Working While Building A Business

On Sep 23, 2011, at 2:25 PM, Robert wrote:

I understand your view - start a business because even if you fail it's the quickest way to learn.. and hardship should not affect those with a burning desire to be self employed. 

***You do not fail if you do not quit, and I think you are applying an objective estimation of failure, not a subjective; to an individual, failure is subjective...***

Some people do start businesses with no experience.. they're probably either lucky, extremely talented or have an extremely high level of motivation.

***You mean succeed with no experience...  plenty start with no experience, but again, you are using a objective definition of success...***

They're like prodigies, so rare..

***I don't think so...***

most people start businesses after their forties

***Nothing to support that...***

But that's not your point - your point is that wherever you are you will learn more by starting now. OK, I accept that.

Following on question - if you have to work 8 hours a day anyway, better it be in something closely related to the business you're working on in the evenings and weekends than working behind the burger counter.

***there is nothing closely related to your business, because your business will be new...***

Or would you argue that such a job would reduce your motivation to be self employed?

***Partially...***

Or that you would spend more time worrying about your career, getting qualifications, working overtime, that you would not actually be able to work on your business after work?

***Partially... mainly it is there is no reason not to go straight to it.... it's social conditioning to be "successful" by some objective norm.  I really do not think hesitancy is in the area of "needing to eat" but in the area of "lacking passion"...  you got to get to that match of suffering (passion) over something that needs to be changed and the joy in working on the problem. 

All these successful people in big biz and big govt, with good educations, nice careers, well-respected... they are the ones who bring us war, genocide, bailouts, torture, spying, and general lawlessness.  They choose decay over reform, they'd rather rule over ruins than be a shoe clerk in paradise.  They are eager for resistance, so they can bring overwhelming violence to bear.  They offer security for those who sign on.  It is extremely attractive.  

Starting a business, solving a problem, serving others is an example of nonviolent resistance.  Those huge businesses that would not exist without subsidies, that is the violence-backed mulcting of taxpayers, are threatened by a start-up.  The skills to work for them and the skills to start up and thrive in self-employment are inimicable. Problem is, they are the only ones hiring.  

So the problem is 2 part: there is no "closely related field" and anyone hiring will teach you anti-creativity.  If you want to be self-employed, you got to go straight at it.

This exchange did precipitate a suggestion for employment, which I sent out to the listserv...  in essence, it is to make money teaching your passion, which I suppose would help by allowing one to work in a closely related field...  teaching what you are passionate about...  it follows...

Folks,

If you are concerned about the economy, especially as it relates to yourself, let me pass on some advice I got way back when, from an old-timer, when I mentioned I was starting my own business. He said make sure you've got something you can do to make money when times are tough. If you are going to be self-employed, there will be tight times. There is always demand and big turnover for bank tellers, short order cooks, customs brokers... if you need to make some money quick, you can always get a short term job doing something like that. 

At the time I was reading a book about Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's greatest swordsman. He was so poor at one point he had no sword, was obliged to fight with a wooden copy. To make ends meet he tutored kids in calligraphy. I though, hmmm... maybe I will teach. No matter what happens in Washington or on Wall Street, there will always be schools and teaching. 

Well, teaching, noncredit that is, is a wide open field, no credentials required, and no end to the opportunities. For me I like the creative part of putting together my classes (product development in essence) and then marketing it. That was 25 years ago, and both parts are much easier now. It led to a book that has been gratifying, and a fun side line.

I've never advised anyone to pursue any specific business as you know, but I am advising everyone to take up teaching as a sideline. Why? Recall my inquiries a few years ago as to why people do not start businesses? Fear and making ends meet where big reasons. I just finished a series of exchanges with a lad who wanted to know a path to self-employment that included working for others, since he needed to eat. I told him, start the biz, and flip burgers to make ends meet. I should have told him to start teaching. You decide your topic, but everyone should have this fall back. Indeed, if times are tough, you gain distinction by teaching, as opposed to collecting unemployment, or worse. And is sure beats flipping burgers.

I wrote a book on this, and you can have it free at the bottom of this page (it's on amazon too if you want it in print...)

http://perishyourpublisher.com/

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And Pakistan's Foreign Minister

Someday to be a Prime Minister, here is the Pakistani Foreign Minister!  It's a plot!

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Hong Kong Employment Best in 13 Years

Hong Kong and USA were formed at the same time by the same people with the same philosophy.  Hong Kong pretty much stayed to its free market origins.  USA changed, mainly because it got big.  In a big democracy, it only takes a few people to hijack the whole thing. Wars, bailout, torture, lawlessness... it is at the direction of very few people.  USA unemployment is rising up up up, but in Hong Kong, they have the least in 13 years.  Hong Kong has freedom.  USA does not.  Hong Kong deregulated wine, and there was a tremendous wave of new job creation as a result.  People in Hong Kong and China began to get the health benefits of wine flowing through their veins.  Argentina, Chile, Australia and Europe have been doing well with this new market.  Their wines are good.  USA wines have a bad reputation, because the huge USA corps with promotion tax dollars went in and offered schlock first, and when you do not have to earn a profit, because taxpayers bail you out anyway, any sales channel will do.  USA wine reputation may never recover.  And you pay for it, you paid for it.

The government policies are sucking the oxygen out of the economy, and killing off small business.  Job #1 is to end corporate subsidies.  Also end corporate taxes, since it is impossible to tax a business.  All costs are borne by the consumer.  Any business tax is passed on to the ultimate consumer, if the business does not die (if it does, then that business was in effect the ultimate consumer.)

Subsidies contribute to the sucking of air out of the economy.  Regulations break the back of small businesses who cannot comply.  Let property rights and contracts regulate business.

And then freedom.  Hong Kong deregulated wine and spirits and employment grew.  In USA we are hyper-regulating and "paying for" free health care (ugh!... if I am sick, I want cure, not care!)  All we will get less, worse, expensive and slow.  If we want to see the US economy flower again, then deregulate something anything.  Deregulate medicine.  Eliminate the FDA, forbid anyone laid off (check the social security numbers) from ever working for government again, cut the govt budget by that much, and then let medicine grow and flourish and push the unemployment rate back down.

It happened when we deregulated telephones.  And nobody new the internet would follow.  Deregulate medicine, and the undreamed good will happen.



A change in leaders will make no difference, just as there was no difference between Bush and Obama.

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2012 Elections

Hmmm... the president of Brazil...


She and Hillary are calling for more women in politics... and no longer are the positions to be limited to the supine.

The Prime Minister of Thailand...


The front runner in Taiwan elections...


Maybe Derek Flint should look into this...

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On Eating While Starting Up

Occasionally I get into discussion with past students who want me to expand on some part of what I teach.  For me it helps me clarify in my own mind my ideas, and of course is fodder for my next book.

As I watch our economy falter, one aspect I am watching is the portion of our economy that is welfare-based.  For example, Yum Foods, which runs KFC and owns Pepsi, is trying to grow its business by qualifying to accept food stamps at its restaurants.    Welfare recipients constitute a class that is detrimental to business.  Landlords that accept Section 8 tenants find their properties go downhill quickly.  Hospitals are afraid of too many welfare patients. Grocery stores that accept food stamps (EBT) find an increase in shoplifting and other detrimental activities.  I was astonished back in the 1980s when a  Bay Area grocery chain announced it was severing itself from the food stamp program. Just not worth it.

A friend of mine explained how she got around the restrictions on an EBT card.  She buys tuna or another high cost allowed food on the EBT, and then returns it later for cash, and uses the cash for smokes and booze.  EBT laundering.  This is at a Safeway.  If you are junkie in a hurry, you can just have a small business run your card and then they hand you 50% of the transaction fee.

Narcs and other cops will tell you drug crime and petty theft jumps when the state hands out the money to the "poor."  EBT cards are commonly found of people arrested (wasn't welfare supposed to keep people from crime?)

A San Jose Mercury News reporter did an expose on how the CIA was aware that drug cartel people were flooding the ghettos with dope (paid for by welfare) and then laundering the money out of the country to support clandestine activities.  When caught red-handed, the CIA would claim they were just following the dope to catch the big players.  In any event, a neat trick:  hand out welfare indiscriminately, flood the ghetto with dope, make dope a crime, and advance genocide on people brown or darker, use the money to advance the empire.  The liberals get their program of domestic genocide advanced, and the conservative get their program of int'l genocide advanced.  This is why it does not stop.  O, and Gary Webb, who wrote the stories for San Jose Mercury News, finally committed suicide, according to the coroner: he shot himself twice, in the face. With a shotgun. That shows serious determination.  On someone's part. Let that be a lesson to you.

The world can be a wicked place, and that is good to know.  But the big glamorous world is supported by welfare and fraud and some very ugly fundamentals.  The skills required for this world are alien to the skills required for a free market.  If you wish to be self-employed, there is no training or preparation working for the the welfare/warfare state.  There is only serving customers.

USA is supposed to be an example of a polity exempt from class warfare.  We may have a classless society, but it is pretty clear there is an elite class that makes war on people outside its class.  There is a class that insists there is no class, while it makes war on people outside of its class.

Anyway, I get the impression that very many people want a plan of action they can follow and succeed.  Since the market needs things not yet available, there is no real plan of action, except to get thee in front of customers. Then what?  Well, they will tell you.  See Steve Jobs.

But people want a sure plan, success that can be measured in money.  That is alien to a free market.

On Sep 19, 2011, at 2:51 PM, RG wrote:

On the 'flip' side, you could spend two years flipping burgers and still not end up with a business. Would the experience gained be worth it... is it valuable experience to have tried and failed, and is one more likely to succeed the next time?

***You only fail when you quit.  Why would you fail?***

Problem is until one has actually done it

***So do it while flipping burgers....***

all others can do is sit back and laugh as you regale them with tales of your entrepreneurial exploits from behind the burger counter.

*** A strange vision for your future....***

 You wouldn't be investing any money either since all your salary would go towards subsistence, reducing chances of success further.

***You do not need money to start a business, you need customers.  You do not need money to ascertain customers.***

Web dev and online marketing is grunt work veiled with respectability for those in it, however, I have seen what it's done for businesses and I see it as just another cost of business.

*** BUt that is true of flipping burgers, but there is little chance you would settle down to a life of flipping burgers.  On the other hand, the world is full of 50 year old underemployed web developers.***

I take your comment very seriously that working for someone else would not tell me what to do, however it would surely make someone more able to execute the business plan when it comes time to do so.

***No.  Every business is unique, and since your value is in design, and wealth is division of labor, there is nothing of real value you can learn somewhere else.  Might as well flip burgers.***

The question is how long can someone take working a minimum wage job, and will the flame of hope die out before they jack it in and decide to hit the rat race, intending to start a business the conventional way by gaining some experience first?

***You don't fail until you quit.  Working for other is not a real option, so why not go straight to it?***

Are your kids and nephews set on starting businesses and are they willing to work at McD, seriously?

***Versions thereof...***

That's amazing if true, you certainly have a different outlook on business success and I need to get my head around it.

***the list of people who started flipping burgers and went on to biz success is quite long indeed...***

I know people start businesses from nothing and that shows anyone can do it regardless of background, but I just get the same feeling as when clicking buy on one of these long copy sales letters with all the highlighted text and a 365 day money back guarantee.

***You know those are a scam, so it is not an option.  There is nothing to keep you from testing hypothesis A or B tomorrow, in front of retailers.***

I would seriously love that to be the way to go about things, but it seems a high risk strategy.. one could either make it quickly or spend many years struggling.

***If you spend many years struggling, you would anyway.  The struggle is due to the degree to which you are at variance from customer satisfaction.***

At least in a job gaining experience one gets to smooth ones income over a lifetime, what economists and insurance brokers would call acting rationally.

***If income is your goal, which is rarely the goal of an entrepreneur starting a business, contrary to what academics and salesmen have to say.  Certainly those who tend to fail claim to be motivated by income, but that is just play-acting, a bit of a scam on the part of a person looking to secure some funding.  What motivates the entrepreneur is solving a problem and the joy that comes from working on it.  The money is tertiary at best, and in any event, it is lifestyle, not income that is the payoff.

John

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National Language Nonsense

One of the silly ideas is a country should have a national language, that some how, non-native speakers are detrimental.  The fact of the matter is, the more polyglot a place, the more peace and prosperity.

North Korea admits only one language.  Switzerland has four official languages, French, German, Italian and English.  Hong Kong is freer yet, and most of the population does not even speak the national language, Mandarin (although they can read it), and fewer yet speak the power language, English.  Another bastion of freedom, a totally voluntary country, the Vatican, has a dead language as its official language, and probably more languages spoken per capita than any place on earth or in history.

If and when someone in USA finds it advantageous to speak English, they will learn and use it.  If not, why should that person bear the cost in time and money and effort to learn the language?  Why should one person's opinion oblige another to perform some task?  Why should third parties, the taxpayers be obliged to pay for language lessons for the first party, demanded by 2nd party busybodies?  If anything, if we love peace and prosperity, we should mind our own business when it comes to what languages people prefer to speak.

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Smoked Whitefish

A wee parable dawned on me while I was getting a masters degree in education, that explained how we get into such messes as our deleterious educational situation.  It goes like this:

A customer walks up to a grocery store meat counter and orders one pound of smoked whitefish.  Butcher says "very good..." and proceeds to open a four ounce can of Alpo, and drop the contents onto a piece of butcher paper, wraps it up and hands it over.  "$1,000, please..."

Now the customer is a little astonished, this must be a joke.  "Aaaa... this is not smoked whitefish..."

The butcher replies annoyed, "You think I don't know what smoked whitefish is?  This is smoked whitefish..."

The customer shoots back "I saw you open a can of Alpo..."

The butcher "Don't come in here and try to start trouble..."

The customer tries another tack, "Well, $1,000 for smoked whitefish...!?"

The butcher, "Don't you want the best for your family?"

In desperation the customer notes it is not a pound as ordered, but only 4 ounces, what is in a can of Alpo, to which the butcher replies "Are you calling me a liar?"

"Well, forget it..." says the customer, "I don't want it now..."

To which the Butcher replies, too late, you ordered it, I delivered it, and now you will pay, and the customers credit card is taken and charged.

Defeated, the customer goes home and feeds the family on 4 ounces of Alpo, and the family asks "what is it?"

"Smoked whitefish."  No one in the family likes smoked whitefish after that.

A big reason we are bust is education is not education, food is not food, insurance is not insurance, health care is not health care, it is all something else merely named as such.  And we take pride in our education, food, insurance, health care, etc.  Sigh.

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Defining Profit

A very successful fresh fish monger in the UK sold out his business, for despair of bankers and politicians doing what is right, and now fights the good fight here...

http://www.cobdencentre.org/

they refer to the austrian school of economics, which argues for free markets...

mises.org

Both sides agree on the problem (if not definitions) and one side says you'll never get rid of govt, so work for reform; the other side says you'll never get reform, so work to get rid of govt.   Problem is, they are both right.

What this leaves is secede in place, like the Amish or orthodox Jews or Sikhs, etc.   But those are all separatist movements, what about those who do not desire to separate, but participate, yet obviate the damage done by state?

To me this is an interesting problem...  but back to definitions, before one can even discuss a topic, definitions must be agreed upon... let's take one term in economics, profit. There many definitions, most contrary to another.

Profit as motivation, psychological, the goal: here the idea is profit is what what gets the ball rolling, what motivates the entrepreneur, both the austrians school and its arch-enemy the keynesians agree on this, and Keynes refined it as "animal spirits" putting a subhuman aspect to it.  I've met plenty of people who have great ideas for making "profits" or lots of money, but the are not entrepreneurs, at least by my definition.  Entrepreneurs solve problems, and make a living at it.  It is the joy in alleviating suffering that motivates the entrepreneur.  Always has been, always will be.


Some people call profits simply what is left over after all expenses are paid.


Drucker referred to profits as just another business expense.


Bankers study a given companies profits to judge against an industry standard, so its purpose if not definition is unique.


These are mere aspects of one term that ought to be simple when discussing economics, and not an exhaustive list.  If you'd like you head to swim, read what wiki has to say about profits.

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Self-Employment as Personal Transformation

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Robert wrote:

John,

Quick question, if the topic interests you - I agree with you that self-employment is self-improvement, and perhaps becoming self-employed requires self-improvement. It may take more or less time to achieve it depending on what knowledge and skills you start with. Assuming one wants to go into importing based on design, what career paths should one consider to accelerate that process?

Thanks, Robert

Hey Robert,

Thanks for your question...

I think you mean what stepping stones or backfill-experience kinds of jobs will help you get going?  To which I'd say the path would be whatever puts you directly in front of a customer asking a question, whether you are plan A trying to test out a new idea, or plan B get feedback on off-the-shelf items.

The idea is the customer is going to casually state requirements that will be quite a challenge for you, and adapting to the challenges is one of the  the self-improvement aspects.

There is a problem/solution fundamental to the progress, in which one assesses the challenge and the work necessary, and then assesses the personal challenges, mostly in terms of resources: time money energy experience intelligence spirit physical...  a whole bunch of things.  It is an ongoing progress of can do/no can do...  there is while this is going on a carving up of the challenge itself, and saying, "well, if we don't try all that, just this, then it gets within my scope."  Plus there, of course, the "if I can just be more patient..."  or "if I can learn project management..." or whatever which is thrown into the mix.

So this roiling pot comes with an idea to the customer, and the customer says what they want...  and then as they say, back to the drawing board, at all levels.  Yes, the customers is the most important thing in business, but getting the product or service right is the hardest thing.  And that product or service is you.  So it gets personal.

So the career path is directly to the customer, front and center.

Does this make sense?

John

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