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Successful business owners respond quite differently.

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He who makes the rules wins.

On the way from the Charleston airport to speak at a conference last Thursday evening. I engaged our cabbie in conversation, which of course always gets around to food. I asked what seafood he liked since he lived on the coast, and his first response was “I don’t eat shrimp.”

I found his response in the negative to be interesting so I pursued it. He told me his cousin worked on a shrimp boat in the early 60’s and had drowned, and that he had never been able to get over it. So now he doesn’t eat shrimp because it reminds him of his cousin drowning over 40 years ago.

I empathize with his loss but I don’t understand letting that circumstance rule his entire life even in one small aspect like eating shrimp. I lost a cousin at the age of 41 from a massive heart attack as he went out the door for a run, but I would never think to stop running or exercising because of my loss.

The moral of this story?

Circumstances don’t make me who I am. How I respond to them does.

I met a woman once who was a quadriplegic from birth who always introduces herself by saying, “I have the gift of cerebral palsy.” As someone who has every right to claim true victim status, she is a bright light in a world full of self-made victims.

How are you responding to the circumstances in your business? If you decide you’re not a victim and respond accordingly you’ll enjoy life and business a whole lot more.

He who makes the rules wins.

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Make Your Own Business Rules.

As I was writing my new book “Making Money is Killing Your Business” and getting feedback on it, a lot of people told me that some of the principles in this book are things they’ve never heard before. I’ve frequently heard, “I’ve never been given permission to think that way.” Allow me to set the record straight. I’ve never had an original thought in my life and I’m pretty sure no one else has either.

Picasso said “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” There is nothing new under the sun and when I hear people claiming they have an amazing new way of doing something that no one else has ever thought of, it usually turns out it was all just marketing.

One of the big re-discoveries of old truths for me was that a business is supposed to throw off three things for us, time, money and significance. But for some reason we only expect it to give us one: money. And because we focus on just making money, our business never gives back time or helps us have a significant impact in the world around us. We’re too busy making money to get to the important stuff.

As a result everything is backwards. We build a business and take whatever lifestyle that business happens to throw off for us, which at best usually involves having money, but rarely a lot of time, and almost never significance. This isn’t surprising because “he who makes the rules wins,” and we too often let our business and the business world around us make the rules for us. Making Money was written to help us take hold of our business and re-make the rules in our favor so that our business finally becomes our servant to do our bidding, not the other way around.

On Monday, I’m able to head to London, Belfast, and Nairobi Kenya largely because I’ve been committed to making my business live by my rules. I have to rein it in every day of every week, but simply being committed to do so has made all the difference. Working for free with business owners in Kenya is a great reward for having made the rules in my business. I’m looking forward to a lot more time, money, and significance to come as I force my business to live by my rule: Live well by doing good.

Are you making the rules or reacting to your business? He who makes the rules wins.