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If we as a business don’t respect ourselves, how can we expect clients to respect us?

All we have to sell clients are our ideas, talent and expertise - what they hire us for because they themselves don’t possess.

Stop! Think!

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Thanks in no small part to my business partner, Richard Gearhart, I was awarded an Entrepreneurial Excellence Award today from Inside Business.

I’m not one for the spotlight, I have no fancy degrees, and I certainly was not born with a silver-spoon in my mouth. So it was particularly overwhelming and humbling to be honored as one of almost 50 nominees – one of 11 given an award.

The Entrepreneur of the Year went to Billie M. Reed, Executive Director of Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority. Congratulations, Mr. Reed.

Inside Business and the Regent University School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship put on a really nice event and it was very well attended.

To steal a theme from keynote speaker Jeffrey McWaters (and for whom I did the logo for his start-up business, Amerigroup, now #509 on the Fortune list) here’s my Top 10 list for a successful business:

10. Start a business doing something you really love
9. Write a solid Business plan that includes a Marketing Plan and budget
8. Surround yourself with people who will challenge you to do your best
7. Hire people who love what they do; give them the means to do their best
6. Develop a financial structure that keeps everyone hungry for success
5. Make the business a partner
4. Make sure you appreciate your family for their support and understanding
3. Don’t forget to say thank you to those who help with your success
2. Read “Cowboy Ethics” - Treat your clients/customers, vendors, suppliers, and associates fairly, honestly
1. Be patient and open to change

RESEARCH DEPT ENTRY:  “The phrase was originally “don’t look a given horse in the mouth” and first appears in print in 1546 in John Heywood’s “A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue”, where he gives it as: ‘No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth.’ ” [“The proverb refers to the practice of evaluating the age of a horse by looking at its teeth.”]

“Nobody gave any respect to this thing called image because it wasn’t in the business plan,” Mr. Wangers (former head of GM) said. “It was all about, ‘When is this going to earn a profit?’ ”

I said years ago the big three needed to cut models - stop trying to be everything to everyone and concentrate on one thing they could do better than anyone else. Why did GM need to build GMC trucks and Chevy Trucks? And then Cadillac trucks? Why not just have 3 great Chevy trucks - the rock of the brand?

While trying to be everything to everyone, they also took their eye off quality. Not to mention better fuel economy.

I was a loyal GM owner for more than 20 years. I switched brands 5 years ago because I was spending too much time at the dealer with a brand new car getting things fixed because of cheap parts, poor engineering and poor workmanship.

Mr. Wangers was right about one thing, there was too much bureaucracy* - they let the bean counters convince them “value engineering” was more important than building a great product.

Chevy was an icon. Chevy had the ultimate image - baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. When they moved to value engineering their marketing, they threw many many years of branding and image out the window.

They only way they have a chance at winning me back is by building an American Truck with engineering that rivals or out-thinks the foreign competitors, is at least 50% more fuel efficient than today’s truck, is built as well or better than Toyota or Hyundai or even Mercedes and is priced reasonably.

*See New York Times article After Many Stumbles, Fall of an American Giant