Generosity and Innovation

In this space we extensively discuss the idea of fostering entrepreneurship. But what if you are already an entrepreneur? Why should you direct energy away from your own business to help someone else compete with you?

We're not asking you to put your own expansion plans on hold, to make big sacrifices, or to create direct competitors. Having other entrepreneurs, especially in other industries, helps you.

  - they increase the tax base, so you're not covering municipal needs
   by yourself
  - they create customers--people who can afford to buy your stuff
  - it improves the "vibe,"the innovative spirit

So please, dear successful entrepreneur, be generous.

Resources for Communities

Community leaders and developers are not the only people interested in this topic. Professionals and politicians are also seeking to encourage entrepreneurship in their communities.

What can communities do to encourage entrepreneurship? Here are six things you can do as a community leader:

 1) Attract smart people (through publicity and lifestyle improvement)

 2) Remove barriers (many of the licensing and regulations you have in 

     place probably seem so vital, but might not in reality be worth the real cost)

 3) Provide entrepreneurship education, ideally for both adults and youth 

 4) Compile information resources

 5) Help potential entrepreneurs to network

 6) Improve infrastructure (not a first step, but a long-term goal)

See what Barb Fails is doing in Michigan: Land Policy Institute.

Curiosity can kill cats but can save you

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
                                                                       Voltaire


I like curious people. The really curious ones. I appreciate people who "like" my Facebook comments, but they make zero effort. A really curious person works hard and keeps asking questions. 


Do you think you can find a great solution for a problem? Do you think that the answer can be found by asking the right question? Then keep asking. Ask questions about questions. Question your own motives for asking the questions. Then ask more questions. 

Apologies from Bangalore

Someone in another country took your job. But he didn't do it to be cruel. He wanted to buy food and to pay rent, just like you do.

Please forgive him: you can get your job back. Or your customers back.

If your product, service, special combination of product and service, or delivery style are truly unique and compelling, then you don't have to compete on price. From where you sit, you can more easily engage with your customers.

Let Walmart compete on price. You should compete on trustworthiness, personal connection, and extraordinary user experience. 

We interrupt tonight's show to bring you the following news

The Nauvoo Commuter is excited to report finding from the IIRA conference, but can do nothing until the situation in Japan stabilizes.

One of my best friends has lost his home, and I still cannot confirm the situation for others. When the situation becomes clear, we will return to business as usual.

Your Town's Assets

"Why wouldn't you want to move here?" should be the appropriate question you ask everyone about your town. 

Asset Mapping is a popular tool for community development. You start by listing all the assets your town has. Go ahead, give it a try. 

You may not possess all of the following advantages, but here are some possibilities to help prime the pump on your brainstorming session (most are plagiarized from a session I was involved with today):

Volunteer organizations

Family ties

Work ethic

Revolving loan organizations

Development grant programs in place

Empty office space (glass is half full)

Strong ministerial associations

Food pantries

Natural environment and/or outdoor recreational options

Transportation and logistics facilities left from the smoke stack era

Adequate health care facilities

Low crime rate

Broadband Internet access

Reasonable access to an urban area

Child care availability

Trade schools

Entertainment options

Basic food sourcing options

Go ahead and try to make your own list.

Reminder to check out: www.TheSEP.org 

Economic Gardening

Economic Gardening is a concept we've mentioned in this space before. But today the Nauvoo Commuter attended a conference dealing with the issue.

The idea is that instead of futile recruiting of companies (to build factories or call centers), communities should build local talent. If the people are amazing, they will do amazing things.

Governments would often try to support certain businesses. They would pick a promising sector and support it. But can government people choose the next winner? Can anyone?

So you build the capacity of the people, and let them take risks. Some will succeed and create jobs.

Communities seeking to develop their economies should study the work of Chris Gibbons.

See http://www.littletongov.org/bia/economicgardening/default.asp for more details.  

Forgetting Business Cycles

I remember when the recession of 1981 ended. A year later, my town emerged from the recession. (Two years after that, my family had climbed out of the recession. Some families never did.) Even now, we hear on the news that the recession in the U.S. has ended, but 16 percent of Americans still cannot find employment.

This is one reason that following business cycles to time your business creation is a dumb idea. Unless your business involves selling stocks and bonds to institutional investors, you shouldn't make decisions based on cyclical timing. By the time we reach unemployment rates below 5 percent again, the next recession might be on its way.

Start now, selling things people want and can buy now. When they have more money, they'll probably buy more. Your business will be viable at any part of the cycle.

A business that forms at the top of the curve, in contrast, may not be needed at the trough. Don't be that business.

Creating an overall strategy

Are you ready to plan your business? Here is the four-step strategy proposed by management consultants Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui:

Think big, start small, fail quickly, scale fast.

Think about the big companies that have failed to think big and missed the next economic shift.
On the other hand, most would-be entrepreneurs never actually get started because they keep thinking big. They plan and plan, subconsciously hoping to avoid actually doing anything. All you need to do is to plan enough to be conversant with trends and potential threats. Then start small, hopefully with no investment. 
If you fail, you fail quickly. (New information may become available as a result of starting, and that new info indicates the idea will not work. But don't give up and call it inevitable failing. Being honest with yourself in the failing process is a HUGE challenge.)
When it starts working, then scale up quickly and become big, before competitors take your ideas. 
  
In case you are interested, here is the Whole Article. Thanks to Dan Pink for pointing it out!

More threatening weaknesses

Here are three other weaknesses that can prevent entrepreneurial success.

•  Introversion tendencies that takes away your ability to deal with multiple people. You need to continually negotiate with employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, realtors, investors, bankers, and contractors. Not everyone can do that. Want to start a business so you can be your own boss? Business owners still have bosses: each of their customers. And sometimes those customers are not friendly people. 

(Note: Our definition of introvert is not someone who is shy or is afraid of people or cannot communicate with others. An introvert is someone who needs alone time. An extrovert needs to party with friends to relax, and introvert needs to sit home to relax.)

• Fear of success: some people torpedo their own success because of subconscious fear that success will make them selfish (like that mean old man you knew when you were younger), it will make you forget your roots, or because it will make you proud and uppity. Please release the fear. 
• An unnatural relationship with money. Some people are unable to spend money, some people are unable to not spend money. They don't understand what money really is. The issue probably comes from the way our parents raised us. 

"Following your passion," as self-help gurus love to advise (as though that idea was revolutionary) is in fact insufficient. You might blow up your business, or never even get started, if you don't remove a major weakness.

Your "To Don't" List

In the this forum we have discussed the necessary attributes for success as an entrepreneur. Here we list some of the traits you do NOT want. This is the list of characteristics to avoid or to release.

Top Three Habits of Highly Ineffective Entrepreneurs:

• Inability to handle criticism from multiple bosses:  you remain emotional, angry, or defiant after a customer is hostile and might even remain that way for the rest of the day. As an entrepreneur, each customer is your boss, but you can't let them get under your skin.
• Preference for stability and predictability:  if you need to know the answers before beginning, you might be better off working as a civil servant. 
• Fear of disappointing people:  if you fail, you might disappoint investors, lenders, your mother-in-law (who knew you would fail at everything), and yourself. That fear restricts some people's ability to succeed. 

We will deal with this topic more later. In the meantime, please take some time to analyze yourself. 

Is rural living a huge disadvantage to entrepreneurship?

Our simple answer, given out of principle, is that it does not matter. We live in the country because we love the lifestyle, or it is where we are connected to those we love, or because other circumstances keep us here. So we don't run off to the bright lights of the city. We bloom where we are planted. 


Previously we have addressed the disadvantages of conducting business from a rural area. 


  - Fewer variables in our business plans: we know what we are dealing 
    with in our home markets. Risk, opportunities, customer profiles, etc.
    are easier to analyze. 


  - A longer time to discovery by competitors: we can stay under the radar, 
    hide from copy cats longer.  We are in tiny laboratories, laboring obscurely
    but diligently.


  - A real, connected life: living in a large city is spiritually draining. Being jostled 
    and imposed upon all day can make you "people weary." But where you live, 
    out in the hinterlands, people are genuine and life is real. You are connected 
    to the basic roots of life. You are connected to basic human needs, protected 
    from weird psychological office games. You receive less customer feedback, 
    but you can understand consumers better because you affiliate with people in 
    real ways. 


In the future, you will be a mogul. Someday your business will be important enough that your location will not be relevant. People will travel to speak with you.

Purpose of this Blog (Review)

Here is a review of the main purposes of this blog:

1) encourage rural residents to start businesses instead of wallowing in self-directed grief
2) encourage rural business owners to rev up their businesses
3) encourage communities to support entrepreneurs
The response has been warm. 

Here is our Manifesto:

Agrarian life hones people. In general, rural citizens are smart, industrious, and prudent. 
They can use those traits to create exceptional customer experiences for local or global markets. 
People in the countryside should support and encourage each other. 

Drop the Shipping

Occasionally we mention things here at the Nauvoo Commuter that you might know, but some readers might not know.

If you run an internet site that sells stuff, you don't need to actually take possession and ship it. You can advertise a product on your site, and it can be mailed to your customers from Amazon, another back-office provider, or directly from the manufacturer.

I normally recommend that rural internet retailers sell things that are unique to themselves or their region: local beverages, their own hand-knit mittens, regionally-grown plants, heritage items... something unique. But you might be able to find an alternative to doing the shipping yourself. Just a reminder.

And if you have to do the shipping yourself, don't be intimidated. If your idea is good enough to sell, it is worth the time to research postal regulations. 

Give me a break!

The Nauvoo Commuter will be on a business trip March 1st and March 2nd. No posts will come through on those days. 

Be the Exception

In our town, a common practice has been for out-of-state tycoons to start businesses based on business models that they have used to succeed in other regions. "We've been successful, and we'll show these locals how to succeed."

In almost every such case, those businesses have either failed or have not reached expectations.

This model is common. We want to trigger success in a town, so we bring in successful outsiders to share their vast experience. Sometimes it works. But often it feels like a sandwich that combines peanut butter and tuna. You can't necessarily overlay one strategy onto a mis-matching situation.  Someone that succeeded in the ice cream business won't necessarily replicate that success in Antarctica.

The new model, conversely, identifies local successful outliers who have succeeded. They succeeded under the same conditions, so they can show how to succeed again in those conditions. We replicate their style of business because it works here. 

Crushing Criticism vs. Friendly Feedback

Let's say you've just finished writing your novel, a lifelong dream finally realized. Just in case you misspelled a word somewhere, maybe asking a friend to proofread it might be valuable.

Your friend returns scathing criticism. The plot is weak, the grammar is unreadable. The whole concept is completely flawed.

  Is your friend reflecting jealousy?
  Trying to protect you from disappointment, thereby holding you back?
  Offering needed feedback?
  Creating an excessively difficult avenue to improvement?
  Mirroring disappointment from his own childhood?

You don't really know. How do you discern the difference between needed feedback and criticism that might hold you back?

The answer is the same for a situation where you seek feedback about a business idea or business plan. Many of the truly game-changing businesses of the past several decades were mocked by friends and experts, but the entrepreneur's perseverance overcomes, and the world is bettered. But some people, inspired by those stories, ignore warnings and make really, really, bad mistakes.

One option is to ask advice of many people. When choosing subjects to interview, expand the sample size.

Another important strategy is to analyze yourself. 
  Are you an overly sensitive person? 
  Do you tend to be too stubborn? 
  Are you a poor listener? 
  Are you less skilled at discerning people's motives?

Entrepreneur, know thyself.

The New Regime

Recently I drove through a small town in the midwestern U.S. The entire main street was boarded over buildings: it looked like Baghdad. This was once a prosperous community.

I followed up through social media links to the town, and found that a lot of anger exists. Some people choose religious or racial bigotry, some find other sources to blame. The story is a very common one, unfortunately.

But overall, I think it is a happy story.

The suffering that accompanies decline started a generation ago. Several decades of slow decline, like a man watching his powerful chest muscles fall into his stomach as he ages, is difficult. But that degree of suffering might be what it takes to break the back of the old idea that we deserve prosperity simply because of where we are born. Your factory job will be outsourced, regardless of legislation. Why should you be paid triple, because of your birthright?

The idea that we deserve something based on birth is a bankrupt philosophy. Now we finally believe that. A new system is arising, one that requires us to work hard and think hard and create something really special. Don't try to compete with factory workers in Guangzhou.

The new system will reward differentiation. Embrace it. 

Help is on the way

So much help, so much need. Just in the past two days, I have uncovered dozens of government programs designed to assist entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. Loan programs, education systems, ....

I really am amazed. Why are these programs not more widely publicized? Is the actual available money less than it seems? Or are we not working hard enough to research options? Or do we believe governments shouldn't help entrepreneurs? Should they?

We'll keep thinking about this question.

Needs

In booming economic times, we focus on our higher psychological needs. In tougher times, we focus on our basic needs. Maslow's hierarchy, shows the baser needs people are focusing more on recently.

Where is the economy headed? Here at the Nauvoo Commuter we still don't have that answer. But we think fat times are a long way away. So selling things that people really need (safety), might be a better bet in the short term. People use to say "I need to use visualization techniques to attract that Ferrari to my garage." Now they say "I don't like visualizing myself as a homeless person. Better keep my head down and work harder."

Food shortages probably will not affect the First World much, but people in my neighborhood are concerned about it anyway. I should try to address their concerns if I want to connect and sell.