How the Rookie Crumbles Is your business off to a crummy start? Learn how facing your faults can put your business on a solid foundation.

As scientific studies go, it at first sounds ridiculous. Makingheadlines last year was the news that a doctoral student in Englandhad identified the "that" in the expression,"That's how the cookie crumbles." Qasim Saleem andhis colleagues at Loughborough University in Leicestershire,England, used a laser beam to follow tiny deformations that form asthe cookie picks up moisture near the edge and loses it near thecenter.

What follows are ruptures in the cookie that make it susceptibleto crumbling, causing the cookie to be prone to disaster evenbefore the customer reaches for it. The point of the research isthat cookie makers want to stop throwing up their hands and saying"That's how the cookie crumbles." They want to fixthe problem-and save immeasurable dollars in lost cookie revenue inthe process.

It's a good bet you never learned in Business 101 thatentrepreneurs are a lot like cookies. Like the cookie that hasfault lines somewhere in its sugar, shortening, flour and vanillaextract, every entrepreneur has some personal weakness inside allthose mitochondria and brain cells, a weakness that will affect howhis or her business is run.

The question is whether your flaw is harmless or the type thatcould short-circuit everything you're trying to create. And theproblem is that even seemingly harmless shortcomings can end uphurting your company. If you aren't very good at accounting,that may be fine while you're the only employee. But the slackmay not be cut when you've hired two more people, andyou've misplaced a decimal on their paychecks so they'vebeen working for $1.20 an hour instead of $12. They may not findthat funny.

There's a lesson here. Before you open for business, makesure you're ready for business. Tap your inner Socrates, andtake to heart his oft-quoted phrase: Know thyself. And how do youknow thyself? It helps to know what weaknesses entrepreneursfrequently share.

Achilles' Heel

Missy Cohen-Fyffe, 42, came to a crossroads a few years ago,when she realized she would have to give up some control of hercompany, or quit. And she doesn't mince words. "I alwaysrefer to my behavior as being a control freak. It's notflattering at all. But the nuts and bolts of the problem is that Ioften think it won't be done right if I'm not the one doingit."

Certainly, in the beginning, Cohen-Fyffe had all the control,which made sense-she was the only employee. And so naturally,things were being done the way she wanted them. But her thirst forcontrol almost kept her from hiring employees, and worse, fromletting them do anything once they were hired.

In 1999, she began Babe Ease LLC in Pelham, New Hampshire, to sellClean Shopper, a cushion that fits over seats and handlebars ofgrocery carts so tots with a taste for teething can gnaw away onthe cushion and not the handle, which has likely been handled by347,897 shoppers beforehand.

It was and continues to be a success: Babe Ease, which makesother baby-friendly products, is projecting $2 million in sales in2004. But in early 2001, Cohen-Fyffe was a one-woman show, puttingin eight hours a day at her business, coming home to spend timewith her husband and two children, and then working to fill ordersfrom 8 p.m. until about 2 a.m. She'd sometimes enlist herspouse to help her stuff packages while watching Jay Leno.

The turning point came after an annual February vacation, saysCohen-Fyffe. "When I got back, I was mortified by the level ofwork waiting for me." Cohen-Fyffe realized her need forcontrol meant that she was frequently feeling out of control. Shewas either going to have to hire employees and turn her operationinto a full-fledged business, quit, or keep working and eventuallygo insane.

Neither of the latter options sounded promising; the formerseemed appealing. She discussed the situation with her spouse, whobelieved she should go for it. So Cohen-Fyffe did, after severalmore months of deliberating; she finally asked a neighbor to joinher business part time. "Once I hired her, and I realizedsomebody else could answer the phone, it was a big relief,"recalls Cohen-Fyffe. "It was like this huge weight beinglifted off. Then I realized, if she can do this, clearly she cancharge the customers; and then once that went well, I realized ifshe can do this, clearly she can stuff the bags and send them outthe door."

The result: Cohen-Fyffe had more time to manage and build otherparts of her business, hired four full-time employees, andoutsourced wholesale orders to a warehouse. The company now shipsthousands of Clean Shoppers and other products every week. On herown, she was doing about 40. "It's been a relief torealize I don't have to have a hand in everything, and thatthere are many people who can do what I do," says Cohen-Fyffe."And I try to take advice from my staff. Many times,they'll come to me with some idea, and I'll say,'yes,' and we'll run with it. And that's why we cangrow. I would call myself a reformed control freak. I'm not 100percent cured. But I'm getting there."

Getting There

Fixing a personal problem is often the easy part. It'sfiguring out you have the problem in the first place that can bedifficult. Kenneth W.Christian, a Carmichael, California, psychologist for more than25 years, has rescued numerous entrepreneurs from themselves. Ifyou can figure out you have a problem, he says, the best way tomanage your weakness is to "disconnect the trigger." If,for instance, you have a short fuse, you may discover your temperrises with your workload, and you're constantly chewing outyour one employee. To deal with an unmanageable workload, you couldeither hire somebody else or opt to work from home on the daysyou're likely to blow sky-high.

That's the problem Demetri Argyropoulos faces when employeesdo things that raise his ire. "It's not so much a shorttemper," says Argyropoulos, CEO of Prima Consulting GroupInc., a Santa Barbara, California, business talent agency thatconnects professionals with firms that have business and technicalneeds. "But I have low tolerance for lack of common sense. Ithink I have a lot of that, and that's what people reallylack."

The 27-year-old entrepreneur readily admits that whenexpectations for employees aren't met, he sets himself up"for getting pissed off. I don't slam doors or anythinglike that. But I will maybe insult the person a bit, like 'Howcould you do such a stupid thing?'"

Argyropoulos doesn't really believe his getting peeved is aproblem, and it probably isn't-Prima is almost a $10 millionoperation, employing 22 people full time-but that may be becausehe's disconnected the trigger: Argyropoulos has surroundedhimself with "some very key personnel who handle a lot of theoffice relationships. They make my life so much easier. They'reable to operate as close [as possible] to the quality that I canproduce, and in some regards, they have skills I don't have aswell."

But what if you don't know what your weaknesses are? What doyou do then? Christian suggests some self-analysis is in order. Heindicates that, as with Dorothy and those ruby slippers, theanswers have been with you the whole time. "No matter howyoung and inexperienced in the business world you are, you know ifyou don't have patience," says Christian. "You haveto work on yourself-and create backups, checkups, anything to keepyou in some sort of order, if you have a weakness that threatens todistract you from your business."

Practicing Perfection

Josh Barsch,29, knows he isn't flawless, and he's always trying to fixwhat he believes may be broken. "Most things are learnable,provided you can manage your time well," says Barsch,president and CEO of StraightForward Media, a Peoria, Arizona,marketing firm that specializes in pay-per-click searchadvertising. "You can consistently work on your weak areas andbecome better at them."

Barsch is doing just that. He wakes up at 4:45 a.m., and heheads to the gym to lift weights. Instead of driving to the gym ina sleep-induced fog, he listens to foreign language tapes and nowspeaks passable French, German and Spanish. He admits, "Iwouldn't want to conduct business in those languages anytimesoon," though that's clearly his end goal.

But Barsch's weakness used to be much more serious. When hebegan his business in April 2001, he was afraid to tell people whathis services cost. "In the beginning, it's hard to wrapyour mind around the fact that it's OK for you to charge Xamount of dollars for what you do," says Barsch, whosebusiness was projected to pass the $1 million mark in 2003."At some point, you have to jump in and do it. You can'tease in and ask half of your rate today and 60 or 70 percent withthe next client. There are always going to be people who thinkyou're too expensive or too cheap. As long as a fair number ofpeople think you're the right price and become your client,then that's OK."

Barsch managed to quote his prices from the beginning, but itwas always done with a gulp and a knotted stomach, and it took alot of practice and time before he could do it without feelingstrange about it. His memory of other days didn't help him.Before he began StraightForward Media, he worked as a journalistfor a paper in rural Missouri, and his editor asked him to convincea tractor supply store owner to buy an ad. "I choked up. Icouldn't do it," says Barsch, who did make a clumsyattempt. The owner cut Barsch off, saying, "I don't needthis; everybody knows me." Within seconds, Barsch says, he wasout of the office and back on the street.

Silvana Clark, aBellingham, Washington, motivational speaker and author for 13years, specializing in every topic from small-business problems toparenting issues, recounts a similar experience. "I stutteredwhen someone asked me my speaking fee. For the average person,hearing that a speaker gets several thousand dollars or more seemsoutrageous," Clark explains. "I've had people say,'You actually expect us to pay you?'" But she realizedthat "if you speak with confidence, people just accept whatyou say."

Barsch echoes that advice. "The worst thing that can happento you is that somebody says no. All you'll be in is the sameposition you're in now. It can't get any worse. You have toget past the fear that somebody is going to grab you by the belt,put the other hand on your collar, and toss you out. Thatdoesn't happen. 'It's more than we can afford,' isall they're likely to say."

So if closing a sale is your biggest problem, you either have todo as Barsch did and learn to get over it, or partner with somebodywho is comfortable discussing fees.

It can be daunting and depressing, searching for your drawbacksand realizing you're not a natural in a critical part of yourplanned business, but you should be applauding yourself for lookingfor possible fault lines in your personality, instead of beatingyourself up about it. Better to realize you're easilyintimidated and start working on it now than to wait until youenter a meeting with several clients, only to turn white and loseall ability to function.

"I've talked to so many businesspeople who have onepersonal problem or another that's holding them back,"explains Christian. "Everybody has to deal with these issuesat one time or another." That's just life. That's howthe cookie crumbles.

Geoff Williams isa writer in Loveland, Ohio.