For those of you not familiar with the story, it centers around a stuffed bear in a department store. A little girl, Lisa, sees him on the shelf and wants him but her mother says no because he’s missing a button. He then goes on a search to find his lost button, without any luck. Lisa ultimately returns with her own money and buys Corduroy and takes him home. The end. It’s a pretty simple tale, but there’s a lot of hidden wisdom in there. Let’s unpack the story some more…
As I was reading my son the beloved children’s book Corduroy recently, I realized there are actually a few key lessons that entrepreneurs can take away from this children’s classic.
For those of you not familiar with the story, it centers around a stuffed bear in a department store. A little girl, Lisa, sees him on the shelf and wants him but her mother says no because he’s missing a button. He then goes on a search to find his lost button, without any luck. Lisa ultimately returns with her own money and buys Corduroy and takes him home. The end. It’s a pretty simple tale, but there’s a lot of hidden wisdom in there. Let’s unpack the story some more…
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Starting an ecommerce business can be expensive – there are a lot of essentials and a plethora of add-ons to take your basic store to the next level. How do you determine which things are critical right away and which will make for nice additions later on? You ask the experts!
In my time at the nation’s leading ecommerce provider, I worked with thousands of online businesses and there were a few key elements that fueled their business’ growth from day one. In my experience, business owners run on coffee, and ecommerce stores run on this kind of fuel: When I entered the working world out of college I had a lot of ideas about where I thought my education would take me. People told me I should become a writer, but I was way too practical for that. “Writing for a paycheck? No thank you!” I insisted. Instead, I imagined I would be working for a large company in some sort of branding role – managing all the little things that add up to create a brand experience. I wanted to be a part of telling a story through the visceral elements of a company and selling not only a brand but a lifestyle, a way of thinking, a personal identity. That’s not the direction my career went in and where it ultimately ended up was somewhere I could have never foreseen.
You see, straight out of college, I found myself working in customer service for a startup that provided ecommerce software. There were three of us answering the phones to handle every sort of issue or problem that our 5,000 user customer base could throw at us. Resources were scarce and we had to make do with whatever we could figure out on our own a lot. It was high pressure and, at times, demoralizing. So needless to say, when I got the chance to do anything related to marketing, I jumped at it. I started out writing a few blog posts for the company blog and they went over pretty well with our users, but the company wasn’t going to pay someone to write for them full-time so if I wanted to transition to a marketing role, I was going to have to find another avenue. This company offered PPC services. I had no idea what that was, but when the woman handling that wanted to get it off of her plate, she asked me if I would be interested in learning about it and helping out. Interested? YOU BET! So I learned everything I could from her and before long I was managing the PPC accounts for our clients. I wish I could say that it was a smooth road, but it wasn’t. Like all startups, there were a lot of growing pains as the company expanded and its direction changed. But by the time I left there 6 years later, we were offering every ancillary service possible to our clients, the company had hundreds of employees and had grown into the world’s largest ecommerce platform, and I was leading my own team of PPC experts amidst a large in-house agency. While in this agency role, I swore over and over that I would NEVER run my own business. I worked with small business owners every day, and I knew the toll it took on them and their families and I wanted no part of that stress. But then, like earlier on in life, my career took a turn I never expected. As a business owner, I’m constantly plagued with this doubt in myself. I look at other successful entrepreneurs and envy their strengths. I find myself thinking, “I’m definitely not as smart as him” or “I wish I had her public speaking skills” or “I’ll never be as much of a people person as them” and in the process I put myself down to the point where I start to wonder if I’m really any good at anything at all. People will give me props for being a small business owner and I’ll shirk them off, chocking up this feat to dumb luck because I honestly don’t believe that I really deserve any of them. When I look in the mirror I feel inferior to other entrepreneurs that I’ve met or read about and secretly hope no one will ever find out that I’m a pretender. That’s how I feel – like I’m pretending to be a successful business owner, or intelligent marketing professional, or diligent working Mom. Then it becomes difficult to run my business because I feel like no matter what I‘m doing, I could be doing it better. So, if you find yourself drowning in the same sea of doubt, I have some advice for you. Here’s how you can continue to run a business when you’re “not great at anything”:
We’re wrapping up our blog series where we’re sharing business lessons from the wildly successful entrepreneur and investor Marcus Lemonis. Thank you for following along all month!
You’re in for a treat because we’ve saved the best for last! Okay, so maybe math isn’t the most fun part of running a business, but it’s certainly one of the most important elements! (And if the math includes big numbers in the profit column, it can definitely feel like one of the best parts of running your own business.) So what can Marcus teach us about business math? Well, as a guy reportedly worth about $150 million, the answer is simple – a lot! In every episode Marcus breaks down the numbers for viewers so that they can understand why he’s making certain decisions. For instance, if he decides that a lunch/dinner restaurant should start offering breakfast, he’ll give you the breakdown to the dollar of why this decision makes sense financially. Here are the three main areas Marcus looks at when he makes strategic business decisions: |
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