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Memo to POTUS: Hiring Is a Risky Business

25 Sep

Mr. President:

Creating jobs in America has to begin with job creators.

Has anyone asked why people like me – business owners, especially owners of micro-enterprise and middle-market businesses – are unwilling to put permanent employees on our platform?

Simple. Today, when people become your employees they become your burden.

Risk comes with taking on responsibility for the financial stability of people and families. When we hire people, we’re instantly responsible for their families as well as our own. It becomes our job to figure out how to keep a roof over the heads of 10 families or 100 families or more. And business owners don’t have other people’s money when payroll time comes around. Nor do have printing presses. We have to earn cash flow every week, with margins that are eroding everywhere we turn. When we can’t sustain, we have a level of financial exposure that no sane person wants on his or her shoulders.

Micro-enterprise owners already carry a lot of risk in today’s economy. That’s why we aren’t hiring and no tax cut or hiring incentive will solve that problem.

Answer: Reduce our risk. That incents us to hire.

Sam

(Fourth in a series of open memos to the President of the United States)

(Illustration courtesy of JSCreationzs)

 
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Posted in Business Ownership, Economic Recovery, Memo to POTUS

 

Memo to POTUS: Time and Money

23 Sep

Mr. President:

I work in triage every day. As a business advisor to business owners and an owner myself for 30 years, I’m right in the middle of the economic battlefield. I try to help stop the bleeding, set broken bones and help owners figure out how to adapt and survive in an economy that is changing faster than most business can respond, especially when lifeblood resources like time and money are severely limited.

Creative solutions must come from the sources that will execute those solutions – the owners on the battlefield.

Their views need to be tapped. But they have no margin to invest in political debate that’s going nowhere. Their margin of time and money has been strangled. There’s no access to capital and no time for a lot of mistakes on the road to re-creation. About all they feel they have left in abundance is the wisdom that comes from meeting payroll. But if nobody’s listening to that wisdom, it’s just more of America’s lifeblood trickling away.

And we wonder why we’re not competitive in the global marketplace.

Sam

(Third in a series of open memos to the President of the United States)

(Illustration courtesy of Sheelamohan)

 
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Posted in Economic Recovery, Lifeblood, Memo to POTUS

 

Memo to POTUS: Who Do You Listen To?

22 Sep

Mr. President:

Conventional wisdom has long said that micro-enterprises – Main Street America businesses – are the wellspring of job creation. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s debatable.

But I do know that the jobs created by these businesses are intimate to their communities. I do know who is sleepless when it’s necessary to disrupt somebody’s life with cuts to jobs or pay. I do know that micro-enterprise is a key to America’s morale and our belief that we can make a comeback.

Yet Washington thinks it’s talking to the marketplace when it’s actually listening to its big investors or special interests. When asking the marketplace how to solve our country’s economic problems, Washington listens to those who squawk the loudest – typically big corporations with strong balance sheets and powerful special interest allies.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield of the economy, America’s micro-enterprises are on tenuous ground at best. And far too many lie mortally wounded.

Sam

(Second in a series of open memos to the President of the United States)

(Photo courtesy of Vitasamb2001)

 
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Posted in Business Ownership, Economic Recovery, Memo to POTUS

 

Memo to the President: Fixing the Economy

21 Sep

Mr. President:

With all due respect, Washington has it wrong.

In fact, politicians – even the smartest and most well-meaning in the bunch – don’t have a prayer of fixing our economy. And every business owner knows that.

The people who will solve our economic problems are people who create employment, not politicians who think they can buy jobs and influence using somebody else’s money. Think employers, not public servants.

Sam

(First in a series of open memos to the President of the United States)

 

 
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Posted in Business Ownership, Economic Recovery, Memo to POTUS

 

Live Intentionally, Build Wealth

12 Sep

My two youngest kids are off to college. Molly left last month for Auburn University, where she’s a junior. Andrew is a freshman at University of North Carolina Charlotte; he’s moved closer to campus.

Although we’ll be empty-nesters for the first time in more than 20 years, Velda and I are still very much focused on Molly and Andrew and the world they’re launching into. What kind of world is it? Have we equipped them well enough? Is it even impossible to equip today’s youth for a world that changes radically and continuously?

In the weeks before they left home, Velda focused on making sure Molly and Andrew know how to handle the practicalities of everyday life. I did my best to teach them to navigate some of life’s mysteries. One morning as I journaled, I found myself writing about what I believe they need to know in order to become wealthy in this strange economic landscape they’ll be occupying.

  • Observe everything, first from close up, then from afar. Zoom in to study the minutia; zoom out for the big picture of your life, your community, your world.
  • Become conversant with the world. Learn how to listen to it. Engage with it. Surrounding ourselves with a wall made up of our current beliefs or our lifelong values is easy. Open the gate. Walk out, especially if it feels scary.
  • Connect with people. Not networking, connecting with different kinds of people, in different ways from your usual. If you’re big on social media, wade out into a real-life community. If you’re an eager joiner, find out how you can expand beyond taking part  by going global and going virtual.
  • Organize intelligence. The most valuable commodity of this century is knowledge and it is abundant. Anybody can be filthy rich with knowledge, if we pursue it, study it and organize it so we know what it’s trying to tell us.
  • Build an accountability structure; integrate it into your life. Lean into the people and the places that will keep you alert to how you’re really doing, not how you judge yourself to be doing.
  • Get high on life. Playing around with mind-altering substances seems harmless enough when we’re young. Don’t underestimate how mind alteration becomes dependency and dependency becomes decline.
  • Invest in You, Inc., mentally, physically and spiritually.

 

All of this adds up to living intentionally, not by default. When we do this, wealth follows, no matter how wealth becomes redefined as this century unfolds.

 
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Posted in The Journey, You Inc.

 

Reflect, Reconnect, Restore

07 Jul

I recently returned from my family’s annual beach trip. For years, my immediate family and my extended family – brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, multiple generations of Frowines – have come together for a week of reconnecting as a family and restoring as individuals. This year, there were more than 30 of us.

For most of us, a week of R&R looks like this: sun, sand, surf, good food, plenty of laughter, marveling over how much kids have grown. I enjoy those things, too.

But in times like these, for people like us — you and me and other You, Inc’s – even vacation has a bit of an edge to it.

We’re conscious, maybe more than ever before, that the clock is ticking on our economics. Payroll keeps coming due and client contracts don’t always renew when we hope. Overhead keeps going up and lines of credit keep shrinking. People still look to us to keep things afloat, but they seem to be ready to abandon ship as soon as they sense it might have sprung a leak.

No matter how blue the ocean or how golden the sun where we are, all of that still waits for us when we return.

I spent my week the way I hope you’ll spend some of your time this summer – sitting in deep reflection and joyful celebration with people who matter to you; letting go of the tensions of these times; and remembering that the cares of You, Inc., are ultimately in far more powerful hands than yours alone.

 
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Posted in Business Ownership, The Journey, Uncategorized, You Inc.

 

Celebrating Freedom

01 Jul

Business owners don’t always like holidays. Employees don’t work and they get paid anyway. That can make us grouchy. 

But July 4 marks a holiday owners, leaders, solopreneurs – everybody, really, who has been forced to think creatively these days about how to get the bills paid – can really appreciate. This is the weekend we celebrate freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom to pursue purpose, freedom to make choices, and especially the economic freedom that has been so threatened the last three years. 

Grill steaks or watch fireworks or listen to some patriotic music – celebrate however you want to. But don’t forget what it is we’re really celebrating. And if you run into me this weekend, I won’t be calling out Happy Fourth! or Enjoy the Fourth of July!   

I’ll be the guy saying, Happy Independence Day! Celebrate freedom!

 
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Cussing at a Crisis

23 Jun

I know how well I’m handling the tensions of the day by how many times I use one of the words I gave up for Lent. Don’t take this as a confession, but let’s just say I’m glad I wasn’t still fasting for Lent last week.

The everyday tensions of business feel a lot like ongoing crisis these days. Crisis has almost become the status quo as owners struggle to capture new business, stabilize revenue, decrease overhead and meet payroll. How do we handle crisis? By adapting. Some of us adapt well. Some of us cuss. And some of us engage in negative adaptation.

There’s a difference between looking at a crisis and seeing it as an affliction versus seeing it as a way to gain a new perspective and develop a new view of our business model. Negative adaptation is going on when we’re approaching our situation with fear of loss instead of coming at it with curiosity and openness to new angles on our businesses. Negative adaptation is marked by blamefulness or anger, causing destructiveness and defensiveness in an organization.

The best way to spot negative adaptation is to examine the fruit of our reactions to crisis. If the fruit is more fear – or more cussing – maybe it’s time to get curious and open-minded and grateful we’re still in the game.

(Even though I’ve used a light tone in referring to cursing, I do take it seriously. That’s why I gave it up for Lent. That experience has made me aware that the language I use makes a statement not just about how well I handle the tensions of the day, but about my spiritual condition as well.)

 
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Posted in Business Ownership, The Journey

 

Conscious or Unconscious?

07 Jun

Sometimes I think times are tough.

Other times I realize how privileged and provisioned my life is, as well as the lives of most of the people I am around on a regular basis. 

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a luncheon to benefit Barium Springs Home for Children, which has been around since 1891, a haven for children who haven’t been given a safe launch into the world. The luncheon reminded me that the whipsaw of this economic crisis is the pressure on already weak families. And it forced me to ask myself: How sensitive am I? 

I’ve built a world that allows me to feel secure and comfortable. But in today’s world, how much is too comfortable and too secure? What responsibility do I have to become sensitive to the plight of those who are in circumstances they didn’t create and can’t control? Not for political reasons. And not for the good will or good press social entrepreneurship might generate – just conscious. 

Of course, Barium Springs isn’t the only place that desperately needs resources. Especially in these times there are more legitimate and worthy unmet needs than I could list here, all of them with heartbreaking statistics. And those of us who are privileged to effect or create resources can’t solve all the world’s problems. 

But we can be stirring about what this means for us. We can examine our priorities. We can ask ourselves what our part is, and how we are to use all that we’ve been provisioned with. We can become conscious of harsh conditions around us. And out of that consciousness, we can hope for a clear understanding of how we are to express our generosity.

 
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Posted in The Journey

 

Moving Past the Old Game

31 May

Graduation season must make everyone feel older. That’s good for graduates, not so good for parents.

A week ago, I attended a graduation party at a club where I was a star – at least in my own mind. In reality, my friends beat me more than I beat them. But I was definitely well known for my trash talk.

I stood on the verandah with my old tennis buddies. Inevitably, as we watched our young-adult children embarking on a new stage of life, our talk turned to age, and the aches and pains that are taking down our game. Somebody mentioned a bad knee, another his hip problems, another friend said something about scar tissue from shoulder surgery. I quit tennis six years ago because of back problems.

When I was sidelined, I treated my back problem the way I’d treat a business asset that wasn’t performing well. I studied the problem and came up with a game plan for adaptation. Maybe yoga held answers. Water aerobics worked for some. Maybe walking or running, better nutrition, the right desk chair. I can tell you this much – although I’m sure it is a perfect answer for some people, the big purple balance ball on the top shelf in the storage room at the office was not the answer for me.

Continuous adaptation is my answer to the challenges of no longer being in my physical prime, just as it is the answer to the economic challenges of the marketplace. Continuing the pound-and-grind approach to fitness that worked for me when I was younger has been replaced by something more subtle – a willingness to move past the old way to a new way of playing the game.

 
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Posted in Uncategorized, You Inc.

 
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