Die Broke Blogger
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls ~Joseph Campbell
This month I began blogging on small business and the meltdown on the Die Broke blog, part of the StockTwits network. My focus is helping small business owners deal with creditors, the IRS, family members and their own inner demons.
What qualifies me for this assignment? Personal experience.
Since shuttering the industrial cleaning businesses in 2007 I’ve continued to deal with creditors (including friends and family), the IRS and a loss of face. I’ve learned a great deal about financial law, pondered business ethics and done a lot of navel gazing.
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure ~Joseph Campbell
I won’t chronicle the whole debacle here…it will unfold over time over on Die Broke. But I will say that my entrepreneurial “failure” freed me to pursue the writing career I was always told would never be mine. How? Janis Joplin’s raspy lyric explains it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
In 2008, with no money to invest in a different company, a dismal job market and absolute loathing of corporate America anyway, I gave myself permission to hang out my shingle as a business writer.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are ~ Joseph Campbell
Fortunately my husband still has a job. The best off-balance-sheet asset an entrepreneur has is someone who lets them bunk in rent free. Thanks, Matt.
More Joseph Campbell bon mots:
- We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us
- Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself
- I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave
- Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?
- Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging
- The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure
- The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature
The Road to Success is Paved With…
lots of detours and false starts, from the looks of things.
I’m already on record as a fan of FlowingData, whose blog I subscribe to. This morning Nathan posted an evergreen allegorical cartoon, originally published in 1913, that blows me away. If you want to study it closer, click to get it in another browser window by itself, then zoom in.
Scroll past the poster for my thoughts on success and wisdom from the Buddha on healthcare, entitlements and financial reforms.
Macro events on micro successes
This allegorical poster works well across the range of arenas in which people strive to succeed, whether it be spiritual enlightenment, gaining the esteem of family and neighbors, building a thriving business enterprise or artistic mastery. When you think about it, there are really several mountains of success we climb in this life: family member, citizen, profession, avocation, seeker…everyone’s list varies. And none of us is at the pinnacle of all life’s mountains at the same time. Life is full of trade-offs.
The one thing the poster doesn’t account for, however, is the role of macro events in our micro lives. For example, let’s say you created the world’s most precise wristwatch and fashioned it into a gorgeous piece of jewelry at a time when mobile phones have essentially replaced the need for a separate timekeeping device. Your company goes bust, taking down the family and friends who invested in your vision. Does that make you unsuccessful? Depends upon your definition of success, doesn’t it? I had a similar experience, touched upon lightly in this essay published in Charlotte Magazine, Breathe In, Breathe Out.
One thing I hope we’re all learning in this Great Recession, is how interdependent we are. Investors in now-failed enterprises run by managers with the highest moral fiber have suffered alongside those who placed their life savings in Ponzi schemes. And now investors of all stripes are suffering alongside those now unemployed by the companies crumbling around them.
Here’s a story about some Madoff investors now marooned in a RV park in Arizona, because they can’t afford the $2500 to drive home to NY. He was a New York City Department of Corrections officer and she, a computer analyst; hardly the glitterati we associate with Madoff’s victims.
It’s a compelling interview, including this quote by the prison guard, “We have our money in a viable institution and nobody was there to check. I mean, if I went to work every day at the Department of Correction and just left the door open and let the inmates out…. That’s my job to keep them in line, keep them behind the gate. Did anybody do that at the SEC? Absolutely not.”
A third way — between unfettered capitalism and outright socialism
I’m growing deaf listening to the various screaming matches on financial reform and fixing healthcare/entitlements.
To hear those on the far right, Fascists monsters are lurking under our collective bed, waiting for us to fall asleep so they can nationalize all industries and make the US unattractive to capital, thereby plunging this great country into the abyss alongside other empires on which the sun has long ago set. The left sees virtue in centrally coordinated systems that make the quality of life in America less dependent on highly variable, state-based programs. In this vision, we’ll provide for the common weal and wipe out blood money-derived profits, but unless we take swift and broad-sweeping measures to centralize federal control immediately, we’ll be swept into the dustbin of history as another fallen giant.
Interesting that no matter the side, both meet in the middle with their conclusion that we’re headed down the road to ruin.
Look, the desire to organize society around an enforceable ethical code and to take care of the poor, old and infirmed are goals as ancient as the human race. These aspirations separate us from the beasts of the field. Our approach to these goals differs as society matures and technical advances enable us to try new things. So let’s all take a deep breath and look under the bed. With a flashlight.
I’m a fan of Buddhist monk Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart and think her work provides a useful frame of reference for the dread we feel about the changes now upon us. “We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.”
When we can accept the falling apart and coming together of all things in life, starting at our personal lives and including our entire world, we might approach financial reform, health care and entitlements with less dread, hysteria and finger pointing.
All these systems met needs pretty well for a time as originally designed and implemented; things came together at those points in time. Times have changed and new tools and social conditions have come on the scene since then; things have fallen apart.
Two examples:
- Things fell apart during the Depression, so we implemented entitlement programs and erected new regulatory bodies. Things came together. I argue that the only reason we’re not in another Great Depression today is the post-Depression social safety nets that now provide unemployment insurance and a baseline of health insurance to our elderly and most financially vulnerable citizens. But since we essentially dismantled Glass-Steagall, and financial mathematicians developed products that were unforeseen by jazz era regulators anyway, we produced fake wealth and things fell apart again.
- Employer-provided health insurance came into being in a different age, too, beginning in the 1930s and quickly expanding as an employee fringe benefit when wage and price controls were implemented during the Second World War. Breathe in. Time for an update — we don’t even drive vintage 1960′s automobiles anymore, so why a ’60′s era healthcare system? Breathe out.
Now let’s all chant Om and get on with finding third-way solutions to financial and social services reforms that work for all of us.
Think=”Strong” Feel=”Weak”
The Brothers Heath (Chip & Dan) ran another great column in July/August edition of Fast Company, proving it isn’t just me who’s observed that thinkers are considered to be strong, while feelers are considered to be weak.
“In Defense of Feelings” highlighted a series of experiments conducted by the University of Toronto, the upshot of which proves “When people were given a choice to interact with a rational decision-making partner or a gut-trusting one, 75% chose the rational partner.”
Extrapolating to the roots of this Great Recession, I agree with the Heaths that this preference for rationality explains why we trusted spreadsheet-wielding financial mathematicians, whose modeling “proved” that NINA (no income, no asset) mortgages would perform even if default rates reached historically high levels.
What the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator teaches
In B-school at Duke, I studied the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for a class on leadership*. One of the preferences the MBTI instrument measures is “thinking or feeling,” and most everyone in the world comes out with a preference (from slight to strong) for one or the other. To paint an illustration with a broad brush, most bean counters are “thinkers” and most elementary school teachers are “feelers,” each being attracted to a profession where their strengths are most appreciated.
The Heaths addressed the feeling side of the spectrum, too, saying “Guts aren’t perfect. For instance, we tend to feel so much empathy for individuals that it can doom our efforts to be impartial and consistent.”
I have no MBTI preference between thinking and feeling, which is statistically rare. Circumstances apparently drive my preference. My children would characterize me as a “thinker” because of some of the tough love I’ve dished out — like letting my underage-drinking son deal with the law himself instead of hiring a lawyer to get him out of the consequences. On the other hand, those familiar with my unprofitable environmental contracting business would say I was a “feeler” for not pulling the plug sooner — I “felt” sure I could turn it around in spite of clients declaring bankruptcy and a key employee who stole from me. More about this debacle in an essay I wrote for Charlotte Magazine.
The thinking-feeling upshot for me is to know my vulnerabilities and do what I can to insulate myself from situations where I tend to apply “thinking” solutions to “feeling” situations, and visa versa. For example, I vowed never again to have employees — I always work with contractors or project partners.
Back to the point at hand, that we prefer thinkers over feelers. Perhaps that explains why I studied business instead of psychology in the first place.
What about it? Have you been in business situations where your gut told you one thing and your head said another? Do most people worship math geniuses and spurn touchy-feely types?
*The indicator is beyond the scope of this short post, so here’s a link for those who don’t know about this valuable tool.
A New Capitalism?
Some old stuff works
“Common knowledge” says we can’t have an economic recovery without our financial sector at its center. I wonder.
Would it be so awful to envision an economic system on a more granular, personal level? I’m no Luddite; I don’t wish for Ye Olde Banke or a total barter economy, but somewhere between there and the craziness that’s imploding around us might be just the right balance.
We need a Goldilocks solution– not too big to fail, not so small that growth is impossible, but just right for worldwide trade and solo-preneurs alike.
One reason microlending succeeds is its built-in social support system. Loan recipients work in groups of fellow borrowers and if one enterprise goes under everyone in the group is responsible for paying back the loan.
I attended an introduction to bartering a couple of months ago and that seems to have its merits.
With all the bright, unemployed minds in the world pooling intellectual resources and harnessing technology, I believe the decaying corpse of the current financial system can be put to good use as mulch. Bring it on.
The Meltdown and Entrepreneurship
I had my own business meltdown in 2008, chronicled briefly in this article in Charlotte Magazine. Since then I’ve taken stock in what’s important, what’s possible and what’s probable for the next chapter in my life.Big thoughts.Although it’s possible that I’m attracting people who are similar to me in their entrepreneurial hard wiring, I have noticed an uptick in the number of people I meet who are considering applying themselves to creating work instead of finding it through an employer. I made my decision long ago never again to be on a payroll. Been there, done that, had the reconstructive surgery.The decision isn’t so easy for most others. Some approach the question with mental calculus involving return on investment and probability which goes something like this:
I have Xwaking hours a week and know that finding a job will take Ymonths and I have Z% chance of making (insert income goal here) with a job versus hanging out my shingle, representing a return on the investment of my time that yields A per hour spent trying to get a job and B per hour going the entrepreneurial route.
On the other hand, if I hedge my bets by trying to get some freelance work on the side or selling crafts on etsy.com while trying to find a job, (insert math equation here).
These are left-brained approaches.
Others, like my friend and lawyer-cum-artist Catherine Anderson, takes the right-brained approach of I don’t care about the money, I’m going to live the life I want to live and I’ll figure it out along the way.
And still others go into self-employment kicking and screaming, perhaps finding themselves technically self-employed by virtue of doing a little something here and there for a 1099 while praying that eventually they can get on someone’s payroll again.It appears that a great many of us will become self-employed by one path or another. I hope the US will radically re-structure itself from the industrial revolution social safety net policies that make self-employment scarier and more costly than necessary.According to Freelancers Union “the independent workforce has grown to 30% of the U.S. population, employment laws have not been asked to adapt.” For example, access to health care, disability and unemployment insurance, unpaid wage compensation, and saving for retirement are much easier to obtain as an employee than as a self-employed worker.Then there’s taxes. Again, Freelancers Union weighs in:
Independent workers face complex and burdensome tax rules. Independent workers pay more taxes than traditional employees because the tax code overlooks them in some instances, and directly targets them in others. Freelancers pay higher social security and income taxes than standard employees. They have limited access to the pre-tax health care financing available to standard employees. Many must keep detailed records, set aside money, and make tax payments each quarter because they don’t have access to a streamlined system of tax payment like payroll deductions from a regular paycheck.
I’m an anti-corporate type, which perhaps overly influences my thinking on this matter, but I think the massive layoffs of highly-educated people around the world, enabled by communications technologies, will lead to a social renaissance that will bypass the corporate hegemon. If you haven’t read Dan Pink’s excellent book, Free Agent Nation, it’s still pertinent. And here’s another blogger’s take on free agency.Not to change the subject, because there’s a lot to do here in the US, but I don’t think every individual country can come up with its own approach to economic recovery in a vacuum of the rest of the world. The G20 will convene in London this April. Let us hope nationalism won’t get in the way of reforms that will make life livable for us all.
