Regular listeners to TAE may recall the episode not too long ago when a well-intentioned caller asked my guest (a venture capitalist from New York City) about securing a two million dollar investment for his latest start-up.

I say “latest”, because I've lost count  of the number of business this guy has started or attempted to start in just the past five years.

His start-ups are always “trendy”. For example, when Sarbanes-Oxley was sweeping the nation, his start-up was (all together now) designed to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley!

I oftentimes wonder when this guy, as well as probably a million other American entrepreneurs, might learn that the real secret of entrepreneurism is to “Work against your base nature --- and do just one thing at a time.”

You heard me: “work against your nature” … and you entrepreneurs know exactly what I mean … you must bury the son-of-a-gun that keeps on sabotaging your start-ups.

(To I.D. that son-of-a-gun, please check the nearest mirror.)

Yep, he’s “the man in the glass”. The person who habitually prevents entrepreneurs from reaching their financial independence goals.

But why do so many business operators chronically refuse to “stay the course”? Why do these entrepreneurs start their second enterprise way before the first one has even approached profitability, much less stability?

There are theories. We all know about that oldest of chestnuts, “fear of success”. (We also all know the story of the dog that finally catches the car.) Maybe some entrepreneurs don’t really believe that they are capable of managing a successful company, and so maybe they make certain that they never WILL?
 
I once had a salesperson who worked on straight commission.  Each and every month, he would earn almost exactly the same paycheck --- about $3,500.00. He had worked things so that this was just about exactly what he needed to pay his bills and maybe also take his wife to dinner each month.

But one month, and through no special effort that I could see, he “broke the bank” and earned about twice his usual amount.  The truth of the matter was that he had no concept of either investing or saving.  To him, this money was simply just not supposed to be there … so, it had to go.  I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he told me that he had squandered his bonus bucks on a weekend trip to Las Vegas.

Other entrepreneurs are victim to what I call the “kid in the candy store” syndrome. That is, they simply cannot resist the lure of some fresh, new playing field, even though they are still very much mired in their current enterprise.
 
Leaping logically into niche opportunities is far more rational than fearing success. But when such leaps foreclose success in the primary business (as they almost always do) the “kid in the candy store” syndrome must be eradicated.

On my wall at home, there is a sign that says, “We all live two lives …the life we learn from, and the life we live.” In 1983 or thereabouts, I went bankrupt by failing to honor that oldest of Chinese adages, “He who chases two rabbits catches none”. It was then and there that I learned the absolute power of focus and just how much leverage can be aggregated by concentrating every single erg of energy into one laser-pinpointed pursuit.

Years ago, when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers were dominating the National Football League, it was widely known that they had but a handful of unique plays in their repertoire. The implication being, “We’re going to successfully run off-tackle all day long, and if you don’t figure out a way to stop us, you will lose.”

Vince’s guys … and just regular guys they were … soon became experts at delivering the exact same product the exact same way with the exact same dedication each and every time they played. Soon, this became “the way things were”, and eventually, no one questioned or challenged their perennial position as the league’s finest franchise. It was simply just accepted that there was no one better.

Green Bay became and stayed the very best simply by doing just one thing and then doing that one thing better than anyone else.

Is your company fighting a two-front war? Three fronts, you say?

Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn ya!