Posts by Fran Tarkenton
Don’t Forget the Plan
One of my favorite quotes is that an idiot with a plan will always beat a genius with no plan. I love to make bold moves and try new things—but I always want to have a plan, even when I know that the plan has to be flexible and adapt to all the changes that…
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What to Do When You Hit the Wall
Building a business isn’t always smooth sailing. Even when you’ve experienced success, a time will come when you hit the wall. You don’t know what to do. That’s one of the many ways I’ve found entrepreneurship to be like football. As a quarterback, I hit the wall all the time. And when I did, that…
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You’ve Got to Start With a Plan
There’s at least one way that any small business owner can be just like the greatest football coaches of all time: you have to have a plan! In the highest competitive levels of sports, there’s only one possible outcome if you go into a game without a plan: you’re going to lose. The plan is…
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Don’t Disown Your Failures
In 18 seasons with the NFL, I won more than I lost. But, like everyone else who plays professional football, I lost a lot. In far more years as an entrepreneur, I’ve achieved plenty of successes. Behind every one of them was a failure. Often more than one. Some of the failures were altogether mine,…
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Do You Know What You’re Failing At?
Before you can own your failure, you first have to know what you’re failing at. True knowledge is a start, not an end. It is a question, not an answer. When Walmart’s Sam Walton or Home Depot’s Bernie Marcus sought meaningful and productive knowledge, they did not attend a seminar, assemble a committee, convene a…
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How I Let My Passion Follow My Opportunities
Sometimes a business idea comes from a passion. There’s something you love, you’re completely immersed in it, and it becomes a business. The whole idea of the gurus who say, “Do what you love,” and “Follow your passion” comes from this path. But that’s not the only way to start a business. That’s never really…
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Commit to the Work, Not a Product
Like a quarterback, an entrepreneur works in a cycle of success-failures-success. In business, this cycle parallels the innovate-fail-innovate rhythm found throughout much of today’s business environment, especially among enterprises introducing new products and services or new approaches to established products and services. The upside of our new Networked Information Economy is tremendous opportunity. That’s why…
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Control the Controllable
For me, the 1955 high school football season and state championship was special for urgent personal reasons. At fifteen, during my junior year, we had a tackling drill in which I separated my shoulder. I probably should not have played again until my shoulder had healed, but I didn’t think about not playing. I just…
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Why People Need to Talk to People
None of us ever has an original idea. Everything we know and think of ultimately comes from what we see, what we read, and what we hear. So what better way is there to get new ideas than to go out and engage with more people, more sources of information? During my NFL career, I…
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Provide Relevant Benefits to Your Customers
You get your customers to come back more often to buy more and occasionally pay more by constantly providing them with relevant benefits (through your products, your service, and the total customer experience with your business) that are differentiated from all competitive options. That’s it. That’s how to succeed in business. Relevant needs drive half…
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