The Eight Principles that Helped Me Beat the Odds

If there’s one thing I learned during my time as an entrepreneur, it’s the power of changing the question in order to change everything else. Not long after I sold my company, I realized that the question I’d been asking myself—was I a good boss?—was the wrong question. That question, too, had to change.

About a week before the sale went through, I went to lunch at a friend’s house. The host, David, is a hugely successful venture capitalist, with a ton of energy, really smart, and intuitive about other people. His wife is one of my best friends and was part of my book group for years. In the middle of lunch, David saw I was in a bit of a fog, so he came over and sat next to me.

Do you know what you want to do when you sell your company, he asked?

Thinking about what I would do next overwhelmed and scared me. No, I admitted with a smile.

I’ll tell you what you want to do, he continued. You want to be a business coach and you’re going to be very good at it.

I’d never heard of coaching and asked him what it was about.

I have a coach, he said, and it’s the best part of my week. My coach is always in my corner. I can tell him anything that’s going on and he walks me through my thoughts on it. Look, everyone makes mistakes in business, but my coach helps me think about the things that are hard to think about. I make fewer mistakes because of him. You are going to be great at it.

My mind immediately flashed back to SnapSac, not my only mistake, but my worst. I thought how it might have been different if I’d had a weekly call with someone that I trusted who could make a case for me to slow down, or who might have suggested that sales deals were normally based on commission. In hindsight, I recognized how valuable it would have been to have a business coach.

A few weeks later, after the deal went through, I started investigating coaching, what it meant, what it takes to become one. Of course, I was happy with what I’d accomplished, thrilled really. Still, I was convinced that if I’d had a coach, I would have done even better. Maybe a lot better.

As I learned about coaching, I began to see that it would bring together everything I knew, the Socratic method I learned in my teaching career, the business knowledge I acquired over the last decade as an entrepreneur, and my love of working and connecting with people. David was right—I did want to become a business coach.

As I embarked on coach training, I returned to the questions that I still had not answered. Before long, I realized that it was not about being a good boss or a bad boss. The problem was that I saw myself as a boss, a person in charge who makes decisions.

I realized that seeing myself as an authority figure prevented me from seeing myself as a leader. A leader, as I was to learn, is a person who provides an inspiring vision for a talented team of people who want to grow and contribute to a growing organization and stretch what it can do. Companies that succeed exceptionally are built by teams where everyone has the opportunity to take on new challenges, develop new skills, and try ideas that make the whole better in a way that one person alone can’t do.

A boss spends a lot of time telling people what they are expected to do. However, a leader spends time creating a vision for success and challenging the team with new experiences, mentoring them, supporting them when they fail, and helping them try again smarter and better next time. Leaders outperform bosses.

Looking back, I saw that actually, I had been a good leader for my production and logistics teams. Amy and the factory owners who helped produce my product all performed highly for me, and many stretched, learned, and became better at what they did, ultimately making my company better. From the start, I knew none of them worked for me directly and that they didn’t have to do what I needed them to do. I knew that in order to get what I needed, I would have to make them want to come up to my standards. My best option was to inspire them to do better and stretch. When they caught my excitement, they did.

I did the same for a lot of my clients. I inspired hundreds of retailers to change their business model and stop hiding the cost of cheap bags from consumers, instead charging consumers directly for an affordable bag. I never got any one of them to change the question at checkout, but I convinced a lot of them to make reusable bags visible at the checkout stand, where customers need them most, and to promote bags in various ways. For many customers, I offered new products and helped them grow bag offerings over the years as consumer desires evolved.

I didn’t turn those talents on for my team in LA because, well, I was their boss. They had to work for me. It turns out, when you have to do something, you don’t put much heart or effort into doing it. You just do what you have to do. But when you want to do your job, when you’re inspired to stretch, grow, and reach for higher goals, you start overperforming. That’s why leaders outperform bosses. Leaders spend their days focused on helping people love their job and grow. As a coach, I would dedicate myself to a mission of helping people become better leaders.

My heart still swells when I recognize that I was a good entrepreneur, good enough to start up a company, handle a hockey-stick curve, accomplish a mission, survive my worst mistakes, and complete the business cycle through to sale. That in itself is a huge win, and I learned a lot along the way.

Believing in myself and being driven by a mission greater than myself gave me the energy to keep going even through the longest days and darkest nights. If I had been motivated by money, I would have failed. What kept me going was my dedication to a purpose and to other people—the people along my supply chain and the consumers who adopted my bags. I couldn’t let them down. Because it was never about me, I always found the energy to keep going.

As I look back, I think the most courageous action I took was not the first money I wired to China or quitting my job, but simply letting go of what other people thought about me. I let myself dream and be inspired by a vision that, at first, only I could imagine. Certainly, it scared me a little bit, but I have learned, that is what a good dream should do. If it started as a spark, I nurtured the flame until I felt a burning passion and moral imperative to make the world better. For the next ten years, I fed that fire until my passion carried me far beyond where anyone else would have thought.

Ultimately, my mission ended up changing me. Although I learned a lot, what helped me succeed was not so much the knowledge or lessons I learned, and more the principles that kept me on the right path even when I didn’t know where I was going. I hope that the business principles I discovered will help you, too, beat the odds and succeed in achieving your wildest dreams.

Here are the eight principles that helped me beat the odds:

1. If you’re going to be something, be the best. Don’t let other peoples’ expectations hold you back.

2. Write a mission that lights a fire in your heart and pursue it every day. Resist the temptation to drift into new activities that don’t contribute directly to your mission.

3. Balance what you feel with what you know. What you feel, and what others around you feel, will motivate and drive your actions. Use science and data as a reality check and make sure you are on the right path before you commit. By honoring the feelings of those around you and balancing your decisions with real knowledge, you will make better decisions.

4. Write a story that will convey your passion. Tell everyone your story and improve it as you find out what resonates with people. Use it to connect emotionally with others before getting down to business.

5. Dedicate yourself to respect for all people and the planet. When you demonstrate your respect for people and the planet, by your daily interactions and by the occasional hard decisions that make your commitment manifest, you will earn the respect of others and begin to truly lead them.

6. Track your cash flow carefully and try to match your projections. If you miss your targets, figure out why, adjust, and try again. If you hit them, set higher targets. Be bold in your projections.

7. Keep your promises to customers, vendors, and employees. Take responsibility when things go wrong. Build relationships of trust.

8. Be a leader, not a boss. Spend most of your time inspiring everyone to believe in your mission and vision for success. Hire people you respect and expect them to learn, grow, and contribute new ideas to improve your results. Invest in others and encourage them to take on projects that stretch their skills. Give them goals that make them reach and support them as they overcome challenges. Recognize and reward success. Ask what they are learning often.

Your mission doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary. Honestly, grocery bags are pretty unremarkable as a dream or purpose in life. What happened when I focused on just this one thing was surprising.

All you need to start making a difference in your world is a belief in the value of what you want to do. Sure, success will take a lot of hard work, but the only way to fail is to quit. If you just keep going, you can do anything. Maybe, like me, if you just do one thing, you too can put a wedge in the whole works and have an outsized impact. That’s how you change the world, one mission at a time.