SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURS

How many businesses have you seen go under?  Too many for me, particularly of start-ups.

Who is to blame?  Obviously some individuals made some mistakes.  Perhaps they were naive, inexperienced, or under financed.  You might think the blame was on these individuals who were foolish enough to start a business, but I think you have to include us consumers.

It is easy to criticize other's failings from a safe viewing spot.  I have been an employee, an employer, a consumer, a salesman and have seen many failed businesses.  As a salesman I am conscious that the need for a salesperson comes from the fact that everyone is a creature of habit.  We feel comfortable when not rocking the boat.

Large companies have an advantage (most of them earned it): volume efficiencies, credibility, but also consumer habits.  But the larger they are the more they tend to be remote and have no emotional attachment to your concerns.  They operate on formulas and although flexible something is apt to get lost.

It is easy to underestimate what is needed.  To be successful it is necessary to have a lot of up front expenses as attracting attention requires marketing.  Too many these days rely on free marketing. Social media can be very helpful and needs to be attended to, but is not enough in itself.  The underlying assumption is that if they build a better mousetrap that people will flock to buy it.

Experience is an often abused word, but is critical.  The mechanics of the process of business have to be learned.   Before one is a manager one should understand the details of the business.  Maybe more important learn how to work with people.  Obviously there are groups and individuals that are willing to advise and many of them can make a difference.  New entrepreneurs need to be selective and not too proud to seek help.

Another problem that illustrates why the individual must be prepared is that most consumers are creatures of habit.  A few are mercenary and will seize advantages wherever they can.  Many will give a new entrepreneur some encouraging words and go back to their old habits.  Others will try to take advantage of introductory prices and then seek out other introductory deals.  Many will bargain in bad faith.  To build a sufficient base of loyal customers requires a lot of effort and other resources. Marketing is a skill.  Accounting is a skill.  Purchasing is a skill.  Customer relations is still another skill.  Many details--you can learn some of them by making the mistakes or you can pay someone (hopefully trustworthy) to avoid some of them.

As a consumer I see the advantages of dealing with huge corporations--McDonalds, the Keg, Best Buy,   When traveling to unfamiliar places it is reassuring to see a familiar company and their formulas are usually well thought out.  But there are advantages of dealing locally.  If you want to understand a different culture one way is to buy locally

Big companies are able to take advantage of you and that is true the bigger they get where they gain access to very sophisticated tools.  You really can't be friends with the actual owner unless you travel in their circles.  There is truly a tried and true formula to make you feel comfortable, but it is a formula.

When you buy local there are many advantages.  Instead of shipping goods from the other side of the globe many of their supplies come from local sources with fewer pollutants and some of the money stays in the community.  You can get to know the owners and managers.  If you admire someone with the gumption to take a chance you will find many at the local level.  You can build a relationship that is well nigh impossible with big companies.

The consumer is king and everyone wants your hard earned (and any other kind) of money.  We all recoil from bad service.  The real key is how an owner deals with a problem.

At the same time there is no need to be afraid of goods from other lands and feel guilty because you like them  I love mangoes which I usually buy from a local vendor at the Farmer's Market.

I remember reading an autobiography of Sam Walton and at first thinking what a cut throat business man he must have been, but he surprised me.  He decided to focus on price.  He felt a local business man could give better service and if he didn't try to squeeze too much should be able to thrive.

The bottom line is some businesses might well deserve to go out of business, but not before we give them a chance to prove themselves and learn from their mistakes.

My 2013 Resolutions

Time can drag on when you are sorting out your priorities in life and how best to achieve goals.  A public declaration is part of my strategy.

Habits run my life.  I have spent over 64 years developing them and some of them are helpful but others have constrained not only how much wealth I control, but also more importantly my enjoyment of life.  A lot of thinking and preparation went into this set of resolutions

I am not without discipline and willpower, but not enough. Wean myself off of binging on chocolate--made difficult with gifts of chocolate.  Problem apparently is caffeine, but also I like the taste so much I end up eating more cream, sugar, etc.

The specifics listed below are intended to be something to be aimed for and then something to be built upon, but not to the point of becoming obsessive.  Now that I bought myself an egg timer I can use it for meditation and exercises.

Pushups minimum 4 times per week doing 100 pushups within a 20 minute period

Situps minimum 4 times per week doing 80 situps in a 20 min period

Meditation min 5 days per week of 10 min.  Mindfulness to expand.

Idle time--exercise, rest, learning, enjoying (relaxing) NOT aimless surfing Double stepping

Sales effort--minimum average of 40 efforts per day with 15 direct contacts

Reading--still more non fiction (improvement, business, biography, history), but increase fiction that is enjoyable

Enjoy music as much as the news.

Start the year with attention to organizing.  Like most people I have enough resources to make my life better.

Be nicer, listen more deeply

THE POWER OF HABIT

There have been a series of books recently on my reading list that impinge territory covered by The Power of Habit and they all reinforce one another.  Perhaps that indicates I only read books that bolster my own thinking or that I am obsessed with a narrow field of thought.  Or maybe it is just a habit.

We are all slaves to our habits.  Or you could say habits free us to do really important stuff.  Habits operate from our subconscious mind meaning we don't think about them nearly as much as we just live them.  The beauty of the human brain is that we do most of what we do on auto-pilot, but are amazingly unaware of that.

The sub conscious allows us to survive.  We are able to interpret and react to many details without really being aware of them.  Our mind can automate much of what we have to do. The basic concept of a habit is something we do without conscious thinking after we are presented with a cue and before we get an anticipated reward.  To really entrench a habit there is usually a craving for the activity.

We are not conscious of most of our habits.  We have countless habits that take up much of our day. Although we can't identify many of our own habits other people can.  One example given has to do with hit music and how to manipulate our tastes.  Another example comes from Target, a major retail chain who wanted to determine prospective customers who were pregnant.  They used a huge data base to discover buying habits of pregnant women and refined it so they could get an early read which would allow them to direct more buyers into their stores.  This was so sophisticated that sometimes the women (or their families) were unaware of the pregnancy.

The author provides two case studies of social movements tying themselves to habits to grow.  One is Rosa Parks who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery which led to a dramatic upswing in the civil rights movement.  Another is the Saddleback Church that grew to a very wide membership.

We are all conscious that we have bad habits that hurt us and would like an easy way to change them.  Essentially that is my motive for reading the book.  Unfortunately bad habits are just as automatic as our good habits.

Charles Duhigg maintains you cannot break a habit, only replace it with something stronger.  The first step is to identify the routine needing to be replaced and then experiment with rewards to determine what is the motivation.  Then you have to isolate the cue.  Five cues are suggested:  location, time, emotional state, other people, and immediately preceding action.  Record and study the possibilities and then develop a plan.  Although it is much easier said than done this is an effective method to replace any habit.

Aristotle is quoted to good effect, "just as a piece of land is to be prepared beforehand if it is to nourish the seed, so the mind of the pupil has to be prepared in its habits if it is to enjoy and dislike the right things."

Free will occurs when you are consciously able to alter your habits.  Or when you rise above your habits and use your conscious mind to make better decisions.

To learn more about Charles Duhigg, visit his website at http://charlesduhigg.com/

THREE MONTHS ON FOR MY RESOLUTIONS

It takes a lot of effort to develop habits. There are so many distractions. You all know that. I am partly continuing this progress report as an incentive to keep going.

I have managed to do some pushups or situps every day and am ahead of where I originally intended to be. On my holidays I continued and if anything did more walking. But I have fallen behind in the progression laid out partly because of holidays and partly because I pulled an abdominal muscle. Seem to be going in the right direction.

Work habits are also going in the right way and should progress as a new project is coming on board and one unexpected one was thrown my way recently, but will be wrapped up soon.

Still got my foot in the door for mindful eating, but not progressing. If I don't report next anniversary month it may just as likely to be because I don't need to as I have given up. Thank you for reading this far--it all helps.

My original resolutions:  http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2012/01/resolutions-for-2012-made-january-3rd.html