Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Answering the Two Hesitations to Business Start-up

Probably a decade ago I surveyed my 1000 or so listserv members on how come people do not start up businesses, given the know-how to do so.

Now, a good portion of my seminar participants have always been the already employed, looking for an alternative.  Early on I realized, and even mention it in my book, the flight attendant with all of the advantages in the world someone does not launch a business.  How come?  Busy working!  Dentists, truck drivers, bank tellers, you name it, the employed have security and routine, and routine is important.  For this reason I'd advised kill your TV, take the 24 hours per week devoted to TV (remember those?) and work on your biz in the same time slot.  But even then, the underlying fears emerged. The answer as to "how come no go" got down to two parts in essence: funding and health insurance.

I suppose I can argue all I want that no one needs funds to start-up, only customers, but the fact is people see funding as extremely unlikely, and if their mind runs to contemporary banking, they are probably right.  No bank is going to fund anything that is not necessarily predatory.  The bank wants you to bring them an edge.

As to the health care thing, the mind boggles at the effectiveness of social conditioning.  Without health care insurance, all is lost.  Why would anyone think that?  But almost everyone does.  I recall when almost no one had health insurance, but of course the care was better and you could afford it with your own money.  But attitudes have changed, and prices have gone up, at least because of "insurance."

But now an effective response to each problem has emerged, thus wiping away major reasons for hesitation in starting up a business.

1. Health care.  A couple of evangelical groups have revived an ancient health care support scheme that is Romney/Obamacare exempt.  http://samaritanministries.org/  and http://mychristiancare.org/Medi-Share/  .  For each of these you have to affirm a faith statement and a lifestyle affirmation.  In essence both of these are narrowing the risk pool to clean living protestants and passing the savings on to the members.  And it is not insurance, it is co-op in which you commit to send in money each month and it is directed to the co-op members who have medical bills.  Expect monthly costs of $300 vs $1700. Now I found and could not affirm their faith statement, and junkies and homosexuals need not apply, but that is not the point (live with freedom of association).  Study the structure and form one for your community, and escape the horrors of Romney/Obamacare.  (I have a .pdf on tontines, and ancient insurance practice, that may be instructive as well, email me for a copy.)

2. Funding.  What if your business never had to get a loan approval from a banker? What if, as all major religions ethical systems teach, a loan is always a charitable event, and never a business event? That is to say, money is loaned at no interest to a member of the community who will endeavor to pay it back over time.  Never happen?  In a case of Deus ex machina https://www.communitysourcedcapital.com/  offers exactly that.  You still need customers first, but you'll never hope for loan approval from a banker, you loan gets funded by interested parties.  Now I know I just mentioned https://www.communitysourcedcapital.com/ yesterday, but in another context, and I want to add this - since the corporation is not an ethical business structure, the co-op, which is, is uniquely structured to accept the loans from its customers which are its owners.  The mind boggles!

You need to shift your definition of wealth from how much you can personally accumulate to the range of products and services the widest range of people can afford with their own money (which of course includes you.)  Comity vs polity, access vs credit score, prosperity vs aggression.

You cannot spot these emerging good things unless your weltanshauung might include them.  think differently.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.


1 comments:

Nick said...

John, you said: "the corporation is not an ethical business structure"

This intrigues me, I'd like to learn why you think this... have you any posts that speak to this point?

Thanks!