And it will, what do you do?
Wilson NG, at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, shares 5 things to do When Failure Strikes.
My fave is:
5. Seek a Higher Purpose!
You are more likely to succeed, be less disappointed, and also feel more fulfillment if you can combine financial objectives with also an impact on society.
From Small Biz Trends Twitter post.
I read the recent news that while our economy grew, it grew only by 1%. And that growth only came from exports due to our weak dollar.
It made me think of the phrase Go west, young man. Only now it's Go overseas, small business. Right now, that's where success lays. Not at home.
You Can Never Go Home Again. Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can never go home again. Or maybe it's painful, if you do. Maybe I'm missing NC, my home, a bit these days. That's why a post about economic growth from exports leads me to that book and Look Homeward, Angel. Both are novels about travels and change, success and fresh eyes it brings that sees the home that was, maybe and now will never be there again. Nor will I, you, be the same person even if the building itself remains.
I know success for me has never come from home. Using any basis for the definition of home, geographic or social or company or familial, my success (and happiness) has never come from home.
It's come from change, from disruption, from upheaval. The old home is torn down, destroyed. And the hard work to build the foundation for the next period of success starts again. (It's the economic version of the artist's dark night of the soul...Hey, I AM a former art major.)
Over time, I look back through coke-bottle lenses of sentimentality on the fun, the craziness, the challenges, the camaraderie of those times at that home. And I forget that...that home doesn't exist any more. I don't exist any more. I'm not the same person. Neither are the others. Neither is the situation.
And the heavy summer air of a NC afternoon...sweet with memories of naps and adventures, doesn't exist now...except for the naps, maybe.
And my success, I think ours as a nation, doesn't rest in the past. It's in the future. It's in the hard work we're doing now to build the foundation for the next period of success. And while it's inevitable we reminisce about the past, remembering it grander than it was, and it's understandable to be unsettled with the disruptions and destructions around us in our homes, those homes are gone now. We can never go home. The we that lived in 'em are gone. We're different, stronger, wiser, smarter, tougher. A little balder. We can never go home again. And we wouldn't want to, anyway. Look homeward, just don't linger. The future's where we're headed.
Companies have gone on a “hiring strike,” notes Ed McKelvey, a Goldman Sachs economist. Existing firms aren’t expanding much, and not enough new firms are starting. The country is suffering from an innovation deficit.
...American prosperity of the 20th century sprang largely from the country’s longtime lead in educational attainment, a lead that has all but vanished. Future prosperity won’t be based on saving yesterday’s high-wage jobs... It has to start with smarter, more strategic investments in education, physical infrastructure and other things that can create the high-wage jobs of tomorrow. - Dispelling Summer's Myths, by David Leonhardt of the NY Times.
We have the money to invest in education, health care and physical infrastructure...but it's spent elsewhere. We have to decide if we're going to invest in our children, our future and create an economy that can create the high-wage jobs of tomorrow.
Milk in Innovation.
Sometimes change involves a lot of spilled milk... Solution or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth
This post from 37Signals blog, A Pleasant Failure, reminds us all that your customer's error, real or imagined, is a grand opportunity to surprise and delight them.
Celebrate the failure with a pleasant surprise for them.
We are no doubt in a period of slow growth, it is growth nonetheless but it's very slow and it's had an impact on employment. - U.S. in Period of Slow Growth, Job Losses.
Our economy's becoming a mirror of those empty corporate, offshore financing, shells so popular with Enron, corporate banks, sub-prime lending, hedge funds. Dump the costs over there, the revenues over there, sell the shell to the public. The public is us.
What's being sold is the the economy's growing...and like investors in Enron's exotic scams or those unwitting dupes/investors who bought those packages of sub-prime mortgages, the ROI for the American worker isn't under our shell. It's under their shell.
Ok. You're not stupid. And I'm not calling you stupid. You already know it's the economy...
I'm only referring to James Carville's classic campaign advice for Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential campaign. There he wrote on a whiteboard in their campaign offices: It's the economy, stupid.
I think he should do it again. Consider:
High Gas Prices Threaten to Shut Down Rural Towns.
A May survey by the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a fuel analysis company, and Wright Express, a company that collects data on credit card transactions, found that people in rural areas spend as much as 16.02% of their monthly family income on gas, while people in urban areas of New York and New Jersey spend as little as 2.05%.
How's that going to work when gas prices nudge past $7.00 per gallon? In some rural areas gas prices are already past $5.00.
Rising Prices Hammer Seniors on Fixed Income
Annual inflation for food prices is 6%, for energy it's 28%. Both will rise as the year goes on.
The inflation adjustment for Social Security was 2.8%.
The unemployment rate, for those that are actively looking, rose to 5.5%. Add in those no longer actively looking or are under-employed...the rates rises to 9.7%.
“Slowing wage growth and falling employment is absolutely toxic if your business is selling anything to consumers,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics.
Really? Ya' think?
Auto sales plunged in June: Toyota (-21%), GM (-18%), Ford (-28%) for the month of June.
Now, some may be upset by reading this. Oh, what a negative person, they say. Perhaps.
But I do know you don't begin to address your challenges without first acknowledging them and their impact. And then take responsibility for changing them. We're in the first phase here: Hey! Houston. Got some problems here in our economy-landing ship. And it's going to take more than duct tape and Ron Howard's brother to fix.
Have a good 4th.
Update, July 3:
Employers Cut 62,000 Jobs in June, 438,000 in '08.
April and May job losses were revised down to 129,000, 52,000 more than previously thought.
Paul Simon sang there's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
Andrew Chen writes there's 25 Reasons Users Stop Using Your Service.
I'm not sure what it says about...life, love and romance... that there are twice as many reasons to leave your lover as there are reasons your customers stop loving you....but the song is a clever singalong and the post is excellent for understanding where are the breakdown points in their relationship with you.
I found this blog and this post from Becky McCray of SmallBiz Survival sharing in her Google Reader a blog post from Chris Brogan who linked to it. Social media....
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Recent Comments