Do You Have a "Knack" for Business?

Recently a publicist sent me a fascinating book that I believe will help entrepreneurs in their efforts to build their business. It is called “The Knack: How Street Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up” by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. It is the compilation of the work of other successful entrepreneurs: their life stories, brilliant strategies, and “hands on” experiences.

The book isn’t scheduled for release until October 2, 2008, so you are getting a sneak preview of it in this blog post.

I receive many interesting books every month, several of which fall under the radar screen because of the large number of them. This one caught my attention. Frankly, the destructive power of Hurricane Ike has me thinking I might have to think differently about business.

What I like about it is that it is both profound and quite simple. It isn’t merely lofty strategies on business that you would find in the classroom, but “rubber meets the road” issues such as what to do when your customers stop paying in a timely manner, what to do with the problem of creeping expenses, how to keep customers when your competition pursues serious price cutting, and more.

However, the book is rich in areas that many (if not most) in business think about. In it the authors explain:

Why you should never confuse good sales with good cash flow
Why having competitors is better than being first to market
Why a “sales mentality” is dangerous to your business
Why it is smart to hire sales people from outside your industry
How to judge if your business is viable

What impresses me most about the authors is that they are, on the one hand, serious business writers with years of experience writing a column in Inc. Magazine. On the other hand they are serious entrepreneurs in their own right, having had mentored many successful business leaders.

I read a great deal of business literature for this blog and my radio show and over time it is pretty easy to cut through the rhetoric of those in academics that know little about business in the real world and the true business leaders that know exactly what they are talking about. Brodsky and Burlingham fall in the latter. When October 2 comes, get your copy.

Kevin Price articles frequently appear at ChicagoSunTimes.com, Reuters.com, USAToday.com, and other national media.

Kevin Price is Host of the Price of Business (M-F at 11 AM on CNN 650) and Publisher of the Houston Business Review. Hear the show live and online at HoustonBusinessShow.com. Visit the archive of past shows here.

Business and Golf

One of my best friends, Kent Batman (an insurance executive I have known for over a decade), use to always tell me that golf is good for business. "Some of the best deals are made on a golf course," he would tell me. He is a big reason why I play today. With a 3 handicap, I actually saw him make some testosterone driven wagers. "If I win the most holes, you do the deal. If you win the most holes, I leave you alone and buy you dinner." He won those deals handily and I stood in awe. Than there is my skills. I have a 30+ handicap and my deals go something like this, "if you win the most holes you still do the deal for me and if I win the most holes, they name a national holiday after me." If that did happen, I'm sure it would be "April Fools." Some how, I can't get anyone to make such a deal. Yet, I am still on the course and I love it.

Today I went golfing with my oldest son. Neither of us have been out all year because of how terrible the weather has been here in Texas thus far, so we were actually worse than usual. The only thing more terrible than the quality of the game is our golf etiquette. "Dude, your ball is in my way, go ahead and putt it in." "'Hey, quick, what is that thing you are suppose to yell when you hit the ball...', 'Wow, you almost hit that guy!" "'What does that 90 degree stand for and is it okay to actually drive this cart where we putt...' 'Oh, you ran over the flag again!'" It is really almost scary. But we still have fun.

I think it still helps me in business, even if not in making deals. I find myself much more relaxed after 14 holes (each hole takes a long time for us, rarely do we have enough sunlight to make it to 18). I have a clearness in my mind as I swing that club that I don't have at any other time. I can't think of anything or I'll miss the ball; but I need to think of how to hit it well enough to get it where I want it to go. I guess that will come with experience. After all, I have only been playing for around three years. Golf helps clear my head so I can be at my best when in comes to business and it reminds me that I certainly still need to work for a living.

In Spite Being Marketed as "New", Obama Sounds Like Old Time Democrat

If you were listening to a radio and the voice didn't tune in very well and sounded distorted, Sen. Barack Obama's announcement could easily be confused with a campaign speech from Jesse Jackson's earlier failed campaigns. Obama talks about a "new day" and a "new chapter" in our history, but his rhetoric is largely stuck in America's past.

He discusses racism and discrimination as if it were as prominent today as when he was born in the 1960s. Frankly, his neighborhood must have been much rougher than mine because we were born the same year and this little white boy's best friend was an African American named Joe Cosby through most of our elementary years. Marty White became one of my best friends in Junior High and he, too, was African American. I'm not saying that America hasn't struggled with racism, but I get the sense that many African Americans of a liberal persuasion want to throw our grandparents racism in our face as means of using guilt to get their ends. Obama is going to find this a dangerous and unproductive trail to take, in my opinion. He needs to become a candidate for all the people and not a man looking for revenge from the past.

His views of the economy are stuck in the past as well. Thomas Friedman has persuasively pointed out that "the world is flat," which means that through technology anyone in the world can compete with anyone else. That is why China and India have become such major economic players in the last few years. Obama acts as though he doesn't live in the same world as we do. He attacks free trade, argues for raising salaries to artificial highs, and taxing businesses into oblivion. Unfortunately, in our world, that would translate to shabby American products, the exportation of jobs, and the demise of job creation. The world we live in requires being competitive, not living in a fantasy world of how it "should" be.

Furthermore, Obama wants to talk about socialized medicine (AKA, universal health care) as a panacea to our medical crisis. There is no doubt we need people covered, but shifting it to government only means that health care will be plagued with shortages and there will be reduced accountability (good luck suing the government for their medical mistakes). My grandfather and aunt died in England waiting for treatment thanks to socialized medicine and that is a common stated cause in countries that use such a system. Obama's proposal is the same Ted Kennedy advocated in the 1960s and there is nothing new to it. An innovative approach would be one that gives 100 percent tax credits for individuals to get their own coverage, even earned income credit for some (meaning they get money directly back for their purchase), the creation of policies with high deductibles and additional tax savings for taking annual visits (prevention is crucial), and other policies that restore responsibility where it belongs (which is on individuals).

Finally, his anti-war rhetoric is a flashback to the 1960s and the Vietnam War. We are not fighting against a potential domino principle (the belief many countries would fall to communism if Vietnam fell), but a real threat. We were attacked by terrorists and many of the ones fighting our brave and trained volunteers there would normally be over here attacking public schools and hospitals if we haven't moved the theater of the war to the Middle East. We didn't start this war and we are very naive to think we can ended by moving troops out of there and over here. There is little question that our enemies will follow them.

There is nothing really new in Obama's rhetoric, it is the same old time liberalism stuck in the tragic decades of the past. We can't protect America's jobs, we have to compete for them. We can't stick our heads in the sand, we must fight for our safety and freedom wherever the war requires. Government cannot solve our health care crisis and many can argue it caused it; instead we need real solutions with more consumer involvement.

The US can't afford Obama's policies, neither in money nor human lives. There is nothing new about him and his approach to politics has been a dying breed for decades. It is my hope that voters can see through the style and the find the lack of substance.