Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Why Not Me?

‘‘Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your

windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light

won’t come in.’’

—Alan Alda, actor, commentator, and activist

If you’re reading these words, I’m going to assume that you’re doing

so because the idea of starting your own business from scratch sounds

exciting to you—now.

That’s good. In fact, it’s great. No business can thrive without

excitement and emotional engagement from the founder of that business.

And yet, my job—as someone who started a successful business

from nothing, and as someone who has worked with, and interviewed

for this book, dozens of people who did exactly the same thing—is to

let you know that being excited is not enough. There are plenty of

businesses that never achieve their potential, despite incredible initial

emotion and strong commitment from the people attempting, in vain,

to get them off the ground.

It’s easy to be excited now. But the kind of excitement you feel

right now definitely won’t see you through what is to come. When I

tell aspiring entrepreneurs this, I usually get a nod of agreement and

a stern expression of resolve.

Most of the people who nod at me obediently, though, are under

a serious misconception. They think that by saying this I mean that,

in addition to showing excitement and emotional engagement in

their businesses, they have to master the technical skills they currently

lack. What are those skills? Accounting, maybe, if they’re not

accountants; or advertising and promotion, if they’re not familiar with

those areas. Or maybe it’s hiring and personnel that they perceive as

their weak spots.

That’s not what I’m getting at.

When I tell people that their initial excitement about starting a

business is not enough, what I am saying is that their ability to bounce

back tomorrow is much more important than their initial excitement.

Resiliency, persistence, stick-to-it-ive-ness, a sense of purpose—

whatever you want to call it—is the factor I am talking about: entrepreneurs’

unique and certain knowledge that they are embarking on

the work of their lives, on their true missions, not just for today but

also for tomorrow as well and for the foreseeable tomorrows to come.

That quality is what always makes the difference between a business

that succeeds and a business that fails. You need that resiliency if you

are to challenge your own assumptions about what will and won’t

work in your business, and you definitely need it if you are to challenge

anyone else’s assumptions as well. You should know here and

now that you cannot expect to start a successful business from scratch

without that resiliency and persistence.

Why Not Me?

In my experience, there is one, and only one, way to generate that

quality of being on a personal mission, a mission that endures no

matter what happens to you today. You must get into the habit of

asking yourself: Why not me?

You must use this question daily, and probably hourly, and you

must answer it in the right way if you hope to use the ideas in this

book to your advantage. You must use those answers to overcome

every fear of failure and every ridicule, every doubt, every adversity

that enters your mind. Your own answer to this question will be the

single most important factor in your personal campaign—your mission—

to start a great business from scratch.

Contrary to what you may have heard or read, successful entrepreneurs

are not born with a personal sense of mission. They choose to

build that sense of mission into their lives. Successful entrepreneurs

know that they operate in a world that’s filled with people who have

all kinds of skills, dreams, and abilities. They make a conscious decision

to assume that they, as individuals, belong at the head of their

own personal parade through that world.

They ask, in essence, ‘‘Why shouldn’t it be me who leads the

parade?’’ And they always come up with an answer that gives them

the right—and the duty—to lead that parade.

Excerpted from YOUNG GUNS by Robert Tuchman. Copyright ©  2009 Robert Tuchman. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission.

All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.