Ex 14-Year-Old Tells You What to Do

I was 14. Kids at school were watching “Love Boat”. My neighbors were getting into drugs and worse. My parents, incredibly, buried their heads in their sand and simply hoped their jobs were safe, even as our neighbors lost good jobs forever. I was going to the library and reading the then-meager literature on how to succeed in business and personal life. (The two often march hand in hand.) My parents hated it, and did their level best to pretend it was a phase I’d grow out of. Sorry, Mom and Dad, wherever you are… I still haven’t. Money’s important. It helps protect your children, especially in bad times. It means you don’t have to spend winters putting pots under leaky holes in the roof the way we had to. It can also be fun to make.

I made my first million by 40. I’ve made more millions since then (lost plenty, too). The story has been different from what you might expect. One of my goals with this blog is to tell you what I did wrong, so you won’t have to, and what I did right, so you can do better.

Why Listen to a Guy Who Didn’t Buy Google at $90?

Many of my mistakes stem from what turns out to be my greatest strength at this inflection point in history. Because I was always gearing up for hard times, I didn’t take full advantage of many opportunities I encountered. When the economy soared in the late 80s, I figured it would crest by the early 90s. Fail! It meant that my developed tolerance for risk-taking was tempered by my expectations of a dip that didn’t really occur for well over another decade.

On the other hand, I’m in a pretty safe position. I have several houses all paid off, I have a couple of paid-off rental properties, and I don’t have any debt beyond the mortgage for our main house. (Why not pay it off? More on that in a later post.) Plus I have enough cash in the bank to live on for a year if my day job goes south.

This isn’t bragging, because believe me, the path has not been without rough patches. Nor is it an accident. I am here because I’ve been ready for it since 1975. Maybe you made a few bucks on Amazon or Yahoo! or AOL during their respective meteoric rises. Not me. I didn’t understand how their P/E’s could remain so high. I wasn’t the guy to listen to in 2005 when Google went public. But if you want ideas on how to prosper in these lean and dangerous times, I’m your guy.

Learn to Steal from the Best

One thing I did right was continue to study good business practices. I did it to steal ideas, and also to accumulate material for other people who wish to start a business but don’t know how. If you have any business ideas you’d like to discuss or need help on, post them in the comments. I love talking business!

We live in the Seattle area. It has not been hit nearly as hard as Detroit or even California, but it’s been hit. That has made the continuing success of many of my acquaintances even more impressive. The unifying thread is that they are all providing high quality products and services. I know a psychologist who specializes in testing children. These tests aren’t cheap. They can hit the four-figure mark quickly. She literally is barely aware of the recession. I asked her business was down. She didn’t know. I asked her office manager. “Oh yes”, she said. “Our waiting list used to be four months long. Now it’s only a month.” I’m sure many of us would love to have a 30-day waiting list for our high-end business. Heck, I don’t even have an office manager, now that I think of it!

I go to the coolest little gym. It’s priced the same as the meat market gyms, but it’s a high-end studio with only 3 rooms, one per person being trained, one trainer (sometimes two) per customer. They’re so busy they can’t hire enough good people to manage demand. What’s their secret? Sensational service. They’re personable, knowledgeable, and know how to handle the kind of edge cases that simply won’t get dealt with properly in a gym with 500 customers and two personal trainers.

There’s an amazing restaurant called Poppy in Seattle. It has one of the most original (read: hard to sell) menus I’ve ever seen. Poppy isn’t cheap, yet they’re full every night. The food is incredible, and the wait staff are all top-notch.

Many small banks have weathered the housing disaster using a super secret ninja financial technique. They didn’t loan money to questionable characters who couldn’t prove sufficient income or provide a real down payment. Did you know that very, very few homeowners who put down 20% on their houses defaulted on their loans? Surprise!

If You Were Fired Would You Hire You?

What is it that all these parties doing right? They’re doing everything right, that’s what. Hang on, don’t click away in disgust. It has direct meaning in your life even if you don’t run a business. When I taught myself programming I chose a career in creating programming languages. Compiler theory is considered by most programmers to be one of the most technically formidable disciplines there is. Why did I do it? No degree, that’s why. I figured I’d better be pretty good at programming, or I’d lose jobs to people who’s resumes looked better because they had degrees. I learned something hard but I only had to do it once. It helped me for years.

You may not be an entrepreneur. Doesn’t matter. You should act like one anyway. Think hard. If you were fired tomorrow, would your employer do better or worse? If you can’t honestly answer “worse”, then it’s time to rethink your career plan. Now be even more honest with yourself. If you were your boss, would you hire you? Are you so good at what you do that you’re a no-brainer decision for your next hiring manager?

If the answer isn’t yes you know what to do. Either start working on your backup plan or improve your “customer service”, that is, make yourself indispensable. Or both.

Unfair? Of course not. Gimme a break! Suppose you had started a business with your own money. Given two equally desirable and qualified job applicants, is Mr. or Ms. Beer Brong the kind of person you’d put first on your list? Or would it be the who looked stone cold sober on that Facebook page? What if that page linked to a blog showing off that person’s expertise in web promotion, mentoring skills, or church involvement?

Maybe you’re not the business-minded type. Try this on for size. You learn you’re about to have new baby. You work your butt off at Olive Garden or Wal-Mart or a local insurance brokerage to get a managerial promotion with medical benefits. You hire someone with less than stellar work skills. Your boss turns up that same beer bong page in the three-minute-after-the-fact forensic investigation to determine why you hired the kind of flake who showed up on Wednesday for a job that started Monday. How do you plan to defend your hiring decision?

Let’s take the heat off you for a second. Suppose an apparel brand you like is demonstrably underpaying its employees and exploiting children in a third-world country. They respond to stories about factory conditions with weasel wording about local cultures taking a different view on child labor, about how they really aren’t associated with the company that runs the factory, and about how it was all set up by a consultant and not themselves. What message are they sending to you? Suppose another apparel brand you like has a factory here in your own country and has a great reputation for paying its workers fairly. You’ve seen a news story about how their workers stay on for 40% longer than the industry average and that job openings always result in lines that stretch around the block. You like both brands fine. Which are you likely to choose next time you need a T shirt?

Take it from a hiring manager. We know how to use that internet thingie almost as well as you do. Late-breaking update: it’s not even very hard. More and more, employers are acting on something you should know already. You are a brand. What you’ve published about yourself is often the only message most people will get from you. The web is the best way for a prospective employer (or children, or spouse, or ex-spouse’s attorney) to find out about Brand You.

And if you don’t control your message, it will control you.