My rules of business so far from my short career:

1. Ideas are not opportunities. Ideas are cheap, plentiful, and disposable.
2. Good opportunities are required for good business.
3. People make up the personality of a business.
4. A business is ultimately a persona of the owner in all aspects.
5. The inertia of hard work and perseverance can overcome a bad market/tough competitor.
6. A business is made of metrics. To not know your metrics well means you don't know your business well.
7. Most business "rules" are worthless.
8. It will be harder than you think. See the "Hype Cycle".
9. Transactions are not ultimately profitable. Healthy/cooperative/trustworthy business relationships are ultimately profitable for all.
10. Without alignment of expectations neither customers nor business counterparts will be happy with your product or service.

Feel free to critique.

< Previous Post

Comment by Cindy Baxter on May 21, 2013 at 4:23pm: Love this, Sandra!

Comment by Sandra McCartt on May 22, 2013 at 1:19pm: Life in recruiting and life in general is fun if we don't take ourselves too seriously.

I sort of think of myself as the Maxine of the recruiting world. It is possible to make money and have fun doing it if we get over our need to be "professional" and quit looking and talking like we just ate a lemon. Glad you got a giggle. Spend a day in my office and the world will look different through the lens of "everybody is full of crap, don't step in it or you will waste a lot of time getting it off the bottom of your shoes".

Nobody cares how cool you think you are, they just want a qualified candidate in the salary range they can pay, go find it.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on May 22, 2013 at 1:35pm: Amen to what Sandra said! :) I'm going to print out that quote, Miss Sandra, and hang it up in my office :)

Comment by Sandra McCartt on May 22, 2013 at 6:27pm: LOL. It's a McCarttism. I have little cards that i hand to a recruiter who just lost one or blew one. It says, "Shit happens, get over it, i hate whiners."