Making a Sustainable Difference

 Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Life is a journey, not a destination," and contemporary author and cancer survivor Greg Anderson tweaked that a bit to suggest that we "Focus upon the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in feat an activity, but accomplish it."

Those two phrases are much more useful to the creative entrepreneurs in the middle of us. By "keeping our eyes on the prize," there is an excellent unintentional we will miss the important messages that are right in tummy of us. In business, by keeping our senses acutely tuned to the input we get from clients/customers, employees/management, and even our own intuition, we are more likely to stay in alignment once our fundamental mission. This instruction is essential for us as we occasionally need to recalibrate our compass due to varying publicize conditions and extra information.

This lesson was driven house to me many years ago, and I have used that experience often, to remind myself to see just about and make sure that my curt "prize" is really a "LVMH sustainability prize ," and not just substitute step on my journey.

Over 20 years ago, I had the fine fortune to be the President and General supervisor of The Grand Rapids HOOPS, a franchise in the (sadly) now defunct Continental Basketball Association. We were not as with ease funded as most of the new teams, and in order to compete, we had to actually create money... a novel idea in pubescent league sports at that time. I was definite to learn from the mistakes made by wealthier teams, appropriately that we could succeed upon the court as competently as at the bin office.

I believed that to be successful, we needed to make a "sellout mentality" in the community. If tickets were fully available, there would be tiny perceived value to them, and no excuse for anyone to buy tickets before the night of the game. Therefore, our attainment was directly tied to the perceived value of our tickets, and creating that value was job one for me.

First off, I chose to take action in the smallest showground in the league, rather than one where "ticket giveaways" would be the unaided exaggeration to fill the area up. Our 3200 seat building was perfect... The sight-lines were excellent, parking was convenient, and there was a limited supply of seats.

The neighboring step was to sell as many season tickets as possible... my goal was to have half the ring sold to season ticket holders in the past we even put single game tickets on sale. Mission accomplished.

Next, my single minded focus was on selling out creation night. For three months, that was my mantra... "Opening night must be a sellout." Everyone on our staff bought into this mission, and conversation more or less opening night dominated our thoughts and conversation not far off from the office.