Accountants are from Mars and Entrepreneurs are from Venus

Imagine moving to a foreign country where the people speak a different language from your own.  While you may be able to get by for a while without learning the language of this country, you will be severely hampered.  Asking for and receiving simple information will be a tedious and frustrating task.  For example, assume you want to go to a movie.  How do you get to the movie theater?  How do you order a medium box of popcorn? What are the actors in the movie saying?  More complex tasks are even a bigger challenge.  Imagine trying to rent an apartment.  What does the landlord expect from you as a tenant?  The contract she is requiring you to sign is completely unintelligible to you.  Even an interpreter will only help so much.  Your interpreter can translate, but the process is slow.  And it would be impossible to rely on your interpreter all of the time. 

Accounting is called the “language of business.”  Much of what is communicated about a business is done in this financial language.  And yet to many entrepreneurs this is a language as foreign to them as the language was to the traveler in this story. 

This summer I am learning this “cultural experience” from the opposite perspective.  I am teaching our required graduate Entrepreneurship course.  But instead of teaching it to our MBA students, I am teaching to a section that has only graduate students in our Master of Accountancy program.  As I teach them about entrepreneurship, I now appreciate that many of them experience my world of entrepreneurship as a strange and confusing place.

Their world is order and precision.  Mine is change and chaos.  Their world is historic measurement of what has happened.  Mine is the hope and dreams of what might be.  Neither is better or worse, and neither is right or wrong.  And in today’s entrepreneurial economy we need each other more than ever.

We teachers always like to say that we learn as much from our classes as do our students.  This summer I know I am learning much more than my students.  Given the importance of entrepreneurs really knowing and understanding their numbers, I know that what I learn from my accounting students will help me to better prepare my entrepreneurship students for the for their frequent and critical trips into the Land of Accounting.

Business Cards that Stand Out

Ever wonder what happens to the business cards you hand out?  Often they end up in someone’s coat pocket, in a stack on someone’s desk, or — heaven forbid — in the trash. 

For years, people have been trying to find ways to make their cards stand out.  For example, they have put things such as jokes, inspirational sayings, and even recipes on the back of the card.

Now a new company offers you a way to truly customize your cards and hopefully make them stand out so people will hang on to them and use them.

Moo.com allows you to have pictures and images printed on the back of your cards.  What is unique is that you can choose “lots of different images” in a single pack of cards.  You can include pictures of your various products, you office buildings, your staff, or even shots from your vacation.  A cool use of digital technology!

 

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A Taste of the North

Having grown up in Wisconsin, one of the things I miss is Friday night fish fries (although my waste line does not miss the fried part).  

One of my former students from the University of St. Thomas, Jesse Ness, has an Internet business that sells freshwater fish such as walleye (my personal favorite), perch, blue gill, etc. 

 

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Now we former northerners can satisfy our hunger for these freshwater delicacies without having to brave the long cold winters and summer mosquitoes the size of small sparrows.

Walleye Direct is the name of his website.  You can get freshwater fish “shipped overnight to your doorstep” and cook it up with one of the many recipes available at the website.

This is a great example of a business that leverages the Internet to create a “virtual” niche in the market.

Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk to a Bootstrap Culture

I have been posting this week about creating and sustaining a bootstrap culture.  In my previous posts I wrote about the importance of using recruiting and rewards to build a bootstrap culture.  My final post on this to stress the importance of both talking the talk and walking the walk.

Entrepreneurs should communicate a consistent message about bootstrapping.  Highlight the importance of bootstrapping, in every form of communication ranging from informal conversations with employees to formal communications such as newsletters, annual reports and policy manuals.  A consistent message reinforces the importance of bootstrapping behaviors.  For example, include a feature in every company newsletter about an employee who was the “bootstrapper of the month,” offering a story of how they accomplished a task with minimal resources.    Story telling is a fundamental part of building a culture in a business.

But also remember that your actions speak loudly.  The actions taken by leaders speak more loudly than what they say.  The company Fastenal has become legendary for its bootstrapping culture.  Fastenal sells industrial and construction supplies wholesale and retail from its 2,160 store locations located in 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, China and the Netherlands.    Even with over $2 billion in revenues, the company’s leadership takes bootstrapping actions that reinforce their culture. 

This story comes from a 1997 feature about Fastenal in Inc magazine:

[Robert] Kierlin [now Chairman of the Board] and chief financial officer Dan Florness could easily have taken a flight to a conference in Chicago, a little more than an hour away by plane. Instead, they drove five and a half hours in a van, saving Fastenal hundreds of dollars. They lunched at A&W, feasting on burgers and root beers. (Cost: $5 a person.) They spent the night at a motel in Rockford, a Chicago suburb, to avoid the high city prices. The pair even shared a room. “This sends a message that cost control is important to everybody in the organization,” Kierlin says. “By being attentive to all expenditures, you can really set the example at the top.”

Talking the talk, walking the walk, using rewards to reinforce bootstrapping, and recruiting those who fit in the culture will all help create an enduring bootstrap culture in an entrepreneurial venture.

Energy Costs Hitting Small Businesses Hard

According to a recent survey, 42% of NFIB members ranked the cost of natural gas, propane, gasoline, diesel and fuel oil as a “critical” problem. The issue has climbed from being the #10 ranked issue concern to the #2 concern in this year’s survey.

Inflation is real and will become an even bigger concern over the coming months. 

Here are two stories that the NFIB is sharing as examples of this growing problem.

Jim Buchy
Buchy Food Service
Greenville, Ohio
Buchy Food Service is a fifth-generation, family-owned business that began as a manufacturer of meat and sausage products in 1878 and is now a full-line food distributor with a 100-mile service territory. The company prides itself on service and has long claimed, “We have no minimum shipment requirements or drop-ship charges.” Yet, as energy prices continue to rise, the cost of delivering goods — a staple of the service that Buchy’s provides to its customers – has risen dramatically. The rising delivery costs are having a big impact on the 139-year-old business, causing Buchy’s to examine ways in which it can consolidate services — something they are reluctant to do.
 
Douglass Henry
Henry Molded Products Inc.
Lebanon, Penn.
For over 40 years Henry Molded Products, Inc. has been topamax to buy providing customers with high quality molded fiber/pulp products. They produce recyclable products that are environmentally friendly using 100% pre- and post-consumer newsprint, kraft paper and other waste papers, and are a nationally recognized manufacturer of green products. Henry Molded Products relies on natural gas to create its products and now pays more than $100K per month on its natural gas bill for his factory. Over the last few years, his energy costs have more than doubled.

The NFIB is taking the right stand on this issue, pushing for more freedom within the energy industry.  From a letter that Dan Danner of the NFIB sent to Congress:

Small business owners need immediate relief from high energy costs, and drilling offshore is a critical step towards increasing the domestic supply of oil and natural gas and reducing prices at the pump.  Unlike some of their larger competitors, escalating fuel prices hit small businesses particularly hard because they often must absorb these cost increases instead of passing them on to their customers. 

In order for our economy to regain its footing, we must be able to meet the energy needs of small businesses, and I urge your strong support of this important energy policy.  

Recruiting Bootstrapping Employees

My last post looked at a bootstrap culture as I have been writing about it for my new textbook on bootstrapping.  There are four steps that can be taken to help build and maintain a bootstrap culture as the business grows.  The first of these steps is recruiting for a Bootstrap Culture: 

When bringing new employees into a business, it is critical to look beyond their technical skills and experience to fill the position.  A fit with the bootstrap culture should also be examined. 

One approach is to develop open-ended questions that can be used during the interview process.  For example, “Tell me about a time when you had to accomplish a task when limited resources were available.”  If the interviewee answers the question by saying that she always had more than enough budgetary support in her old job, it might be difficult for her to adapt to a bootstrapping environment not having worked that way in the past.  Or, if she answers by complains about the availability of resources in her old job, or about how her old boss was always cheap, that is a good signal that the employee is not have bootstrapping as a part of her work ethic.  On the other hand, if she speaks with enthusiasm and pride about how she got the job done within the limited resource available, she would more likely fit into the bootstrap culture. 

 

A Bootstrap Culture

I am finishing up my last chapter in my new Bootstrapping text today.  I am writing about how entrepreneurs build and then sustain a bootstrapping culture as their businesses grow.  It is easy to see why most entrepreneurs bootstrap when they start — they simply don’t have much start-up capital.  The average start-up in the US has only ,000 to get their business off the ground.

But why do they keep bootstrapping even when the cash starts flowing and they are no longer doing it out of necessity? 

First, bootstrapping over the long-term can help a business avoid the need to secure external financing and keep 100% of the ownership in the entrepreneur’s own hands.  By being more efficient throughout the life of the business, cash flow is optimized and the entrepreneur can build cash reserves that can be used to fund future growth. 

Second, bootstrapping increases the income that the business can generate for its owners over the long-term.  It also helps them to build more wealth from the venture. Cash flow is what allows the entrepreneur to take income out of the business, and successful use of bootstrapping helps to generate more net cash flow.  This is just as true in a mature business as it is in a start-up.  The value of a business is based primarily on its ability to generate cash flow into the future.  The stronger the cash flow the higher the value of a private business.  Bootstrapping, therefore, helps build wealth for the entrepreneur by increasing the value of the venture by increasing its new cash flow over time.

Third, there is an ethical reason to continue bootstrapping over time.  They bootstrap to be good stewards of the resources that have been put into the business.

So what does a bootstrap culture in a business look like?  The values and beliefs common to a bootstrap culture include:

–  Frugality — it is desirable to achieve the same ends with the fewest resources possible.
–  “Cash is King” — the cash in a business is its most precious resource.
–  Stewardship — a sense of obligation to make the best possible use of the resources made available to the business from its stakeholders.

My next few posts will address what actions can be taken by entrepreneurs to sustain a bootstrap culture.

Turn Your Competitors into Your Sales Force

After giving a speech to a business group yesterday, I was reminded by one of the participants of an unexpected benefit of finding a safe little market niche.  Many established businesses that you might normally think of as your competitors can become your sales force. 

Find a niche that is a part of the market that established businesses don’t really want to serve.  The customers may be too small for their operation, or serving them may be just too inefficient for their size.  I have seen this recently in new law practices, landscapers, healthcare, web design, food distributors, etc., etc.  Look for needs to serve not just in customers, but also in the businesses already establsihed in the market. 

What seems like crumbs to them can become your feast.  Actively market to them.  You will make them look good, as they will have an easy referral outlet for business that does not fit their model.  That keeps them looking like a good guy to their referral sources.