Week 8 Blog Post – “Never Burn Bridges”

For the final week of class, I decided to focus on Chapter 26 of It’s a Jungle in There by Steven Schussler. Remember the Golden Rule: “treat others the way you want to be treated.” Chapter 26 “Don’t Burn Bridges” reminded me of that concept. It is never good to burn any bridges unless the circumstances force it. The first reason is that you never know who could help you fulfill your dreams. The second reason is that the way you treat someone now will come back to you in some form or fashion in the future.

Here is an example:

“Imagine you’re interviewing for a job that has dozens of candidates. The interview goes well and you appear to be a great match for the position. During the meeting, the interviewer looks at your résumé and realizes that you used to work with an old friend of hers. After the interview, she makes a quick call to her friend to ask about you. A casual comment from her friend about your past performance can seal the deal or cut you off at the knees. In many cases, you will believe the job was in the bag, right before you receive a rejection letter. You’ll never know what hit you.”

I personally try to live by the concept of greeting the janitor the same way you would treat the CEO. No matter what someone looks like or where someone comes from, you should treat them just as positive as you would treat anyone else.

Let’s take Tyler Perry as an example. Tyler Perry is a famous writer, actor, producer, screenwriter, filmmaker, etc He had a very tough life growing up. He was even homeless and lived out of his car at some point in life. I live in Asheville, NC and downtown Asheville has many homeless people living on the streets. I have witnessed people never acknowledge them. I can guarantee that people treated Tyler Perry the same way. Today his net worth is over 600 million dollars.

Moral of the story is, your life can change in the blink of an eye. The person that you once treated like crap could be the same person will make or break your career or success in the future.

Source:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creativityrulz/200908/its-small-world-dont-burn-bridges

Week 7 Blog Post – “Help Others Achieve Their Goals”

Week 7 I enjoyed reading Chapter 22 of It’s a Jungle in There by Steven Schussler. I enjoyed Chapter 22 so much because it speaks volume to live itself. I don’t know one person who has become successful without the help of someone else. Teamwork makes the dream work is one of my views on life.

Warren Buffett is the world’s fourth richest person with a net worth of $83.3 billion dollars. Buffett was not born a billionaire. There were many people along the way that helped him achieve his goal. When Buffett was younger he worked in his grandfather’s grocery shop. His grandfather taught him other means of creating income. Buffett and one of his friends invested $25 in a pinball machine and installed the machine at a barber’s shop. The machine was successful and they ended up installing more machines in other shops. Buffett’s grandfather and the friend helped contribute to his success.

Helping someone achieve their goal, not only helps them but it helps you as well. Trying to prevent a person from being successful will only be damaging to the person doing the damage in the long run. I am a firm believer in karma. What goes around certainly comes back around. Help someone achieve their goal, and once they achieve their goal, they may end up helping you achieve your goal. Or your reward will be rewarded in a different scenario.

Source:

https://successstory.com/people/warren-edward-buffett-warren-buffett

Maintaining Control and Maximizing Wealth

Maintaining control of your business is essential to maximizing your wealth. I read an article that gave 6 ways to maintain control of your business.

The following are the 6 reasons: Upgrade your board of directors, get an employment contract, hire qualified talent, stock options, explore “earn backs,” and pay attention to preferences.

The two that sparked my interest the most were hiring qualified talent and paying attention to preferences.

According to the article hiring qualified talent will help your business and hiring the wrong people could break your business. “Every time business owners put unproven staff in demanding positions, they jeopardize their equity stake. Here’s why: The longer it takes a company to meet product development schedules or bring in profitable sales, the more capital founders may have to raise to cover added operating costs. More capital infusions mean more dilution to the founder. Don’t waste time or money on so-so employees.”

It is essential to pay attention to preferences because when a company grows to a lucrative sale, preferred shareholders get paid one or two times their original investment before common stock holding founders receive a penny.   Investors can also add to their percentage equity stake with annual stock dividends that accumulate year after year until the company is sold. Again, founders have to wait in the wings until investors get their liquidation preference multiple plus all accumulated stock dividends.”

Two major ways to maximize wealth is to pay attention to industry attractiveness and competitive advantage.

Barriers to Competitor’s Entry:  Higher the entry barrier, higher is the chances for a firm to sustain for a long term.

Substitutes: Lower the substitutes, lesser are the chances of consumers switching the products.

Bargaining Power of Buyers: Lesser the bargaining power of buyers, the firm becomes in a better position to dominate terms.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Lesser the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, the firm becomes in a better position to dominate terms.

Competition among Competitors: It emphasizes the degree of competition which exists between the current competitors of the industry. Amicable conditions among the competitors would make the firms enjoy the better position.

With Competitive Advantage, it is important to produce a good that can’t be produced by a competing firm at the same cost or make sure the product can be differentiated from other competitor’s products.

References:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2011/06/13/how-to-really-maintain-control-your-business.html

https://efinancemanagement.com/financial-management/wealth-maximization

Building Social and Financial Capital

One can build social and financial capital through many approaches. In order to have financial capital, you must build your social capital first.

Social capital can be built by personally calling your client. A personal phone call shows that you value and appreciate the business of your client. Next call people who have referred business to you. You can check in on those people to see how things are going and then in return help them by referring people to their business. Always keep a list of people to stay in contact with. Do something as simple as sending a holiday card. Finally, follow up with those people to see if they have received your card. This could lead to more potential business as well.

Financial capital could be built from equity, debt, specialty and sweat capital. From experience, sweat equity is a strategy that I have used. Sweat Equity is “when an owner bootstraps operations by putting in long hours at a low rate of pay per hour making up for the lack of capital necessary to hire sufficient employees to do the job well and let them work an ordinarily forty-hour workweek.  Although it is largely intangible and does not count as financial capital, it can be estimated as the cost of payroll saved as a result of excess hours worked by the owners.”

 Reference:

https://www.thebalance.com/the-three-primary-types-of-financial-capital-357332

 

Scaling Issues

Scaling will guide every strategic and tactical choice that is made. Engagement, support, and contribution will be the key to prevent failure.

Engaging in face-to-face knowledge sharing is valuable. You can expect to glean lessons learned on scope, execution, trouble spots, strategy, and tactics

“Scaling up is a significant, whole-system, transformational process. It is not something to be entered into lightly or without due diligence. Due diligence means the major players must be involved, first in interviews and then in the construction of significant portions of the scale-up. These players are both inside and outside the organization. They certainly include leadership, but extend beyond the senior team to include beneficiaries, frontline staff, partners, vendors, thought leaders, technical experts, policymakers and government officials, and media, Appropriate involvement is the approach you want. Not everyone should be in on every aspect, but apposite engagement is required across the board.”

 Reference:

https://www.fastcompany.com/1614223/eleven-lessons-scaling

Role Dilemmas

Explaining roles in the beginning of the business to everyone that is involved will definitely help role dilemmas. One of the things that somewhat hurt my current business, in the beginning, was not securing law and order. If my employees knew the law (rules) then I would have had better order and my business would be more efficient.

When defining roles within your business, it is important to make sure you are assigning roles to people who want to take ownership and responsibility of their job

Here is an excellent example of a role dilemma

“Usually co-founders expect to get a C-level title associated with their area of interest, like CFO for the financial expert. Make sure these titles are handed out only to people who are willing and able to accept the responsibility and workload of the associated role. It’s tough to downgrade titles and roles later.”

 Reference:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2013/07/18/10-dilemmas-every-startup-founder-must-deal-with/#46ca42ce6f0e

Hiring Dilemmas

While researching this topic, I found a really great article that discussed hiring dilemmas. The article discussed an ethical dilemma that is often a common dilemma during the hiring and recruiting process.

“Ethics play a very important role during the recruiting process. While there are laws in place that protect certain individuals during the hiring process–as well as help maintain a professional, ethical standard when hiring employees–HR professionals are often faced with dilemmas that extend beyond these principles. Some common ethical dilemmas in hiring can include:

• Placing misleading advertisements for jobs.
• Misrepresenting the requirements of a particular position.
• Responding to a hiring manager who has asked you to find a way “around” not hiring a qualified candidate for discriminatory purposes.
• Not reviewing candidates based on their merits.

To help deal with these types of dilemmas, it is critical for HR professionals to be honest, consistent and objective throughout the recruiting process.”

I often feel as if some employers do place a misleading advertisement for jobs. I guess technically it would be considered the job description. Many jobs that I have had in the past list all the work that I would be doing for the position that I applied for. When the actual work begins you are usually not doing half the work you were originally hired for and end up doing something completely different. To some people that is ok but to others it can be very frustrating.

Reference:

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/ethicaldilemmashrprofessionalsface.aspx

 

Investor Dilemmas

Two of the most common investor dilemmas scenarios are self-investing versus financial planner and hold versus redeem.

“Whether to opt for the services of a financial advisor or not is another dilemma faced by investors. This dilemma has been heightened after Securities and Exchange Board of India has allowed investors to invest directly in mutual funds without paying entry load.

Per se, investing on your own or through a financial planner is not a dilemma. It’s a decision that can be made easily based on whether you have the ability and time to define your investment objectives clearly with a financial plan on how to achieve them.”

Then you need access to research, which is necessary to help you select the right investment option in the right allocation. “If you feel up to the task of making these decisions on your own and tracking them post-investment, then you can invest on your own. Else it is advisable to employ the services of a financial planner.”

Hold vs redeem: This is the dilemma that a lot of investors struggle with. “In fact, it won’t be wrong to term it as one of the most difficult investment decisions. Of course, in many cases, the investors are cornered in this situation because they are uncertain of their investment objectives. If there is clarity on that front, then the decision to redeem/stay invested is a relatively easy one.”

Investments are usually made to achieve a specific investment objective. Investments should be held until the set objective is reached. “However, there could be situations where investors are left with no choice but to redeem their investments midway. Usually, such situations arise if a particular investment fails to perform according to expectations making the redemption an obvious option.”

Reference:

http://ia.rediff.com/money/2008/jun/30perfin.htm

 

Homogeneous Teams and Role of Founders

When Financial Bliss begins, I will be the founder, CEO, and owner of the business. Personally, a homogeneous team would be ideal but at the same time, I think it would cause issues. Usually having everyone on the team have the same ideas and same personalities would allow everyone to get along but it would put a restriction on the creativity of the team.

My role as the founder would be to oversee all day to day operations with the help of the assistant director, managers, and auditor.

“The truth is, founders must wear multiple hats and it’s often hard to discern which roles should be filled, what each role entails, and when each role is relevant. But if you understand these various roles thoroughly, you can prioritize your next steps and understand the type of questions you will tackle as your venture matures.”

Reference:

https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/04/12/the-4-roles-of-a-company-founder

Week 6 Blog Post – No is Yes Waiting to Happen

“The word “no” is formed with only two letters, but for many of us it’s one of the hardest words to say.” I also believe it is one of the hardest things to hear. Steven Schussler touched on a very important topic. No is Yes Waiting to Happen.

As a kid up until high school, the word “no” was probably my worst nightmare. When someone would tell me “no” I would think to myself that the person did not like me or I was not good enough. As I grew older I realized that no is definitely a yes waiting to happen. Currently, as an adult, I think of no as being nothing personal but only business.

I found an article that states Every “No” Is A “Yes” To Something Else. This article provides a different perspective on the word “no” using the mindset of everyday life versus an opportunity. Below are some examples:

A. Say “no” to say “yes” to the important. What is truly important to you, to your work’s success? For me, writing an engaging, weekly blog post is important. I said “yes” to writing this article by saying “no” to emails, calls, my laziness, and an offer to go to lunch with friends. Determine the activities that are important to your success and say “yes” to them by saying “no” to others.

Or

B. Say “no” to say “yes” to less. More is not better, less is better. You already work hard. Further progress is not a matter of more time, more energy, and getting more done. It’s now about using your time for the important. Spending energy on only the crucial. And getting done the things that are essential to success. Saying “no” is really saying “yes” – yes to less, yes to better.

In other words, “no” could actually mean something beneficial to our lives. We may not get a job opportunity because a better job opportunity has already been lined up for us. The relationship that we wanted to work out, may not work out because there was someone else better waiting for you. You may not have gotten the house you put in an offer for but it is only because that is not the house you were meant to have and something bigger is in the making.

Think positive because for every “no” is a “YES”!