11/14/2014

A lot of food for thought this week.  Do I really want to be an entrepreneur?  Am I too old?  Do I know what I want to do?  Am I really up to it?

Been reading "The Dip" book.  Not sure I agree totally with it.  Why not try lots of different things.  How do I know I am going to like it unless I try it.  It is almost like they say - you only try it if you know you are going to become your best at it.

The brave thing to do is to tough it out and end up on the other side -- getting all the benefits that come from scarcity. The mature thing is not even to bother starting because you probably not going to make it through the dip. And the stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the dip.

so don't bother at all hmmmmmmmmm not so sure.  For fun just try it, who cares if you are going to dip and decide it's not worth it.  You don't know if it is worth it or not until you try it.

Paper I wrote

Christine Hansen

183

11/14/2014

How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution

      In the article “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution” number nine, “reform legal, bureaucratic, and regulatory frameworks,” from the list of “nine prescriptions for creating an entrepreneurship ecosystem,” stands out as be the most efficient to me.  Maybe it is because I live in Oregon where I feel like the government does anything and everything to make a business fail.  Oh, they think they are doing you good, they are looking out for you, but in the end they are anti-business.  We have two problems, high taxes and too many regulations. New businesses get discouraged before they even get off of the drawing board because of the massive amount of regulations and hoops they have to jump through.  You have to balance the type of employees you have, we have a high minimum wage, you are told you have to provide insurance, and when you try to rent a building then you have massive cost in renovating the building to put up to their codes. Startup fees are high and business licenses are difficult to get.  High taxes are another problem.  Oregon has the idea that if you are doing well then you your good fortune to everyone else so they can live a comfortable life, so you are penalized for doing well and taxed heavily. For a new business it is difficult to get your feet off of the ground when the taxes take up what little earnings you make.  Countries and states that have loosened up on their regulations and given tax breaks have seen an upsurge in new companies starting.  After all, the large successful companies we have today, at one point they started small.

            Why would number seven, “Stress the Roots,” do so much good?  For one, if you can attain money easily to start up then you don’t have a stake in the market and it is easy to let the company go.  An entrepreneur who has his own skin in the market does not want to lose that skin so he works hard to make it work. Can we say “easy come easy go?”  We can look at kids who go to school.  The kids who do the best are not the kids where the parents pay for everything, but instead it is the kids that have to work part time while getting their education. My son Mikkel, who graduated as a mechanical engineer, worked 30 hours a week while in school. He felt like his grades suffered a little as he tried to balance work, social, school, social, church, and social.  When he interviewed for a prestigious company in Texas they asked him about his work and his grades. He told them that his mother said that if she paid for all of his education he would not appreciate it and learn how to work hard.  He was hired over other kids who had a lot better grades.  The reason – they told him that they wanted someone who knew how to work.  They felt he had a goal in mind and he worked hard to achieve that goal, even when there were obstacles in his way.  They want an employee who knows how to make goals, stick to them, and work hard overcoming obstacles to get there. Working hard for something allows you to appreciate it.  When you have a lot of time and sweat in something, it now becomes your baby and you want to make sure it is successful.

            In the end, we can throw all the money we want to help get people off of their feet and start a business, we can lower taxes, we can ease up on regulations but in the end it isn’t the money or ease that makes a business successful. What makes a company successful is those that have had to work hard to get where they are at, a company that has had to fight through the thick and thin, a company that has learned how to succeed no matter what challenges they face, a company that, against all odds, succeeded and made it.