I do not usually share this photo ...

That is me and Ken Yancy, the great guy who ran SCORE for many years. He is handing me their Small Business Champion of the Year award.

I do not post this picture anywhere. It has been sitting in my computer for about 6 years.

But I want to tell you why I got it, because the reason is not the one you would guess.

At the time I won that thing, I was running what I would now call a One Person Empire. No employees. No office full of people. Me, a laptop, and a business that was doing very, very well.

So on paper it looks like a solo award. Guy does well, guy gets a trophy.

That is exactly NOT what happened.

I got that award because of other people.

Because of Abby, my tech sidekick, who has been quietly fixing things I broke for longer than either of us wants to admit. Because of Dan, my video guy (my wife says, almost annoyingly often, “He makes you look SO good!” 🤣) Because of partners like B of A and Microsoft.

And because SCORE itself is built on exactly that idea.

I sat on the SCORE Foundation board last year, and the entire model of the organization is one person sitting down with another person who has already been where they are trying to go.

Now compare all of that to the one business of mine that truly failed, my second law office in San Francisco, where this then cocky and stupid guy just winged it. And it collapsed.

The difference was help.

So I am not showing you this photo to impress you. I am showing it to impress upon you that a one person business is not a business built alone.

Sure, you can build the whole thing yourself, but you just should not figure it out by yourself.

(Btw, credit where credit is due: That line about “impressing you/impressing upon you” is not mine. I stole it 35 years ago from a young guy named Tony Robbins, at a firewalk, back when nobody had the faintest idea who he was. And yes, another instance where learning from other people, how to walk on fire no less, is what makes the difference.)

Which brings me to tomorrow night.

Thursday, September 3, at 7pm Eastern, I am opening a live, free hot seat room. It is going to be a small sample of what we will be doing in the One Person Empire Accelerator.

You take the chair. You tell me what you are building, or where you are stuck, or which of your ideas you think is the best one. And then together, we work out what you should actually do about it, next steps, smart moves, out loud, together, in front of everybody.

Then somebody else takes their turn, and you take those insights home too. Half of what you leave with will come from a problem that was not yours.

It is free. It happens once.

I am going to give priority to those folks who sign up for the Accelerator before tomorrow’s event (as I should.) So if you want to guarantee that you and I will get a chance to work through your issue, then sign up. But either way, please come and join us, learn and share.

No, I’m not going to give you a trophy too, but I do guarantee we will have fun, learn, and help one another!

Reply "Hotseat" and we will send you the link.

Steve