Look, it is me bragging about the dent in the quarter panel. Back in ’06, I backed into the corner of an architect office. It was painted the same yellow as the morning sun which turns the sky and your rear window the same shade, so I heard the scrunch before I saw it. That paint color could double as urban camouflage. Could that be why they call them “architects”?
Get your thinking caps on today. Last evening I spent a couple hours in Borders. They’ve got bad times, too, considering the amount of sale-priced material and the lack of customers. As for the rest of the store, who wouldn’t balk at spending $18 on a magazine? Other than yet more programming languages, the information section has vanished. Judging by shelf-space, we may already be a nation of wannabe photographers in need of salad recipes and calendars. A coffee and cookie set me back $4.00. This relates to my predictions about deflation. I do not believe falling prices would be as bad as the pundits say. Those theories are based on a cycle of credit and inflation, a way of doing business that has to change anyway. For example, they predict stores will hesitate to replace inventory today because it might be available at a lower price tomorrow. This tips us off the stores are ordering greater quantities than they know they can sell. What did I just say about change? I’m all for anything that puts the brakes on pressure to buy for the wrong reasons, which is possibly the reason I dislike salespeople. Consumers don’t haggle the price enough when they’re using a credit card, making things more expensive for us who pay cash.
Browsing the music section, I flipped through a magazine for bassists, wondering what’s new. Nothing. These publications suffer badly from the guitarist hero worship mind-set. Other musicians have stars, but rarely do you find, say, a piano player who wants to be a clone of that star. I did see an invention, a new bass concept. It has no strings, but is not to be confused with those kid’s air guitars. This unit had full size wooden furniture and the strings were replaced by a permanent metal rod that the maker states feels and acts like a string at the points where you depress the note. Must give that a try.
For those who remember I predicted it 15 years ago, there is a surge in small business startups. With that is a parallel rise in rip-off schemes. Make millions, no skill required, send for kit. I have a grim satisfaction with people losing their shirts because they who answer such ads are the morons who assume they know it all. They represent the largest remaining untapped national resource. What is it to me how they get edu-ma-kated? Sorry, no mercy. Particularly since most of them are yuppies losing their $45 per hour jobs. I read several articles on the “best” small businesses to start. I have more bad news for you a little later.
What I am about to tell you comes from the only person you may ever know who has spent the last five years purposely practicing for retirement. I speak with authority. [Author’s note: The following is in addition to my fifteen standard rules which include my five rules as published in the New Times, 2003, see “Mr. Toothpicks”.] Commandment Number One: Only start a business where you do a fast, skilled and complete job. The customer walks in, pays, leaves, whereupon it becomes very difficult to ask for his money back. Commandment Number Two: Avoid any business practice that is primarily service industry or relies on repeat customers.
This advice may fly in the collective yuppie face, but ignore me at your own peril. The bad news I promised is this: First of all, you yuppies, with the exception of dentists, probably don’t have any such skills to offer. You were cogs in a machine that has been declared obsolete. Second, when it comes to true customer service (fix it or replace it right this moment), not one of you was anywhere near as good at it as you liked to think you were. After all, that is why you lost your job. Third, you will quickly be driven out of business by other yuppies with the identical game plan. There’s 85 million of them.
Still with the bad news, as I scanned the small business articles for a pattern, it emerges that all semi-skilled positions (or lower in the case of tow truck drivers) are full or franchised. Think again if you are planning on repairing bicycles or selling hotdogs. Even the 5,000 MicroSoft employees being canned this year better think twice about those charities they were planning to start. I even stay away from tutoring because the customer has to be resold with every lesson. You get what’s left over.
I admit I have not been able to strictly follow my own rules, but renting Internet computers is close. Try asking for your money back. Just don’t ask me what is right or I might get snarky and suggest you start learning to play bass. That would be mean, so I won’t. I recently looked at mailboxes, then decided I don’t want to be open 24 hours a day. Your mileage may vary. Send for kit.
[Author’s note: No, I have not forgotten that I still have the only true Internet work at home business plan ever invented. One day, I will get around to selling it. The business card network idea.]
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