FREDERICK W. SMITH
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
FedEx Corporation

(Excerpt from speech)
To be a successful entrepreneur, I believe you must learn five secrets. They will make the difference between your being a maverick with a good idea and a company owner with a solid bottom line.

1. The first secret is to have a compelling business idea, one that is differentiated and sustainable.
• No doubt about it. A big idea is important. But it must be big enough to set you apart. Unless you can distinguish your product or service by a characteristic no one else offers, you won't stand out from the crowd and neither will your profits.
• As long ago as 150 B.C., the Roman playwright Terence said it best: "Do not do what is already done."

You must be the first; or the fastest; or the most convenient; or you must deliver more value for the money. In the U.S.,

• MacDonald's was the first to popularize the concept of fast food.
• FedEx was the first to offer time-certain delivery.
• Sears & Roebuck was able to offer the convenience of catalog shopping.
• Dell Computers was the first to sell customized computers online.
  So it's the uniqueness of your idea that will attract the financial support to get things off the ground. It's the uniqueness of your proposition that will help guarantee success.

Just as important, your idea must be sustainable. It must stand the test of time.

• A couple of decades ago, in the United States, a new product hit the store shelves-something called a pet rock. It was a small gray rock that sat there and did absolutely nothing. It was advertised as the perfect pet for those who had no time to feed, walk and groom a dog. (Ah, Americans, los locos [the crazy ones], you must be thinking.) For a while, the stores couldn't keep them in stock. But soon sales began to fizzle. The pet rock may have been a clever idea, even a novel one, but it was not sustainable. I only hope the person who developed the pet rock invested his profits wisely.

 

2. The second secret is to be a zealot.
• You must have a passion for your idea. If you aren't convinced your idea is great, no one else will either. To paraphrase General Colin Powell, the recently appointed U.S. Secretary of State: "Find something you like to do and then become good at doing it."
• There's no greater source of individual power and creativity than loving what you do-or what you want to do. It's been said that what made Thomas Edison such a great inventor was his unlimited enthusiasm. It motivated him to press on until he succeeded. Edison's passion to create resulted in patents for more than a thousand inventions, including the phonograph, the telephone, the incandescent electric lamp, and the motion picture projector.
• Despite the nay Sayers, you must believe to the core of your being that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come-and that you have one of those ideas!

 

3. Third on my list of secrets is to have a conservative business plan.
• You must be as rational and thorough about your business plan as you are passionate about the idea it supports. This is absolutely essential in attracting investors. And it's positively a requirement to set yourself up for success.
• A good plan must present the basic assumptions of the business and substantiate those assumptions with hard data.
• It must include the basic metrics-revenue, expenses, projected profits and so on. At FedEx, we had three independent studies done to validate the financials we laid out.

 

4. Secret number four is to work effectively with others.
   I've yet to see one person do it alone. You cannot do it alone so you must work well with others to put your plan into action. To the extent that you believe in yourself, you must also believe in other people.
• That means hiring the right ones. And trusting them to do their jobs once you hire them.
• It means persuading, motivating and even inspiring those people.
• It means delegating authority because you will not be able, or perhaps even qualified, to make all the decisions.

 

5. The last secret of truly successful entrepreneurship is to change and grow as your business grows.
• Learn everything you can about your business. If you don't know the in’s and out's of your company, your industry and your customer, you're liable to experience more down's than up's in your financial results.
• Learn other things as well: ancient history to economic theory, gardening to photography, mutual funds to Mozart. You never know when these studies will come together in your mind to form a new idea. It may happen in five minutes, five months or five years. But have faith that it will happen.
• I'm reminded of something the phenomenal Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez said: "Every year I know more and more about the hitters and how they react to me. There are some guys I know how to get out every single time, and I'll keep doing it unless they make an adjustment-and then I'll adjust." It's that ability to adjust that will keep you a heavy hitter over the long term.