{"id":2335,"date":"2015-07-30T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=2335"},"modified":"2015-07-20T11:58:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T18:58:46","slug":"i-sat-in-my-own-safety-net-while-weaving-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/?p=2335","title":{"rendered":"I sat in my own safety net while weaving it."},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note:\u00a0Berni Jubb<\/em><\/strong> was an Inc.500 entrepreneur, after years as a senior marketing manager of a large computer company.\u00a0 He regained his senses, and now runs a small resort and restaurant in Costa Rica.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Berni Jubb<\/strong><\/p>\n

My First Startup\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026never started, nor did my fifth or sixth.\u00a0 My desire to run something stirred inside me early in life, but the first real entrepreneurial adventure finally took hold after a lot of failed experiments.\u00a0 Each one had a steep learning curve.\u00a0 And all were missing a key ingredient or two.\u00a0 One thing, though, that never bothers an entrepreneur is fear of the unknown.<\/p>\n

The good thing was that I had a certain ability to see ahead of the obvious horizon so I could often find resources we didn’t have, and grasp those issues we knew we didn\u2019t know about.\u00a0 It is not today’s idea that makes the business a success, it is tomorrow’s.\u00a0 It is not today’s screw up that really messes up your business but the one yesterday that you didn’t know about.<\/p>\n

I digress for a moment with a business lesson direct from the hand of our mentor at the time, Mister Berkus himself.\u00a0 I was asked to explain my issue at a CEO round table for one of Dave’s membership groups.\u00a0 The date of the round table happened to coincide with the \"man-falling-onto-safety-net\"<\/a>clearing up of the remains of a nasty event that caused my company to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy.\u00a0 Of course it wasn’t just one event that was the cause, as you might guess.\u00a0 It was mismanagement that caused the event – rapid growth and the simultaneous realization by our big vendors that we had grown faster than our ability to pay.<\/p>\n

[Email readers, continue here…]<\/em><\/span> The notorious credit crunch<\/em>, as Wikipedia puts it succinctly \u201cis often caused by a sustained period of careless and inappropriate lending which results in losses for lending institutions and investors in debt when the loans turn sour and the full extent of bad debts becomes known.\u201d\u00a0 Ouch!<\/p>\n

We thought we had a friendly banker as a lifeboat.\u00a0 But the creditors and our bank somehow realized our \u201cgrowth problem\u201d all at about the same time, and when we went to use our bank line of credit, the bank told us we had blown it<\/em> and the line was withheld.\u00a0 Our suppliers had been careless lenders – and we had been careless borrowers of their credit.\u00a0 The bank just sent us \u2026 condolences.\u00a0 We missed all the signals. And we were one of the twenty-five fastest growing companies<\/em> in the INC.500 list at that time.\u00a0Double ouch!<\/p>\n

In three weeks of fast restructuring of our credit, tamping down our growth, reworking our marketing plan, repairing our inventories, calming down our vendors, working with our bigger customers (i.e. fixing everything),\u00a0 we saved the company, and the bank pitched in to support our new plan.\u00a0 The post mortem occurred at Dave’s round table a month later.\u00a0 I will always remember Dave’s observation when I smugly concluded with \u201cwe know how to deal with this kind of thing now.\u201d\u00a0 He snarled across the table with a knowing smile\u00a0 . . .\u00a0 something like \u201cIt won’t be this Pink Elephant that will sit on you again.\u201d\u00a0 These days I always have an eagle eye out for unknown Pink, Purple or Magenta Elephants waiting to trample on something I haven’t thought of or experienced yet.<\/p>\n

But how do you see these things before they hit you?\u00a0 What kinds of detectors are available to avoid these things?\u00a0 You can’t stop an entrepreneur from starting a new business or activity that is viewed as hopelessly stupid by detractors – and merely insane by close relatives.\u00a0\u00a0As an entrepreneur, you have a genetic problem.\u00a0 The bomb disposal guy in The Hurt Locker comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Entrepreneurs often crash headlong into these nasty, often dangerous and sometimes exhilarating experiences.\u00a0 I posit that in fact entrepreneurs sometimes tempt fate to get off on the experience – tread close to the edge to keep the fire inside burning.\u00a0 They sometimes don’t care; they are often reckless adventurers.\u00a0 Or as one of the richest guys in the world is quoted as saying, \u201cA real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is that we weave that safety net even as we sit in it, making the job doubly difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note:\u00a0Berni Jubb was an Inc.500 entrepreneur, after years as a senior marketing manager of a large computer company.\u00a0 He regained his senses, and now runs a small resort and restaurant in Costa Rica. By Berni Jubb My First Startup\u2026 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-your-ideal-niche","category-hedging-against-downturns","category-protecting-the-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/berkonomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}