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It's a chance to prove that the first time wasn't just dumb luck
"Yeah, my first company made a mint selling The Lion King merchandise. So, what's your point?"
Most successful entrepreneurs will admit that luck plays a certain part in success. (Although they'll probably add that the harder you work, the luckier you get.) But, Forrest Gump aside, what are the odds that sheer serendipity will strike more than once? "I wanted to do twice what most people can't do even once," admits Tom Weldon, 39. "Then I could say that it had more to do with my skills, the team I built, our strategy and philosophy, and the lessons we had learned. If you're successful the second time, you prove to yourself that external factors had less to do with it."
Not that anyone ever suggested to Weldon that his role in his first company's success was about as relevant as the average lottery winner's part in having the winning ticket. " I said it to me," he admits. "Most of the people who knew me then felt I had earned every dollar I got. But I look back and see how I had little control over certain things. I needed to prove to myself that I had learned enough and that I was good enough to do it a second time." Jaffe compares such a tactic, which he says is quite common, to a football coach's trying to get energized for a new season after winning the Super Bowl. "How did George Seifert of the Forty-Niners get motivated?" asks Jaffe. "People didn't think the first time he won was fair. So he had to prove it wasn't a fluke."
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It allows you to set your sights on developing others
"You mean there's someone else in the world besides me?"
Remember those late-night bull sessions in your senior-year dorm room, when you and your collegiate coterie promised one another that when one of you made it big, you'd pull the rest of the group along? No? Well, then, you probably didn't go to college in the 1960s. Ed Farrer did, and he hasn't forgotten that promise, although it's not his college buddies he's pulling along with him; it's his employees.
Farrer admits that in 1985, when he started his first company, M.A.I.L. (Mailing Assistance in Lafayette), a mailing service based in Dayton, he was pretty much out for himself. "With your first business you're ego-focused. But in a later business you need something to keep you getting up every morning," he explains. "For me, that's the career success of the people I employ."
So with Quik-Pak Inc., Farrer's second venture, which he started in 1987 in Lafayette, Ind., he focuses on helping his employees develop more marketable skills. "You need to look at what's going to make the company stronger, not what's going to make you stronger," he says. "And to me, that's making my people stronger."
He proudly points to a 24-year-old computer-systems analyst on his staff who has already had experience as a manager -- going through the hiring process and helping to cultivate a fellow employee. "I try to give people opportunities to translate their experiences into something that's salable," he says.
Focusing on his employees, Farrer says, fulfills a spiritual need. "I have this dear friend who is an incredible songwriter. She just wrote a new song where somebody is asking her, 'What do you get out of writing songs?' She says in the song, 'It's a way of praying.' I couldn't say it any better than that. Helping other people out is to me a way of praying. When you help other folks out in their careers, there's a spiritual return on that investment. It's something that helps make me whole."
John Overby couldn't agree more. He learned from running his first company, Advanced Input Devices Inc., in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, that "I like growing people."
When it came time to start his second company, Advanced Hardware Architectures Inc. (AHA), in Pullman, Wash., Overby knew that creating growth opportunities would not only help his employees develop but help him stay engaged as well. Because the company manufactures and designs semiconductors, Overby must employ a highly educated workforce. The challenge, he says, is providing employees with the business skills to complement their technical skills. To do that, Overby sets up teams of highly experienced "mentors" to work with the neophytes. "We hire the right mix of experienced people and bright young people with potential, and put them on the same design teams," he says. "We try to get them to make it through the learning curve in 5 years instead of 10."
Providing other people with the chances and challenges necessary to get ahead does wonders for Overby's motivation. "The satisfaction of seeing people grow turns me on. And it's fun. If it isn't fun, I don't care about the money, I don't want to do it."
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It's an opportunity to take on an even greater challenge
"This time I'm going to sell real estate -- in California."
Never underestimate the motivational value of one-upmanship, even if you're the one you're one-upping. Weldon felt that focusing on creating "more value in less time" and producing "greater returns for our shareholders" the second time around would present more than enough of a challenge to keep him motivated. "With the first business you're happy if you just don't lose your investors' money," he says, "but this time you're focusing on creating liquidity opportunities at an earlier stage and producing monumental returns." Weldon stresses that that should be an internal motivator: you certainly wouldn't make such a promise to your investors. "That would be risky from a legal perspective," he warns.
