When Everyone Thinks You're Nuts

Dear Colleague,

I’m writing today from the Portoroz coast in Slovenia. As I look out my balcony, to the left is Croatia, where they have an old-fashioned lighthouse that has the light beacon circling every night. To my right is the wine-growing region on Italy. I’m here speaking at the EuroBiz’04 Business Development Congress.
Yesterday was a treat for me, as I got to do an interview with Nicholas Hayek, the founder of Swatch. Quite an amazing guy. He started Swatch when the Swiss watch industry was in serious decline. While they had once dominated the industry, they lost market share to Japan, and were down to 10% of the world production, rapidly heading to zero. Everyone “knew” that quartz watches were the future, and all mechanical watches would soon be extinct. Everyone except Nicholas.

The financers told him that he was nuts, and refused to back him. He put up his own money and went ahead anyway. Today not only does Swatch sell millions of units, but the Swatch group has bought or started 17 other lines, from Flick Flak for tiny kids, to Omega, to the high end stuff at a couple hundred thousand dollars a copy. They’re doing over 4 billion Swiss francs a year in sales, and Nicholas’ stake is today worth almost U.S. $6 billion.

He’s 76 years old and hasn’t slowed a bit. Someone asked him about retirement recently and he said, “Entrepreneurs are artists…and artists never retire.”

Another highlight of the conference for me was a panel discussion led by my partner Bostjan Erzen. I was joined by marketing legend Ted Nicholas, Leon Peklar, who is one of the brightest entrepreneurs in Central Europe, and Bojan Brank, who runs DHL in the area. The discussion focused on a favorite subject of mine: the traits of successful entrepreneurs.

We challenged the audience to be more decisive, bold, and entrepreneurial. I find doing business in the area excruciatingly slow and quite frustrating. In the States, Australia, and even the U.K., I can have lunch with a CEO and close a million-dollar deal. We sketch out the issue, each side announces what they want, we negotiate a little, and then we shake hands, and order dessert. We go home and e-mail or fax the contracts to each other.

Central Europe is nothing like that. If you even suggested to most CEOs that they do business like that, they look at you like you must be insane. Even the most minor decisions and expenditures are done only after careful deliberation, committee meetings, and seeking approval from others.
Projects that would take two weeks in the States, like printing a brochure, can take months over here. And I literally do mean months. I once waited more than seven months for a client to print a two-color, eight-page brochure.

Say what you will about Americans. We’re brash, we’re rude, and we have no culture. But we know how to do two things better than anyone in the world: make blockbuster movies and make money.
I have often told Leon Peklar that I think he must really be American. He is the kind of guy who is not shy about making decisions, and he gets things done. He is as unique in Slovenia as Nicholas Hayek is in Switzerland. During the panel discussion, Ted Nicholas raised another interesting issue. He mentioned the American viewpoint toward failure. We don’t make a big deal out of it. We fail at something, we get up, dust ourselves off, and try something else.

American politics, entertainment, sports, and business are filled with example after example of people who failed on their way to success. In fact, it’s almost a badge of honor to have a triumph-over-failure story. In fact, it goes a long way toward explaining why all of the high-priced, famous motivational speakers come from America.

Ted mentioned the stigma associated with failure in many other cultures. He talked about people who failed at a project and then simply stopped coming around. They refused to show their face at the country club ever again. Here in the States, we give people like that a television show so they can say “you’re fired” to someone every week.

Nicholas Hayak went against all the conventional wisdom of his time and built the most successful watch company in the world. My partner Bostjan started his first business in college. As Slovenia was getting used to independence, he and some schoolmates started a company to help new ventures get their companies incorporated.

Leon Peklar started an entire consulting company around the subject of corporate governance; an area no one even knew existed. Now his company is synonymous with the topic and expanding all over the region.
Ted Nicholas had an idea to write a book about forming your own corporation without a lawyer for under $100. Nine publishers rejected it. So he published it himself. Attorneys General investigated him. Lawyers tried to sue him. He went on to sell millions of copies of the book and used that as a cornerstone to form Enterprise Publishing, one of over 20 successful companies he has started.

Ford Saeks, my partner back in the States is an orphan who bounced from foster home to foster home and a number of abusive environments along the way. The more people told him he would never amount to anything, the more determined he became to prove them wrong. As a runaway teen, he started his first company while living in a car. Next time you see him at one of our events, ask him to tell you the story.

When I was 15 years old, I decided that the safety of my mother’s house, school, and normalcy were too constraining on me. I was determined to go out and make my way in the world by myself. I had some bumps in the road, but I never looked back. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

If you ever doubt yourself, ever wonder if you have what it takes to start something special, keep one thing in mind: “everyone” may not agree with you, and “everyone” may not like you, and “everyone” may think you’re crazy. But most “everyone” is broke, unhappy, and unfulfilled. They live a life of quiet desperation; spending hours a day drinking rancid fermented hops, sitting in a recliner, rubbing the hair off the back of their heads watching the idiot box—telling people like you why things can’t be done!

Have a great week!
P.S. Here’s a site for you to visit when you’re looking for some inspiration. Go: HERE.