HM Williams (2005) has written an excellent book about growing a business, entitled Proper Coffee & Other Ways to Grow Your Business. He makes a compelling analogy between owning a business and owning an elephant.

Here’s an excerpt :

Phase 1

You buy a baby elephant. You are bigger than it is, can see a great future with it and foresee no problems. The only concern is that you don’t have any skills in managing elephants – but you think that this won’t matter and off you go.

Phase 2

The elephant soon grows much bigger than you. You are no longer strong enough to control it and it takes over your whole life. It pulls you along, wreaking destruction in its wake. Standing behind it, it blocks your whole vision and you can neither see nor know where you are going. You are so preoccupied by being dragged along by it that you think there is no way to ever bring it under control. It is ruining you and your quality of life. Does this sound familiar?

Phase 3

You are one of the rare ones who decides to take advice on how to become a pukka elephant handler, it is no use walking behind it ineffectually holding on to the reins as it pulls you along. You accept that you have to take a wholly different approach and that you have to learn how to manage your elephant to get the most out of it. To do this, you have to know how to sit on top of your elephant, where you can not only see where you are going, but also, with just a gentle touch with your feet on its ears, steer the elephant in the direction you want it to go. In a short time you are now running the elephant, instead of it running you. As a result of accepting that you needed help, and as a result of taking professional advice, it is soon fulfilling your original dreams.

Phase 4

Once you have learned how to control your elephant, and it won’t take long, you can hire and train your own mahout to manage the elephant for you, while you ride in the canopied howdah behind, sitting back and enjoying the view.

 

If you would like a complimentary copy of Proper Coffee & Other Ways to Grow Your Business by HM Williams delivered directly to you by Amazon then please email your name, business name and postal address to me at [email protected]