Notes of reading "secrets of male entrepreneurs" ----Jim Penman

1. Have there even been times when you wanted to give up? What got you through?
a. "I was cold and hungry, night was drawing on, a special evening that I had planned was ruined and I was now facing a bill to replace the clutch, which I couldn't afford. I had worked and worked, early till late, but nothing I did seemed good enough, I felt like I was never going to get out and get ahead. At that moment, I lost all hope and gave up".

b. When the spirit fails, sometimes habit can step in. I had a saying from my earliest mowing days, 'Put one foot in front of the other'. No matter how bad you feel, keep on taking the next small step, and then the next small step, and eventually the job gets done.

2. And it's not difficult to find the right type of new franchisee when you have current franchisees willing to tell anyone how well they were treated and how much support they received.

3. What is the biggest mistake you've ever made in business and what did you learn from it?

"I ignored the business principle of sticking to what you know. I learnt to stick with the business that I knew and to save my money for more certain investments"

4. In the long run, putting people before profit was helping me to build the largest lawn-mowing business in the world, but at the time I did it purely because it was the right thing to do.

"Great people are the foundation of any successful business. Looking at profit and cost control is vital, but you do it with the key principles in mind"