The Complex System: Story of an Entrepreneur

Act As If

Being effective in business is largely about attitude. Often attitude is driven by emotion and negative attitude can be progressive when you’re in a bad place emotionally. Whether you know it or not, people around you feed off your energy, good or bad. When I can’t seem to shake a negative attitude or emotion, I try to act as if. It’s a technique that was taught to me some time ago, and I’ve found it to work. It is not dissimilar to the popular book The Secret, which documents the Law of Attraction. The concept being that what you put out there, you get in return. Well, if things are bad and you put out a negative energy, in my experience it doesn’t get better, rather it gets worse, or at best it stays constant. But, acting as if everything is great, even if in my heart I know it’s not, things get better. And it’s not just; it seems like those around me get better too. They don’t of course, it’s just my perception, but perception is a powerful force. So when I’m down, or angry, resentful, irritated, disappointed, frustrated or any dozens of other emotions, even if it takes me a few days or a week, I tap into a habit of acting as if, and it really keeps me on track. I seem to get back into the grove quickly. In time, whatever was troubling me passes.

We Are What We Are

Have you ever heard of the idea that dogs and their owners look alike? There have been a variety of studies on the subject and in my experience, it’s often true. I believe this phenomenon is due to a person’s subconscious desire to align themselves with like things. In business, I see a similar occurrence. Professionals enroll in careers or start businesses that fit their personalities. I discovered a great example of this recently. As a business that is very focused on a select set of verticals we work with may like companies. One of our core verticals is the debt/loan modification industry. An interesting, yet aggravating, trend we’ve uncovered in recent months is that these companies tend to break contracts more frequently than companies in other industries do. If you think about it, this makes sense. Debt settlement, debt consolidation and loan modification companies are, in fact, in the business of breaking and re-negotiating contracts for their clients. These companies will lie, cheat, steal and do anything to break an agreement. At the core, these companies, and the people that run them, have no respect for contracts. They simply sign anything because, whether consciously or sub-consciously, they know they can and will just break them if things don’t work out. Doing business with a company like this is difficult. Like an owner who looks like his Jack Russell, an entrepreneur in the debt industry, who’s core business is to help clients get out of debt by breaking or re-negotiating contracts, will look and act like the services he offers.

This is seemingly true in other verticals we play in. Insurance for example is a conservative product. You buy insurance as protection for what might happen but hopefully never does. If my theory is sound, someone selling insurance is likely to be conservative and risk averse in their own behaviors. In some ways this is a good thing; I doubt many of our insurance clients will just ignore agreements they’ve signed with us or lie about signing them. However, they are also more likely to lack the willingness to try something different, something risky. As an example, implementing a lead management system like Leads360 is a bit of a risk, certainly an exercise in change. As a company you are basically betting that we can help you find a better, more profitable, more efficient way to do business. In order to get these results however you have to get out of your comfort zone; you have to be willing to change.

Look at our core vertical, mortgage. This sector is in the business of risk. They are selling debt. They are basically selling product that says, “hey, I don’t have the money for this, will you loan it to me if I promise to pay it back. Ironically this industry made so may risky bets they crashed. But even in a conservative responsible market the product is still risk. How do you think they approach their business? They take risks. On the one hand this is great. A client may hire 20 sales agents on the come, great for us; but then with the potential for bigger reward comes the probability of increased failure. Believe me, we’ve seen a lot of both with our clients in this industry.

Finally, let’s take our newest vertical, Education. What does their dog look like? I don’t think we have enough data to back anything up as of yet, but I would hypothesize this. Schools are in the business of helping people learn. They provide a structured way to absorb information, process it and make a change. I suspect our education clients will have very good product adoption. I think they will put in the time, effort and analysis to thoroughly benefit from our products.  We’ll soon see.