Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Sep 25

Most everyone by now has read or seen (or at least HEARD OF) The Secret. It’s a really good book about the power of positive thinking, AKA the Law of Attraction. I read it fairly recently, and liked it quite a bit. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it essentially says that “the universe” provides whatever you need and want, but it doesn’t understand negatives.

In other words, you can’t think “I don’t want to get sick” because the universe won’t understand “don’t.” So it hears, “I … want to get sick.” And voila, you’re sick. From an entrepreneurial perspective, thinking “I don’t want to fail” all but guarantees your failure.

The answer is to think positively; think about what you WANT, not about what you don’t want. Thinking “I want to be healthy” will help stave off illness; thinking “I want my business to succeed” will help to avoid failure. And I think that this is true as far as it goes. Where it starts to get a little iffy, at least for me, is where the book and the film say that if you act as if you already have a million dollars, and feel like you’ll feel when you have a million dollars, that a million dollars will come to you.

Every result comes from action. And I absolutely believe that saying to yourself, “I want a million dollars” is better than saying “I don’t want to be broke.” But you still have to work toward that goal. If I wake up every day and say to myself, “I want a million dollars,” but then go to work like always, do what I always do, come home and watch TV all night, drink beer and eat Doritos, I’m still going to get what I always got. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So why do people love the idea of “The Secret?” Because it sounds easy. But it’s not. You have to work as if you already have a million dollars before you will ever receive the money. And the positive thinking part of it is only beneficial inasmuch as it sets your mind in the right direction. If you are running away from something, you’ll stop running as soon as the threat is gone. That is negative thinking - an “I don’t want” thought.

But if you are running toward something, you’ll keep running until you get there - if the goal is motivating enough. This is “I want” thinking. The REAL benefit of positive thinking is that it opens your mind and senses to opportunities and possibilities that you never would have noticed before. The opportunities and possibilities always existed, but your negative mindset had you focused on what you DIDN’T want instead of what you DID want. So things slipped by unnoticed and uncapitalized upon.

Think of it this way - when you bought your most recent car (let’s say it’s a Volkswagen Jetta), all of a sudden you notice that there are Jettas EVERYWHERE! Where did they all come from? They were always there, you just never had reason to notice before. This is a function of your Reticular Activating System (RAS) - a part of your brain that subconsciously notices things that are important to you. And it does not have to be trained. It’s automatic. As an example, I rent small airplanes to do my flight training. I fly different aircraft, which have different identification, every time I fly. But if Air Traffic Control says the ID of the plane I’m flying, my attention is piqued immediately. Not because I am used to the aircraft ID, but because my RAS determined that it was important to me. It’s how you can hear someone whisper your name across a room; it’s how you recognize possibility and opportunity once you’ve told yourself it is important to you.

So even if you can’t bring yourself to believe that The Secret is scientific fact and all you need to do is think positive thoughts and good things will appear out of thin air in front of you, know that there is good evidence that a positive outlook and “positive thinking” can absolutely make your goals more reachable, in a more timely manner, with less frustration and work.

So run toward something good - not away from something bad!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Apr 21

Here’s something interesting: Small Business Week coincides with Earth Day.  I don’t know if that is the case every year, but in 2007, here we are. 

President Bush has praised small business owners in the days preceding Small Business Week, but he has not latched on to the opportunity these shared celebrations present.  If you would like to read the full text of the President’s proclamation, click here (HTML) or here (PDF). 

Here’s the thing: we all know that the environment is in dire straights.  We’ve heard the hullabaloo about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (both a book [aff] and a movie [aff]) and have seen the many recent reports on Global Warming (or Climate Change - choose your poison), a topic which has finally hit the mainstream as it deserves.

So what is to be done?  Bush missed a BEAUTIFUL opportunity to link Earth Day with Small Business Week.  According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), small business represents 50% of the United States’ private, non-farm gross domestic product (GDP).  In fact, small business ranged from 18 to 85 percent of each sector of the US economy!

Imagine what could happen if there was a strong call for small business to usher in a “green revolution!”  What if all small businesses began to run in an environmentally-friendly (even an environmentally-enhancing) way!  How great would it be if the ideas laid out in books like Green to Gold [aff] and Natural Capitalism [aff] were truly brought to fruition by the ingenuity and creativity of entrepreneurs and small-business owners!

Now think about what WILL happen if no small businesses think about the environment.  Nothing will change.  We’ll continue on exactly the same path we are already on - and, as we entrepreneurs know, avoiding change is not an option.  The status quo is a death knell for business.  In this case, the death knell would only warn us of the impending doom from climate change.  It may not end things, but it would DRASTICALLY change life as we know it.

So if President Bush won’t do it, I will.  I (and Aviation of Business) challenge all small business to try to think “outside their box” and “think globally while acting locally.”  And putting the clichés aside, I truly do believe that small business is up to the challenge of redefining what business can be.  I believe that small business, with its ability to change quickly and with its creativity and ability to mitigate risk (even though it can never be completely eliminated) is more likely to cause the environmental revolution than big, bumbling, slow conglomorates that slog through committees and make tiny, incremental changes so as not to misstep and (god forbid) make a mistake! </rant> Small business entrepreneurs know that mistakes are lessons, and that “incremental” actually means “slow and scared.”

So take the challenge, please!  Find any and every way you can make your business “green.”  Then let ‘er rip!  Leave a comment telling us how you currently “green” your business, and come back and add to the list if you hear about or think of a new, creative way to increase the “greenness” of your company!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Mar 17

My wife and her father often play Dr. Mario, an old eight-bit Nintendo game.  In this game, each player starts with a number of “germs,” each one of three colors: blue, red, or yellow.  The goal of the game is to eliminate all of the germs from the screen.  To do so, you must either stack up (vertically) or line up (horizontally) four blocks of the same color.  The blocks are actually pills; some are all one color - most are half one color and half another.  They come in any combination of two of the colors above.  Players can move and flip the “pills” to get them lined up or stacked properly to eliminate the colored germs with same color pill (or half-pill).  The pill’s and germs disappear when four or more of one color are lined (or stacked) up.

What is interesting about this is that when playing in competition, it is possible to “plop” on the other player by arranging your pills so as to make more than one line disappear with one move.  The other player will have two (or three, or four!) “half-pills” drop down at random on his/her side of the screen.  These plops generally land in inconvenient places and are inconvenient colors.

Why the hell am I giving you a crash course in Dr. Mario, you ask?  For this reason:  The competitive style of playing the game is uncanny in its parallel to entrepreneurship and business.  Stay with me here…

 Business is competitive by its very nature.  So the competition aspect of Dr. Mario draws an obvious similarity; however, there is much more!  Due to competition in business, there are constant “plops” in your business from your competitors… these “plops” are neither convenient nor avoidable - they happen no matter what you do.  They are totally in the control of your competition.

Now it gets truly interesting.  What you do and how you react to these “plops” often determins your success in the game… just like in business and entrepreneurship.  If the “plops” distract you from your ultimate goal of eliminating germs, your competition will beat you in short order.  On the same token, if you ignore the plops and play as if they aren’t happening, you’ll also get beaten.  To win the game, you have to change your actions to take the plops into account while always keeping the germs in mind.  If you can eliminate the germs while dealing with the plops, you have a good chance of winning.  By the way - sometimes the plops are actually beneficial.  Just like in life, luck plays a role.

My wife consistently wins at the game… often she wins three rounds straight - “skunking” her opponent.  She also regularly comes from behind after being ruthlessly “plopped” upon.  She is a master of adjusting her actions and strategy based on the reality of the game - always focusing on the end goal of eliminating the germs.

We need to do the same in business - focus on our goal, but always see the reality of our situation.  Only a combination of the two will lead us to success so we can “skunk” our competition.

Fair Winds,
Andrew