After looking at hundreds of businesses throughout our careers, Paul and I have often asked ourselves what the consistent link is that connects all the best performers we have seen. All businesses need good systems, management, staffing, product or service etc, but the most overlooked to us is passion.
We often see or experience passion when we talk about our sports teams (All Blacks, Kiwis, Silver Ferns), even the sports themselves (rugby vs. rugby league) our cities (see how passionate the everyday Cantabrian is about his/her hatred of Auckland), our western neighbours in Australia, politics, religion and there are many more. Bring up any of these subjects and you are bound to get a passionate response from whoever you are talking too.
How does this apply to business? Well the best businesses we have seen more often than not have an owner that is passionate about his or her business. But not just about the business as a whole, he/she is passionate about everything about that business and will continually strive to make every small part of that business as good as it can be. The old cliché, the sum of the parts becoming greater than the whole. You have to love the process of business ownership, working longer hours, coming in on the weekends and public holidays, 100% responsibility for the good and the bad and the commitment to not accepting second best wherever possible in your business. Business ownership is not for everybody; if it was, everybody would be doing it. This is obvious, so if you are thinking about purchasing a business or have lost your passion for your job or been made redundant you will have to ask yourself, do you have the passion for business ownership, before you purchase!
It is not as easy as finding a business category that you are passionate about. Otherwise every company would be involved in sports, travel, fishing, hospitality or any of the pursuits everyday citizens are passionate about. You need to find an opportunity that has strong fundamentals, whatever the category, and then be as passionate as you can be in the purchasing process and then in making that business the best that business can be.
The owner of a business I have recently sold had a business that was involved in an extremely competitive category providing discretionary and day to day service to mainly woman. How did she stand out from the crowd? She was passionate about all of the little things in her business. She purchased an “ok” business that was in a great location and spent all of her time (and employee’s spare time) on improving her employee’s skills, the relationships with each other and the clients, instituted systems that took the guesswork out of the quality that she demanded, which created an environment where the business prospered. As an owner she never really had a personal passion for the category (she was never involved), but she was passionate about how the service was delivered to her clients. As importantly, she was passionate about the backend boring day to day record keeping systems of the business (I have talked about verifiable records in previous posts) and as such it was a pleasure for us to assist her to exit the business after 7 fruitful years of ownership. The obvious question you might ask is, why would she sell?
She had a health issue raise its ugly head and fortunately because her business was in such good condition, we were able to move immediately.
Passion is something that we hear about every day in the media, but is often difficult for us to quantify in our everyday lives. If you are looking to purchase a business, you need to try and quantify what you are willing to do to ensure the success of your business and then ask yourself if you can be passionate about going about it. If you also want to have a business to sell after 7 years of successful ownership then your passion will be the driver that gets you there.
When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible. Unknown.