LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER 2

      THE REAL ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPERIENCE: CODE RED

      I’m only an average man, but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

      —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

      The entrepreneur suffers more bureaucratic foolishness than you can possibly imagine until you deal with it firsthand. As an entrepreneur, you are drafted into service without compensation as a bookkeeper and tax collector for at least three different governments (federal, state, city) and for at least a dozen different taxes, some dealt with twice monthly, some monthly, some quarterly, and some annually. There is nothing that politicians and bureaucrats understand less or that costs and frustrates entrepreneurs more than this enslavement to government.

      Some years ago, I had one friend, an owner of a small retail business, who got so angry over all this that one day, when his mail was filled with more letters from government agencies than anything else, he had a heart attack, tax notice clutched in hand.

      Former Senator and Presidential candidate George McGovern bought a bed-n-breakfast as a retirement adventure. Subsequently, in an article he wrote for Inc. magazine, he confessed that he was overwhelmed with the nonsensical, outrageous government interference in his business. He said, had he understood this when in the U.S. Senate, he’d have voted very differently on a large number of issues and laws. McGovern subsequently filed bankruptcy and publicly blamed much of it on the burdens government layered on his business. He even noted: “A critical promotional campaign never got off the ground because my manager was forced to concentrate for days at a time on needlessly complicated tax forms for both the IRS and the state of Connecticut.”

      This points out the fatal flaw of a noncitizen government, taken over by professional politicians lacking real world experience.

      If you’ve read Ayn Rand, as most entrepreneurs have and all entrepreneurs should, you can certainly see the events of her visionary novel Atlas Shrugged marching toward us with frightening and depressing speed and apparent inevitability. Very recent events have made this book much more timely—and frightening. But its underlying message is that those of us who choose to be the producers of wealth and creators of business better shed any thoughts of appreciation or even fair treatment by the government or the population at large we support, and live as we see fit for our own satisfactions. We should expect and accept undue interference and opposition as the reality and recognize it is our willingness to triumph against it—a willingness most couldn’t muster on their best day—that makes our success possible.

      As entertainment, at the conclusion of this chapter, you’ll find a “legal document” that I created and published in my No B.S. Marketing Letter. Feel free to copy it and share it with any other business owner you think might enjoy it. It speaks to the litigious and regulatory intensive environment in which we operate. A little entrepreneurial humor.

      Government interference and idiocy—tax upon tax, regulation upon regulation—is only one of the many severely annoying, emotionally challenging distractions from productivity that the entrepreneur confronts hour by hour, day by day. There are also employee problems, vendor problems, financing problems, customer problems, and competitor problems. On top of all that, there are the times when nothing’s going right and red ink is flowing all over the checkbook like blood.

      How You Respond to Pressure

      Determines Your Success. High

      Tolerance for Stress and

      Pain Is a Skill Successful

      Entrepreneurs Are Paid For.

      You might think entrepreneurs are paid for creating or inventing, making or providing exceptionally appealing products or needed and valued services, or for managing and growing and expanding their businesses effectively, or for building up equity within a business. But these achievements are actually possible only for the entrepreneur who masters the management of problems. Who can, again and again, pass the tests of creativity and will placed before him.

      Almost every legendary entrepreneur is severely tested at one time or another, one way or another.

      When I interviewed Tom Monaghan of Dominos Pizza years ago, he talked about going from “entrepreneurial wiz kid” to “village idiot” overnight. Trump has nearly gone broke more than once. Bill Gates spent years mired in federal anti-trust litigation. Should you attempt anything of real significance or expansiveness, you too will be tested.

      In The New Economy, the tests will come more frequently, more quickly, more furiously. Regulatory changes took away telephone prospecting and a large part of tele-marketing, broadcast faxing, and broadcast voice messaging or “robo-calling,” all marketing media relied on by hundreds of thousands of businesses—and some businesses did not survive the loss or never recovered from it. As I write this, at least 11 states’ legislators are contemplating do-not-mail regulations similar to the do-not-call laws, these laws are potentially paralyzing to businesses’ growth and outreach to new customers. A change in federal law streamlining the unionization of workers in smaller businesses is gaining steam in Congress; local laws placing all sorts of food ingredient restrictions and disclosure requirements on restaurants are proliferating; and I could go on and fill ten pages with the list of other threats. Add to this the constant, rapid changes in technology, fast-changing consumer demands, the commoditization of product and service categories by the internet, liberaliz ing of global trade thus multiplying imported goods in every imaginable category—even food. Again, I could continue. The New Economy Entrepreneur lives in a heightened, high-threat environment. If the government

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