You Might Be a Business Loser If...

I am on a Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce committee that is sponsoring a lunch in July on succeeding in the Chamber. We have assembled a panel of four successful, at least in my opinion, businesspeople. A number of people suggested one particular person for the panel. I decided, under the exalted authority granted to me by the remainder of our committee, not to pursue this person. I don't consider him either a success or someone to be emulated. Yet, if you asked a hundred other Chamber members, eighty would disagree with me.

I have been actively involved in the Chamber for three years or so. Jack has been an active member since well before I came along. He is a Chamber membership ambassador, who has sponsored a lot of new members. He has been ambassador of the month many times and, if I remember correctly, ambassador of the year. Everyone considers him a great success in the Chamber. What could I possibly have against Jack?

I don't consider Jack a success. Over the three years that I have known him, he has worked for probably half a dozen different companies as a salesperson. I don't consider any of these companies places where I would work as a salesperson. I don't want to identify any of the companies by industry, but I don't think of these companies as someplace a salesperson could succeed. The dollar amount of each transaction is too small to support substantial commissions. Not surprisingly Jack hasn't succeeded in sales for any of these companies.

How can I hold that against him? First, he isn't a good enough business person to accurately identify real opportunities. Second, he hasn't been able to land a sales job for a serious company. IBM isn't competing for his skills. Jack is a success for the Chamber, but he isn't a success in the Chamber for his employers. Therefore, he isn't a success to me. He is just a guy with a lot of time to attend Chamber events. That isn't the message we want to or should want to covey in a presentation about succeeding in the Chamber.

A couple days ago, I ran into another Chamber pretender. She is a very attractive and well-packaged woman in her forties – I am guessing on her age. She isn't in my beloved Jen Aniston's class, but who is? At first glance, this woman reminds me a lot of my wife, Laura. She is very pretty and comes across as very intelligent. However, I had an almost immediate negative, visceral reaction to her as soon as I learned a little about her. Why?

She has or had a whole bunch of businesses, none of which have amounted to anything. Her current business is providing advice to businesses on using social media. Hey – that's a unique business these days – isn't it? It's a lot like being a real estate agent in Florida during the boom. I had a bell hop at a hotel pitch real estate to me during a vacation trip to Disney World.

What is this woman's experience in social media? Her level of experience is apparently about the same as mine. She knows what a hash tag is. Her other businesses have nothing to do with marketing as near as I can tell. She is just another person waiting to be buried in the graveyard of stupid business ideas. Why should that upset me?

She makes succeeding in the Chamber much more difficult for the real businesspeople in the Chamber. When a real business person attends a Chamber event and sees the number of people like her attending the event, he / she gets turned off. I hear this comment a lot, “How many business losers do I need to know in a lifetime?” Not everyone uses the word, loser, but they all mean that.

Business networking is a lot like dating on a number of levels. If you want to get beyond first base with either a date or a potential business prospect, you have to bring something to the relationship. If you don't have a real business, you bring nothing to potential business contacts. You don't deserve even a kiss on the cheek.

With all due respect to Jeff Foxworthy and in respect of any royalties I may owe him – you might be a business loser if:

1. You have owned three or more different and unrelated businesses in the last five years.
2. You have been employed by three or more companies in the last five years.
3. None of your businesses has ever achieved more than $30K in annual revenue.

Business losers are guilty of not sticking with anything long enough to succeed. The lady with the social media company won't succeed, but her failure will have little to do with her social media consulting skills. Obviously, I don't have any faith in her skills, but skills can be learned. She will fail, because at the first sign of difficulty, she will be off to another business idea. I have no clue what trendy home business idea will pop up next, but I know she will be there.

If you are interested in non-snarky business advice, check out the Stitely & Karstetter tax and accounting blog at www.skcpas.com. Thanks for reading!