Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

So lately, i’ve been involved in a number of negotiations that have died. Now all of these deals actually made sense to both parties but they died for various reasons. Here’s some tidbits of what i’ve learned from simultaneously doing a number of deals and many of them falling apart.

1. Don’t assume your counter-party must do the deal. Often times there are other options you didn’t know about.

2. Make sure you know why you are doing the deal. If so, stick to it, even if you smell weakness, exploiting it too much may kill the deal. Focus on your initial goal and make sure it gets done. 

3. Always get paperwork as soon as possible. Don’t wait on the promise of a contract or term sheet. Walk away if they delay and tell them to get back to you when they are serious. Yes, this may offend people but it will put the pressure on. Do it subtlety. Don’t let people waste your time. 

4. If your counter-party keeps rescheduling meetings, the odds are they aren’t interested. Even if you manage to do a deal, do you really want a partner who doesn’t take you seriously. 

5. Have a lawyer handle negotiating terms. You negotiate price, lawyer (or banker) should be negotiating terms. There’s a simple reason for this. Your emissaries can get away with saying things that you can’t. Blaming your accountant is one thing, having your accountant say it himself is another. 

6. Never use email to negotiate. Always do it in person or over the phone. Context is often lost in email. 

7.  Once again, know your goals and go for them. Set false barriers a little above what you want so you have wiggle room and also make sure some terms are a little out of this world. Not crazy but out there. Why? Get your counter party to negotiate terms instead of the main point of the deal. It will help you get some compromises you may not otherwise be able to get. Though remember your purpose, your goal isn’t the little terms, it’s the core deal. 

8. Cash is king. Less cash today is worth more than more cash tomorrow. 

9. Don’t agree to terms where you are selling the company and the buyer has a dozen ways to return the company. That’s not a sale. That’s a free option to the buyer to return the company and basically a money back guarantee. You are selling a company to get out of it not to be screwed around with. 

10. Short emails are better than long emails. Less is more. More makes you seem a little bit crazy (as I suppose I am) 

Murphy’s Law basically states that if anything can go wrong, it will.  Last week at BookSwim, Murphy’s Law held truer than anyone could imagine.  Last week in New Jersey we had quite a heat wave going on and in our warehouse, temperatures definitely hit the triple digit mark.  Tuesday morning I got a bunch of text messages and calls saying “the books fell over”.  Now, that didn’t mean much to me until I arrived.  What had happened is… the books fell over.

All of the books are on bookshelves, which are arranged like you would imagine: in rows.  What had happened was one of the bookshelves cracked (presumably due to the heat) and it toppled over taking ALL of the other bookshelves with it.  Imagine dominoes.  The team spent the better part of the week putting the books back on the shelves… one by one.

So what did I learn through this experience?  Crisis management.  When something catastrophic happens (and it will), it’s best to take a few minutes to step back and reflect on the situation at hand.  Understanding the priorities is also crucial to figuring out how to solve the newly created problem.

What I find most interesting is the way in which things happened.  There are over 20 rows of shelving and any one of those shelves could have cracked but it happened to be the one at the end.  The one that cracked COULD HAVE fallen the other way (where there are no other shelves), but instead it chose to fall in the direction of the rest of the books.  Amazing, ain’t it?

So in short, I’m REALLY proud of the BookSwim team for getting it all together to put the books back and make the operation fully operational again.  Truly an inspiring thing to be a part of.  One thing that I wish we did was take more pictures.  It would have been awesome to document the process of putting things back together, but I guess that’s just another lesson learned.

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected.” -Tyler Durden

So I’m in the middle of a conversation with a friend of mine right now and he’s yelling at me (Steve, I love you) because I always downplay my past and always talk about the negative points of my past ventures instead of focusing on the positives.

Why do I do this? I’m not sure. I think it’s partially because I don’t like coming off arrogant and I actually am very self conscious when people look up to me in anyway. As I write this,  Steve is giving me a huge compliment & criticism rolled into one “No one ever had the balls to tell you this but you always downplay everything”. And Steve’s right. Whenever people introduce me or I introduce myself and give my bio I always focus on the negatives, like I’m embarrassed about the positives. Well, I suppose I am to some extent - I’ve built a lot of great companies and products but haven’t had a huge windfall exit so in a way I’m embarrassed about it - when in reality I actually have built several companies and helped start several more, which is impressive and something to take pride in. Now, I’m trying to not to sound arrogant right now but I think I need to refocus how I present myself so I don’t make myself come off negative. In general, life is about the positives not the negatives. I think we all should take Steve’s advice and play up the good, play down the bad and be happy. It’ll lead to happier people.

PS. Still, always learn from your mistakes.

Research!
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Everything

…then ask yourself a simple question “Do you know enough to run this company” now before you answer that question think about this scenario. Pretend the idea is a 5 year old girl stuck inside a burning building. Are you the fireman? If the answer is no, find partners that are. If you try starting a company and you’re not the fireman - that means you’re the poor slob who ran into the burning building and never came out.

Goodluck to you…