Kathy Ireland likes to say that she’s “still the girl with the paper route” after so many years as both a swimsuit model and a hugely successful entrepreneur. Despite all the fame that has come her way and through the many decisions she has to make and responsibilities she carries on her shoulders, she still sees herself as that young girl delivering newspapers in her neighborhood.
Can you say the same thing about yourself? Maybe you didn’t deliver newspapers. Perhaps you cut lawns or worked on your parents’ farm. You might have managed a lemonade stand or started your own little business baby-sitting youngsters in your neighborhood.
Whatever it is you did, there was probably a mix of early entrepreneurial genius and youthful exuberance that made your early ventures a success. But after all these years, have you been able to maintain that spirit and energy that helped you leap out of bed in the morning and see what you could accomplish that day?
Tap into your past
The world is not always an easy place to live, work and play. When you’re an adult, tough decisions often have to be made. But if you dwell too much on being a grown-up and making grownup decisions, you can easily become an automaton simply going through the motions. Each day is not about making your business a success. It’s just about getting through to the next day without encountering any disasters so you can do the same thing again tomorrow.
When you listen to Ireland talk, you can feel the passion she has for her business and for her people. It’s a labor of love, primarily because it’s not just about her work. She makes her family a priority in her life and that gives her the energy she needs to come into work each day and help her company try to get better.
She regularly talks about the paper route she had when she was little, and the determination she felt about the fact that the ad was looking for the right “boy for the job.” The point is she hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be young and determined and it remains part of her personality to this day.
Find the opportunity
Many leaders these days equate a healthy workplace culture with pingpong tables and ice cream socials in the lunchroom. Certainly, anyone would enjoy that or having an Xbox in the employee lounge.
But as our columnist Ronald Burr pointed out last month, today’s employees are more focused on being supported in their work. They want the resources they need to produce a great product and give the clients they are working with the very best your company can offer.
So put yourself in the shoes of that youngster who could see the opportunity in every challenge and felt there was always an answer to make your business better, whether it was a multimillion-dollar corporation or a $25 dollar-a-day lemonade stand. ●
Mark Scott is Senior Associate Editor for Smart Business Los Angeles. Reach him at [email protected] or (440) 250-7016
