There was an interesting piece on the NPR Radio program Marketplace on Tuesday 11/18/08.

The piece was titled "Starting a Business in a Bad Economy."

In a short space, it identified a number of things that, from my perspective, are critical for small-scale entrepreneurs and startups to understand. It also highlighted some of the most fundamental misunderstandings about entrepreneurship that are in common currency.

What I would like this post to highlight is that small-scale sustainable enterprises are absolutely possible in this economy if you are willing to put in the time and effort. However, the amount of time required for these kind of startups is typically more than you estimate.

If your financial life is such that you need immediate pay-the-rent type cash flows, starting your own business to dig out of this is a very poor option, with low odds of success.

Let's start with current news. There is no doubt this economy is a massive mess. Each time there's been a ray of hope, it's been snuffed out by something unexpected from left field. Then we restart and the process gets repeated. This has been an awful year for the economy and the near future looks very rough.

That doesn't mean you get under your desk however. It means you smarten up and start building some solutions for yourself.

I've run small businesses through the last bunch of recessions, including the whoppers. If you are overextended and have built your enterprise on a platform of unsupportable risk, then you've got real trouble. For the rest of us, the sun will continue coming up. Birds sing after storms.

The Marketplace radio piece was done by Mitchell Hartmann of Oregon Public Radio. Mr Hartmann is a very good reporter and focuses on sustainability issues for Marketplace.

This piece summarized a few of at the many difficulties and opportunities that startups face in this kind of economic environment.

Mr. Hartmann spoke with an advisor at the Small Business Development Center in Portland about people rushing into entrepreneurship out of immediate financial need.

The advisor, Jackie Babacky Peterson, sounded a bit shell shocked, referring to the newly unemployed launching new businesses on their credit cards. That indeed is a very bad path.

Here's a transcript from that section:

"Advisor Jackie Babicky-Peterson is seeing unemployment and entrepreneurship meet but not necessarily in a good way."

"Many people get laid off from companies so they are deciding this is a good time to launch a business even though it may be very difficult."

"Many people will rush into biz for themselves without sufficient planning and with little or no savings they'll use personal credit cards to get going. 'Just pure startup money is now - and always has been - pretty impossible.'"

"Credit cards will kill you."

She concludes: "I think we will have more failures."

I'd like to parse this for what slow, measured, startup types can take from this.

Ms Babacky-Perterson is spot on identifying the process of 'rushing into business' as a way of pre-scheduling the likely death of your enterprise and damage to your personal financial welfare.

One line in that quote is critical. It was about the difficulty in attracting outside money to small startups. Outside investment money for brand new startups has never been available. Not in this bad economy and not in the past when things were better. Appropriate small-scale startup money only comes from your pocket. Alternately, outside investment can come, with an increasing chance for trouble, from friends and family.

And yes, using credit cards to finance your rushed effort will likely kill your startup.

And yes, with more startups there will be more failures. However, the most vibrant regional economies in the US have high startup rates AND high failure rates. What's working here is that cultures of entrepreneurship and participatory commerce are celebrated. If something doesn't work, you try something else. There can't be successes if there aren't failures. The key is how we deal with those failures and learn from them, and how we support the culture of entrepreneurship that engenders all this activity.

And yes, if you drive a boatload of other people's money off a cliff (see current events), you've created dysfunction and hurt the system for those that follow. If you lose a small amount of your own capital (and probably a large amount of time), then you're smarter and ready for the next effort.

In the past, I have quoted Vivek Wadhwa whose common sense seems to show at key points in these national discussions of entrepreneurship. (Jan. 5, 2008)

Vivek Wadhwa founded two tech startups and now researches entrepreneurship at Duke and Harvard.

While Mr. Wadhwa's comments speak specifically to large firms, his ideas deliver critically important meaning to the discussion of small startups.

Mr. Wadhwa says the Fortune 500 is full of companies that were founded during bad times: Johnson & Johnson, Disney, Cisco, and Intel to name a few.

The Marketplace reporter Mitchell Hartmann then referred to a big entrepreneurship organization as saying startups will not increase due to these terrible market conditions.

Vivak Wadhwa says that's the wrong conclusion to draw from the current economic conditions.

Here is where I want to shine a bright light on the good words of Mr. Wadhwa.

"We'll be back on track in 2 - 3 years. By that time you will have gotten your business model working, you've got your products perfected, you know your customers, you know your market space, and now you can go to the angel investors, the venture capitalists and pitch a real company to them."

Mitchell Hartmann closed his piece this way:

"So, if you don't have funding from your own nest egg, or from friends and family, you can pretty much forget about going from 0 to startup during this downturn."

With no diss at all to Mr. Hartmann, I humbly submit a concluding summary that would promote some glass-is-half-full action steps.

Mine would run something like this….

If you can invest a small amount of money and a large amount of your time, you can create your own sustainable enterprise in these difficult economic times. With hard work that enterprise can become a commercial platform allowing you to go forward in life with more personal options and more financial security.

Thanks to Mitchell Hartmann for the great piece and thanks, as always, to Marketplace.

Now get out there ASAP and start something. Slowly.


Marketplace broadcast of this story

A passion for problems

A good friend and mentor directed me to a wonderful book called Ripples From The Zambezi, by Ernesto Sirolli.

Mr Sirolli has been doing economic development work around the world and in the U.S. for more than 30 years. He is a 'bottom up' developer - nurturing small startups and then helping those entrepreneurs grow to the next level.

There are many great things to say about the book and the work. I want to focus on one aspect that I've always believed and taught to startup students and clients.

People often ask me what kind of business they should start. Often they're well along into researching business 'opportunities' being marketed to them.

I tell them that's the wrong question. The primary question is "What do you love?" Give me that answer, and I'll tell you what kind of business to start.

If you want to create your own small scale startup, focus on what you love. Build your enterprise around what you do beautifully or make with passion. The service or product will sell your enterprise in a way you couldn't duplicate with any other method, given small scale startup budgets.

Mr. Sirolli directs those that would help entrepreneurs first find the individuals who are passionate about their work and their ideas. Then he advocates getting the appropriate tools and structures in place to support that kind of enterprise.

He says this: "Success , we can therefore say, is to do beautifully whatever it is that you love doing…. And successful people come from every social stratum, race and sex. Some have been physically and psychologically abused; some couldn't see; some couldn't move and typed their books , letter by letter, with a stick held in their mouths. To be a genius in your own mind, however is meaningless; you have to dance it, build it, grow it, communicate it. Share it with the world."

The world gets made better by people solving problems. If you look around and can't see enough problems, I can't help.

Find a problem. Tell me why you know it passionately. Tell me what you love about your solutions, and I'll tell you what kind of startup you should organize. Your business will survive and grow only by continuing to solve problems with all the passion and skill that you can bring to your enterprise.

On top of that you get to live and work with what you love. It's a pretty great two-fer.

In closing, these kinds of small scale startups have never been more needed by the wider economy. The opportunities for small scale startups have never been greater. We are entering the renaissance age of entrepreneurship.

However, you need to remember that it will take longer than you think. The kinds of startups I'm writing about here are the most sustainable and most likely to succeed . But they take a while. I've called it the slow startup movement for a good reason. It's true.

What do you really love? Ready, Fire, Aim. Repeat. Good luck my friend.



Enersto Sirolli and the Sirolli Institute

Thanks to Sue at the Vernon County Economic Development office for the introduction to this good work.

The Slow Startup Movement. An introduction...

The Slow Startup Movement

A Field Guide to Organizing and Launching Your Own Small Enterprise on Your Terms, With Little Risk and Less Money.

An introduction….

Let's start with the economic crisis. My ideas are meant to offer a little self-defense and hope to those of us who would like to get more control over our financial lives, more security in our commercial lives, and more enjoyment in our personal lives.

There are any number of approaches that can work to help you launch your own enterprise. I want to talk about one of those paths that I think fits these times and people's aspirations perfectly. I've also seen them work over a lifetime of entrepreneurship.

This awful economic environment is changing the entrepreneurial landscape rapidly. I would suggest that what has happened to economies across the world will make it increasingly viable and even necessary to create your own small enterprise.

Running to the bank for a loan or raising money from outside investors will certainly continue for a few, but for the vast majority of startups, those tools are just not available.

Rather than give up on the thought, I suggest we get busy. Slowly. It helps me to think of it as the slow startup movement.

The TV and movies push images of entrepreneurs as manic speedy-commerce freaks. This has its roots, but those kind of enterprises often cause as many problems as they solve.

There was a good book out a few years ago called 'The Millionaire Next Door' by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. What was so eye-catching about their study is that people with significant (actual) personal resources and security were not those best skilled at surfing bubbles, but were average people, that started small and carefully grew their businesses slowly over time. They lived below their means. They accumulated real security over time.

A garden is an obvious metaphor. A garden we plant ourselves. A garden we learn to grow. A garden of things we love. A garden whose journey is every bit as valuable as its outcome. A garden that can positively change our self-worth and increase security for our families. A garden that makes our communities stronger.

What in the heck could planting a tiny economic plot of your own do to change things?

The idea of Victory Gardens come to mind.

Think of starting your own enterprise as starting your own small garden. You start carefully. You plan. You nurture the garden, and you grow stronger, wiser and more valuable personally during the process. The work in the garden and the fruits of the garden make you and your community more sustainable and secure.

Here's what Michael Pollin just wrote in a great piece in the Oct. 9 New York Times Magazine, entitled 'Farmer In Chief'. It's an open letter to the next President about our food policies seen as a national security issue, among many other valuable perspectives.

"When Eleanor Roosevelt did something similar in 1943, she helped start a Victory Garden movement that ended up making a substantial contribution to feeding the nation in wartime. (Less well known is the fact that Roosevelt planted this garden over the objections of the U.S.D.A., which feared home gardening would hurt the American food industry.) By the end of the war, more than 20 million home gardens were supplying 40 percent of the produce consumed in America." (My note - these are results achieved in 2 years as a result of contributions made by millions of tiny contributors.)

So what does this have to do with a slow startup movement?

I've borrowed the gist of the term from the slow foods movement. Do you know it? The premise is take control of your food life. Use local foods and high quality resources. Strive for creating value and improving your life. Strive for an enjoyment of the process for savoring the results. Strive to share those results with friends and your communities in ways that make all involved stronger and more viable.

Gardening and cooking are iterative steps. Things don't always go the way you want. It takes time to get started. To do it right, it takes flexibility and creativity and most of all patience.

This is also the recipe for starting small, sustainable enterprises.

You use simple, high quality ingredients. You add your creativity and skill, and most of all patience, and you slowly create nourishing results.

This is not to say that many of these slow startups will not become sprinters, or gazelles as they are referred to in economic development circles. For those with appropriate offerings in the right markets, this is something to encourage. But a recent US Small Business Administration analysis of the gazelles notes that these firms don't get to the place they can sprint until they have in the market for a number of years, and have made their mistakes, and have polished their model, and organized appropriately for the time in their life cycle that they can take off like gazelles.

You don't start as a gazelle. You start as a gardener, nurturing what's good, weeding out what works against success.

That's the essence of the slow startup movement idea. Put yourself in the game. Find something you love and nurture it. Find the help and the resources to grow your seedlings. Take your time. Observe. Test. Fail. Rejigger. Repeat.

You can do it my friend. Like the Victory Gardens of World War II, we need to do it given the state of things.

The slow startup movement is a kind of commerce that you can follow to increase your own security, engage your creativity, and build the communities you live in.

Dig in, my friend. You can do it. Now is the time to start.



New York Times 'Open Letter to the Next Farmer In Chief'.

Overview of the book, The Millionaire Next Door, at WIkipedia

Next Generation Business Development

The Economic Development Director of Racine County, WI is Gordon Kacala. Gordon and I have not met, but I'm an admirer of his work and his writing.

I buy the Racine Journal Times whenever I'm in Racine, which is fairly often. I love newspapers, but my specific reason is to read Gordon Kacala's column in the Journal Times called 'Developing Racine'.

In a recent column I really liked, Gordon wrote about one of my favorite economic development subjects, manufacturing. Specifically his column talked about ways to define 'next generation' manufacturing.

The definitions Gordon pointed at have been proposed by our own Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership. I think these are a great first effort. I also think they are generally applicable to all kinds of economic development issues.

This evolving definition for 'next generation' enterprise has five main characteristics called out. I'm going to take each point and apply it to business development generally.

- Your enterprise embraces systemic, continuous improvement

ME: For startups and small businesses, this does not have to
mean biotech patents. It can mean sending invoices faster or storing phone numbers in the right place, or checking credit better. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to continuously improve your operations and the solutions you offer. However, you do need to do both all the time.

- Your enterprise is globally engaged

ME: There is micro-economic and a macro-economic comment to be made, given current circumstances.

The big global stuff is fun, and it's never been more available to small businesses. In both of my last enterprises, we had customers on 5 continents. I sold recycling equipment in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas from my virtual office in Madison, Wisconsin. However going global is not the first step that most startups must learn to take. We took those global steps only after we learned to walk regionally and nationally.

I am not going to dismiss purely local commerce, but it can be very limiting and potentially lethal for most small enterprises.

For most enterprise their first markets need to be regional. It spreads the risk, it increases the universe of customers and it offers the potential for implementing your solutions at lower costs.

After that, when appropriate, you should then learn to market yourself nationally. Setting up a small enterprise that rejects the potential for selling across the United States is naive and wrong headed. When appropriate, marketing small businesses throughout the US has never been easier or less expensive.

After that, go global with my blessings. It can be rewarding and very profitable if you're ready.

- Your enterprise has active strategies to attract, develop and retain the talent necessary to win in a next-generation world.

ME: For the smallest businesses this means training yourself to learn the skills and tools needed to cowboy up commercially in the 21st century. This is not only the digital stuff, but the people skills needed to equitably do commerce going forward. Attracting and developing talent for small business can mean employees, but also increasingly means growing and retaining talented strategic market partners.

For existing small businesses, I would also suggest that the big picture needs adjusting. I mean that we all need to advocate for a system that takes health care out of the list of risks we face when starting and running enterprises. Without that, we can not compete for, or retain talent. The talent we need won't be available because those talented people can't risk their insurance status. The people who small businesses most need, (and I think the same people who most need small business), have to balance their family's risks with every decision as you do. We need to fix health care to fix economic development. Period.

- Your enterprise incorporates green ideas in its growth and operating strategies as a means to reduce waste and take advantage of the growing demand for sustainable products.

ME: I have seen the most egregious BS attached to the green movement, and I have also marketed hard right into it with great success. The test of sustainable green commerce is not a complicated one; it needs to fix real problems and it needs to make money.

There has been a sea change recently that will drive this movement forward. Green has become a national security issue.

As a sustainable path into the future, I have never seen so
much market wind at the back of green commerce

Need a definition of green commerce? I recently saw a great quote by Nobel Prize-wining physist Murray Gell-Mann defining sustainable as, "living off nature's income rather than it's principal".

Your community and the entire world want more sustainable products and services. There has never been more potential for ground-up, sustainable entrepreneurship in my lifetime.

- Your enterprise is skilled in strategic partner and supplier relationship management as a means to increase production flexibility, use partner competencies, and tap new markets.


ME: For small businesses, this translates as setting up equitable, transparent, mutually beneficial food chains with your commercial partners and customers. This is the most profitable model in the long run, and also the easiest to operate. Simple is good.


What we've seen in the economic meltdown this summer is that complicated, opaque commercial systems are almost impossible to manage and master, and in most case lead to disaster.

Next Generation business development will require the positions suggested above: continuous innovation, a regional and national market focus, your approach to all people is one of equality, your approach to commerce sustainably fixes problems, and you develop the ability to work cooperatively and equitably with all your commercial stakeholders.


Sustainable = repeatable. This 'Next Generation' model highlights that approach. Anyone can do this. I believe everyone should start and grow their own enterprises along these principles.

There has never been a more important time to to do so for yourself and for our economy going forward.




Thanks to Gordon Kacala for his good work and good writing on behalf of Racine County. Visit the Racine County Economic Development site

Visit the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership site discussing Next Generation Manufacturing

Successful economic gardening in bad economic times.

One of our major utilities recently brought in an unusual economic development specialist from Colorado named Chris Gibbons to give presentations in our area.

I wasn't able to attend, but I've been reading about Chris' work since he was here. His approach is one of 'Economic Gardening'. This approach emphasizes the creation of support programs that focus on growing local entrepreneurs in smart, low-cost ways. They do this by creating attractive, entrepreneurial communities. In essence, grow your own economic development from the inside out.

Here is how Chris summarizes it on the Littleton, CO, website where he is Director of their economic development activities: "We are more convinced than ever that our fundamental concept (entrepreneurs drive economies) is right and that healthy communities have a healthy base of entrepreneurs."

As a long time entrepreneur who has worked with business assistance programs of all kinds, I'm in a good place to highly recommend Chris Gibbons' work. As someone who has developed and taught my own curriculum for successfully launching micro-enterprises, I strongly agree with his conclusions.

This is a time of terrible economic news. The macro-economics of the world economy are under historic strains. There seems to be more difficulty with every new headline.

Yet we will come through this. Hurt and battered in many cases, but the cycle will continue on its way until we let another bubble get big enough to burst again.

What has changed permanently, I believe, is the sense of trust many of us felt leaving our economic security entirely in the hands of others.

The Economic Gardening approach to business development is to stop chasing any old big-is-better outside solution. The idea is to quit throwing money at businesses development, but rather, create communities in which creative new enterprises of all kinds can thrive. Help entire communities become more entrepreneurial. Help startups of ALL kinds. When some of those startups turn into 'gazelles', or faster growing organizations, help them plug into the next steps.

Chris calls this kind of sustainable development 'the edge of chaos': "This term describes the area between stability and chaos, where innovation and survival are most likely to take place. As a way to think about these regimes, consider what form H2O takes in each. In the frozen regime, it would be ice. In the stable regime, it would be water. In the chaotic regime, it would be steam."

Yes, yes, yes. Through the years I have seen peers vaporize wonderful companies because they could not control the chaos. I have seen other friends stay frozen in place because they did not have the constitution or the support to innovate.

What I teach in my micro enterprise courses is that you should launch your own startup as soon as possible. The idea is to invest in yourself to help gain some measure of financial control over your own life. This is especially true in times of economic trouble like we have with us now.

I teach my startup entrepreneurs and small businesses that running your own enterprise will be a giant lesson in making mistakes. If you haven't thrown a ton of money at your business, you can - and should - make as many mistakes as quickly as possible. They will be invaluable and inexpensive with this approach.

Here is what Chris Gibbons says on the subject:

"We came to equate the edge of chaos (success) with lots of changes and experimentation and lots of little mistakes. It seemed like the mistakes that accompanied the process of innovation were like earthquakes: if you don't have lots of little ones, you end up with a big one. We read a study out of Dallas that indicated the most vibrant economies (in terms of producing jobs and wealth) were highly unstable in the sense that they had the highest rate of business start ups and business deaths. This turbulence also looked like an economy operating at the edge of chaos."

The current state of Economic Gardening relies on 3 major approaches to creating successful economic development from the inside out. They are information, infrastructure, and connections. Notice they don't include throwing money at the issue. Those days are over.

Information refers to the capture and sharing of as much valuable data with entrepreneurs as is possible. Chris in Littleton, CO says he spends about three-quarters of his agencies time providing tactical and strategic information. Amazing.

Infrastructure refers to building sustainable, supportive communities that attract and retain entrepreneurs. It also refers to building intellectual infrastructure; that is, making world class ideas and resources available to local firms and the local community through local courses and training.

The emphasis on connections means that economic development and innovation are driven by the ability to connect with people and talent outside of your immediate area of knowledge. In my own region, this means the ability to plug into the University, the Technical College system, great regional and national economic development organizations, and my own favorite, our wonderful Inventor and Entrepreneur Clubs.

The economic headlines are awful lately. This is not a time to get into the fetal position and hide. It is a time to begin building more economic security into your own life and into the life of our regional communities.

Starting and growing your own sustainable business is a step you should take. In spite of the headlines, there has never been a better time to do it.


Chris Gibbons' story about economic gardening

Community Development Venture Capital: A Strategy for Rural America

Anyone reading these pages over time will know that I am an advocate of creating jobs by starting new enterprises. This strategy makes our personal lives more enriching and engaged, and it also makes our communities more secure and sustainable.

I think this is especially true for rural areas.

I just found a piece released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It was written by Kerwin Tesdale, who teaches at New York University in the business and law departments and is President of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance.

Community Development Venture Capital (CDVC) is a great idea. It utilizes existing private money networks to create investment capital for reasons that not only include market rate returns, but also to enhance community development goals. Some people call this double bottom line accounting. You measure the metrics by which you make the place better then you execute on those measurements as hard as you execute the numbers. Both will be required to go forward commercially in this century.

Mr. Tesdale's strategy for enhancing development in rural America is to utilize the emerging private money networks rather than rely strictly on direct investments by angel investors and government agencies.

These networks have the ability to get involved in a productive way that government and typical funding sources can't. The idea of investment capital arriving with technical and management help, delivered by people with only an agenda of your success is compelling. I would like to see it grow in my state and beyond.

Here is a nice summary of how they work…"CDVC funds focus on markets where other venture capitalists typically do not compete. Rather than participating in bidding wars for pieces of Silicon Valley high-tech firms, rural CDVC funds nurture long-term relationships with entrepreneurs in their regions. When an excellent investment opportunity arises, they have the relationship to capture the investment on attractive terms."

What I really like about all this is that there is a bunch of win-win checks and balances built into the process.

For instance, investing in CDVC funds, local banks can satisfy their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), but more importantly they can seed the field with a real contribution toward growing new customers within their markets.

We aren't chasing smokestacks here. That game is over. A better approach is to grow our communities by growing our own enterprises and creating our own new jobs.

As it says in Mr. Tesdell's article, "The term 'community development' evokes inner-city urban communities, where community development corporations develop low income housing and address other social needs. But the pioneers in community development venture capital are rural funds, and still many of the most experienced and accomplished CDVC funds focus on rural markets. Business development and job creation are at the heart of the rural agenda to promote economic well being."

This is an area many of us working on startups and small business development, especially in rural areas, can use to great benefit.

Many of us live well outside "the one plane rule" used by traditional venture capitalists to measure how far they would go to look at an investment.

You don't want those folks anyway. Not yet anyway. Their money is too big and the requirements placed on them by their investors will likely not match your agenda.

The deal flow through the CDVC Alliance shows a representative group of investments in the $150,000 to $250,000 range. That's a sweet spot that can be very hard to fill, especially in rural areas.

You know I'm an optimist by trade. I spent an hour on the phone with a gentleman from Milwaukee last week who was a farm kid that started his own small business in 1959. Life took many unexpected turns for him, but his enterprise gave him the platform to secure his own future and make many jobs for others. For almost 50 years now. His underlying message to me was that challenges always appear but solutions generally arrive for those willing to look for them.

I think these CDVC organizations can be a tool that grows solutions for rural and urban communities.

The world is begging for local and regional commerce. The cost of shipping alone is forcing the issue.

Wise funding sources will recognize that Community Development Venture Capital funds may be among the best tools for creating economic development in rural areas.

Let's put these CDVC tools to the test. Let's find ways as small businesses and entrepreneurs to provide them with market + returns. Your job is to show them how their funds can make money on your great ideas and your unmatched work ethic.

Of course this is hard work. But you need to know the metrics for developing your business anyway and working within private investment rules is a great way to make sure you have the data you need for them and for yourself.

Then, world, get out of the way.


Download the CDVC Strategy for Rural America article by Kerwin Tesdell. PDF

The Wisconsin Rural Enterprise Fund works statewide but primarily serves the Northwest counties in WI. Typical investments are fro $25,000 to $300,000. A nice model for the rest of the state.

The Community Development Venture Capital Alliance

Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), WIkipedia

Inventors panel discussion July 7

I was honored to be asked to lead a panel discussion about innovation and invention at the next meeting of the Green County WI Entrepreneurs and Inventors Club.

This is an especially vibrant E&I Club. The panelists work from a wide variety of interesting and creative parts of the economy.

The meeting is Monday July 7, 2008 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM. The location is the Monroe Clinic in their New Glarus Room. 515 22nd Av. Monroe, WI

Come early and have a Limburger sandwich at Baumgartners on the Monroe square. Monroe is one of my favorite WI cities and you just can't beat the environment and the economic potential of this great location.

If you have an interest in learning more, please send me an eMail

Nice recognition for this blog

I just received a nice note from the folks at HR World. Their web site is a resource for business people of all kinds, with a focus on HR work.

They have just chosen this Sustainable Work blog for a special honor. They have included us in a new article titled, "Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark."

Here's what they included in their write up, "Novices can get tips for innovation, startups and emerging enterprises, while established leaders can get know-how on developing sustainable new products and services."

They included some of my favorites, such as Tom Peters, Chris Anderson (The Long Tail), and Seth Godin among many other notables.

Very nice. Thanks HR World!


Link to the HR World article

Green return on investment is here

Here is a quick follow up to the previous post. I just came across a new article by Ray Unger, who writes an excellent financial column for my local paper. Ray is the Chairman of Forward Investment Advisors of Madison. I like his writing a lot. Ray has provided a long record of open, transparent service to his community through his writing over decades. Great in-the-trenches stuff from a no BS guy.

Ray talks about how the legislation behind the Clean Air Act of 1990 entered the world and changed environmental history. The Clean Air Act used a "cap and trade" system to allocate the burden of cleaning up the air.

You may or may not have strong feelings about cap and trade systems, but as Ray points out, the Economist Magazine in 2002 crowned this system, "probably the greatest green success story of the past decade."

The article continues, "Today, much the same thing is happening in the area of global warming and carbon dioxide emissions. And like after OSHA, winners and losers will emerge."

The rules that will emerge will likely be based on a cap and trade model. The difference between political parties will be on the timetable.

Either way, it's coming, and the numbers are big. One estimate is $3.32 trillion dollars in costs to non-sustainable practitioners between now and 2050.

Green ROI is here. Our society is about to create a measurable, marketable return on investment for enterprises greening their operations. Green is getting monetized. Big time. Those that can demonstrate continuous improvements in sustainability and stay below the cap get increasingly valuable credits to sell. And there will be a large market for buyers of these credits going forward as large commodity based commercial systems plod through their conversions. You get to sell them increasingly valuable credits for a long while. For getting greener. Green ROI.

A current cap and trade bill has been introduced in the Senate by people considered to be pro-business. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act probably won't be the final version that passes, given the national elections, but I think it defines the debate going forward. The lobbyists will help all involved sort out the timetables.

As Ray Unger closes his piece, "… it's never too early to work out such details. One thing's for certain: It will raise the cost of virtually all goods and services that depend on energy. And that's just about everything."

Creating ever-tighter sustainability practices has become a security issue and a survival issue for our economy. It's also about to become a lot more profitable.

Will this act as a tax on enterprises that are bad environmental actors? Yes. Will they try to pass along the tax to consumers? Of course. Are we bound to do business with them? Only at your own risk. Greener substitutes will arise, and we'll leave the bad actors to drift off.

And oh, by the way, getting greener will make your own products and services more profitable.

Not to mention the marketing avalanche anyone can create by documenting their sustainability gains.

When you can fix up the place and measure the payback, life is good.




Ray Unger's article, Confessions of a Money Manager: Carbon dioxide cap will change investment playing field


I love still saying "my paper", but reading it online. My afternoon paper for decades moved to the web and is doing a great job. I read it several times a day... The Cap Times online

Green Management Storming Every Gate

Today we had the biggest one day jump in oil prices in history. A couple of big economists at major banks predicted $150 or $200 per barrel oil this year.

Is this the end of the world? Of course not. Some Europeans are coming here to take driving vacations because energy is so cheap.

Is it the end of the road for inefficient, wasteful, energy intensive commerce? Yes, thankfully.

In my last startup I skimmed & recycled industrial fluids. I saw millions of gallons of oil going to waste. The industries I worked in called that oil a contaminant or pollution. They were paying to have oil hauled away. Oil. Honestly. I'm talking this century.

Long ago Buckminster Fuller said pollution is resources in the wrong places. If he knew how dysfunctional the transition would be, I'm sure he would have been shocked.

I used to give talks around the country, mostly in industrial settings. I loved speaking at the yearly industry conventions and professional education seminars for our industries.

I had to travel on the night of Sept. 11, 2001. I was giving a talk in Cleveland the next day for some of the heaviest hitters in my business. It was an awful drive. My society was seizing up. There were people waving flags on almost every bridge across 4 states. There were reports of Indiana Troopers seizing gas stations in Gary, IN for hoarding fuel as I drove past wondering where I could find the next open gas station. Weird, scary times.

During the seminar the next day, we were all politically numb but a new economic reality was in the air. The focus of every discussion was the need to protect our exposures - as a nation, as states, as industries, and as individuals.

Every single day since 9/11 more and more people have equated the idea of increasing efficiencies and cutting energy use as a way of decreasing exposures of all kinds.

Today - especially today - you can't escape the tidal wave of public support/demand behind getting all areas of our culture greener and more sustainable.

My point for this post is as follows: Think of energy use as a 'sin tax'. Something that costs you dearly for your guilty little pleasures. You'll pay more because you just gotta have it…..

Sure the revenues may not be going directly to the government as true taxes, but the money is flying out of your world as lost, not as a productive investment. You've got exposure. You're going to pay. Fix the exposure and you become safer, more productive, and more sustainable.

The idea of 'we just gotta keep to our old ways' is NOT inevitable. Good design can reduce the 'gotta'. Thoughtful, sustainable practices reduce the 'gotta'. Day by day, you reduce the 'gotta'. Day by day you get stronger, more efficient, and less exposed as an organization.

If you are an entrepreneur, or if you are an entrepreneurial company, this is a time of great opportunity to help.

I know the industrial world the best. The way we manufacture things, the way manufacturing energy is expended, the way manufacturing fluids are spent, the way manufacturing affects air quality and the overall effects of manufacturing on carbon emission issue are all significant, immediate opportunities.

Remediating these issues will only get more expensive over time, especially as inflation returns to the economy. Energy costs may dip now and then, but the upward trend is inexorable so long as we're exposed to energy insecurities.

The way to get the biggest bang for the buck is to remediate these exposures and build out new sustainable systems as fast as possible. Do the math. There's no other solution to that problem. Do it fast. Save the most. Decrease exposures and increase security immediately. Payback is forever. Duh.

There is a lot of low hanging sustainability fruit in many parts of our industrial and commercial worlds.

If you are an entrepreneur or work in an entrepreneurial enterprise, this economy is not the end of the world. You are living through a world-wide economic system change.

Thankfully there is a vast, public demand for measurable improvements in sustainable practices at every level of commerce. Thankfully you can be here to help.

We had a gentleman in town this week doing a seminar at the University for regional marketing execs. While not exactly talking about my world of commerce, his thoughts about branding any enterprise in this economy is an apt way to close.

The following quote is from Mr. Gary Hirschberg, one of the founders of the $300+ million revenue per year Stonyfield Yogurt and a well regarded business writer.

"The best brands are truly the most authentic ones. Brands that really set out to be solutions to environmental problems, water problems, energy problems, climate problems, are going to have an inherent competitive advantage, especially in a world where oil is heading for $200 a barrel."

Sustainable practices make money. Sustainable practices decrease exposures. Sustainable practices increase security.

Measurable, sustainable practices are also the greatest opportunity to build an authentic brand and to create a company that people want to do business with.

The world is changing. Change with it, my friends. Be diligent out there.