In 2008, Rick Lochner was having brunch with his wife and another couple. They talked about how it would be great to start business and discussed the details of what the business would look like when it started in a few years. At the end of the meal, Rick said, “Why are we waiting; let’s do it!”
Why did Rick decide to go into business for himself? After all Rick had had a successful career executive for a Fortune 500 company. In another stint he had taken a company from $30 million to $140 million in sales. What triggered the decision to go into business for himself? It was his WHY.
The Ultimate Key to Success
The ultimate key to your success is having a big enough “WHY”. If your WHY is strong enough you can overcome any obstacle. As you go forward with your new business, having a compelling WHY will enable you to succeed. It is the most important item in your business, because the big WHY drives your attitude toward your business, which drives your actions.
What is a WHY?
It is the reason you get up early in the morning and move your business forward each and every day. It is your purpose for taking the actions you take and doing what you do, whether you feel like doing it or not. Starting your own business can be a daunting task. It is a new world for you, just like was for me. We experience fear when we start something new, the fear of the unknown and that fear, if it becomes too strong, keeps us from taking the actions we need to take. That is why you need a big WHY.
What is your WHY?
What is your WHY? Do you want to have a successful business because you are sick and tired of corporate life? Tired of someone else being in control of your future? Is your WHY to take care of your family and stop living paycheck to paycheck? Is your WHY because you have an elderly parent to care for and you want to have the money to provide a good retirement home for them. Is your WHY the ability to provide a great college education for your children and the ability for them to go to whatever college they choose. You’ll do whatever it take to provide for those you love. That is your WHY.
WHY comes in Different Flavors
Maybe your WHY is a hobby you love and your excited at the possibility of turning that that into a business. The new business would give you the opportunity to spend hours doing what you love.
Maybe your passion is a car restoration business. Maybe it is buying and selling classic cars. Maybe it is catering business or home-cooked meal business. It could be any number of businesses. I recently interviewed entrepreneurs that have created businesses that range from a communications business to a leadership training business to a franchising business. Each is in a very different area and they absolutely love their life and their business. Whatever it is, it needs to be a passion for you and your commitment to make it successful goes hand in hand with that passion. Your business will need the full commitment of your time, your intellect and your energy.
Maybe your WHY is to make society a better place. What is the impact you want to have on the world? How do you want to give back? How do you want to be remembered? Below is the story of a person finding their WHY.
The WHY for TOMS
Blake Mycoskie is the Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS, and the person behind the idea of One for One®, a business model that helps a person in need with every product purchased. He told his story to Entrepreneur Magazine and below is an excerpt.
“Toward the end of my trip, I met an American woman in a café who was volunteering on a shoe drive — a new concept to me. She explained that many kids lacked shoes, even in relatively well-developed countries like Argentina . . . [and it} exposed them to a wide range of diseases. Her organization collected shoes from donors and gave them to kids in need — but ironically the donations that supplied the organization were also its Achilles’ heel. Their complete dependence on donations meant that they had little control over their supply of shoes. And even when donations did come in sufficient quantities, they were often not in the correct sizes, which meant that many of the children were left barefoot even after the shoe drop-offs. It was heartbreaking.
Then I began to look for solutions in the world I already knew: business and entrepreneurship. An idea hit me: Why not create a for-profit business to help provide shoes for these children? Why not come up with a solution that guaranteed a constant flow of shoes, not just whenever kind people were able to make a donation? In other words, maybe the solution was in entrepreneurship, not charity.
It was a simple concept: Sell a pair of shoes today, give a pair of shoes tomorrow. Something about the idea felt so right.”
(For the full story go to story of TOMS).
My WHY
For years I dreamed of having my own business. My wife and I started a restaurant and it failed. It left us deep in debt. I remember thinking after it closed that we would never try to have our own business again. But as I’ve gotten older I know the odds of success in the corporate world are stacked against me and I need to find my WHY and establish our own business.
I found out the other day that a colleague; a contractor, was let go. The budget for his project ran out and after a few days, he was gone. No advance notice, no warning, no severance; nothing. He wasn’t ready to retire, but he got retired. His destiny was in someone else’s hands.
I know so many people my age, (I’m in my 50s), that have been laid off and in some cases several times. It has happened to me more than once. If you’re 50+ it is difficult to find a full-time job because you are considered too old. So all of us have had dip into our savings while we look for a job. That savings, which are already too small to fund retirement, gets depleted funding the current living expenses. The retirement situation goes from bad to worse.
I’ve volunteered for many years at job services. I’ve met many people with heart-breaking stories. One gentleman, about my age, had been in commercial real estate. With the real estate crash he lost his job and hasn’t worked in years. I could see the fear in his eyes when I talked to him. The fear of not knowing if he would ever work again. The feeling of helplessness.
The pain that people go through during a layoff created a deep ache in me. I wanted to help those that are sick of corporate life and want to be in charge of their life and their financial freedom. I wanted to help the would be entrepreneur take that step into the unknown of finding their true passion and starting their own business. I want to give hope in a hopeless situation.
The purpose of babyboomercashnow.com is to help entrepreneurs who are in their 50s, create and grow their business by providing the knowledge and tools they need, no matter where they live or what their business.
In addition, we want to give back. There are many people around the world who are trying to do something to make a better life for themselves and their family. They have found their WHY. But they don’t have the means. They are in parts of the world that are very poor and they don’t have access to a way to fund their business. That is, until now.
Kiva is an international nonprofit, based in San Francisco, with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.
By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a life-long ambition. So babyboomercashnow.com will be contributing to the operations of Kiva in Kiva to help that non-profit reach out to even more entrepreneurs.
Rick’s WHY
We started the blog post talking about Rick Lochner. What is his WHY? His Vision is to help Business Owners, Corporate and Non-Profit Leadership Teams and Individual Professionals Make Leadership a Way of Life. Rick gives back to the local community as a member of the Board of Directors for Literacy DuPage, as well as the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
Next Steps
- Write out your WHY
- List compelling reasons why you want to be in your own business.
- List out what you want to accomplish in the next 10 years of your life. Provide details of how you want to give back.
Send me a note at alan@babyboomercashnow.com, I’d love to hear your WHY.
Thank you for your article. I see myself in your examples. I’m from the baby boomer generation and need to hear this. Fear is my biggest obstacle. Having been in corporate all my adult life, leaving it can be daunting. But I do see many companies “transforming” and leaving us baby boomers behind as they work furiously to recruit the millianials.
Hi
this is great stuff. are you on facebook?
Thanks. The Facebook page will be set up in the next couple of weeks.