Ken takes you into his study of time and how it correlates on businesses by reading quotes pulled from his 17 business quotes of all time. Walking down memory lane, he talks about difference of time in business from before to now. Establishing your product back in the days with word of mouth and handing out flyers completely differs from how fast we could do it now with advanced technology. The internet has undoubtedly changed the dynamics and its time for you to consider that in growing your business.
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Time
I’m in the middle of doing a fairly exhaustive study of time and how does time affect business now. I’m going to start by reading off four of what are considered the top seventeen business quotes of all time. I’m going to show you how they relate a little bit and then I’m going to dump something else on you. Number one, “Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of mediocrity,” by Warren Buffett. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over,” by Sir Richard Branson.” “Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan,” by Jeff Bezos. “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success,” by Biz Stone, Twitter’s Cofounder.
'Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It is the enemy of the mediocre.' – Warren Buffet Click To TweetDoing a study on time, how does time correlate in business? Years ago, we had a lot of time to make corrections, launch companies and even try new products. This is both good and bad. Here’s the bad. It took forever to wait for word of mouth to kick in back in the day. I’m talking pre-internet. What’s the good? Once word of mouth took hold, it took a long time to change good word of mouth. The bad is it took forever to get something cooking, but the good was once you establish it, it was so worth it. Now, time is completely different. Now, time has to be a major factor in business decisions. You’ve got to think about this. I want to throw out the thought of 40 years ago. In 1977, I wanted to start a lawn mower repair shop. How much time is it going to take for me to pass out flyers, do a radio spot or do direct mail? You had only so many options to launch a business.
We have five restaurants in our family. They’ve never once spent a dollar on advertising, but it took every one of the five restaurants up to three years to break even. In my dad’s words, “It took up to three years for word of mouth to penetrate the thick skulls of the people that lived around our restaurants.” Once they tasted the food and came back a second time and it was as good the second time, word of mouth was established, and it was solid for 27 years. How does time now differ? Everybody knows in so many ways, you can launch a restaurant on Facebook in 72 hours. You can build credibility. You can build social proof. You can get endorsed. You can go to a new city with a prelaunch attack plan for a lawn repair business. By the time you’re moving truck moves your family into the newest city, your business is established on the internet.
Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success business. Click To TweetThe factor of time is a little bit overwhelming of how much I’ve missed taking time into consideration. What I want to do is I want to read these four again and I want you to reflect on these four quotes. These were pulled from what is considered the seventeen greatest business quotes of all time. I want you to read these quotes in relation to time and how time affects your business. “Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It is the enemy of the mediocre,” by Warren Buffett. “You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing and falling over,” by Sir Richard Branson. “Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan,” by Jeff Bezos. “Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success,” by Biz Stone of Twitter. You ponder these. You might want to review these once a year. Here’s the question, “Are you putting the time to work for you? Do your business plans incorporate time? Is time your friend?” If you remember a prior episode, it was titled Relax in the Numbers. Do you relax in the numbers? Is time on your side? I hope this helps. Take care.
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