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Let’s pretend you’re in the market for a good pumpkin. You pack the kiddies in the car and drive out to the local pumpkin patch. When you get there, you see row after row after overwhelming row of orange, green and brown. You’re looking for the perfect pumpkin, but they all seem to look the same. It is easy to pick out the bad ones, though—they’re smashed, or dented, or bruised or look hauntingly similar to your mother-in-law.
You keep searching, and just after you get through the corn maze you spot it—the biggest pumpkin you’ve ever seen. It’s like Charlie Brown’s “Great Pumpkin” big. It’s so big, it’s hard to believe it’s even real.
Suddenly your kids start running toward this freak of nature like it’s the greatest thing ever, and you’ve got to admit, it kind of is. The gigantor pumpkin dwarfs all of the other pumpkins in the field. As you walk over to it, you don’t even see the other pumpkins, and you wonder how you didn’t spot it right off the bat. Although it is surrounded by red tape and signs saying “prize-winning pumpkin, not for sale,” your kids are begging you to buy it. “Please? It’s the only pumpkin we want!” You walk around it, marveling at its size. At its remarkableness. You get out your phone and take pictures of your kids standing next to it, and text your friends, telling them they have to come see the most awesome, gigantic pumpkin in the world.
Like a magnet, the pumpkin draws a continuous stream of other people, too. They pass by the other, smaller, pumpkins, their eyes glued to the orange wonder before them. The bald guy says, “How is this even possible?” The buttoned-up woman says, “It’s clearly a genetic mutation.” The wide-eyed grade-school boy says, “The farmer must have some super secret veggie vitamins or something.” And the dazed and confused teenager says, “Dude, it looks like Jabba the Hut knocked up a basketball.”
There is something absolutely irresistible, something magnetic about being the extreme. Be it the strongest, or the fastest, or the most unique. The farmer with the most extraordinary pumpkin in the field wins. Every. Single. Time.
The same is true for entrepreneurs. Yet most entrepreneurs work their tails off, only to end up with small, ordinary, unremarkable pumpkins. Compared to the giant pumpkin, the companies these struggling entrepreneurs grow are insignificant, so insignificant that customers often don’t see them, or squash them, or leave them to rot in the field without a second thought.
To grow a successful business your company must be irresistibly magnetic. The average lose and are left to rot. It’s the most unique—the best —who win.
You’re probably thinking, “Duh! Do you really think I’m working my ass off to build an average company? What more do I have to do to be the best?”
Simple. You don’t need to do more. You need to do different. You have to pretend you’re a pumpkin farmer.
Yup. You read that right. A pumpkin farmer. But not just any pumpkin farmer. A freaky, geeky, overall-wearing, straw chewing pumpkin farmer, those county fair folks who dedicate their lives to growing the half-ton pumpkins you see on the evening news. Turns out that they, of all people, hold the “secret formula” for big-time entrepreneurial success: plant hearty seeds, identify the most promising pumpkins, kill off the rest of the vine, and nurture only the pumpkins with the biggest potential.
In this book I reveal how, by implementing the same strategies pumpkin farmers use to grow their massive gourds—and which I have, with great originality deemed “The Pumpkin Plan”—I was able to launch two multimillion-dollar companies by my thirtieth birthday, gain notoriety with top firms, and in turn help them radically grow their businesses. Not only will I share my stories and their stories of success, but, most importantly, I will teach you how to apply the same ideas and lessons to your own business.
Never forget this: Ordinary pumpkins are always forgotten. Only the giant pumpkin draws a crowd and lives on holiday cards, refrigerators and grainy YouTube videos…forever. The giant pumpkin is legend. And when you’ve grown one… you will be a legend, too.
You didn’t start your business because you wanted to blend in, make enough to get by and save enough to pay for the nursing home. You went into business because you wanted to grow something amazing, something that would dramatically change the quality of your life, something that could make a difference in the world.
The late Steve Jobs has been lauded for his many accomplishments and innovations, and there’s no doubt that Apple is one of the truly remarkable companies on the planet, thanks in large part to his vision. But his contribution goes beyond innovation. At the time of Jobs’s death, Apple employed almost 47,000 people, hired thousands of subcontractors and, by necessity or association, inspired countless entrepreneurs to create businesses that served Apple and its customers. That is a huge contribution to our culture, one that goes way beyond how we listen to music or communicate with the world.
Now that’s legend.
And you can grow a legendary company, too.
I know you already know this. You know that if you want to be wildly successful, you’ve got to be the most unique pumpkin in the patch. I didn’t write this book to tell you that. I wrote this book to show you exactly how to grow it, to teach you a proven system that will free you from the entrepreneurial trap and create the most magnetic business in your industry.
I wrote my first book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, for those who want to start a business but think they lack the education, resources, momentum, expertise and capital to do so. I wrote it for the millions of hopefuls who aren’t afraid to work hard and take chances in order to reach their goals. And I wrote it to empower entrepreneurs with the tools they need to succeed in the start-up phase of business ownership. That book was about planting the seed; this book is about growing it…big-time.
Since the release of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur in 2008, I’ve talked with thousands of entrepreneurs—at conferences I keynoted throughout the world, as an expert on various business television and radio programs, through discussions of articles I have written for publications both large and small, through my (notably whacky) blog, and face-to-face—who are looking for a way up…or a way out.
So I know firsthand that the sobering statistics are spot on. Entrepreneurs are struggling, trapped in a neverending cycle of sell it–do it, sell it–do it, sell it– do it that leaves them feeling desperate, hopeless, trapped. No matter how many all-nighters they pull, no matter how many kids’ soccer games they miss, most entrepreneurs can’t seem to get anywhere near the multimillion-dollar mark, much less beyond it.
I wrote The Pumpkin Plan for all of those entrepreneurs who reached out to me and said, “Help! Something’s got to give.” I wrote it for the entrepreneurs who are exhausted from an entrepreneurial dream that has turned into a real-life nightmare. I wrote it for the entrepreneurs who need a proven system to help them get over the hump and cruise into greatness. I wrote it for every entrepreneur who is committed to having a wildly successful business. And I wrote this book for every entrepreneur who wants to make a significant contribution to the world.
This book holds the key to your entrepreneurial liberation.
By following The Pumpkin Plan step by step, you will build a business that blows the competition away, magnetically attracts clients and, as clichéd as it sounds, finally gives you the life of your dreams.