Blog - Page 80 of 80 - Black and in Business

TOXIC PEOPLE LOVE TIME

Op-eds

Staff Writer

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July 13, 2016

Toxic people love using time to their advantage because they are strong believers that “Time heals all wounds”. The problem for the wounded warriors is when they believe the same thing, they will forever be repeatedly wounded. Time doesn’t “heal” all wounds. Time may reduce the amount of pain a wound causes but it doesn’t heal it without medicating it. True healing comes from atonement. It comes from the offender acknowledging what they have done in specific terms, not broad, general terms and taking accountability for their role in it. It is a tough thing for the offender to do, especially when their life has been filled with offending.

Offenders don’t generally heal their ways without acknowledging the toxicity within them. Offenses will never go away until the offender change their environment, their habits and themselves. They will continue to reoffend.

It’s important for you, while you’re on your journey to success, to ensure that you encounter as few toxic people as possible. This isn’t gonna be easy; especially when these people are of the fabric of your family’s heritage and culture. It’s not gonna be easy when you grew up with them. It’s not gonna be easy if you live near them, have the same friends, go to the same school, church or frequent the same places. It won’t be easy. However, what toxic people use to their advantage is time.

They will try to make you feel that you are holding a grudge when you do not re-assimilating them back into your life exactly how they were. They will make you feel that you are wrong for “holding on to things” even when you are not. (It may seem so to them because you have rearranged your relationship with them.)

Like toxic waste needs a special place to be disposed of properly, toxic people need dumping grounds as well. Those dumping grounds are usually the people around them they have no respect for. You can’t live a life as a “dumping ground” and never let the enormous time that has passed convince you that things should go back to the way they were. When you do that, you find yourself back in the same place.

Toxic people love to use time to their advantage. Toxic people use consistency to their advantage. The more they are in your environment, the more their toxicity seems normal to you.

Yes, change can be difficult. The good news is the easier part to changing your own habits is changing your environment. It’s the first and best step. But if you convince yourself that your environment is HAZMAT free, it’s only then nothing in your life will grow simply because your atmosphere is filled with toxic fumes.

ARE YOU GROWING OLD?

Op-eds

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July 13, 2016

216

Most people are growing poor, not growing old. Let me explain. As we age, if we are not making smart decisions while we are young, poverty will be inevitable. “Rich” is tied to skills. “Wealth” is tied to systems. When a system is created that reproduces itself, it generates the opportunity for riches and ultimately wealth. Most times, the system utilizes the skills of workers who contribute to the success of the business and the wealth of the ownership/investors. These owners/investors don’t have to do anything either, expect retain ownership. You see, skills diminish, while ownership doesn’t.

When individuals grow old without owning a system, they are ultimately growing poor, as well; not just old. When our skills are at their peak, we are happy and confuse the difference between “rich” and “wealth”. We confuse permanent with temporary. Rich feels good, while wealth “is” good.

In our culture, most of our elderly people need the financial help of their offspring. Why? This is because they didn’t invest a portion of their lives building a system that secured their wealth. Instead, they only contributed to a system that made them feel rich.

On average, it takes 2,555 days to build a successful business. Meanwhile, our average lifespan is now 28,105 days. Your childhood accounts for 6,570 of those days. So you even spend more days being a child than it takes to build that business that is on your heart. What are you going to do with those days? There will be so many extra days in your bank to either live well or dream about living well. Are you willing to allocate just under 10% of those days to live a blissful life for the remainder of it?

I encourage you to look at your life. Are you growing old and poor or are you securing your future too? Is there an expiration date on your comfortable lifestyle? They say beauty fades but if you are smart enough, your bank account won’t be forced to follow suit.

STOP WORKING FOR MONEY

Entrepreneurship

Staff Writer

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July 13, 2016

930

Most people that work for money find themselves disgruntled after awhile. Why? It’s because when we think we’re working for money, were actually working for the things we bought with that money. Most times, the things we bought aren’t things that really bring us long-term fulfillment either.

Every human being is born with a compensable purpose. However, very few people find it. We wind up getting distracted by the allures and challenges of life that prompts many of us to chase money as the quick fix. As we are introduced to newer allures and further challenges, we find ourselves on a treadmill money-chasing. Most of our financial problems are self-inflicted. This means that money will NEVER solve our problems. I’ll prove it. Look at your bank account. How much has it risen in the past 3 years? I don’t mean look at your cash flow or income. I mean look at the growth of your accounts. Some of you are too ashamed to look at the facts. If you can’t handle the truth and be willing to fix it, you can’t fathom being in business for yourself, solving other people’s problems.

We struggle with understanding how to forecast, consume and allocate in ways that our financial problems become mere inconveniences that are easily taken care of without the need for debt or handouts.

As an economics professor and veteran entrepreneur, I find one of the most interesting things about paper money is that it’s a fairly new concept to mankind. We once worked on a bartering system, only trading what’s important to us to acquire things that we could use. That concept has been thrown out the window. Now we work for money, with no real purpose of what we will use that money for; with no real plan of how that money will bring us long-term fulfillment. We merely work for lifestyle until we can “afford” retire. The result… powerless people being gunned down in the streets… but, hey, I digress.

You shouldn’t be working to make money. You should be working to make a difference; whether directly with the work you do or indirectly with the money you earn. You are able to make a difference in your work when you find what makes you different from the rest. You have to find the thing that excites you; the thing that wakes you up every day with no need for an alarm clock. Then, use the money you earn to create a life of doing your purpose full-time. The most money is earned by people who are doing it through their purpose.

Paper money is evaporating. We are now merging to plastic money. But one thing that shouldn’t ever evaporate is your reason for being and your healthy mental state from living in your daily fulfillment.

DON’T CHEAT YOUR STRUGGLE

Staff Writer

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July 13, 2016

203

If you’re over the age of 18 and have lived on your own, you understand what struggle feels like. If you’re anything like me, you know it hurts. It brings pain, stress and bruising of the ego. It is a thing that many people avoid, hence the term: comfort zone.

But I am going to be honest with you, struggle is one of the best things that can happen to us. It is the place where our best ideas reside. It is the place where our greatest strength exists. It is the place where our character lurks. However, the very issue with struggle is what I mentioned above. It hurts. Due to this hurt, they do their very best to get out of it the fastest way possible. Merely, because so many people hate the pain and embarrassment of struggle. Remember that very thing I mentioned, character? This is where our true character begins to surface.

So many people choose to make poor-integrity decisions in order to escape the pain of their struggle. They attempt to lie, cheat and steal from whomever they can; even their loved ones. Here is where everything goes wrong, especially when it goes right. Whenever your cheating, lying and stealing works, it allows you to get back to your comfort zone. When you get back to your comfort zone, you lose touch with internalizing. When you internalize, you brainstorm, you ponder and you meditate. These are the elements that lead you to your bright ideas and your exit from the struggle.

But if you cheated your way out of that struggle, you lose the opportunity to find your best ideas, your highest potential, your greatest strength and your tireless faith. You miss the opportunity to confront and correct the issues that brought you to the struggle in the first place. You MISS your true self. What then happens is you go another few years in this comfort zone from disingenuous decisions, which wasn’t achieved from your greatness but achieved from your weakness (your inability to stay the course), before you find struggle again; causing you to delay finding your highest self and living it out. You lose valuable time.

I know it’s hard to struggle. But there are 3 things you can do to make it easier. (I did them too.)

Don’t answer any calls from entities/individuals that will negatively affect your spirit
Focus on honest solutions to your problems instead constantly thinking about your problems. We multiply whatever we think about.
Read books, watch TV programs and listen to radio shows that bring objective solutions. Resist the urge to tap people in your circle for advice. Chances are they contributed to your struggle.

You have to become tougher than your problems. Cheating only validates that your problems are greater than you. A wise person knows, if you fail the test you will be given another lesson.

THE BLACK CANCER

Op-eds

Staff Writer

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July 7, 2016

10,019

There is a cancer that holds back the black community. If we were to look at the progress, the wealth and the advancement of the black community today vs. the black community 75 years ago, it would be an embarrassment.

The black cancer in our community is called “justification”. Here’s what we mean. There are certain things that are a must for someone to expect to be successful. Much of what we call the “black culture” are things that ruin our opportunities for wealth creation and teaches our kids poor behaviors. However, because many of these things make us feel good, we tend to justify the reasons we do them.

We can’t want to be successful but expect success to fit our comfort. Because we have been living a certain way for so long, success for our entire group will have to be uncomfortable. It will take an entire generation to accept this discomfort and live it out until it becomes the new “way of life” for the next generation. We can’t expect success to show up at the doorsteps of dysfunction. We must fix ourselves!

What we fail to realize is many of our entertainers of today are controlled by white companies and white investors. However, the minute we see one of “our” drop-outs, convicts or drug users/dealers find fame and millions in entertainment, we start to believe that this lifestyle is cool to live and is entitled to millions as well. It is all a TRAP and a “set-up” for more black people to follow lifestyle of that person.

Black people we cannot keep justifying our dysfunction. We cannot make jewels, sex and partying the “branding” of our community. We cannot have a trillion-dollar spending power but 30% unemployment. We cannot live selfishly and expect our people to flourish collectively.

If you pay close attention, these large corporations invest in campaigns to make us “believe” corporations are the best places to work and shop rather than with our local black-owned businesses. They are investing in the fame of the people in our communities who represent the “worst” examples of success just to make us live like that person, KNOWING that our young people will spend a lot of their youthful years living dysfunctionally too, hoping our children make decisions they are unable to recover from (felony convictions, death, HIV, producing bastard children, etc.) If our children can do that, it keeps us poor and keep them wealthy. It’s all a trap!

We cannot let our black youth compare their allowances to the actions of Whites youth. Their infrastructure is built and their children can easier find recovery from youthful mistakes; not ours.

Family, we cannot just talk about it. We cannot just justify it. We have to band together and invest in what real success looks like and what will bring us real wealth and leverage. It is what will stop us from going backwards. We are not in pursuit of black supremacy either, just black equality. Until our bank accounts are equal relatively, we are continuing to operate from an underclass position.

If you want to stand with us and participate in our plan to reverse the black assimilation and gentrification, inbox us, like this page and stay tuned for announcements we will be making. It’s time for us to get serious!

EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS ARE ANTONYMS

Business Advocate

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July 6, 2016

2,510

Though “employer” and “employee” sound very much alike, they both have two very opposite perspectives. Employer experience is very unique and only a small percentage of America gets to experience it, meanwhile the vast majority of Americans get to explore the life of an employee. This basically means that much of the advocacy will come from the employees’ perspective, unless the employer has already established a corporation and can afford to appease the employee.

Employers are managers. Employers aren’t outsourcers. Employers aren’t government employees. Employers are people who went into their pockets, sacrificed their credit and/acquired loans to get an enterprise off the ground that requires people to help build it. That is a very small lane that few have traveled in. It is a world that puts you at much risk, though outsiders have the assumption that all businesses are thriving and guaranteed to succeed to earn profits, they are not.

These are people who take a “chance” with strangers. They go out on a financial limb hoping that workers and customers help them stay out of financial ruin. These aren’t people hired to just do a job or manage people. They are people with handcuffs on their legs that are connected to the guts of the ship. If the ship goes down, they can’t abandon it. They go down too, while everyone else can abandon for the next ship.

Being an employer is a feeling that is not common, but so is economic freedom, financial independence, and getting paid to live your dreams. It’s a life that poses great upsides that all the stakeholders want to benefit from but has downsides that many of them disappear from when they see they start to emerge.

The business has feelings to! Employees think a business is just some faceless system that pumps money out of its veins. It’s not. In fact, it bleeds and it cries. The problem is most selfish or misinformed workers don’t see the blood and tears.

When workers don’t do their part, a business basically fails. When a business fails, it impacts its owner(s), investor(s) and good worker(s). The problem is most owners simply suffer in silence or just cry in the dark. Call it pride, perhaps. But they implode in their home.

They come to work stressed by the thought of their business failing and workers view this stress as them being “assholes”. Instead, what it is, is they are not happy with the company’s performance, and if they are unable to get workers to be better, they often “act out”.

Businesses respond to how we treat it by returning the favor in revenues. It shows us love through high revenues and profits. However, if we abuse the business each month it will bleed money and cry losses.

This is the language of the business, but only well-informed, selfless, caring and long-term-minded people on the team understands this language.

Leave it up to some popularity seeking politician to stump for employees, even those who are underperformers. Leave it up to high ego, low capability workers to expect compensation and treatment well above what they bring to the table. Leave it to some shoppers to embrace free products yet expect high service.

Businesses have feelings too but only bilingual people with empathy ever connect with the business to make sure it stays taken care of so it can then take care of everyone else.

The more we miss this as a society of workers and shoppers, the more gentrification we can expect to see. We will wind up living in a world where we continue to depend on the skills, acumen and mercy of other groups.

SHOULD I START A BUSINESS WITH MY BEST FRIEND?

Staff Writer

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July 5, 2016

10

SHOULD I START A BUSINESS WITH MY BEST FRIEND?

We all know the catchphrases, “You should open a restaurant because you can cook… you should open a business because you can do hair… you should open a shop because you know how to work on cars…” However, we rarely ever hear someone say, “You should start a business because you are good with money, or you should start a business because you have good credit.” We usually take our good credit to buy a new car or get a credit card so we can get our hair done or eat at a restaurant. It’s been said that you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure but despite our skewed beliefs and our raging emotions, we do it anyway. Just how the success of a romantic relationship requires more than love, a successful business partnership requires more than friendship. Here are a few things to consider before you take that leap of faith.

Financial – Is your friend truly good with money or are they good at making you believe so? Have you ever seen your friend’s credit report or bank account? Are they impulse spenders? People often upstage their skills and do a better job making people believe they are competent than being competent. Every financial habit you have will follow you into the business.

Professional – How reliable is your friend? Yes, they make a mean barbeque dinner but can they get it finished on time and every day? Sometimes we let our emotional connection with friends cause us to give them a free pass when they let us down, however customers won’t do the same thing. Perhaps your friend talks too much. If they tell everyone their personal business, chances are they will tell everyone their professional business too. Do they regularly talk bad about their current workplace? Well, be ready, they may talk about you to others once the business is started.

Ideological – Do you both have the same societal views? Are you on the same religious page? Do you share the same charitable beliefs? What about pay rate? They may feel employees should be paid less than what you believe. There can be disputes over the type of benefits you offer them too. These beliefs also slip into the treatment of customers. Do you share the belief on how customers should behave in your establishment and other operational procedures? Your friend may feel that their relatives are entitled to a job no matter if they are the best fit for your business or not; something to think about.

Emotional – The best business decisions require a lot of rationale. This simply means that these decisions come with discomfort. You won’t always be able to please yourself or partner. What about their patience level? Do you think they will respond to issues with customers favorably? How do they handle their personal relationship problems? Do they display in their behavior when things are bad in their personal life? How do they handle stress and pressure? If they panic easily, you may want to second guess partnering up!

Political – It’s interesting how different some of us are from our friends politically. Corporations identify two topics as taboo discussions between co-workers in the workplace: religion and politics. The reason for this is there is no right or wrong in either discussion. They are topics that are not quantifiable or empirical. They are merely based on beliefs. So the discussions can last forever and probably get physical. Extending unemployment benefits may be positive to one person and seen as negative to another. Some see unions as evil and others see them as heaven-sent.

Going into business is a life-changing move that comes with risk, however choosing the wrong person to go into business with can increase the risks exponentially. When deciding to go into business, the best choices must be made, not the most comfortable ones. Always seek out the best options and resources, not the ones that are the closest by or familiar. If you make a business decision based on what you have come accustomed to, failure will be the only thing that you will be most familiar with.

OUR FEAR OF SALES KEEPS US POOR

Staff Writer

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July 5, 2016

3,235

There are numerous reports on the disparities of wealth between blacks and other groups. These disparities often highlight the differences in wages and assets but what is missing is the assessment of what got people to those places. I once heard that we don’t get what we deserve, we get what we negotiate. When you are sitting in a job interview you are, in essence, in a sales meeting. You are promoting yourself to a buyer, which happens to be the company.

Selling requires confidence and comfort in what you are selling. Without these you won’t be able to sell anything. If you take a look at our culture, you would see the lack of “sales-ability” running rampant. In business we often see much lower sales in our businesses than that of other-raced businesses offering the exact same product.

According to BlackDemographics.com, “Black owned businesses only make up 7% of all U.S firms and less than a ½ percent of all U.S business receipts. 26.4 million Adult blacks in America produce $135 million in gross business receipts while $10 million adult Asians produce $506 million in gross business receipts.”

These numbers is a snapshot of a skill we are lacking. I often run into black entrepreneurs who have great ideas and passion. But one thing I often see they are lacking is comfort with sales. More blacks work in non-revenue generating positions and non-productive-measured positions than any other positions. We rank the highest employed in government, hospitality and service positions.

When we own businesses, we tend to rely on paid advertising (rather than publicity marketing) or depend on sales people to grow our businesses. What most of us fail to realize is, people in sales people rank the highest in income and wealth. It’s true! We shy away from speaking publicly or one-on-one to potential customers about our businesses. I know, it is a fearful position, especially when the position is commission-based. We see much more applicants of non-sales positions than sales positions, even though sales positions offer the greatest financial rewards.

Here are five quick things you should do in order to help you with selling:

View yourself as a problem-solver
Schedule debates with your family or friends on your product. Make them be the “negative” while you act as the “affirmative”. This is a serious exercise. Your sales skills will grow!
Role with a total stranger on selling your product (Ask them for their help. You would be surprised how many strangers wouldn’t mind doing so. They see it as a focus group. At the end, they often buy from you or at least research you.
Strike up a conversation with a stranger about anything (don’t try to sell)
Speak the benefits of your product or service to yourself in the mirror for 10 days

You have to emotionally detach yourself from your product and intellectually attach yourself to it. Know in your mind that it makes sense to be on the market but don’t get your feelings hurt if someone criticizes it or chooses not to purchase it. Move on. The average sales conversion is 1-3%. This means that you have to expose 100 people to your product before 1-3 of them would buy.

However, what you must quickly grasp and overcome is sales is the heartbeat of any business, and those that do well at it are greatly rewarded financially. You have to get comfortable with your product and learn how to sell its benefits. You have to be willing to hear “no” and not be discouraged. You have to get comfortable getting through lean financial times until the world learns who you are. You have to remain consistent regardless of the market’s landscape.

Sell your idea. Sell your product. Sell your business. Soon enough, your customers will be the ones subconsciously selling for you!

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