May
18
2012
“The entrepreneur is essentially
a visualizer and an actualizer. He
sees exactly how to make it happen.”
– ROBERT L. SCHWARTZ, Founder, The New School for Entrepreneurs
When I “graduated” from what was once The New School for Entrepreneurs in Tarrytown, New York, it was with my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds. I had the entrepreneurial success idea of all time percolating in my professorial brain all during the program’s intensive retreat-style weekends, but could bring only a Fortune 500 corporate background to the table.
I came away from the Entrepreneurs program experience with lots of material to weave into the college classes I was teaching. I came away with a better understanding of who I was and what I was all about, and that I was “an entrepreneur” of sorts for being so hellbent on making ideas work (and not the weirdo I was sometimes accused of being).
I ended up creating and copyrighting “Corporate Entrepreneurs” and “Doctorpreneurs.” I used what I learned to help start hundreds of successful businesses.
I learned that the Entrepreneur does not fit any definition. But being one usually means you share a number of characteristics and traits evidenced by other entrepreneurs.
- You are first and foremost a catalyst of society.
- In your own–usually underestimated–way, you are a “mover and shaker.”
- You possess the unique combination of vision and follow-through.
- You take reasonable risks.
You are the key –the secret– ingredient that’s missing in corporate think-tanks, and in every level of government.
A true entrepreneur running the U.S. Postal Service, for example, would be competing head-to-head with FedEx and UPS instead of folding up sidewalk mailboxes, cutting back offices, hours, and work schedules and raising prices. You would know that you have the world’s greatest address delivery database and network, and you’d figure out how to take over the world of email.
But what entrepreneur in her or his right mind would want to spend a lifetime untangling a 237-year-old pile of knots?
Entrepreneurship is not dead. It is lurking.
Entrepreneurs are sitting quietly in the shadows watching and waiting for the ever-dwindling opportunities that earmark today’s economic quagmire to show some signs of life. Entrepreneurship-driven activities are on hold waiting for revitalized and more encouraging government responses. Entrepreneurs are waiting for renewed trust in government representation.
- Who, after all, wants to initiate (or pay for) an innovative new business venture that gets over-taxed and over-regulated before it even gets its startup feet wet?
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit will rise again. And when they do, they will usher in a new “Age of Enterprise” unlike any we have ever known. And besides revolutionizing the Internet and smart-phone worlds, part of the fallout will be that the U.S. Postal Service will no longer exist. Another part will be a new sense of self-enlightenment!
What are YOU doing now
to ensure that your business survives and thrives?
# # #
FREE blog subscription Posts RSS Feed
Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116
Open Minds Open Doors
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Jan
08
2012
What will you do with
your time this year?
FACT: As of January 10, you will have already spent 14,400 minutes of this new year that you’ll never get back. QUESTION: On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), how would you rate the value of your 2012 accomplishments so far? ONE MORE QUESTION: What will you do with the remaining 340,666 minutes (511,000 minutes minus 1/3 for sleep) in 2012?
~~~~~~~
Can the last question really be answered? Of course not. How could you possibly know what situations and circumstances will impact your intentions? So maybe intentions are not such a great thing. We’ve heard, after all, that they pave the road to hell, hmmm? And they’re kind of like expectations, right?
And don’t expectations breed disappointment?
So where does all this quibbling over semantics actually leave us? Hopefully . . . (aw, wait a minute, isn’t “hopefully” like an intention and expectation combined?). Well then, is this an end to planning as we know it? Do we throw the goals out with the posts? (A little pun there for football fans.) Do we stop having objectives to pursue?
Planning is essential, but it is not a trigger for compulsive pursuit at all costs.
How do we know this? Because planning (i.e, goal-setting) has been long proven to be successful only if the process of goal-setting adheres firmly to specific criteria, and one of these is flexibility. The less flexible, the more stress. The more stress the greater the odds for failure.
There is something to be said for the thrust and direction of many, if not most, entrepreneurially-spirited engines . . . something that is most succinctly put as “living for the moment.” Entrepreneurs instinctively seek immediate gratification and are more focused on the “here and now” present moment than those in other careers.
It’s that old thing grandpa used to say about not putting off ’til tomorrow what you can do today. Entrepreneurs are business junkies. They have a powerful need for a quick fix when things start to flounder or deteriorate, or when last week’s “high” begins to wear off. Sound familiar? It’s true. Look around. Ask around.
Small business owners and operators have mostly learned the hard way –through trial and error and intuitive “street smarts”– that ongoing quick-fix actions are the only ones that get results, and keep businesses moving forward when the tide is changing or the current is a backwash.
But swimming upstream for any period of time can be exhausting to say the least, so the idea of taking immediate corrective/adjustment action needs, in reality, to be tapered only with the commitment to take only reasonable risks in the process, and to always imagine the worst case scenario before proceeding.
Try repetitively asking yourself the following question all during any crisis or critical period, hourly if need be:
# # #
FREE blog subscription: Posts RSS Feed
Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116
Open Minds Open Doors
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Aug
01
2011
Okay, Politicos,
now we have
a debt ceiling…
but guess what?
… there’s no FLOOR!
Is there anyone left in America besides politicians and some really dumb, leftwing extremists who think that having a compromise solution to the debt ceiling crisis will suddenly and miraculously eliminate the economic quicksand beneath our feet?
SOLVING THE ECONOMY IS A BUSINESS PROBLEM THAT HAS BUSINESS (not social-reform) SOLUTIONS.
The economy is not a political football for manipulating votes. It is not a feel-good or politically-correct issue. It is not going to be resolved through compromise. It is not a this or that side of the aisle affair. It is ready to explode on every side of every aisle. And in your wallet!
I have never been a “sky is falling” Chicken Little alarmist in my life, about ANYthing, but now? Well, it’s become increasingly harder to ignore the warnings. We have reached a point in our nation’s economic history where we need to stop fantasizing and start facing reality.
At least one leading economy guru is warning that 2012 can begin to bring 50% unemployment, a 90% drop in the stock market, and 3 successive years of 100% annual inflation. This is not a “loose lips” guy. The voice belongs to Robert Wiedemer. Dow Jones calls his work a “bible.” Standard & Poor says his “track-record…demands attention.”
Yeah, well, so what? you might say because you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t own any big deal stock market stock anyway, and your business has made it this far so you know you won’t be unemployed. Besides look at the talent pool you’ll have to draw from. Okay. Maybe. But how about the good odds of getting to $28 a gallon for gas?
You fill up your 18.5 gallon gastank sedan
at the pump… Cha-ching! Okay, let’s see,
that’ll be $560… uh, cash or credit card?
No, huh? Do the math.
And hope you don’t own anything bigger than a mid-size sedan.
The point here is that Mr. Obama inherited a mole hill and has made it into a mountain. In the process, he has done everything humanly possible to avoid solving this business problem economy with business solutions. The Congress hasn’t done a whole lot better but at least they’re trying to cut spending and taxes. That’s a beginning.
As small business owners and operators, we need to accept that the range of the survival options continues to shrink, we must rise to the occasion, face reality, and –in the same entrepreneurial spirit that launched our businesses– begin to fend for ourselves.
This government is 100% unreliable, 100% incompetent, and 100% committed to the destruction of our free enterprise system. We can’t change the fact that we’ve been stupid in the voter booths, or that we’ve failed to play more active roles in influencing others. But we can choose to change that right now. Right this minute.
And the more of us who are willing to step out of our hectic lifestyles to help others see the oppression that’s driving record unemployment and record inflation, that threatens to continue undermining and ultimately destroy the cornerstones of our business and family existences, the better our chances of averting impending disaster.
# # #
Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed
Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116
Open minds open doors
Thanks for visiting. God bless you.
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Jul
02
2011
The Second Civil War
is coming:
Obama’s left-wing,
liberal socialists
vs. thirty million
US small businesses.
Happy Birthday America!
_____________
As we celebrate our “E Pluribus Unim” and “In God We Trust” heritage, as we pause to value the freedom that comes–as Thomas Jefferson said–at the price of eternal vigilance, we need also to take stock in the reality that for nearly three years, we the people have been trapped and sold up the river, by none other than our own President.
Mr. Obama has dishonored us, disowned us, and disengaged himself from the job he was elected to do, and –in the process– has triggered us into The Second Civil War, this one between big government and small business!
Mr. Obama has disgraced and spit on the entire (30-million strong) universe of small business enterprises and on the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great to start with, the very spirit that allowed him to be elected in the first place . . . the very spirit he should be nurturing and rewarding with tax benefits for innovation and job creation.
Small business tax benefits for innovation and job creation remain the only viable key to economic recovery yet, at every turn, the White House arrogantly insists on doing the exact opposite.
Small business innovation and job creation tax benefits remain –after more than three years of harping on it in this blog– the only REAL solution to our still plummeting economy.
It is hard to imagine, when truck drivers and supermarket clerks and burger flippers and barbers and plumbers and roofers and accountants and doctors ALL see that this is true, how the White House can be so adamant.
By obsessively over-taxing and over-regulating small business
–AND by continually berating and discrediting the leadership of the Senate, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and our military–
Mr. Obama is simply demonstrating transference (ask any psychologist) of his own inadequacies and his own complete lack of leadership.
Being tangled up in one’s underwear is not the way to move forward.
As we celebrate this second most important day in America’s calendar – second only to the birth of Christ — let us pray in thankfulness for all that we have achieved as a nation, all that we in small business have achieved in industry and technology and humanity.
Let us be thankful too for our entrepreneurial global leadership and enlightenment (until and in spite of the current White House).
And let us also pray
. . . that we overcome The Obama Depression, that we survive and thrive once more, that we the 30 million of us join together in purpose on November 6, 2012, to turn the tide, and begin to restore our battered economy and rapidly eroding stature as leader of the free world. Use your business clout to make a difference. Start now.
STAND PROUD IN TROUBLED WATERS.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!”
[Thomas Jefferson]
# # #
Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed
Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116
Open minds open doors.
Thanks for visiting. God Bless You.
God Bless America and America’s Troops.
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Apr
26
2011
Reported today on satellite radio news . . .
Nearly 20% of all U.S. income
now comes from the
government!
Why bother working
anymore?
WITH GRATEFUL (Cough! Cough!) APPRECIATION FOR GROWING THIS PREDICAMENT INTO A FULL-BLOWN SMALL BUSINESS QUAGMIRE . . .
-
THANKS TO: Our never-ending bad economy that we’ve been hearing for two-and-a-half years has repeatedly “turned the corner” and is “getting better” (uh, do politicians ever fill their gas tanks, notice foreclosures, or artificially-inflated unemployment rates?)
-
THANKS TO: The complete absence of decisive leadership in the White House (which serves among many other things, to facilitate the evaporation of America’s world leadership posture and respect, and actually set us on a track of anxious retreat in the eyes of emerging nations).
-
THANKS TO: Mr. Obama’s incessant efforts to create boundless dependency on government incompetence (dramatically marked by government’s ever-present lack of business sense, business experience, businesslike conduct, and entrepreneurial spirit . . . the same entrepreneurial spirit that made America great to start with!).
-
THANKS TO: The reckless government spending sprees that embrace idealistic socialist agendas at the expense of citizens losing their jobs, their homes, and their dignity (and front and center is the utter insanity that’s responsible for continuing efforts to ram a cataclysmic-ally extravagant and dibilitatingly expensive healthcare plan down the already constricted throats of small business).
Now you perhaps know more than you want to know, but –ah– what’s behind this leading of lambs to slaughter?
Could it possibly be that we have a government intent on gaining voter control by making all citizens and businesses beholden and grateful for the survivalist handouts that ooze out of wasted government programs?
And how do we initiate a great escape? How do we ever return to the solidity of national purpose and world respect and the high human standards this nation has been built on?
The answer, my friends, is NOT “blowin’ in the wind.”
The answer is NOT in redistributing the wealth, nor in providing safe haven to all illegal immigrants, nor taxing small businesses –literally– to death.
The answer is in taking action now. The answer is in standing tall for your small business enterprise and ambitions. The answer is in voicing your objections to increased and increasing government control and over-regulation. The answer is in doing the very best you can possibly do every day to strengthen and anchor your business interests.
The answer is to fight corruption and politics
with integrity and heart,
The answer is to light your own fire and keep it burning in the minds of all those who support you and the work you do – your employees, customers, suppliers, advisors, investors, and the geographical communities where your business lives.
The answer lies within the purpose of your business soul.
Take your opportunities and run with them.
# # #
Your FREE subscription: Posts RSS Feed
Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Mar
10
2011
In business and life:
THINGS AREN’T
ALWAYS WHAT
THEY SEEM
The business world is filled
with its share of illusionists.
Look in the mirror. Are you
coughing from the smoke?
We are under relentless media bombardment of fake unemployment numbers. The make-believe news has risen to howling proportions. It’s the White House’s feeble attempt to have us all swallow that the economy is on the upswing (which failure to confirm requires, merely, a trip to your nearest gaspump, with $8 a gallon coming soon to you!).
Just the word “gaspump” puts a gasp in your ump, right?
(Am I imaging this? I doubt it!)
Looking back to November, 2008, should remind us all that in business as well as government (and all of life!), what you see is not always what you get!
Though most of us think the Latin phrase “Caveat Emptor” — Let the buyer beware– first surfaced in the Ralph Nader consumerism movement of the 1960s, the birth of its use was in fact claimed in 1523, would you believe? So, bottom line here is that deception in business has been around for awhile.
Talk with anyone who sailed through the last few years of the “Dot Gone” Revolution in the 1990s, and you’ll hear sad tales of almost jumping out of tall buildings. I lost $500,000 with a legal signed contract in hand. Another family member lost $1.5 million with a signed contract in hand. The lesson? Signed documents mean nothing!
Where does that leave us? Having to be V~E~R~Y cautious about others we do business with. I’m not so much talking about customers (though big-ticket product and service customers have been known to take what they can and run). I’m really referring more to employment and investor and loan arrangements — big bucks deals!
But I’m also keying in on small business ripoffs that cost big-time hours and effort.
I need to make sales to eat.
It’s often hard to do due diligence on a small-time business down the road or in the next town enough to find out that the owner is a scam artist, looking to con as much information from your brain as possible, for free!
Experience has taught me some, but –in the end– I still have to sell my services. Selling services requires giving services. You can sample the pastrami in a deli, but any kind of consultant (except maybe a pastrami consultant) has to provide a sampling of know-how and experience, and that takes time. And time costs money.
So figuring out how to best parcel out samples of your expertise in order to hook the fish but not lose your shirt is the ultimate challenge. And you may never win if you don’t approach prospects with reserved skepticism. I’m not suggesting distrust. I trust everyone until they prove otherwise. I’m talking about being yellow-light-cautious.
Not everyone has your integrity. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone functions completely on her or his own. (You’ve heard of silent partners? Wives? In-laws?)
There’s not a whole lot we can do about gas prices, but we always have control of whom we choose to do business with. Yellow lights are only followed by red lights!
Stay alert. Don’t get hurt!
Posts RSS Feed FREE blog subscription
# # #
302.933.0116 Hal@BusinessWorks.US
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Feb
24
2011
$200 Fill-ups?
No joke, business owners!
Obama pushes for $8 a gallon.
Do the math.
Unable to succeed at squashing America’s entrepreneurial spirit and controlling small businesses and professional practices –though certainly not for lack of trying– the Obama Administration is now making the biggest mistake of its (hopefully half-over with) life.
Mr. Obama is quietly seeking to drive the price of gas to
$8 per gallon.
Average gas tank capacity means that
a fill-up will cost $200!
Crushing not only the travel freedom of the general public, $8 per gallon gas rates will put many of America’s 30 million small businesses out of business. Imagine the financial paralysis that will set in when shipping and delivery costs are doubled.
Who could think the skyrocketing fares of air travel, air cargo, taxicabs, buses, and every conceivable type of personal and commercial truck shipment will not drastically impact small business and professional practices.
Do we even want to consider the impact
on emergency services expenses?
Why, you might ask, would anyone (let alone Mr. Obama) be looking to undermine even further the only real opportunity that exists to restore health to America’s economy: small business job creation?
See if you can follow this path of crooked reasoning exposed in last night’s Washington Times Editorial. Here are some excerpts:
A perfect storm of foreign and domestic policy choices by the Obama Administration has paved the way for European-style energy prices to arrive on these shores. Far from being alarmed, President Obama sees the prospect of $8 a gallon gas as an opportunity.
When it comes to energy, the White House has sought to augment government controls to prevent the “long-term threat of climate change, which if left unchecked could result in violent conflict, terrible storms, shrinking coastlines and irreversible catastrophe,” in Mr. Obama’s words. Making energy more expensive is exactly what the administration’s “cap and trade” scheme is meant to do.
The theory is that pricier power will be used more frugally, which in turn will appease Mother Earth into blessing us with cooler weather. Mr. Obama expressed the same outlook in May when – with oil at $61 a barrel – he signed a memorandum dictating to automakers the kinds of cars they will be allowed to sell. At the time, Mr. Obama noted with trepidation, “The impetus for action would fade when gas prices started to go back down.”
It’s not possible for domestic production to relieve the pressure from international uncertainty. Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have blocked drilling in places like Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in millions of acres of federal lands and in offshore locations. Mr. Obama even took advantage of the BP oil disaster to shut down operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Obama points to the small amount of oil currently produced at home to conclude, “We can’t drill our way out of the problem.” That’s only a true statement as long as the current policies place 67 percent of America’s reserves off-limits.
The events unfolding in Egypt, Libya and throughout the Middle East are beyond American control but not outside our influence. Fear and uncertainty drive oil prices higher, and Mr. Obama has done nothing to restore confidence that the United States will act firmly to promote stability in the region.
Instead of addressing these concerns openly, pledging support for the remaining U.S. allies or deploying military assets to show that this country will not allow an interruption in the flow of goods through the Suez Canal, Mr. Obama has calibrated his tepid response to ensure no Muslim mob is offended.
We’re now paying the price for weak leadership, but it’s about more than just paying a few bucks more at the local Chevron station. Every product and service depends on the price of oil and the price of electricity. The vast majority of goods hit the shelves after being transported by aircraft, ships and trucks powered by fossil fuels.
That’s why, as economists note, there is a direct correlation between the number of miles vehicles travel in a year and the nation’s Gross Domestic Product. Unless there’s an immediate U-turn in the domestic and international agenda, we’re headed for rough economic times.
BOTTOM LINE: Should stampeding gas price increases be a concern of small businesses and professional practices?
If you’re not sure, I respectfully suggest you consider re-reading the nine excerpted paragraphs above.
If you disagree, you are surely a few quarts low on entrepreneurial spirit, or you are so rich that a couple of thousand extra dollars a month to keep your gas tank filled makes no difference.
If you agree, remember there’s strength in numbers, and there are 30 million of us.
Well?
# # #
YOUR FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS BLOG, CLICK: Posts RSS Feed
www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Feb
12
2011
America’s small business
community is 30 million strong.
On one issue –the economy– we
stand shoulder to shoulder
with one voice:
The economy can only be saved by new job creation.
New jobs come –only– from small business.
(Check history!)
It’s time to face the fact that America’s small businesses drive America’s economy. Period.
It’s time to step up to the plate, Mr. Obama, and exercise the kind of domestic leadership you were elected to provide.
Without a strong economy, there is nothing else you can provide. Your social agenda will continue to dissolve. Our nation’s image will continue to deteriorate. Your support will continue to erode. And the kind of legacy you surely pursue will become more elusive each day.
But you can turn the tide.
You need only to choose to stop being driven by fear of losing face and votes, and show the world the leadership you appear to be capable of.
Bottom line, Mr. Obama:
Stop being an under-achiever!
Your “pulling up short” behavior simply doesn’t do justice to the promises you represent. Surely you can do better than that?
Instead of:
-
Blockading and berating small businesses at every turn, and catering to big businesses that are over-run with lethargic 9 to 5 attitudes and disreputable union leaders . . . corporate giants entrenched in maintaining the status quo.
-
Creating artificial government “jobs” that simply add to the deficit . . . how many people does it take to fill a pothole? (A State issue? And where do the states take their lead?)
-
Making lots of PR sound-bites and photo ops to illustrate your administration’s dedication to business (and setting up token programs through the pathetic SBA and other smoke and mirror entities to try to look good to voters). . . I served the SBA Advisory Council for two, two-year terms; it’s a farce run by corporate giants.
. . . how about trying a bold new tact?
What, for example, could happen if you actually threw Federal support behind small business development by providing genuine tax incentives for job creation?
What, for example, could happen by introducing genuine tax incentives for meaningful small business expansion, and for the creation of entrepreneurial and innovative new revenue streams?
Will you please set the stage for entrepreneurial input by taking the high road? In other words:
-
Can you start to genuinely demonstrate a more receptive attitude toward small business owners?
-
Can you show a little entrepreneurial spirit yourself by taking the reasonable risk of rolling up your sleeves and setting to work with non-politicized teams of America’s great entrepreneurs? (This includes looking past just those who have worked with and on your various campaigns.)
-
Can you put political ambition aside long enough to recruit some active “straighten-out-the-economy” participation by small business? (This means doing far more than just dispatching small armies of researchers and interviewers and surveyors into consumer, industrial and professional marketplaces to “report back.”)
So far, it seems to ALL of the hundreds of small business owners I informally communicate with regularly, that your administration has done everything humanly possible to alienate entrepreneurs and small business owners and operators and managers, instead of tap into their experience and knowledge, and embrace their spirit.
Small business owners and operators and managers and entrepreneurs know how to be productive.
They know how to turn on a dime.
They know how to create and manage marketplace opportunities.
They know how to do whatever it takes with a passionate sense of urgency.
They know how to make things happen.
It’s hard to know the source of numbers that have crossed your desk, but reality is that there are indeed 30 million of us who are tired of being stepped on, over, under, and around. And many of us care more about turning things around than we do about making political points.
We truly want the opportunity to work with government to turn things around, but there must be an ongoing and mutual sense of purpose and respect coming from the White House. There has not been so far.
Just say you’re willing to try, Mr. Obama, and let’s get started! Yes, it’s that simple.
# # #
YOUR FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS BLOG, CLICK: Posts RSS Feed
www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
Make today a GREAT day for someone!
Aug
09
2009
Reality Check!
Just in case you’re star-struck with the idea of starting your own business venture, be aware that there’s a little more to it than flipping the black and red “Yes, We’re Open” and “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign twice a day.
There’s . . .
- money (at least twenty times more than you can even imagine needing!)
- industry experience, training and know-how
- knowledge of the market and the competition
- customers (you’re going to need a few to start)
- suppliers (you’re going to need a few to start)
- location (which is often critical, depending on the nature of the business)
- utilities
- a formal written business plan
- investor and/or loan payback arrangements
- basic office and business supplies
- inventory of products and/or services
- credibility (industry/community associations?)
- advertising/marketing preparation
- advertising/marketing implementation
- an accountant
- a lawyer
- an advisory board
- employees
- a bank and bank account
- maybe a post office box
- maybe charge card or PayPal arrangements
- maybe a charge card
- furniture and equipment
…this could go on for pages!
And don’t tie-up your brain with this next thought, but you surely need to be conscious of the fact that 9 out of 11 new businesses fail in the first 3 years, and that it takes 5 years on average just to break even financially.
Be aware that most businesses fail because of poor management. Period. It’s common to hear that a new business didn’t make it because it was under-capitalized, but if you think about that for 2.5 seconds and can be honest about it, under-capitalization is: poor management!
You can be a free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit all you want, but reality dictates that you have to do some planning and have a ton more money than you think you need just to get up and running. This is a “haste-makes-waste” point in time where shortcuts don’t work.
Of course there are always Steve Jobs and Bill Gates success stories about starting in a garage and working “on a shoestring,” and I wish for you to be that kind of successful, but reality is that these two superstars are each one in trillions.
If all the above thoughts have fueled your fire instead of discouraged you into retreating to the life of a bottom of the barrel employee, you might actually have what it takes to make it work. Go for it! (Oh, and if you need to call me for help, do it please before running out of money! Thank you.)
# # #
Input aways welcome: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar
# # #
This blog free via list-protected email: click RSS Feed above…$1.99/mo on AMAZON Kindle. Creative? Add your own 7 words to the 314-day 7-Word Story (under RSS) We’re making it up as we go! GET Hal Alpiar short story in Sept. release book from Nightengale Press: THE ART OF GRANDPARENTING Amazon, B&N, OR order special (signed by Hal) pre-publication $22.45 total check only (includes s&h), payable & mail to: TheWriterWorks.com, LLC @PO Box 1236, Millsboro, DE 19966. Include continental US ship-to address. 9/13 is Grandparent’s Day!
Mar
16
2009
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.
OH?
…time to examine both the cause of business failures and the solution.
The cause is something like a one-two punch:
1) For the past 18 months, mainstream media have been delivering a staggering succession of doom and gloom jabs to keep professional practices and businesses off balance by focusing one of every three headlines on how bad things are, and then beating the economic woes into the ground.
[And guess what, mainstream media? -- Professional practice and business owners and operators and managers, are sick of your negativity! We have stopped buying your poor excuses for print and broadcast news, and many of us have withdrawn our advertising dollars. And so now you are starting to suffer. Time magazine's list of top ten newspapers that are about to go under is startling to say the least, but, unfortunately, well deserved.]
2) The federal government‘s pitifully naive and sorely misdirected “bailouts” and “stimulous package” reactions (note “reactions” not “responses”) that actually fail to bail out or stimulate anything of any consequence in the direction of economic revitalization, have done their damnedest to deliver the knockout punch!
Only trouble is that the entrepreneurial spirit lives on, and will never be destroyed wherever free-thinking people exist. Small business people know that it’s small business people who produce the vast majority of jobs in America. And small business people know that the ONLY way the economy gets stimulated is with incentives for small business to create jobs. And small business people know that there’s not a single penny allocated for this purpose in government’s (almost laughable were it not for the fact it’s our taxes being fed to those who choose not to work!) stimulus guise.
So here’s the 2-way solution:
1) Mainstream media pulls itself up and starts pounding our ears and eyes with positive, inspirational, motivational messages, and
2) The federal government hires a team of independent small business management consultants and proven entrepreneurs to show the corporate giants how it’s done (economic survival) with no cash and no bailouts and no stimulus, and how to take that survive mode into a thrive mode with 6-7 days-a-week of hard “lean and mean” work, networking, some reasonable risk-taking, some tough ROI due-dated venture capital, and the rallying support of familiy and friends.
Yeah, right. And how sick is it that reality renders this solution not even worthy of dreaming about? Oh, right, I almost forgot, times have changed.
Besides, who needs dreams now that we’re up to our ears in “hope”?
God Bless You and Good Night! halalpiar
# # #
CLICK ON Posts RSS Feed FOR YOUR FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO THIS BLOG
ADD TO THE DAILY GROWING 7-Word Story started 186 days ago (inside a coffin). Click on the link to the right, or go to “BOOKS” tab at the top of this page, then to the top headline link.