(NOTE: The following is true except that the names, dates, and certain other facts that could reveal the identify of the individual discussed herein have been changed.)

The story you’re about to read is repeated, every day, and in every town in America. I myself have lived this story. The chances are pretty good that you have, too.

This particular version of this story begins, roughly, in 1998. The individual in this story was in his mid-forties and had spent almost his entire professional career learning about a specific industry.

Part of his education was paid for by the government. The rest was learned in the private sector, but this man was always an employee, never an equity holder.

He and I had a luncheon meeting. I had known this guy most of my life, but we had never been really all that close. However, he had come to me at this point in time, seeking advice and insight as he pondered starting a business that would actually compete with the company that presently employed him.

With all the caveats that you might suspect, I encouraged him to go ahead and start his own business. I think I told him something like, “You’ve got 25 years of experience and you’ve got contacts coming out of your ears. What’s more, you know the marketplace and so you know what works and what doesn’t. I’d say you’ve got a pretty good chance of succeeding.”

And, he had done his homework. Even though he had never written a formal business plan before, his marketing ideas were sound and his numbers accurate. The fact that he had so many numbers greatly impressed me. “It looks like you can turn black late in your first year,” I said as I perused his crude cash flow forecast, “I also really like the fact that you have a ‘Sugar Daddy’ client. If this customer can generate the kinds of numbers you estimate here, you’ll not have to worry about taking on a second job.”

He assured me that his Sugar Daddy was indeed lined up. “These guys have been asking me to take care of them for months,” he said with pride, “and I know exactly what has to be done to keep them happy.”

It wasn’t 30 days after that meeting that my friend (from here on in, we’ll just call him “Joe”) launched his own business, which we’ll call “Joe’s.”

Joe was and is a tough guy. He had never had a thing given to him in his whole life and he understood hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. He was not then, nor is he now, the kind of person who gives up when faced with tough sledding.

I remember very well the early days of his business. We would meet maybe monthly or bimonthly and I was impressed with how fast his knowledge of the business grew. I also liked the fact that he hand-wrote all of his early invoices, as well as the fact that he bought and installed his own computer system to do his billing and payroll. I remember thinking to myself, “That was tough for me to do in my early 20s ---- here’s a guy pushing 50 teaching himself some fairly sophisticated invoicing/payroll software.”

By the time Joe turned 50 (in his third full year of business), he had gone past the $1 million dollar sales level. Moreover, he was quite profitable. In fact, he was profitable in his seventh month. Right on schedule.

I remember very clearly an end-of-year meeting at a local restaurant. No longer was I sitting with some neophyte, who was hanging on to every one of my comments. No, it was now pretty much a meeting of peers. He knew a lot about how to run a business day-to-day and he certainly knew a lot more about his business than I did.

It was at that same year-end meeting that he started to ask me the kinds of questions that were quite difficult to answer. It was at that meeting that I knew that Joe now had everything that it took to go all the way.

In the following years, Joe’s growth slowed down a bit as all start-ups do at some point. And, he began to have the kinds of problems that naturally come when one’s payroll approaches a hundred employees. I noticed that some bad apples had now crept into his company. They had to be dealt with. Also, it seemed as if some of his managers had lied about their qualifications and capabilities. This too had to get straightened out.

But these were simple problems, compared to the problems that cropped up because of Joe’s management style.

One thing that I noticed was the fact that Joe started to take more and more time off. While commendable, this is something that generally cannot happen with a fast-growing business. Moreover, Joe was traveling to places where he would inevitably “meet and compete” with “Big Dogs.”

I’ve seen this many times before. No matter how big and how bad you are, there’s always a bigger and badder animal somewhere in the jungle. Joe, being a fierce competitor, thought that he could “stay and play” with any and all of these guys. Problem was, he couldn’t. They were just smarter, stronger, faster, and more experienced. Unfortunately, you can spend an awful lot of money as well as an awful lot of time trying to be a Bigger Dog than you really are.

I could tell that Joe wasn’t entirely comfortable running with these Big Dogs. Yet, and somehow, his ego was forcing him to do it. Not good.

Joe made another, classic mistake as well. He tried to replicate his business, brick-for-brick, in another city.

This is a mistake I’ve seen many times. An entrepreneur starts a business and has success. So, he or she figures, “I did it once, in Pittsburgh --- so, why can’t I do it again in Philadelphia?” The trouble is, you can’t. It sure seems likes a makeable putt, but you never seem to see that hidden undulation between you and the cup.

I could recite half-a-dozen additional reasons why a second site just doesn’t work, but let me give you just one of them: The second site doesn’t have you!

That’s right. The first site has the company’s best decision-maker on its premises 24 x 7. But the second site has no such decision maker in place. And businesses succeed when good decisions are being made.

And so whenever a tough decision has to be made, there is no one on-site who is ready and willing (and able!) to make it. Consequently, that decision either goes unmade, or made erroneously.

Either way, you lose.

This ain’t pretty, because you don’t get feedback in real time and, as such, problems can be compounded very, very quickly before you even know that you’ve got a problem.

Finally, there’s one more absolute business killer that seems to find its way into the minds of entrepreneurs just beginning to taste success. And here it is.

For as bad as, “running with the Big Dogs” can be, Joe did something much, much worse --- specifically, Joe made the same mistake that so many great field generals have made over the centuries. That is, Joe opened up his “Second Front.”

While “Second Front” sounds just like “Second Site” (see above), these two terms really have absolutely nothing in common. A Second Site’s only sin is that it’s not in the same place as the First Site. That’s it.

But a Second Front has absolutely nothing in common with a First Site. This is because a Second Front is actually a whole new business model.

To specifically define the similarities and differences between my friend’s two “fronts” would be to help (at least some of) our readers identify the individual I’m being so critical of in this article. And this is the last thing I want to do.

Think of it this way. Let’s say that my friend’s first business (First Front) repairs automobiles. To draw a comparison that would help you understand his Second Front, I would have to tell you that this second business designs curricula for college-level English literature professors. Does that help?

The business that Joe came to me with just recently is just like this. Other than the fact that he sells stuff and counts stuff (for those of you who read my columns regularly, you know that I’m fond of saying that all businesses really do just three things: they make stuff, they sell stuff, and they count stuff), there are absolutely no “Common Components” to these two businesses.

These two businesses require completely different types of employees, and they target and sell to completely different customer bases. What’s more, these two businesses each buy their raw materials from completely different sources.

I’ve done this to myself. In fact, I’ve done this many times.

It’s insane.

It’s the surest ticket to hell. (Sometimes, one can at least find synergy by sharing sales or even back-office personnel between companies. But even in this case, it’s only a matter of time before the gunfights erupt. “Hey, why are you sending Charlie to Cleveland to meet with your customer?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why, because he’s the only guy under this roof who has ever been in Cleveland before.” Believe it or not, this is the kind of thinking that “mixed fronts” invariably leads to!

So when my friend came to me, telling me that he was now going to “bring in” his brother-in-law to, “run the other business,” my previous lives flashed before my eyes!

“What do I say to this guy,” I asked myself under my breath, “He’s going to destroy a very successful business just so his brother-in-law can have a job!” (After all, that’s apparently really what this is probably all about.) I thought to myself, “Who is going to stop Joe from doing this? Why can’t he see this for what it is?”

The reason he can’t, Dear Romans, is because he violated another of the Morris’ Immutables, the one that says, “The worse thing that can happen to a gambler is to win on the first hand.” (BTW, he also violated the Immutable about “never going into business with relatives.”) For, even though Joe didn’t hit the jackpot until he was well into his 50s, technically, he still “won on his first hand played.”

I wish I had a nice, fairy tale ending for you. I don’t. Maybe some shrink is right now saying to himself, “Well, what Ron is really doing here is sending out his admonition via proxy (in this case, a newsletter article) in hopes that his friend will read it.”

Maybe I am. And if this is the case, “Joe,” I’ll be only too happy to look you in the eye and admit my guilt.

Especially if that is what it takes to get you to see what you’re doing here.