Toine Knipping has taken to heart the statement, 'One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure that it is worth watching' In a very engaging, lucid style, he draws the reader not only into his philosophy of entrepreneurship but also explains how to live a well-rounded life. This is a book full of wisdom-highly recommended to anyone interested in acquiring a deeper understanding of the inner theatre of the entrepreneur -Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Clinical Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change, The Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development "While you may or may not agree with everything Toine Knipping says, one thing is for sure: he is an inspiration to all entrepreneurs. Mind Your Business is a practical and necessary read for anyone who wants to succeed in business" -Chip Conley, Founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels and author of PEAK and Emotional Equations "Mind Your Business is a rare book that combines eminently practical and valuable advice for would-be entrepreneurs with wise reflections that imbue the whole activity with a larger purpose. Toine Knipping is a hugely successful entrepreneur who has valuable observations not only about business but also about the business of life. Mind Your Business should not only be read by budding entrepreneurs but by everyone who is involved in business life and is struggling to give this life more meaning" -Sudhir Kakar, World-renowned Psychoanalyst and Author of numerous books including The Inner World

Mind Your Business

Thoughts for EntrepreneursBy Toine Knipping

BALBOA PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Toine Knipping
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5494-5

Contents

Epigraph..........................................................................................ixDisclaimer........................................................................................xiPreface...........................................................................................xiiiAcknowledgments...................................................................................xxiiiChapter 1: What Makes Your Heart Sing?............................................................1Chapter 2: Am I Capable of Starting and Running a Business?.......................................13Chapter 3: Where Do You Find the Bright and the Right Idea?.......................................26Chapter 4: When Is the Best Time to Start a Business?.............................................33Chapter 5: Do We Really Need a Business Plan?.....................................................37Chapter 6: Where Can I Sign Up for Entrepreneur School?...........................................42Chapter 7: What Is the Importance of Top Quality?.................................................51Chapter 8: How Does One Define the Corporate Mission, Vision, and Values?.........................59Chapter 9: Where Do You Stand?....................................................................66Chapter 10: How Can You Be a Leader and Be Followed?..............................................76Chapter 11: What Can You Manage and What Not?.....................................................86Chapter 12: Do Teams Work?........................................................................92Chapter 13: What Is Essential in Marketing and Sales?.............................................103Chapter 14: How Do You Deal with Risk and Failure?................................................107Chapter 15: What Is the Value of Time?............................................................111Chapter 16: What Use Do We Have for Gurus and Consultants?........................................115Chapter 17: Are Employees the Most Valuable Asset to Your Company?................................122Chapter 18: Who Pays the Salaries and Calls the Shots?............................................140Chapter 19: Is It Important to Have Your Suppliers as Your Business Partners?.....................146Chapter 20: With Whom Do You Compete?.............................................................150Chapter 21: How Does One Finance a Company?.......................................................154Chapter 22: How Does One Combine Friends and Family with Business?................................160Chapter 23: What Is Corporate Social Responsibility?..............................................165Chapter 24: How Does One Create Environmental Consciousness?......................................174Chapter 25: Why Is Transparency Important?........................................................182Chapter 26: What Is the Need for Good Corporate Governance?.......................................189Chapter 27: What Causes Happiness, and Where Does One Find It?....................................196Chapter 28: How about Love, Desire, and Sex in the Workplace?.....................................205Chapter 29: Can Your Business Become an Addiction?................................................216Chapter 30: What Does Religion Have to Do with It?................................................222Chapter 31: Where Will It End?....................................................................231Chapter 32: How Much Money Is Enough?.............................................................237Chapter 33: Is Death the End in Mind?.............................................................244Chapter 34: Is This It?...........................................................................250Afterword.........................................................................................255About the Author..................................................................................257References........................................................................................259

Chapter One

What Makes Your Heart Sing?

The recipe for living life to the fullest—if such a recipe exists—is to laugh heartily and often, play with abandon, appreciate beautiful things, build and maintain deep friendships, take pleasure in family, and enjoy the task at hand. It is the journey of life that counts, not the destination. How we cope with the obstacles that we inevitably encounter on that journey determines the richness of our life. By extensive self-exploration we can all learn the lesson that most of our obstacles are self-made. If we want to, we can remove or restructure them. We can learn from experience.

—Manfred Kets de Vries

I purposefully decided to begin this business book with a chapter on the purpose of life. This may not seem to be the most logical starting point, but I believe that before establishing or taking over a business, it is very important to be conscious of what we are doing, why we do what we do, and why we want to be responsible for an enterprise and the many people who depend on it for their livelihoods. Once a business is born, it is like your baby. You have to take care of it, and you cannot help but love it. And whether you are a capable parent or not, you are responsible for it until it matures, leaves the house, or dies. I have stood at the cradle of a few businesses, and I assure you there are many parallels between setting up and running a business and bringing up your kids. And whether they become instant successes or limp along, I love them equally. Once you decide to become an entrepreneur, I am convinced the same will happen to you.

So you will have to contemplate what "makes you tick," what drives you to do the things that you do. Those may be totally different things from what you learned in school or at university, heard at the dinner table from your parents, shared with your friends on social occasions, or see as part of normal conventions. You will need to go deep inside yourself to discover what really drives you, what really makes your heart sing, and what really produces happiness and fulfillment for you. One of my favorite German writers, Rainer Maria Rilke, crystallized it as follows: "There is only one journey. Going inside yourself." If you think or meditate long and hard enough, you will discover that at the subconscious level there are a number of beliefs, ideas, and values that drive your life, maybe unbeknown to you, in a certain direction. It is what Sudhir Kakar, who is sometimes described as the psychoanalyst of the world, calls "the elephant" inside you. It is who and what you are, what your purpose for being on earth is, what your dharma is. You can nudge the elephant somewhat in one direction or another, you can reason with it, or you can ignore it, but it always remains an elephant and always does what that elephant is supposed to do.

Do not confuse this with determinism. The idea that your thoughts, character, or behavior cannot be changed, as they are prewired by your genetics or the way your early childhood evolved, has been studied in detail and proven to be false. In fact, the latest studies confirm that although, yes, all that information is in your DNA, and, yes, all the early childhood memories remain in your amygdala and reptile brain, they are only part of who...