Confirming their view that the nation’s economy is moving solidly ahead, small-business owners nudged the February NFIB Small-Business Optimism Index up four-tenths of a point to 101.5 (1986=100), reinforcing the positive-growth message that they have been signaling for some time.
Small Business owners’ optimism is supported by their plans to increase inventories and capital outlays. They also are forecasting stronger sales and earnings.
We did not enter adolescence and early adulthood quietly in the 60s and 70s. We made a big splash into the job market in the 70s and 80s. We have made advertisers rich for decades as they try to coax us to their clients products. And now? We are front stage once again, but this time for how poorly we are handling our own children’s journeys into young adulthood. We have come know as “helicopter parents.” From the Tennesean:
Universities and colleges are coping with a growing number of these well-meaning yet hyper-involved parents. They jump to the rescue whenever their kids don’t like roommates, struggle in a class or can’t get along with a professor.
Some parents are calling deans of students, advisers and residence halls. Some fill out applications. Others try to go to class registration, dominate school visits or even complain about grades to professors.
My concern with this is less about how it impacts my life as a professor (but believe me, it does sometimes). I am more concerned to what we are doing to one of the most entrepreneurial generations to come along in many, many decades.
I remember how my father told me that when I went to college I would learn more outside the classroom than I would sitting in my classes. I didn’t understand this at the time, but as my own children went off to college I remembered his words and how true they were. I learned how to get along with people. I learned how to solve my own problems. I learned how to make my own decisions. My parents were there as a safety net, but they no longer held my hand.
I also remembered his words when we were building our businesses. I appreciated how the successes I had, and more importantly the mistakes I made while in college helped in so many ways to prepare me for the challenges of being an entrepreneur. Two of the greatest lessons I learned were to be confident in myself and to learn from my mistakes, and these lessons served me well.
If I had had helicopter parents I really believe that I would not have been as successful in life, or at least as an entrepreneur. I would have sought security in my career, looking for an employer that would protect me like my parents did. Instead, because of the freedom to succeed and to fail, my independence was made firm and it helped to shape my character and my career.
Our economy is relying more on our entrepreneurial spirit than it has in over a century. But if we continue to hover over out kids, that is our young adult children, they will never be ready to become true leaders in this entrepreneurial economic era in America.
COTC is at ProHipHop this week.
NFIB is co-sponsoring a business plan competition for student entrepreneurs.
Young entrepreneurs from across the United States can win one of 10 $1,000 scholarships and up to $7,500 in seed capital as part of a business plan competition sponsored by BizFilings and the National Federation of Independent Business through its non-profit education organization, the Young Entrepreneur Foundation.
Need something to read this weekend? O’Reilly Radar has a long, but very good post titled Entrepreneurial Proverbs.
Here is one of my favorites:
Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible — small budgets give big focus (probably another line I’m stealing from Jason Fried: it sounds like something he’d say…) Don’t go out and raise a ton of money right away. Instead, give yourself just enough to get going, and use the limits that imposes to motivate yourself.
Worth a visit and worth your time reading.
(Thanks to Pablo at the World Bank for passing this along).
Off to one last Spring Break round of golf…..
Based upon survey data from more than 107,400 respondents in 35 countries, today’s GEM Women report, prepared by scholars at the Center for Women’s Leadership at Babson College, gives a clear indication that while women entrepreneurs often exhibit patterns of behavior similar to those of men, a gender gap nonetheless exists for entrepreneurial activity across the globe.
Women most likely to be entrepreneurs are those who hold jobs, have higher levels of household income and education, and have confidence in their level of skill and in the possibility of their success.
For the first time, GEM divided countries into middle- and high-income clusters, on the basis of per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and identified entrepreneurs by stage of business process. The report found that women’s businesses in high-income countries are just as likely to survive and thrive as men’s. It;s a different story in the middle-income cluster where the survival rate is significantly lower than that of a man’s business. Also, young women (25 to 34) are more active in ‘early-stage’ enterprises in middle-income countries while women 35-44 are the most likely to lead ‘established’ businesses.
Despite these encouraging signs, a gender gap nonetheless persists. On average, men remain nearly twice as likely as women to start a new business. In high-income countries, the gender gap is greatest, while in middle-income countries it narrows somewhat.
In case you hadn’t heard, Belmont is going the the Men’s NCAA basketball tournament.
Belmont’s Dan Oliver (an Entrepreneurship major!) holds up the trophy after Belmont beat cross-town rival Lipscomb in overtime, 74-69, to win the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament.
Time after time governments look to the private sector to bail them out of financial and performance failures that are a result of their own incompetence.
The No Child Left Behind legislation established performance standards for public education. Many of those schools that cannot meet these standards are looking to privately owned educational businesses to improve their performance. In Memphis, privately owned tutoring businesses have become a growth industry with the public school system becoming their biggest customer.
One irony of such privatization efforts is that the same government agencies that cannot perform in the first place, often serve in an oversight function over the private businesses they hired to pull their bacon out of the fire.
One of the benefits of working at a University is Spring Break. We will be starting our spring break this weekend here at Belmont. Although we will be hanging around Nashville, my blogging may be hit or miss this next week. I have business plans to grade and golf courses to conquer……
I just finished several weeks of teaching about bootstrapping to my students. It is becoming a traditional that I wrap up this unit with a visit from Charles Hagood, co-founder of The Access Group and Health Performance Partners. Charles, a graduate of Belmont’s Massey MBA Program, shared his advice on being a successful bootstrapper:
1. Cash is King. Enough said!
2. Sometimes Less is More. Having fewer resources can force a business to be more flexible and more resourceful. For example, Southwest Airline’s business model grew out of the limited number of planes that they had to work with during their start-up. I am a firm believer that too much money early in a business creates too much mischief. The temptation is to live beyond your means. Start-ups spend money on overhead that they just cannot support once they have to rely on day-to-day cash flow.
3. Keep Your Priorities in Order. Never compromise your ethical principles, even when money it tight.
4. Enjoy the Ride. Love what you do in your business and enjoy each day. That will make the lean times easier to take.
5. Cut Costs, Not Quality. Focus your money on customers when money is scarce.
6. Impress Your Customers, Not Yourselves. Don’t waste money competing internally over who has the best stuff. Invest it in your customers and in your product.
7. If You Have $1 Left in the Bank, Spend in on Marketing. Even when the market is not buying your product stay in front of them so they will remember you when things pick up. Charles tells the story of the huge hit their business took after 9/11. They decided to cut back on all spending except marketing. They kept in front of their customers. When the economy turned around, they were rewarded for this investment in marketing. They came back stronger than ever.
8. Always Look Bigger and Tougher Than You Are. A classic from NFIB.com offers tips that should be part of a good bootstrapper’s tool kit. Each recommendation is relatively inexpensive, but offers good value in terms of its impact. And each of these ideas can make your business look larger and more well established to your potential customers.
– Set up a first-class voicemail system.
– Get a toll-free number.
– Send all mail on custom-designed letterhead in a designed envelope.
– (Y)our business card should be world class.
– Write articles for trade publications.
– Send out press releases whenever warranted.
– Dress the part.
9. Continuously Reassess Your Business for Wasteful Spending. As more cash flows in, the risk of wasteful spending increases as employees take their eye off the need for bootstrapping. Bootstrapping should not just be a part of your start-up. Build it into your culture and your business will build more value over time. The value of your business will ultimately be determined by the cash you can take to the bottom line. A bootstrapping culture will help maximize the amount of cash that makes it to your net profits. In this piece from Inc magazine from 1997, you can see what the ultimate bootstrapping culture looks like in even a large business.