The Pondering Thoughts of an Entrepreneur

  Is entrepreneurship right for everyone? The simple answer no! But how do you know if it is right for you? After operating several businesses over 20 years I have learned a lot about what it is like to run a business and the decisions you must make. Here are a few questions I suggest asking yourself prior to making the jump. 1)       Can I get back up after a failure? As an entrepreneur failure is going to happen. Are you the type of person that can get back up after a failure? Can you use it to your advantage and find an opportunity out of it? Or does failure get you depressed? 2)       Am I willing to risk what I have now for a different future? Many people dream of owning their own company. Dreams of setting your own hours and now worrying about money. However, these things are only achieved after years of failures and risk. Can you give up the hours of time today for more hours 20 years in the future? Are you willin...

 There is so much to be said about how a business should be operated. When I was just 22 years old with no experience in business, I was invited to be a minority partner in a small pest control company. I felt extremely blessed with this opportunity. Because I was a partner, I put everything I had into growing and developing this company. Together with the other two owners we grew the company extremely quickly just out of hard work.  Since we had been given such a great opportunity to be business partners and maybe because of our young age we treated all our employees as if they were partners. Each employee recognized how we appreciated and worked as if they were partners as well. We provided wages that were higher than the industry standard. We numbered and remembered all those that were dependent upon the success of the company. Every time we planned, we determined how it would affect every employee, spouse and child that depended upon our success. As we ran the company ...

 I recently read an article titled, “ Attitude on Money ” by Stephen W. Gibson. He addressed the question, about money being evil. He wrote: “ The first thing we need to understand about money is that is not evil. Money is neither good nor bad. The Love of money or the obsession with accumulating money from others unrighteously, no matter what the method, may be evil, but money in and of itself is neither good nor evil .”(Gibson, Pg.3) I couldn’t agree more with Gibson. Having lived my life as an entrepreneur for the last 20 years, I have experienced living with nothing and having an abundance of wealth. In both situations, I have been extremely happy! However, when I have an abundance of wealth it allows me to help others succeed in life as well. Recently I was approached by a young father that had grown a successful business. To get the business to a certain point he had to borrow large sums of money. The loan payments had become extremely burdensome on his successf...

  One of my hero's In 1991 Ralph William Perry was laid off from his job as a BBQ salesman.  Having taken the test to help a friend get a pest control license he decided that now was a good time to get into the pest control business. His family spent every evening putting out fliers trying to drum up business.  It was working but growth was slow. A couple years later Ralph’s oldest daughter was killed in a car accident. Because of the tragic incident, he was given an insurance settlement that allowed him to grow the company.  Prior to starting the pest control business, Ralph started a newspaper and a variety of other businesses.  He found them all interesting and felt like he had learned a little bit more knowledge as he operated each of them. His success was meager until he got into the pest control business. In 2007, Ralph sold his original pest control business and temporarily retired. During this time of “retirement”, he tried operating a bookstore, growing...

   By 2006 our company had experienced 25% growth for the past 6 years.  However, in 2006 we didn't achieve any growth.  The concern was that all of our employees expected increased wages and hours. Without increased revenue, there was no way we could increase wages without taking it out of the profit and there really wasn't enough profit to do that. How did we get into this situation? The prior 5 years we had continually developed methods and services to increase the advantage we had over our competition.  The competition had watched closely and changed their services to match ours.  For whatever reason, we had become comfortable with our current advantages and it cost us growth when our competitors caught up with us. How did we become comfortable with our competitive lead? When you are first starting a company with little or no money you often deprive yourself and your family of many necessities while you reinvest the profit into growth.  Eventually,...

  After reading all the study material for this week, I couldn't help but think of past experiences. I had just purchased my second company in an industry that I didn't really understand.  It was a disaster cleanup company that fixed flooded homes etc. We were struggling to get consistent work, so I devised a plan to send out a letter to all licensed plumbers in our service area offering them a referral bonus if they notified us of flooded homes when they were on jobs fixing pipes.   To my surprise, the largest plumbing company in the valley called to set up a meeting for me to meet the owner at their facility.  I was beyond excited for this opportunity to work something out between the two of us.  The meeting day came and I was totally prepared to pitch my plan.  I was escorted into the owners' office.  He greeted me and introduced me to his 5 managers that were sitting in the room.  He politely asked me to introduce myself.  After my i...