As many of you will be aware, Cameron and I started our entrepreneurial journey in a community newspaper, in a small country town called Maleny, in Queensland. The notion of owning a newspaper was driven very hard by Cameron (who has ink in his veins, I swear). The subject first came up five years earlier while we were on our honeymoon, driving through a gorgeous little town in New South Wales, called Bellingen. It was the most stunning countryside, lush and green, with a picturesque river running through it. As we were driving along, Cam said that it was his ultimate dream to own a newspaper in a country town just like Bellingen.
So flash forward to 1996, and we were visiting Cam’s brother, who had just bought a supermarket in Maleny. We had driven through Maleny, which is a ‘picture postcard’ beautiful town. It is surrounded by rolling, lush green hills, dotted with contented dairy cows. As we headed back down the mountain to our home on the coast, looking out over the Glass House Mountains, Cam said, “Imagine if we could buy the newspaper here”.
The idea kept bugging us (actually, it bugged Cam more than me, I was completely terrified at the very idea, I had no idea how to run a newspaper). So we spent some time making enquiries, and decided to make the owners of the local paper an offer.
We took the necessary bookwork to our accountant to complete a due diligence, and his verdict was not what we wanted to hear. As far as he was concerned, the price we were being asked to pay, was far more than what the figures indicated the business was worth. In fact, he thought it was not a good idea to move forward, unless we could significantly bring down the price.
We had our heart set on this business, and we asked him to go and negotiate with the owners on our behalf. So he did, and during the course of the meeting, he asked them why they had put such a high price on the business, when it clearly did not have the trading figures to support the asking price. And their reply was “because it has potential”.
He remained unconvinced, and made the comment that it was not the business which had the potential. We didn’t know what he meant by that, and at the time, we thought he was raining on our parade. We thought we could see exactly what they meant. The paper was almost like the Bible in town, everyone read it. It was in a growth area, with very little competition, as far as we could see, we would own the territory. So, despite the best advice we could get, we decided to go ahead with the business.
Within a month or so of taking over, the company which eventually went on to buy our business from us, set up in opposition and sent a troupe of advertising sales reps all over our territory. Scary stuff, given that our sales rep was me, and I had no prior experience, and had a 13 month old baby in tow while I was working most of the time (we couldn’t even afford child care at that point).
But we knew that if we were to compete, we had to be better. We had to build strong relationships with our advertisers. Offer them better value, and teach them how to make the most of their advertising budget.
As time went by, it became obvious that our work had paid off. Advertisers were not buying the opposition paper, and eventually, it got shut down. We committed ourselves to making constant and incremental changes and improvements to our product and services and expanded our business to include a tourism magazine which we published annually.
As the business grew, so did the challenges, and we had to continue to grow and change ourselves to meet them head on. We would never have made it if we didn’t. In 2006, we were approached by a large media company to buy our business (ironically, the same company which had set up in opposition to us ten years earlier). They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, on the basis of “the potential of the business”, and we gladly stepped out, and eventually into the world of e-commerce.
But it got me thinking about potential. And when I saw the way the company ran our old business (and lost a lot of advertising revenue in the name of ‘streamlining and efficiency’), it gave me a flash of insight about potential.
I realize now, that that our accountant was right. The business did not have the potential, but we did. And that is the same in every business.
So many people go into a business venture, and they think that their product, system, company, sponsor, training (or any other external factor) is going to be the key to their success. In reality, you hold the key. It is within you where the potential lies, and no-where else. There is a brilliant book by T. Harv Ecker called “The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”, and in it he talks about the difference in self talk between the poor, the middle class and the very wealthy. And it looks something like this:
The poor think ” I wish that I could have success in my life”. The middle class think “I hope this works out for me”, and the very successful think “This is going to happen, because I will make it happen”.
You can see, quite different self talk going on here. So, what is your self talk? Making change and moving forward requires some serious and honest self analysis. How do you see yourself in the context of your business? Are you looking externally for solutions to move you forward, or do you recognize that you already have everything you need right now, to build the business and life of your dreams? When you take your focus off external factors, and start to own your beliefs and actions, and eventually the results you are getting (or not, as the case may be), you will see significant changes start to take place. The nature of those changes will be completely up to you.
Make today a great one.
Cheers,
Tan
