Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, September 14, 2016

In the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, the first of the eight life’s lessons is “It’s your choices not your circumstances that control the outcome of your life.”  For each of us, our mind is the one and only area over which we as humans each have total control.  What we’ve learned after four years of Entrepreneurial Mindset and two years of Fab Lab ICC is that, through our thoughts and related choices and decisions, we have much more control over our life’s outcome than our society has led us to believe.

We can greatly influence our outcomes in all facets of our lives—work, school and personal—by the way we think.  Much of what we think about comes to pass, whether positive or negative.  Thinking you’re going to flunk that big test will influence you toward failure.  Thinking you’re going to do well, especially if you’ve prepared, will influence you toward success.  (BTW, what’s the real life-long significance of whether you pass or fail any particular test?  That’s a subject for another discussion.)

The power of positive or negative thought does influence our lives.  In a conversation with a couple of our ICC students the other day they both said, in so many words, “I always expect the worst.”  Both have had plenty of “the worst” over the past few months.  Now I know why.

We’re bombarded every day with dozens, maybe hundreds of messages encouraging us to expect the worst.  Some, like the pharmaceutical commercials are blatant “You may be sick with a disease you didn’t even know about.  Ask your doctor about xyz to see if it’s right for you.”  Some are more subtle “Watch out.  If you do badly on these tests, you’ll do badly on your ACT or SAT tests.  Then you won’t get into one of a hand full of good colleges and your life will be ruined.”

Our message needs to be “Expect the best and much of the time you’ll get it.”  When we get less than the best, we can learn how to do better next time.  These lessons lead to happier, more productive and fulfilling lives.  It’s all about expecting the best and learning to respond in a positive way to the “less than the best.”

Does positive thought mean we’ll never have flat tires, broken down cars, flunked tests or even illness?  No, but we will have fewer of those kinds of things and the positive thoughts and attitudes can help our lives benefit even from life’s challenges.

There are thousands of books on positive thinking, but three that have been of great influence to millions of people are:  “Who Owns the Ice House?”, “The Power of Positive Thinking” and “Think and Grow Rich.”

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, September 7, 2016

The topic of business succession planning, or a general lack thereof, always comes up in discussions about helping rural American small towns prosper.  No one likes to see established businesses simply close down instead of transitioning to new owners.  There has only been limited success in promoting and facilitating business succession planning.  I think we’ve made the concept too complicated, thinking it’s all about what the accounts, lawyers and consultants need to do.  Those people are necessary, but there are several things that need to be done before getting the heavy-hitter professionals involved.  After several years of observation and my involvement in a few transition efforts, here’s my top 10 list of things business owners should do to set up a smooth transition to a new owner.

• Give yourself some time. Businesses generally don’t transition within a few months.  Allow a year or two to find the right prospect and situation.  Don’t wait until you’re 3 months from total burn-out.
• Keep up appearances. Keep the store nice and updated.  Repaint, remodel and rearrange over the years.  This not only makes the business worth more at transition time, but your current customers will come more often if they know you’re always making changes and improvements.
• Keep up with the changing times and markets. Markets are changing and changing fast.  You’ll have a much better chance at transition success if you’re products and services have been updated to be in demand now, not what was in demand five or ten years ago.
• Create your “cook book”—how you do things. Well documented procedures of how you do things will open up the transition market to people that aren’t necessarily experts in your trade if you can point to a book and say “Here’s how we do things here.”
• Separate real estate. We counsel entrepreneurs and potential small business owners not to buy the building that goes along with a store, unless they want to be in the real estate business.  Be prepared to keep the building and lease it to your new business owner.
• Be prepared to finance. As a rule, it’s very difficult for the buyer to obtain full financing to buy a business for any more than the assets are worth.  Most of the time, current owners have to be willing to finance a part of the purchase.
• Consider your income tax strategy. Serious prospects, eventually, will want to see your tax returns to verify the business is performing as you say.  Be aware that a tax strategy to minimize profits will also minimize the profits the prospect sees in reviewing your returns.
• Where will the money go? Assuming you’ll have a successful transition, be thinking about where you want to proceeds from the transition to go.  This would be a good thing to discuss with your financial planner.
• Contact your accountant and attorney. Finally, after all the above have been considered and done, consult your accountant and attorney.  Consider making up a transition team of your financial planner, accountant and attorney.
• Contact a business broker—maybe. There are plenty of people that will be eager to confidentially help you find a buyer, without charging you a commission.  These include representatives of Network Kansas and the Kansas Small Business Development Centers.  We know who to contact in both of these organizations.  Don’t forget your banker.

Selling a business is somewhat like selling a house.  Keeping it updated and in good repair over the years is not only more beneficial to you, but makes it worth much more when it’s time to transition to someone else.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, August 31, 2016

I’m not fond of the idea of paying big money to retail consultants and branding experts to come into a city, telling us all the things we need to do to be prosperous.  They pretty much tell us things we already know or could come up with if we sat around a table at a brainstorming session.

One of the things nearly all of them say is “You have to figure out what you want to be known for.  What is it that will make your city a destination?”  Cities come up with all kinds of ideas, many based on historical figures or events with which they’ve had some success in the past in attracting visitors.  There are usually other nice attractions in each city and the debate goes on about which one should become “the one thing” for which the city is known.

The experts stir up the pot, getting everyone discussing what “the one thing” should be and then they leave town to go into the next town to do the same thing.  There are a couple of problems with this approach to choosing “the one thing”.  First, with every passing generation, interest in the historical figures and events will wane.  While it is sad (and perhaps a topic for another time), by and large youth don’t realize the value of history as a great teacher in how to stay out of future trouble.  So, they don’t care so much about the historical attractions.  Second, once chosen, how are the rest of us supposed to go about our daily lives supporting how “the one thing” can attract more interest?

But wait.  What if we made innovation “the one thing”?  What, if instead of a parochial city by city approach we made innovation “the one thing” for a whole region?  That’s pretty much what Northwest Arkansas has done and it’s one of the hottest regional economies in the United States.  The people there have learned that a culture of innovation can make the whole region become a destination.

Everyone can support innovation and innovation will never become dated.  Companies that innovate continuously not only stay viable in their markets, but in themselves become destinations for new workers and related suppliers or even competitors to move into the area.  Historical attractions can innovate to find new ways to be relevant to each generation of youth; interactive displays that blend the lessons of history with very effective and exciting experiential learning.  Schools can become innovative in the way they help students learn.  Local governments can be innovative in the way they serve their constituents as customers.

Innovation provides the “one thing” attraction while allowing all the segments of a regional economy to contribute in their own way.  A region “where innovation happens” attracts tourists, residents and new businesses to the region because they want be where the action is.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, August 24, 2016

My only choice, at home, for “local” television is the Tulsa stations.  Therefore, the only time I see the Kansas Lottery commercials is when I’m lodging somewhere in Kansas.  The commercials are all pretty much all the same.  They show people gleefully laughing and having much fun, either waving the stacks of cash they won in the Lottery or pulling the handle of the slot machine and showing a big win.   For me, it’s a good thing I don’t see these commercials very often because every time I do, I’m first a little angered that my Kansas government is in the gaming business, but mostly sad that we live in a world where people have accepted, and even demanded this situation of state-owned gaming.

If I were a state legislator (and I won’t be) and I said “Let’s impose an extra tax on the poorest citizens in our state.  We can use that money to shore up our state budget.”  The outcry would drown out the current discord over increased property taxes.  From where I sit, it looks like the Lottery and state-owned casinos are doing just that, imposing a “tax” on our poorest citizens.

It’s bad enough that we’re taking money that could be better used to climb out of poverty, but we’re also exactly a toll on their mindset.  Many of the ads say something like “Make your dreams come true.”  So, the message is that dreams will only come true by winning the Lottery or making a big haul from the state-owned slots.  More troubling still is that the message filters through to the youth in our state; your dreams coming true are dependent on the astronomical odds of winning the state-sponsored Lottery.

What we’ve learned in ten years of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at ICC and the last two years creating Fab Lab ICC is that there can only be one entity in control of making a person’s dreams come true, the dreamer.  Again and again we see it through the entrepreneurs and makers we study and get to know.  These people, whether in the videos we watch or the area entrepreneurs we meet have learned that dreams will come true as a result of the power of thought by the dreamer.  Somehow, we need to convey a new message to our youth.  Your dreams are not dependent on winning the Lottery or the slot machines.  Your dreams are dependent on what you think about and work toward and it all starts coming true after you put it in writing.  Also that dreams should relate in some way to helping others, making the world a better place.  This is the message we try to convey with our Entrepreneurship and Fab Lab activities; always an underlying theme regardless of age, circumstance or walk of life.  Think for a moment what life would be like if everyone was pursuing their dreams in ways that would help others.