Awake at 2 o'clock?

Changes in the new landscape

Posted on October 2, 2011 by John F. Dini

Last week we talked about an economy where we can expect things to stay flat, or at least feel like they are flat, for a long time. The ageing Boomers, a long recovery in real estate and construction, shrinking government spending, weakness in the financial markets and increasing global competition will prevent anything like former fast recoveries for the forseeable future.

What does that mean for the business climate? It’s one thing to say that things will be flat, but another to translate “flat” into day-to-day operating examples. What can we expect to be different in the next few years from what we were accustomed to before 2007?

Integrity and Loyalty

In a recent keynote speech in San Diego, Frank Abagnale , the subject of “Catch Me if You Can” reportedly announced that “Integrity in business is gone.” With 40 years as a consultant on fraud prevention in business, he is probably in a position to know. What does that mean in the course of normal business transactions?

Most business owners, or at least those whose companies are still profitable, have have made some difficult decisions in the past four years. Employees who were merely “good enough” in good times had to be let go. Vendors relationships based on friendship and service were replaced for ones based on price. Customers for whom they went the extra mile “just because we like them” were told that their level of service would be based only on what they paid for.

My friend, and a brilliant consultant now retired, George Dawson once told me something typically smart and insightful. “I stopped helping business owners who were in deep trouble,” he said. “I realized that a desperate owner would stoop to doing anything to anyone to save his business, and that included screwing the guy who was helping him.”

We’ve all become more aware of customers who represent a danger to us. We don’t have the slack to carry them longer, “in case they turn it around.” To the person who dealt with you for years, getting cut off may appear to be a lack on integrity on your part. To you, it is simply about the survival of your business.

I’ve seen several cases lately of businesses that found a way to save their customer a substantial amount of money. They added value by their expertise, only to have the customer take the idea to another vendor who lacked that expertise, but would cut the price even further using the improvements. That certainly seems like an integrity issue to me, but maybe it didn’t seem that way to the customer.

Many companies, especially larger players who patronize smaller businesses, have used the recession to change terms unilaterally. I know scores of owners who have received notices that account terms of “net 30 days” would now be paid in 60 days, or even 90. Scores more received notices that the prices previously agreed to had to be reduced, or else the relationship would be dropped. Is changing agreed-upon terms a lack of integrity, or just hard-nosed business? The first few times it happens, it seem to be the former. After a while, we start to accept it as the latter.

Whether the changes in business relationships are a matter of a lack of integrity or a lack of trust, the result is the same. If you experience a lack of integrity from several customers or vendors, then new customers and vendors will be approached with less trust. It is self-fulfilling.

Pricing and Profits

I saw a sign in a snack bar last week. It said “We apologize for our price changes due to the cost of beef.” Most people won’t change their habits over a quarter increase in a hamburger, but world demand and monetary policies are inflating raw materials and commodities at an increasing pace.

Yet most small business are reluctant to increase prices. Customers are more inclined than ever to switch vendors. The Internet has given us a worldwide price exchange, available in minutes to anyone. Business owners complain constantly that their customers compare everything online; the “Google Effect.” Their standard response is “Online vendors can’t supply the service that we do.” That may be true, but a customer looking to eke out a few more points of margin this month isn’t looking down the road to long-term benefits.

On the other hand, a substantial minority of our clients had record years for profitability in 2009 and 2010. They watched costs like never before, and focused on customers or markets that maximized their returns. A few were frankly surprised at how much profit was available in their businesses. Those clients aren’t going back to the old ways. They will continue to watch every expense with an eagle eye. Any price increases to them will trigger a review of the entire relationship.

Increased competition from Asia is a factor that is huge, and can’t be fully addressed here. Whether it is outsourcing an executive secretary with an Oxford accent in Mumbai, or fabricating steel without environmental compliance costs in Huangchuan, the world is simply more competitive than it was 10 years ago.

The last factor I need to address in this section is speed of decisions. Customers are simply more reluctant to pull the trigger. When they were booming, it was more important to get what you needed, when you needed it, than it was to pay the very best price. Going back to last week’s column, when things are flat you can see a long way. It’s like driving in the desert. You have a long time to make decisions. (“Giant Ball of String- Only 153 miles!)

Customers have discovered the advantages of waiting. Maybe the price will go down. Maybe a better model will come out. Maybe my business will dip, and I won’t need it anyway. Maybe I should wait until next year. Maybe I should wait until it breaks.

Your sales process will have to be broadened to take timing into consideration. It’s no longer sufficient to explain the features and benefits of using your product. You need to explain the benefits of using it now.

Employees

The third major change has been in employee relationships. For thousands of small business, the old standby “We are like a family- we take care of our employees,” was left as roadkill in the last few years.

Small businesses cut pay, cut benefits, and cut bodies. In a buyer’s market for employment, they found that their people would sit still for a lot more than the owners thought they would.

Our high unemployment numbers are astonishing, and will remain so for a long time to come. Gallup Polls don’t “adjust” for seasonality, major layoffs or the other things that the Federal government uses to make the numbers more palatable. They simply ask if someone is looking for work, or looking for more work than they are able to find. That number remains at over 18% of the workforce.

But unemployment is also seeing the effects of the Gini Coefficient (see last post) on separation between the highest and lowest segments of the population. Drilling down into the unemployment figures shows that this recession hasn’t impacted the educated, experienced or skilled workers nearly as much as it has those who lack those attributes. It has been brutal on construction workers, white-collar administrators, entry-level service employees, and new graduates.

Employers are accomplishing more with fewer people, but that has a corollary. It means that each person is more important to the business than before. In small companies, cross-training has always been an ideal seldom fully implemented in reality. With less time, and more work, you’ll have structural tension between two forces.

For every new job, you will have more choices of applicants. But every job now requires someone who can perform at a higher level, do more things, and act with less supervision. You can no longer afford to hire three people to do the work of two. In reality, you are looking for one person who can do the work of two. That person is still hard to find.

Good employees will get over the headlines about unemployment soon. They are beginning to realize that they play a bigger role than ever in the company’s success, and that their contributions are worth compensation. Employers will learn that the headlines about how easy it is to find employees don’t mean great employees, they are just body counts.

The New Order

If it sounds like all this makes doing business more difficult, don’t despair. It does make doing business the way you used to do it harder or impossible. It does require new thinking, and a return to some old thinking.

The first three columns in this series were to set the table of expectations. I may be myopic, but I think what I see is, by and large, what our situation looks like. Next week, we start talking about how to win in this brave (and frightening) new environment.

Posted in Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business strategy, economy, employees, small business advice | 1 Comment

One Response to Changes in the new landscape

Marshall Hatfield says:

October 11, 2011 at 8:59 pm

John,

Your assessment – and Frank Abagnale’s – is right on according to my own experiences as well.

I’ve thought about the issues of business integrity & client loyalty (or lack thereof) my entire career … and rarely found either to be often present.

The prevalence of scams & frauds – especially in the service economy boom of the late-90’s / early-2000’s – has taken its tole on trust in the global market place & in business at all levels. As a Los Angeles resident, I have fast seen the majority of locally advertised business services devolve into nothing more than white collar crime. It is truly depressing.

Looking forward to your upcoming posts on the topic.

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“When everything is flat, you can see a long way.”

Posted on September 25, 2011 by John F. Dini

That statement was made by Van Palmer of Palmer Technology Systems after a lengthy discussion about economic trends. It perfectly describes why we should be positioning our businesses differently from how we did it at the end of previous recessions.

Since World War II, the United States has enjoyed a growing number of working adults as a percentage of the population. This was an effect of both the baby boom, which added 58% to the US population in only 20 years, and the baby bust, the trough in birthrates that kept the number of children at a relatively low level through the 70’s and 80’s.

A rising tide lifts all boats. (I don’t know who first said that.) When the number of workers in a society is expanding relative to the economy as a whole, everyone prospers. One major reason for America’s rise to dominance in the 195o’s and 60’s was that our economy was relatively intact after World War II, and it outpaced those in Europe that were rebuilding from the war.

Have you noticed how many economic comparisons include the term “World War II?” The worse recession since WWII. The highest deficit since WWII. The longest sustained unemployment since WWII. That is because the last 60 years have been fueled by the Baby Boom. Each recession, or “correction” as we became fond of calling them, was followed by a new period of sustained growth.

The Boomers are the pig in the python of American history. (see my website www.theboomerbust.com ) As they age, they will once more transform the basic underpinnings of the US economy. Will it be better? Not for those who build their business plans on assumptions of inevitable growth. Will there be opportunities? Absolutely.

That’s why I am undertaking this series on positioning your business to compete in a flat economy. It’s not because I’m a doom and gloom kind of guy. I’m not. But I do think that things have changed in the overall landscape of American small business. Those who recognize that change and adapt to it will do much better than those who don’t.

The rest of this column is going to list the reasons why we will be in this type of economy for quite some time. I believe it is like gravity. It’s there, and you have to deal with it. If reading this stuff depresses you, then skip it and wait for my next column. I feel that it is necessary to set the table for the thoughts on winning in this environment that will follow.

Inflation and Unemployment

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on how the government has continually shifted the statistics to make them look better. Sometimes it makes me think of the old Soviet 5-year plans. Suffice to say that the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes people who have given up looking for work and those who are working part-time because they can get nothing else, stands at 16.2%. Many of the lost jobs are in finance and construction.

One analyst told me two weeks ago that using 1983 government standards of measurement, our inflation rate currently approaches 10%. I don’t know how he calculates that, but anyone who goes to the supermarket knows that the rate isn’t as low as the Feds say it is.

In finance, high employment was driven by the trading and debt bubble. At one point in the mid 2000’s financial companies accounted for 25% of the market value of the Dow. That was an anomaly, and we will not return to those levels in the forseeable future.

Construction is the largest single employer in our economy. The collapse of the real estate bubble, combined with restricted Federal and state budgets, doesn’t promise millions of new construction jobs any time soon.

There are other factors, including the Gini Coefficient (named for the Italian statistician), that measures the increasing shrinkage in the middle class, largely due to technology. Relatively low-skilled, high-wage jobs in office work and manufacturing are being disproportionately impacted by technological advances in productivity. Suffice to say that we can expect unemployment to be a continued drag on our markets for some time to come.

As an employer, we can expect more candidates for some jobs, and reduced expectations about what employers have to provide. That will take some regional evening-out, as many middle class workers are still chained to their devalued homes. It will happen eventually, although technical skills and sciences will remain in short supply.

Real Estate

Housing prices in many areas of the country have fallen by almost 50%. Assuming we return to more normal patterns of growth, that should increase by something like 4% to 5% annually. In the absence of another boom, that means it will take 7-10 years to clear out the negative equity and bad loans in the system.

As I noted in 2009, the amount of retail space built during the boom almost doubled square footage per capita between the late 1980’s and 2008. That was a function of easy money, both to build and for the consumers who bought on credit. This, too, is a market that will take some time before demand catches up with capacity.

Of course, if your company is growing and you need space, it will be a good time to shop.

Government Spending and Deficits.

Many people have campaigned for the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as wasteful and contributing to the deficit. Regardless of your political opinion, winding down the wars is shrinking spending on materials and services by several billion dollars a week.In the long run, getting the country on a sound economic footing is a necessity. In the short run, it will be painful.

Similarly, shrinking the government payroll is a favorite bugaboo of conservatives. The average Federal employee now makes more than the average private sector employee. Those employees, however, are also the epitome of middle class white collar workers. They eat in restaurants, buy new cars and have their clothes dry cleaned. Reducing that workforce will add to the pressures on the job market and consumer spending.

South America, Asia and Africa

The emerging economies and their increasingly prosperous workforces represent new markets. In many cases, they have become new markets for each other. China’s trade with South America will surpass its trade with the US this year. Much of what was formerly termed the “third world” is humming along without much help from us.

We will remain the wealthiest market in the world for at least the rest of my lifetime. China’s economy will inevitably outgrow ours, but it will still be spread over nearly 5 times as many people.

That doesn’t mean every small business in America has to become an exporter. There will be plenty of opportunity domestically. It does mean that we will have to be cognizant of new competition in almost every industry.

The Ageing Population

Back to the Baby Boomers again. As the largest generation in American history retires, there will be slower growth in the workforce (an issue in the Southern Mediterranean countries right now). Unless major steps are taken, and Obamacare did not take those steps, health care will become a major inflationary force, and draw from other areas of the economy.

The head of the S&P Sovereign Debt Rating bureau was questioned a few weeks ago about the lowering of US debt from AAA to AA+. He said that the average time for a first world nation (Canada, Finland, Australia) to regain their prime rating after a reduction was between 7 and 14 years. When asked if the US would have to wait that long, he ducked the question by answering “People have to realize that this country’s demographic peak was ten years ago.”

That demographic peak was the Boomer generation all between the ages of 35 and 55, their top of the productivity curve.

The recessions of 1973, 1981, 1990, and 2001 were all followed by periods of rapid growth. Part of that was technical. Financial recession like the ones in 1929 and 1937 take longer to recover from. Part of those recoveries were due to the Boomers driving increased productivity and consumption.

No country has ever seen as large a percentage of their population in active retirement as we will experience. The Boomers are relatively healthy, and have $10,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion) in assets. Their productivity will be missed in the workforce, but some of that should be offset by their spending.

The ageing Boomers have changed the business landscape. They have driven cosmetic surgery, health clubs, vitamins, pharmaceuticals, athletic clothing, diet plans, work out videos, and high-end equipment from bicycles to running shoes.

How their spending will impact the economy of the next 15 years isn’t clear, but it is certain that they won’t be their previous, depression-scarred parents. They are not going to sit home and hoard their savings. The Boomers will continue to spend.

Gravity

There are a lot of other things on the doom and gloom front that the media will keep reminding us of. We will continue to deal with bank failures, a flood of mortgage foreclosures, default in Europe, and a debt hangover. These will all eventually be addressed, and we will work through them.

You can see a long way when things are flat, and we can look forward quite a distance. My point isn’t that this is the end of the world as we know it. I’m just saying that the business environment of the next 7 to 10 years will look a lot like it does right now. The problems we are dealing with can’t be disposed of in a year or two, regardless of how much we would like them to be gone.

We have one more area to discuss before we get to strategies for thriving in a flat economic environment. That is to recognize how our way of doing business is changing. Just as assumptions of inevitable growth are outdated, so may of our beliefs about customer relationships, value pricing and efficiency have to be adjusted. That will be next week.

Posted in Exit Planning, Thoughts and Opinions | 2 Comments

2 Responses to “When everything is flat, you can see a long way.”

Brad Elmhorst says:

September 28, 2011 at 8:12 am

Well stated…also check out the article about health care in today’s Express News showing how government intervention increases costs. Regardless of Texas’ high rate of uninsured, where is the investigative reporting of who has been denied coverage or service if they applied for it? Perhaps a portion of the Texas population has made a decision to not have coverage, in the same manner that my employees can opt-out of coverage offered by the company. Health insurance will become the new ‘company car’, a perk that was once offered (driving the auto industry to new heights in the 70’s & 80’s), but no longer offered by many companies. It has been eliminated or reduced to mileage reimbursement or if you are lucky a car allowance.

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Todd Marquardt says:

September 28, 2011 at 9:18 am

I get it. We should adapt. How do you suggest we adapt?

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Dealing with “Malaise”

Posted on September 18, 2011 by John F. Dini

This starts out sounding like doom and gloom. It isn’t. I have come to the realization that the world of small business ownership is changing, and we have to change with it. For the next few weeks this column will discuss how we have to be different. Please read through the depressing part- it gets better. I promise.

On July 15, 1979 President Jimmy Carter delivered a nationally televised speech on the “crisis of confidence” facing the American people. It has become widely known as his “malaise” speech. although that word never appeared in it.

The country had good reason to feel depressed about things. The economy had just started growing after the deep recession of 1974-1975, but the energy crisis engendered stagflation. Inflation was at double digit levels, Congress was gridlocked, and the Fed’s loose money policies were failing to prop up the markets. By May of 1980 we had fallen back into recession, which spelled the end for Carter’s presidency.

The parallels to 2011 are obvious. Consumer confidence hovers in the low 20-percent range. Inflation, if measured using 1980 standards, is nearing 10%. Quantitative Easing 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 have failed to revive the markets, whose volatility is terrifying small investors.

Instead of the Iran hostage crisis and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, we have Iraq and our invasion of Afghanistan. (Again? There is a reason it is called the “Graveyard of Empires.”) China is positioned to pass us as the largest economy in the world. Over 15% of the nation is unemployed or underemployed. The residential housing market is years away from recovery. Europe is threatened with financial meltdown. Half the country is becoming a dust bowl, while the other half is swimming to work. We have become gun-shy of the news- it seems to be all bad, and promises us every day that things will get worse.

The response of small business owners is consistent and universal. “All that may be true, but at the end of the day I just have to keep running my company the best way I know how.”

A valid argument to be sure; but what if the best way you know how isn’t enough? For the last 60 years we have run our businesses on the certain knowledge that things would eventually get better. “This, too, shall pass.” “What doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger.” “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

How would you change what you are doing if you knew that this was the way things were going to be for the forseeable future? Do you really believe that your customers are going to become less cost-conscious in the next few years? Do you think that government spending is going to increase? Will consumers regain access to easy credit to spend beyond their means? Will housing prices that have fallen by 40% or more recover in the next two years, or three, or five?

Of course not. Running your business on the assumption that everything will soon go back to the way it was is simply foolish. I think that most business owners would agree with me, at least when the questions are presented in this way. Yet most of us continue to operate our companies as if we are in a temporary trough. We have an ingrained assumption that recessions are followed by expansions.

Japan discovered that wasn’t necessarily true, or at least it wasn’t true for everyone. After their bubble burst in the early 1990’s, the Japanese economy remained moribund for the next ten years, and isn’t much better today. The rest of the world boomed, and didn’t seem to mind that its third largest economy wasn’t along for the ride.

There are lots of reasons to think that we could follow that same pattern. Our issues are systemic. For my newer readers, I refer you to my post of January 2009 on dealing with the recession and what was to follow. I put it here simply for credibility. It wasn’t clairvoyant, but rather a simple look at the facts and figures. They haven’t changed in the last 3 years. They won’t change tomorrow.

Our tendency in difficult times is to hunker down and tough it out. You can’t do that indefinitely. Most of my clients are making money, but generating a profit is harder, and they are working more. If we are to succeed in a new economy, it will be by doing things differently.

In the coming weeks I’ll discuss what those factors are that make it different this time. Then we’ll discuss what we can do about it. Every crisis has opportunities, but it is certain that those opportunities do not involve just doing what everyone else is doing.

Posted in Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business planning, business strategy, economy, leadership, small business advice | Leave a comment

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Raises and bonuses- sharing a recovery

Posted on September 4, 2011 by John F. Dini

Your business is starting to recover. You are again profitable. If you were smart and agile, you remained profitable or perhaps even increased margins during the downturn by being “lean and mean.”

One advantage of a financial recession is that employment trails the recovery. So while businesses rebuild their earnings, jobs remain scarce. Most small business owner don’t see their employees as part of a statistical anomaly, though. If you froze increases in 2009, they haven’t had raises in what seems like a long time. They also have a better view of your company’s increased revenues or improved financial health than employees in larger organizations.

When is it appropriate to reinstate raises? There are a few considerations. The first is your confidence level regarding the sustainability of your business’ recovery. Most of us are still concerned about whether another dip will cause our customers to slam their wallets shut again.

If you think that your increasing business is sustainable, then you have a few additional factors to take into account.

Are your employees in demand? In a competitive environment, you can’t afford to be the last one to offer increased compensation. This recession has hit lower wage, less educated employees the hardest. Unemployment among those with a high school diploma or less is over 12%. For those with a college degree, it is 4.5%. For professionals, the unemployment rate is less that 2%. If you are thinking that high unemployment is a factor in keeping engineers or programmers in their current jobs, you are mistaken.

Another factor, and one far more difficult to handle, is recovering your past losses, or rebuilding reserves. One of my clients is emerging from a tough couple of years. While his company remained profitable, it wasn’t anything to write home about. Two months ago they had a great month, posting their highest profits in three years. His accounting manager immediately informed him that it was time for him to get a raise.

Ironically, the profit turned out to be a bookkeeping error. The point remains, however. The employees see today’s results. They easily discount or disregard all the months you barely had enough to make their payroll, or even had to use savings to keep the doors open. It isn’t easy to explain to hem, but you can and should. They have to understand that if you ran the company based on monthly results, the next time there was a hiccup they might not have a job.

None the less, if you are growing the business your staff feels it on a day-to-day basis. They are busier, and you aren’t hiring more help. With today’s free-agent employee mentality, more work is supposed to mean more compensation. How do you deal with those expectations?

If you had to cut wages or staff to get through the downturn, you probably realized an unforseen benefit. You began talking to your employees on a different level. You had to share at least some of the bad news, and explain what your plans were for survival. As things get better, it isn’t time to go back to your old ways. Keep sharing information.

Explain not only that business is improving, but by how much. Put it in context of how much was lost during the rough times. Place a number on how much more revenue would have been done if sales had stayed at 2007 levels. Let them know that a business doesn’t just pop out of a hole and move on, the hole has to be filled in first.

Now may be a great time to announce an incentive system. When our businesses were growing year after year, many of us got sloppy with out fixed costs. We hired and gave out raises, creating structural expense that couldn’t be sustained in leaner times. We’ve fixed that, and it isn’t smart to head back down the same road.

Putting in an incentive program that shares success sends a powerful message. It tells your employees that you are willing to pay them more as business improves, but if it isn’t maintained, the benefits attached to the improvement will disappear just as quickly.

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Can Startup America revive US small business?

Posted on August 28, 2011 by John F. Dini

A couple of weeks ago in my opinion blog “Awake at 3 o’clock” I pointed out that politicians pronouncing small business owners as the saviors of the economy is a misplaced strategy. (“SMB isn’t the cure for the economy“) Most SMB owners are ageing Boomers, disinclined to take big risks as they seek greater retirement security.

Now the government is rolling out a new program “Startup America” to foster the development of innovative entrepreneurs. The program will support early-stage companies by improving access to capital, mentorship and education while reducing red-tape and regulatory barriers.

I’m proud to note that as the owner of a franchise of The Alternative Board, I will be included in the participating mentorship partnerships.

I’m also inclined to favor an organization with a Board of real entrepreneurs. Folks like Michael Dell and Magic Johnson presumably are still close enough to their startups to remember what it was like. The CEOs of Under Armour, FedEx and LinkedIn all built companies from scratch. No politicians – now there’s a worthy idea.

As good an idea as this is, I have a not-unexpected skepticism of the role of government in the business markets. I work with a number of 8-A, HUB, WBE and other businesses that enjoy some special status in government contracting.

I’m not going to riff on the “Caucasian Males Get Shortchanged” theme. The programs that favor folks who were traditionally shut out of a lot of opportunity have a purpose. They really don’t (contrary to the belief of a lot of those left on the outside) steer a lot of work to those classifications. It is a tool that lets you hunt work, but it doesn’t just dump money in your lap.

What it does is make a lot of large corporations look at subcontractors and vendors they would otherwise ignore. I’m not sure if a giant multinational surrounded by small businesses, like pilot fish around a shark, is a good thing or not. It is, however, an opportunity. What it clearly does as well is to wrap a whole lot of regulation around the process of choosing a vendor.

So I wonder if “reduced” regulation can really mean “May the best ideas win” in a government controlled environment. How will ideas be judged? Will there be room for the next Under Armour, which is “merely” another, albeit innovative clothing company? Or will we quickly see a predisposition towards “cool” industries – clean energy, technology, and the Internet?

An interesting feature of the Board is the number of members whose companies are largely or wholly based in the USA. I’m entirely in favor of building jobs at home, but it is a global marketplace. Might there be a bias towards companies that locate in the “right” area or hire from the “right” population?

How does a government-supported organization not have politically correct agenda?

Let’s hypothesize an example. One company is working on an idea for storage cells, located in Gary, Indiana, with a business plan that calls for fabrication and distribution by training high school dropouts in depressed inner-city neighborhoods. Another has a similar product concept, but plans on developing it with an international team of engineers located both here and in Asia, and manufacturing where it costs the least.

The latter company may have the better idea, but can Startup America handle a headline that says “Taxpayer Supported Businesses Send Their Jobs to India?”

Could the current (or any) administration say “We think entrepreneurial creation is a chaotic and wide-open world. We accept the fact that not all will succeed, not all will get a fair shake in the marketplace, and not all will do things in a manner that pleases everyone. In the long run, we think making something happen is more important than trying to only make the right things happen.”

I’d love to see it, but I can’t quite envision it. None the less, I plan on finding out how I can support Startup America. Standing on the sidelines being cynical isn’t accomplishing anything. I do believe that making something happen is better than worrying about whether it’s exactly the right thing.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged new business, startups | 1 Comment

One Response to Can Startup America revive US small business?

Tom Morton says:

August 29, 2011 at 1:14 pm

Thanks John — a very interesting and thoughtful piece. On our side of the Pond we also have a continuing series of Government initiatives to stimulate small business, and they also suffer from the same constraints you identify.

Your last sentence, however, is key (and to many other fields as well)

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