Don't Focus On What You're Going Through: Think About Where You're Going

by Rick Duree

When I first opened my store, I had a chamber of commerce grand-opening ceremony where smiling, supportive fellow businesspeople came over and ate doughnuts (I definitely knew how to put together a spread!). When they walked into the store, they saw my layout. My wife, my brother and I had worked for a few months on getting the store ready to launch, but we were still low on inventory. All three of us were attending the local university and had compiled our personal textbooks to launch the store. I had 24 shelf units and a whopping 12 books.

You could see it on my honored guests’ faces: “This guy’s going out of business. Let’s get over to the next grand opening, fast.” I tried to make them feel welcome and excited, but they kept asking me, “Where’s your inventory?” I told them: “Well, my business plan says that next month as the current semester ends, I’m set up to buy books from the students to sell in the upcoming semester. So I don’t have much inventory yet. Students will be my main source of inventory, and then I’ll order supplementally off various book websites as the next semester approaches.”

I could see them rolling their eyes, literally. They didn’t know where I was going with this. They couldn’t catch my vision. They only saw what they saw, and at that point I had practically zero products.

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky famously said: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” I’ve found that when you are building a business, you have to tell your story to your accountant, your banker, your mentors – because people don’t always see where the puck is going.

What made Gretzky great was that on the ice, he could see the future. Successful entrepreneurs can always see the future a little bit. Obviously I’m not telling you to go to the palm reader for advice because entrepreneurship is not about fortune telling. It’s about building a plan and following that plan. If you’ve done your research, thought through possible market swings, written out your business plan with thorough financial statements and even awakened dreaming about how your ideas are going to solve the world’s problems, then that plan becomes your own personal “Entrepreneur’s Bible.” Make changes as your customers’ demands shift, but hopefully you’ll be able to stay largely true to it.

On the other hand, if you burst into consciousness from an entrepreneurial nightmare, then that may be a sign to reconsider. Some startups face major pivots in their business models before and after launch. Sometimes the customers just don’t walk in the door. Sometimes you have to shift within the industry or supply chain. But don’t talk yourself out of your entrepreneurial dreams. If the numbers in your financial projections were good going in, chances are you’ll have good numbers coming out. Keep at it.

A self-made entrepreneur, Rick Duree launched four successful businesses and had four kids by the time he was 30. A professor of entrepreneurship, inspirational speaker and community builder, he founded the Duree Center for Entrepreneurship, where he actively mentors young creators ramping up their startups. He is also the author of “The Entrepreneur’s Bible: 52 Proverbs of Profit.”