Peter, a local business man encouraged me to join a (certificate) course at the local university for business owners. Feeling sure that I wouldn’t qualify, I didn’t pursue it. He took it upon himself to contact the director of the program and asked her to call me. If he hadn’t, I would not have gone.
As I walked on to the large campus for the interview, I looked up at the tall buildings and the crowd of young faces and thought, “What am I doing here?” The woman who interviewed me looked at our business performance over the previous three years (which was poor) and asked why. I shuttered because I didn’t know. ‘I’m done,’ I thought. 'Now I’ll have to tell Peter that they didn’t accept me and embarrass him as well.' But, I was accepted and it opened a whole, new world for me. To my surprise, there were other business owners in the class with similar problems and some were worse off than I was.
One night, a business coach came as our guest speaker to present the 9 lies that are holding your business back. Across the table from me was a very wealthy and successful classmate who owned a large construction company. I noticed that he was taking several pages of notes from the presentation so I concluded that I had better do the same because the information was apparently very valuable.
I believed that the business coach had the answers that I was looking for in our business. It was my desperation that forced me to approach him and ask if he would work with me. In order to do so, I had to overcome my fear that he might judge me and my ability as a businessman. I was running our business by trial and error. Mostly error. I thought he would be like most of the people I knew; either they didn’t know what propane was or they knew what it was and considered it dangerous. Not the best way to meet friends and influence people.
The lesson I learned from all of this is that my fears were in my mind and the more I thought about how I would be judged or if I would qualify or be good at being coached, the more the fear grew. Once I took action the fear melted away. I learned that seeking outside help was demonstrating strength not weakness. As for the fears they were unfounded. No one judged me and we are all get better at whatever we are committed to doing if we have a coach to teach, push and be accountable to. I’m the player out on the field, the coach just brings out the best and keeps me focused.
It was these trial-by-fire-experiences that have led to the creation of this blog. I want to share what I have learned (mostly) the hard way. With our coaches’ help, we have implemented various programs into our business which have been successful and more importantly, enjoyable for me. We have prospered in spite of several large oil companies entering our market, natural gas incursions and an economy in recession. Please join me as I share the actions we have taken that have worked for us in the real world.
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