Second in a series
Re “A Green Business Tip: You Only Will Succeed by Really Trying”
[img]1430|left|Victor Green||no_popup[/img]Was Victor Green, the sagacious British-born entrepreneur, peeking over the transom? How else would he know why so many Americans have failed when trying to start a business?
While touting his new book, “How to Succeed in Business by Really Trying,” Mr. Green dwelled briefly on what not to do.
Now in his early 70s, Mr. Green is as hunched-forward intense as he was at the height of his everyday working life.
An enormously successful businessman in two countries, a byproduct of his towering conquests is an overflowing tank of supreme confidence about his way of building businesses.
He left school at the age of 15, in the more commercially innocent 1950s, but none dare try that today.
He has experienced uncommon success and he has keenly observed, in others, confounding streaks of failures.
Mr. Green has not a doubt about which formulas pay jackpots.
“You don’t have to like the product or the service you are offering,” he says. “Your clients do. They are your customers.”
Zeroing in on a central fault of ambitious beginning entrepreneurs, Mr. Green sounded as if he were crying out from a mountaintop.
“There is no point in being idealistic and saying, ‘I want to revolutionize the world. I want to make the world a better place.’
“That is fine if you want to live on Skid Row. That’s not a problem. That’s a choice.
“But if you’re going to make your business successful, the people you are supplying have to like your product. You can make it, and as long as they like it, you are in business.”
Question: How do you determine if they like it?
“Only one way, by research, by field testing. You can never, ever do enough research in any business. You have got to continue, 24/7, looking for new ideas, new angles, new ways of doing things.
“Am I doing as well as I should be? Is it going to give added value to my customer? Can I provide this better than they do? You have to look and look. And when you think you have tested the market, then you need to go into the marketplace and meet people.
“Try and find a mentor in that particular business.
“Somebody comes to you and says, ‘I want to be a journalist.’ You say, ‘Come and speak to me.’ You help him along. You correct him when he takes a wrong approach. You tell him, ‘You need to condense a 500-word story into 200, you have a headline, which means a thousand words, you have an illustration, which means a thousand words.’ You are the mentor. You help him.
“Find someone in an industry whom you can bounce ideas off of.”
One never suffices, says the relentless Mr. Green.
“Find two or three.”
(To be continued)
