Be an Ethical Entrepreneur, Marketer, and Business Builder

Is it hard to be an Ethical Business Builder?

Me on the top of Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh

Me on the top of Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh

Since I’m 26 I often go to meetings with other business owners where I’m the youngest one there and certainly look too young to own a business. At one such meeting someone who was quite a few years older than me and was working for another business asked me if its hard to own a business. “Not really. It’s like anything else. If you take the time to educate yourself anything can become easy.” Here’s why building businesses is “easy” for me. Keep in mind I don’t define easy as working 2 hours per week (though that is the goal). Easy for me is simply sleeping well at night, not feeling overly pressured, and welcoming the day. Nothing I encounter troubles me that much because I feel confident I know how to overcome it.

  1. I LOVE it. When you’re totally, completely, absolutely passionate about something and you know its what you were designed to do even the trials are colored positively.
  2. I picked a great partner. The rule of thumb is you only get a partner if you absolutely need one. Since I can’t service or sell my company’s products I needed to make sure I could rely on someone who could if times got tough. Granted that’s far secondary to finding someone I can easily work with and trust.
  3. I’ve spent a ton of time and money educating myself. If you ask an expert programmer if it was hard to write that last program, chances are they’re going to say no. Ask the plumber about plumbing that house, or the salesman about closing that deal and you get the same. Why? Because they’ve spent the time and energy necessary to become experts to the point that doing what’s best is second-nature.

By far, educating yourself in how to ethically buy, build, and sell businesses is the most important part of making it “easy”. If you want the crash-course in business that will far exceed anything else you could ever learn in 3 days I highly recommend saving up $4k and attending Brad Sugar’s Entrepreneur’s Masters class. He’s the best. Or if you don’t have that money and you prefer to get more hands-on, then join my team and we’ll work through the 6 Levels of a business together.

There are really only 2 paths to getting started down the path of being a successful entrepreneur without having to make all of the common mistakes along the way:

  1. Go work with the absolute best entrepreneur you can find with the potential of buying him or her out. Or just eventually take the knowledge you’ve gathered and go out on your own.
  2. Attend Brad Sugar’s Entrepreneur Master’s Class (if you know of a better 3-day training then I’m all ears), read his and the other books I recommend, find a good lawyer and accountant (which is by far the hardest thing to do), and then go do it.

As a motorcyclist, when I first jumped on a bike with no experience and no friends to ask for advice it was a bit scary. I just never felt completely in control. So my first trip on my brand new bike was to the library where I borrowed every book I could find on motorcycling. A few hours later my eyes were forever open and my riding skill improved 1000% as I learned the concept of “counter-steering”. If you’re not a motorcyclist here’s the simplest definition of what it means: to go left you turn the handlebars to the right and to go right you turn the handlebars to the left. In other words it’s backwards or “counter” to how you would turn a car. What? That doesn’t make sense, right? Well without getting into the Tony Foale (Tony is probably the greatest motorcycle chassis and suspension expert in the world who I’ve had the pleasure of learning from) explanation, if you look at it in a few basic steps it becomes perfectly clear. First, all 2 wheeled vehicles turn by leaning. No lean, no turn. It’s impossible. Second, motorcycle tires are rounded, not flat on the bottom like car tires. That’s important because to get the bike to lean you turn the wheel to the right and the front tire immediately drops down onto the left side of the tire – which causes it to lean, and therefore turn, left. This blog isn’t about motorcycles but if you ask any cyclist to demonstrate how it works with the bike sitting still on flat ground you can see it very quickly.

So now you know how something that seems to go against common sense actually works. Business is much the same way. We as business owners think the more time we spend taking care of customers and putting out fires the happier everyone is going to be and the better business will be. Makes sense, right? The problem is, that if you’re so busy putting out fires and helping each customer, who is making sure the customer is happy when someone else helps them? Who is the fire marshal out teaching your team members how to prevent fires? There are hundreds of “common-sense” business practices that you and I would easily understand if someone just told us. That’s why it’s so important to learn from the best. Guys like Brad Sugars, Marcus Buckingham, Michael Masterson, Dale Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Dave Yoho, Duane Sparks, Dan Kennedy, Michael Gerber, etc. etc. etc.. Read the various books that I reference, look for great business blogs, and make as many contacts with business owners as you can possibly make. They may not all be geniuses, but all they need is to fill you in on one great idea, system, or program to make it worth spending time with them. Plus, we entrepreneurs are all egotistical and think our ideas are great. So we’re generally more than willing to share those lightning bolt ideas with you and after we’re done we like you even more since you let us talk. 🙂

To your success, Bryan

P.S. If you really want to know what it’s like to live a hard life then check out American Courage: Remarkable True Stories Exhibiting the Bravery That Has Made Our Country Great and learn about some of the greatest figures in American history who they didn’t teach you about in school. 🙂

About Bryan Trilli

Entrepreneurial Junky is probably the best way to describe me. I've bought, run and sold 3 businesses in 3 different states and started a 4th. The first 3 were brick-and-mortar service-based businesses and the 4th does internet marketing for service businesses. My team at Optimized Marketing guarantees to double your business' internet contacts in just 90 Days.

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