A Quote by Andy Dunn
Plenty of entrepreneurs can start a company. What is more rare is to evolve it and to scale with it over time.
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More than once in the history of Whole Foods Market, the company was unable to collectively evolve until I myself was able to evolve - in other words, I was holding the company back. My personal growth enabled the company to evolve.
Ultimately, I didn't quite find the company I wanted to join, but I met more than 100 entrepreneurs and realized that all these entrepreneurs were just as unqualified as I was. If I wanted to be this retailer of the future, or if I wanted to join the retailer of the future, I could just start it.
When e-commerce companies build scale, cost comes down. Companies that can handle scale and reduce costs over time will win. Margins will come from reducing costs over time and not by increasing prices. Technology is the answer at large scale.
It was important for me as a theater artist to allow myself and my interests to evolve over time and allow my notion of what success meant to evolve over time. I've always had a day job and never been just acting. But it didn't make me feel like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
That's what America's all about. Entrepreneurs who can start a business in their basement and have it grow into a global company - that's exactly what we want.
If the only common thread you have as an industrial company is the fact that you think you're well managed, you can still be a pretty good company, but you're not going to be a dominant company, a competitive company over time.
Civilizations evolve over time, and most scholars of civilization, including people like Carol Quigley, argue that they go through periods of warring states, and eventually evolve into a universal state.
When you're in a start-up, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn't you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.
It's so easy to practice out of context. For example, if you're learning a scale, you take that scale and you sit in your room and you go up and down the fretboard, over and over. You've gotta do that, because you need to get that scale working. But you have to keep in mind that that's not the finished product. That's the starting point.
The goal of a private company is, first, zero to one. Get past the product market fit, figure out whether people actually care about what you're trying to build and someone will pay you money for that. That's the zero to one problem. So scaling, one through N, is figuring out can you do that at scale and how big is the scale. And when people pay you more than what it costs for you to make it, does that equation end up leaving you with money left over, i.e. profits.
Lots of entrepreneurs don't want to be hassled by a board of directors early on. The entrepreneurs want to control the company, don't want to be responsible to a board, or don't want to waste time communicating with board members. This is a classic error of thinking about the early stage board incorrectly.
I would point to a song like 'I'm Not A Loser', which I tried to evolve as best I could over the years. But finally after years of trying to evolve it into something a little more, up to date I guess, we just don't play it anymore.
Companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.
Perhaps our most debilitating rut as a culture is a dependence on experts. Until we kick this dependency, how can we rise above the statistics and become a nation of entrepreneurs and leaders? The answer, as challenging as it is, is for entrepreneurs to show us the way, and to keep at it until more of us start to heed.
I start with people's growth, my own growth included. I don't start with the company's strategy or products. I start with people's growth because I believe that if the people who are running and participating in a company grow, then the company's growth will in many respects take care of itself.
It's never happened to me before, in my career, and never will again. It's a one-off experience. It's a rare treat to have a cast together for six years. Crews come and go, and a few of them have been there throughout, but not many. It's rare, in my experience, after 26 years, to have had a proper company in a show that enjoys each other's company, and who is such a fine bunch of people and actors. To have struck a chord with people, and to have had that combination, is extremely rare.
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