Resolutions

It's New Year's Eve and I am certain that you have tons of resolutions that you are going to make or have made. Some of these resolutions likely involve your small business. After a particularly rocky year, I am sure that one of those resolutions is: make more money. I don't know of anyone, even the very wealthy, who had a bonanza year financially. Even the richest of the rich, guys like Kirk Kerkorian, Robert Tchenguiz and Adolf Merckl are practically going broke, losing billions of dollars of value in their portfolios by the day.

I could be wrong, but the battle cries of the recession has been universal - except maybe for hospitals, shrinks and people who work with the dead - they have really capitalized on the consequences of excess stress and financial shock, I would imagine. Yes, all indicators are the the country is in a recession (as are many countries across the globe) and 2009, according to the economists, pundits and their statistics, is not going to be a heck of a lot better - it may even get worse before it gets better. (Be still your heart!)

I think that one of the ways a small business owner can assure that 2009 is worse than 2008 is to adopt a doomsday attitude and to believe that it will get worse. Negative thinking is singularly the worse thing that can happen to a challenge. In order to succeed, one has to remain certain that one can overcome the core challenges that one faces. One has to stay positive. And focused. One has to resolve to master the challenges, to get on top of them, rather than have the challenges get on top of one.

As a small business person, one of my resolutions this year, 2009, is to remain optimistic. And like president-elect Barack Obama always says, I will adopt the mantra, "yes, I can."

What about you? What are your resolutions for your small business?

Obama

Obama pulled off a stunning and emotional win tonight to become the 44th President (elect) of the United States of America. The historical significance of his win cannot be over-stated. Many are jubilant in the streets of America, regardless of their color, national origin, orientation, religion or gender.

What will Obama mean for small business? Only time will tell, but if what he said during the campaign holds up, small business can expect less taxes (this will please Joe the Plumber), assistance with health care (this will please Hillary Clinton), and possibly increased funding opportunities. According to the Wall Street Journal, "SBA-Backed Loans have dried up and the substantial decline in Small Business Administration-backed lending is fueling criticism that the federal government isn't doing enough to help small businesses that are in dire need of cash." Surely, this will change with an Obama adminstration.

The President Elect has made it clear that if a business makes less than $250,000 that business will not get a tax increase. So small businesses should like that since only about 5% of small business generate revenues anywhere close to $250,000 per year.

The Obama administration will probably have one of the most developed green strategies of any president in recent memory. Big on his agenda seems to be the issue of alternative energies and reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil. This will also impact small businesses just like it will impact multinational corporations with global geopolitical influence.

Obama's style has been a conciliatory one throughout this campaign. If that continues, that is going to be very good for America and for America's small businesses. By working in a non-partisan way with the Congress, Obama will surely get more of his agendas (including those that pertain to small businesses) across than if he doesn't.

Obama supports young people and he supports education. Young people are one of the most experimental, innovative and business-minded demographic in the U.S. today. They are the computer geeks, the IT gods, the next Sergey and Larry. And Obama owes a big debt to young people in America. They voted for him resoundingly in this election. So Obama is likely to support more grants to assist these youthful friends, to support bills that are geared to assisting small businesses, to support educational and financial assistance for not only college bound students, but those young people who are involved in a trade as well.

As a community organizer, Obama is sure to know the power of transforming neighborhoods, and revitalizing towns by bringing new businesses to these areas. New businesses can mean jobs for the young, and the elderly too. New businesses can simply restore a sense of community to areas that are hit by the recession. An Obama administration is likely to do all in its power to support these community initiatives.

There are more ways in which an Obama Administration will impact small businesses. Overall, I would say he will be a net gain for small businesses in America.

Change

Is change always good? Barack Obama would have us believe so. Is he right?

I was in Borders the other day having a cup of Earl Grey and a wedge of chocolate cake when I noticed that there was a stack of books from the person who had been sitting at the table before me. I absentmindedly started to poke through the mountainous pile: The Bitch Switch by Omarosa Maningault-Stallworth; Inc Magazine; Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson; The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics by Jessica Porter; and The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. An eclectic mix to be sure. But an intriguing combination. I felt inspiration coming on.

I began with Maningault-Stallworth’s The Bitch Switch. What could this self-proclaimed “bitch” and former Trump Apprentice tell me about running a small business which I could in turn share with my readers on smallbizsociety.blogspot.com?

It turns out quite a lot. Here’s a woman from humble beginnings who went on to earn a PHD, work for the Bill Clinton administration, and who has become the most recognizable apprentice from Trump’s reality TV franchise. How did she do it? First of all, she was a Purple Cow . There is no other like Omarosa. Apres Omarosa, c'est la deluge. Second of all, she knows how to capitalize on opportunities and trends. Third, she knows how to build and expand a brand. Then of course, she knows how to use the media and different mediums to sell her brand. And she is bold and innovative for writing this book and doing all the other things she does, including her philanthropic work. What I admire most about her is how she embraced the changes that came about in her life after the Apprentice, and how she exploited the market place and how she has made herself into a big reality TV star. She is the ultimate "small business person" that became big cheese. Her change has been "macrobiotic." Change has been big for her. Change has been good for her.

As I started to browse through Inc Magazine looking for more inspiration (with the word CHANGE on my mind), I stumbled across an article called, The Beer Crisis of 2008. Again, I noticed a theme of change. According to the Beer article, change has been good for the beer industry. Thanks to the bad economy (btw another article in the same issue blames the economy and Sarbane Oxley for the fact that IPO’s are at a 30 year low and this opens up other applications of the concept of “change” which I won't get into with this particular blog entry) but when the price of hops started to go through the roof after major producers like the Czech Republic and Slovenia were hit by bad weather and a reduction in supply, small U.S. breweries became desperate for supply and became competitive with one another. But instead of trying to run each other out of business, they created these lottery systems to distribute the hops supply in a fair and democratic way so that small breweries across the country could stay afloat. A change in circumstances called for them to find new ways to operate within their industry so that they could all remain profitable. And they did. They began to use collaboration and cooperation as strategies to deal with the changed circumstances.

The theme of change also ran through Who moved my cheese, by Spencer Johnson. In the book which is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller, the author espoused the idea of adaptation, preparation, foresight and innovation. The theme was: forget about who moved the cheese. The point is [small businesses] should anticipate that the cheese will get moved and they need to have contingencies and strategies in place (or adapt quickly) to cope with inevitable changes in the market place. Spencer definitely saw change as being a good thing – a thing that can expand an individual's life. I thought to myself that change can also be quite good for small businesses that can anticipate what's coming and adapt quickly to the change.

I did not get a chance to really delve into The Hip Chicks’ Guide to Macrobiotics by Jessica Porter. The security guy came around and said the store would be closed in 30 minutes. So I quickly skimmed the introduction. Knowing nothing about a macrobiotic diet, except in so far as I read that Gwyneth Paltrow was into it before she wasn't into it anymore I wanted to find out what the diet entailed, and whether there was anything useful I could learn about "change" by reading about it.

It turns out that the art of macrobiotics is about the “art of creating a big life.” It’s a whole "philosophy" about "change coming from within," that we "change the world by changing ourselves," that we change ourselves by what we choose to eat (this includes a lot of brown rice,) and how we choose to eat it and how we choose to live. I thought to myself, that a macrobiotic diet could be applied to a small business owner. In taking a macro-biotic approach to his or her business, a small business owner would be looking for ways to big up his or her business. They would also be looking for ways to change their business practices to make it more compatible with the environment – in other words, they would probably be going “green” and trying some other trendy ideas which eventually could become a part of their DNA.

Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s story, The Giving Tree was probably the most fascinating of all. Here was a character who spent a lifetime changing. He was first a young boy, innocent, with very few needs. He loved the tree simply and unconditionally and the tree loved him in return. As time went on, his life changed, even though the tree remained contant. His needs got bigger and more complex and he had less and less time for the tree. In the end, the tree was like his sacrificial lamb. He sacrificed the tree to achieve his goals and objectives, to get what he "wanted." He took everything the tree had to offer in order to get what he wanted and needed. The tree was demolished, changing from a beautiful, full, rich character, to a mere stomp by the time the boy (who was now a grown man) had taken all the tree had to give. The only thing that did not change was the love the tree felt for the boy as he grew into a man who wanted more and more things: a house, a wife, kids, a boat, everything his mind could conceive. And he got it all by exploiting the tree. But in the end, after taking it all from the tree, the boy (who was now a man) was right back where he started: alone with the tree, sitting on the stomp he had reduced the tree to, being too tired to want anything more - and even if he wanted more, the tree had nothing else to give.

As a small business owner, you will change. Change is good. You will get bigger and you will expand over time if success comes your way. But the thing with change seems to be taking it with a grain of salt. And in making change, always pay attention to the trade offs.