My Turn to Face Reality Part One (aka "Confessions of a Failed Entrepreneur")

Again, here's the book that made me start thinking this. It's the first time that I ever looked at business ownership and entrepreneurship from the perspective of an investment banker/venture capitalist. I mentioned in Facing Reality that this book "forced me to look at my business career and my life in an entirely new manner." I HIGHLY recommend reading this book if you are considering entrepreneurship as a lifestyle. 

I wish that this was easy. In a way, it is a great relief and in another way it is creating the opporutunity to re-create and (re) begin(?) my business career (see re-invention ). I usually don't disclose all this pesonal stuff, but I'm writing this for my benefit so I can figure out what's next in my career. If someone should read this and help them NOT quit their job too soon, lose their spouse and/or family, the roof over their head, etc. (and you think I'm kidding), then I've done a good thing.

It's time for me to sharply take a look at who I am and what I really have been doing. I am not without personal accomplishments, but my business accomplishments are on a short list. This re-invention process has been something I have been working on for a couple of years now, but tonight I am feeling the need to pick up the pace a notch.

I seem to be making a whole lot of new friends, so now MIGHT be a great time to re-introduce myself...and I'm about to find out (the hard way, as usual). First, my name is Michael Neely and I have fancied myself an entrepreneur for many years now. I'm the guy who bet the farm and lost...a few times. I basically wanted to become what I thought was an "entrepreneur" from what I saw in the movie "Wall Street." After all, everyone was making LOTS of money, staying up all night, getting wasted with a lot of beautiful women running around half-naked...hell yeah, sign me up!

I got out of the Navy in 1989 and jumped straight in...with all of my money and absolutely no training. Then again, in 1989 there wasn't any training (still isn't), internet, personal computers, cellphones, iPods, iPhones, or anything else the "Technology Revolution" has bestowed upon us. My main motivation was not working for anyone else. This has proved to be a mistake (learning experience).  Needless to say, I failed miserably in my first business attempt and returning to college was not an option any longer.  A few years later, I financed my life and businesses by waiting tables in restaurants, you know, like the late JFK Jr. SAID he would have done IF he ever lost everything in the Barbara Walters interview in 1991(?).

After a few more years, I racked up about three more complete business failures as sole proprietorships.  By the way, they don't make a "smiley" for this emotion.  Due to my second to last business failure, I left my hometown of Birmingham, AL and headed to south Florida (where my mother lives) to put my life back together again.  I got into the commodities and currencies options and futures "business," except the companies I was working with were "less than ethical" (and that's being kind). After making absolutely no money and, once again "betting the farm," I found myself working at Chili's as a server in Coral Springs, FL and sleeping on a picnic table in 2003. I worked with Fast Company magazine's readership network as a volunteer coordinator (means "not getting paid") for the Entrepreneurship and Small Business Special Interest Group at the Palm Beach Community College library that was open to the public. This kept me somewhat sane over the next couple of years as I got into the habit of keeping a roof over my head.  I got to write (rant) about business ownership and meet some cool people (albeit, through the internet) like Steve Farber
and Barry J. Moltz. I moved to Atlanta with my last $20 in January 2007 and, with the help of a few friends, the re-invention has been an ongoing process ever since.  I stopped getting wasted a couple of years ago and finally started taking care of myself and my career.

Yesterday, I thought I'd put together my entrepreneurial resume as if I would go out and finance a company. After staring at the neatly typed screen for a couple of hours, I came to the conclusion that I've never had a success. There have been other hints that I haven't achieved the success I desired (trophy-wife, Ferrari, etc.), but this was the first time I had a "NO BULLSHIT" viewpoint of whether I'd been successful or not. The weird reality is that instead of thinking in terms of "risk/reward," I was thinking totally in terms of "risk." It's like someone told me years ago that I would never be successful as an entrepreneur (ex-wife, ex-girlfriends, ex-employers, ex-friends, ex-family members, ex-dog, etc.) and I have been following their orders, taking on as much "risk" as possible for no apparent reason (reward). Some of that psychological, self-fulfilling prophecy stuff might be right after all.

I have devoted myself to personal and professional development and study over the last two years and Carol Roth's book, The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business, has been a part of that. If you do just one thing and think of the Return on Investment and Return on your Time investment realistically, you MIGHT have a better "run for the money."  It would be better to buy the book, so you don't have to sleep on a picnic table one day.

Facing Reality

There is a book out there that forced me to look at my business career and my life in an entirely new manner.  It's called The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business by Carol Roth.  People have always looked upon me as a little crazy, if not completely off my rocker.  All this time, I thought it was because I had some really stupid friends.  Not so fast, Skippy (speaking to myself, another reason that my friends...um, nevermind).

Growing up in Birmingham, AL, there weren't a great deal of entrepreneurial role models (outside of prison) to follow.  Even some of Birmingham's greatest entrepreneurs are currently serving prison time.  I got bit by the entrepreneurial "bug" when I was in the Navy (living in New England) and thought this was what I wanted to dedicate my life to.  That was 1989.  I thought "Entrepreneurship is easy!  Just get started and saunter to the bank laughing everyday!"  Since 1989, technology has made this a completely different world and entrepreneurship looks easier than ever.  There are many less responsible people that still get people into entrepreneurship today without looking at the downside risks or even mention a "risk/reward ratio."  I didn't even know what that phrase meant until I had lost everthing at least a couple of times.

The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business does just as it's title says it does.  I laughed several times as I realized that I had made some of the mistakes that Carol outlines in her book.  I also realized a lot of mistakes that I have been making over and over again without solving them (the classic, not to mention expensive, definition of "insanity").  I realized that my business education (the books I read or should have been reading) was WAY behind the times.  In short, this book will defintiely make you re-think what you do as an entrepreneur and make you re-think IF you should become an entrepreneur in the first place.

This is an outstanding book with a lot of great advice, to your advantage if followed and to your financial detriment if ignored.  It even made me question what I'm doing and I am one stubborn S.O.B.

Hwæt! OMG, LOL make the Oxford English Dictionary

Remember the high dive that terrified you as a kid?  You were scared silly of jumping off of it, but one day came that you jumped off anyway.  You return as an adult and realize that the "high dive" that once was a part of your nightmares was only six feet off the water and no big deal at all.  I remember the daunting site of the Oxford English Dictionary sitting in the school library.  It was kind of a hallowed place that we looked up words only if we wanted to re-write the paper we were working on.  For me, the American dictionary worked just fine...which might explain a few of my literary short comings (LOL).
Well, the standard for "proper" words of the English language has been updated and there are a few additions that surprised me, additions that criticizing them makes me sound like my parents and my teachers.  The additions that are most notable arrived from the digital age and are text lingo such as OMG and LOL.  I can't say that I was a stickler for perfection in my English classes, but I guess I am getting older.

Then again let's think about it.  I also studied Latin and it a given taht the Latin language was what is termed a "dead language," not because all the Romans were dead, but because there were no new words created in the evolution of the language.

Here is the difference between a living language and a dead language:

Hwæt! We Gardena        in geardagum,
þeodcyninga,        þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas       ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing       sceaþena þreatum,

5
monegum mægþum,       meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas.        Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden,        he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum,        weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc        þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade        hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan.        þæt wæs god cyning!

 

Translation (I guess):

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve
till before him the folk, both far and near,

who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!

 
This is epic poem Beowulf from 4th Century ad England.  I copied and pasted this from another web site, and I don't speak Old English.  No body does, anymore that's why they call it Old English.  I have no idea if this is a valid translation or not...but it is close.

I guess we should be thankful that our language and our culture are changing and (I guess) growing.  One could also argue that are culture is now in decline, as our language is becoming over-simplified.  It also is a challenge that I hold dear that I can communicate with people who hold the traditional English language dear to their hearts and at least be able to understand what people are intending to mean when they say something stupid like "O-M-G" (typed, yes-  spoken, personally not a fan).

I guess the good news is that "WTF" didn't make the Oxford English Dictionary...or did it?

MBN