Tireless. Kim Lorenz

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СКАЧАТЬ was in our ability to visualize what a customer really needed and training our employees to do the same. We developed the habits to see opportunity when it presented itself, while others missed it. Opportunity can come in thousands of different ways, but if you are not looking for it, it will be missed. Opportunity can be disguised as an obstacle, but when you face it head-on, in most cases, you will discover new paths to success. But, again, this is only true if you are looking for it.

      Our minds are such powerful tools. There are millions of things we might be looking at, but not really seeing what they are or what they could be. What is important is asking why what you see is the way it is.

      Highly-educated executives in Fortune 500 firms (or any business for that matter) such as Boeing, United Parcel Service, and PACCAR missed or failed to recognize what could be because they were focused on what they thought they knew. Because I asked why, I was able to create tremendous new opportunities for success in business. You will read these win-win stories and learn how you can apply this strategy to your own life.

      Many times, totally by chance, you will see opportunity and simply fail to follow up. Then the opportunity is wasted. Once you start to see any situation differently, with eyes open to change, you can make a significant difference in your life and the lives of others. If you fail, you can use that failure to power yourself ahead. Use failure as a lesson to build on. I failed many times in the companies I worked for or owned, but in the end, I founded and successfully ran large corporations that were eventually sold to Fortune 500 firms.

      We are all familiar with companies like Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon. While these are now giant companies that are known all over the world, creating some of the world’s wealthiest individuals (as well as millions of wealthy stockholders), they each share similar traits. The founders were able to visualize an opportunity—to see and understand something that could be—when others did not see it at all. While there are many books about the famous, wealthy people who started these companies, remember, there have been millions of other companies started that succeeded for their founders, families, and workers. Some share very similar paths to success of the well-known companies, but many took non-traditional paths to get to the place they are today.

      My first business was started with borrowed money in a legacy industry crowded with similar companies. Yet, we succeeded in our markets far beyond any of the competition, including many international firms. One of the companies we started and sold now has thousands of employees. While there were many barriers to starting the businesses, we overcame them. There were obstacles to success that became valuable lessons to learn. When we all learn from mistakes, we become better decision-makers.

      As I mentioned previously, a common thread that holds Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon together is that the opportunities envisioned by their founders were right in front of them. However, those opportunities were also right in front of millions of other people. Why did these founders see something others did not see? What was it that they saw? And why didn’t anyone else jump on those opportunities first? What did these individuals do that set them apart at the time they started and beyond? We can learn so much from their examples.

      We can teach ourselves to look past the obvious and open our eyes to see opportunity, examples of which are seen throughout this book. You can train yourself to visualize, learn, and gain a better understanding of what can be ignored and what should be pursued. Always ask yourself why things are as they are.

      Is there a better way?

      What does the customer really need in the future?

      Can we do better?

      Can we find a more efficient way to do what we do?

      My favorite question when I hear, “We always do it that way,” is “When did we start always doing it that way?” The more you can understand the stories behind many great businesses and their founders, the more you can build the confidence to either start your own business or have greater success in the place you work. I hope that my own success stories add to your knowledge and open your mind to better ways of achieving success.

      A close business associate once remarked after a very successful new product launch, “The difference between this success and nothing changing is that the person behind it took the thoughts from the shower, acted on them, and did something great to make them happen.” In other words, the difference is in taking the initiative to take a thought a few steps beyond a dream, to investigating what could be and visualizing positive outcomes.

      The founders of Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon not only saw opportunities, but they took immediate action and made something happen. Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an enormous opportunity that opened up with the advent of computerization. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw an opportunity to change the way that people buy books (and now everything). This was also made possible by advancements in technology. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, on the other hand, saw the opportunity to avail millions to a café environment with the focus on meeting, sitting, reading, and having a pastry as opposed to just selling a cup of coffee in a restaurant.

      Howard Schultz recognized a need for a customer space that was so much more than just a place to get a cup of coffee. He envisioned a place to gather, offer up consistent, quality beverages; a place with a customer-focused culture and experience. I look back at the first trip to Paris my wife and I took, and distinctly remember the desire to visit a café to enjoy an espresso while sitting at a small table on the street. This was well before Starbucks started, but I never gave any thought as to why this same environment could not be replicated in the U.S. (and around the world) in a consistent and more unique way as Howard Schultz, Howard Behar, and Orin Smith (termed the H2O team) did.

      The three Starbucks founders created a small coffee shop that went global in a very short time. This team started a few years after some serious coffee aficionados started the first few stores by roasting and selling seriously good coffee. But the H2O team visualized a much bigger opportunity, invested in the company, and the rest of the story is history. As Howard Behar was quoted saying, “I saw it was all about the people. We’re not in the coffee business serving people. We’re in the people business serving coffee. I knew that intrinsically; that was my personality. Those were my values. That has been constant from the beginning.”

      While the three companies briefly discussed here are now household names, millions of other businesses small and large share many of the same traits and stories, as well as similar cultures and work habits contributing to their success. When they were just starting out, did any of them know the enormity of the success they would eventually see? Probably not. They could dream, and as their businesses developed, they made thousands of changes, feeding the successful directions and cutting off the ones that were failing. They simply took that leap of faith at first, and the rest is, as they say, history.

      The founders of these companies were not all wealthy, highly educated, or from privileged families. They all came from vastly different backgrounds. Bill Gates’ family was wealthy, as his father was a successful attorney. His mother, Mary, was a very successful businesswoman who also served for 18 years on the University of Washington’s board of regents. She was the first female president of King County’s United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served with IBM’s CEO, John Opel, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington’s board of directors.

      Bill Gates’ founding partner, Paul Allen, grew up in a very modest family. His father worked many years as a librarian in Seattle. They both shared a vision of what could be possible with a computer operating system accessible to anyone. At that time, the giant computer company was IBM, called “Big Blue.” It was an enormously successful company with a highly-educated, exceptional global leadership staff. Yet that IBM staff had focused on large, mainframe computers for business and failed to understand; failed to “see” the potential СКАЧАТЬ