April 2010 | Bigg Success

Monthly Archives: April 2010

The Problem with Taking a Vacation

Written on April 23, 2010 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Time Management

vacation-sunset If you’re a regular reader, you already know that we recently returned from vacation. The photo you’re seeing is from the balcony of our room!

Without question, it’s important to take time to rejuvenate and we were overdue. But it’s hard to get away, especially if you’re an entrepreneur.

And as you know, BIGG success is entrepreneuring your life. So we’re all entrepreneurs.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss a lesson learned when returning from vacation on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen while you read [6:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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You may go away but the work doesn’t!

It’s the vacation paradox that entrepreneurs face. You need time away to rejuvenate but you have to work even harder to get that time away!

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George Krueger I jokingly said that we had to do two weeks of work to take a one week vacation.

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Mary-Lynn Foster George, I think you forgot that you have to do two weeks of work the week before your trip and two weeks of work the week after!

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Under the gun gets you in the groove

It sure seems like it anyway. Before vacation, we were really cranking. It seemed like we were getting two days of production done every day.

Because we had to!

It meant long hours. But isn’t it amazing how efficient you can be when you’re in the groove?

And that’s a lesson … when you’re under the gun, it seems easier to get in the groove!

Relighting the fire

We love the work we do here at BIGG Success. We were gone long enough that I couldn’t wait to get back and get going again.

In fact, I think we both started mentally checking in the last day or two of our trip. Then we would remind each other to keep enjoying the time away.

So we got back from vacation ready to set the world on fire. But we’ve been disappointed with ourselves.

It took a while to get the fire relit!

We got used to a more leisurely pace. We were able to sleep longer …

… and later! Although experts say you can’t catch up on lost sleep, we think we did.

The entrepreneurial marathon

Our city’s marathon is coming up soon. It got us thinking about the similarities between the marathoner in training and entrepreneurs’ production capacity.

Picture yourself preparing for a marathon. You go out on the first day of your training and run a little bit. You go out the second time and run a little bit further.

You keep running a little bit further each day or so until you know you can go the distance. Now you might start working on your time – getting it done faster.

But you don’t run all the time. You give yourself a break now and then.

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When we look at people we admire – people who are a BIGG success – one thing they have in common is that they work hard.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes training.

Your production capacity increases over time. You can work a little longer, work a little harder and work more efficiently. You can work at a pace that would have never been possible had you tried to do it earlier.

But you have to take some time off – even if it’s just a day – to maintain that pace.

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George Krueger It reminds me of the football player who was asked why his team had won the game. He said, “We came out and got the momodum. Then we lost the momodum but fortunately we were able to get the momodum back.”

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Mary-Lynn Foster Yes, momentum is a precious thing. We had the momentum going into our vacation. There’s no doubt we needed some time away. But as entrepreneurs, we often think we’re super-human. We’re not. The problem with taking a vacation is that you’ll lose the momentum.

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But you can get the momentum back. It will take a little time. You should plan for it.

That’s what we missed.

We thought we could hit the ground running like we were before. We didn’t. So we were disappointed. But we learned. And we know that leads to BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00578-042310.mp3

(Image by BIGGSuccess Flickr Page, Vacation 2010 Set,CC 2.0)

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Entrepreneurs and Beggars

Written on April 21, 2010 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Entrepreneurship

beale-street_memphis We recently took a vacation. Memphis was our milestone for the trip back. We wanted to enjoy Beale Street.

We weren’t there long but we had a great time. We had a nice dinner at the Blues City Café. Then we went out on the street to see where we to settle in for some great live music.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss a lesson they learned on Beale Street on The Bigg Success Show! Cick the player to listen [6:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Larry the tour guide?

That’s when we met Larry the beggar.

Larry had a great personality. We were feeling pretty laid back so we engaged with him.

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Mary-Lynn Foster Larry said that he was a tour guide. He wanted to show us this “new thing”. I said, “We’re on Beale Street. We’re here for the blues, not some new thing.”

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George Krueger He said, “Oh, you gotta see it. Come with me.” So we followed him. We weren’t sure where he was taking us. We came to the corner of Beale Street and Rufus Thomas Drive. I said to Larry, “Who’s Rufus Thomas?”

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He didn’t have an answer. (When we visited Sun Studio the next day, we learned that Rufus Thomas had been one of their artists.)

So the local “tour guide” couldn’t tell us anything about the person after whom one of the streets was named.

We asked Larry what he did before he became a tour guide. He said he was a forklift operator. We asked where. He didn’t tell us about the company he worked for; he just said, “Kalamazoo”.

We kept walking with Larry. He was leading us past the area the police had barricaded off so you could walk on the streets. We saw few people ahead of us. So we told Larry we were turning around.

Before long, we were approaching some cops. Larry seemed to get a little nervous.

Now, of course, we knew Larry wasn’t a legitimate tour guide. We don’t usually do this – and we may never do it again – but we gave Larry $10. Then he asked for $5 more!

Larry was great at asking for money. Unfortunately, he wasn’t good at delivering any value for it. Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs are the same way.

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Are customers people or dollar signs?

He knows he has to be aggressive. He has to walk up to complete strangers with a way to ask for money.

There’s nothing wrong with being assertive. But who among us really likes to deal with an aggressive person, however you may define that?

Yet many business people today are aggressive. Many business people act like Larry the beggar!

Larry doesn’t see people; he sees dollars. Many business people today behave the same way.

It seems especially egregious in the online world. Many “internet marketers” are among the worst.

Somehow, since they aren’t dealing with you in person, the dynamic changes. But it shouldn’t … there’s still a person behind the computer.

You can’t have customers without a product
Larry doesn’t care about his product. Of course, he really doesn’t have one. But he could. Some entrepreneurs don’t really care about their product either. It doesn’t matter what they offer; they just want to make money.

But a business has to sell a product or service that meets the needs of its customers. Otherwise, it’s not sustainable in the long term. And that’s true for ALL businesses.

You have to create value for the customer first
Larry the beggar could be a genuine business person. Without question, he has the personality for sales. And he’s not afraid to ask for money, which holds a lot of people back.

Like Larry, some entrepreneurs find it easier to ask for money than to do the hard work. It’s hard to create value for others. It’s hard to put the needs of others first.

We didn’t help Larry by giving him money. You don’t help an aggressive business person by giving in to them either.

Entrepreneurs know that they must deliver value to their customers first to create value for their business. That’s what leads to BIGG success!

… the rest of the story
By the way, we did find a great little blues joint, Mr. Handy’s Blues Hall – named after W.C. Handy, the original developer of Beale Street. We even got a shout out for Champaign, Illlinois from Dr. Feelgood Potts, the leader of the band that regularly plays there.

As Dr. Feelgood says, “The smaller the joint, the bigger the party!”

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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(Image in today's post by mdcarpe01)