“A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressed vessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourth signal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.” -Booker T. Washington (1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech given within Piedmont Park at the marker directly in front of the Active Oval)
As a kid, I remember watching the Disney film, “The Swiss Family Robinson” about a family finding themselves shipwrecked on a deserted island and having to use whatever was available to them to create some sort of living situation until they could be rescued. They built for themselves a tree house complete with running water, and then an effective fort to defend themselves against an invasion of pirates. Though this was Disney fantasy for the most part, there are countless stories of individuals surviving and sustaining themselves in remote and seemingly inhospitable parts of the world with seemingly nothing except for the will to survive and raw nature as a resource. Yes, that does take skill and it is a skill that anyone can learn. It also takes creativity and thinking outside of the box. If you live in a city with a connection to the internet, there is not plausible excuse for you believing that you do not have the resources necessary to launch a business. Apple Computers was launched in a garage. Madame C.J. Walker launched her hair care enterprise out of her kitchen. There’s a long list of major corporations with humble beginnings like these. I endeavor you to research them to inspire you. In all of these scenarios, people simply used what they had to get started to move on to the next level. In order to get started, you will need to develop this same skill of resourcefulness.
Perhaps you have heard, “Use your resources.” during high school and college exams, reminding you that all the answers you will need are right before you, you’ve just got to know where to look. Doesn’t Google know everything? Well now, that is always a great start, but go deeper than that by asking friends and relatives to refine your search. Visit the library. Find the courage to talk to authorities in the industry. Do you have any friendship favors you can call in? What kind of bartering arrangements or deals can you set up to get what you want? If it were a survival situation, you’d figure it out and you had better have faith in yourself that you can. You may need to use that same resourcefulness to get your business off the ground. You better ask somebody.
Your most primary challenges you will need to figure out is money, the help of other people and operating space. If you’ve done your business plan, by now you should know how much money it will take to get started. How much of that do you have on your own? How much of this can you qualify for a grant? How much can you fundraise for? How much loan or credit can you qualify for or should you take? How much of it can you raise with a second part-time job if it would take you forever to save? How about a side-hustle like Uber, baby-sitting for friends, house sitting, pet-sitting, cleaning houses, washing cars, cutting lawns, etc. This doesn’t mean starting a business to start a business. Look at it as fundraising, something you can get into quickly and easily, get the money you need and then get out. Can you clear out the garage and host a yard sale? Can you bake cakes, cookies and pies for sale? At one time, people hosted rent parties to pay their rent. Can you host a cocktail party? Get inspired by the days of thrift when ancestors like Percy Julian and others paid their way through college, working odd jobs and bussing tables in order to get to their dreams. If you stay focused, you won’t need to engage in this for long. Every dollar you earn will put you that much closer to the green light on your business. Not only this, those considering on investing in your venture will be impressed by your resourcefulness of making a way out of no way. That’s the kind of person they can bank on who can snatch business victories out of the jaws of defeat. So have fun putting your mind to work and figuring it out.
KNOWLEDGE:
You don’t need to be an expert in whatever industry you’re going to be engaging in. You only need to know 4 things:
- You need to know what you know, which might be more than you think at first.
- You need to know what you don’t know. What questions do you have? You should always have questions.
- You need to know who knows what you don’t know or where to get the answers.
- That’s all you need to know.
PEOPLE:
Those people who know what you don’t know, who have have some of the necessary skills, connections, resources, prestige and influence you’ll need to launch your business, you will likely not be able to hire them for pay at first. So instead, attempt to interest them in partnering with you. These will actually be your first investors, as they will be investing their time, their intellectual services, their contacts, their reputation, their labor and maybe even their money as you round out your board with just the necessary part of your team to make the dream work. Your business plan will answer who these people should be. Next, get about the business of networking and asking around to find these people. Always begin by seeking answers from them. As you question them, they will naturally become interested in your need for their answers and if they see viability in the direction in which you’re going, they are likely to invest themselves in your vision more and more to the point of asking them to partner would be the next logical step. Meanwhile, do as much as you can on your own to pull your business together. The more together it is, the more you will impress them.
OPERATING SPACE:
If you need room to host your board meetings, your local library has them available to patrons for free. Depending on the environment, a restaurant, coffee house or hotel lobby might suit your needs just fine. Do you or any member of your board have a dining room table to use for meetings? Can you carve out a small designated space in your home to use as an office and use the library on any of the options listed above when meeting with clients? If you are ready to begin paying for space many hotels have them for rent. Regus.com is also a great start to borrow space as you may need it. Can the new technologies of google hangout and group chat functions suffice your needs to meet with your team under time and location constraints? Explore them, research, get creative, work your networks and start where you can.
LET'S COOK
“Where there is a will, there is a way” has always been the mantra of resourceful people. Resourcefulness is the skill of solving puzzles with the faith that all of the necessary pieces of the puzzle are right before you. Starting with your vision, what parts of this jigsaw puzzle will you be starting with? How can you use the pieces you do have to attain the next piece? Once you get that piece, what’s the next piece you can get? Step-by-step you build your business and manifest your vision with the skill of resourcefulness.
You can hone your skill of resourcefulness by simply playing with puzzles: jigsaw puzzles, word puzzles, crossword puzzles, word problems or any mathematical game which requires thought with the use of clues that are given to gain the next clue and eventually solve the puzzle. When you think you do not have enough money, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness. Don’t call it a problem. When you think that you don’t know the right people, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness. When you think you do not have the space to host the functions of your business, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness.
STOCKING YOUR TOOL CHEST:
Money:
You can hone your skill of resourcefulness by simply playing with puzzles: jigsaw puzzles, word puzzles, crossword puzzles, word problems or any mathematical game which requires thought with the use of clues that are given to gain the next clue and eventually solve the puzzle. When you think you do not have enough money, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness. Don’t call it a problem. When you think that you don’t know the right people, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness. When you think you do not have the space to host the functions of your business, that is a puzzle that can be solved with resourcefulness.
STOCKING YOUR TOOL CHEST:
Money:
Before you know you’ll have a use for them, begin at once, stockpiling and organizing your resources. Do not delay saving money. Your wealth is the difference between the money you can bring home and the money you need. You need housing, electricity, water, food, and transportation to work. Unless you are naked now, you already have clothes. You just need to launder and care for them. If you honestly have no professional clothes with which to at least be presentable in performing the functions of whatever your business is, you can suffice between Goodwill, Walmart, Target, Marshall’s, T.J. Max, K&G’s and a good tailor. No one will know that you haven’t shopped at Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Sears, Jos. A. Bank and Men’s Wearhouse. The money you have left over after satisfying your bare, basic necessities for as little as possible, you can begin saving up for an emergency fund of up to 10 years of bare, basic necessary living expenses as your target. Once you have reached that number, you are free to go after your business full force, and it won’t matter what happens or how you may fail, you have the time in money to recover and go after it again and again and eventually you will make it. You can fully emancipate yourself to your vision. Couple saving along with ways to boost your income to reach this goal quicker through investing in money producing assets like viable side ventures, temporary part time gigs, and seeking promotions through your current place of employment.
Many businesses are wrecked by personal economic disasters and not through some impotence on the part of the business. A ship can be perfectly made, but what happens if its captain becomes incapable of steering it? The Titanic can answer that question for you. An emergency fund will keep your personal life from negatively impacting your business before it is able to take care of you as life happens as it will. Right after your 10 years worth of necessary expenses are covered, you will need insurances to cover you in major disasters which can wipe out your savings and assets and reset you by years. These include: health insurance, life insurance, adequate car insurance, homeowner’s insurance, renter’s insurance, legal shield especially if going into business. To keep your premiums as low as possible, you should at least be able to cover whatever the deductibles might be through your savings or through a portion, up to 10% of your savings. As your emergency fund grows, you can raise your deductible and lower your premiums so that you can put more into your emergency fund. If you come upon a point where your business needs money, you have the option of borrowing the money from yourself, but make sure that you can and do pay yourself back with at least 3% interest as if you were borrowing from the bank. You will save yourself on debt and higher interest rates.
The next resource is credit, which then makes improving your personal credit score the next necessary goal. What you can not borrow from yourself or fundraise, it might make sense to seek funding from a bank, and in the beginning it will be very difficult for your business to qualify for credit on its own. Until there is some proven viability, it might not be wise do so, should it fail leaving in you in massive debt. Borrow only as much as you can pay back with your savings, your assets or through your income within 3 years. You will need to use the health of your personal credit to vouch for your business loans in the beginning. The point here is that you know that you are going to be needing money, and you are likely never to find yourself in a position where there is too much of it, expanding your resources in this area through saving and credit will begin providing resources and options you can work with when you come upon a point at which you will need it in order to get to the next level.
People:
The same as with money, you are going to be needing people. Sorry, independent people. Before you know what you will be needing them for, begin at once stockpiling your database of individuals in various industries and social circles. Organize them in a database detailing their industry, their affiliations, where and how you met them and who you know mutually. This is very much the way a politician begins building their campaign, and you will be launching one of a sort. Go to various networking events in your community and try to meet everyone. When you get home, log the information from the business cards you’ve collected in an Excel spreadsheet and connect with them on social media if you can: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and try to regularly interact with them to create a relationship that is both personal and professional. Like and comment on their posts which interest you and never forget their birthdays. When you begin creating social events for your market, make sure they are cordially invited. If you build a relationship with them, invite them directly and personally. Doing something random and fun like going to the movies, roller skating, running, white water rafting or off to the amusement park? Invite a few of your new friends. If you get invited to an event, make your best effort to attend. Say “Yes” unless you really have to say, “No”. Put them on a list of your 90 favorite people and call one of them once a day just to catch up. Make this a routine habit. After 90 days, you will have at least attempted to touch basis with everyone. If they stop reaching back after three attempts, replace them. Once a rapport is established, taking the time and a few dollars to send a greeting card for birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, child births, family deaths, graduations or any various life events, or random encouragements or letters of genuine appreciations for the unique individuals that they are will pay off when you need it, if you are genuine about sharing your life and sharing your light with others and filling your heart with the lives of others. It will make your life fill full. The experience for your spiritual and psychological well-being goes far beyond the needs of business. You can learn so much from the lives of others as much as you can learn from your own life. You’ll also a pick up a very crucial skill and that is people skills.
The next resource is credit, which then makes improving your personal credit score the next necessary goal. What you can not borrow from yourself or fundraise, it might make sense to seek funding from a bank, and in the beginning it will be very difficult for your business to qualify for credit on its own. Until there is some proven viability, it might not be wise do so, should it fail leaving in you in massive debt. Borrow only as much as you can pay back with your savings, your assets or through your income within 3 years. You will need to use the health of your personal credit to vouch for your business loans in the beginning. The point here is that you know that you are going to be needing money, and you are likely never to find yourself in a position where there is too much of it, expanding your resources in this area through saving and credit will begin providing resources and options you can work with when you come upon a point at which you will need it in order to get to the next level.
People:
The same as with money, you are going to be needing people. Sorry, independent people. Before you know what you will be needing them for, begin at once stockpiling your database of individuals in various industries and social circles. Organize them in a database detailing their industry, their affiliations, where and how you met them and who you know mutually. This is very much the way a politician begins building their campaign, and you will be launching one of a sort. Go to various networking events in your community and try to meet everyone. When you get home, log the information from the business cards you’ve collected in an Excel spreadsheet and connect with them on social media if you can: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and try to regularly interact with them to create a relationship that is both personal and professional. Like and comment on their posts which interest you and never forget their birthdays. When you begin creating social events for your market, make sure they are cordially invited. If you build a relationship with them, invite them directly and personally. Doing something random and fun like going to the movies, roller skating, running, white water rafting or off to the amusement park? Invite a few of your new friends. If you get invited to an event, make your best effort to attend. Say “Yes” unless you really have to say, “No”. Put them on a list of your 90 favorite people and call one of them once a day just to catch up. Make this a routine habit. After 90 days, you will have at least attempted to touch basis with everyone. If they stop reaching back after three attempts, replace them. Once a rapport is established, taking the time and a few dollars to send a greeting card for birthdays, anniversaries, marriages, child births, family deaths, graduations or any various life events, or random encouragements or letters of genuine appreciations for the unique individuals that they are will pay off when you need it, if you are genuine about sharing your life and sharing your light with others and filling your heart with the lives of others. It will make your life fill full. The experience for your spiritual and psychological well-being goes far beyond the needs of business. You can learn so much from the lives of others as much as you can learn from your own life. You’ll also a pick up a very crucial skill and that is people skills.
Make reading, “How To Win Friends and Influence People” your bible until your social skills become second nature. Relating and building genuine relationships with people before you see that you might have a need for whatever they can offer, makes it so much easier when it comes time to ask and they will be more likely to help. This also goes both ways. If you are sought for help, never leave anyone empty handed. Either help them directly if you can or drop them some knowledge that they can use to help themselves or refer them to someone or a resource which can help them. Help for you or for them can simply be an answer to a question that makes all the difference. As a need shows up, you can go to your database, do a search and you will know who to turn to. Your network is indeed your net worth. Plant and tend to your crop. It will come in handy. When you come upon a moment when you need people’s help, don’t have a case of not have anyone you can turn to. Build your human resources now! My mother who was a master at resourcefulness taught me, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, who they know and who knows you.” Write that down. Study that for all that it means. Begin now to affiliate with some professional affiliations in your industry, or fraternities, sororities or even church groups and get to those networking events. At each event, make it your goal to engage with at least 5 individuals you have not met previously. Make it a fun adventure getting to know these characters and when you are called on for help, do your best with the resources you have. It will pay off later, if it only puts you into contact with more individuals.
Intelligence:
Our government has a Central Intelligence Agency, surveilling and archiving information of value and of danger to the nation within and abroad. It is suggested you develop the same for your corporation. Growing your knowledge resources can not be easier these days with the advent of the internet. There are industry websites you can follow, magazines you can read and books you can study. You should set aside regular time to feed your knowledge resources. Youtube seems to have tutorials on just about everything these days. As far as higher learning, the degree is only to confirm what you know with a piece of paper. If your industry requires a degree, growing your knowledge base of library of books you can turn to will make getting that degree a cinch later. Further on, if you feel it is necessary to establish yourself as an authority, then it might make sense to go get those degrees you might not necessarily need in order to do your job and then write a book putting into print the useful knowledge resources you have gained to help someone in a novice state that you were once in. Knowledge is indeed power and you will never really appreciate it until after gaining it and acknowledging how much of a handicap you were in before you knew what you do know. You will have many moments of screaming, “How come no one ever told me this?!” Yes, ignorance is that scary and perhaps embarrassing. Ignorance is the cause of worry and suffering and struggling for reasons you do not understand. Knowledge is the antidote to all of these experiences. Get you some!
Skill:
Once you have some raw resources of money, people and knowledge, you can then begin using the creative aspects of your resourcefulness skills to begin preparing your masterpiece, just like a chef in the kitchen. While your business plan is your recipe, there is nothing like knowing how to cook with resources in the raw, or from scratch is the term. While your business plan figures out a lot for you, learn to improvise, which is to think on your feet and pull resources together as quickly as situations can change on you. This is why it is important to train at thinking games like puzzles, chess and monopoly. Military commanders get this training in the military arts, where victory on the battlefield means knowing how to marshal the resources of men, artillery, food, terrain and weather conditions to their advantage to outmaneuver the enemy. Some of these skills can be picked up by reading Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” Improvising also means having the creativity to substitute what you don’t have with what you do have. Don’t let not having a particular item like a flathead screwdriver stop you from getting the job done when there is a butter knife lying around. I am one who is fascinated with life hacks for the sheer creativity of people using random, ordinary items lying around the house to come up with solutions to many common problems. This skill is what you must develop as an entrepreneur, for when things do not go as planned, you can take over and get the train back on track. Just like an actor who knows the story, if there should be a disruption, they can improvise and get the show back on the script without anyone ever noticing that there had been a disruption. Those who do not develop this skill of resourcefulness often get stuck even if they have a plan and they stay stuck and often end up in defeat right there. It is a skill that is worth developing within yourself at once as you begin to pool resources.
Intelligence:
Our government has a Central Intelligence Agency, surveilling and archiving information of value and of danger to the nation within and abroad. It is suggested you develop the same for your corporation. Growing your knowledge resources can not be easier these days with the advent of the internet. There are industry websites you can follow, magazines you can read and books you can study. You should set aside regular time to feed your knowledge resources. Youtube seems to have tutorials on just about everything these days. As far as higher learning, the degree is only to confirm what you know with a piece of paper. If your industry requires a degree, growing your knowledge base of library of books you can turn to will make getting that degree a cinch later. Further on, if you feel it is necessary to establish yourself as an authority, then it might make sense to go get those degrees you might not necessarily need in order to do your job and then write a book putting into print the useful knowledge resources you have gained to help someone in a novice state that you were once in. Knowledge is indeed power and you will never really appreciate it until after gaining it and acknowledging how much of a handicap you were in before you knew what you do know. You will have many moments of screaming, “How come no one ever told me this?!” Yes, ignorance is that scary and perhaps embarrassing. Ignorance is the cause of worry and suffering and struggling for reasons you do not understand. Knowledge is the antidote to all of these experiences. Get you some!
Skill:
Once you have some raw resources of money, people and knowledge, you can then begin using the creative aspects of your resourcefulness skills to begin preparing your masterpiece, just like a chef in the kitchen. While your business plan is your recipe, there is nothing like knowing how to cook with resources in the raw, or from scratch is the term. While your business plan figures out a lot for you, learn to improvise, which is to think on your feet and pull resources together as quickly as situations can change on you. This is why it is important to train at thinking games like puzzles, chess and monopoly. Military commanders get this training in the military arts, where victory on the battlefield means knowing how to marshal the resources of men, artillery, food, terrain and weather conditions to their advantage to outmaneuver the enemy. Some of these skills can be picked up by reading Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” Improvising also means having the creativity to substitute what you don’t have with what you do have. Don’t let not having a particular item like a flathead screwdriver stop you from getting the job done when there is a butter knife lying around. I am one who is fascinated with life hacks for the sheer creativity of people using random, ordinary items lying around the house to come up with solutions to many common problems. This skill is what you must develop as an entrepreneur, for when things do not go as planned, you can take over and get the train back on track. Just like an actor who knows the story, if there should be a disruption, they can improvise and get the show back on the script without anyone ever noticing that there had been a disruption. Those who do not develop this skill of resourcefulness often get stuck even if they have a plan and they stay stuck and often end up in defeat right there. It is a skill that is worth developing within yourself at once as you begin to pool resources.
This has been another preparatory lesson for those who want to get ready to tackle their business vision head on with The Baldwin Business Institute thebaldwinbusinessinstitute.eventbrite.com and want to get entrepreneurially fit to maximize their results, for these lessons will not be covered in class. Fall Class starts, Saturday, October 7th. Registration deadline is September 23rd. There is a 10 student limit. Don't procrastinate.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
