Venice Beach Lessons

A sweltering hot weekend in Los Angeles prompted me to stay close to home and the beach. My trusty old bicycle had a fresh overhaul at a nearby cycle shop so pedaling to the Venice pier along the board walk became my test run. It is truly a wonderland of the entrepreneurial spirit!

The merchants of Venice beach amaze and sometimes impress me on every visit, and I’ve been going there for over 25 years. There is a very pure form of the marketplace at work, and anyone who wants to start a retail business should spend a couple of hours browsing and asking questions. You’ll see people from all over the world as customers and as merchants. Tee shirts, tattoos, ice cream and kazoos are all available there. If I had a sizable retail business, I’d be tempted to do some test marketing along the beach because of the diversity among the throngs who flock to this unique seaside marketplace.

Mark Burnett, the mega TV producer, who created “Survivor,” among other shows, was hawking tee shirts at Venice beach in the late 1980s. I’d be willing to bet that he learned more than a couple of things about making strong but short presentations from that experience. What a place to prove that you can survive and thrive. When you are competing with a guy playing a guitar on roller skates (The Swami), a chainsaw juggler, and dozens of very lightly dressed women, you’d better have a good pitch!

What I love about it is the fundamentalism of it all. While there are some formally organized stores and restaurants, there are many stall type spaces where merchants offer a dizzying array of items from junk to jewels at a variety of price points. Also, there are some people who simply show up at 6am to stake out a piece of the sidewalk to sell their artwork or crafts. Do they all have business licenses? I doubt it, but they do learn pretty quickly if they have the flair to be a successful merchant. They probably know that in about as much time as it takes for one of the ice cream cones to melt. It is a sharp demonstration of how the marketplace mentality works. You want to buy for $1 and sell for $2. You want to double up on merchandise that moves and drop the items that don’t quickly find buyers. If you have a family, they may prove to be your best helpers. You want to learn how to endlessly ask for the order.

There are plenty of Asian and African immigrants hustling to make a living from their temporary stores along the boardwalk along with native born folks. This is how it was on certain streets in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other American cities in the early 20th century. This is how some legendary merchants, such as William Thomas Grant (W.T. Grant Stores), began by enthusiastically selling a product from a pushcart, on a sidewalk or door to door. John Cash Penny (J.C. Penny Stores) and even Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) learned their business lessons by standing on their feet facing customers every day. Those immigrant merchants of Venice are not at a welfare office or lounging at the corner sports bar. They are learning to test themselves in the marketplace. Hard work and thrift are on display here and if their paths resemble those of their predecessors, some of them will own buildings and businesses employing hundreds of people in the next couple of decades.

Of course I have to remind politicians that the entrepreneurial spirit is one of the cultural movements that made America great in the first place. And it wasn’t simply that business owners could be hit up for campaign donations! Our country wasn’t born of entitlement social programs and empty promises. Don’t tell us that our lives will be more prosperous as we do less and create less. Forget the fairytale that a growing government brings affluence. Just have a look at the Venice boardwalk or a large swap meet anywhere in America. You’ll get a clear picture of the entrepreneurial spirit at its grass roots best. As my small town merchant grandfather used to say, “You’ve got to learn to hustle.”

Be sure to check out www.MakingItTV.com for a comprehensive collection of resources for entrepreneurial thinkers and small business including streaming video, articles, events & workshops, entrepreneur confessions, Q&A, and more!

Smart Days

For people up and down the business spectrum, from tiny home based enterprises to Wall Street darlings, there seems to be a surplus of bad days so far in 2009. To prevent those pesky 24-hour negative episodes from rolling up to be a truly bad year, I practice something I call “smart days,” which gives me hope for the future.

In these crazy times we all yearn for smart insights and advice. What I call “smart days” is simply when I call someone who is smarter than me on a particular subject or aspect of business. I simply ask for 30 minutes of their time to ask questions and take notes. The practice started for me about 5 years ago when I met the legendary Art Linkletter at an advertising business event in Beverly Hills. He’d been one of my media idols since watching him host “People Are Funny” and “House Party.” In conversation and through his books I learned that he was a true entrepreneur, very successful and wonderfully insightful. He asked me how passionate I was about my mission of spreading the entrepreneurial spirit and told me to find something to smile or laugh about every day. When we parted after a brief chat I was smiling, grateful for the smart advice from a man I’d greatly admired. As of this writing, Linkletter is 96 years old and still functioning pretty well after a stroke last year.

A couple of events on my schedule for this past Monday earned it the designation as a smart day. At 12:30 I met in downtown Los Angeles with John Hope Bryant, the founder and Chairman of Operation Hope (www.operationhope.org.), a not-for-profit organization devoted to economic literacy. Why? We have launched The Making It Institute for the Advancement of Business, and I wanted advice from a person who’d built a not-for-profit from nothing to a $15 million annual budget. No matter what I read or look up on the Internet, nothing is as valuable as learning from someone who has accomplished something of substance and done it smartly.

At 4:30 that day, I was at The Milken Institute for a meeting followed by a symposium featuring Lynda Resnick. Michael Milken, who first gained fame as a bond trader, founded the institute and I like their mission. It is to improve the lives and economic conditions of diverse populations in the United States and around the world by helping business and public-policy leaders identify and implement innovative ideas for creating broad-based prosperity. In the halls of business and finance, Michael Milken is still revered and seen with awe for his abilities with numbers and to be able to simplify complex situations. The Milken Institute Global conference truly does bring together some of the smartest and most extraordinary people in the world.

Lynda Resnick is a something of a savant when it comes to marketing and you can get a taste of her smarts in the new book on branding that she co-authored (with Francis Wilkinson), Rubies in the Orchard. She and her husband, Stewart, have built very significant businesses that you may have heard of including Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water, and Teleflora. Also, The Franklin Mint was in their portfolio for a while. In her role as President of Teleflora, Resnick introduced "Flowers in a Gift," which earned her a gold Effie award.

So in one day I was fortunate enough to hit the jackpot for having these people pour their smartness over me. I recommend smart days for anyone who wants to expand their horizons and mix some positive rays of light with the daily pounding of negative information that popular media delivers to each of us. Seeking out the company of other business owners is a favorite pastime with me, especially these days. While a bit of conversation deals with the fears and challenges of the downturn, they usually move quickly to talk about opportunities and how they plan to take advantage of this phase: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful,” according to Warren Buffett.

So what does Lynda Resnick consider the smart way to think and behave in business these days? Well, she talked about having lived through many recessions; and also endured an industry with shrinking demand. Resnick said that the recent good times have gone on for so long that many of us have gotten away from the basics, “If you are under 40 this is a revelation. Well embrace it for the near future it is your life.” She also feels that Americans are getting past the obsession to consume instead of producing. Another of her observations is that people are starving for true value and that hard work is making a return. She got a chuckle from me when she said that too many people graduating from college these days expect success to be handed to them like a happy meal.

Michael Milken is a wonderful at summarizing thoughts into easily digested phrases. This isn’t a word for word quote, but I recall the intent of one of his summaries. Michael said that we all tend to want to have formulas and scientific principles to lead us on a successful path. But according to Milken to do anything at a very high level is an art, which often defies formulas.

On those too frequent days when you feel like Sisyphus pushing the boulder uphill, I recommend you think on how to construct your very own smart days. You may be surprised to find that people of immense accomplishment who you admire are willing to give you some of their time to help you become smarter about something. Art Linkletter, Lynda Resnick, and Michael Milken are worth hundreds of millions but continue to make themselves available to share their thinking and offer advice. People like John Hope Bryant travel thousands of miles per year to teach and preach according to their missions.

One of the smartest pieces of advice for small business owners came from my friend and author, Jane Applegate ("201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business"), who said; “never be afraid to ask for help, you may be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the advice you get.” These are indeed challenging times and just circling your own wagons may not be enough. A wagon load of smart thinking from someone else may be what is needed.

Be sure to check out www.MakingItTV.com for a comprehensive collection of resources for entrepreneurial thinkers and small business including streaming video, articles, events & workshops, entrepreneur confessions, Q&A, and more!

Business Does Go On

Though popular media may be having a field day with grinding out stories of abject gloom regarding slowed business activity and rampant job losses, my experiences of the past several days tell a different story. Just below the big media radar, there is intense activity involving America’s small business owners, and those men and women are proving that despite what you may hear or presume, business does go on.

I’ve just spent two days in San Francisco, California taping interviews with a variety of small business experts for a Wells Fargo online series called, “Insight.” Gathered in a video studio at the edge of Chinatown, were business owners and bankers who were well prepped to share information about how to develop, market and grow small businesses, even in today’s tough environment. Put me in a room like that with successful entrepreneurs and I become a tireless question machine!

The people I interviewed included Gene Marks, a technology consultant, Jagdeep Dayal, a banker and expert in commercial real estate, Barry Moltz, a business author, and Lisa Lambert, an attorney with deep knowledge of 1031 tax deferred exchanges in real estate. They were all fountains of information and good advice. I’d say that most college professors would be hard pressed to equal their practical knowledge and enthusiasm for their subjects.

Here are some of the thoughts that emerged from our two all-day tape sessions. Jagdeep Dayal, who offered some very useful guidelines for buying commercial real estate, feels that opportunities to acquire properties at good prices are beginning to emerge. The year 2010 is becoming a target year for many property investors. Gene Marks reminded me that there are 25 million small businesses in this country and that there are thriving segments such as low cost restaurants and credit counseling services. We Americans tend to think in terms of succeeding by hitting a home run but Gene said that in today’s marketplace getting to home plate hitting singles and doubles is just fine.

Barry Moltz, who says that he is “crazy about business and insane for success,” is a serial entrepreneur and author (Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence for Your Next Great Success) who has boundless energy. While acknowledging the tough times we are living in Barry says business owners should focus on profitability, not growth, and focus on cash, not sales. Lisa Lambert took me through some of the ways that a business person who owns real estate can use a 1031 exchange to help manage their tax burden. If you didn’t know, the Internal Revenue Service’s 1031 rules allow you to defer payment of capital gains taxes on income properties under certain circumstances.

So, while gloomy seems to be the color of choice for many in the business world today, there is always another side to any situation. We hear that banks have gone into hiding but to create this useful material, Wells Fargo is partnering with several small businesses including Imagination Publishing of Chicago, Nelson Davis TV Productions, and Media One Studios. Joint ventures and special cooperation between disparate large and small businesses is a wave that isn’t waiting for the future. It is easy these days to speculate on how we’ll work our way through the big time challenges we are all facing. I’ll say yes to the entrepreneurial spirit lifting us from these doldrums and with the past few days as evidence, I’d bank on it.

By the way, my conversations with these vibrant and knowledgeable folks will be condensed into information-rich, five minute segments that will be streamed on a Wells Fargo web site, www.Wellsfargo.com/biz/education/insight. At the site you can already see some of the wonderful small business advocates that I’ve interviewed during the past year.

For More Information On:

Lisa Lambert & 1031 exchange: http://apiexchange.com/

Gene Marks: http://www.marksgroup.net/

Barry Moltz: http://barrymoltz.com/

Be sure to check out www.MakingItTV.com for a comprehensive collection of resources for entrepreneurial thinkers and small business including streaming video, articles, events & workshops, entrepreneur confessions, Q&A, and more!