Small business owners have a tendency to be passionate about what they do. As part of this passion, they also have a tendency to relate everyday life experiences to that business; sometimes in quite unusual (and in some cases rather tenuous) ways.
I’m talking about personal stories from your fellow entrepreneurs explaining how they leveraged seemingly unrelated life experiences to help their small businesses succeed. While you might not have thought to analyze the situation as the authors do, the small business lessons they reveal can be useful to overcoming the day-to-day challenges you face in running your small business.
Finding one story about how Hula related to small business success would have been surprising; finding two makes you want to grab a hoop and gyrate for insight.
This small business experts relates how her initial failure at hula-hooping and subsequent life-lessons relating to learning and eventually-acquired expertise not only taught a valuable business lesson but also proved a useful skill in a business settings.
Whether growing, preparing, selling, or serving; small business lessons from food abound.
This software entrepreneur grew up on a family farm, and highlights key traits of farmers that have helped him achieve success in business: Versatility, Cost consciousness, Creativity and ingenuity, Efficiency, Strong relationships and Optimism.
Taking her team to volunteer at a soup kitchen taught this marketing firm Managing Partner the value of efficient teamwork, the value of extracting maximum utility from all business resources, and the value of truly understanding your customers– meaning “understand their nature, their personality, and all they’ve been through” not simply what they want and how you can maximize profit by giving it to them.
This Art Gallery Owner turned Pie Shop Owner relates key components of a successful culinary concoction to key components of running a business. She cites patience as a “key ingredient” for both baking and business, relates the exactitude required for baking to the discipline required to follow a business plan (as well as the creative flair that epitomizes a great chef to the successful entrepreneur’s ability to quickly respond to a changing environment or new opportunity), and compares the baker’s admonition to “Bake the whole pie, but savor just a slice” to a strategy for managing small business social media engagement.
HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes reflects on the financial lessons he learned from his first entrepreneurial venture: a small town pizza shop he started with nothing but a credit card for capital.
Perhaps it’s the team dynamics, the never quit attitude, or the necessity for exertion until exhaustion that causes the common comparisons between athletics and small business.
Professional football player turned small business owner Tony McGee recounts six lessons he learned in the NFL that have helped him run a successful business. His examples won’t be new to seasoned business professionals, but the football slant provides interesting insight. For example, he notes that “the best coaches hire great assistants” with diverse skillsets that create the strongest possible team. Any MBA will note the variant on the “A Players hire A Players and B Players hire C Players” theme.
Life may imitate art; art may imitate life; but fictional worlds seem to have a way of helping entrepreneurs of all types understand the characters they encounter in the business world.
One half of a small business marketing firm partnership reflects on how her partner is the perfect “Ethel” to her crazy “Lucy,” and how the best business partnerships are ones where two people complement each other on many levels, and also simply have fun together (which in MY opinion, is truly the key to a successful small business, partnership or sole proprietorship).
What do all these posts have in common? Nothing but the fact that their authors have managed to glean small business lessons from the most unlikely places.
A small business marketing freelancer relates the lessons she learned from her drum instructor that apply equally well to small business, including the derivation of the term “Chopless Wonder” and why they should be avoided in a business setting at all costs.
This post describes how the installation of a prayer kneeler (a long bench on which people kneel to pray) in front of a display of paintings of Catholic Saints turned the exhibit from one that was viewed to one with which people engaged. It suggests that crafting your business marketing messages in ways “which simultaneously invite the passerby to participate and facilitate the possibility of engagement… in a very meaningful way” should be the ideal towards which we strive.
Have you learned an important small business lesson in an unlikely place? If so we’d love to hear about it in the comments.