The Number One Secret to Success and Happiness

When you find yourself on a planet whose most widespread inhabitants are bacteria, what action do you take to survive? Do you try communicating with the bacteria? When you deplete your food supply, do you avoid confrontation with the majority population (in case the bacteria have large-scale defense mechanisms) and eat some other species besides the bacteria?

How did you figure out the population count and distribution patterns to begin with? Quite possibly, you anticipated the types of organisms you'd encounter and brought surveying instruments with you to measure a sample population, from which you then extrapolated total population data.

No matter how much you analyzed and prepared your approach to the planet, you know you have made decisions that will limit your capabilities.

However, you maintain one important goal -- personal survival.

And so it is in business, also. When you entered a new market, you prepared a set of goals and objectives, made assumptions about the market conditions, including competitors and customers, but inevitably missed some important factor that you couldn't see until you stepped foot in the market.

Question is, if initial results are disappointing or a negative market condition looks too daunting to overcome in a reasonable timeframe, do you just step out of the market and start over later?

The answer is no. You must pretend that you've crash-landed on another planet, with some tools and food for immediate life sustenance. But to ensure long-term survival, you have to study, process and cultivate the surrounding resources. Setbacks will hit you at every moment as you learn about the inert and hostile aspects of an environment not tuned to your existence. You celebrate the smallest iota of success. If you've arrived with a team, then every member reassures the other when solid, thought-out efforts do not lead to success (even if the effort resulted from a hunch rather than analysis), because only through experimentation can we ever achieve success.

Friends, strangers, coworkers and family have expressed their concerns to me about the current economic conditions during this pending U.S. Presidential election. They all look forward to the exit of the current President as if the change in the U.S. political administration will cure the global economic headache, no matter whether they believe McCain or Obama will win the election.

The U.S. economy indeed faces many challenges ahead, tied as it is to the rest of the world and the competition for limited resources. However, we humans share this planet with other species that, though more abundant than us by many magnitudes, have no clue about the temporary ebb-and-flow of money. Their minute-by-minute survival does not directly change from the simple uptick or downtick of the price of a stock, mutual fund or barrel of oil. In fact, their species thrive with no regard to human existence, which points us to a simple secret.

So, what's the number one secret to success and happiness? Well, it's an easy secret to share, one that young wise people know and old wise people have learned:

All problems are insignificant and transitory.

We've crash-landed on this planet together. We depend on each other to survive. The current economic conditions dominate the mass media communications networks but don't forget these conditions, as dreadful as the news organizations play them up to be, are insignificant and transitory. We will survive. And better yet, we will thrive. If a mixed race man and a former prisoner of war can run against each other in a civil contest for U.S. President, then together, WE can accomplish anything. Let's put our minds and bodies to the task of making this planet a better place to live, work and play.

The Best Time to Start a New Business

When is the best time to start a new business?

Last year, a small group of engineers and other technical types saw a problem and invented a new gadget to fix the problem. They test-marketed a "proof of concept" unit, which excited the customer who used the gadget and gained interest from others who wanted to purchase the unit, even at the hand-built stage the unit was in. The inventors realized this high level of interest meant they could go to market with a set of prototypes. Instead, wanting the product to reflect their engineering expertise and professional approach to problem-solving, they hammered on the design details of this gadget for the past year and finally filed for a patent last month.

One of the engineers brought me on board about a month ago to run the business side of their venture. After examining their gadget and analyzing the gadget's potential market, I assembled a business plan to give the inventors information they needed in order to see if they really wanted to incorporate a business, finalize the product's design for manufacturability, work with a contract manufacturer (CM) to mass-produce a bunch of units, start selling the gadget by the dozens and build enough momentum in the marketplace to attract a buyer. At the same time, I established a budget so the inventors could see the investment dollars they needed to offset the cost of the startup, including consulting/contracting fees for accounting and engineering support, salary for a technical manager and payment to a CM for a set of preproduction units (and the first run or two of production units, depending on cash flow).

As is the case for many startups, the inventors want to maintain majority control of the company so they will benefit from their invention whenever profitability and/or buyout occur. They don't want their invention to make someone a gazillionaire while they end up getting pushed out the door without so much as a dollar for their efforts. They have seen this happen to friends of theirs and don't want to make the same mistake. Therefore, I set up the business plan to show their majority ownership position to potential investors.

The investors we've spoken with so far see the great potential for this product, which is somewhat recession-proof and opens up a completely new market. Well, as luck would have it, we started selling the business to investors during the recent downturn in the stock market. In addition, the U.S. Presidential election takes place in two weeks. Combine those two uncertainties and investors have shied away from putting money into a new company until at least after the election and perhaps until after the first of the year.

So what's a couple of months, right? Well, with this delay, we've already lost one of the key members of the group, who would have worked as the technical manager to coordinate all the development activities but can't wait until 2009 for investors to fund his salary. He left this week to work a regular, six-figure, salaried engineering job and he's taken his expertise and the investors who counted on his participation to make the product a success.

Meanwhile, the remaining members of the team have agreed to move forward with the product, albeit at a much slower pace.

Those who take risks know they don't fail. They just add to their list of lessons learned. Although this current business venture hasn't yet failed, it has faced a setback and reminded me of a valuable lesson:

There's no such thing as the best time to start a business but there sure are times when getting a business started would be much easier!

I'll keep you posted.

A Simple Thanks Will Do

Regardless of your position on the subject of religion, you understand the interconnectedness between creatures of the same species -- chemically attracted to one another, genetically predisposed to reproduce like offspring and amazingly sympathetic to each other's pains, joys and sorrows.

Therefore, if we're programmed at birth to help one another (discounting the ones whose genetic makeup drives them to non-procreative actions such as murder and self-isolation), should we feel grateful and thus express our gratitude to those who treat us kindly? In other words, what does the concept of "common courtesy" -- the give-and-take of a civil society -- mean to you?

A friend of mine once said, "Be kind to everyone because you don't know who's having a worse day than you are." Usually, this friend of mine lives her life in New York City as a loud, boisterous, happy person, with no care in the world other than gladly spending her husband's money and helping old people across the street.

Unfortunately, her husband was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which has spread to his liver. Medical science is full of unexpected, miraculous recoveries from devastating diseases that run counter to the normal outcome for people who've received radiation and chemotherapy to slow down the destructive nature of the diseases or even put the diseases into temporary remission. I don't know what will happen to my friend's husband but I know they will pray for miracles while the certified medical professionals follow their prescribed course of action.

About the same time as this, I found out my mother in-law has deteriorative vertebrae that will prevent her from living the active home life she was used to for the past 91 years. I took care of her for a few months last year, moving her from a hospital to a physical therapy unit at a nursing home, getting her much needed physical therapy to strengthen her leg and back muscles that eventually put her back in her house and her active life in the community. A few weeks ago, I returned to her house to get her medical attention for a kidney infection. After X-ray and CT scans of her body during an examination to determine the extent of the kidney infection and possible diverticulitis/colitis, a surgeon once again recommended she go to the nursing home for physical therapy. The physical therapists do not want to push her as hard as they did last year because they worry my mother in-law will literally break her back. Of course, she feels frustrated by the lack of progress.

This past weekend, good friends of mine suffered a heartbreaker when their son, who ran to the grocery store for his mother, seemingly lost control of his car. The emergency personnel who arrived at the scene watched the young man's brain shut down as he went into a coma. Examination at the hospital revealed broken ribs, broken femur, crushed ankle, collapsed lungs and head/brain trauma. He remains in a coma and now has pneumonia. He will stay in the hospital for weeks, at least.

Also this past weekend, my parent's next-door neighbor of 38 years died. His health had declined recently so he had talked with my father a couple of days before he died about setting up legal documents for his son so the transfer of property after his death would not cause any hardships. Unfortunately, his son found his father's cold, dead body before he was able to create the paperwork he'd talked about.

Meanwhile, everyday, all over the world, people get maimed in fights, receive brutal torture, die in political skirmishes and starve to death from malnutrition. Children are born with birth defects directly attributable to negative environmental conditions (whether through the mother's negligent behavior and/or exposure to toxic chemicals), creating hardships at birth they will carry with them the rest of their lives.

Despite all of these people's stories, despite their tragedies and suffering, most of them maintain a positive view of life. They thank God or their lucky stars that there is hope. They ask for miracles but do not expect them. They will accept whatever happens, even if they suffer mental strain and stress in the process.

From this, I have learned not to take anything for granted. With relatively good health, I have what I need. With loving family and caring friends, I have more than what I need. I don't ask for anything else. I do hope that people around me see the appreciation I feel for their presence in my life when I smile at them with a ridiculously big grin, say "Thank you" for no reason, or slightly nod in passing. We may not agree about our political beliefs, religious beliefs, or favorite football team, but we share this planet together. Instead of labeling others and wishing them out of existence, let's reach out to others and see them for who they are: fellow members of our species. If you can't think of anything to say to one another, a simple thanks will do.