Do You Know how to Swim? Then You Know how to Start a Biz!

I'm not sure where the idea crept in that goes something like this-

I want to start a business. I should bite the bullet, quit my job cold turkey and start one!

Or, I'll wait until I get fired and get so desperate, I'll do something about starting a business then.

As if there is a greater air of legitimacy when one is stepping out in blind faith, hoping against hope that things will be all right for no good or apparent reason.

The art of starting business is controlling risk.

That's a stupid risk.

When you learned to swim, I bet no one violently threw you, kicking and screaming and horror stricken, off the side of a fishing boat into a deep murky lake, did they?

(For those of you living in Louisiana and Arkansas, forgive me. I hear that's how y'all learn.)

I'm asking you now, to go back in your mind and think about how you learned to swim.

Go ahead. I'll wait...

Of course you did!

You just said to me, "I learned a little bit at a time."

That, boys and girls, is the very, very same way you're going to start a successful business.

A little bit at a time.

Entrepreneur Chick's mother was a beauty queen.

Here's how beauty queens teach their daughters to swim.

First of all, there's absolutely no getting wet.

Getting wet will mess up your hair, it will mess up your make up, and everyone knows a swimming suit is only for looking hot and sexy, certainly not for swimming.

Elizabeth carefully spreads her beach towel by the side of the pool.

She lights a cigarette. Adjusts her sunglasses. Exhales with a certain unidentifiable annoyance and says to me~

"Okay kid. Here's what I want you to do."

"Okay!"

"First of all, hold your breath like this- and stick your face down in the water and hold it there a few seconds."

"Like that?"

"Yeah, like that. Now I want you to stick your face in the water but lay down in the water on your stomach and move your arms like this..."

"Like that?"

"Yeah, like that. Now I want you to stick your face in the water, lay down in the water on your stomach move your arms like I just showed you and kick your feet like this..."

"Like that?"

"Yeah, like that. Now you know how to swim. Don't bother me any more; I'm reading."

Are you ready to start of business?

Here's what Entrepreneur Chick wants you to do.

Write down a few business ideas that you have.

Go ahead, write them down.

Don't edit yourself, just write.

If you have ten, write ten.

If you have one, that's awesome too.

Now leave them in the comment section or email me, and next time, I'll show you how to, a little bit at a time, get started using your very ideas.

Let's make some cabbage, guppies!

A Few Glimpses of My Pretty Much Sober New Year's

I only managed to pull out the camera after midnight.

Sorry about that.

A lot of people already left.

I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of the conga line that snaked through

the house,

or

the Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle, the Macarena,

Shake Your Tail Feather,

the Hustle or the really cool swing dance we did either.

But passing Elizabeth, our D.J. ...

and while everyone else was still downstairs...

I was summarily greeted by this Merry Fellow...

keeping a round the clock vigil over this...

"Ooooooh, score!" gushed Entrepreneur Chick.

"Not so fast."

"Huh?"

At first I couldn't tell just where the demanding, pushy little voice was coming, but upon

closer inspection...

"What happens when you mix your drinks?" asked Magic SinkLizard.

"I throw up."

"Right, you throw up. Is that how you want to start the New Year off like you did three years ago and barfed from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. like you had a job?"

"No sir."

"You can have some, but not all. Understood?"

"Okay."

"Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year to you too."

But once downstairs, it all got a little hazy-

this guy seems to know me.

Who are you again?

What'd you say I said?

Dude, you didn't listen to the Lizard, did you?

When is it my turn to ride the guests?

It didn't matter anyway because The Poodles said it was time to go...

"Take another picture of me and I'll bite you."

Dear God, please make Entrepreneur Chick go away...

Well, Poodles, I have news for you.

When there ain't no cake,

ain't no party.

I was leaving anyway.

Your Employees Are Big Kids- Reward Them!

Elizabeth related a funny story to me a few weeks ago.

Elizabeth is one of my employees, but she was sharing, over a few Colorado Bulldogs on my part, how she did such a good job for one of the companies, a hotel, that she worked for- the owner ran off and left her completely in charge of the whole operation! Elizabeth was only nineteen or twenty.

"Okie, Dokie. I am going to Calcutta now. See you later," the owner said.

Why'd he do that?

Because Elizabeth understood that the staff were big kids.

"So I started this sticker program."

"What?"

"Stickers. You know, gold stars and silver stars and that kind of stuff?"

"Oh, right."

"You would not believe how much adults like stickers! I made a big chart so everyone could see it. I listed every one's name, you know. I had boxes by the different days, and if you did good that day, you got a star. If, for instance, I got a compliment on you by one of the customers, that was an automatic gold star! If you got your job done by a certain time, that was another gold star. At the end of the week, we'd total up the stars. "

By using stickers alone, Elizabeth was able to up the total level of employee performance, improve customer service, and even save the hotel money!

Everyone wanted stickers.

"And see, I had these two sisters, Mexican sisters. They had to outdo the other. They were so competitive you wouldn't believe it. They'd come in the break room and check out the chart and be all like, "Ooooh, girl. I don tink so... I going to jit a gole star and not chew."

I am fortunate beyond belief that Elizabeth works for me now. When I see her in a few minutes, I have something for her.

Appropriately, the picture on the card is that of an empty chair. I told her when she leaves in January, as she's going to Mexico for a few months, that just like this chair- very few people could ever fill it the way she does.