Success Made Simple E-Book

Erik Wesner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 350

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

The keys to better business from a thriving group of business owners-the Amish Business can be discouraging. According to US Department of Labor figures, only 44 percent of newly-opened firms will last four years. Amish firms, on the other hand, have registered a 95% survival rate over a five-year period. And in many cases, those businesses do remarkably well-as Donald Kraybill writes: "the phrase 'Amish millionaire' is no longer an oxymoron." Success Made Simple is the first practical book of Amish business success principles for the non-Amish reader. The work provides a platform of transferable principles--simple and universal enough to be applied in the non-Amish world, in a wide variety of business and management settings. * Learn how to develop profitable and fulfilling enterprises as Amish explain how to build fruitful relationships with customers and employees, prosper by playing to strengths, and create an effective marketing story * Includes interviews with over 50 Amish business owners outline the role of relationships in business and the importance of the big picture-taking in long-term goals, the welfare of others, and personal integrity * Offers ideas on practical application of Amish business practices to non-Amish businesses, with bullet summaries at the end of each chapter reviewing the most important take-away points With a focus on relationship-building and the big picture, Success Made Simple offers business owners everywhere the tools for better, smarter, more successful enterprises.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Foreword

PREFACE

A NOTE ON NAMES

CHAPTER ONE - EYE TO THE HORIZON

CULTIVATING A VISION

HEAD CHECK

HEAD CHECK, PART 2

PROPER EXPECTATIONS

DRIVEN

THE GIFT OF TRYING TIMES

FAITH MATTERS

HAVING VISIONS

TEN POINTS ON VISION AND CRISIS

CHAPTER TWO - GETTING SMART

HARD TIMES AT AMISH U

HANDS-ON

A LEARNER’S ATTITUDE

TIES THAT BIND

ENTERING A MENTORING RELATIONSHIP

SEARCHING OUT A SOUNDING BOARD

PEER PRESSURE

FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE?

OUTSIDE SOURCES

HEALTHY SKEPTICISM

THE BIG ONE

REST OF THE SHELF

GETTING SMART

TEN POINTS ON GETTING SMART

CHAPTER THREE - MARKET-BOUND

IN DEMAND

THE AMISH STORY

LEARNING AS WE GO

SPREADING THE STORY

STORYTELLING

GETTING THE STORY OUT

MARKETING YOUR MESSAGE: A RECIPE

SALES

SIGNING THEM UP

DIALOGUE, NOT MONOLOGUE

READING THE SIGNS AND LOVING THE NOS

VISUALIZING THE SALE

CLOSING IT DOWN

BOILING IT DOWN

NINE POINTS ON SALES AND MARKETING

CHAPTER FOUR - DOING UNTO OTHERS

THE TRUTH IN THE TRUISM

SPOKES IN THE WHEEL

HEAR ME SMILE

SQUEAKY WHEELS

GOLDEN RULE

QUALITY

INTERCOURSE AND THE “UNDER-OVER” BALANCE

WORD OF MOUTH: MANAGING FOR THE NEXT JOB

THE CUSTOMER-CONSULTANT

PAMPERING YOUR GOLDEN GEESE

WATERING SEEDS

THE DARK SIDE: WHEN THE CUSTOMER ISN’T RIGHT

BOMB SQUAD

AVOIDING THEIR ISSUES AND BAGGAGE

DOING UNTO OTHERS (BEFORE THEY DO UNTO YOU)

DOING UNTO OTHERS

TEN POINTS ON THE CUSTOMER

CHAPTER FIVE - CHOOSING UP SIDES

TWIDDLING YOUR THUMBS

ONE TEST ALONE

MANAGEMENT AND THE EXPANSION CHALLENGE

FITTING THE TEMPLATE

READING THE SIGNS

EXPERIENCE VERSUS THE “BLANK PAGE”

PICKING UP THE BROOM

ROUND PEG, SQUARE HOLE

TRICKLE-DOWN ATTITUDE

YOU’RE NOT MARRIED TO ME

DUKING IT OUT

RESPECT ON THE LINE

CHOOSING UP SIDES

TEN POINTS ON HIRING AND FIRING

CHAPTER SIX - FISHING LESSONS

CHEMISTRY CLASS

AN EXTENSION OF FAMILY

THE SILO RING

KEEPING THEM BUSY

ON EXPECTATIONS AND BOUNDARIES

FINDING A PLACE

ONE WALL AT A TIME

GETTING TO BUY-IN

OPENING THE LINES

FEAR AND RESPECT

WASHING FEET

PUTTING IN YOUR HUNDRED

THE POWER OF RECOGNITION

BONUSES AND BENEFITS

EMOTIONAL EXTRAS

SHOWING THEM THE MONEY

THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPENSATION

ELEVEN POINTS ON DEVELOPING AN EMPOWERED ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER SEVEN - AROUND THE EDGES

KEEPING COBWEBS OUT OF THE CORNERS

PINCH-HITTING

GETTING PAID

LEVERS

THE MONEY LEVER

GOOD AND EVIL IN THE MARKETPLACE

BEING GOOD IN PRACTICE: THREE GROUND RULES

FOLLOWING THE RULES

LEVERAGING STRENGTHS AND TALENTS

TENDING THE MACHINE

HANDLING FATIGUE AND STRESS

MODERATION, BALANCE, AND DOWNTIME

ACCEPTANCE

AROUND THE EDGES

ELEVEN POINTS ON EFFICIENCY

CHAPTER EIGHT - THE BIG PICTURE

BLOWING UP

TURNING SOUR

THE WRONG WAY, AND QUICK

FAMILY TIES

SHE’S THE BOSS?

BALANCING ACT

SUCCESS STORIES

HANDING OVER THE REINS

GIVING BACK

GETTING BACK?

REVISITING A VISION

THE BIG PICTURE

TEN POINTS ON THE BIG PICTURE

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX - RESEARCH AND INTERVIEW METHODOLOGY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acknowledgements

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEX

Copyright © 2010 by Erik Wesner. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wesner, Erik, 1978-

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-59732-3

1. Success in business. 2. Amish-Social life and customs. I. Title.

HF5386.W443 2010

658.4’ 09-dc22

2009048407

HB Printing

For my parents, Stan and Wanda

FOREWORD

A surprising thing happened across America in recent years: many Amish farmers abandoned their plows to become entrepreneurs. And they succeeded. This quiet, mini Industrial Revolution in Amish-land trailed the rise of factories in the larger society by more than a century.

Barefoot Amish entrepreneurs walked right out of cow stables to assume the ownership of microenterprises in dozens of communities. With no family lineage in business or cultural tradition in manufacturing, they founded hundreds of start-from-scratch operations. Today some nine thousand Amish-owned and -operated enterprises thrive in North America.

Most of these enterprises are not modest mom-and-pop operations selling homemade root beer, rugs, and brooms on back-road stands. Although many are small, and lean heavily on family labor, some have a dozen or more employees and annual sales above $5 million. Some shops manufacture products that are marketed across the nation, and occasionally even around the world. A few enterprises have contracts with businesses as diverse as Kmart and Ralph Lauren. Others craft upscale kitchens for homeowners in the suburbs of Chicago and New York City. Dozens of Amish entrepreneurs have regional and often national webs of dealers and retailers who distribute their products.

The rise of Amish enterprises was surprising because barefoot farmers were perhaps the most unlikely entrepreneurs, let alone successful ones. Moreover, it was remarkable because Amish “CEOs” faced not only the challenges of other small-business upstarts the world over but cultural hurdles as well within their communities.

The revolution was also striking because these novice entrepreneurs held only eighth-grade diplomas from one-room schools, not Ivy League MBAs. Moreover, most of them had the same teacher across all eight grades and, at best, several years of basic, pencil-computed arithmetic, minus even a handheld calculator. Missing from their credentials were courses in accounting, human resource management, systems analysis, and marketing. These homespun entrepreneurs started their businesses at ground zero without any of the textbook prerequisites for success.

The story is surprising for a third reason: Amish cultural taboos restrict many types of technology. Imagine trying to start a new business without tapping electricity from the public grid, installing a phone, or buying a computer—never mind a religious taboo on owning cars and trucks. Amish business owners face church regulations against advertising on radio and television and any ventures that would clash with their moral order. Selling cosmetics or televisions and transacting business on Sunday are unthinkable.

Entrepreneurs who accelerate too fast will receive visits from church leaders admonishing them about the sour effects of growth and the blowback from a large-scale operation that loads too much profit and power on the lap of the owner—a bad thing in egalitarian societies.

The most striking thing is this: Amish businesses succeed and flourish despite the cultural obstacles stacked atop the typical hurdles faced by business startups. As a scholar of Amish society, I’ve followed the rise of Amish entrepreneurs with great interest. In one study, my colleague Steven M. Nolt and I found that the failure rate of Amish enterprises was less than 5 percent over a five-year period. Such a low dropout rate is impressive on its own but dazzling when compared to a failure rate that soars above 65 percent for small-business starts in their first seven years in North America. The homespun Amish rate is even more astonishing considering that non-Amish entrepreneurs are plugging computers into the public grid, driving cars and trucks, and using computer-controlled manufacturing equipment.

To make the tale even more tantalizing, a few Amish owners have become serial entrepreneurs—growing a business and selling it off to outsiders, plunging the profits back into new startups, and then eventually selling off their second-generation business and searching for a new one. In other cases, owners will break a thriving business into two or three separate divisions and hand them over to their children.

How did barefoot farmers become such successful entrepreneurs and do it so quickly? What lessons can we learn from them? Erik Wesner addresses these basic questions in Success Made Simple. In dozens of face-to-face interviews with Amish business owners Wesner probes for answers to these intriguing questions about the secrets of Amish success. He parlays and distills their homemade recipes for productivity in ways that can benefit all entrepreneurs—from those beginning a business for the first time to old salts searching for ways to improve.

I know Wesner and his work well. I’ve accompanied him on interviews in Amish homes and businesses. He has an excellent grasp of Amish culture and a winsome way of making interviewees comfortable. It’s no small feat to earn the trust and respect of people ensconced in a different culture, yet it’s one that comes easily for Wesner. He has a gift for opening doors and digging deep to discover the reasons that propel Amish entrepreneurs toward success. Moreover, his creative writing style tells the story with clarity and even hilarity.

The story that emerges from Success Made Simple is filled with irony. For many Americans, the Amish, at first blush, appear as a backward people, out of step with the march of so-called progress, and shunning many gadgets of our high-tech society. Nevertheless, these people without worldly accoutrements or credentials have applied an uncanny savvy, a dose of common sense, an ethic of hard work, and a bushel of enduring values to the world of business, in turn sprouting profitable enterprises. And ironically, in this fascinating and well-told story, we well-credentialed “moderns” have much to learn from these down-to-earth folks.

Donald B. Kraybill

Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania January 2010

Donald B. Kraybill is senior fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College (Pennsylvania), coauthor, with Steven M. Nolt, of Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits, and coauthor, with Steven M. Nolt and David L. Weaver-Zercher, of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.

PREFACE

Unearthing the Secrets

I pull my truck into the drive, unsure whether to continue. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m down on my numbers for the day, so I decide to press the gas. Riding down the long dirt lane toward the weathered farmhouse, it takes me a minute to register what’s missing: power lines.

As I grab my sample case, I am unusually apprehensive. In my sixth season selling books for Nashville’s Southwestern Company, I rarely flinch when approaching a prospect—from big brick homes manned by stare-you-down after-work dads to backwoods trailers, where you don’t know whether to expect a handshake or the barrel of a Winchester. But somehow the unassuming head-scarved figure standing in the yard intimidates me in a way that others never have.

As I approach the housewife, I notice her two young girls, seated at the picnic table nearby, conversing in a language that’s clearly not my own.

This sales call falls flat; I sell no books today. Later, I find out that Amish speak their own dialect at home and that Amish women rarely make large purchases without the counsel of their husbands—a few of many lessons I would learn doing business in Amish communities.

Some five years, twenty settlements, and five thousand Amish homes later, the Amish don’t seem so odd anymore. In fact, in a wired America that opts for Amazon and online searches, they turned out to be ideal prospects. While the eighth-grade-educated Amish didn’t respond to my college-prep materials, a follow-up with a Bible-oriented product proved a huge hit. In Amish communities from Illinois to Indiana to Pennsylvania, the Family Bible Library set rests on many bookshelves, a classic that is treasured and passed from one generation to the next.

Salespeople get a bad rap. Direct sellers, in particular, often find themselves stuck somewhere between trial lawyers and repo men in the public estimation. They’re pushy, untrustworthy, sell suspect products, and usually don’t take no for an answer.

At least that’s the stereotype.

Working an eighty-hour week, visiting thirty-plus homes a day, enduring the doldrums of refusal in an entrepreneurial pressure cooker over an intense three months would be most people’s idea of a miserable way to spend a summer. But in terms of raw business training, there is perhaps no better preparation in learning human nature, organization, and self-management, and in overcoming challenges. As the thousands of company alumni who’ve done the job successfully over the years can attest—including leading businesspeople, state governors, authors, doctors, and teachers, among others—it’s an experience that can shape a person in important ways.

Doing business with Amish in communities from Kalona, Iowa, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I enjoyed a firsthand look into their own successful businesses. Many of my Amish customers signed the dotted line amid the din of a bustling furniture-making facility or leaning over the counter of an at-home retail shop. Later, studying the Amish as a research fellow at Lancaster County’s Elizabethtown College, writing an Amish-themed blog, as well as living and working among them, I gained a deeper appreciation for Amish society. Though I quickly learned that Amish are as human as the rest of us, I came to admire them for the qualities that typically attract outsiders: their sense of simplicity and honesty, and their emphasis on community.

I often saw evidence of these traits in business dealings with Amish as well, which, as it turned out, gave a clue as to why Amish companies were flourishing. The ability of Amish people—many of whom are sharp and streetwise in a way that seems to belie the “in the world but not of the world” faith tenet—to succeed in the arena of business was also something I came to appreciate. After reading Donald Kraybill and Steven Nolt’s Amish Enterprise—a sociological exploration of the Amish business phenomenon—I began to wonder if the Amish business story had something to offer the rest of us. It turns out it does.

Delving deeper into Amish entrepreneurship revealed a community thriving in ways not just linked to the bottom line. In researching this book, I focused on the two largest—and arguably most entrepreneurial—Amish settlements, in Holmes County, Ohio, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I interviewed sixty Amish firm owners employing roughly four hundred employees, chosen from across the size and experience spectrum. They include contractors who have spent years building in up-and-down markets, accountants, wholesalers, a buggy builder, and custom furniture makers who create plush bedroom sets for wealthy suburbanites. Some are second-generation businesses, but most were started by the current owner. Most operate as sole proprietorships, often in direct competition with one another.

As Kraybill and Nolt explain, the societal shift from agriculture into small business has enabled Amish to maintain a plain lifestyle, support large families, and ultimately keep their children in the faith. In these and in other areas they’ve had resounding success.

But—as I learned the hard way—speaking with Amish about success is not always easy. I recall asking a nationally known Amish manufacturer to share a few “words of wisdom” on a management question. His terse reply: “I don’t have any words of wisdom.” Full stop. Only after a considerable pause, and further prodding and softening of the terminology, would he continue to offer his thoughts.

Sometimes, praising an Amishman’s business skills can border on the offensive. Asked about success, the typical Amishman, accustomed to avoiding gross feelich (“big feeling”), will more likely point to external factors than to himself as the cause. Instinct says, “It’s not me; it’s something else”—God, employees, good fortune.

That said, Amish do recognize business success, though the definition of success itself can vary somewhat from the popular perception. Concepts such as personal advancement and a high-consumption lifestyle factor less prominently, if at all. Rather, Amish tend to keep in mind that business is first a means to realize core goals, ones which don’t usually come right to mind when thinking “business prosperity.”

When it comes to those goals, ambitions may vary from individual to individual, but certain aims repeat themselves. Family and preservation of lifestyle. Passing something of value on to the next generation. And, of course, the ultimate: getting everyone into heaven.

Amish business owners enjoy certain advantages as members of their communities. Among other things, they benefit from a quality Amish labor force, intrinsic market appeal to the non-Amish public, and community relationships that foster bonds of trust and help to reduce costs in areas such as hiring and firing.

At the same time, Amish business owners face numerous obstacles resulting from the cultural restrictions of their communities. These include constraints on the ownership and use of technology, which reduce efficiency and add expense; cultural taboos, which can hamstring product promotion to the non-Amish public; and, for the most part, a lack of legal protection, since Amish do not sue, at times leaving them exposed to unscrupulous outsiders.

Resources and restraints act against each other in the Amish business arena. Yet, in the end, it’s the entrepreneurs themselves that make the vital difference in entrepreneurial success, and it’s from them that we can learn lessons for businesses in any culture.

The voices contained in this book express Amish ideas on business success. And, like the Amish, I take the concept to mean more than just the bottom line. As Amish well understand, “business success” incorporates the financial aspect. Yet the idea goes further. I explore business success in the traditional monetary sense, while looking beyond the numbers to examine deeper meanings of the concept, and their relevance for modern business owners as well.

As I researched Amish business success, a few key concepts emerged. Foremost are two: Business is a vehicle for something more important. And, you can’t do it all on your own. The tight-knit Amish realize that it takes strong relationships—forged with employees, customers, other companies, and other members of the community—to achieve success.

In the following pages, we’ll examine how Amish hire, sell, create, learn, market, and manage, all while keeping these concepts in mind. The Amish voices you’ll hear may sound quaint at times. In other cases they may sound like any neighbor.

One thing is certain, though. The principles these remarkable businesspeople illustrate, reflective of human nature and raw business realities, are universal enough to apply in any arena—whether you prefer “talking Deitsch” or just plain English.

January 2010

Erik WesnerRaleigh, North Carolina

A NOTE ON NAMES

In deference to the importance Amish place on humility, all names have been changed. Identical last names are typical in Amish society, and the naming used in this book reflects that—although individuals with matching last names are not necessarily closely related. In a few cases, nonessential identifying details have been omitted.

Non-Amish people and businesses are referred to as “non-Amish,” “modern,” or “English,” the last a term Amish typically use for their modern-world neighbors.

CHAPTER ONE

EYE TO THE HORIZON

Cultivating a Vision and Thriving Through Crisis

If you don’t have a dream, what do you got?

—PENNSYLVANIA AMISH ENTREPRENEUR

The patchwork acres and stone barns of the Amish settlement in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, seem to reflect a way of life from a time well past.

Eighteenth-century forefathers laid the agrarian foundation that has supported the Amish for nearly three centuries in North America. Amish dress, transportation, and aversion to worldly ways have changed but slowly and incrementally in the years since.

Until a few decades ago, the farming vocation was the primary way to make a living as an Amishman. Milk checks made few Amish rich, but that was never the point.

Farming was a means to raise a family in an environment mostly shielded from the urbane influence of the world. Farming also meant continuity. The tangible assets of fields and meadows—and a way of life based around tending the land—were passed from father to son for generations.

Across America today, Amish farmers continue to cultivate their fields. But the real story is what’s been happening in the buildings and shops that have sprung up next to the barns.

Driven by necessity, the Amish have laid a new entrepreneurial economy atop their agrarian heritage, in the process becoming one of the most unexpected business success stories in recent memory.

Amish businesses provide for vibrant communities whose members exist in a way their modern-living neighbors would consider primitive. Yet the firms the Amish run are far from backward when it comes to satisfying customers. Some sell nationwide and overseas—multimillion-dollar operations are not unheard of—while creating employment in their rural corners of America.

The Amish business example, pivoting around concepts such as integrity, family, and simplicity, is rife with insight for application in the modern business environment. And in examining the Amish business story, a good place to start is with the motives and visions that drive these robust small companies.

Regardless of whether you put on pinstripes or suspenders in the morning, having a well-formulated vision is an indispensable part of business success. A guiding vision proves particularly relevant when the start is harder than expected, when recession strikes, or when a newcomer challenges a long-established market position.

Ups and downs alike present challenges to owners and managers. A guiding vision, undergirded by integrity and personal commitment, can keep spirits up and focus sharp in lean times, and feet grounded in good times. A clearly formulated and internalized vision safeguards integrity when ethical issues are on the line.

Just like the family dairy, the Amish-owned business has served as a vehicle to support large clans and to entrust trades. While the temptations of prosperity have proven problematic for some, the typical Amish business motive is anything but consumption-centered.

Amish forefathers sowed their acres with the ultimate aim of perpetuating family and faith. Amish entrepreneurs today cultivate their businesses with similar ambitions in mind. Along with this cultural ideal, however, comes the individual vision of each Amishman, which naturally varies, just as it differs among non-Amish.

In this chapter we’ll examine business visions of successful Amish entrepreneurs, and how they serve to buttress business achievement. We’ll also look at some Amish start-up stories and lessons learned along the way.

The start can prove particularly difficult, especially when initial enthusiasm sputters out in the face of discouraging results. We’ll explore what it takes to persevere when faced with weak sales figures or when all you seem to hear are doomsayers.

We’ll also ponder the role that faith plays in running a firm—an unsurprisingly prominent element in a God-centered culture. Finally, we’ll examine what to consider when formulating a business vision, a topic we revisit in the final chapter.

Amish may seem different from the rest of us, but their motivations, challenges, and hang-ups are frequently the same. Ultimately, the entrepreneurial experience of the Amish shows that business issues commonly seen in the “real” world in fact transcend cultural bounds, and that the tools and strategies they rely on are present in the modern toolbox as well.

CULTIVATING A VISION

Scanning Amish-themed features in the media, one comes across a well-worn journalistic template. It’s the portrayal of the Amish as a standoffish, world-wary folk, suspicious of modernity and staunchly insular. Many pieces start with a standard assumption of the Amish as pious Luddites, wanting as little to do with us modern backsliders as possible. “Get thee gone, Englishman,” they seem to murmur between the lines.

True, the Amish do delineate their world from the non-Amish one, making important distinctions that help preserve the integrity of their faith and communities. But get to know enough Amish people, and the aloof and prickly portrayal starts to wear thin.

Case in point: Jonas Lapp. Jonas is a “people person” in every sense of the phrase. I recall first approaching his Pennsylvania home, unannounced, on a muggy July evening. Suddenly, the Amishman materialized, nearly throwing the door off its hinges. Before I could open my mouth, I found myself tractor-beamed into the house. Have we met already?

I’d hardly recited my name before Jonas, bright eyes and beaming smile, had me at the kitchen table in front of a couple slices of his wife’s pizza. On my return visit a half-year later, Jonas’s children frolicked, and a handmade mailbox sign announced a new baby boy to passersby.

The second time around, the veteran homebuilder was no less hospitable, sharing ideas on his trade and on business in general. The whole time Jonas hammered away at one concept: relationships. That came as no surprise, based on my experience with Jonas, and his Amish neighbors’ warm comments about him.

Jonas relishes what he does. But you can see that it’s less the actual construction of homes or the financial payoff that drive him. Instead, it’s the chance to be a father figure to an employee who never had one, to form a friendship with a “customer” who in the end never even does business with him, to do his small part to strengthen ties in his community.

“Builder” is a hat Jonas wears, one that allows him to achieve higher-plane ends such as these. But it didn’t always come so easy, nor provide so much satisfaction. Early on, Jonas struggled with the F word.

Fear.

“I got into business ... scared,” he admits. “I knew there was a chance to make more money, a better opportunity.” But, he says, “I probably believed a lot of lies about business.”

Lies?

“ ‘It’s tough.’ ‘You probably won’t make it.’ People talked about the ones that didn’t make it—not about the ones that were doing well. And you kind of buy into that. So the first two to three years I was running the business scared.

“And that’s aggressive,” he concedes. “You get very aggressive when you have fear of not making it. But it’s not healthy.”

Fear poisons motivations. When operating anchored in fear, he explains, “you’re not establishing relationships. You’re in it for what you can grab today. You’re after as much as you can get.

“You try to do a good job, but as fast as you can. And the relationship thing? Well, I don’t know if I’m going to be in it long term.

“Because you have this thought in the back of your mind,” Jonas continues, “that this might be the last year the economy’s gonna be strong. This might be the last year before there’s a recession. This might be the last year before I fall and break both legs and I can’t do this again.”

Talking to Jonas, you get the sense that he’s been through his share of rough spots. Recounting start-up struggles, Jonas feels that early challenges are often rooted in a person’s mentality more than anything else. And so having a solid grounding plays an important part.

And here’s where the other F word comes in.

Jonas’s faith is what grounds him. He returns to it over and over. “After a bit you start to look around, and you start to realize that God is long term. And the Lord’s going to take care of you.

“And if you really believe he’s gonna take care of you, then you should start doing business like God’s going to take care of you.”

Amish lean on faith. It’s a seemingly bottomless source of strength and security. Faith helps them see hope when tragedy strikes. Faith fosters gratitude in the fortunate. It’s a basic element of Amish life and, by extension, their approach to business.

Whatever grounds you—spirituality, family, core principles—what matters is being actively aware of it, and understanding its importance.

Mission statements have long fulfilled this “grounding” role, at least on a companywide level. Some firms take mission statements seriously. For others, they seem to serve more as wall decor or as marketing tools.

The idea of a mission statement does fit inside the concept of vision, but the two are not one and the same.

The concept of business vision can be somewhat difficult to pin down, but it typically includes a company’s or business owner’s more general goals: the needs it plans to fulfill, the unique qualities it aims to bring to the table, how large, how much, what, when, and where.

Yet vision also takes in the individual’s perception of his own role in the business, and how the business is meant to intersect with everyday, “nonbusiness” life. Vision, by its very nature, motivates.

Vision can include the potential positive impacts a company desires to have on a community, a market, and in the most profound cases, the country or world. Creating a vision encourages imagining how life could be different for you as well as for others whom your business can possibly influence—your customers, employees, neighbors, and family.

Mission statements typically capture a company’s aims and ambitions in a market context and often take into account some of the impacts just mentioned. But a personal business vision necessarily includes in its scope how running a company affects the owner and his immediate environment, as well as what he and others can be or become through the business activity. A well-formulated, deeply held vision is often highly personal.

HEAD CHECK

Vision can also be a crucial source of strength. Fear takes over when we focus on failure. Jonas’s vision has helped him battle and destroy this disabling emotion.

Jonas neutralizes fear by shifting his focus. “If you’re a servant-leader, that means other people are gonna come first,” he explains. “People have to be very important to you. You’re not in it for the dollar anymore...you’re in it to help people. And the profits? They come.

“People need people that will take the time to make them [feel] important.” He sees the people focus as part of a personal mission. In Jonas’s vision, he is a mentor to his employees, an ear for his customers, a reliable partner for his business peers. He executes in the day-to-day, while the far-horizon focus frames each decision.

When we are oblivious to all other concerns but our own, minor issues take on far more importance than they deserve. Directing our concern outward and acting to aid our fellow man is one of the greatest fear-destroyers in the modern businessperson’s arsenal. But to do this, you need both humility and an ability to empathize.

Jonas raises another worthy point relating to vision: sorting out motives and ambitions before techniques and strategies. Vision is concerned with the why before the how. It may have taken a journey to get there, but Jonas has his why sorted out—in his case, to be a person who adds value to others’ experiences, be it by mentoring, listening, or collaborating as a contributing, productive member of his community.

Are you long term or day-to-day? While entrepreneurs like Jonas stress the importance of the here and now, at the same time they realize they must have a long-term vision to be effective in the day-to-day—in Jonas’s case to avoid the place of fear by residing in concern for his fellow man.

Small-business owners can be providers in numerous meaningful ways: products or services that improve lives; jobs for members of the community; contributions to charitable causes. Amish bosses who provide these things often stress the good of others before they get to talking about their own pockets.

At the same time, successful Amish businesspeople take great satis faction in the roles they create for themselves and in the fruits of their labors. The examples of Jonas and others seem to suggest one question relevant to anyone who is considering, or reevaluating, a personal business vision: Where’s your head?

HEAD CHECK, PART 2

Getting your head right also means locking down the raw, nuts-and-bolts knowledge needed to achieve competence in your field. At the same time, mastering the tech side is only one slice of the pie. And in some cases, in a managerial context, intimate knowledge of every procedure in your firm not only is unnecessary but can even become an obstacle, leading overzealous managers to lose sight of the wide view.

In the business classic The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber explores a basic error, which he terms the Fatal Assumption: Just because you are good at doing something means you’re ready to make a business of it.

Like their English counterparts, Amish businesspeople often seek guidance at some point in their business lives. As we’ll examine in the next chapter, this may take the form of offhand consulting with a father or brother or neighbor. It could mean seminars and books. It may even mean kicking ideas around with their current boss—some of whom are surprisingly supportive of their employees’ entrepreneurial ambitions. The wiser entrepreneurs identify what they are lacking and supplement the missing bits. The Amish even have their own consultants.

Isaac Smoker is a deliberate man who weighs every comment carefully before speaking. Neighbors and fellow church members alike speak highly of him. Seen as an authority, Isaac is trusted for his no-nonsense business counsel. At the same time, Isaac, a bishop, fulfills a valuable function, guiding his business contemporaries and coreligionists on how to stay true to their beliefs and cultural practices while running successful firms in a non-Amish world.

A business owner himself, Isaac works with a number of Amish-run companies and is well positioned to observe the development of businesses among his people. Talking about typical mistakes, he says that one “problem is they go from working for someone else to forming their own company overnight.” The main issue, Isaac points out, is that “maybe they’re not really suited to be running a company; maybe they’re not really suited for the business they’re in.

“They think they know how to work, and they don’t realize that running a business is something else.” Ignoring the fact that business is about a lot more than just efficiently pumping out widgets is a common hazard for would-be company managers. Gerber writes in E-Myth that “when the technician falls prey to the Fatal Assumption, the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else actually enslaves him.”

According to Gerber, what happens is that “the job he knew how to do so well becomes one job he knows how to do plus a dozen others he doesn’t know how to do at all.”

Lancaster homebuilder Elam Peachey realizes this today.

“That was me,” he confesses, describing a start-up experience matching Isaac’s example. “I knew how to build the house, but I didn’t... know anything about [the business side]. But I wasn’t gonna let it stop me.

“The office thing—I made some mistakes at first,” Elam admits. “I do things differently now than I did when I first started. But I didn’t make that many mistakes that I failed,” he emphasizes, saying that he learned quickly enough “to stay afloat.”

Elam, in his late twenties and running a company for five years, is street-savvy and a quick study. His approach may work, if you are quick enough to pick up what you lack, or get others to show you. It is not for everyone. “I would rather see a person start part-time, and learn not only how to do the work but how to run a business, before they do it full-time,” says Isaac Smoker.

Quite a few Amish do just this, continuing to earn steady paychecks while learning and building a customer base.

In Ohio, furniture finisher Harley Stutzman followed this strategy. A bit uncommon for an Amishman, Harley worked on the railroad for a spell and drove a vehicle before being baptized in the Amish church, followed by a stint in a mobile home factory after rejoining the community.

About his chosen trade of furniture finishing: “I had no experience. I just jumped in. It was a little scary, I had two kids at the time, and I had a mortgage payment,” Harley explains. “I stayed at the factory when I first started. I didn’t leave immediately, and I worked [on the business] in the evenings.”

But business grew to the point where “it got to be too much” to hold down both. Today, nearly a decade later, Harley’s firm—employing nine members of the community and fulfilling Harley’s original vision—could be described as a success in many ways.

Harley’s evolution from working full-time to half-and-half to full- time firm owner is a common and sensible example of how many Amish individuals reduce the risk of the start-up while acquiring the know-how and customer base necessary for long-term success.

WHY BUSINESS?

In a nutshell: children, faith, and real estate.

Amish tend to have large families, averaging around seven children per married couple. Significantly, the vast majority of those children tend to remain within the Amish faith.

With an exploding population, land has become scarcer, and—particularly in Eastern seaboard settlements such as those in Pennsylvania or Delaware—pressures created by urbanites fleeing the cities for suburbs and exurbs have caused prices of farm acreage to skyrocket. This has left Amish less able to acquire the 80-100-acre farms they’ve historically based their lives around.

In order to avoid work in non-Amish environments and to simulate the at-home dynamic of the family farm, small business has become an attractive option. A home business typically requires less start-up capital than a farm, and can be operated part-time while still receiving a steady paycheck.

Additionally, many of the trade skills that the Amish use in their woodworking or homebuilding firms are ones they have long honed on the farm. These labor-intensive, craftsmanship trades are among the most popular for Amish entrepreneurs.

Though both education level and cultural acceptability limit the scope of businesses, one still finds a diversity of firms represented in the Amish business roster. In addition to trades based around the wood and building industries, other Amish enterprises include horseshoeing operations, machine shops, market stands (some operating in urban areas such as Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.), quilt-making businesses, dog breeders, bakeries, dry goods stores, and buggy builders.

Around the edges are a host of less-common pursuits, such as physical therapy, bookkeeping, horse training, herbal medicine, auctioneering, the occasional tourist-oriented businesses providing meals or even stays in Amish homes, guinea pig “farms,” and even alternator and engine repair shops, in an example of an unusual meeting of cultural worlds.

PROPER EXPECTATIONS

An important part of the start-up calculus lies in recognizing and evaluating challenges—both physical and mental. Successful business owners are typically paid at an above-average level because of above-average sacrifices of sweat, nerves, or brainpower.

Harley Stutzman explains that “you have to be very determined and focused. If you like a lot of free time, starting your own business is not for you.”

His tone attests to the seriousness of his experience. “I didn’t see my kids. . . . I think I did the right thing. I’m glad I did what I did. But I wouldn’t want to do it again,” Harley admits, citing as especially challenging the times “when you need groceries, and you need supplies for the baby, and the money’s not there.

“We never went hungry, but we did with a lot less.”

Another of Harley’s peers in the trade reflects a sentiment felt by most at some point, when he mentions “A.M.” starts—meaning even 2 A.M. in his case. “When I was down there by myself in the morning,” he says, “I’d think, ‘Why did I ever do this?’ ” Short nights and shoestring spending are a common reality. If it ends up not being as big a struggle as expected, call that a bonus.

As we’ll examine in the next chapter, mentors and a support structure can be very important during early days. At the same time, entering the business-arena demands independent thinking, which means things can get lonely.

One longtime Amish business owner, no stranger to success, describes the initial reaction of his peers toward his entrepreneurial plans as terrible. “I was the black sheep everywhere,” he explains. The way he tells it, he found pessimists around every turn. “People are cruel, baby!” he laughs.

“If you read through the Old Testament, that’s the way it’s always been,” the Amishman continues. “We’re prone to destroy other people who are successful. We like to do that.

“We like to see people failing that have been successful, because they’re arrogant now. . . . It just gives us a good feeling!” he remarks, flashing a big ironic grin.

While the direct tone may seem surprising coming from an Amish man, this entrepreneur’s words offer an insight on human nature, one which can perhaps explain tax-the-rich cheerleading, corporate scape goating, and the satisfaction Main Street takes in watching Wall Street titans topple.

Though spoken with tongue at least partially in cheek, the Amish man’s take points up a reality: a budding entrepreneur can’t always count on emotional support, even from his own community. The people whose opinions you care about most may be the quickest to put you down.

Sometimes the critical eye comes in good faith. You should probably listen to skeptics when it’s the trusted and experienced doing the talking. Other times, true motives for raining on your parade may be closer to what this Amishman describes.

Discerning whom to listen to while withstanding naysayers is a common challenge for entrepreneurs and executives. Not everyone will love you or your idea, especially when it’s unproven or unusual. Part of running a firm is getting used to kickback and, in some cases, punching ahead regardless.