Layoffs, Cutback, Downsizing, Outsourcing!!

These are the terrifying terms that young professionals and college students hear with frequency, though they continue down the prescribed path, heading blindly into a tumultuous corporate environment no more prepared than they were 4 years earlier. As a follow up to my post on Small Business Trends, I wanted to give an alternative to a college “education.” The more you read from me, the more you’ll hear my disregard for college and the education they claim to provide.

Many people say you cannot succeed today WITHOUT a college degree. I submit that a college degree is a hindrance to success for many people. In my humble opinion, I believe college serves to squash the entrepreneurial spirit, squelch creativity, and propel it’s victims down a path of averageness.

I hear arguments today that college is place to grow, learn, and mature. If 4-6 years of ultimate authority and no responsibility is your definition of an environment in which to mature, I believe “mature” does not mean what you think it means. This does not apply to those of you who are WORKING your way and PAYING your way through school, or to those whose chosen occupation absolutely requires a degree (i.e. doctor or lawyer).

But those of you in a “liberal arts” course of study, beware! I doubt you’ll be any more ready to meet the real world after college, but you will be 25 lbs heavier. I’ve been thinking about this subject a good bit, and I’ve come up with a three step formula for success without college.

1. Get a Sales Job - After 4 years in sales, you should have done all the maturing you would have accomplished in a lifetime of college. Not to mention you’ll be making $60-100K a year instead of borrowing $20-40K a year. Once you have a base of sales experience and expertise, you’ll never be unemployed again, except by your own devices. Should you find yourself unemployed, you’ll be able to have a job my next Monday. Monster.com has 37 pages of sales jobs within 10 miles of my house. I’m sure CareerBuilding has as many if not more.

2. Become an Expert - At something you’re interested in, and do it within 6 months. That’s a whole different post I wrote a few weeks ago. Check it out, it’s a gem.

3. Find a Cigar you Love - and smoke one twice a week with a nice beer, not Miller Lite. If you’d like a suggestion on beer or cigars, feel free to contact me and I’d love to point you in the right direction. You may not believe me, but I think this step is the most important. Maybe I’ll cover that another day.

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I’ve got a bit of a story that will frustrate just about the most laid back person there is. My Secret to Stress Management is at the bottom, but don’t peek.

‘Round about 3:30 today, my email stops working. Incoming email works fine, but I can’t send anything. At this point, my email can wait and I have other things to do, so I put it off until about 5:30. I would say I am semi-computer literate, so I went into my account settings to make sure all the mail server information was correct, which it was, so I called BellSouth.
‘Round about 3:30 today, my email stops working. Incoming email works fine, but I can’t send anything. At this point, my email can wait and I have other things to do, so I put it off until about 5:30. I would say I am semi-computer literate, so I went into my account settings to make sure all the mail server information was correct, which it was, so I called BellSouth.

Achmar picked up. I explained the situation, and after 15 minutes of having no idea what he is trying to say except “thank you for that information Mr. Graham,’ more times than you can imagine, which happens to be the most annoying phrase in the Indian accent, he lets me know that if I want to use an email address that is anything other than bellsouth.net that it won’t work anyway so I shouldn’t try. That’s funny, I’ve been using my visionmarketdevelopment.com email address for weeks just fine.

So I call Register.com. Angela D. answers! SHE SPEAKS ENGLISH CORRECTLY!! YAY!! Unfortunately, she lets me know that “sometimes BellSouth blocks the register.com email servers so that you have to use theirs.” This seemed super-duper odd, but she’s in the industry so I figure she knows. I must call BellSouth again and get their outgoing mail server to put in Outlook instead of the register.com outgoing mail server. This should fix the problem.

SURPRISE! This doesn’t fix the problem. So I ask the guy at BellSouth what I should do. He says, “why don’t you just use the bellsouth.net email?”

“Are you kidding?”

“It is very good email.”

“but bellsouth is not the name of my company.”

“yes, we are bellsouth.”

“I’m painfully aware. I don’t want to use a bellsouth.net email address.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Well if you use bellsouth.net email, it should work.”

“But I want my other email address to work. How do we make that happen.”

We spend the next 30 minutes are so doing things that I have already done until he finally decides that it is not an issue with BellSouth, but an issue with Register.com and I’ll need to call them back. Next, I get Sparky, the 19 year old new hire in the register.com helpdesk.

I explain the situation to Sparky and he asks if I typed my password in. “For Joy!! THE PASSWORD! How could I forget?” Of course it’s not the password. My email was working at 3pm and then wasn’t working at 3:30. You think my password left the country, Sparky? Ridiculous. So he puts me on hold and when he comes back, he says that he talked to his supervision who says it is an issue with my POP3 settings, but he can’t go over that with me on the phone. He’ll have to email it to me. I thought I had done all that, but let’s find out.

Turns out that I had already done EVERYTHING in that email multiple times.

So I call back and the next guy I get says, “Oh yeah, one of our mail servers lost power. It should be back up within the hour.”

How is this not the FIRST thing I was told??

Anyway, The Secret to Stress Management is…”Who Cares. If it won’t matter in 5 years, it doesn’t matter now.”

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There are 1,000,000 things that will give you cancer, 1,000,000 that will increase your blood pressure, 1,000,000 that will deform your babies before they are born, and 1,000,000 that will lead to any number of catastrophes.

About a year ago, anyone would tell you that the experts say you are not to eat fish when you are pregnant. Now you are supposed to have at least 12 oz. of fish per week when you are pregnant.

Wine goes from good to bad, good to bad, good to bad. One day you’re supposed to drink no alcohol for fear of liver failure, and the next day you are instructed to have 2 glasses of red wine per week to combat heart disease!

None the less, people continue to listen to the “expert” in any field and they pay good money to do it. What does this mean for an entrepreneur? Could it be that being an “expert” would lead to increased income, opportunities, and privileges? I believe that is Exactly what it means.

This raises the questions, “How do you become and Expert in your field?” Tim Ferriss has a great formula.

1. Join 2-3 Related Trade Organizations - This should cost no more than about $50 each plus a yearly renewal.

2. Read the Top 3 Books in the Field - Chances are, you can find them at the library, so this is free!

3. Offer to Write Articles for a Trade Organization - Generally, you can just offer and they will accept. On occasion, you will have to do steps 4 and 5 before your articles will be accepted.

4. Give 2 Free Seminars to Large Companies - In Atlanta, we have Wachovia, Home Depot, CNN, Turner, etc. etc. Pick an organization in your city and contact HR. If you tell them you’d like to hold a free “Stress Relief Seminar” for some of their employees, they will jump at the chance as long as you are not selling anything.

5. Give 1 Free Seminar at Well-known University - Again, they will jump at the chance as long as you let them know you are not selling anything.

These 5 techniques will give your “Bio” a jump start and allow you to stand on your past achievements to push you forward. None of these will be paid gigs, in fact you will have to pay for some of them, but think about this…

“your name” is an expert in the field of “your field,” a writer for “your trade organization,” and speaker with engagements at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Wachovia Bank, and Turner Broadcasting, among many others.

Tell me that doesn’t sound better than “Graham Lutz started a business one time…”

Here’s my question for you…“Will you do it?”

Do you know How old you will be if you spend the next year becoming an Expert in your field?

The Same age as if you DIDN’T spend the next year becoming and Expert in your field.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for Jarkko Laine entitled Product of Your Environment. I wanted to follow that up with a few more thoughts. Coming out of the Catalyst Conference over the weekend, and having our first doctor’s appointment for my pregnant wife, I’m feeling very responsible for the success of my family and business, even more so than usual. This idea of being a product of your environment has never been more real than it is now, as I am working on creating the environment into which my child will be born.

Andy Stanley, the pastor at North Point Community Church, leadership author and mentor, spoke at the catalyst conference with a topic very close the mine today. He says that “systems create behaviors,” and not the other way around. He tells the story of his two teenage sons whose job it is to take out the trash. Every Tuesday evening, he gets home to find the trash is not out, so he asks his sons once and they say “yeah, yeah, we’ll get it,” but nothing gets done. He asks again, garnering the same response. Then he begins to get angry and they get the message and take out the trash. He created a system that says, “you really only have to take the trash out once I get mad.”

So, finally Andy decides to change this systems so as to change the behavior. The next Tuesday, he gets home and takes out the trash. The boys are ecstatic! “Thanks, dad!”

No problem,” Andy replied, “but now I get your allowance.”

The next Tuesday, The trash is at the curb when he gets home from work.

Some say if you want it done right you have to do it yourself. I say, “if you want it done right, create systems that encourage doing it right!” I believe that this works on a personal scale as well. For instance, those of you working from home know that it is very easy to get caught up in anything but work from time to time. So you must create systems that encourage you to get the job done. I use Salesforce.com for my CRM system, and all the tasks turn red if I don’t get to them that day.

Granted, red letters are not the end of the world, but it is nice to see that you’ve gotten it all done and when you wake up on Monday, you have no red.

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So It’s been a few weeks since I have written anything at TheYoungCapitalist.com, but for good reason. First of all, I hope you all saw my inaugural post as a Small Biz Expert over at Small Business Trends. Turns out, it was pretty popular! I think the idea of Time as Currency is really beginning to catch on in all generations, not just the youngins’.

OK…It’s a Friday about halfway through September. I’m sitting at my desk at my job (with a soft “j”), thinking about this balance between time and money. When my paycheck arrives, it is $1200 short and this is the last of a long line of injustices my boss had brought upon me, including but not limited to phone calls when I was 4 minutes “late” (it was an all commission sales position), phone calls when I left 5 minutes “early”, meetings to discuss whether or not I wanted to be there, and constant emails reminding me of the office dress code and business hours.

The $1200 was all it took for me to decided that I was done with that job. I had already started Vision Market Development about a month prior, so I took the leap and I am now full time self-employed! It’s fantastic. We weren’t going to have much money for the next few months as I was getting my business up and running, but we had gone without money before, and we could do it again. I didn’t think it would be much of a problem…that is, until my wife told me she was pregnant the next day!!!

Yes Yes, you heard it! There will be a new Young Capitalist in the house! Pictures will come in May. I’m so excited, I can’t even begin to explain. So needless to say, I’ve a bit of a roller coaster of a month but I’m settled in to my new schedule and back in business. Apart from the carpel tunnel, working from home is amazing!!

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