12.27.08
Posted in Small Business at 15:58 by lnxwalt
Today, I had a discussion with some of my nephews regarding their roles in helping us make these businesses successful. I was clear about the fact that I don’t aspire to be a millionaire, about the fact that I’m not out to make a fortune on the backs of underpaid employees, and about the fact that as a Christian-owned business, I don’t expect to operate with the kind of routine dishonesty that often characterizes both small and large businesses.
We talked about a particular role that we need to fill, and about the fact that there isn’t any money available for the person filling that role. We discussed the economy, and its likely effects on our prospects and the difficulty of our tasks that are ahead of us. Lastly, we discussed not becoming a trap–that I wanted them to be free to leave and pursue whatever dreams they have, rather than getting trapped in a tiny company that doesn’t enable or allow them to do whatever they feel they should be doing.
Of course, we also discussed resource constraints. There are nearly unlimited desires, but limits on the time, the funds, and the skills available to pursue those desires. I’m hoping that this will be the beginning of a new way of thinking for them. They’ve grown up in a work and college-oriented household, but one in which there was little thought to preparing for future hardships. Now is a good time to introduce them to the concepts of hardship and preparation for it, before they graduate and find that they cannot even obtain employment at fast food restaurants, because there is so much competition for every available job.
It was a productive talk, I think.
It is the kind of discussion that I believe every small business owner needs to have both with his or her own descendants and with close nieces and nephews. Yes, I am doing this because it is my dream, but also because I am not going to be here forever. I want to leave something viable for the next generation to pick up and make even better.
I am currently reading a book called “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job”, by Patrick Lencioni. It is a fictional book, kind of a modern-day parable for managers. The main character learns over time about some things that can help make work into a place where the employees look forward to getting there each day. So as I talk with these high schoolers, I am trying to look at it that way.
small business
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12.23.08
Posted in Economy, Small Business at 09:12 by lnxwalt
In the Victor Valley, as in other locations, our economies are built upon small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs). SLOBs provide the bulk of the jobs, provide customized and specialized service to local residents, and recycle funds for the local economy, rather than sending huge slices off to “headquarters” somewhere else. Yet, local political leaders’ hopes are based upon attracting large, out-of-area corporations (LOOACs) to move to town and provide hundreds of minimum-waage jobs. These same companies are being courted by large numbers of other communities. Like your community and mine, each community is dangling a basket of tax abatements, subsidies, and exemptions to attract LOOACs to town.
And yet, those incentives are paid for by local taxpayers, including SLOBs. We are, in effect, taxing SLOBs extra to give it to LOOACs. The Small Biz Survival blog has this to say:
Small Biz Survival: Abatements and Incentives: Where are they for small business?
And yet…civic leaders in these communities, mine included, swoon like a teenager in the throes of first-love at the prospect of a big corporate company bringing their operations to town. Oh, they run after ‘em and buy them gifts and talk sweet nothings in their ear with offers of abatements and deferments and infrastructure investments and tax credits.
Now that banks and corporations are falling like dominoes, we need to look closer at what we are giving away and what we are getting in return. It seems to me that it is a better use of funds to shut down some of these “economic development offices” that our towns have opened in order to pursue LOOACs and to devote those funds to strengthening existing SLOBs and helping new ones to be established.
After all, the LOOAC will have no real ties to your community. As soon as another locality offers a better package of incentives or at the fist sign of economic distress, they will leave town, taking all of their job openings and infrastructure improvement bond repayment funds with them. A forward-looking city council will turn off the gift spigot and start supporting the local business community instead.
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12.16.08
Posted in Economy, Small Business, Society at 22:17 by lnxwalt
This “Buy Local” Thing « The CitySquares Blog
Local businesses drive our national economy, this is a fact. They’re the oil in the nation’s economic engine. Local business is the best ingredient for any community’s success.
Anyway, to tie it all back together, and where we all seemed to agree last night, is on one simple but very important point – ultimately the consumers need to decide. That is very powerful. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, you surely still want the same things for your community, for your children, your family, and for your neighbors – your community. At CitySquares we really believe in this. It’s the mission behind the business. It all begins with the local businesses. Supporting your local and independent businesses is critical for your community’s sustainability.
It has been almost two years since we premiered this blog, talking about SLOBs, small, locally-owned businesses, and the reality that SLOBs are the key to freeing American communities from servitude to LOOACs, large out-of-area corporations.
We’ve already seen large corporations giving their managers huge bonuses, then coming to Washington to beg for handouts. Likewise, we’ve seen the way they play our local governments, getting subsidies paid by SLOBs in the community in order to suck funds out of our communities and send them to their headquarters. The truth is, if we want local jobs, local control, and local benefits, we have to refocus our efforts on building and strengthening local businesses–local farmers, local grocers, local manufacturers, local services, local broadcasters, local Internet service providers–or we face more of these bailouts.
CitySquares is in Massachusetts, actively promoting SLOBs in their own communities, gradually expanding to the whole Northeast and the rest of the country. This video comes from their site.
I’d just like to add “go thou and do likewise”.
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12.14.08
Posted in General Management at 22:04 by lnxwalt
The last couple of weeks, I’ve been reminded once again how important it is to have some preparations in place for devastating events. For example, if your home burns, how do you put a roof over your head? How do you get the resources needed to bounce back? Whether tornado, earthquake, hurricane, flood, or fire, a devastating event can ruin your day, your week, your month.
I was in Ohio earlier this year. Tornado warning sirens went off, but being a Californian, I did not know what they were. Fortunately, the people upstairs had a television that had a very loud set of instructions (find a room with no windows or outside walls, and stay there until the ‘all clear’ is announced). The lesson? Learn about the common devastating events in the areas where you expect to go, and the appropriate responses for those events.
You will notice that I keep referring to “devastating events”, not to “disasters”. This is intentional. A devastating event is an event that causes devastation and severe damage in your home, family, business, or employer. A disaster is a devastating event which is widespread enough that the government says “this is disasterous”. You can expect a devastating event to occur, whether it is a sewer backup that makes your home unlivable for an extended time period, a storm that blows your roof off, or a car that comes crashing into your daughter’s bedroom. These devastating events won’t usually be large enough to attract government attention, but their impact on your life and the lives of your family members and friends can be just as enormous as the impact of a large hurricane or major earthquake.
I visited the mobile home park in Sylmar where about 500 homes were burned. I can honestly say that I have never before seen such utter devastation. This is what I would imagine Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like in 1945. Looking at that has me thinking about ways to prepare for such an event.
Although the insurance industry tends to try to get out of their obligations during disasters, keep in mind that government aid is extremely limited. Your only chance of fixing your problems is to have sufficient insurance to cover most or all of your damage. Contact your state insurance regulators to find out what coverages may be available. Be sure to ask about state or federal disaster-event coverages, such as flood insurance or earthquake insurance.
The truth is, you have to start where you are. Do you have an off-site location where you could store resources (food, water, clothing, pet food [both canned and kibble], blankets, medical supplies, money, prepaid mobile phones under a different carrier than your usual one, an external hard drive with encrypted copies of your important files on it, and both digital and paper copies of important legal documents) so you’ll can utilize them if a devastating event destroys items stored at your residence? Are your files stored in open standard data formats (such as OpenDocument Format, text, and HTML/XHTML), so that you aren’t limited to a particular software application or operating system during a really bad time of your life? Do you have money and other resources that you are not presently using and which could be stored off-site? (Money recommendation: use your locally-owned bank for most of your needs, but have a small account with a state-wide or nationwide bank just-in-case. You should not have more than $100 in cash at any time, and generally quite a bit less.)
What can you start doing to reduce the damage from a devastating event? Can you strap your water heater to the wall, so it can’t topple during an earthquake? Purchase a fire-resistant box for most of your important documents? Learn where your utility service connections are and how to shut them down if necessary. Check out federal, state, and local government websites for disaster-preparedness information. Take a look at what you have and what is around you. Look at where you are, and make appropriate preparations.
While most of the above is directed toward your personal life, the truth is, your business will also be affected by a devastating event, should one occur. And your business will have even fewer government resources available. Once again, insurance, preparation, and mitigation are key to survival.
DISCLAIMER: This is not official information from any government agency, employer, or company. These are common-sense guidelines. You should contact your state or local disaster-response agency for more information about what you should be doing to prepare for disasters.
disaster preparation
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12.12.08
Posted in Small Business, Technology at 02:22 by lnxwalt
Green IT – pie in the sky? No… head for the clouds! « Ivanka Menken
Reason for this is that cloud computing makes a lot of things easier to manage – sometimes even easier than when you have your IT internal.. and because most people follow the path of least resistance, the opportunities for Cloud Computing are almost without bound.
Let me say right up front that I have no crystal ball. I do not know whether “cloud computing” is going to mostly displace internally-hosted servers for most companies. I do know this much: if you are running a small, locally-owned retailer or restaurant, you very likely do not have even fifty employees. Why would you have much internally-hosted infrastructure? You probably need a single server that runs your point-of-sale system (cash registers) and handles both user accounts and file storage. Generally, if you’re running a “Pro” version of your operating system, a beefed-up workstation can serve those needs while it also serves as the manager’s terminal. In that case, you aren’t likely to host your own Web or mail servers–you’ll continue to pay a hosting service to provide those–and you aren’t likely to run any custom applications that would require Amazon or Google cloud-hosting services.
It is the larger businesses, especially those with a significant Web presence, where there are questions about how well this will fly. In my other job, I work for an organization with a fairly-large network. I honestly cannot see that organization exposing significant portions of its internal-facing infrastructure to the possibility of security breaches in external data centers. In other words, this is great for putting things on your world-facing Web site, but may not be so great for your internal sites and services. It all depends on your organization.
It will be interesting to see what happens. I look forward to it!
Cloud Computing
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12.08.08
Posted in Economy at 06:34 by lnxwalt
Several years ago, during and after the dot-com crash, many formerly free Web sites tried to go subscription, began to allow intrusive advertising where they had formerly kept advertising restrained, or went with a highly-limited free version, with most of the desirable functionality locked up behind a pay wall.
During the recent period of growth, this eased up considerably. But with the economy in shreds, I expect to see a lot more focus on getting dollars into the companies behind the sites we use.
This is not entirely a bad thing. Once you find something you like to use, you really should try to find a way to send some cash their way; this helps ensure that they stay open and their services remain available. A company whose sites are entirely advertising-free, and which has no “premium” content is a company that is likely to fold their sites or to suddenly be acquired because they weren’t bringing in the funds.
I remember when companies like Excite and Lycos and Microsoft’s Hotmail service would lock your accounts if you hadn’t logged in within 30 days. Yahoo! was accepting pop-up and pop-under advertising, claiming that its customers (the advertisers) wanted them to do it. Things have improved, hopefully enough so those bad old days will never be repeated. But we have to understand that the companies that provide services we utilize have to somehow earn some money, or they will fold up shop and shut down the services.
Check companies’ privacy policies. A site that changes hands will also change its privacy policy. If a site’s owner appears shaky, it might be prudent to cancel service and ask that all data about you be erased except as needed for legal requirements. A company does not have to obey your request as long as its privacy policy does not promise it. You have a better chance of removing your information from the new owner’s grasp if you jump on it early.
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