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Page 132 GO IT ALONE!
Another reason that some go-it-alone enterprises deliberately avoid any press attention is a desire to project a professional image. Many companies with a limited number of employees can do valuable work for Fortune 1000 companies, but they don’t want to appear “small-time” or “unprofessional.” One very successful husband-and-wife team that declined to be included in the book expressed this sentiment as follows: “You go to a trade show, make a favorable impression, and then have a professional process for follow-up and sales. The last thing you want is for a Fortune 1000 sales prospect to focus on the fact that you are a husband and wife operating above your garage.” Though you may not agree with this concern, it is certainly valid. Successful go-it-alone entrepreneurs are acutely aware of their competitors. Many of the company owners who did agree to be interviewed for this book adopted strict guidelines in what they would and would not discuss. They were appropriately conscious of the potential for competitors to copy techniques they had developed, and did not want to unwittingly accelerate any transfer of knowledge. As Everette Phillips, the cofounder of China Manufacturing Network and a savvy former corporate executive said, “One of the advantages of being a private company is that we can be private. There are absolute advantages to operating beneath the radar screen, and to keeping our competitors as far from knowledge of our operations as possible.”
MYTH 2: EXTRAORDINARY RISK IS ESSENTIAL TO SUCCESS Scott Adams’s popular Dilbert comic strip is a good barometer of the underside of business life—the issues, concerns, and craziness of employees in large firms. In one particularly telling strip,
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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