Whenever Roger Daltrey and Peter Townsend still sing, “Hope I die before I get old” they certainly aren’t talking about themselves, either as the singers or the entrepreneurs they have become! Just as the Who has prevailed, here in the United States, the last 30 years has seen the number of business owners grow from the 9 million I marketed to when at NEBS, then the US’s largest direct marketer to small business, to the 25 million the SBA now reports are up and running.

So when we are talking about entrepreneurs these days, who are we talking about? In working with teenagers to 90-something business owners, their differences are remarkable. Here are my observations by key age groups (yes, these are stereotypes as entrepreneurs are unique by definition):

The Greatest Generation: These octogenarians came out of the military on the GI bill and started businesses after years of corporate training. Disciplined as a group, they’ve built stable companies through sacrifice and are taken with the profound change and dismayed by the lack of commitment, duty and teamwork they must accept in the younger workforce. Hopefully their self awareness allows them to be wise counsels to younger entrepreneurs smart enough to listen to their wisdom.

More Money than Timers: These 60 to 70’ish owners have succession and transition on their minds, regardless of whether their businesses are successful or not. Worrying about retirement, changing competitive trends, and sustaining their own passion, most are not coasting even thought they hoped they would. Coming from corporate backgrounds, these owners strive to run their own meritocracies and believe that everyone wants to be accountable for their results.

Baby Boomers: The great age wave of those from 45-65, many who are second and third generation entrepreneurs, value their lifestyles equally with their businesses and believe they deserve rewards as much for hard work as for results. Their businesses are vehicles for multiple goals and they are often conflicted and their focus suffers. These entrepreneurs are very open for ways to accomplish their unique and complicated goals

Gen X’s: The first of the new generations younger than me, these 25-45’ers place at least equal emphasis on family and personal satisfaction and often see their businesses as much as a vehicle to accomplish this as one to create wealth for themselves. These owners are the most interested in growing their businesses on their terms and as soon as possible. Many of those who started their businesses did so without gaining the typical experience of working for someone else and “making their mistakes on someone else’s dime”

Millennials: These 15-25 old and youngest of entrepreneurs are coming into their own businesses in the most unusual of ways. Without paper routes, or door-to-door sales to cut their teeth (as a parent I can tell you they are not available as they were for me) these youngest of entrepreneurs are understandably turning to the Internet. Not surprisingly the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list is the founder of Facebook.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, work for one, or sell to one, take these differences to heart. As my consulting business is now split evenly between clients older and younger than me, I can tell you I am learning and applying my understandings of generational differences to help my clients grow on their terms every day. But, as Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend proved in their latest tour, passion, conviction and energy are essential whatever your age, as a rock star or as an entrepreneur!

When you discuss the current recession, do you ask yourself:
Is it real or not?
How are you and others responding in order to succeed?

It is logical that in a recession buyers are more hesitant, require more guarantees and have to feel greater pain before investing. But is this recession real or not? While there are job losses it’s not a typical recession, especially since the services sector is up and even the manufacturing sector may not be down. Only construction and financial services seems to prove there is any recession at all, particularly considering energy prices should be causing more inflation.

So, if sales are OK, how are small business profits? While many of us assume they are down, we know some firms are compensating by taking advantage of their ability to export more goods given the cheap dollar.

So is the recession occurring at all? The more you ask, the less agreement you may find! Some feel that sales of luxuries should suffer at the expense of necessities while others will tell you that luxuries are impervious to a recession. If some regions are more prone to recession, then why are many Midwest manufacturers doing quite well?

Perhaps we can agree that a recession is a consequential recession. Namely even if our results are not be off, we react to our customer’s decisions to pull back, and their moves, in turn, are repressing our confidence. So what is the role of confidence in a recession? Here are some conclusions:

• If you do not know how to sell what you sell, you lose confidence
• Not understanding your own business’ value is the definition of losing confidence
• Not understanding how you profit and therefore cannot automate it or leverage it is the path to stagnation
• Not understanding your customer’s buying process means you cannot understand how to modify your selling process to succeed
• Not understanding how you brand means your brand is weak or non-existent.

During recession, guarantees of loyalty, time and experience cannot be taken for granted between buyers and sellers. And unfortunately, the disconnection that occurs between buyers and sellers in terms of relationships and value are the most dangerous outcomes of recessions.

One of the unintended consequences of the 1980’s and 1990’s cost cutting through supply chain management was to separate face-to-face sales people from buyers. Now, not only are they separated but with automation and virtual business they are faceless and don’t even know who to sell to let alone connect with them. So in conclusion, maybe the recession is best defined by this separation and distraction of sellers and buyers to the point that they are no longer communicating. This lack of communication not only diminishes trust in others but leads to reducing trust in one’s self!

Unanticipated demand, aging infrastructure, competing jurisdictions, and inadequate funding!  These descriptions best describe our country’s highway bridges. But for those of us who live to travel, we roll our eyes at infuriated amateurs who blame highway workers for delayed trips.  Yet how many of us blame the symptoms rather than root causes of business technology problems.  After thirty years of watching marketing dreams meet technical reality, here are some observations of why it is so hard to translate marketing programs through technology.

Today’s typical scenario
• A goal-driven entrepreneur or marketing manager defines a program they wish to implement using technology
• Next a project manager is assigned to translate these needs into a project work plan and
• Finally, a programmer is assigned to write the code and connect it to the needed databases and communication/delivery systems to bring the project to fruition. 

If it’s so simple, why doesn’t this work?  Here’s why. 
• The entrepreneur/marketing manager has been promised that in this day and age anything is possible and all they have to do is ask. 
• The project manager, especially if he/she is billing the client for their time, eagerly attacks a complicated project arriving at an enormous work plan and budget accommodating every need and want they heard. 
• The programmer, formerly a $100 an hour domestic worker, and now often a $20 an hour third world programmer, is presented with a giant work plan hopefully leveraging his or her ability to generate accurate code at break neck speed. 

Inherent in this virtual relay race are missed handoffs. 

• The marketer assumes the project manager understands his or her business. 
• The project manager quickly realizes the marketer doesn’t understand or care about the complexity of what they are requesting or the sophistication of the technology that it will take.
• Similarly, the project manager faces translation challenges on the coding level with a volume-driven technician who increasingly has to overcome a language and cultural barrier. 
Isn’t it a miracle that programs are ever completed satisfactorily or to return to our highway bridge metaphor, most don’t collapse? 

Looking forward

After decades of watching capabilities increase, costs drop and expectations soar, successful marketing through technology is as tough as ever.  Here are a few lessons I’ve learned the hard way.
1. Entrepreneurs and marketers need to understand when and why their requests are easy, hard, time-consuming and unreasonable.
2. Project managers need to understand how and why the marketing manager and his/her program is successful
3. The programmer needs to understand what the project really has to accomplish.

In summary

There is more pressure than ever on all parties to communicate, understand and translate what they are trying to do into what someone else is depending on being done.  Like “smart” bridges that absorb, convert and transfer weight, seismic shifts and weather, successful entrepreneurs, marketers, project managers and programmers have to be as good as handling similar “shocks” as they are at doing their specific jobs.

In October, I had the pleasure to address my home town, Solon, Ohio’s Civic Club, on regional growth.  The local press covered it here and if there is any truth to rarely being a prophet in one’s own land it was thrilling to be so well received. Solon Ohio is a great suburb, balanced commercially, relatively integrated, and in great shape given the decline of Northeast Ohio which surrounds it.  The big issue in Solon right now is which billion dollar development project the town should choose to replace its lack of a downtown with a high-end lifestyle center like NYC’s South Street Seaport or Columbus’ Easton Center.

With Cleveland’s gang shootings only 4 miles away and an intractable struggle between city politicians unwilling to give up their fiefdoms and share power with redundant suburban governments and services whose residents (e.g. Solonites) decreasingly work in and enjoy Cleveland, the new developments are a real flash-point for debate.

• Does Solon need such a showcase when there is so much destitution and redundancy nearby?
• While the new development will raise the retail and restaurant standards, it will put local incumbent retailers out of business.
• Bringing such additional wealth into Solon, in terms of a new tax base, employment and opportunity will only siphon more away from other less fortunate neighbors.

 Regardless of these good points, Economics 101 says that the strong need to get stronger because it is unlikely the weak will do so.  Cleveland is the most charitable city in the country yet is invariably one of the poorest.  I wrote an article about this titled Doing Well vs.Doing Good which lays out my premise that it doesn’t help anyone to help others until one can stop being a burden him or herself.  Giving charitably is great but our region has a knack of producing one hit wonders in the form of entrepreneurs, who after scoring one business hit, devote themselves to a life of charity and non profit work. Instead of taking their talents to higher levels and employing more people, paying more taxes and building more wealth, they start yet another redundant charity, non profit which only contributes to the cycle of Cleveland staying the most charitable and poorest.

So, when asked why should Solon raise its standards even higher, after even after just being named the best suburb in North East Ohio?  I say, because it must.  Excellence draws more talent and dollars towards it, raising margins and profits as it does tax dollars, employment and social services.  If mediocre retailers, restaurants and services fail in the face of increased competition, their customers were obviously willing to pay more for better quality and the incumbents blew it.

A good suburb, can no more rest on its laurels than can a good business or rock star.  Life is a competition and there are winners and losers.  When the flight attendant says, “Put Your Own Face Mask on Before Helping the Person Next to You,” she is not kidding.  We all owe it to ourselves, our clients, employees and our vendors to make ourselves healthy and as successful as possible.   Tell me what you think below.

Dear Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

Do you need a jolt to shake out of your ownership doldrums? Use the virtual world to generate some of your own buzz. Recently, I was bemoaning what a boring and challenging a month October had been when:

• My business was named a HB100 winner here  where I ranked 7th!
• Last month’s www.birolsblog.com post was featured by Carnival of the Capitalists, the web’s premier reviewer of business blogs
• A clip from my recent NYC speech appeared on YouTube Link
• I was contacted by a Vietnamese publisher who wants to translate my book, The Five Catalysts of Seven Figure Growth and market it in his country.

(WITAFYB) What’s In These Anecdotes For Your Business?

With and through Web2.0, if you share your message and value, the Internet continuously and economically promotes your expertise and your business.

Are you interested in a new idea for doing this in your business? Ask me below and I will respond with an idea for you!

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Take the BGC Growth Analyzer (in approximately 12 minutes) to learn how you can grow your business based on your ownership style by clicking here www.andybirol.com/Webquiz.asp#

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So please spend twelve confidential minutes gaining free, personalized insight on your ownership style and how it is impacting your firm’s growth. Earn a free book based on your responses and the confidence in learning what steps you can take to grow. What else can you do so simply that can make such a difference so fast?

What are the top 3 mistakes I see business owners make?

1. Not having true confidence and conviction in what they are doing to “Get There”

 Owners are excellent at implementation but may develop ambivalence or apprehension   about what to do.  When that happens they operate in a state of inertia.

 This means they

 a) don’t take quick and decisive action,
 b) straddle between multiple goals and
 c) implement tactics half-heartedly. This first saps their money and time and    eventually their passion for business. The solution is to have or create a defining point to rekindle confidence and conviction.

2. Not continuously focusing or fortifying their B&H use
 They all have BHU is
 
 a) what they and their business are good at doing,
 b) what they and their business like doing and
 c) what has been valued by the market for what they do.

3. Not recognizing when their personal goals and actions are diverging from goals and   objectives of the business
 Ask successful owners what they personally want to do and it always includes their   business goals. As an owner gets bored or disheartened, their personal goals begin to  diverge and consume their business passion.  When this happens it is clear that the   owner must acknowledge and fill any such gap with either his or her own resources or   other resources their disposal.