Hi, I’m Brian and I’m excited to be a part of the energy here at JDsBlog.
I graduated from college back in the 90s with a degree in Chemistry and no plans to do anything other than to assume my position as a cog in the great corporate machinery. I showed up in corporate America as a chemist. My first week on the job I found out my company had a large government contract (we tested soil and water samples) which we were in danger of losing. The reason? The contract specified the then brand-new concept of an electronic deliverable. In other words instead of a three-foot high stack of paper they wanted a floppy disk. The floppy disk was to contain the results from the machines. The catch? The files had to be in a specific format. I was offered overtime if I would stay and help TYPE IN the results to this format! I looked at it for ten seconds and said, “You know we could just write some scripts to manipulate these files into the proper format.” I was transferred to IT virtually within the minute. Needless to say, a company with this much brain-power wasn’t in business very long. Thankfully I left before then.
Before there was Monster.com there was…well, nothing. Instead, sometimes people would post their resumes on their home page. I made up several pages, including my resume, which by then included both Microsoft and NetWare certifications that I got by studying from a book. Still, I was pretty surprised when that resume led to a call from a major computer company offering to double my salary if I went to work for them as a consultant. Soon after, I met another consultant, but he didn’t work for a computer company. He worked for himself, going from gig to gig and ratcheting up his skills. I followed in his footsteps and never looked back.
It wasn’t long after that when I noticed how messed up companies can be. The problem is size. It is impossible to continually weed out all of the dead weight once you hit a certain size. There are just too many ways to hide. Unfortunately, dead weight tends to accumulate more dead weight because you have to hire more people to make up for the dead weight. Out of those new hires, some of them will turn out to be even more dead weight and so on through a vicious cycle.
Dead weight never learns new skills or tries new things. Dead weight never looks at a problem and says, “What can I do about that?” Add that to the inevitable corporate policies, bureaucracy, and apathy, and you get a full scale version of the 80 20 rule. 20% of any company is what produces it value. The other 80% just gets in the way. As an independent consultant, when I learned new skills, and made things better, I got more projects (and more money) from that client. When the people who worked at the same company learned new skills and made procedures better, they probably got assigned more work (with no more pay). When I did my job faster because I was smart, dedicated and efficient, I finished my projects early which meant I got paid more money for less time. When people who worked in those companies did the same, they were assigned other people’s work because the others were “overwhelmed”. When promotion opportunities came up I watched as they promoted other people (those who were overwhelmed) just because they had been there longer and had more experience. I’ve always been amazed at how experience can be valued over ability.
I’ve spent the last several years in finance. I specialized in working with small business owners. There I found kindred spirits: people who see solutions and make them happen. People who don’t accept problems as just the way the world works. It doesn’t matter whether you actually own your own business, just as long as you think like you do. That way, you’ll continue to strive for better things. So, here we are at JDsBlog, a site dedicated to battling business as usual. As the immensely overused cliche says, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” My goal will be to bring you ideas to stimulate your own vision and also to maybe give you pointers for your trip down the paths I’ve already seen. Whether you are out on your own, or hope to be someday, or if you just refuse to give into the zombies who do the same thing every day while grunting about how things never get better, then good luck, and let’s do it.
My first series will be on the finances of a new business venture. It will include things like loans and grants and even venture capital, but more importantly, the other things you will likely need as you get going.
This is one of the most important and often used interview questions of all time. Where do YOU want to be in 5 years?