How To Start A Small Business

One of the most frustrating (and sometimes terrifying) aspects for any modern employee or customer is the lack of simplicity in practically everything businesses do these days. Organizations today are fiercely competing with one another to attain complexity, while at the same time loudly claiming to be making things simpler for everyone. Complexity is adored, worshiped and organizations behave as if every employee has been hypnotized by some mysterious force to shun simplicity. This has resulted in every modern business suffering from complicated project plans, complex paperwork, insane laws, tedious procedures, cumbersome business transformations, jargon spewing executives, etc., that engulfs everything right from the janitor’s department to the CEO’s office. Even the most trivial of tasks is made difficult and daunting. In layman terms, modern business is like walking through a thick smoke or a business fog that does not impair vision, but simply numbs the brain. This fog turns every employee into a living zombie who becomes oblivious to the pain of complexity. Unfortunately, the complexity you see has evolved over the years due to many sane and insane reasons and keeps growing by the day. Nevertheless, while you may have no say in reducing the fog of complexity due to numerous reasons, you can still cultivate a special power to see through the fog. The five methods described below can help you see beyond the visible pomp and ceremony, see clear patterns from chaos and see things that other are unable or unwilling to see.

1. The first lesson to see through fog is to be dismissive of hype, hot air, business jargon and fluff when projects, jobs, etc., are being described. Seek simplicity even if it is not fashionable or popular. Just because everyone around you has gone crazy, one need not join that bandwagon to survive. Concentrate only on the practical, real work necessary. It is important to note that the glamorous job descriptions many executives paint themselves with is very different from the ordinary (or even mediocre) work they will be doing in reality. Many years ago I was accidentally involved in a prestigious multi million dollar technology project that covered many countries. My accidental involvement was because a few key staff members had suddenly quit and I was thrown in due to business urgencies. Though I had a generous experience in doing technical stuff, the hype and pomp of the project made me feel like a lamb among wolves. Everything about the project was awesome, or so it seemed. Every other day I had to endure a slow lingering torture by PowerPoint presentations that spewed slide after slide, graph after graph, table after table and business transformation agendas by jargon speaking executives. I would sit there bewildered and embarrassed to admit I don’t understand anything. However, when the actual project and the hands on work started all the artificiality and terror vaporized. The whole project was simply about installing a bunch of computers, half a dozen softwares and a series of data transfers from the old computers and old softwares in the various international sites. And that was no rocket science even for an average techie. So this is how many projects work in modern organizations. Once the hype and hoopla is broken it is usually nothing but an emperor’s new clothes story inside.

2. The second lesson is to know the difference between difficulty and complexity. Few people realize that difficulty is different from complexity. Difficulty is a natural thing based on the task and depends on the effort involved. But complexity is a man made thing, an aura of hype deliberately invented to make the task look glamorous, impress others and separate the royals from the commoners. Difficulty is unavoidable, but complexity is optional. For example Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language (now almost extinct) was deliberately made complicated so that only the elites were eligible to learn it. There were too many do’s and don’ts, too many rules, and tedious methods of learning intended to keep the ordinary folks out. So the common folks invented their own simple languages and thus rejected the complexity of Sanskrit. Similarly many classical arts worldwide have suffered the same fate. In a similar way you should reject complexity and seek simplicity. Coming back to the business world, many business decisions, even billion dollar ones, can be easily taken if one has the realistic experience to summarize it into a few pages containing the absolute essential details. But if it is mandatory to go through the rigmarole of “one method fits all” flamboyant process of fancy Hollywood type presentations, endless meetings, status reports, jargon filled complex paperwork outlining all the unwanted and unviable alternatives, etc., then the same decision now becomes complicated and tedious.

3. Learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. Be like an elephant. It has been said elephants can detect the slightest amount of unusual noise among the countless noise and din created by other animals around. Similarly you should learn to suck only the essence and filter out all complexity. Remember if a million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. Often you can reduce any project, no matter how big or complicated, into a simple short summary that contains all the necessary details to take a correct decision. For example, a fifty page report may really contain only five pages of useful information that is needed to take a decision, while the remaining forty five pages could just be cosmetics, bells and whistles.

4. When something appears complex, don’t be afraid to ask elementary questions, dumb questions or even absurd questions. If you know the subject matter well and it still appears complex, then don’t portray an illusion of understanding. Different people understand the same thing from different angles. Cultivate a “Show me how or let me do it” habit. Think of hypothetical situations where you have to do everything yourself or teach everything to someone else. Think in terms of shopping lists and the real work necessary. Learn to read the fine print. The fine print is where the truth is hidden.

5. It is always the insecure and clueless managers who create complexity as Jack Welsh had observed in his quote, “Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick, convoluted planning books.” Too many managers avoid learning the work hands on, or at least an essential percentage of it. They never bother to understand the “Nuts and bolts” or roll up their sleeves to get involved. Instead they run their departments from a high level by viewing the world through status reports, endless meetings, email wars, metrics, statistical gymnastics, asking tough questions, etc. By refusing to learn or get involved they distance themselves from understanding any practical issues and difficulties of a department, and very soon everything they do becomes automatically complicated, which gets spread around like an infectious disease.

Finally we can conclude this article with a quote by Ernst F Schumacher who said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. But it takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

Thejendra B.S is the author of the wacky business book THE CAVEMAN DIARIES – Some Raw Advice for Modern Executives, now also available on Kindle. Visit his web cave http://www.thejendra.com to download sample chapters and read other free articles.

No is such a small word and yet so hard to say. Often we don’t want to say no, even when that’s the right thing to do because we don’t want to risk appearing unable, unappreciative, or disrespectful. We don’t always act as we know we should. Many people place more value on what others think of them rather than on what they think of themselves. Their need to please others is so strong that, in pleasing others, they continue to diminish their own worth and the quality of their lives. If you, like many people, inadvertently are more concerned about pleasing others than pleasing yourself, it’s time to change.

If you consider what others think of you to be more important than what you think of yourself, you are likely to accept more responsibility than you want or can handle. In a childish attempt to please, you might accept too many responsibilities and become overwhelmed. We’ve all had occasions when we were afraid to tell the boss no. We’ve hesitated about refusing an invitation lest we hurt someone’s feelings, or we’ve agreed to help out a friend even when we didn’t have the time to do so. As stated before, this can cause you to feel overworked, underpaid, out of control, and unappreciated!

If your self-image is healthy and your need to please others is secondary to pleasing yourself, you will tend to frame your responses in light of your values and priorities. As a result, you will find yourself appropriately saying no when requests are not in alignment with your values and goals. Focus on developing attitudes and habits that continuously enhance a positive self-image and a high level of confidence. Focus on doing the right things for the right reasons.

The key to changing any habit is having a desire to change. Desire is reinforced by your conviction that your goals and priorities are right. Habits are very powerful and difficult to break. Therefore, you must really want to change and the rewards or the consequences must outweigh the alternative. If not, you’ll do what’s comfortable. It is frequently easier to do what is familiar than to do what we know is right, but familiar may not be best.

Choose the outcomes you desire. Who you are today may have been the result of choices made by many others in years past. Who you become tomorrow will be a result of choices you make today. Look to the future, not to the past. View setbacks not at failures but as learning experiences and opportunities for growth. Situations do not control you. If you feel your job, your life, your boss, your employees, or your family controls your time, you’ve chosen to let them. You can choose to control your own life. You can select the events in which you want to participate and affect the ultimate outcome. Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” People may choose to control our lives, but they are only successful of we choose to let them. What you accomplish and the amount of time you spend getting there depends on the choices you continue to make.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how at http://www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

Trust is essential to the success of any team. Outstanding performance and winning teams are based on trust and competencies that produce results. Trust is a belief that those who you depend on in your team will meet your expectations. When trust is present, your team members will work effectively together, share information freely, share challenges and mistakes, admit lack of knowledge, and commit themselves to the success of the team. It is easier to build trust when working in the same physical environment because you will be exposed to many visual clues. Researchers say that it takes less than four minutes to make a trust judgment based on someone’s voice, body language, and words. However, in today’s business arena, there are times where a team is functioning remotely and developing trust can never be forgotten or pushed to the wayside.

When people fail to work well together, it is often because there is no trust. When there is no trust, there is fear, and fear is a major deterrent to innovation and results, and without trust the best ideas will never surface. Trust can never be mandated, as it must always be earned. There must be honest, complete, and open communication delivered in a way that fosters mutual respect. Your employees must feel free to ask questions with the confidence they will receive support and the necessary information. Each employee must also feel free to openly express his or her thoughts and feelings. There can be no hidden agendas or clandestine activities. An effective leader must become an expert at ensuring that everyone is kept informed and feels that they are in on things.

In his book, Building Productive Team, Glenn Varney introduces what he calls the Trust Cycle as a means of showing how leadership can prevent cynicism and establish trust. The Trust Cycle shows “Trust is developed from adequate to total information so that the individual can influence or make decisions, which builds more trust.”

There are many factors and behaviors that build trust, and even though developing trust is a very individual experience, research has shown there are some common factors, which help create an environment of trust. Trust can be enhanced when a leader focuses on building strong relationships with and among the team. Review the following categories and concepts as it relates to your department, team, or business unit. What can you do to build stronger relationship and deeper trust within your team? How will it impact the overall results?

Results: All team members are focused on and produce results, exceed customers expectations, meet delivery times, and measurable results are documented

Integrity: Team members can be trusted to mean what they say when they say it, show commitment to the team, do what they say they will do, communication is essential, and behavior is in the best interest of the team

Change: Team members are willing to change and adapt, open to other view points, and are flexible

Empathy: Putting yourself in a team member’s shoes and showing care and concern are culturally sensitive, and sensitive to the impact of all decisions

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how at http://www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

An article appeared recently in the New York Times which discussed how many for-profit trade schools are doing very well in these difficult times. It seems, however, that their students don’t always fare so well. Federally backed student loans are used to pay for this training over 80% of the time, and many students cannot afford the debt load when it comes time to repay them.

Many of these trade schools advertise frequently on television and subsequently have become household names. Some examples are the University of Phoenix, ITT Technical College and the Cordon Bleu cooking school among many others. It is not unusual for these for-profit schools to be billion dollar per year enterprises. The fees they charge can be substantial, sometimes surpassing $40,000 for a two year program in some cases.

These trade schools have been booming lately because of the recession. People see that business is down and that the future does not look brilliant for many, and they think that the only way to get ahead and lead a decent lifestyle in the future is to get training and a good paying job. The problem is that they are letting themselves be misled in a lot of cases. They do this by listening to the recruiters for these schools who tell them it is likely they will be placed into a job through industry connections the school has developed. They also are led to believe that they can expect a certain level of salary upon graduation, and this often turns out to be totally unrealistic. Of course these figures are never put in writing and are not guarantees, but people tend to latch onto these dreams and find themselves in trouble when they don’t earn nearly the salary they were expecting and cannot afford the student loan payments after finishing trade school.

It is an axiom of student loan borrowing that a person should only borrow in total as much as his/her first year of salary is expected to be- beyond that the debt burden will be too high. If someone were to borrow $40,000 for a two year trade school program, this will lead to payments of $460 per month for a ten year payoff period. Another axiom is that student loan installment payments should not exceed 10% of a person’s monthly earnings. So someone would have to start out earning about $55,000 per year to afford that level of student loan debt. There aren’t that many jobs paying $55,000 to fresh-out trade school graduates.

Worse than that the former students are often facing underemployment and jobs paying close to the minimum wage, if they get hired at all. It is not unusual for people who graduate from cooking schools to get jobs bussing tables or washing dishes rather than being the glorious chef they expected to be, for example.

The trade schools are doing very well, however. In fact in many cases they have begun to offer student loans themselves. As stated previously, these schools average well over 80% of revenue coming from student loans. So why would they lend additional funds, in fact their own money, to students? A lot of this loan money ends up being written off as bad debt, so what is going on? The answer is that there is a requirement when taking out federal student loans that at least 10% of the cost of schooling be paid either by the student or from other private sources. So the trade schools step in and lend money to students to meet these requirements. Their business that is funded by federal student loans is so good that write-offs on the money they lend to students themselves are worth it.

It could be worse. There are many trade schools out there that are not well established household names like the companies cited above. There are lots of smaller, unaccredited schools. Sometimes these schools just close up and students are left holding the bag. And that bag is a heavy one because these kinds of schools, being non-accredited, are not sanctioned by federal student programs, so private student loans are required if the student needs to borrow money, which is the case most of the time. Private student loans have much higher interest rates and far less protection for borrowers than do federal loans. So the student is left with a heavy loan burden and no job credentials from the trade school that he can use to find employment and pay off the student loan debt. There are more and more reports of trade schools declaring bankruptcy and closing in one location and then opening up shop and starting again somewhere else under a different name and organizational structure.

Walt Ballenberger is founder of Student Debt Consolidation a resource site with articles and information about student loans and student debt. Also learn about Scholarships