John Lyons
Parachute, Colorado
1997 Galbreath Award
(Transcript of Lecture)
The
John W. Galbreath Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship in the Equine Industry
has been presented each year since 1990 to one individual whose success within
the industry has been due to the utilization of uncommon abilities or innovative
approaches to business management. Each recipient has had a positive impact on
the equine industry because of his entrepreneurship, and has gained widespread
respect for it.
John
W. Galbreath, in whose name the award is presented, distinguished himself
internationally as both a horseman and a businessman. No one else has ever bred
and raced winners of the Kentucky Derby (Chateugay and Proud Clarion) and also
the Epsom Derby (Roberto). He was the owner of Darby Dan Farm (producer of over
90 stakes winners) and the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, as well as chairman
of the board of Churchill Downs. His business interests included large-scale
development projects around the world.
Winners
of the Galbreath Award have been: John A. Bell, 1990; James E. Bassett, 1991;
Cothran Campbell, 1992; John R. Gaines, 1993; Ami Shinitzki, 1994; Robert Clay,
1995; B. Thomas Joy, 1996; and John Lyons, 1997. Recipients are invited to the UofL campus in the fall of their
award year to deliver the annual Galbreath Lecture to students, faculty, and
guests, usually dealing with their own experiences and their personal
philosophies.
John
Lyons, the 1997 recipient of the Galbreath Award, is widely known as
"America's Most Popular and Trusted Horseman. "In 1981, Lyons, a rancher from Colorado's western slope, began to stage
"hands-on" clinics for horses and riders of all levels.
As his clinics grew in popularity, it soon became clear that many people
would gladly pay simply to have John explain his methods while working with a
horse. As a result, he developed John Lyons Symposiums in 1987. In
the past decade, he has put on more than 300 symposia in the U.S., Canada and
Australia; his book has been through a dozen printings; he has 15 different
videos available; he publishes his own newsmagazine on training; and he has a
68-page catalog of horse products designed or endorsed by him.
He is, in every sense, a true entrepreneur.
The
John W. Galbreath Award is a project of the Equine Industry Program (EIP), an
academic unit of the University of Louisville’s AACSB-accredited College of
Business and Public Administration. Created by an act of the Kentucky State
Legislature, the EIP is the only equine program in North America that offers a
BS degree in business administration. Other EIP functions, in addition to teaching,
are industry research and professional service.
Copyright 1997, Equine Industry Program
Equine
Industry Program
College of Business and Public Administration
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Dr. Robert G. Lawrence, Director
Office: 502.852.7617
ROBERT G. LAWRENCE
Let me first emphasize that the Galbreath Award is for entrepreneurship. We do not give
it for serving on 20 committees, we give it to entrepreneurs. Now, I don't get
to vote on this award but I do read the nomination letters. When we got the
letter about John and I read through it, I thought this man is going to win this
award. I don't know when, but sooner or later he will win, and here he is, and
it is great to have him here.
We all know what an entrepreneur is, or at least
students in my classes know. John Lyons has personified exactly what the UofL
business school means by that term. But an important factor is that he is also
an outstanding horseman. His success as an entrepreneur in this business would
be all "smoke and mirrors" if he didn't have that behind him. John is
a top horseman and that has provided a basis for what he has achieved.
John has made things happen, and he's been willing to
take risks. First, he had this perception about how to handle horses that was
somewhat different than the way most people have thought about it. But then, in
the back of his head, he had this other concept, namely, that people want to
learn, and that there had to be some way to reach more of them. He was certainly
limited in how many he could reach from his ranch in Parachute, Colorado.
His solution was his John Lyons Symposiums, which have
allowed him to reach out in many ways to horse owners everywhere. He can't train
everybody's horse for them, but people can get to his clinics where he instructs
them in training. He has had over 300 clinics. If they can't get to a clinic but
they have a VCR, he has tapes available. I don't recall details but I know he's
had the top-selling videotapes in the industry. If they don't have a VCR but can
read, they can buy his book, Lyons on Horses, which is in its 10th printing.
If they can't do these things, they might learn from
one of the other trainers that he now certifies. So many were claiming to teach
"the Lyons method" that he decided to institute a certification
program that requires 10 weeks of intensive training over 18 months. And he has
done many other things. He began advertising nationally; he developed a mailing
list of over 15,000; he enlisted top national companies as sponsors; he began
making and selling round pens and other training equipment; he convinced more
than 500 tack shops to sell his products; he began his own publication; he even
sells food at his clinics.
We are talking about a one-man, small-town business
that now grosses about $4.5 million a year. To get there took capital and it
took risk. I remember reading in his nomination letter that he went $90,000 in
debt the first year he started. Here in Kentucky, it's not unusual to see people
buy horses for a half a million dollars. That's serious money, to be sure, but
often it's money that the people spending it can afford to spend. John Lyons
risked everything - his reputation, his name, and all the finances he had to
start this enterprise, and in one of the most competitive businesses I know.
Why is training horses such a competitive business?
Because it often seems as if everybody who has been around horses for even a
month feels he is ready to hang up a shingle and start giving advice. There is
an old saying that "Only one man in 10,000 knows horses, but I meet one
every day."
We are very proud to have John Lyons here today.
I don't know what he is going to say but it's a real pleasure to
introduce you to one man in 10,000 who really does know horses, and also the
business of horses.
JOHN LYONS
Thank
you. That's a real honor.
I'm not used to appearing in front of an audience
without having a horse up here with me. This is the first time that anybody ever
said, "John, we understand you know horses, but how come you are so
successful in business?" Usually, it's just "he got lucky." It is
a real honor to win this award because it means something special. It means
recognition for all of the hard work that went into developing our business.
Normally, I never speak from notes but I am going to do
that today. The reason is that I spent some time putting down my thoughts, and
you get to be the first ones, other than my wife, to actually hear them. They
asked me to present my own thoughts and that was really dangerous because they
didn't realize just how many thoughts I had. If you have to leave before I'm
done, I won't mind. I'm not the best reader in the world, and I haven't
practiced this much, so you will have to bear with me. But every idea here comes
from my own experiences and things that I have gone through. Hopefully, I might
be able to give you something here that you'll be able to hold onto.
What is an entrepreneur? My definition is a person who
is willing to take risks, willing to work harder than anybody else, willing to
sacrifice a great deal to accomplish a goal, and who never quits on an idea -
just finds a way to make it work. Entrepreneurs never give up even when they
have good reason to, and maybe should.
Entrepreneurs are people who are willing to do what
others won't, and willing to give up what others won't, and don't. They are
positive thinkers, and will not accept failure. They always keep trying. They
will listen to the crowd, and to their families, but they themselves will make
the final decision about what they feel is best or right. They want feedback
from others, but they'll go their own way - not out of belligerence, but because
they feel they should. And they will sit on the "hot seat" and take
the blame themselves when something, or perhaps everything, goes wrong. They
will not make excuses.
Entrepreneurs may not like the less glamorous jobs, but
they'll make themselves do whatever needs to be done to succeed. In other words,
they will do their job rather than what they would sometimes enjoy more. They
are usually people who do many things well, but not necessarily anything great.
Generally, they are also not the smartest people in the room. But they learn
from experience, both their own and that of others, and they are highly
competitive. It's not enough to win, they truly want to feel like and be the
best. They have self control over their spending, and they will reinvest the
money they've made rather than spend it on new cars or other luxury items. They
don't spend money they haven't made yet, and they hate spending money on things
that depreciate. If you take all of these qualities and habits and start adding
them up, you begin to find out why so many entrepreneurs are successful.
Entrepreneurs stay focused on their goals, and are not
sidetracked. They develop the ability to concentrate for long periods of time.
They have purpose. They watch and listen every day because they know that
opportunities come by almost unnoticed. They stand guard, looking for new ideas
to develop or improve their businesses.
Most importantly, entrepreneurs
care about and love other people. Not just a few but basically all people. They
feel good about serving others and seeing them do well and enjoying how their
success evolves.
What, then, is a visionary? A
visionary is a dreamer, who can conceive a greater future, who can see the plan
before anything is built. A visionary is a dreamer whose dreams, with the right
amount of work and innovation, might be possible. A true visionary dreams
possibilities, ones that can be acted on. What can or does a visionary
accomplish?
The dreams of the visionary turn
into the goals of the entrepreneur. That's how it breaks down. And when these
two qualities end up in the same person, things begin to happen that change the
field in which they have chosen to work. You can be that person, if you're
willing to make sacrifices. You will choose whether to be an entrepreneur or
somebody's employee.
I believe that we all have the
same kind of opportunities. They come by us each day - often just as a passing
thought. Maybe our own thought, or maybe someone else's thought. Maybe somebody
says, "This would be a good idea." Those ideas and opportunities pass
on by like a leaf floating down a stream. An entrepreneur grabs on and says that
is a good idea and decides to develop it. And that's when the work begins.
What does it take to own your own
business? A person in business has to be self-motivated. They can't look to
others to keep them excited about their lives, or their work, or their future.
The motivation has to come from within. Motivation can come in many different
forms. It can come because a person is broke and needs the money. Motivation can
come from having responsibilities, and there can be other motivators as well. To
me, the longest lasting motivator is a sense of purpose in one's life - a reason
to be here on earth, or a calling, if you will. You may not know why God put you
on earth but you can have a sense of knowing that your life has a purpose, a
function of importance that you are supposed to do. Many times our businesses
can lead us to realize or discover our purpose for being on earth.
You can't develop a business by
giving it your attention for only eight hours a day, five days a week for a year
or two. In a relative sense, people only give their ideas and their businesses
about 15 minutes to succeed. I believe that the success rate in business is
directly linked to the ability to concentrate. Every owner expects, when
starting up a new business, that it's going to be hard. But they assume that if
they get through the first year, they will have made it, and that the second
year will be better. Generally, the second year is worse and the third year
isn't much better. By the fourth year, the business starts to settle down just a
little but it probably won't be until the end of the fifth year that you can
actually sit back, and make a fair evaluation about whether or not that business
has a chance of being successful.
We live near Grand Junction,
which is 250 miles from Denver. To get here, I had to get up at 1:00 a.m.
yesterday to drive to the Denver Airport. About 1:30, I passed by my 19-year-old
daughter's bedroom and she wasn't home yet. I wasn't worried because I knew
where she was. Sure enough, as I left town, I stopped by our office, and there
was Brandy by herself, as she often is, working on writing letters and
developing her business, which she has been involved in for the past nine
months. It is a multi-level marketing business, the product is good, and she is
already making $1500 a month with it. She even laid out a year of college at San
Diego State to take advantage of this opportunity.
She is self-motivated to the point that her mother wishes she wouldn't
work so hard.
That's a normal reaction. If
you're a self-motivated entrepreneur, you are going to have to deal with that
from your family and friends. They will say "Gee, you spend too much time
working. Please don't work so hard. Why are you spending so many hours a week
working?" But working long hours, or all night, is normal for a motivated
person and it's necessary to succeed. When Brandy returns to college in January,
and is making several thousand dollars a month while in school, her friends, and
other people, even relatives, will say how lucky she is to be my daughter. They
won't have seen all the effort that went into making her business successful.
They won't have seen the hard work that it took to make that money.
It's going to look like easy money when it's rolling in.
Brandy has maintained her
motivation with no help from anyone. I don't say, "You need to be writing
300 letters this week," or "You need to be down there working by 8
a.m." I don't try to motivate her at all because I have learned that you
can't motivate people, not if you expect them to stay motivated. You can inspire
people and get them excited for a week or two, but motivation has to come from
within. Nobody here is looking for a motivational speaker to come in and get you
off your duff so you can create a business. It's not going to work. You can have
the best teachers in the world but they can only give you knowledge. They can't
give you the motivation, effort and energy that it takes to build a business or
build something successful over a long period of time. It has to be your reason
if you're going to have the determination it takes to succeed.
During horse clinics, I used to
pick out riders, blindfold them, and hand them a rope. What I asked them to do
was try to pull whatever that rope was attached to across the arena. After doing
that to 50 to 75 people in different clinics over a few years, I learned to tell
quickly whether they were workers, managers, or owners of a business. What the
rope was attached to was a post that held up the building. If they were
employees, they would usually quit pulling soon, normally in less than a minute,
never more than two minutes. If they were managers, they would usually pull
longer, maybe try different angles moving around. Most of the business owners
would pull five, ten, even 15 minutes.
One fellow down in Florida
wouldn't stop pulling. He was tied up to a steel beam with NO give. I'm waiting,
but this guy keeps pulling. He would put a few pounds of pressure on his rope
and pull a little bit, then ease up, then pull a little more. He did this for an
hour. Finally, I had to quit. The end of the day, after the clinic, I said to
him, "You own your own business don't you?" When he said yes, I said,
"It's a pretty good-sized operation, isn't it." He said, "Last
year we did a little over $55 million dollars in business." It was a
perfect example. When I asked him why he kept pulling on that pole, he said,
"I just knew I could get it to move. In fact, I felt it give."
Entrepreneurs are different than
other people because they absolutely refuse to fail. Most people will try to
talk you out of your ideas. They will try to talk you out of working so hard.
They will give you solid reasons why not to become an entrepreneur. They will
tell you that you might have to spend time away from your family, perhaps even
move away from your loved ones. They will give you all kinds of excuses for you
not to become who you possibly could become. They are going to tell you it is
not practical. They are going to tell you what you can't do. This is because
that's what normal people think and do. It takes phenomenal determination to
build your own business.
One time, some years ago, I had
two horses and all my equipment in the back of a homemade horse van. I fell
asleep driving, ran off the highway, and flipped the truck over. My two horses
were in the front of the van with all of the equipment stacked in behind them: a
round pen, a speaker system, probably 3-4,000 pounds of gear. The truck was on
its side and the doors were jammed so we couldn't get the horses out. The truck
had a sliding door in the back so I began throwing the speakers and equipment
onto the freeway. The accident had caved in one wall on the horses. I had lost
track of the person with me, who was traveling ahead, so my son, who was then
about 10, was the only one with me.
Emotionally, I was having a hard
time. One of the horses was hurt badly, and we did manage to get him to the vet
about 100 miles away, not even waiting for the wrecker to arrive. By the time we
got everything with him taken care of, it was almost midnight. I had a symposium
scheduled in two days at a location 500 miles away. My truck had been totaled, I
had no trailer, and my equipment, which had laid on the side of the freeway
until the wrecker arrived, had been transported to the wrecker yard where it was
covered with a tarp sitting near my truck. And on top of that, we had no place
to stay.
At that moment, everybody in my
life was advising me that we could not possibly make it to that symposium. There
was no way that we could get the equipment, the horses, or me there. I told them
that I had made the commitment to be there, and that I was going to be there. I
rented a moving van, placed the equipment in the front of it, and then jumped
the remaining horse in behind. I turned him around backwards, left the door
open, and stuck a gate panel across the back. Two days and 500 miles later, we
did that symposium.
How do you become encouraged when
you are discouraged?
I started giving horse-training
clinics back in 1980. The first thing I did was give a free clinic for my
neighbors, because they knew me, and I figured if they came and liked it, it had
to be successful. The people that know you are going to be the least likely to
come to you to learn. There were six or seven people in the clinic. Well, I was
broke, in debt, had no job, and lived in a house that was condemned after we
sold it. We needed money, and it was crucial because we had four kids to
support. One guy was so excited at what I'd been able to teach him that day that
he wrote us a check for $50. It seemed like a million bucks! That check was a
huge source of encouragement, and made me believe I could give clinics that
weren't free.
One of our first out-of-state
clinics was in Arizona. We had one owner with two horses, and one observer.
There were a lot of clinics that I gave after that one where I was the only
person. A guy in Arizona would say he knew someone in Texas who would love to
have me do a clinic. Sure enough, we would set up the date but then, for thirty
days before the clinic I wouldn't talk to them, because I knew they were going
to tell me they didn't have anybody signed up and that there was no use in
coming. But I needed the money, I was committed to this business, and I was
determined to make it work. So I'd take off and when I got about 100 miles from
their place, I would phone them. They would say, "We've been trying to call
you for a month because we don't have anybody for the clinic." I'd say,
"I don't have the money or time to go back home so I will just have to go
ahead and show up for four days." At least, I usually got free food.
If I was lucky enough, they
boarded horses at their place and had other people walking around. I would sit
there for four days and, sure enough, somebody would having trouble getting a
horse to load in a trailer, or to do something else, or would have a horse that
was rearing or bucking. I would charge $50 bucks to fix that horse, then I'd
send half of it home, keep the other half for gas and head to the next location.
I did a lot of clinics over the years where no one showed up. You are going to
have a lot of times in your business that nobody's going to show up - you'll be
the only one there. If you are willing to give up, you will have reasons. But
recognize that if you quit, it isn't the business that is a failure and it isn't
the idea that is a failure, it was you that quit.
Whenever people did come to a
clinic, afterwards I'd have them write down their name and what they thought of
it. Then, whenever I was broke down on the side of the road going from one
clinic to the next, or if I got discouraged about going to another clinic, I
would sit in my truck and read those comments over and over and over again. It
would help me understand that my product was good, that it was worthwhile, and
that people wanted it. When there wasn't any money, that was what gave me the
encouragement to keep going.
What about your family? Your
spouse can be a crucial and critical part of your ability to succeed. He or she
must have faith in your ability, must believe in you, and must support what you
are doing. Your spouse must be willing to give up some of the time you would
normally spend together. In truth, most spouses will probably love and hate your
business at the same time. The reason is that, even though the business is your
pride and something that energizes you, it's also a rival for your time and
affection, almost another person that he or she can't fight. It's tough for a
spouse to have to deal with something that grabs so much of your time, attention
and focus. Although your spouse can make your challenge more difficult or be a
tremendous support, your ultimate success or failure will depend on you. Don't
blame your spouse or family.
I feel very strongly about
honesty. My feeling is that you must never lie or try to misrepresent anything.
Even if you are honest all your life, some people - mainly those who have never
met you - will think you're dishonest. And it's easy to be dishonest, and
difficult to stand guard over every word you say. But as soon as anyone finds
out that you are a liar in even one thing, they will stop relying on anything
you say, which cannot help but damage your career. When all is said and done,
your word is all you have. If you build your platform on lies, it will
eventually crash, and at the most inopportune time.
What is not generally understood
is that teasing is also a kind of lying. If you are always teasing, people won't
know when to take you seriously, so
A business must have direction, a
goal, to know where you are going and know how to get there. At our weekend
clinics, we have a devotional on Sunday morning and usually someone from that
area will speak. A guest preacher at a Florida clinic gave this illustration:
"Suppose you knew you were in Florida and you wanted to get to Washington,
DC, but you didn't know which direction it was. If you merely started walking,
your chances of hitting Washington would probably be about one in a thousand.
Your chances would not be good."
Then he said, "What if you
not only didn't know where Washington, DC, was, but you also didn't know where
you were. You didn't know if you were in Florida, San Diego, Louisville, Canada,
or Australia. If you had no clue in which part of the world you were, and you
just picked out some direction and started walking, your chances of hitting it
would probably be a million to one."
I see lots of people running
their businesses, running their lives, and training their horses doing that sort
of thing. They have no clue where they're trying to get, and, worse yet, they
don't know where they are. For example, they're trying to solve a horse problem,
such as trying to get clippers on the horse's ear, and they don't realize that
they couldn't get their hands on that horse's ears even without the clippers in
them. Yet, they are out there trying to clip the horse's ears with clippers.
They have no clue where this horse is in its training. What are their chances of
success? Obviously, minimal.
If you're starting a business and
you don't have a business plan, you don't have a clear goal you are trying to
reach. You must know what you are working toward, and you have to know where you
are at the start. The goal and the starting place are extremely important in
developing a business. Your goals might well change, and, as a result, many of
the decisions you make may also change. But it's very important that your goal
be out there clearly.
I can't believe how many people
want a business but don't want to make a profit. Some people want you to give
your services away. I get letters from people who say, "John, you are
supposed to be a Christian. Why do you charge so much? God gave you this
information. Why don't you give it to other people?" In the same breath,
they ask me to donate to something. If you want to be a good Christian, earn a
lot of money so you can give a lot away.
You can start as many businesses
as you want, but if they don't make a profit, you will go broke. It doesn't
matter how good your product or your sales pitch. You're spending a lot of time
in school, and you or your parents spent a lot of money for you to be here to
take these classes. It's costing you just to sit here this afternoon because you
could be earning a salary. If you spend all this and don't get a return, it's no
one's fault but yours. If you're willing to give your knowledge or services away
for nothing, that's fine, but don't complain about somebody else not being
willing to do that. Get into a business in which you can make a profit. The
greater the income incentive built into the business, the better - the better
chance you have to succeed.
We offer short programs (for both
observers and participants), long programs, private clinics, special
appearances, motivational speeches, catalog sales, magazines, wholesale sales,
retail sales, sponsorship programs, weekend space, office rental and, in some
cases, equipment rental. We are trying to expand our revenue. If your income is
mainly from selling paper, then what you have to look for are ancillary products
that go along with paper. More and more restaurants over the past five years
make you walk through a virtual store to get to your table. And when you come
out, you see ties and tee shirts for sale. Steakhouses sell their steak sauce,
their barbecue sauce, even steaks. It is because those owners realized money was
walking out the door.
Income for ancillary products is
"free" money. To a great extent, this is the source of your profit.
Very often, the ancillary income is what really makes a business work. You have
to have a main source of revenue, but do not overlook what else is out there and
what may be walking "out the door."
You also do not have to prove
that you are the world's best in order to start a business. In the horse
industry, people have had the idea that you ought to be a world champion, to
prove that you're the best before it's acceptable to begin training other
people. I found this doesn't have to be true. All you have to do to have a
successful business is be willing to be of service, and to be of good service,
regardless of what it is. Find a service and fulfill a need that people have.
That's all that I've done in my business.
When you start out, you have an
idea that you think will be a complete business. But keep your mind open to ways
of expanding business revenues because it's the whole picture that makes the
business successful. You're not going to be able to see that whole picture when
you're starting. This is another reason it usually takes time to develop a
substantial business, at least if you are normal. There are exceptions. Some
people go out and hit a home run, become successful in just a few years. I don't
know about you but I'm not exceptional. I am just average and normal, so I
except average and normal for me.
Tom Landry, the coach of the
Dallas Cowboys for many years, insisted to players that, while he was coaching,
they never lost a game, they only ran out of time. He always believed the
Cowboys could go ahead if they had enough time. He would not accept failure,
regardless of what the world told him. Papers reported that the Cowboys lost the
game, but he never saw it that way. Well, that's the type of attitude those of
us in business have to develop in order to be successful.
Failures are nothing more than
setbacks that need greater effort and improving. We need these areas to show us
how to improve our business, where to fine-tune things, and how to make more
money.
Years ago, my wife used to fly in
every weekend to help me with symposiums.
She was right, but the trouble
was, I believe that, at least at the beginning, you have to be like a coal-miner
if you're to succeed in business. You have to dig that hard and you can't look
up and you have to push.
Many people say I am lucky to be
doing what I love to do and that's why I am a success. But I believe that any
business can be interesting if you put enough into it. Many people stumble
through life looking for work that will make them happy. They always believe
it's not the thing they are working on at the moment.
When I was in college, my Mom
said, "John, if you get a job making matches, you can make it interesting.
Just go learn the history of matches, and the history of sulfur." This is
word for word, and I can remember it just like it happened the other day. She
said, "Don't be bored around here looking for something that will make you
happy. If you put enough effort in your job, it's going to become interesting.
Don't look for some job that is going to satisfy you. You need to become
satisfied with the job that you have."
My step-Dad said, "If you
want to quit a job because you don't like the work or the business, you may not
do it until you get to the top. Then you'll know you are quitting for the right
reasons." His point was that, of course, no one likes to be on the bottom.
Nobody likes doing the grunt work that comes with being new in an organization.
But you can't make a rational decision on whether you might like farming, or the
horse business, or even working for a chemical company, if you're stuck doing
the lowliest job there is. So my stepfather told me I wasn't allowed to quit a
job until I got to the top. Even though I didn't like it, his perspective really
worked. When I wanted to quit a job, I started working extra hard to get to the
top. And those jobs got better.
Now let me share just a few more
observations.
You can never satisfy a
dissatisfied customer. Give them their money back, send them a nice letter, give
them a night on the town, even send them extra money. They are still not going
to recommend you or your product because they were not satisfied. The way to
deal with dissatisfied customers is not to have them in the first place. The old
saying that you cannot satisfy everyone is a sure-fire excuse for you and your
employees not to do the job right.
Never say anything bad about
competitors. It makes you look bad and customers will not respect you for it.
Say something good instead. Leave the comparing to the customer. If you're
worried about what competitors are doing, they'll catch up. Besides, you are
wasting valuable time that could be spent in productive thinking. Do your own
thing, even if it doesn't put you in first place. Do more of it, and figure out
a better way to give customers what they need. If you are successful, there are
people who will copy virtually everything you do. If you worry about that, they
will take business away. Just know that they are behind and go to the next step
in your business. Think of competition as an ocean wave pushing you, like a
surfer on a surfboard. You start this thing going and they are pushing you. All
your competitors come right along behind and they are just pushing you forward -
just carrying you along.
Something else I want to mention
is that many people have been on a job for one year and have one year's
experience. Many people have been on a job 20 years and have one year's
experience 20 times. There are not many people who have been on a job for 20
years and have 20 years' experience.
Most of the time, friends don't
make good employees. Find people who do things better and who do things that you
can't do. Loyalty is a gift from an employee. It should be appreciated but not expected. Loyalty is something you
should give to others because you want to give it, because it says something
about you. You won't be disappointed. But remember that an employee does not
have to be loyal to do a good job or to fill a need in your business. Employees
aren't employers because they have not chosen to run their own businesses. They
may not want to put up with the same hassles as you do so don't expect them to
want to run your business. They have agreed to help; that's all.
You can learn the business
principles that they teach you here, but if you are not a contented individual,
with personal integrity and a sense of purpose in your life, then those
principles aren't going to make as much sense, or be as effective, as they
could. We could talk much longer about these things, but at least you have some
insights to my thoughts, insights that I've not shared with many people before.
It is a great honor to have been asked.
Thank you.
Copyright 1997, Department of Equine Business, CBPA, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.
Equine
Industry Program
College of Business and Public Administration
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Phone: 502.852.4859
Fax: 502.852.7672
