Ken Blanchard - The One Minute Entrepreneur: The Secret to Creating and Sustaining a Successful Business

Contents

Dedication

T his book is dedicated to the thousands of entrepreneurs who have braved countless obstacles and hung in through good times and bad to create successful companies. These firms are the backbone of the free-enterprise system.

We also dedicate this book to two such pioneers in particular: Charlie Tremendous Jones and Sheldon Bowles.

Tremendous Jones has been a mentor to both of us for years. From the quality, one-on-one time he has given to thousands, to his extraordinary speeches to millions, we have seen him impact the worldours includedone life at a time. His love of booksresulting in the founding of his own entrepreneurial venture, Executive Books, some four decades agohas touched people around the world. His personal works, coupled with his encouragement of reading, have helped countless people improve their lives and achieve their dreams. His unbridled passion for business has inspired many entrepreneurs in their quest to build great companies. This mountain of a man stands so tall in his spiritual walk that it is impossible not to be inspired by his faith. His enthusiasm is boundless, his friendships deep, and his leadership profound.

Sheldon Bowles has had a tremendous impact on the thinking and business lives of Ken and Margie Blanchard. He is an entrepreneur extraordinaire, New York Times and BusinessWeek bestselling author, and noted speaker. He began his career as a newspaper reporter covering stories in the Canadian Arctic, Japan, the United States, and Europe for such diverse media as the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Time, the Times (London), and the Winnipeg Free Press. He left reporting to gain business experience and join Royal Canadian Securities, Ltd., where he rose to become a director and vice president. For fifteen years, Sheldon was CEO of Domo Gasoline Corporation, Ltd., which he builtalong with Senator Douglas Everett, chairmaninto one of Canadas largest independent gasoline retailers, with many hundreds of employees. At a time when the industry was going almost exclusively self-serve, they built their business and reputation on full-serve Jump to the Pump service. It was his experience creating legendary service at Domo Gas that brought Sheldon to write, with Ken Blanchard, the bestselling book Raving Fans.

After leaving Domo, Sheldonwith three partnersturned a small manufacturing plant, Precision Metalcraft, Inc., into a multimillion-dollar business. This success experience led him to coauthor with Ken his second bestseller, Gung Ho! Sheldon and Ken realized that you cant create raving fan customers without having motivated, committed, gung-ho people.

Sheldons writing success led him to develop a third career as a stimulating speaker with great take-home value. His desire to help other entrepreneurs led Sheldon to coauthor two other books with Ken, Big Bucks! and High Five! There is nothing Sheldon enjoys more than mentoring other young business leaders, especially his son Kingsley, daughter Patti, and his honorary adopted son, Aaron. Patti and her husband, Kristjan, have created a large commercial recycling company, Phoenix Recycling, and a successful Canadian document-storage and high-security document-destruction business, while Kingsley manages the family holding company and Aaron rebuilds jet engines.

We thank you, Charlie and Sheldon, for your unending positive influence, which has made our world a better place. May all the good youve done for others come back to you both a thousand times over. We know your influence through The One Minute Entrepreneur will make a real difference.

Ken Blanchard and Don Hutson

Foreword

T heres something about essentials that we all seem to ignore. When it comes to entrepreneurship, we get consumed by our vision and forget about the money. We get consumed with our customer and forget about our employees. We get consumed about life and forget about death. Isnt it strange how you and I can become so disconnected from the essentials? Thats why I love this little book. Its a wonderful story about the essentials of entrepreneurship.

After years of studying entrepreneurship, Im sure about one thing: Becoming a success story is easier said than done. Within any given year, close to 1 million people start a small business in the United States. Sadly, at least 40 percent of those businesses fail within the first year. Eighty percent of them will be out of business within five years, and 96 percent will have closed their doors before their tenth birthday.

One of the primary reasons small businesses fail is that they are started by technicianspeople who are skilled at something and who enjoy doing that thing. Whether they are electricians, writers, photographers, or computer programmers, these people make the fatal mistake of continuing to do the work theyre skilled at while ignoring other vital parts of the business.

The One Minute Entrepreneur will help you avoid that fatal mistake. In a parable as delightful as it is instructive, Blanchard and Hutson focus on three essentials you must attend to if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.

The first key is your finances. Many entrepreneurs go out of business because they dont know how to manage their money. Expenses exceed their sales, they dont collect their bills, and they dont realize that their success depends on cash, cash, cash.

The second key to entrepreneurial success involves your people. Empowering others to take responsibility in your business relieves you, the entrepreneur, of having to do everything yourself. Once your people feel empowered, they become like owners and are eager to take special care of customers.

Which brings us to Blanchard and Hutsons third vital element of entrepreneurial success: taking care of your customers. You can be the most skilled technician in the world, but if you dont take care of your customers, youre never going to make it.

The One Minute Entrepreneur will help you understand that while success might be easier said than done, focusing on a few essentials will dramatically increase your probability of successand help you have fun doing it.

Michael Gerber, entrepreneur and author of
The E-Myth, The E-Myth Revisited, and
Awakening the Entrepreneur Within

A Note to Readers

While The One Minute Entrepreneur is a fictional parable, a number of the advice givers in the story are real people. Why did we name them? Because we owe our success to mentors who seemed to come into our lives at the right time with the right adviceand we were smart enough to listen.

Why the One Minute Entrepreneur? Because we found the best advice we ever received was given in less than a minute. In other words, the gems in life did not come from long diatribes, but rather short, meaningful insights. Perhaps thats why The One Minute Manager which is based on three simple secretshas been on bestseller lists for more than twenty-five years.

The contribution that Ethan Willis brought to the book is the development of a comprehensive online assessment of twenty key attributes of successful entrepreneurs. These winning characteristics are listed in the appendix. To assess yourself on these key attributes, go to www.estrengths.com. This free assessment will help you get the most out of this book by helping you discover your entrepreneurial strengths.

Building a Firm Foundation

F rom the time he was a kid, Jud McCarley dreamed of owning his own business. Yet he nearly blew his opportunity before he even graduated from high school.

Jud was a good kid but an unremarkable student. In everything that counted most to him he was having a great senior year. He was popular, played tight end on a winning football team, and had a pretty girlfriend who thought the world revolved around him. That great year, however, was about to be interrupted.