Avanti Entrepreneur Avanti Entrepreneur Magazine Fall 2017 | Page 17

Ari Weinzweig
12 NATURAL LAWS OF
BUILDING A GREAT BUSINESS
A MORE ORGANIC WAY TO OPERATE?
I
most definitely could not have listed
all 12 of these tips anywhere near
as clearly back when we opened
Zingerman’s in 1982 as I did when I
wrote this piece 25 years later. But the
truth is that these “natural laws” really are
all things that we did back in the early ’80s. I
think they’re as true now as they were then
and will still be true 20, or 220, years from
now. They are very much the same behind-
the-scenes attitudes and approaches that have
guided us over the years. And, although I
haven’t run any other businesses, I’m pretty
confident that every successful organization
would likely have followed many of these
same approaches. Each organization will, of
course, have its own applications, but the
laws themselves will remain the same. I hope
they help you as much as they have us.
1
AN INSPIRING,
STRATEGICALLY SOUND
VISION LEADS THE
WAY TO GREATNESS
(ESPECIALLY IF YOU
WRITE IT DOWN!)
What’s a vision? As we define it here, it’s
a picture of what success looks like at a
particular point in the future. If you’re
starting a business, I’d suggest that you pick
a time at least three to five years in the future,
and longer might be even better. Your vision
will talk about what your business does, and
why it’s special. How the people who work in
the business feel about being part of it. How
your business relates to its customers, and
about how it fits into the community. It could
even detail what you as the owner will do,
and how much money you want to make. To
be effective, the vision needs to inspire the
people who will be doing the work. It also
needs to be strategically sound—i.e., while
your goals should be ambitious, you want
them to be realistic, too. To that end, the
vision should also have some key measurables
so that everyone involved has some sense of
what you’re aspiring to.
2
YOU NEED TO GIVE
CUSTOMERS REALLY
COMPELLING REASONS
TO BUY FROM YOU
This seems exceedingly obvious,
but I’ve encountered a lot of businesses that
don’t get it—they seem to think that people
ought to buy from them “just because.” But
from the day we opened at Zingerman’s, we’ve
always taken the approach that we need our
customers way more than they need us. We’ve
always assumed that we have nothing to offer
that anyone really needs. If you don’t think
the reasons your company is offering are all
that exciting, they probably aren’t. If that’s
the case, I’d say start working to come up
with more as quickly as you can—the risk of
offering too many compelling reasons would
be what we’d consider a “good problem.”
3
WITHOUT GOOD
FINANCE, YOU FAIL
This one is so widely accepted
that I almost didn’t include
it on the list. But you know
what happens when you “assume,” right? Plus
it’s quite possible to fulfill most or all of the
other natural laws as they’re laid out here and
still not have a sustainable business from a
financial standpoint. Granted, it’s way more
likely that your finances will be good if you
live up to all the other laws on the list, but
there are still absolutely no guarantees. Many
businesses that are doing special things fail
every year because they don’t manage their
money well.
I’ll be brief here because there are a million
places for you to learn about business finance.
(You may want to start with Karen Berman
and Joe Knight’s book, Financial Intelligence,
or come to ZingTrain’s Fun, Flavorful Finance
seminar.) The bottom line (pun intended) is
that you can have all the good intentions and
good ideas in the world, but you still have
to be profitable in order for the business to
survive; you do have to have cash on hand
in order to pay the bill s; and if you don’t pay
your taxes properly and on time, you’ll get in a
lot of trouble.
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