Chapter Two: Burning the Bridges Behind Me... or was it boats? Was it bras?

There are some alarming statistics about small business failure. Some estimates say that 95% of all small businesses fail within the first five years.



The difficulty there is that there are no standards for who gets to start a "small business". In this way, small businesspeople are much like motivational speakers or rappers. Absolutely anybody can be one and there are no talents or qualifications involved.



Most people who start a small business aren't really serious. You see a lot of folks whose real occupation in life is to act as a disposal mechanism for somebody else's money. For instance, a trophy wife, a congressman or a crack addict on welfare never really add any value to the world. They just suck up money from somebody else and spend it.



Some of these people would like to be able to portray themselves as offering something worthwhile to the world.



So, they start a "small business". Perhaps they start a business making hand-crafted home-style decorations that they'll sell at craft shows. After a few days, they realize they don't like selling things at craft shows. They also realize that they don't particularly like putting the stuff together any faster than one unit every year.



Then, one day, they realize that they're married to somebody who makes $90,000 a year at the local auto assembly plant. This breadwinner has never noticed that the "small business person" was capable of bringing any income into the house. Nor, do they ever expect the person to.



So, the would-be “small business person” goes back to gluing cotton balls onto sweatshirts that say "Ewe's Not Fat… Ewe's Fluffy" at a rate of 1 every 9 months and giving them to one unfortunate obese relative every Christmas.



Voila… another small business failure.



It's not so much that small business is so risky, it's that for most people, it's not particularly necessary. It's much more attractive to be able to say, "I'm a home decorating consultant" versus, "I got lucky and married a rich guy and now the divorce would be too expensive". So a lot of people feel compelled to try and contrive a small business for themselves to justify the oxygen they're removing from the environment.



But when it comes to doing some of the more arcane things involved with running a business, such as finding a paying customer or actually doing work of any sort, a lot of these hobbyist businesspeople soon give up and move on to something else like watching Oprah and going shopping.



With my business, I backed myself into a corner where failure simply wasn't an option.



There is a fable about a Roman general who, upon landing with his army, burned the ships to provide for no retreat. This wasn't a particularly bright tactic because after his army won the battle, they had no way to get back home. So, they starved and died on a lonely shore, miles from home, when it would have been so much easier just to return in the boats that had brought them.



Still, I felt that I needed similar motivation. So, after I got to work one day, I burned my car. In hindsight, I can say that this wasn't as motivational as a person might imagine. It also makes for a long walk home. In my case, it made for a long walk to the strip club, but a short ride home with a seriously top-heavy woman named “Candee”.



There were other symbolic ways of burning the bridges, too. For instance, debt is a fabulous motivational tool. At one point in time, I was $300,000 in debt. My wife was constantly searching for the rock, and I actually went so far as to hide it in the back yard.



Finances are quite the motivator. So are big rocks.



Also, I knew that there were a lot of former co-workers who would have been more than happy to see me fail. One of them was my former boss.



It is imperative for him to prove that he is competent at what he does. Granted, that hasn't happened, yet, but in theory, it could. Both he and the person who promoted him are really looking forward to that day.



At his level, one of the things he should be doing is identifying, grooming and promoting people who demonstrate entrepreneurial ability.



As any business leader will tell you, entrepreneurial ability is the hardest thing for a business to find and the most important thing to a business' long-term success.



The people who are capable of running a successful business, for themselves or others, are rare indeed. These type of people are so rare that when they aren't available, people like my ex-boss will get promoted instead.



If it turned out that I was a slacker idiot, my boss' decision to boot me would be validated.



If it turned out that, instead, I had enough entrepreneurial ability to start a business and become wealthy in a few short years, it would tend to indicate that perhaps he had made a poor decision.



If it turned out that not only had he disposed of a valuable company resource, but did so because I was recovering from an accident, then he'd not only look like a poor decision maker, but a complete jerk, too.



Proving that he was, indeed, a big stupid jerk is quite the motivator as well.



In all seriousness, if there had been a way for me to quit at a few times during the early days of my business, I would have done so. I didn't have a choice, though. I can't tell you the number of times I was driving home from a hard, 18 hour day of work in the most inhospitable conditions.



There is a fork in the freeway where one way leads to the hospital and the other way leads to home. After a hard day of cleaning carpets, sometimes, it took everything I could muster in order for me to take the road that led home.



If not for the fact that I was broke, I'd have taken the road that led to the hospital. That's because that road also leads to a really cool strip club.



I found out the hard way that telling a stripper that you're not going to tip her, but you would be glad to wet-clean her rug, will get you slapped like nobody's business.



Plus, I have basic needs that I have to meet. For instance, one modest need of mine is to have enough guitars that if I should ever happen to become a platinum recording artist on the verge of a world-tour, I won't have to go shopping first.



The chances of me meeting those needs if I were to run my business into the ground would have been remote, at best. So, my back was against the wall. I needed to make this thing work.



So, I continued to take the road that led to home. When the next day dawned, I took the same road back to work. Burning deep inside me, however, was the vision of a day when I could give the wife back her rock and go to the strip club and tell those women they can clean wet-clean each other's rugs for all I care. With a big enough pile of money, I think I can make that happen.