Posted on 01/03/2013 11:31:55 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Feeling down about your small business these days? Is the broken economy hurting your sales and keeping you up at night? Need some motivation and tough love to help you stop pitying yourself? Well, here you go: 13 reasons you might have in your head about why you're not as successful as you should be.
#1 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Laziness I don’t think there’s an easy way to put this. I have to assume that you’re lazy. Every single successful person works their butts off to get where they are. It’s ok to be lazy. Just admit it. But don’t whine about not being rich and successful, ok?
#2 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Entitlement Only a few people in the world are part of the lucky sperm club. You and me? We gotta work to get what we want. Quit thinking you are owed something. You’re not. Get to work.
#3 Reason You’re Not As Successful As You Should Be – Fear You are afraid, plain and simple. Afraid of looking silly. Afraid of what your friends and family will say. Afraid of everything. Look, you’re either going to stop being afraid, or you’re not. Nobody can convince you to stop. Imagine though... what awaits you when you stop with the fear excuses?(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at nfib.com ...
Good Idea!
Logging out now!
We can relate. It is brutal.
One thing I did was to spend a lot of time and energy finding discount sources for some of my supplies. Just scored nearly 2 years worth of one item at Goodwill (they bought up a liquidator’s inventory)that means I saved 80% on future cost of those supplies. One of my main suppliers of a consumable has produced their own brand, saving me another 50% on that item, while presumably keeping themselves alive. I am actually saving less, though, since my product uses a lot of energy to produce. Just had to raise my prices 10% and the buyers tell me they have never seen prices rise so much, so fast. Everyone is fearful.
My husband’s client list shrank to those w/government pensions or who work in education or medicine.
However, we dropped to 1/3 of income in 2008 and about 14 months ago, business improved to the point where we are now only down 50% compared to 2007. The New Normal. Ha!
My husband is hanging on to his hand machine tools, though (rolling mill/trip hammer/some others). Thank God, they are paid for. You never know when you’ll get an idea that will utilize your tools AND find a market.
As for firearms manufacture: we have friends who lost their shirts in that industry back when the economy was booming. Now, the partner with the FFL is feeling paranoid and wondering how many more *lists* he is about to be on.
Markets. That is the real problem, right now. And sales venues that don’t eat all your profit, time and personal energy.
My area is full of specialty micro businesses and people are really working hard to stay alive.
nice rewrite
thanks.
Great re-write. Probably will print it up and post it in my truck somewhere.
As we used to say where I worked, and saw people move up who could not meet the “required” qualifications...
“It’s not who you know, it is who you bl#w.”
Incidentally, his points are the opposite of your last paragraph. I agree with you re the folly of striving for that which you can never achieve at the expense of the wonders that are all around, but he clearly doesn't think that. He is of the mind that anyone can be successful, if only they had the right mindset. But that is unrealistic. Mindset is important sure, but it's going to take more than that.
It is immaterial that most people here believe in Free market economics, because that is not the basis on which I am criticising him. The fact that he is filling a niche that is valued doesn't mean I cannot question whether that niche is a valid one, or whether his services are of any value. After all, a croupier fills a niche that society values. So too does a prostitute, a palm reader, and a drug dealer. Does that mean I can't argue against gambling, sex slavery, charlatinism and cocaine addiction?
His argument re negativity is that he is advocating ditching people whose negativity is dragging you down. The point I was trying to make is that you might be able to do that to friends, but there are folk you can't do that to. Folk who you have a responsibility to. Family for example.
Attempts to induce inadequacy in me because I have the temerity to disagree with a moticational speaker don't work. The times when I would have fallen for that are long past.
Cynical, but not untrue alas.
My #1 reason is satisfaction. I’ve built a life for myself better than I ever thought I’d get, and rather than continuing to chase the money I’ve decided this is good. So yes if I was willing to work harder I could probably double my income, but I’d rather go home and read than work over time and do business travel. The money chase is overrated, enjoy what you have, because nobody’s grave stone says “I should have spent more time at work”.
Well, yeah, the article is in a business magazine.
But that doesn’t mean the philosophy only pertains or is espoused for financial success. It could be for someone wanting to get married and start a family, or, given this particular publication, someone looking to build a ‘lifestyle’ business, rather than a megamillion earner.
His list is simply suggested as possible reasons that one might not be succeeding with one’s business as wished.
I’m sorry you’re so jaded as to think this grand ol’ US of A, however challenged it might be right now, is not still a land of opportunity.
Lord knows Himself can machine just about anything and has made gun parts for his own use.
I’ve actually suggested that to him after seeing the quite nice things he’s made.
As an aside from, he just told me that a local man whose car repair business just folded was ‘taken away by men in a black vehicle’ because he had a sign in front that ‘thanked Obama’ for the closure and was released from custody after 4 days *only* because he didn’t own any guns.
Anybody hear anything about that or will it be kept under wraps?
See my post #30.
Apparently people aren’t even allowed to name the cause of their ‘failure’, now.
Sure wish I could find a news source for what happened but so far, only the locals are speaking of it in hushed tones.
Things just got very bad, very fast, if what they’re saying is true.
There is zero tolerance for criticizing 0.
I am a news junky and follow several patriot and 2ndA sites and heard zilch about that. You are in Tennessee?
Friends w/a successful biz (34 employees)lost Federal contracts after writing LTE and otherwise speaking out, including a local billboard. It is common.
We are surrounded by bots. DH has a local & regional biz and I sell all over the country to 3 major distributors in my industry, plus individuals and some smaller accounts. We have learned to keep shut.
As my handle indicates, I am a long-time known defector and have become quite the hermit, aside from my conservative friends. We’re all self-employed, so we just don’t say much. If asked, we just allow that this is what folks voted for and we believe in majority rules, so it is what it is. I do want to gag when people volunteer how they LOVE 0. If they keep on, I just nod and say nothing else.
You are dog people. THAT is a good niche, if you can find the right product.
I’m in Western Maryland.
Himself is a welder/metal fabricator and there’s not much market for steel dog items...:)
[darn it]
I told him to start acting like we live in Nazi Germany or Russia.
He may rightly know why our business is tanking but he shouldn’t keep telling anybody within hearing distance.
The town west of me where the guy was supposedly grabbed is full of “47%ers”.
It’s a fairly poor river town and 80% of the once-thriving businesses have closed down.
All that’s left are the mom & pop hardware stores, grocer and couple fast food places.
Most of the rest are living on some kind of dole.
I held on for six months after it hit the fan. It was too much to bear, for me. Thirteen years, most of which were very successful, went spiralling down the tubes, and so quickly. I was caught by circumstance at a very bad time. Feeding attorneys is expensive even as plaintiff. Had to settle, took a big hit on that. Sold cars and a lake house to support both myself and the business but it wasn’t coming back. Nobody was buying, they were all paralyzed with fear, this was late spring of 2008. Then my dad died. I couldn’t do it anymore. I folded. Took a job with a former customer, one of the few still solvent and growing. Still there. Greatly reduced circumstance, but current on everything, able to save a little, holding my own.
I think the biggest beef I have against the progressives is that they are collectively allowing this decline to happen. Indeed, some seem to be positively encouraging it. You hear it in phrases like "what gives us the right?" and "America cannot dictate to the rest of the world". There is a measure of self-hatred there that I think is really rather sad. And that self-doubt is largely self fulfilling. Your country cannot be great if you continually go around thinking and saying that it isn't.
Now ok, the US is not as pre-eminent in the world as it was even 5-10 years back, but that's largely due to the rise of other nations, not because of an innate decline in US culture per se. But these people by wishing it true start to make it true. "Our industry cannot compete against these emerging nations, therefore we should move production overseas." They never consider the answer of fighting back by making industry better - by being more efficient, or making higher quality or better designed products. That's what would have happened in America's heyday. That kind of attitudinal difference is what is making the US decline. Am I being jaded to think that? Possibly. But more importanly is it true?
This all sounds so very familiar.
It wasn’t ‘progressives’ who moved inefficient, union-ridden jobs overseas for the cheap labor—it was the market. And that was better for the US than the protectionism it would have taken to keep them here.
But the combination of the new US energy boom—primarily led by gas fracking—and the increasing use of technology in manufacturing is allowing for a mini renaissance in US manufacturing. That’s exactly how and why it should have come about.
One area where progressivism (and the sellout GOP) is killing the country, however, is in the massive import of multigenerationally unskilled labor. We can’t compete with the rising labor of Asian countries with high school-dropout illegals-made-legal. That’s just a simple, ugly truth.
BFL
Just....damn.
:(
I hope the new technology and a coming energy boom really do help things out, but from experience I remain doubtful as to how much they can do. New technology manufacturing doesn't employ many people, particularly those with low skills. There is going to be a lot of resistance to fracking, even though it does seem like it can solve our energy needs for the next century plus.
The bottom line is that every nation needs a few people who do the basic job of connecting bolt A to nut B. Americans are not going to survive this century by selling each other insurance and hamburgers.
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