Mastering Business Basics - An Introduction

 This podcast is dedicated to all of the small business owners in the United States, and our mission is to help you learn the foundational aspects of properly building a business.   We also like to talk about some subjects that'll make you think, that'll examine yourself, that'll put you in the best frame of mind to build a proper business. 

 But today I want to start with discussing why you may want to spend your precious time listening to this podcast.

Transcript

Welcome to episode one of Mastering Business Basics - The Podcast.  This podcast is dedicated to all of the small business owners in the United States and our mission is to help you learn the foundational aspects of properly building a business.  This starts with the three pillars that every business person needs to learn involving the legal, logistical and tax considerations of operating a small business.  The boring stuff.  But, the stuff that will give you an advantage when times get tough.

I don’t intend to discuss all of the sexy marketing strategies or super systems you may hear about out there. There are plenty of other people that will be glad to sell you their awesome methods - which is based on their skills, not yours and we’ll get into that in a later episode.  But today, I want to start with discussing why you may want to spend your precious time listening to this podcast. 

I’ve spent 55 years running my own businesses or managing businesses for others.  And for the last 23 years, I’ve also been working with small businesses to teach them how to structure their businesses, reduce their tax liabilities and increase their profits.

Over those 55 years, I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes.  After all, the schools don’t really teach you how to run a business.  I didn’t have a mentor that would take me under their wing.  Like so many business people in this country, I just saw a way to make some money to pay the bills and ran with it.

And now, nearing three-quarter of a century of life, I’ve learned probably what is the most important lesson of life: It doesn’t matter how much money you make or how successful you are in your life.  In the end, what really matters is how many people’s lives you have improved along the way.  There really is no better feeling than seeing someone succeed because of the education and support you were able to provide them.

And thus my mission.  To impart the nuts and bolts of the business world. To make you stop and think about how you are trying to build your business. To help you avoid so many of the mistakes I have made and seen other people make.  That mission has taken me to learn how to be an author, a podcaster and a course creator - a journey that will provide me a purpose for the rest of my life.

I’d like to start this podcast with what is probably the most important thing you need to find: Your Why.   If you read the literature of the most successful people in the business world, they all talk about finding your why.  It is not becoming a millionaire.  That is just a score card.  It is not about becoming famous.  That tends to just feed the ego. Your why can’t be about you.  

Your why has to be something outside of yourself.  I really didn’t understand that until the last few years.  I always thought it was about setting goals and reaching them. But what I’ve learned is that your why needs to be something that will improve the lives around you. To some, that is improving the lives of your family.  To others, it might be to support your favorite cause or charity.  Always, your why should help make the world a better place to live in for those you interact with.

Which brings me to this week’s story.  I’d like to briefly tell you about my  journey through the world of business and how I arrived at my Why.  It certainly has a lot of twists and turns and really started when I was a senior in high school. I decided I wanted to be a teacher.  So off I went to a Teachers College (which is now called the University of Northern Colorado). 

Except for the part about cleaning chemistry labs to help make living expenses, things were going along fine until I started to do student teaching at the beginning of my second year.   I then saw how the actual public school system worked.  This was the beginning of the 70’s where they were teaching how 2+2 could become 5 and they threw out phonics.  School boards were dictating which books you could teach from and you could not deviate from that.  Well, I knew that was nonsense and If I tried to work with the public school system, I would probably get myself fired.  It was time to leave school and chart a different path.

The problem was I had no clue what to do, but there was something inside me that drew me to owning or managing a business.  So, for the rest of my life I have charted that course.  Sometimes owning my own and many times managing others.

I’ve spent many years finding out what I don’t like.  I started a small lawn care business and did top quality work, but didn’t really enjoy it in those 100 degree Nebraska summers.  I tried my hand at landscape design and really enjoyed it and sold a few.  But I realized that to really be successful from a business standpoint would mean going back to school to learn some engineering and horticulture.  I decided that wasn’t going to happen so I moved on.

Many years later in another state, I decided to start a custodial business cleaning restaurants overnight.   This was the first time I had to hire employees for my own business and soon found out this was something I was not good at.  I got tired of filling in when someone did not show up for work.  So I sold the equipment and accounts and moved on.

Then there was over a dozen different multi-level-marketing companies I tried over 30 years.  Then someone showed me how most of them were set up to make the founders money with everyone else holding the bag. There is a reason most don’t last over five years and they don’t publish their stats, because the real failure rate of most is over 95%.  I just regret it took me so long to learn this lesson.  

Then there were the management jobs.  I spend 10 years in the restaurant business working everything from line cook to general manager. There was 4 years in the supermarket business from cashier to assistant manager. There was the 4 years in the computer business managing a retail store, doing networking support, and then doing website design. This brought me to the 1990s and a move to Florida.

I got a job doing OS2 software support for IBM and gradually moved up to middle management. I was even teaching software classes to the support technicians. Then after 3 years, I was called into the manager’s office and told that my position was being eliminated.  So then I got a manager’s job at a document management company and built a new division scanning documents. I grew it from 2 employees to 25 with dozens of clients.  Three years later, a new comptroller came in and replaced all of the management positions with his own people. So then I found a document management software startup and got a top management job with them only to find a couple of years later that the president was taking the investors money and paying off his own debts.  When they found out, the company was closed.  The 90’s were know as the decade of downsizing, and it certainly kept downsizing me.

At that point, I frankly did not know what direction to go.  So, my sister-in-law suggested I go take this tax preparation class.  She had been doing it part-time for quite a few years and suggested that at least I could make some money working during tax season until I figured things out.  So I did  Because of my background, I specialized in doing business returns. And I found out something very interesting.  I actually enjoyed helping people straighten out their taxes and teaching them how to properly set up their businesses to save money. 

And now, here I am, about to go into my 24th tax season.  I’ve enjoyed - for the most part- working with thousands of people and hundreds of businesses during this time.  I even spent a decade teaching tax classes.  But it will soon be time for me to be the one to say good-bye to a career.

The last three years, having defined my continuing mission, I began to transition the way that I can help improve peoples lives.  I wanted a way to help more people than I could sitting in a tax office.  After all, there are just so many hours a week you can work.  So I developed a three way approach taking into account that some people learn by reading, some by listening and some by viewing.

For those that like to read, I just published my first book entitled, Mastering Business Basics, The Legal, Logistical and Tax Consideration of Starting a Small Business.  For those who like to listen, I have created this podcast to pass on all the lessons I have learned and help you make sense of your journey.  And for those who like to watch, I am putting the finishing touches on a college level online course and support options for those who wish a hands-on support system.  I am doing all of these things so that no matter what avenue of learning you are most comfortable with, it will be available. No matter what avenue of support you need, I can help you find it.

This is My why.

I hope you will consider spending a few episodes with me and let me know what you’ve learned or what you need to learn.  I’ll be listening.

If you would like the links to all I have to offer, you will find them at my corporate website, seagulltechnologies.com

Until next week.