The Harbour Pilot

Bernie was fourteen when he took over the family business of salvaging construction materials. He faced challenges from a sceptical business community, and a family which worried about the risk to their primary asset. His father’s untimely passing had made it necessary.
Bernie had to abandon any aspirations for formal schooling, despite his intellectual talents, in favour of learning the business from the ground up. He was an incredibly quick study, absorbing the maximal use of every operating asset – buildings, real estate, personnel’s skills - and every business practice – costs, pricing, contacts, customers… The business stabilised and began to grow.

Entrepreneur’s Reality

Bernie did construct his own reality (with a hat-tip to our existentialist and post-modern friends…). The difference is that his version of reality was tested every single day – and the price of inaccuracy was hunger. Good teacher, hunger…
Someone once said

“Only the enemy will teach you where you are weak, only the enemy will show you where he is strong…”

Bernie took the lessons that he was taught by his competition and colleagues pretty seriously. He had to – other people were depending on him.
Bernie would buy an item from a demolition site as salvage. He knew exactly

• how much work was involved in retrieving the item
• how much work it took to remove or restore the old finish
• how much work to warehouse the item
• who might be interested in such an item
• why they valued it, and how it would be re-used
• what value a potential buyer might place on it

He could not afford illusions, if his information and decisions were wrong, his business would be in trouble. Bernie’s transactions were based on that knowledge, not on the form it might take, not the paperwork, or the appearance of a mutually beneficial deal. When Bernie struck a price for an item, it was only after understanding what use the buyer had in mind, and what the value was to the buyer. More than anything else, Bernie did business in information – he was ahead of his time, or possibly a throwback to a time of barter.

Bernie dealt from his own reality. Bernie once bid on a particular demolition site that featured some truly rare lumber. The deal was in tonnage, rather than board-feet, naturally. While out-of-town, a truck delivered 14 ton of material to the yard. Upon Bernie’s return, he personally inspected the load, and uncovered the inclusion of yards (and tons) of scrap concrete affixed to some structural lumber. Bernie did not resolve the dispute immediately, rather, after a simple notification to the site superintendent, he reduced the delivered weight to 4 tons. Eventually the discrepancy between the weights was tabled. Notwithstanding the scale slips and the balance of the paperwork, Bernie defended the reduction as not only the difference in weights, but also his costs for re-sorting, removal of the concrete, and subsequent disposal of the debris. From his perspective, on balance, the demolition site owed Bernie for the delivery of the load. Bernie’s version of reality won.

Bernie built his reality from a more fundamental basis than the appearance of a transaction. A contract, a load order, weigh scale slips, packing slips, invoices – all appearances building one form of reality. Bernie built his from touch, sight, and sweat, and would act – certainly initially – in a unilateral fashion. He had an unusual clarity of the true reality as it effected him and his business – and he fought for that reality every day.

This is an attribute of many successful entrepreneurs. They have an ability to view a situation from their own perspective. They are interested in others’ views only as a tool for negotiation, and rarely concede that the other view is inherently correct. This disturbs a lot of people that interact with entrepreneurs – most hold their view of reality as subject to being overruled by others. This is fatal for an entrepreneur.

Question for you…

Conflicts often arise because of differing understanding or reality. Do you develop your own standards for appraising reality? If so, how do you defend them?