Begin it now

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now."

This is a quote variously attributed to Goethe, and to the Scottish mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray.

Whoever said it, good on 'ya.

It often seems like the hardest thing you can do is beginning something new. Yet the most rewarding, life-enhancing thing you can do as a human being is to begin something new, and productive in your life.

The slow startup movement solves this dilemma better than any other scenario I can imagine. I've done it myself many times and I've watched friends employ it to build wonderful new lives. Now I'm fortunate enough to be doing a slow startup once again, and watching clients not only doing them, but loving the process.

Boldness does have genius, magic and power in it. So does dreaming about, planning, and then taking those first new steps.

That's what makes the difference. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just start. You'll be better for it.

The great risk in NOT starting your own enterprise

The old way of thinking about starting your own business said that it was very risky.

The newer, smarter way of thinking about startups is the exact inverse.

It is much riskier to NOT start your own enterprise under these economic circumstances.

I am not a doomsday guy. Just the opposite. However, everyone I know that works in large organizations, especially those that have been through a few years of that grind, know that these are rough times and getting worse. The security that used to be the hallmark of large companies is long gone in the U.S. economy.

This broken macro economic mess is a risk to all of us. However, broken stuff is also the surest place to look for opportunities that I know of.

The security we all want is in our own hands. Everyone has marketable skills they can deploy in the service of fixing problems.

Who knows where this current credit crisis will lead. It's certainly a big correction. The Dow dropped by the largest amount since 9/11 this week, led by the gang of big financials. The front page of the biz section of the NY Times on Thursday Nov 8th was dominated by G.M.'s $39 billion write-down for the quarter, yet another multi-billion dollar mortgage related loss, and decreased holiday spending. Great, a crummy Christmas too.

Yet on that same day, parked back at page 10, there was a story headlined, "Small Business Flourishing Despite a Weakened Economy". It was a good piece by Brent Bowers, that highlighted the emerging reality that small businesses are the engine for job growth, especially in troubled economic times. My local paper, headlined tonight's business section with a story about leaders of Wisconsin's emerging biotech firms enthusiastically speeding forward, full speed ahead.

I'm not going to tell you that small business startups are all an exercise in skipping off to a happy ending.

I am going to tell you that if you don't plan and start your own enterprise, your financial security will be at greater risk in the coming years. Period.

You may make less money. You may make more. You will have more control over your time. You will have more personal say over your own economic security.

You tell me what's risky about that. You can do it friend.



What Economic Slowdown? by Brent Bowers


Brent Bower's article links at the NY Times

Brent Bowers, a longtime small-business editor at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, is author of The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs, now out in paperback (Doubleday).

His column In the Hunt scrutinizes the changing world of small business and the colorful characters who inhabit it.

Can entrepreneurship be taught?

Here is that nature vs nurture argument applied once again to entrepreneurship.

Can you learn to become an entrepreneur, or must you be born with the entrepreneurial gene?

I will state up front that I believe anyone can - and should - become an entrepreneur. I'll tell you why and how at the end.

First a short piece just reported in Business Week (Oct. 29, '07), then posted on BusinessWeek.com by Stacy Perman.

The title asked, "Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?" This is an exploration of a new book by Professor Richard Goossen. The book is, "Entrepreneurial Excellence: Profit From the Best Ideas of the Experts" (Career Press; 2007). "My motivation was to talk to the top researchers and instructors in the world who teach something that a lot of people think can't be taught," he says.

There are a number of good quotes, in both Business Week links below that are worth perusing. I thought Richard Goossen's summary was spot on: "Goossen came to the conclusion that while there are several elements that can be taught to enhance the knowledge and success of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is something one can learn only by doing."

Yes. There is real truth in that from where I stand after decades of entrepreneurship. To me that confirms my mantra of, "Go! Get out there and start!". Quit thinking about it. Quit fretting. Bruise your knees and skin your knuckles. Make as many mistakes as quickly as you can with the least amount of financial risk.

You can teach entrepreneurial tools. I do it. The biggest payback I get is when I see and hear people throw off their self-doubt and embrace what's possible. That's where Richard Goossman's thesis and my genetic propensity kick in... accept the uncertainty, assume you'll make mistakes. We all do. But never let that stop you from trying, and doing, and trying again and again. That's how you learn entrepreneurship. That's how you learn life.

However, here is my reality check. You can teach people to be entrepreneurs. You can't teach people to succeed as entrepreneurs.

Why? I believe you need to love what you're doing to succeed in entrepreneurship and in life. I don't believe you can teach people what to love. Therein lies the nature part. The nurture stuff is easy.

You can teach someone who loves something how to grow it into an enterprise. I watch it day after day now. It's inspiring and humbling and profoundly exciting.

What do you love? Learn what you can then get out there and do it.

Your enterprise awaits, my friend.



BusinessWeek.com post

Business Week Magazine piece

Stacy Perman bio at Business Week

Encore careers

I had not heard the term 'encore careers' until I read a commentary by Marc Freedman in the Nov. 2007 Ode magazine.

Marc is the founder and CEO of the think tank, Civic Ventures (Helping society achieve the greatest return on experience) has written a book called Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life. I have it on hold at the library but judging from the commentary piece in Ode, this looks to be a great premise.

I'd like to use this post to highlight some quotes from Marc's commentary...

After setting up shots of dreamy seniors on sailboats and golf courses...

"But wait a minute: Who looks forward to endless retirement anymore, 30 years of R and R? Who can afford it - even with the most diligent savings plan? For reasons of money and meaning, the golden-years vision being peddled by the financial and real estate industries is already obsolete. Stretched from a justified period of relaxation after the mid-life years into a phase lasting just as long, this version of retirement has been distorted into something grotesque, something that no longer works, for individuals - or for society."

"But this troubling conclusion amounts to scenario-planning through the rear-view mirror. Retirement as we've known it is far from an eternal verity. In fact it is already being displaced as the central institution of the second half of life, soon to be supplanted by a new stage of life and work opening up between the end of mid-life and the eventual arrival of true old age. Indeed four out of five boomers consistently tell researchers they expect to work well into what used to be known as the retirement years."

Here's the part that I find most inspiring and I see it clearly in the wonderful boomer launches I work with...

"...boomers should be encouraged not only to continue contributing, but to rethink the purpose of that work - in short, to dust off their idealism of the '60s and '70s, and get to work making the world a better place. It is the perfect opportunity for the generation that set out to change the world and got lost along the way. Now, as tens of millions of boomers careen toward what were once the golden years, I believe more and more people are interested in living out a distinct and compelling vision of contribution in the second half of adult life, one built around an 'encore career' at the intersection of continued income, new meaning and significant contribution to the greater good."

Good words from Marc Freedman of Civic Ventures.

The service economy is growing without pause through all kinds of economic turmoil. The wisdom accumulated by older workers can be applied in unlimited creative and valuable ways.

I see small, smart, self-funded, boomer enterprises emerging everywhere to fill this need and to take advantage of this growing opportunity to serve.

These new enterprises do not have to fit anyone's model but our own. They can operate at a pace and scale we choose. I've written before about the slow startup movement, and I think it's a perfect fit for boomer entrepreneurs and this enormous opportunity. Start early and start slow. Plan carefully and launch at your own speed. What's important my friends, is that you start.

You should consider this more than just an interesting idea. It's a big, big social trend. Welcome aboard!

Civic Ventures

Ode Magazine

New networking course

Commercial social networking has a tawdry history.

Many of us who have been in the game for long enough have memories of walking into a room full of self-certified financial planners and 'business brokers' drinking cheap beer in a stale hotel banquet room all looking for the keys to your money.

The misery that these events brought on was deep. Mostly because of all the time you'd wasted by falling for another come-on for business development socializing.

The Small Business Center at the Technical College (WCTC) I've been teaching through has done a very nice job of bringing these events into the 21st century. If anyone reading this wants some good suggestions for what I think works here, send me a note.

When a new course at the college opened up called 'The Art of Networking' I was asked to teach it. My first inclination is that I didn't want to do it because of the memories from the old days.

But when I watch new - and seasoned - entrepreneurs feeling their way through the newer, better versions of networking events put on by the Small Business Center, I sense a need for some one-on-one, interactive training for the way these things work in the age of Tom Peters and web 2.0

WCTC gave me a blank sheet of paper. I can't wait, the more I think about this. For anyone who has read these posts for a while, you'll know my approach to networking is finding ways to help your network. That's what I'm quickly filling in on those blank sheets of paper.

A good primer on my approach was summarized by Guy Kawasaki who I link to on these posts regularly. Always good stuff. Guy quoted author Darcy Rezac as someone he thought had the best definition of schmoozing: "'Discovering what you can do for someone else.' Herein lies eighty percent of the battle: great schmoozers want to know what they can do for you, not what the you can do for them. If you understand this, the rest is just mechanics."

These courses are the classroom variety and will be taught in Waukesha, WI from Mid November through Mid December, once per week on Wednesday evenings. There will even be a large group networking 'Connections' meeting sponsored by the Small Business Center on one of the class nights that we'll all immerse ourselves in.

If anyone comes looking for short term, easy money strategies we'll have a dunce cap on hand.

For everyone who comes looking for ways to work with a wildly changing and diverse marketplace in an honorable and valued way, I'll have extra gold stars.

The link for information and enrollment is below.

Thanks to the Small Business Center and WCTC for the opportunity and the blank sheets of paper. This will be fun for all involved.


Info about Networking Course at WCTC


Guy Kawasaki's blog on The Art of Schmoozing

Turning down new clients

Your life as a new entrepreneur will bring you to the crossroads of 'I need the money' and 'I don't want to do this work', more often than you think in the early days.

When we started SmartSkim my first year's income was well below the poverty line, a statistic my daughters now wear as badges of honor because they lived through it with us as young people old enough to recognize what was going on. Startups can be financially challenging, but you don't need me to tell you that.

What you may need me to tell you is that as a new entrepreneur you don't have to take every job or every client that appears. The goal of smart startups is just the opposite.

I turned down a potential client this week even though the money would have been great. As Business Diligence rolls out, all new additions to the client list are helpful.

My problem was the client. He was a new economy guy who wanted to start a business in such a way that he could 'monitize it' by automating a web site to generate income. He assured me he'd read all the articles about gaming Google and been to several 'keyword seminars'.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge believer in using the web to communicate the stories and values of small enterprises. There has never been a more powerful tool in the history of the world of entrepreneurship. Back at SmartSkim, we were a very small manufacturing company, yet we had devoted customers on 6 continents. We did it with only four people on the payroll, due largely to our ability to leverage the web.

But this new world of monitizing web sites by generating keyword searches and selling Google ads while having very little content of value leaves me cold.

Small business startups are like making meat loaf. You've got to plunge in. You've got to commit to mixing up improbable ingredients. You've got to clean up the resulting mess. The process is not automated or done without effort. Yet the results can be wonderful and nourish you well beyond the event.

I turned down this potential client. He will not be the last.

The way to make Google work for you is to choose a truly great name that Google can find quickly and then build out your site with great content and a great offering to your end users. It's your job as a marketer and a salesperson to then make that name known. I helped several new clients pick names and launch last month. Within 2 weeks Google had found them and put every one of them at the top of searches with hits numbering in the millions because they had a unique name that served their offering well.

It's not keywords. It's content.

The world needs startups that solve real problems, not ones that are launched to scam Google algorithms.



SmartSkim™, my last startup

Favre alone in the shotgun

I've tried to keep these posts tied to entrepreneurship and will continue to do that.

But I'm a Wisconsin guy and one of us, Brett Favre, last weekend set an NFL career touchdown record. 422 Touchdown passes. Bret has many other notable records embedded in this statistic.

What is most impressive is what those of us in Wisconsin have known to love about the guy. When all hell is breaking loose, when nothing is going right, when everything is lined up against the Green Bay Packers, they call one play.

It's the most dangerous offense any competitors could face for the last decade or so, and your thinly veiled entrepreneurship lesson.

The play they call... Brett Favre alone in the shotgun.

They tell everyone on the team to support the playmaker, and let him do his thing.

The playmaker accepts maximum personal risk for the right to move the game forward at their disgression.

Favre alone in the shotgun.

That's you.

Records are there for your taking, so long as you work and train like a fanatic and show up for every detail and follow up on every possibility in real time.

Brett was typically humble in breaking this records, as you need to be for every accomplishment you achieve.

But while being humble and doing everything right, please think of yourself as an entrepreneur in this picture....

Favre alone in the shotgun.

Congratulations from all of us on a great carreer and great mentoring Brett.

Brand You 50

Tom Peters has written many great books and hosts an especially valuable web site and blog that I recommend you visit often for information and inspiration.

I noted with great interest that Tom has initiated a seminar series based on one of my favorite books of his called Brand You 50. This is the one business book I insist my startup clients and students read.

I call Brand You 50 'the book that can not be excerpted'. If you took out all the valuable stuff, you'd be left with the blank pages and copyright stuff.

This book was first published in 1999 during the precipitous rise in the economy, yet Tom used this work to focus not on big picture, meta stuff, but on the role individuals can and should play in their own commercial lives. If you haven't followed or read Tom before, you'll need to adjust to his writing style. Tom's free flow of street level wisdom will hook you.

The substance here is clear and demanding: you'd better matter. Quickly.

I believe the book was initially written for people working to advance their careers within organizations,. However, I make every one of my startup clients get this book and absorb it as early as possible in their emerging lives as entrepreneurs.

What's so valuable to me about this lesson in entrepreneurship is that you not only matter, you have to change the world. It will likely be in small incremental ways (or perhaps Ghandi-esque proportions), but you need to participate. We need you. You need to get in the game and help the world grow better.

Here's several pieces that I really think are clarion calls to entrepreneurship...

(On vanishing job security)... "My answer: Return to Job Security! (Not the answer you expected, I bet.) But it's New Job Security. Or, actually, Very Old New Job Security. It's what job security was all about before - long before -! Big Corp. Before Social Security. And unemployment insurance. Before there was a big so-called safety net that had the unintended consequence of sucking the initiative, drive, and moxie out of millions of white collar workers."

"I'm talking about job security in the Colonies and in the first century after our country was founded. Which was: Craft. Distinction. Networking skills."

"Craft = Marketable skill.
Distinction = Memorable.
Networking skills = Word of mouth collegial support."

"It's as old as the colonial blacksmith. (And his modern counterpart, the housepainter, or local CPA) As new as Hollywood. Or the peripatetic web programmer in San Francisco, or Austin, or Raleigh-Durham... or Tahiti."

"It's about being so damn good and meticulous and responsible about what you do (and making sure what you do is work that needs to be done) that the world taps a T1 speed path to you."

Bingo! Be responsible and authoritative about what you do and make sure what you do solves a real problem. There's an elevator pitch for entrepreneurship if I've ever heard one.

Let me take one more piece from Brand You 50 and hoist it up the flag as a shout out to everyone (and a flat out demand of my boomer peers!) to embrace and honor the entrepreneurial instincts within all of us...

"Master bootstrapping. From UPS to Marriott, most of the companies we most admire were founded on a shoestring. Literally: Less than a coupla thousand bucks."

"You don't need a silver (corporate or personal) spoon to sally forth. You do need passion, commitment, a few pals... and a Consuming Desire to take the next, usually wee step"

"NO EXCUSES:

- you do have 'space'.

- You don't need 'permission'.

- You don't need 'power'.

- You don't need a 'big' task.

- You don't need money."

"Money kills (or at least it can). With big bucks, you're too soon beholden to the funder... which can prevent us from taking the truly WOW leaps. But mostly, history is on your (poverty stricken) side. Most cool stuff - products, and companies and revolutions - was started in basements and garages, for (literal) pennies. Sony, UPS, Marriott, Apple, HP, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, FedEx, etc."

"Consider: Imagine Ghandi's budget. He merely created Earth's Largest Democracy."

When I train or mentor new entrepreneurs virtually all have the desire to launch, but many are too ready to back away from barriers they have only assumed were there. These barriers are of our own making. In fact, as Tom Peters indicates, most barriers are resources to build on, seen from the right perspective.

Get this book by Tom Peters, then read all the rest he's written. Visit Tom's web site often. Go to the Brand You seminar if it lands near you.

If you need a book to inspire your entrepreneurship goals, Brand You 50 is it.

This is the renaissance age of entrepreneurship, and it's just beginning.

You are important to all of us. You are vital to all our futures. You belong in the world and you can make an entrepreneurial contribution that is compelling and valuable. Don't wait for a time when things are just right. Take your "WOW leap".

We need your contribution as an entrepreneur. Your time is NOW, friend.

Tom Peters web site

Want something good? Guy Kawasaki on evangelism

Even better, it's free.

The web seminar folks at WebEx have lined up Guy Kawasaki to do a presentation on the art of evangelism Next Tuesday Sept. 25 at 11 AM PDT - 1 PM CDT for my Great Lakes area startup friends.

For anyone who has worked with me on their startups or taken one of my courses they know that the main job of the entrepreneur is evangelizing.

It's a wonderful word and an even better day job.

The concept was likely around before Guy defined the role, but it's certainly never been the same since he helped bring the early Apple systems to life back in the day.

Birthing new enterprises and new products is the essence of entrepreneurship and there is no better evangelist drawing breath than Mr. Kawasaki.

This is free. Not sure if there is a limited registration, but I'd recommend registering ASAP.

As entrepreneurs, you'll be better off doing this than anything else you could put on your plate for that hour or so. I rarely say this, but, trust me on this one.

You need more Guy Kawasaki in your life and here's a great opportunity.


Guy Kawasaki's blog discussing this, with link to registration at WebEx

A great week

I had a wonderful week.

I taught the first of the online classes devoted to startups. It was a very enjoyable experience with a great group of entrepreneurial class members.

This was the initial 'Intro to Micro Enterprise' course, but one gentleman in the class was so enthusiastic he launched the next day. Set up his LLC, grabbed the domain name and lit the fuse. Very cool. I met with him for coffee today and his model looks great and we're going to work out his details through the coming courses.

These courses have limited enrollment but there are still open slots. Even though they are being taught through the WI Technical College System, you can take the courses from anywhere in the US. They are taught live, online using a toll free telephone line and the content is on the web. If you have an interest please eMail me for details and I'll help get you to where you need to go. You can also download course descriptions, dates and sign up details from the home page of the Business Diligence site.

I asked the first class to rate the value on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being excellent and the average came out to be 9.6. Thanks to all the class members for a very exciting evening!

Another client launched commercially this week and took her first orders. Ring the bell! Congratulations Heirlooms Again! May the commercial winds be always at your back.

As the Friday work load wound down late this afternoon, and the phone and the eMails slowed, I took some time to watch the bird feeders out the office door at a more appreciative pace. The hummingbirds are gathering in Southern Wisconsin for their migration south. I inched myself closer and closer to their feeders over time until I got less than an arms length distant. They were squabbling with one another and flying so close to my face to check me out that my cheeks were cold from the beat of their wings.

In the background, the raucous sounds from a flock of Sandhill Cranes that live in the nearby marsh rose and fell in waves. Aldo Leopold described their calls as clangorous, a perfect word for a language that's been used by the cranes in some form for at least 9 million years. By comparison, humans have had language for no more than 300,000 years at best estimate. It makes you wonder how deep and primal the communication among cranes must be.

It also strikes me that clangorous is a pretty good word to describe entrepreneurship.

Much to ponder, much to celebrate. A great week.

Be well, friends.


Rick's entrepreneurship class info taught online through the WI Technical College System at WCTC. Join us!

Heirlooms Again

Hummingbirds:
A good description of the hummingbirds' story
A good place for hummingbird science

Sandhill crane info from the Cornell Bird Center

The Aldo Leopold Center