of people whose leitmotif was "I'm not sure I really want this job." They were questioning the basic underpinnings of why they were doing what they did. We never talked about passion, but we have had many, many conversations in which there was unbridled candor. It seems to make the difference.

What do YOU think?