The World Owes Us Nothing

As many of us are enjoying the best two days of the year, those being the first two days of the main draw of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, I wanted to talk about a Facebook post that got my attention for multiple reasons. This person spun the apparent fact that his business is not where he would like it to be in terms of number of customers/clients because most of the people where he lives are "conservative far right" and don't see the need for his service (which is not in the least a political field of word).

His service is not scalable and must occur in person so this "conservative far right" is his potential client base unless he moves. Let me say I have no idea if he is any good at what he does nor do I know whether anyone needs the service he provides but obviously he does know the extent to which his service is needed.

From where I sit his success or failure will hinge on his ability to relate his service to the lives of the people who must be his customers if he is to have customers. It is not the political ideology of his potential customers that is preventing his success it is that he has not figured out how to effectively relate his service to his potential audience. I'm not sure how he can ever have success if he continues to blame other people. I can't imagine this is an original sentiment but individuals are the greatest determinants of or impediments to their own success.

We have all encountered this attitude before in our lives but I am not sure how prevalent it is (hopefully not too prevalent). The idea that something will be handed to you when you have your own business is fatally flawed and there nothing preventing anyone from getting their expenses down.

Embedded in this, unfortunately is so called class warfare. My self employed friend has some very specific ideas about the wealthy and what they are doing to the poor which is what he considers himself. On this issue I try to just stay on my own mat but I know that some people who think of themselves as being poor are very resentful of the wealthy and use wealth gap data to support their argument. I'm not sure what these people are looking for. My friend wants a more prosperous business but resents people who already have some measure of the prosperity he appears to seek. I don't have much sense of where the wealthy are coming from as they don't seem to talk about this much (why would they?).

Here I think a small dose of Ayn Rand might fit in with some self-motivation to do for ourselves, to create our own opportunities, so to speak, to figure out and then build our own happiness. In conjunction with that sort of big picture vagueness are the usual practical things I talk about all the time which includes living below your means and saving as much as you can.

If more people spent time working on their own problems we'd have fewer problems. To whit babyboomers haven't saved any money for retirement (intentional hyperbole) and there seems to be some real doubt about the viability of the program (I expect zero payout when my time comes). If you have saved properly then you are more likely dealing with an inconvenience if social security plays out as a worst case scenario not a financial deathblow.

I'll finish this part of the post with a quote I've used before from our friend Bill here in Walker that I think pertains; you can figure it out now or you can figure it out later but if you can figure it out now your life will be much easier.

The first full day of the tournament was awesome including San Diego State's fist win in the tourney. They beat Northern Colorado despite a very impressive outing by UNC's Devon Beitzel. He was UNC's best player and he stepped up big time in that game; very impressive.