Resilience Earned

April 24, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

I spent time yesterday with Joe, a long-time friend, colleague and mentor. Joe’s is a terrific professional service firm story; its probably been 20 years since he started a boutique consulting and systems integration business serving the mid-market.  That’s decades of PSF and entrepreneurial stories and learning, and I soak it up like a sponge.

So much is written and studied about large organizational leadership; but in my opinion the case studies pale in comparison to a day, or year, or decade in the life of a professional services entrepreneur with staff. You’ll read a lot about the resilient entrepreneur, as if its an innate character quality specific to the species, or as if its something you can arbitrarily decide to add to your persona and resume.  But yesterday, catching up with Joe, it struck me that resilience is earned; its all merit.

I also took away:

  • Be really clear about and true to the 1 or 2 things you do really good and make it the foundation for everything that follows because everything but those 1 or 2 things changes..often and with little warning.
  • Don’t beat a dead market segment; find a new one knowing that it will take at least two years to get traction.
  • When you get burned by really lousy people, become a better person yourself for the experience.
  • Family drama does not hold a candle to staff drama in terms of the time and effort required to manage it and the impact it will have on your life.
  • There are no failures, just learning.
  • Don’t fire people, find them new jobs.
  • Have a great spouse.

One thing we agreed to continue to discuss and work on together, is an approach to marketing that communicates to potential clients and employees, the value of "merited" resilience and small business leadership like Joe’s, as a point of differentiation and added value. Because, to quote Jerry Garcia, "You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who can do what you do."

And that’s always earned.

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