Business Failures To Avoid

Posted On: 2006-01-17Length: 20:59

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Well hello, children. We're back once again. I have the Lee Strong.

Hey, and I'm excited to be here.

Hey. I've got Dr. Andy.

Huh? Wha? Wha?

And then I've got Paul Sanneman.

We're going to talk about failure

That was a failure of a program.

And you know, I regret that I will not be able to say much about this show. For this show we have decided to do about failure. And when it first came to me, they're like, we're going to do a show about failure, I'm like, what's that?

It's got nothing to do with manly status.

They had to explain this concept to me.

Or sexual performance.

Isn't it dysfunction or anything. No.

It had to explain, wha?

It's what happens when your business doesn't meet your expectations. You know, I say you can stay in business as long as you can afford to pay for your mistakes.

There you go. Now see I understand, it's my understanding that you can't be successful unless you've had some failures.

How do you know, how do you know if you've got the right stuff?

Well, one of the things about like when you hire employees. You want to make sure when you hire employees, hopefully that's failed a couple times, because if they fail with you or have some really setbacks, you don't want to be the first person that experiences. You don't want to be their employer when they fail the first time. Not fun. So one thing when you're hiring employees, if you haven't quit your job, look for somebody's who's been through some ups and some downs and who can handle. Because if you haven't failed, you haven't been there, you don't know how they're going to react to it.

So does that mean you should hire people who have been fired a lot?

That's right.

I've been fired a lot.

I had an employee that failed. And man, I brought him in and he lasted six weeks and I threw him right out. He was pretty bad.

So there's a limit.

Some people are born failures.

There's a limit. But failure, I mean, Lee, you failed, right?

I'll tell you what. Until I got fired three times in a row from three different companies, I never had the courage to start my own business. I finally decided that jobs didn't work for me. It was time to go start a business. So failure worked great.

That's right, I have been fired, let's see as a consultant I've had 400 clients, I've probably been fired 350 times. Fired, let go, whatever it is. And the typical reason is that, we really love what you do, it's a great job, we just can't handle any more information, and

It's not you, it's me.

That's right. It's never you. It's me. Let's be friends.

Now Paul, you're a really good example of a failure.

Thank you. Thank you. I love it. It feels so good.

Because you're the most successful guy here. That's what it boils down to. You've probably failed more than the rest of us because you haven't had any fear of doing that. You've definitely seen success.

That's true. I definitely, you know, I went bankrupt once, not fun. And I remember one time when I was working, in fact I owned the company, which will remain nameless at this point. But I owed the IRS, they came to me and I got a letter from my, first they told me that all my employees would happen to be, what were they, they weren't employees, they were, no they were, I tried to make them independent contractors, like 100 people working with me, for me. And they were all independent contractors. And my accountant comes up and goes, you know what, I think I'm wrong. I think they're employees. I went, oh shit.

Oww! Huge liability.

Huge liability. And so then I was writing checks to pay, you know the government their money, and the, my CEO didn't send them in.

Ohhh! Man

Penalty box.

Penalty box. So what happens, I finally found out at one time I owed the IRS, I think it was $400,000. It was not pretty. And I didn't have it.

That'd set me back.

That, I was really depressed. I walked around the lake...