Adventures in Entrepreneurship with Jeremy Hanks

Focus on Thy Employees!

One of my favorite blogs is Guy Kawasaki’s Bona tempora volvantur. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re unfamiliar with Kawasaki’s work, you need to check him out. Guy Kawasaki is one of the managing directors over at Garage Technology Ventures, a columnist for Forbes.com, and the author of eight books including The Art of the Start , Rules for Revolutionaries, and How to Drive Your Competition Crazy.

Last week, in addition to asking his readers to help him achieve Top 10 status on Technorati by providing 5,000 or so additional links to his blog, Kawasaki wrote that most companies tend to go astray when defeating the competition becomes more important than taking care of customers. By contrast, he says, when companies become obsessed with the pursuit of excellence, “…they often reach new levels of greatness.” He then went on to provide eight distinctions to avoid losing sight of what’s really important, including:

1. Know thyself
2. Know thy customer
3. Know thy enemy
4. Focus on the customer
5. Turn customers into evangelists
6. Make good by doing good
7. Turn the competition into allies
8. Play with their minds.

Click here for Kawasaki’s entire write-up, titled The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy (it’s a great read, and not just because of the fact that I myself have been known to spend a fair amount of time trying to drive my competitors crazy ).

While knowing your customer and even anticipating their wants is important, I’d broaden Guy Kawasaki’s list to include:

9. Focus on Your Employees: I rank this even higher than Kawasaki’s Know thy customer and Focus on the customer. In my book, especially at a service-based company like mine, employees always come first, then customers. Think about it; without employees, you wouldn’t have a service to sell, nor do you have the means by which to meet the needs and wants of your customers. While I agree with Kawasaki on the need to turn your customers into evangelists, I’ve always felt that you do a better job by turning your employees into evangelists first. Getting everyone onto the same page with respect to what your company stands for, and preaching the good word of your company via any authentic means necessary, is critical for every start-up and entrepreneur. Trust me; if you choose to focus on your employees first, you WILL drive your competition crazy!

10. Be the Leader: I’d bet you donuts to dollars that not one NCAA Men’s or Woman’s Division I basketball team starts off the season with a goal of winning just 50 percent of their games. No way, right? So why should it be any different in business? It isn’t. Right from day one you should be saying to yourself and your employees, “we intend to be the market leader in our category.” Set out to be the leader in your field and be it. Any business that follows someone else’s business will be driven a little crazy. Kawasaki’s eight points help get you to and maintain the leadership position. Accept nothing less.

11. Compete on a Higher Plane: Simply stated, set high standards for how businesses in your space should act and perform, and then follow through. Doing so will either force your competition to raise the ante and compete at your level, or they’ll ignore your position altogether and allow the spotlight to focus on your company and it’s superior business practices and ethics. Whatever you do, don’t stoop to your competitor’s level!

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