I wrote a letter to our company...

Hey everyone….so…I’ve been giving a lot of thought to writing this to you. As an outcome, I am hoping that we will all get going and …DO ONE MORE THING! Listen up, I’ll explain what I mean:

Years ago, when I built my first ‘successful’ business, it actually wasn’t my very first company. 16 years earlier, I had started a company called Colorado Grass Roots. It was a chemical lawn care company (like TruGreen). I was young, hardworking, and every day I tried my hardest to do everything I knew how to do. Well, long story short, IT FAILED! I just never had enough revenue coming in. Actually, I had quite a number of customers. But, I suppose, I never had enough. I talked to a lot of people, all the time, about what else I should do. I kept trying to find answers as to the ‘what to do’. Years later, I finally discovered what exactly that was.

Finally, I made a life decision to never, ever have my own business again. Too risky, threatening, and maybe I just didn’t know how to do it!

Truth be told, I never felt that I had enough money to market correctly. I thought, “If only I had the money, imagine what I could have done.” I read tons of business books and heard about guerilla marketing. I actually thought that the success stories in the books were not honest. After all, it hadn’t worked for me.

You know, every week and month I set goals and I tried to get to the goals…it just never quite happened. And, I’m here to tell you the difference in something happening and not ‘quite’ happening was the difference between life and death.

Move on now to 16 years later. I was doing what I had promised myself and not running a business. Instead, I was consulting for companies and helping them solve their problems. I learned a lot of business and a lot of solutions; having consulted for 31 different companies. But, one day I took a job and was helping a tiny little company get off the ground…They got a handful of clients, built up a lot of debt, couldn’t get a lead to make the next sale, and the owners decided to simply walk away.

Funny thing, I wasn’t an employee, it wasn’t my company, but I simply found myself coming back the next day…just me and the lone software developer. I can’t truly explain what made me keep coming back. I’ve often thought it was my commitment to those handful of clients that would be terribly damaged if we’d left. I was sort of a hostage to the promises the company had made to those people.

A week later, I took the company on for real. The owner gave it to me and also handed me the bills; $1.2 million of debt…old and unpaid debt.

I was really at a loss. I’d not really wanted to run another company. I definitely didn’t want the poor house. I knew very little about technology, and I didn’t have a single name of a prospect/ lead that had any interest in buying us.

I had a few clients that had already paid, one software developer and his payroll, and a product that didn’t work too well.

As the sleepless nights piled up, I desperately wondered what in the world I had done to myself and my family. My own bank account had run completely out of money and no matter what I did, I simply could not get a sale.

One day, I was looking at an empty white board and I had an idea. If I could just get enough names of companies that truly had an interest in my product, well, I’d be bound to make a sale…Wouldn’t I?

So, I drew out 10 lines on the board and decided that every day my mission…a mission that could not fail, no matter that I had no idea how to do it, was to put another name on the board that I could begin to work…I honestly wasn’t believing that I knew how to sell the product. Instead, I took on the one thing that I believed I could do with my effort alone. With a little caginess, creativity, and force it would result in another name on the white board. Not a sale, just a name.

If I had a week where I didn’t have a new name on the board, then I worked 7 days that week; until I talked someone in to letting me talk to them about what I was offering.

You see what I said here? ‘I talked someone in to letting me talk to them…’ I truly never, necessarily, believed that any of those names would be my next customer. Just, that they’d let me talk to them and fill out my white board.

I never, ever…not one single time…had anyone offer me a suggestion, give me any hope, or teach me something….all I had time for was trying the ‘next right thing’ to get another name.

By the way, not just a name of a potential target that I could go after to ask if they’d talk to me…no, that is not a lead. A lead is someone that agrees to let me talk to them…

AGREES TO LET ME TALK TO THEM!

Well, the story is told that this company grew into the fastest growing company in its industry with 6 global offices. It became, annually, one of the top 5 fastest growth companies in Colorado….Inc 500, etc.…..

No matter what size we were, or how ‘successful’ and righteous we thought…the formula never changed; FILL OUT THE WHITE BOARD, ADD A NAME A DAY TO THAT BOARD.

Trust me, if we get enough people to agree to talk to us, we will inevitably get sales.

So, what did all of this teach me? What hadn’t I done at Colorado Grass Roots that I did at this company? Simple, the first time around I tried everything that I could think of. The second time around, I relentlessly tried everything I could think of. I learned that if I was not TALKING to someone then my chances of getting that next lead dwindled. I learned that every single minute of my day…and night….MUST BE RELENTLESSLY IN PURSUIT OF TALKING TO THE NEXT PERSON THAT I HAVE NOT YET TALKED TO!

That’s it, that’s what I learned.

BELIEVE ME, BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS IS NOT ABOUT BEING BRILLIANT AND IT IS NOT COMPLICATED. IT IS ONE THING: TALK, EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY, TO SOMEONE ELSE AND GET THE NEXT PERSON WILLING TO LET YOU TALK TO THEM ABOUT WHAT WE DO. It is not hard, but it is your challenge to be relentless in this effort….think about the minutes in your day that you were not doing this…surfing, chatting, thinking, planning…well, you get it….

And….guess what??? It’s time we all played this game of life the same way. A company is just a combination of people, hopefully of leaders. When we are hired, they are offering us one thing only. It is a chance, together, to build a passion play to be relentless and talk, talk, talk. For years, this is exactly what the founder of your company did and it worked to the level that it wetted his/her taste to try to build a great and big company doing the same thing. At some point in time, they believed that if they hired people with the same behaviors that I just wrote about, that they could afford, grow, and win their industry. They believed that they could built the next great company…and, they chose you…YOU! How lucky is that?

Now, though, here’s the rub. Every day, every moment must be dedicated to adding the next name on the white board. If you’re talking to each other, that is the wrong person. Neither of the two of you can get that lead. We must speak to the world, one at a time. No matter how many sales we make, no matter how proud we are…talk to the next possibility to create the world of possibilities that come from that.

Trust me, it works if you work it. We can no let each other down, ever, not for a moment….find someone…constantly…to talk to…someone else!

The outcome will be something unique that happens rarely to most people. You will build the greatest company anywhere and you will have done it yourself.

Steven Bederman

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