How to Build a Business from a Jeep Enthusiast's Perspective

| October 8, 2011 | By

How to Build a Business

If you have ever owned a Jeep, you know three things:

  1. When built right, they can take you anywhere
  2. It's not easy to build them right
  3. Once its built, you're like a proud father wanting to share your baby (Jeep) with the world
At the end of the day, you want your Jeep to be able to stand up to just about anything you give it. This blog post is on how to build a business. Oddly enough, building a business is a lot like building a jeep.
  1. When built right, they can take you anywhere
  2. It's not easy to build them right
  3. Once it's built, you're like a proud father wanting to share your baby (company) with the world
So lets break these three categories down individually and apply them to your business:

When built right, it can take you anywhere

I go Jeeping a lot. My favorite place in the whole world is Moab. After so many trips, you learn something - you're probably going to break something on your vehicle when you're that rough on it. You might break an axle, a drive line, a hub, or who knows what. An important rule is that if it breaks, UPGRADE. Don't put the same stock part in your Jeep - it's just going to break again. If possible, spend a little extra and get the part that will do the job.

As a business owner, your company has parts including: processes, employees, customers, sales programs, etc. There is nothing worse than having one of those parts break, but if and when it happens, UPGRADE. For example, we used to hire college accounting kids on our staff. They were fantastic employees, worked hard, and did everything you could have expected from them, but they broke. There were times when they didn't know how to handle a particular accounting issue and our company and clients suffered from it. One day, Ryan Steck (our CFO) and I decided to focus on that "part" of our business and UPGRADE. Now our staff is built from CPAs and QuickBooks Pro Advisors with years and years of experience. The best part was that our customers didn't get a price increase due to the upgraded staff - they just got a more experienced accountant to help them grow their companies. I now know that our clients are in great hands. Way to go team!

It's not easy to build them right

Building a good business is hard work. You are going to have to make hard choices - ones that will make you feel financially strapped at times. The important thing to remember is that you must always do the right thing. Growing a business often comes with opportunities to take short cuts which offer faster growth at little to no cost to you. In the long run though, short cuts lead to stunted growth. A good company is built on principles of integrity, openness, trust, and the framework of human potential. Those things take time to build right.

Once it's built, you're like a proud father wanting to share your baby (company) with the world

In the end, you'll be proud of all your hard work. The image of the Jeep in this blog post is my friend's vehicle. He did a great job building it. There aren't many vehicles that can do what his can. It will go anywhere and do just about anything you give it. Your business needs to be the same. The economy has some rough bumps ahead for you and you need to be upgraded enough to withstand a little off-roading. The funny thing is that if you're built to withstand the bumpy roads, its actually a lot of fun venturing into places where other vehicles (small businesses) dare not go.
So when someone asks you how to build a business, call me up and we'll take them for a Jeep ride!

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