But before you accuse me of writing a gloom and doom post, hear me out.

Any time there is a crisis, there is an opportunity.  I’ve written before about the Chinese character for crisis.  It’s made up of two characters: danger and opportunity.  These are dangerous times.  But only a fool would say there’s no opportunity.

The problem is, you have to be able to see the opportunities.  Often that means thinking outside the box.  It’s like playing baseball.  If they say you have to hit the ball into the outfield to have a legitimate hit, that’s what you do.  You don’t complain that you used to be able to get on base by hitting a grounder to the infield.  Complaining accomplishes nothing.  You adapt to the new rules and figure out the best way to flourish in the new environment.  You don’t pine away after things that are no more (and probably never will be again.)

And even if the rules were to change every time you showed up at the field, so what?  There will still be a game.  There will still be a winner and a loser.  There will still be those who come out on top, and those who don’t.   Or even considering the next worse case, what if the competition doesn’t have to play by the same rules you do?  What if they can hit grounders and you have to hit into the outfield?  Well, you have two choices: adapt or quit playing baseball.  Just because someone’s making it difficult for you doesn’t mean you still can’t be a winner!

As the wise saying goes, “We learn from the past.  We live in the present.  We prepare for the future.”  There’s no value in thinking about how easy, how great, how wonderful, etc., etc. the past was.  Learn from it and move on.  If the present in difficult, make whatever adjustments you need to so you can continue to grow and succeed.  Make as many preparations as you can for the future, with the understanding that by the time you get to the future it may not even resemble what you have prepared for and you may have to start over.  Big deal.  Prepare anyway.

The bottom line in it all is, YOU HAVE TO ADAPT.  Either you do that, or you die.  Going back is not an option.  Wishing won’t make it so.  As my buddy’s mom used to say, “Wish in one hand and spit in the other.  See which one gets full first.”  All the wishing in the world won’t accomplish a single thing.

I predict that the future belongs to those who can adapt — those who can change on a dime and give you nine cents change.  You can teach yourself to adapt, of course.  It’s not that hard.  Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but it’s not that hard.  Start now to teach yourself how to adapt (it’s part of that preparing for the future thing.)   Once you get onto it, you will find you have much more confidence to succeed in a chaotic economy (a chaotic environment.)  And not just confidence.  You will succeed much more readily and much more quickly than those around you.

They say there are three kinds of people in the world.  Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.  Which are you?  The adapters are those who make things happen. They lead the way.  Others watch and marvel and wonder how they did that.  All the while the adapters are changing the game and making the world turn again — new rules and all.

So there’s your recipe for success for the future — easy to say, hard to do.  But it’s certainly reachable.  You just have to want it.  Do you want it?

When you look at the explosion in technology and the tremendous opportunities that brings with it, you have to wonder how people did business even just a few decades ago.  I mean, seriously, can you imagine doing business without a cell phone and email?  I still remember the first time my chief information officer came to me and insisted I have an email account.  “What would I use that for?” I countered?  Now I can’t imagine being without it 24/7.

Not only that, but the world is smaller now than it has ever been.  My dad would have no more thought about doing business with China, India, Europe or South America than he would have spent his days thinking about going to the moon.  And yet today, everyone does business abroad.  If we’re not buying, we’re manufacturing or selling.  No matter which way you slice it, there is an opportunity relative to international business that has never before existed to the extent it does today.

In those (and a hundred other) respects it it the best of times.

But the other side of the coin is as dark and tarnished as the first side is bright and shiny.

Never before has the national debt put a burden on small business to the extent it is today.  Small businesses, by any measure, are the golden goose.  They create the jobs, the wealth, the security, the opportunity, etc., etc., etc.  They very literally carry the vast majority of the tax load of the country.  And now, the government — in its infinite wisdom —  is hell-bent on killing that goose, golden eggs and all.

Small business taxes are increasing at an unprecedented rate.  New taxes appear daily.  Government regulation has run completely amok and small business is its primary target.  With government mandated (and soon to be government sponsored and government administered) health care looming like a specter on the horizon, small businesses will be asked (no, not asked — demanded at the peril of prison) to shoulder another very large brick in a load that is already nearly impossible to carry.

The bottom line is this:  with our freedoms disappearing at an alarming rate, and with government intrusion into our lives at unprecedented levels, and with a national debt so large it will likely never be paid off, and with the rise of marxism and the death of capitalism in America, it is going to take some creative thinking to realize the American dream.

So. . . . am I discouraged?  Giving up?  Throwing in the towel?  Crying uncle?  Not even a little bit.  The glass has always been able to hold more water.  Whether it’s half empty of half full depends on you.  You can see the good, leverage what you can where you can and still see the success your parents and grandparent did, or you can focus on the bad and freeze solid in fear and despair.  It really is the best of times and it really is the worst of times.  You just have to decide which it’s going to be for you.

Your future is whatever you make it.  In my estimation, this would be a poor time to give up.  There are opportunities here that business people have only been able to dream about for a hundred years.   Those opportunities are yours for the picking.  But there are pitfalls for the unwary our ancestors could never have even dreamed of.

The Chinese symbol for “crisis” is made up of two characters: opportunity and danger.    So my advice is beware the danger, but don’t let it deter you from seizing the opportunity.  Don’t let fear rule your heart.

Move forward with boldness — leveraging opportunity and avoiding the danger  –  and you’ll find success.  That’s my prediction for the coming year (and many more.)

It seems I’ve talked a lot about contractors over the last couple of months — no small wonder since I’ve been building a big shop during that time.  I’ve watched as contractors have come and gone and I marvel at how very little motivation most of them have.  They charge a premium price — and could make great money if they’d just get to work — but they piddle around getting very little done until they’ve stretched a 3 – 4 day job into a week or two.

I guess the piece they don’t get is, if you do it in three days you make ‘X”.  If it takes two weeks you still get “X” but you have to divide it over five times as many days, meaning you just cut your wages by 80%.  I don’t know anyone who has a regular job who would put up with an 80% cut in pay, but contractors do it all the time.

One bright spot I had was my siding contractor.  His crew showed up at 7:30 a.m. and didn’t leave until dark (about 6:00 p.m.)  They didn’t take breaks.  They didn’t go to lunch.  They weren’t on their cell phones all day.  They came, they worked hard, they got ‘er done and they made money.  What a concept.

As a person who has made a living helping others maximize the potential of their businesses, contractors drive me crazy.  When I see all the money they’re leaving on the table, I can’t help but think how much I’d like to run their business for just half of what I could save.  They wouldn’t have to pay me anything.  I’d just take half of what they’re leaving out there and I’d be making a fortune.

But alas, that’s not going to happen.  If these people wanted to come at 8:00 a.m. and leave at 5:00 p.m. they’d have a job where they didn’t have to work outside where it’s too hot, too cold, too rainy, too windy, etc. etc.  No, they’re here because they want to make a “reasonable” living without having to put in a full day, day in day out.  They like the freedom to take a cut in pay and go fishing.

But imagine what they could do with a little motivation, a little dedication, a little self-discipline, and a little ambition.  These are talented people.  They have a craft.  They have important skills.  They have everything they need to have everything they could ever want.  It’s a pity you can’t help them see that.

In the mean time, I guess I’ll just spend my days scratching my head and asking myself, “What’s up with these guys?”

While I’m 100% behind self sufficiency, I have to wonder about a dairy.  There’s not a single career I’m aware of where one is more “married” to the job than dairymen are.  And even worse than that, when the price of milk rises and you can feed your kids.   When it drops, you starve to death until the next time it rises (which hopefully occurs before you starve all the way out of the business.)

I told my friend that I would be more interested in buying the creamery.  Not that having a herd of milk cows would be such a bad idea (if you owned the creamery,) but the focus for me would be on adding value.  The creamery makes money regardless of the price of milk.  They buy milk at whatever the prevailing price is, make it into butter, cheese, ice cream, etc. and charge whatever the market will bear.

Selling milk to a creamery puts you at the whim of the market.  You have no control whatsoever over the price of your product.  The creamery, on the other hand, can choose to be the BMW of butter or the yugo of yogurt.  They are only limited by the effectiveness of their marketing.

Look at Hagen Daas for example.  Do you think they’re worried about the price dairymen are receiving for milk?  Of course not.  They’re Hagen Daas.  They can price their product at whatever they choose and people will line up to pay it.  They’ve taken the milk, added some value, done some outrageously effective marketing, and they make money.  Never mind that dairies are dropping like flies.

This is true with any commodity.  You make a lot more as a furniture manufacturer than a lumber yard owner.  Why?  Because you take the wood and add value — value that can’t be regulated, pre-priced, or whatever.   The value is whatever you can convince people it is.  Hagen Daas is no better than any other high-fat product.  But they’ve convinced the public — through great marketing — that it’s somehow worth more.

So when you start your next business, ask yourself if you’re adding value or if you’re too close to the source to make the real money.  When you add value, you give your marketing department something to work with.  If you’re not currently adding value, see if there’s not some way to begin doing so.  Adding value separates you from the crowd and gives you the opportunity to be different (read in worth more.)

What the “wise ones” always seem to forget is that it’s small business that makes the world go around.  Small business employs the vast majority of workers in America.  When long-term, viable, ongoing, REAL jobs are created, it’s almost always from small business.  The government talks about “shovel-ready” jobs.  What they mean is that they have a road to be repaired, or a bridge to be built.  The problem with such jobs is that when the money dries up (like it does when the project ends,) the jobs dry up as well.  Unlike the jobs created by small business, those created by a meddling government will be gone as quickly as they came, and there will be a need for more money.

The problem with small business (at least from a current government perspective,) is that they’re seldom unionized.  They are staffed by independent, freedom-loving, free-thinking, hard-working, dare-to-dream people.  Because they don’t belong to the union, they don’t pay dues, don’t make multi-million-dollar donations to political candidates, and therefore lack the “protection” of those who “serve” us.  Our new president seldom makes a move without talking to SEIU (service union.)  What they (SEIU) want is to unionize ALL business — even small business.  Since they donated over $400 million to the president, it’s likely you’ll see legislation soon that will further hamper the small business way of getting things done.

All in all, you can’t be pro small business and be pro big government at the same time.  They are diametrically opposed in everything they do and stand for.  I believe in the free market.  I believe it is capitalism that is part and parcel of the American dream.  I believe small business is the engine that drives our economy.  I believe un-meddled with, the market will make whatever corrections are necessary.  I believe that giving away our freedom to run our own businesses in our own way is a terrible idea.  I believe nobody knows better than me how to run my business.  I believe that any politician who thinks he can do it better than me is not only wrong, but supremely arrogant in thinking so.  Finally, I believe we can find our way out of this mess if we’re just given the same chance to do so that our forefathers have always been given — that is, to let a free market sort it out.  Historically the free market has produced the wealthiest nations on earth with the highest standard of living.  When governments have run things, they produce the poorest nations on earth lowest standard of living.  I know which I want.

Well, that’s what I believe — stated pure and simply.  What do you believe?

For example: there are two cars, same model year, same color, same equipment.  One has 100,000 miles and costs $5,000.  The other has 50,000 miles and is $5,500.  Even though the second car is $500 more expensive, it is by far the better deal.  If you were thinking about buying one of these cars, you’d be crazy to buy the cheaper car.  The more expensive car would give you two to three times the life.

It’s true for everything.  We talk all the time about “bang for the buck,” and that’s really what you look for.  People say you get what you pay for.  The inverse is also true:  you don’t get what you don’t pay for.  Sure, you can pay too much and not get the bang you’re looking for.  But more often you leave the things that are important on the table by buying the cheap stuff.

I remember selling skis when I was in college.  People would come in and I would show them the good stuff.  They would say, “Oh, that’s much too expensive.  I think I’ll go with this cheaper stuff.”  They would buy it, use it one season and come back next year and do the same thing.  Over two or three years they spent the same amount of money as the people who bought the good stuff right from the get-go, but they had three years of paying to ski on equipment they really never enjoyed.  ‘

Contrast that with the people who bought the good stuff right up front.  They had three years of very enjoyable skiing.  At $60 dollars (or more) a day for skiing, three years represents a significant sum of money spent to not enjoy yourself.  So what was the better deal?

My motto is, “I’ve never been unhappy with the best.”  It’s when you buy the cheap stuff you’re not happy.  So you suffer with it until you can’t stand it anymore, then go get some more cheap stuff and start the process over.  That’s not for me.

The bottom line in all this?  Buy value not price.  Don’t dismiss the best just because it’s expensive.  You don’t get what you don’t pay for.  The best price is seldom the best deal.

As I have pondered this call I got from out of the blue, I have to wonder what might have happened had my two friends said, “Oh, you don’t want to do business with him.”  Basically, I would have never heard from him and my life would have continued on.  But it might have been that I could have lost the most important contact of my life (whether this is or not, only time will tell, but you never know if you never get contacted.)

You never know what people are saying about you when you’re not there.  But it can have a dramatic impact on your life (or a dramatic lack of impact, depending on what they’re saying.)  Much of business today is done through networking.  Someone knows someone who knows us and we get a recommendation — either bad or good.  Then things happen or they don’t.

What are people saying about you?  Would people who know you recommend you highly enough that someone might call?  If a person went to the internet to do a search on you, would they like what they find on your social networking sites?  If the answer to all these questions is positive, get ready for referrals.  If not, you’d better make some adjustments.

I know there are a lot of people who don’t like winter.  I’m not one of them.  It’s quiet, it’s clean, it’s crisp, it’s cold, and most of all, the majority of the “vacation-travel” crowd has gone home.  This was a record year for Yellowstone.  They counted over one and a half million cars through the west entrance of the park.  Virtually anyone who uses the west entrance comes through Island Park.  That’s a lot of traffic.  I wasn’t wild about it.

I’ve watched with interest as some people have allowed their mood and their outlook on life to darken with the winter sky.  People who were optimistic in the summer are less so now, which I find odd.  Nothing has changed but the temperature.  If there was opportunity in July there is opportunity now.  If there was hope then, there is hope now.

I see this ever-changing political and business landscape as a field rife with opportunity.  There are opportunities now that have never existed before (well, perhaps in the great depression, but nothing in most of our lifetimes.)  Sure, there are challenges that have never existed before too.  But at the end of the day, a creative person could well find more opportunity now than at any other time in his or her life.

It’s true there are a large number of lemons out there.  So I guess you either start investing in sugar, or you let them sour you.  There’s no reason to be pessimistic.  There’s no reason to give up.  There’s no reason to mope around.  Entrepreneurs will flourish in this environment.  Of course it’s hard to say what the government is going to do relative to entrepreneurs, so I’d get in now while the getting is good.  The sun is shining — get out there and make some hay!

I’d like to remind everyone of a few things.  Every great invention, every meaningful, rewarding job was created by someone who created the thing or the business with the expectation of “making money.”  Isn’t that the American dream, after all?  You can come here to the land of opportunity with nothing but the clothes on your back and you can become all that you’re willing to become.  How did that go from being the American dream to somehow being evil?  I must have been absent when they taught that in business school.

It’s profit that makes the world go around.  Without profit there’s no employer-subsidized health care insurance.  Without profit, there’s no Christmas party, no Christmas bonus, no retirement contribution, no nothing.  Without profit there’s no business.  And that means no jobs.  So without profit you not only have no way of covering your nut, you have nothing at all.

Next time you feel inclined to vilify your boss for “making so much money,” be sure you keep in mind that this is America.  You’re free to leave at any time, start your own enterprise and kick his behind.  You don’t have to put up with being a “lackey”  – being under your boss’s thumb.  You can go start your own business and be the person “making all the money,” anytime you want.  What are you waiting for?  Life’s too short to work for someone else who’s getting rich off your labors.  Why aren’t you out there doing it for yourself?

If you’re afraid to live the dream, and make something of yourself, please stop tearing down those who aren’t afraid.  I know literally hundreds of business owners.  The vast majority had no special favors when they started their businesses.  They went out on a shoestring and a prayer and by their sheer determination and hard work (and a level of risk that few of the rest of us can understand) they made it happen.  If they’re making money right now, I’d say they have it coming.

The bottom line is this:  take away profit from any business and you take away the reason to work, to risk, to innovate, to compete, to create jobs, to expand and grow, to be part of the community, to move forward.  If all you’re doing is working to pay taxes so those who don’t want to work don’t have to, I’d say you’ve pretty much sapped whatever drive or focus might have been there to begin with.  Why would you risk everything and work 16 hour days hundreds of days in a row just to pay taxes?  You wouldn’t.  And neither would I.

If you really believe that there should be a cap on salaries, on profit and on what can be achieved in business in America, you’re part of that group who is determined to see the end of the American dream.  For me, I still dream the dream.  I still believe in freedom — all of our freedoms — and I will go to my grave believing that what made America what it is today is the free market system and the American dream.

Don’t let them kill the dream, either by joining with them in their leftist ideas or though your unwillingness to stand up and do something. It’s time to get out of the lazy boy and remind everyone you know that what made America great is a great free market, where things are naturally regulated by the market.  Where nobody is too big to fail.  Where we don’t  take from those who would work and give it to those who wouldn’t.  Stand up today!  We are about to give up so much in return for so little.  Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

But after talking to him, I hired him.  He told me that with his crew he could frame it in two days.  Wow!  That sounded good, but I figured I’d have to watch him to make sure he did quality work if he was going to do it so quickly.  We agreed that he’d start on a Monday at 9:00 a.m.

Well, he showed up about the crack of noon.  He seemed pretty disorganized as he started and I was concerned.  But as he got going, they did a tremendous amount of very high quality work in a very short time.  By 5:00 p.m. they had three walls up and were closing in on the fourth.  Then, suddenly — when I didn’t hear anything outside — I looked out to see them driving off.  They came back in about two hours and worked for about 45 minutes and it was too dark to work.

They said they were staying on the mountain and would be back the next morning at 8:30 ready to go.  Once again, at about 11:45 they came dragging in, apparently pretty hung over.  And once again, once they got rolling they got a tremendous amount of work done in a short time.

Long story short, it took five of those half-day sessions to get it wrapped up.  The work was absolutely all I could have hoped for.  The building is perfectly square and perfectly plumb.  The seams on the sheeting are tight and everything is exactly where it was supposed to be.

But here’s the rub:  Had they stayed on task they could have done the whole thing is two 10 – 12 hour days.  They could have done that in one trip to the mountain and had only one night to pay for hotel.  They could have made a fortune on the job, but by working hit or miss, they ended up making a wage — nothing more.

Here’s how I figure it.  The boss had two other guys.  One was obviously very skilled.  His wage would have been about $250 a day.  The other guy was a flunky who cut the boards and did the grunt work.  He couldn’t have been making more than $100 a day.  That’s $350 a day for labor. Multiply that by two days and you have $700 for labor.  Figure $250 for hotels and gas to get to the mountain, and your costs as the owner are $1,000.

Now the owner worked right along side his workers.  Had he done the job in two days, he’d have $2,000 (or $1,000 a day.)  If he did that five days a week (and he could, if he had the work ethic,) he’d have made a quarter of a million dollars this year.  But as it was it took five days.  Instead of his costs being $1,000 they were closer to $1,800.  So instead of reaping $1,000 a day, he got more like $250 a day ($1,200 divided by 5 days.)

That made me crazy.  Here is a talented man with a superb crew.  They are in demand and rightfully so.  This man could be wealthy by any standard, but by his unwillingness to get in and git ‘er done, he’s chosen to make about $50,000 a year.

So in summary, the problem isn’t that this man and his crew aren’t talented.  They are.  It isn’t that they aren’t experienced.  They are.  The problem is they don’t have the focus — the work ethic — to reach their potential.  I told my wife what I wanted to do was run his business for him.  If I just scheduled and managed his crew I could split the difference with him on the increase in his income and live comfortably.

But alas, that’s not going to happen.

Evaluate yourself and determine if your problems are work ethic related or skill or talent related.  And look at others through that same lens, and I’m sure you’ll discover that the problem is seldom talent, experience, or ability.  It’s almost always work ethic.  Give me the guy with the work ethic.  I can teach everything else.  I can’t teach work ethic.