The other day around 7:45 am I was walking across London Bridge when a young man, probably about thirty, went past on a bicycle.
There’s nothing unusual about that, there are loads of people cycling across London Bridge at that time in the morning. However, there were a few things that made him stand out.
First, rather than the self-protective urban warrior look that many cyclists very sensibly adopt, he was wearing a rather natty cream coloured overcoat; he also had ear buds firmly in his ears and was, most notably, sitting up straight on his bicycle, with his hands in his pockets! Needless to say, he was not wearing a helmet.
Even when he changed lanes (directly in front of a bus), he achieved it with a subtle shift of his body weight. During the whole time that I could see him, his hands remained firmly buried in those pockets.
As I watched him it struck me – fortunately nothing struck him! – that he was far more interested in looking cool than in staying alive. In fairness, he probably hadn’t actually thought it through quite like that, but in reality it would only have taken a small object or pothole in the road, or a distraction as he was changing direction for him to be sprawled on the ground in front of 121/2 tonnes of rapidly approaching Routemaster.
As he went on his way, I started thinking about the number of people I meet who are doing pretty much the same thing with their businesses.
They appear to have it all. A business that is growing, a big house, flash car, expensive clothes, maybe kids in private school. Everything about them says they are a SUCCESS!
Except they’re not. Well, I guess it depends what you mean by success, but by my definition, they’re not.
The house is 95% mortgaged, the car is leased, the clothes have been bought with maxed out credit cards, and the school fees are being paid with a bank loan.
Yes, their business is growing in turnover terms – it has to, because it’s the only way for them to keep ahead of all that debt – but it’s never made a consistent profit and, in reality, they’re living from cheque to cheque and are only ever one bad month away from disaster.
One bad month away from sprawling on the ground in front of 300 tonnes of rapidly advancing debt mountain!
And it’s not just people with larger small businesses. I meet plenty of people with much smaller businesses, who are trapped in the same loop. Who will always tell you that they’re ‘busy’, when they’re not. Actually, that’s not strictly true. They are busy (in fact too busy), because they’re struggling to keep their business going; but the business itself is usually not busy.
At some level, all these people are paying more attention to looking good than to making sure their business has underlying strength, security and profit built in. I know, because I’ve been there. I’m one of the lucky ones who eventually learned how it actually works.
Many business owners find themselves in this situation just because they don’t know, and can’t see, any other way to do it. Most people running small businesses simply do not know how to run a business! They have had no training and they just pick it up as they go along, getting tips and advice from other people who have no idea either.
But it’s not their fault.
Good training in how to run a business is very hard to come by. Even a business degree or MBA doesn’t train you to run a business. They teach you some of the theory of how businesses work, but businesses rarely work in the way the theory says they should. Particularly small businesses, because they are often an extension of the emotions, psychology and personality of the owner. And the owner, being a human being, wants to look good.
Fortunately it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to build a business which works for you, rather than you having to work for it.
It takes time, focussed activity and consistently placing your attention on the things that will actually help you achieve what you want to achieve. And eventually, simply as a side benefit of building a genuinely successful and profitable business, you end up looking pretty good, even though it was never about that.
It’s a bit like cycling really. The people who put in the consistent focussed work like, say, Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy or Chris Froome eventually also get to look very, very cool – even though it was never about that.
Which brings us back to the guy on London Bridge. I hope he lives a long and happy life, never having to learn that he’s just one small bump away from disaster.
Even more that that, I hope he discovers a way to create a great and fulfilling life, so that he no longer needs to place his attention on looking cool rather than on staying alive.