Trust Your Gut

By Michael Werner from Dream Jobs Dialog

Everybody thinks that being successful in developing and running their own business is all about having enough start-up and working capital, or the proper image that fits your market, or the right employees.

Yup, being successful in running your own show does require a significant dose of all of those things.

But, what I see missing most of all – and it just jumps out at me when I see people, either in their own businesses or as employees – is a willingness by that person to be themselves, and to trust their own instincts.

I fight with this constantly in my own businesses, and indirectly with my own employees.

They want themselves – and our company, by extension – to be something else.

And, this just absolutely drives me nuts-o.

We have whatever success we do by being who we are, not by trying to be something or someone else.

I have one employee, Brad (real guy, name changed), who’s always trying to portray us as bigger – much bigger – than we are. “Well, Michael,” he’ll tell me, “I just want to make sure that the customer takes us seriously.”

Hey, Brads of the world. The customer already does take us seriously – they buy products and services from us. They do that because they like who we are, how we act, and how we look.

We are who we are and, if we’re any good – and in the case of the real-world Brad I’m talking about, we’re damned good; been in business over 23 years, lots of growth spurts, plenty of industry innovations along the way – we don’t need to make up anything about ourselves. They like us, they really do like us.

The corollary to this is a feeling by lots of people that “well, we better do it that way because that’s how Microsoft [substitute your own name here] does it.”

Well, poop. We’re not Microsoft, we don’t wanna be Microsoft (really), and if we were really trying to be more like Microsoft, they’d eat our lunch before we even got past breakfast.

Be yourself, trust your gut. After all, what in the hell are you doing here if you can’t be yourself?

Michael Werner runs the blog at http://DreamJobsDialog.com and is also the CEO of InfoSource, Inc., a company trying hard not to be like Microsoft.