Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2015. The reference to “more than 50 years in business” describes Tarkenton as of 2015.
Business experts and “gurus” have long pointed to certain principles and “mantras” that everyone should follow to succeed in business despite hard times and difficulties. And while they may not actually be false, the truth is that they are often taken out of context or their message gets distorted.
Fran Tarkenton, after a career in sport, has spent more than 50 years in business. He is the founder of Tarkenton Companies, a firm that advises small businesses, and he says he has seen how many of those messages can harm entrepreneurs.
Although they are debatable up to a point, these would be the 3 business myths that Tarkenton considers harmful in a way when they are distorted.
1. Positive thinking
In 1950 the message spread like wildfire that any problem can be solved with optimism. You have to think positive and always see the glass as half full, not half empty.
It is one of the main messages of business gurus, but the truth is that sometimes the glass is completely empty.
If you want to succeed in your business, positive thinking on its own won’t help you. You will have to face reality, and reality isn’t always positive.
Bad news doesn’t always get better with time; if something is wrong and we pretend it’s fine by doing nothing about it, things will only get worse.
“As long as you stay optimistic, things will work out”: not true.
If your sales have gone up but your customer service or distribution is dreadful, are you really on the road to success? Is the glass really filling up?
If your business is growing but your employees are unhappy and morale is very low, will they look after your business for much longer?
Keeping a positive attitude is fine, but there are almost always negative things we have to deal with constantly when running a business. Ignoring the underlying cracks is the key ingredient for failure: even an unsinkable ocean liner full of optimistic people ended up at the bottom of the sea (the Titanic).
2. No one has original ideas all on their own
On this point, Tarkenton thinks very much the way I do: neither Zuckerberg nor even Steve Jobs had original ideas all on their own. We all get ideas from what we see, hear or read. Ideas come above all from talking to people.
“Every successful idea I’ve had, on the playing field, in business, in my personal relationships, has come from talking to people,” Tarkenton says. By talking to people of all ages and to all kinds of business owners, you pick up a bit here and a bit there. As a rule, the most innovative idea is usually an improvement on something that already exists, or a solution that already existed but that someone failed to put into practice.
The self-made man is probably a myth. We are all what we have read and who we have met, the people we have talked to and the people we have surrounded ourselves with. Ideas grow out of other ideas, and that is why you always have to keep learning and never stop listening to other people’s needs.
The self-made man is a collection of pieces of other men, who in turn learned from other people.
3. A company’s mission is to make a profit
The aim of a company is to make a profit. Yet, as Jeff Jarvis himself explained in his book What Would Google Do?, companies, though it may sound like a self-help book, really shouldn’t focus exclusively on profit, or they will never get off the ground. Companies should focus on helping their users and creating a benefit for them.
That should be the mission and sole purpose of every company: helping people. The more people you help with your product or service, and the more partners, employees, customers and users you help, the more successful you will be as a business owner. Profit then becomes something you don’t have to chase, but something that inevitably ends up arriving.
That is why the famous saying makes sense: “Don’t try to make 1 million euros; find a way to help 1 million people.” That way, the million euros will fall into your pocket by sheer momentum, and probably a few more.
Ultimately, the question a business owner should ask is not “How can I make more profit?”, but “How can I make my customers happier? How can I add more value for them? How can I make my employees happier?”
Finding the answers to these questions is how you will become a more enthusiastic, more productive and certainly more successful business owner.
Further reading
Featured image: Francis Godolphin Osbourne Stuart, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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