May 7, 2010
Two Little Words That Will Get You Through The Coming Rough Times
Two Little Words That Will Get You Through The Coming Rough Times By Cliff Ennico www.creators.com I had the privilege of speaking this week to the local chapter of SCORE (the Service Corps of Retired Executives), a volunteer organization of senior and retired business people who devote a portion of their time to providing free advice and counseling to struggling small businesses (contact www.score.org to find the chapter nearest you). After all of the usual questions about legal and tax issues, a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and asked: "Cliff, we appreciate your advice, but we need some inspiration too. Everything we read in the media and see with our customers is scaring the heck out of us. Can you tell us anything that will give us some comfort and help us through these extremely difficult times?" I admit I was a little thrown by the question. Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously answered this question 76 years ago by saying "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," but heck, I'm no Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Still, the question had to be answered. I did it by talking about two words - two simple words - that you should write down on a Post-it Notereg;, put it on your computer, your bathroom mirror or anywhere else you will see them several times a day. Make them your daily mantra, for these are the words that will help you get through whatever economic troubles we have to live through the next few years. Humility. Let's face it, the past 50 years have been a wonderful party. Three successive living generations - Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials - have known nothing but good times. There have been stressful times, of course - several recessions, the Vietnam War - but these things never really impacted most of us personally. War, famine, epidemics, and suffering were things that happened to other people far, far away - we watched them on television, and the better-minded of us tried to muster support to stop them, but we never actually experienced them ourselves. And a lot of us were arrogant and deluded enough that we thought this would never change. The idea of real hardship - not knowing where your next meal is coming from, losing your house or being evicted from an apartment, not having enough money to do what you want to do in life, accepting less out of life than we want because we simply can't have it - is totally alien to us, and as a result we are not as emotionally prepared for it as our parents and grandparents were. To them, hardship and suffering were an accepted part of the cycle of life; to us, they are an aberration. Add to that the Baby Boomers' outlook on personal sacrifice and self-restraint, best expressed in the Grass Roots' classic 1969 pop hit "Live for Today" ("Sha la la la la la live for today . . . there's no worries, 'bout tomorrow, heeeyyyyyy . . . . ), and it's no wonder a lot of people in America have been feeling invulnerable. If it did nothing else, the past year has brought all of us back down to Planet Earth. A lot of people - including some with wonderful track records - have shown themselves to have feet of clay, and even some very good, intelligent people have done some very bad, silly and downright stupid things. And KNEW they were doing them at the time. If after 2008 you still think you know what you are doing, think again. Entrepreneurs are particularly prone to believe their own marketing shtick, but now is not the time for arrogance or self-delusion. It's time to take a sober assessment of your business and yourself, find out who you really are, what you really can and cannot do, and avoid selling yourself as something better unless you can back it up with action. Discipline. The current living generations of Americans have, as a rule, not been very disciplined about a lot of things. We are a rather soft, easygoing, self-indulgent and forgiving lot, inclined to "get along by going along" and accept that anything anyone wants to do is "okay" as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. The idea that you shouldn't do something even though no one will throw you in jail for doing it (what our ancestors referred to as "sin") is alien to us. The idea of personal discipline strikes us as being vaguely authoritarian and manipulative, imposed as it was in days past by religious institutions to keep people in line -- something to be resisted, ridiculed and ignored. Make no mistake - surviving in these times will require TONS of discipline, self-restraint, and personal sacrifice. Aside from being morally wrong, your "sins" these days can kill your business. It's time to take a close look at your company and ask yourself: are we running tight enough? Do we let things slide? Are we too forgiving of people's mistakes or ambivalent about our values as a company? Do we not insist hard enough on work, performance and results? Are we demanding enough with our people? And are we willing to punish those who don't live up to our expectations? While you're at it, ask these questions of yourself as well . . . Cliff Ennico ( cennico@legalcareer.com )is a syndicated columnist, author and former host of the PBS televisionseries 'Money Hunt'. This column is no substitute for legal, tax orfinancial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualifiedprofessional licensed in your state. To find out more about CliffEnnico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit ourWeb page at www.creators.com .COPYRIGHT 2009 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE,INC. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.

Posted by Staff at 1:52 AM