How I Built My Business

The newspaper salesman walked out, and I dropped my head into my hands, kicking myself for running my mouth. I had just told a complete stranger that I planned to build one of the biggest asset holding companies in the province inside of five years. I was twenty-six. There was already a company like that operating in the area, though I hadn't bothered to notice. I couldn't tell a profit and loss statement from a balance sheet, and the basics of the industry were a fog to me. None of that slowed me down. I was young and loud about my ambitions, and I figured I would do whatever the work demanded. It was a bitter February in 1986 when I took those first steps, teaching myself how commerce actually worked around town.

All I wanted was to build something that belonged to me. If I handled it right, I believed, I would make a career out of it and set myself up for years to come as the owner. But some things had to change fast. I sat down and wrote out my goals, then made a decision: whatever the circumstances, I would act as though the goals were reachable. The fear didn't vanish. I felt plenty insecure about how little I knew. I set appointments anyway, sitting down with property owners and managers to walk them through what I wanted to do with their holdings.

The first doors I knocked on belonged to the two largest companies in the area. They nearly laughed out loud before showing me out, politely enough. Someone already handled the services I was pitching, so what use did they have for me? They were doing fine and saw no reason to look past that. For four months I prospected almost every day, repeating the same vision to anyone who would sit still. Then a large property owner said yes. One meeting in, I knew it was the biggest deal I would land in my short career.

A referral to that number two company came through within a month. They hadn't shown any interest before, but I moved quickly and got them to open a separate opportunity with me, and it started growing almost immediately. By the end of my first year with that initial major client, I had ninety-seven sales agents working with me. People kept predicting bankruptcy. It didn't happen.

I stayed fixed on what I had set out to do, and that focus was where the strength came from whenever something got in the way. I kept throwing my own energy behind the company's growth. A lot of the momentum came from telling enough people a specific story about their own futures: that we could pull them out of the month-to-month grind and build toward something bigger and more satisfying, together. Running the thing taught me the fundamentals as I went, sales, returns on investment, legal matters, managing the money, all of it landing on me at the same time. Eventually the operation reached a thousand people, and the confidence that came with that has stuck. Clarity about the objective, real passion, and steady use of sound business practices carried us a long way. You can get there too. - Anonymous Contributor