Guest Article
I recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of a business legend Brian Smith, the founder and creator of UGG Australia, which is a billion dollar brand here in the US. I asked him to share what they don’t teach you in business school about running a small business. Here’s what Brian shared:
You entrepreneurs who are starting a business begin your venture optimistically, but the passage of time allows disappointments, uncertainties, difficulties and apparent defeat creep into your lives.
On the darkest nights, your mind replays a feeling of dread that makes you want to give up.
I can totally identify with all of these negative aspects of how to start a new business because I have lived and breathed more than my share of them.
BUT, maybe I can lessen the pain by sharing some of the lessons I have learned in my new book “The Birth of a Brand – Launching Your Entrepreneurial Passion and Soul.” It is an unusual mixture of Spirituality and small business ideas that breaks new ground in helping you to keep your LIFE and business in balance despite the fact that they appear tangled and sometimes out of control.
It is a beautiful trick of the universe that being an entrepreneur requires a certain degree of ignorance and even innocence, because if you knew of all the obstacles ahead, you might never begin. But that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
You can harvest the amazing inner power available to everyone, and utilize it to emerge from fear and live a life of joy and abundance (most of the time, because we’re not perfect and we have a lot of life to live yet!).
In The Birth of a Brand, I draw you into my crazy journey of ups and downs, victories and apparent defeats, amazing highs and devastating lows, and show how MOSTLY, YOUR MOST DISAPPOINTING DISAPPOINTMENTS BECOME YOUR GREATEST BLESSINGS.
The theme of my book is “YOU CAN’T GIVE BIRTH TO ADULTS”. Starting a business, service or movement begins with the “conception” of an idea. The “birth” is taking the first action, the baby business grows in its “infancy,” and then the toddler, youth and teen phases come before maturity as a stable business.
It is the “infancy” stage of starting a new business that is most dangerous for new entrepreneurs. Just like no amount of feeding, rocking, cajoling or urging an infant in the cradle will make it get up and go to college, your new small business must be an infant and you just have to hang in there until it begins to crawl.
The infancy of the UGG boot business started when I sold 28 pairs in the first season and the next three seasons capped around $30,000 each year. I had so many reasons and opportunities to quit then and over the seventeen years I grew the business, but in the darkest times I always went deep inside of me and called on the power of my inner spirit for guidance. I can’t say I ever heard a voice, but I always emerged with new energy and a “knowing” that I was on the right path.
You can overcome doubt and impatience in such a natural way that you can get back to enjoying the dream of self-sufficiency that began your own entrepreneurial journey.
Remember….. the quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live every day JOYFULLY as a tadpole.
About the author: Brian Smith founded UGG Imports, Inc., and UGG Holdings, Inc., which was sold to Deckers Outdoor Corporation as sales reached $15 million; in 2012 the UGG brand first broke the $1 billion mark, for sales around the world. He was born in Australia, is now a resident of Southern California. He just released his new book: The Birth of a Brand
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