BrandToBeDetermined

Any Excuse, No Matter How Valid, Is Still an Excuse

  Sunday Breakfast 
  Originally uploaded by darkhairedgirl

One of the points that is articulated well in the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the awareness that:

Any Excuse, No Matter How Valid, Is Still an Excuse

We rotate kolache and donut duty at our office and the email went out this morning with this line in it.

“Not a lot of varieties. The guy in the Kolache store just had a baby last night, so he didn’t get much time to make more.”

Read that again. The man's wife had a baby THAT NIGHT and still opened the store for business taking care of his customers. While his regulars would surely have understood if he wasn't there, new customers would have wondered if the store was closed. So he opened it regardless.

This is a guy, who for better or worse, understands the phrase "any excuse, no matter how valid, is still an excuse". This is the competition. This is why I work on Saturdays. Yes be smart. Yes have a work/life balance. But know that the competition opens the kolache store at 4 AM after being up all night with his wife who just had a baby. That is the competition. Be afraid.

Update: before you ask, yes I was there when my kids were born so judge me by my actions. I am not advocating or even agreeing with this man's actions. I am however impressed with his drive.

 

Thanks to some amazing people - 10 years of business!

  I have fierce friends. They can stare down Chuck Norris. 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

"A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - unknown

As the reader has probably gathered, I run a small web design business in Houston Texas. 23 employees now that our summer interns have gone back to school. 300+ clients ish.

Well that small business is 10 years old today. I put in my notice at Lyondell Petrochemicals on 8/15/1997, worked my two weeks, and my first day solo was 9/1/1997. 10 years old today, which is September 1, 2007.

Sheeeeesh! 10 Years! Holy crap!

The main emotion I am feeling is thanks. THANKS to all of the people who have made this happen. I like that quote at the top because it highlights the very challenge. In fact *you* can't do this, but *you* can build a team and that team can do close to anything. So in so many ways, I do not have a 10 year old business, I have just been lucky enough to assemble a team of brilliant people and have HUGE support from family and friends that allowed us this success.

Humble. At an emotional level that has to be the biggest emotion I am feeling.

The biggest thanks has to go to my wife Rachel of 17 years. Rachel has been the rock that held everything together. It is not easy being married to an entrepreneur, a word that also took me years to accept. But there it is. So THANKS RACHEL!

While many more thanks are in order, we have a few "birthday celebrations" coming up over the last two quarters of this year and I hopefully get a chance to thank most of those people in person. However I do have a few lessons learned that I wanted to share after the jump.

Winning Makes You Live Longer

It is good to be a Nobel price winner. You get to live longer according to Wired.

So it seems to me that this 'control of destiny' phenomenon is in effect even among Nobel Prize finalists - if you win, you're the king of the world, in total control. If you don't, you'll always know that there's always somebody out there better than you, even if it's just one punk physicist at MIT...

Just one more reason why WINNING! is good.