SustainableWork

For any friends in southern WI who might like to attend one of my talks, the next one will be June 11th.

This one will be at the Connections meeting, a quarterly networking event held at Waukesha County Technical College in Pewaukee. Doors open at 6 PM. There will be an opening welcome from the Small Business Center Director Russ Roberts at 6:30 and my talk will begin at 6:45.

Here is the official description...

Invest in Yourself: How to Organize Your Small Business to Grow During Difficult Economic Times

What does it take to start and run a small business in difficult economic times? It takes an investment of time, and an investment in the skills and tools to organize yourself and your enterprise. Learn how smart entrepreneurs do more with less, while increasing financial security for themselves and their businesses.

There is open networking all evening following my talk, along with an opportunity to display some of your marketing materials. If you need additional information please send me an eMail.

The talk and Connections meeting will be in the Anderson Conference Center. I look forward to seeing you on June 11th at WCTC!


WCTC Connections meeting agenda

Register online for the Connections meeting

Map to WCTC

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, startups, The slow start up movement

As an entrepreneur and small business owner there is one and only one constant that I've found, managing through in 35 years of widely changing economies.

We have to do increasingly more with increasingly less.

The chart in this piece was taken from financial analyst John Mauldin's great newsletter, which I highly recommend.

It shows all the official recessions we've had, charting from 1940 through 2010. Data is from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research.

You'll notice they haven't labeled the mess we're in as a recession yet. In one sense that sets up this piece. By the time recessions are finally labeled a recession, there is plenty of economic turmoil and badly wounded small businesses out there.

I think the reality of the graphic is that there should be a lighter gray fuzziness about 50% the width of each recession pasted on either side of the dark gray lines now showing. At a guess that might indicate about 1/3 of US economic history for my lifetime has been in difficult economic times.

I've lived through nine out of the last ten recessions. I've run small businesses through the last five; six if you count the current travails.

What I've learned is that under ALL circumstances, entrepreneurs and small businesses need to do increasingly more with increasingly less. Period.

This is not a call for beating your small business self up with more workload, more stress and less available time. It's just the opposite.

This is a message that the way you can get through this, and all the coming economic messes is to trust your gut and follow your smarts. You can do more with less. That's what our American economy does. It creates winners that produce better stuff using fewer resources.

This is a call for evaluating every small biz decision you make through the lens of physical and financial efficiency. Will this (any) decision help me to do more with what I have? Will this (any) decision help me to do more of what I do at a lower cost to me?

Proof of this is evident in the graph above. Yes, the remarkable march of predictable recessions is obvious and something to learn from.

But check out the rapidly rising curve in the background. That's gross domestic product. It's a big macroeconomic measure, and subject to all kinds of interpretation and parsing, but the fact of the matter is this GDP number shows our economy, you, me, all of us, producing increasingly more value with increasingly less input. This happens through good times and bad times and everything in between.

I have commercial self interest in this piece. I used the theme of doing increasingly more with increasingly less as the centerpiece of a seminar at my Technical College this week. The seminar was for an invited group in advance of an Entrepreneur Expo put on at the college that evening.

I used the seminar and the Expo to officially roll out the public beta of Diligence™, the small business workflow tool I've been building this past winter.

Spring is here. The days are brighter. There is yet another economic mess rolling through, and everybody needs to do more with less. Seems to me to be a great time to start another company.

I ran our last company, which was a manufacturing firm, through the deepest recession in manufacturing since the Great Depression. I didn't just run it, I grew it. When the US couldn't export anything I had customers on 6 continents. I hired a guy for a key new role in a month when there was only 1,000 new jobs added in the whole United States. I used my organizing approach to build a firm that was recognized by some of the most significant global small business awards available. I'm damn proud of all that. I loved attacking that situation with the only tool that will ever work. Then, or now. Efficiency.

Doing increasingly more with increasingly less. We did all that at my last startup with just 4 committed friends and the tools for doing more with less.

I'm really excited about making my new biz organizing tool available to others. I'll link to it below. More importantly, I'm excited for what it can do for folks looking to organize and grow their small businesses in this difficult environment.

It's a tool I've used myself to grow small enterprises through all the recent recessions and look forward to training others to use. Diligence™ is a tool that gives my small business peers the ability to do increasingly more with increasingly less. Sounds like a good idea whose time just keeps coming.


The rollout and introduction of Diligence™ my new tool for organizing small businesses.

Subscription page for John Mauldin's newsletter You can also search back archives by entering your eMail address. The newsletter the chart above was borrowed from is March 7, 2008, 'What's that hissing sound?''

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups

I've used QuickBooks to run the last several businesses and I'm using it for my current startup as well.

This is excellent accounting software from Intuit. We like it; our CPA likes it; it's easy to learn, bingo.

I don't normally expect big insights from big companies, but I have to say I've been reading and re-reading a new report sponsored by Intuit, produced by the Institute for the Future.

The good folks at Intuit have seen your future as an entrepreneur and, as anyone who has followed these posts know, I couldn't agree with them more.

I have been trumpeting the ascendance of the independent entrepreneur for all of my working life. I work in those trenches. Intuit has just released (Feb. 2008) a great report with a really nice description for the new world of entrepreneurship called, "The New Artisan Economy".

This is the third in a series from Intuit called, The Future of Small Business Series.

Beautiful, smart, direct stuff. This is a publicly available download so I'll attach a link to Intuit's download page for these reports.

If I copied everything I liked about their Phase 3 report into this post it would be too long. So, here are just a few nuggets…

"The next ten years will see a re-emergence of artisans as an economic force."

Yes, many of us have been in this movement for a long while, but there is a palpable tipping point being reached right now. This idea is going mainstream at the speed of light. It's in the air and the water, and it's emerging into the world economies like a welcome spring day.

"The coming decade will see continuing economic transformation and the emergence of the new artisan economy. Many of the new artisans will be small and personal businesses - merchant-craftspeople producing one of a kind or limited runs of specialty goods for an increasingly large pool of customers looking for unique, customized, or niche products. These businesses will attract and retain craftspeople, artists, and engineers looking for the opportunity to build and create new products and markets."

A short comment on the quote above: This is exactly what we were able to build at our first start up, Banner Graphics, right through our last startup, SmartSkim™. You develop systems to produce unique services and products under the aegis of mass customization. You're world-beating within a niche subject area and then you find a way to scale your output and your productivity effectively. The time for this is not coming. It's here.


"They'll be equipped with advanced technology, able to access global and local business partners and customers, and will be competing in any industry. Their firms will be agile, flexible, and will often partner with larger firms to accomplish their business goals. Most will be knowledge artisans, relying on human capital to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products services, and business models."

In my startups, I always follow this path. The critical piece I don't want you to miss is the last thought about developing new business models. The access to tools and innovative business partnering is virtually limitless within the scale of small businesses right now. Business models - how you organize and go to market - are limited only by your imagination and adherence to applicable laws.


"The new artisan economy will see rapid growth in the formation of small and personal (one person) businesses. The artisans will create new organizational structures and provide greater opportunities for work-life balance. These small and personal businesses will be run by a diverse group of entrepreneurs with a wide range of business objectives, but many will choose to join the ranks of the new artisans to match their work with their values."

… matching work with their values. Sustainable work at its core.


"Small business has generated the majority of net new jobs in the United States over the last several decades, and the number of personal businesses has been growing much faster than the overall economy. This trend will continue over the next decade. We expect that the small and personal business growth will again outpace the growth of the overall economy, and the number of personal businesses will grow from 21 million today to more than 32 million by 2018."

This predicts 10 million new jobs over the next decade, just within the subcategory of 'personal (one person) businesses'. Those growing into the small business category will rise proportionately.

The report describes our economy evolving into a pattern of development across most industries that they call, "barbell economics". This is a term from McKinsey & Co. describing industries, "…with a few global giants at one end, a relatively small number of mid-sized firms in the middle, and a large number of small businesses at the other end."

It is inevitable that the exponential growth in small business formation will create this barbell structure. The economics are obvious. Getting yourself ready to participate in this movement seems obvious. The Kauffman Foundation refers to this movement into entrepreneurship as, 'developing your personal economic independence'.

"Lightweight infrastructures will expand and redefine the boundaries of the small business. They will provide greater agility and flexibility in collaborating, pooling resources, and outsourcing functions to other firms. These changes will reduce the risk of starting and operating a small business by lowering capital requirements and shifting fixed costs into variable costs. Lightweight infrastructures will also open new markets and create new opportunities for small and personal businesses."

Lightweight infrastructures. It's lovely to hear these terms coming into vogue. Lightweight infrastructures are an essential tenant of sustainable enterprise. Moving hard costs to variable costs so that the enterprise can rise and fall and breathe like the (economically) living entity it is. Yep. Dead on.


"The small and personal businesses of the future will build upon information technology to extend their capabilities. Decreasing IT costs, coupled with increasing computer power and the growing popularity of "software as a service" delivery, will provide small businesses access to rich and complex business applications. These new applications will require less time, money and technical skills than traditional business applications, and offer flexibility and ease of use of desktop software. They also provide small businesses with tools and capabilities once exclusively available to large corporations."

What makes me most enthusiastic about all this is that all this guidance is not coming from the usual feel-good suspects. This is coming from hard headed accounting folks. Intuit, no less.

I type this standing under a photo of Buckminster Fuller, who long ago predicted the ever increasing utility of the knowledge economy, resulting in ever increasing possibilities and pathways for all of us to make the world a better place. For me, this report documents that progress.

Intuit really got it right with this report. This is the time, and this is the place for the re-emergence of the artisan entrepreneur.

The idea ties perfectly into the slow startup movement I've been touting. Smart, creative enterprises launched in support of the greater good and designed to support the entrepreneur and their communities. And oh by the way, it ties into the clear realities of the emerging global economy.

This is a time of major transition in economies worldwide, and small business entrepreneurs all over the world are emerging to lead the way to a better life for everyone.

Artisan entrepreneur. A great job title, just waiting for you.



Intuit's PDF links to this study I've been quoting from the Phase 3 report in this post, but they are all great.

Institute for the Future Report authors

The Kauffman Foundation

Labels: boomers, Buckminster Fuller, business plans, entrepreneurship, startups, The slow start up movement

A newly released paper from Harvard economist Edward Glaeser reinforces a theme regarding startups and emerging enterprises that I'm finding to be true everywhere I turn.

Professor Glaeser's paper, "Entrepreneurship and the City", was discussed in the online forum, The National Dialog on Entrepreneurship, a Kauffman Foundation site. The abstract is available from the Harvard Institute of Economic Research. I have purchased the full article, but it's not here yet. However, the abstract and NDE discussion is enough for me to make the point of this post.

While this research looked specifically at what made cities more successful, I have no doubt that the same findings can be said for any region and probably any country.

The paper concludes that it is the culture of entrepreneurship that is critical to the success of a city. Specifically, cities don't have entrepreneurial cultures by some magic stoke of good luck. They succeed because they support and educate the widest number of people who then become entrepreneurs.

Professor Glaesser finds that cities with a skilled and appropriate work force tend to have higher rates of self-employment and relatively higher proportions of small firms.

The paper also concludes that, "There is a strong connection between area-level education and entrepreneurship."

There is no mention of advanced business school training, only education leading to a "skilled and appropriate work force".

Yes. Absolutely. The culture of success is built person-by-person, startup-by-startup, new enterprises becoming small creative, valuable contributors to their cities and regions.
Does that mean all these small new entrepreneurial ventures are going to succeed? Of course it doesn't. Just the opposite. The vitally different - and better - way of asking that question is why is the idea of failure universally seen as nothing but negative by so many people?

Why can't failure be seen as the valuable learning step it can be? In successful entrepreneurial cultures, you aren't looked down upon for failing. You're looked at as someone that's working hard and could use an introduction or two, maybe a referral to a needed link in their next chain.

Now, if your failures involve lots of money and little planning, the value of that lesson is dimmer and can be hard to locate.

If you fail by losing important money in some high risk gamble, that's not failure, that's stupidity.

But if you roll out your startups following the ideas in the slow startup movement I've been writing about and you fail, congratulations! You've learned something valuable without paying much for it. You now know one small thing better than most of the population of the planet. String a few of those together, and you're gold. Nobody can catch you now. You'll know one specific set of things that virtually no one else on earth knows. If you launch your new startup by spending more time than money on it, the world of enterprise becomes an entirely different and more welcoming place.

But you need the culture of support for innovation that only comes from doing it not talking about it.

In many of the circles I travel in, I hear all kinds of supportive talk for entrepreneurship.

This week, I was fortunate enough to see this kind of culture-building support for innovation actually being done.

Was it valuable to for the entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs? There are a few metrics I could use to define success, but let's use one that should have obvious meaning. I saw a large group of people come out on a cold November night in Wisconsin, at the very same time the Green Bay Packers were playing the Dallas Cowboys (both with records of 10 and 1), to share and support their entrepreneurial ideas. Value? Hmm. I'd say.

This was an Inventor and Entrepreneur Club meeting in beautiful Juneau County, WI. Wow. The stories, the mutual support, the flat out usefulness of the entire process was really fun.

Terry Whipple coordinates the meetings. No, that's too orderly a word… Terry mobilizes the meetings. These are very peer-to-peer driven. I'm excited for their organizations. Terry and Sue Noble from the Vernon County Club, and I got to meet before, during, and after the meeting. Talk about getting it! Talking about building entrepreneurial cultures for all the right reasons.

I also came away from a recent Green County I&E club meeting with a similar sense. There are wonderful, low-cost, effective, and highly supportive ways to create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, one person at a time.

This is new enough for a Harvard professor to be writing about it, and yet surely is as old as commerce itself.

The folks working at these grassroots levels in my state are not counting business plans and filtering them for their high tech/biotech/nanotech sex appeal. They are building cultures of entrepreneurship one person, one relationship at a time. They are building networks on networks, one network at a time.

Sue Noble told me a story about her I&E Club which almost had me in tears. I'm headed to one of their Vernon County meetings ASAP, and will post that story soon.

Professor Glaeser writes that "local entrepreneurship depends mainly on having the right kind of people". And I would suggest that to create the most efficient and widespread effects, the right kind of people would be those that are respected, supported, and trained to learn from failure and to grow in sustainable ways. That's a real culture of innovation.

Terry had posters all over the room reading 'Catch the Culture!'. I got it but didn't post it to my notebook. The next day I read about the Harvard study, stating that regions that create systems for supporting small scale entrepreneurship build successful cultures. Terry suddenly seemed smarter than he'd ever claim.

There is a tantalizing reference in Professor Glaeser's abstract for my boomer entrepreneur buddies. "Self-employment is particularly associated with abundant, older citizens and with the presence of input suppliers." Yikes. Boomer biz with lots of small operations. The research paper is ordered. Stay tuned.

I love studies that agree with me. They seem so prescient. Yet the truthfulness and the timeliness of these ground-up ideas makes perfect sense. The idea of building successful, entrepreneurial cultures from the bottom up has to be true.

Is this a knock on other kinds of enterprise creation? Of course not. Those high tech, biotech and nanotech models can be wonderful and produce spectacular results. What I do intend to say is that those models aren't the only valuable kids on the block. The entire entrepreneurship movement needs support and respect for the whole culture to grow and prosper.

This Harvard study focused on two measures of entrepreneurship: self-employment and the number of small firms. "Both of these measures correlated with urban success."

You do the numbers. Any region needs more entrepreneurs and more small enterprises to be successful. That is NOT the same as more headline grabbing this-tech or that-tech venture funded firms. It's sheer numbers. More entrepreneurs and more enterprises make the culture succeed. From this perspective, risk in the economy of our regions gets spread around and diversified, more people get to contribute, and more people become engaged solving problems. Tell me something bad about this approach.

Thanks, Harvard. More importantly, thanks Terry and Sue and all the other good folks working from the bottom up to create a culture of entrepreneurship for all of us.

To anyone considering their own startup or new enterprise, I'd say "Welcome aboard". We all need you.



Juneau County, WI Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club

Contact Vernon County, WI economic development folks to learn more.

Abstract "Entrepreneurship and the City" (October 2007). Glaeser, Edward L., Harvard Institute of Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 2140

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, The slow start up movement

The new issue of Rural Life Magazine (Winter 2007) has a very good article called "The Rise of the Rural Entrepreneur", by Candace Krebs. The subtitle is, "A 'creative economy' spurs opportunity for rural start-ups". This is a subject dear to my heart and the subject of this piece.

The article brings in author Richard Florida, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University, whose book, "The Rise of the Creative Class" did a lot to predict and identify this trend. They quote him emphasizing what seems so important to the general discussion of entrepreneurship and sustainable commerce everywhere now.

"The American dream is no longer just about money. My research and others' show another factor emerging: The new American dream is to maintain a reasonable living standard while doing work that we enjoy doing."

The ability to exercise this dream from rural areas has never been more available.

We all have skills and talents. We're all capable of making a contribution. Now the tools and techniques for interfacing with the general economy from rural communities are becoming better, cheaper, and more reliable every day.

Importantly, those of us working from small or mid-sized communities are all learning the techniques of outsourcing to one another, building strong networks of independent enterprises that, together, are much cooler and - personally - more economically secure than most vertically integrated behemoths lumbering about out there.

Can you do this successfully from a rural area? The article cites a fish broker who easily moved operations from Oregon to Nebraska. Don Macke, founder of the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, NE says, "A big part of the economy has moved from people being producers to being facilitators of services".

That's largely true, and new services are emerging every day that can be done remotely. While not in a rural community, I was starting capital equipment in Johannesburg, South Africa earlier this year with little more that a modest ability to explain things over the internet.
The work force of capable people is crashing. The ability to participate, contribute, and grow your own enterprise from a beautiful, rural county has never been more feasible.

There are tough and necessary questions that need asking when the subject of rural entrepreneurship is discussed. A reliance on outsiders to solve problems seems wishful and risky. Growing our own entrepreneurs from people already in place, on the ground in rural areas seems much wiser. Developing the skills to empower those would-be entrepreneurs is vital to the larger economies of rural areas now more than ever.

I'm not going to be a mask the fact that rural life in many areas can be economically challenging. I am going to tell anyone looking to develop a new small enterprise that rural life in my state of Wisconsin is strong, vigorous, and welcoming to new ideas and new people.

According to the Rural Life article, people working in the creative occupations include such job titles as engineers, designers, artists, writers, planners, micro-production specialists, web workers, and my favorite, small scale ag entrepreneurs. I would also include everyone in a rural community that has the gumption to reach out and engage the wider world with their entrepreneurial venture.

I'm working with several new friends that specialize in economic development in the rural counties of my wonderful state. They are working hard, and working very creatively, to help you establish your new enterprise in some of the best areas to live and work in all of the United States. I think this trend is beginning to occur in most rural areas of the U.S. Their doors are open, friends, and you are welcome.

The Rural Life article included these stats about the new creative professionals: "Creative-sector workers today outnumber blue-collar workers, and the creative sector of the economy accounts for nearly half of all wage and salary income - $1.7 trillion per year."

Richard Florida concludes, and I agree; "The economy will prosper again when more Americans can do the work they love".

Yep. And it's never been easier to do work you love from a place you'd love to live.

Top that.


Resources...

Here are just a few of the beautiful rural places in my state, which are looking to have you live and work and live out your dreams. I'd highly recommend getting in touch with these folks if you would like to learn more. If you are already living in one of these places or would like to, get in touch with the folks below. You'll never launch your own enterprise without taking the first step. Just start!

Juneau County, WI. Terry Whipple has built a program to support entrepreneurship and innovation that is unmatched. All this from a beautiful rural location you'd love to live in.

Vernon County, WI. I think it's among the most beautiful rural areas in the world and don't want to see it overrun. Sue Noble and friends will help their beautiful county develop with your needs and their beautiful county in mind so please call her.

Green County, WI. This county is among Wisconsin's best kept secrets. It's a beautiful rural setting with excellent access to Chicago, Milwaukee, Rockford and Madison. Anna Schramke and her team can get you all the information you could want about starting or relocating your new enterprise in this really lovely setting. Some of my very best new startup clients are based in Green County and the support there is excellent.

Sauk County, WI. Sauk County contains some of the most beautiful rural settings in Wisconsin, yet is bustling with commercial vitality. Not only that, this wonderful Wisconsin county hosts a community baseball park known as a national gem. Call Karna Hanna to learn more.

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, The slow start up movement

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.

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups

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

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups, The slow start up movement

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

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups

I'm in contact with folks setting up a pilot for a really cool sounding TV show.

It's going to be geared toward boomer entrepreneur couples that are considering, or are in the early stages of leaping from their prior lives into the world of entrepreneurship.

As many of you know, I've got something of a specialty beginning to emerge with boomer entrepreneurs. The producers of this show have asked me to suggest additional candidates. They are doing casting for the show right now.

Here's how they describe who they are looking for:

"Have you always wondered how wonderful life could be if you started that business, took that hobby more seriously or changed your career? Is there anything you always said you'd do once your kids got older?"

"For many people in their 40’s and 50’s, the time has come to restructure their life and do something they’ve always dreamed of…….it could be anything from owning a Bed & Breakfast to running a Scuba Diving School in the Caribbean."

"Our show, “Life Begins at 40” will give a husband and wife team an opportunity to Road Test their Dreams."

Please send me an eMail if you're a reader that matches this description. It looks like a great opportunity and a lot of fun!

And by all means you're not alone. Dr. Gene Cohen, M.D., PH.D. who is a scientist and researcher at George Washington University discussed the huge trend of adults taking on new challenges and discovering new meaning in their lives in the Jan 16, 2006 issue of Newsweek.

In an article titled, "The Myth of the Midlife Crisis", Dr. Cohen said only about 10% of the people in midlife that he studies describe this time as a crisis.

"Far more say they're filled with a new sense of quest and personal discovery. 'I'm looking forward to pursuing the career I always wanted,' one 49-year-old woman told me. 'I'm tired of just working on other people's visions, rather than my own, even if I have to start on a smaller scale.'"

C'mon my boomer friends. You know you want to make this leap. Here's the nudge you've been looking for!

Send me an eMail to nominate yourself and your idea for the show.

Newsweek article on boomer brains and what we can do with them

Dr. Cohen is also the founding director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George Washington University Medical Center. This article is adapted from "The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain." It's now out in paperback, and you can read more about it at Amazon.com

Labels: boomers, startups

Tom Peters has picked up on a really cool blogger/writer/entrepreneurial activist/and a person with many other good attributes, Penelope Trunk, in an interview on his site dated 8_6_07

Ms. Trunk works from my home base of Madison, WI. I've linked to her previously and want to highlight her entrepreneurship writing more in the future.

Penelope writes a great blog. I recommend subscribing. I believe she is an important new writer discussing life from a great perspective. I'm a big fan of her writing especially her emphasis on keeping the important things (family, integrity, life) important. It's reassuring as hell to hear her voice rise out of the noise.

I recommend the Tom Peters interview linked below. Here is a sample I thought you'd like...

Tom P: This is why I like your blog; I enjoy your attitude. Yet it seems there are still massive numbers of folks going to Harvard and such and getting their MBAs. They must be jumping into the corporate ring.

Penelope: Most of them want to pursue entrepreneurship. If you look at the materials from business schools, they fall all over themselves saying how good they are at teaching entrepreneurship. Why do people want entrepreneurship? They want flexibility, control over their time, control over their workload. They want all the things that we know make work good. Whereas Baby Boomers just want some money and a title. We know those things don't make work good.

Tom P: But the reality of being an entrepreneur is that you're going to work more hours than at any other kind of job. Entrepreneurship is beyond the extreme jobs as Sylvia Ann Hewlett describes them, right?

Penelope: Only if you want to be the next Microsoft. For example, most women are solo entrepreneurs. It's a lifestyle thing. We used to say that the majority of new businesses fail. We throw that statistic around all the time. But, in fact, success as an entrepreneur today for Generations X and Y is achieving the lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is a success if you had a good time. I think very few people would want to run Microsoft. I think most people would want to sell it before it got that big. Who wants Bill Gates' life? All he does is work.

Tom P: I agree. But I think a lot of people, for some reason, are really attracted to eighteen gazillion dollars.

Penelope: I don't think that's true. I've read great real estate articles about the current glut of McMansions. Baby Boomers are selling them to retire to New York City and drive up housing prices there. Generation X is moving out to the suburbs to raise their kids, but they don't want to live in those houses. Those houses look ridiculous to us. And if we don't want those houses, we certainly don't need eighteen million dollars to build a bigger house.

Tom P: You say you need only 40 thousand dollars.

Penelope: I do say that.....


The Tom Peters interview with Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk's site

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, Penelope Trunk, Tom Peters

Look around. Congratulations. You're living in the renaissance age of entrepreneurship.

New tools, new problem solving skills, and new worlds of innovation are exploding like fireworks all around us.

Certainly our ancestors fended for themselves independently, but their options for gaining more freedom and control over their lives was quite limited.

The possibilities available in our commercial lives are rapidly becoming the exact inverse. We can work independently, in ways of our own choosing, while gaining increasing control and freedom in our lives.

Welcome to the renaissance age of entrepreneurship. The world will get better with or without you, but if you want to join the fray, there has never been a better time.

We are awash in new potential for entrepreneurial solutions in every facet of our societies, from high science to brick making to widget manufacturing. Improbably powerful tools are available free or at modest cost. The world is searching for innovative solutions to uncountable numbers of problems. We have access to instant knowledge. We have a shipping/logistics system available on every other corner that I would’ve walked miles uphill in the snow to get to 20 years ago.

Importantly, there is a real wisdom emerging about appropriate tools for financing new and emerging enterprises. From our newest Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and the wonderful Grameen Bank through community investments through green tech funds and all the rest of the traditional routes. There are many more niches on the supply side of financing than there has ever been in the past. This is smart and beneficial, not only at the micro economic level but at the meta level for civilization. The sifting and winnowing process for planting and developing new enterprises is growing up. There are now many efficient and creative new ways to match up the goals of the financing side with the goals of the entrepreneur.

It’s all lining up. Welcome to the renaissance. It’s coming hard and fast from every direction and it’s setting up a cycle of innovation that could drive progress and prosperity around the globe for many decades.

Here’s a nice summary from a recent CNN.com story...

“Almost everyone wants to own a business - from college students, who are signing up for entrepreneurial courses in record numbers; to those over age 65, who are forming more companies every year; to recent immigrants, who in 2005 started 25% more companies per capita than native-born citizens did.”

“We are in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country has ever seen. According to Small Business Administration projections, nearly 672,000 new companies with employees were created in 2005. That is the biggest business birthrate in U.S. history: 30,000 more startups than in 2004, and 12% more than at the height of dot-com hysteria in 1996.”

There is one miserable-ass phrase out there that you should not accept under any circumstance. I only bring it up because the following very good paragraph was headlined with the phrase I hate - ‘chicken entrepreneurs’ (meaning starting up while holding on to your existing job) – NEVER accept that slur!

However, I digress. The text that followed is inspiring. Here comes the next generation…

“Meanwhile, it has become easier for entrepreneurs to start new companies without quitting their day jobs. According to the SBA, the total number of firms with no employees grew by 26% from 1997 to 2004, to 19 million. A little more than half of those companies are run by workers with another primary source of income.”

Not only that but consider the rolling thunder of the boomers. At our age we’re able to be more engaged and creative than our parents could have ever imagined. We’re pioneering many smart new styles of entrepreneurship and bringing skills and tools to the table based on years of hard won experience.

On top of that, as I’ve said before in an early post, (boomers especially) you gain more personal security by starting your own enterprise. The risk is in NOT starting one.

In support, a nice article from BusinessWeek.com titled, “The Lure of Entrepreneurship Beckons Boomers”

"Baby boomers are looking at starting real businesses—looking for another 10- to 12- to 15-year career, God willing," says Paul Magelli, senior scholar-in-residence at the Kansas City (Mo.)-based Kauffman Foundation, a center promoting entrepreneurship. ‘Just the topic of whether Ford and GM would engage in consolidation talks sends a huge tremor among a huge, experienced workforce—they need to be thinking about opportunities with some kind of income security. It's somewhat subdued, but that anxiety is still very much in the workplace, from the reports we get.’ Entrepreneurship is, somewhat surprisingly, increasingly seen as a stable way to ensure financial security, Magelli says."

The story continues with a note about the amazingly high percentage of self employed folks over 50 who are starting enterprises, as well as the next group rising to the common sense of entrepreneurship.

“About one in three self-employed workers ages 51 to 69 made the transition to self-employment at or after age 50, according to a 2003 AARP Baby Boomers Study, and 15% of the 1,200 adults between 38 and 57 who were surveyed planned to start their own businesses.”

The renaissance is here for all of us, for boomers, for young people and everyone in between. There is no alchemy involved in starting new enterprises. The opportunities are everywhere. The tools for executing are cheap, and often free.

What you most need is common sense, viable planning and the gumption to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The magic comes as you watch your new enterprise take its first steps, then build momentum, then take flight.

I wish you all the best.


CNN.com story

BusinessWeek.com story on boomers and start ups

The Kauffman Foundation

Paul Magelli info at The Kauffman Foundation

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups

Sometimes things in life are best summarized by a great cartoon.

The Jan 16 New Yorker has a good one done by Barbara Smaller.

A human resource/finacial planner guy is at his desk. Behind him, on the wall, is a poster labeled 'Your Future' with an image of an hourglass, rapidly draining out. Across from him sits an older guy sitting nervously.

The planner is asking, "Have you given much thought to what kind of job you want after you retire?"

Hmmmm. Not too far from the mark, my boomer pals.

For a number of good reasons we should all be looking to put some financial and personal control in place as we get older. You can always be a greeter at Wal-Mart, but running your own enterprise makes getting out of bed every morning a LOT more interesting.


Barbara Smaller cartoons at The New Yorker

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, startups

Boomers, gather round. Button up your cardigans. Put your ears on the radio. Ready?

WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!!!!

If you've thought about starting your own gig, now is the time. Not later. Now. We need you and your skills out here. Get out there and fix something. I don't want to meet you for the first time on the obituary page. I want to first learn about you as you're out kicking ass in some creative and helpful way.

There has never been a moment in human history where innovation and design improvements have been needed more. There have never been this many tools available to execute great solutions.

Life is not a rehearsal. Put some wheels on it, friend.

The world needs your help. You've got the skills. You've got the understanding. Fix something. Fast! Faster!!

Start your own enterprise. Start a non-profit. Start a for-profit. Become a social entrepreneur. Become a risk taker and a change agent. Start it up on the side. Start it up with a friend. Start it up with partners in town or partners oceans away. There is no perfect way. There is no single ideal organization model. Put together something that works for you.

Is it easy? Of course not. But you're got all that boomer imagination sitting around mostly unemployed. You need to plan well, execute even better, then get out there and change the world.

C'mon. There is a lot of work to be done. Your ability to execute your own solutions and create your own brands has never, ever been better. You've got a ton of life skills to build from. Put them to work.

You want more security? Make your own. You want a more fulfilling life? Don't wait. Do it yourself.

Boomers! Get busy, damn it. Don't make me use more superlatives.

Fire up you impact on the world before your chance to change the world passes.
.

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship

.
One of my favorite cartoonists (BEK) has a great piece in the April 11, 2005 New Yorker magazine. A middle aged guy is sitting in an interview chair looking for a job. He seems forlorn and lost.

He's saying this to the interviewer; "I'm looking for a position where I can slowly lose sight of what I originally set out to do with my life, with benefits."

Working jobs you don't like is basically giving away control of your life, for benefits.

To me, starting a new enterprise is far less risky than not doing it.

Let's say you have a dumb, boring job that isn't building time, quality and competence into your life. If you get whacked by a bad economy and lose your job, what have you got? Nothing. If you act (wisely, please) on your dreams and fire up your own enterprise, what are the downsides? If your new enterprise gets whacked by the economy you can always get a job. You showed initiative. You organized it. You took a chance. That's what smart corporations are looking for now anyway. You just upped your pay grade as far as they're concerned.

However, it doesn't work the other direction. If your job gets yanked and you haven't got anything else in place, the word toast comes to mind. You're not likely to be able to start up an alternative job on demand.

Tell me why starting your own new enterprise is risky? It's risky NOT to do it! Start now. Start small. Start smart, but just start.
.

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship