Move forward
Ivy spent a lot of money investing in the Internet in the early years. While many at the time scoffed at that, it actually put Heritage in a position to capitalize on the market when the Internet picked up steam.
“Now we have what is far and away the best Internet site for collectibles and auctions in the world,” Ivy says. “We get over 30,000 individual users to our Internet site every day, which puts us as the largest single collectibles site on the Internet — nongovernment.”
The key to striking this kind of success is to constantly be looking and moving your business forward.
“You can’t just sit at home and not read and expect to keep up,” he says.
Ivy subscribes to his competitors’ publications and to all of the trade publications. He also set up Google alerts for anything that he wanted to keep up with. Additionally, he attends trade shows to stay aware, as well.
“It’s more of a mindset,” he says. “There’s not any one trick to it. Having been in business for 40 years, … patience is a virtue in that context, but at the same time, you don’t want to be so patient that you lose opportunities.”
It can be difficult to find that balance between waiting too long and false starting, but Ivy says one way to overcome that is to seek out other people’s opinions.
“Seeking input from others is clearly something that’s worthwhile — particularly when anything major needs to be done,” he says.
You also need to balance what other people say with what your own ideas of the business’s future are.
“Clearly, if they have a lot of specific experiences that relate to a particular idea or subject matter to the extent that they have hands-on experience, you would value that person’s input more than somebody who was dealing more on a theoretical basis,” Ivy says.
For example, if you’re speaking with an attorney, he’s going to be approaching the idea from a legal standpoint versus an accountant who will be looking at it from a profit-and-loss perspective.
“You have to be able to meld all those thoughts together, and as an owner or entrepreneur or a person who’s ultimately in charge, you have to balance all of that and come up with a plan of action,” he says.
One of the most important things is to think long term instead of going for short-term gains. If he hadn’t been thinking long term, he may not have invested as heavily in the Internet early in Heritage’s life, which would have left him playing catch-up with the other auction houses as opposed to leading.
And if you see that you made a mistake in pursuing one course, you have to recognize that. Ivy says the best mistake indicator is when you’re losing money. He says that typically your partners will let you know when you’ve made a mistake, as well.
“Success in business is not the implementation of plan A,” he says. “It’s plan B, C, D, E and F. You have to be nimble, and you have to react quickly. When you’re messing up, you’ve done something wrong, you need to adjust.”