No true leader is an island. It is rare and practically unheard of for a successful entrepreneur to survive as a solo operation, even in the age of the Internet. Eventually, and often sooner than later, you will need to call in support to grow your business. This can be tricky if you haven’t managed employees or contractors before;and the learning curve is steep unless you educate yourself in the process. It may take some trial and error to find people who are reliable and willing to work as hard for your business as you do. It may take time to let go of your need to control every detail. But the best way to ensure you are building the kind of team that will improve and inspire your brand is to follow these five steps as you create your dream team. 1. Listen to your gut. First impressions really can be everything. And you may not wantto judge your prospects on this, but you will want to be crystal clear about the image you want your team members to portray -- especially when you're weeding througha lot of applicants. Depending on your business priorities, "first impressions" may not mean appearance so much as attitude.So, listen to your gut when you meet with interviewees and let your intuition give you that extra edge when candidates'resumes make them seem equally qualified. What energy do you want to be surrounded by day in,day out? 2. Focus on character first. Skills can be acquired and nurtured far more easily than character. The truth is that integrity, honesty, loyaltyand all-around good character is harder to come by than skill or talent. This is certainly not the quick and easy way to decide on a candidate, as it may take you longer to find a good fit. Yet you will save yourself time and frustration in the long run when you hire an individual based equally on his or her qualifications and character. 3. Make culture a high priority. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s best-selling book, Delivering Happiness, speaks to the incredible power of business culture to create success. His research shows that companies with a higher sense of purpose outperform those without this sense by fully400 percent. The companies "with" purpose also displayhigherretention, an increase in sales and productivity, fewer sick leaves, less burnoutand more. One need only look to Google and Apple for examples of how culture creates success. Will a potential teammate embody your culture and purpose? Lay the cultural foundation from the beginning. 4. Advisors are a necessity. You absolutely need to add advisors to your team if you haven’t found them already. Business veterans old and young alike who have “been there, done that” can save you a lot of money and heartache along the way. Invest in coaches and mentors whose experiences may enrich your perspective. 5. Don’t be afraid to let go. Firing people sucks. It just does. Especially if you happen to have a heart, which hopefully you do. Be sure to invest in some emotional intelligence training, and practice compassionate communication. When it becomes apparent that you have made a poor choice in your hiring, you will need to let go of teammateswho just aren’t working out. At some point that will probably happen, but rather than being dragged down by a poor team member, you should allow yourself to do what’s best for the company. After all, you are in charge of leading your team, so step up to the challenge and seek advice from those who have "been there" while still taking 100 percentresponsibility for any breakdowns. You will thrive with the right team behind you; and so much more will be possible for your business and your life.
A dream is a clear spiritual lighthouse that gives out direction when you do not know what to expect in the days ahead and offers comfort and support when you become doubtful of yourself.
Risk-Averse Culture Infects U.S. Workers, Entrepreneurs Americans have long taken pride on their willingness to bet it all on a dream. But that risk-taking spirit appears to be fading. Three long-running trends suggest the U.S. economy has turned soft on risk: Companies add jobs more slowly, even in good times. Investors put less money into new ventures. And, more broadly, Americans start fewer businesses and are less inclined to change jobs or move for new opportunities. The changes reflect broader, more permanent shifts, including an aging population and the new dominance of large corporations in many industries. They also may help explain the increasingly sluggish economic recoveries after the past three recessions, experts said. 'The U.S. has succeeded in part because of its dynamism, its high pace of job creation and destruction, and its high pace of churning of workers,' said John Haltiwanger, a University of Maryland economist who has studied the decline in American entrepreneurship. 'The pessimistic view is we've lost our mojo.' Companies that gamble on new ideas are more likely to fail, but also more likely to hit it big. Entrepreneurs face long odds, but those that achieve success create jobs for many others. As important, say economists, are small acts of risk-taking: workers who quit their jobs to find better ones, companies that expand payrolls and families that move from sluggish economic regions to ones with low unemployment rates. Multiplied across the U.S. economy, these acts of faith and ambition help speed money, talent and resources to where they are needed. Of course, too much risk-taking can be dangerous, as the financial crisis showed. And with the stock market soaring, some types of risk are displaying signs of a strong postcrisis rebound. Indeed, the Federal Reserve said it was watching for signs that easy-money policies are leading investors to take excessive risks. But a broad cross section of U.S. economists, from a range of academic disciplines and political persuasions, agree that a specific and necessary kind of risk-taking is on the decline. Historically, risk-taking that supports high rates of churn─lots of hiring and firing, company formation and destruction─gives economies more flexibility to adapt to changing markets. Maxim Schillebeeckx is the kind of ambitious young American who has long propelled the U.S. economy. A 28-year-old doctoral student in genetics at Washington University in St. Louis, Mr. Schillebeeckx also has a graduate degree in economics. He helped create a student-led consulting firm to provide scientific advice to local startups. But despite his enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and his experience in startups, Mr. Schillebeeckx said he planned to look for the safety of work in consulting or private equity, rather than launch his own company or work for a new venture. 'I'm pretty risk averse, personally,' Mr. Schillebeeckx said. 'On the entrepreneurial side, you have to be willing to jump off the deep end.' Mr. Haltiwanger and other economists said this decline in risk-taking─both by companies and individuals─has coincided with a broader slowing of the U.S. economy, particularly for new jobs. In the eight recessions from the end of World War II through the end of the 1980s, it took the U.S. a little more than 20 months, on average, for employment to return to its prerecession peak. But after the relatively shallow recession of the early 1990s, it took 32 months for payrolls to rebound fully. After the even milder recession of 2001, it took four years. Today, nearly four years after the end of the last recession, employment has yet to reach its precrisis peak. Economists have proposed various explanations for the series of slower rebounds, including the rise of outsourcing and automation that have allowed companies to produce more with fewer workers. Pockets of the U.S. economy still burn with a risk-taking spirit. Google, Apple and Facebook reshaped the technology sector, creating new categories of products and services. Energy companies and their investors bet billions of dollars on new drilling techniques that have unlocked new reserves of domestic oil and natural gas. Such coastal cities as San Francisco and Boston, and college towns like Boulder, Colo., and Austin, Texas, boast vibrant communities of entrepreneurs and investors. But risk-taking seems more concentrated than years past, by industry and by region, said Dane Stangler, director of research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit that studies entrepreneurship. 'We absolutely see geographic divergence,' he said. 'We've got these hotbeds of startups, but you just don't see the same level of activity in other areas of the country.' That is a problem for regions left behind. Cities with high levels of entrepreneurial activity had significantly better job growth than those that relied more heavily on existing businesses, according to findings by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser and two colleagues that were published last year. Entrepreneurship is a numbers game that draws a handful of winners from a crowd of participants, Mr. Haltiwanger said. He and other researchers have found that a relatively small number of fast-growing companies create a disproportionate number of new jobs. But such companies are almost impossible to identify ahead of time. Little about Sam Walton's Bentonville, Ark., five-and-dime store suggested Wal-Mart would one day become the world's leading retail chain. Little about Jeff Bezos's online bookstore suggested Amazon's future as the Web's biggest commercial hub. The problem with fewer Americans starting businesses is that there are fewer chances for the next Amazon or Wal-Mart─or even the successful small- or medium-size business. 'It just means that there are fewer new companies that are creating jobs, fewer new companies that are competing for workers,' said Lina Khan, an economist who has studied the decline in entrepreneurship for the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. 'Traditionally being able to start your own business has been a path to upward mobility.' Fewer Americans are choosing that path. In 1982, new companies─those in business less than five years─made up roughly half of all U.S. businesses, according to census data. By 2011, they accounted for just over a third. Over the same period, the share of the labor force working at new companies fell to 11% from more than 20%. Both trends predate the recession and have continued in the recovery. Investors, meanwhile, appear to be losing enthusiasm for startups. Total venture capital invested in the U.S. fell nearly 10% last year and has yet to return to its prerecession peak, said PricewaterhouseCoopers. The share of capital going to new business ventures has fallen even faster, PricewaterhouseCoopers data show, and is more concentrated: Silicon Valley took 40% of venture funding in 2012, up from about 30% in the late 1990s. The decline in risk-taking is reflected in U.S. migration: Americans move less often, with rates of interstate migration falling for at least 20 years, according to census data. They also have less workplace wanderlust: 53% of adults last year held the same job for at least five years, up from 46% in 1996, according to the Labor Department. The share of workers who voluntarily left their jobs in a given year plummeted to 16.1% in 2009 from 25.2% in 2006 and remains well below prerecession levels, Labor Department data show. Economists at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors found the falling rate of interstate migration over the long-term correlated strongly with the decline in job changes. In other words, Fed researchers said, people are moving less because they are changing jobs less. Recent declines in moving may be tied to the collapse of the housing market, which left millions of homeowners owing more than their homes were worth, making it harder to relocate. But the longer trend predated the latest housing bust. Researchers have proposed such explanations as changing demographics and two-income households, which could make it harder for families to move. Companies, too, are taking fewer risks. Rather than expanding payrolls, for example, they are keeping more cash on hand─5.7% of their assets at the end of 2012, up from under 3% three decades earlier, said the Federal Reserve, a rise that accelerated after the recession. Workers are hired more slowly, particularly at newer companies, Labor Department data show. Andy Gugar opened Mercado's restaurant in Tyler, Texas, in 1987, with a second location a year later. By the early 2000s, the chain, known as Posados Café, had a dozen locations in Texas and Louisiana. Since then, expansion has slowed. The chain now has 16 locations and brings in about $38 million per year in sales. Scott Nordon, Posados's chief operating officer, said the chain might one day reach 20 or 25 restaurants but was in no rush. 'We don't want to have 100 stores,' he said. 'There's no pressure for us to grow. If we see an opportunity, guess what, we're going to take advantage of it. But if it doesn't, we're content.' The conservative strategy predates the recession, Mr. Nordon said, but the financial crisis and the current weak economy have reinforced the view. The company plans to pay off debts over the next four years and will fund any expansion with cash. 'Longevity is the name of the game,' he said. Economists aren't sure what is behind the decline in risk-taking. Among the possible explanations are the rising cost of health care, which makes it riskier to quit a job and more expensive to hire more employees; increased state and local licensing requirements that serve as barriers to newcomers─one recent study found that roughly 29% of U.S. employees required a government license or certificate in 2008, up from less than 5% in the 1950s; and immigration rules that deter would-be entrepreneurs from other countries. An aging population is also cited. Young people are more prone to start companies or move for jobs. But the slowdown in risk-taking began before the baby boom generation began to retire. And even younger workers change jobs less often. One barrier for prospective entrepreneurs may be the growing dominance of large corporations in nearly every industry, which make it tough for new ventures to gain a foothold. A small bookstore no longer needs just a better selection or a friendlier staff than the crosstown competition─it also has to compete with national chains and, increasingly, such Internet retailers as Amazon. For the first time since such records have been kept, the Census found in 2008 that more Americans worked for big businesses─those with at least 500 workers─than small ones. The trend has continued since. The work of running family businesses has also scared off younger generations, said Henry Hutcheson, president of Family Business USA, which advises these businesses. 'The lure and ease of joining a blue chip firm, where you get a good job and a decent salary, just seems to be overwhelming,' he said. 'People are saying, 'I can go take over my dad's garden center and I can go run this thing and work seven days a week and be there from dawn until dusk, or I can go manage a Home Depot and they're going to pay me $150,000 and I'll get weekends and vacation.' ' Tony Raney faced that choice. Until a year ago, Mr. Raney worked for the small chain of appliance stores his family operates in Wilkesboro, N.C. After watching his stepfather work nights and weekends, Mr. Raney had second thoughts, especially since national chains offered lower prices. 'It's a lot riskier to be an independent business owner,' he said. 'Big business is out to get you.' A year ago, Mr. Raney left the family business for a data-entry job at a national appraisal firm. 'I feel safer,' he said. 'I have no desire to show up and be the head of the corporation. I just want to show up and do the job.'
Illusion of Prosperity: Deflating the American Dream No Recovery in "Real" Income By Mike "Mish" Shedlock September 23, 2013 In The Morning After; Price Discovery is Zero; PUT on the Bond Market? Is Inflation Really Under 2%? I posted a chart with a caption of "wages" buy the corresponding chart showed "income". The post is now fixed, but newer data has come in, and Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives has updated charts that I would like to share. From Median Household Income Growth: Deflating the American Dream , by Doug Short. What is the single best indicator of the American Dream? Many would point to household income growth. My study of the Census Bureau's data shows a 600.7% growth in median household incomes from 1967 through 2012. The ride has been bumpy, but it equates to a 4.5% annualized growth rate. Sounds impressive, but if you adjust for inflation using the Census Bureau's method, that nominal 614.2% total growth shrinks to 18.8%, a "real" annualized growth rate of 0.39%. But if we dig a bit deeper into the method of inflation adjustment, the American Dream looks more like an illusion, as in " money illusion ". Click for a larger image The data for the charts is from Sentier Research . Sentier uses the CPI as the deflator for computing their real household income data series. The above chart goes back to 1968. It shows that income growth since 1968 is nearly all inflation. Closer scrutiny shows "real" income growth has been negative since the year 2000. Incredible Shrinking Income Please consider this chart from Real Median Household Incomes: Another Monthly Decline by Doug Short. Click for a larger image Real median incomes are down 7.3% since 2000. That means at least half of the population is worse off now than 13 years ago! Think the CPI is a flawed measure? Doug Short has a comparison using different deflators, including the Alternate-CP I from John Williams' Shadowstats . Click for a larger image Doug comments " The Alternate CPI is a rather bizarre outlier. What this deflator is telling us translates into something like this: The 1967 median household income of $7,143 chained in 2012 dollars would have had the purchasing power of $185,588. " By the way, a close look at the above chart shows that the Williams' deflator is 72% since 1989, not all the way back 1967! Although it's easy to believe CPI is off somewhat, "bizarre" is a polite description of how far off Williams is in the other direction. And Williams' views of hyperinflation in the US and when it is likely, go far beyond bizarre to the point of absolute ridiculousness. No Recovery in Real Economy While Bernanke can talk of "recovery" things started deteriorating badly, not in 2008 but all the way back in 2000. The stock market is back to previous highs, but the real economy sure isn't. Originally posted at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis (c) Mike "Mish" Shedlock Investment Advisor Representative www.sitkapacific.com
Is The Multiple-Expansion "Dream" Over? Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/05/2013 20:58 -0400 Consumer Confidence Consumer Sentiment in Share 0 The current market environment of increasing event risk (suppressed by the all too visible un-tapering hand of the Fed) and slumping earnings expectations has had little to no effect on either the US equity market nominal level or the commission-taking asset-gatherers pitching the "long-term" buy that the market always is. Through the magic of multiple expansion, stocks remain at all-time highs and are pitched as "cheap" because multiples can still get bigger - remember March 2000 25.6x P/E ... There is only one thing wrong with that dream. No matter how hard the Fed tries (mistakenly as we noted here) to pump the "economy" full of money to make consumers feel good, Consumer Sentiment has hit a wall... The ubiquitous "but P/Es can expand much much more before they have hit a 'top" chart... But aside from the dot-com bubble, current levels of valuation are at or near peak of the last 30 years... On a historical earnings basis... and a forward-looking basis... But, it's all about confidence... investors will not be willing to pay increasing multiples unless they are confident that the future streams of earnings are sustainable and forecastable... And simply put, the current levels of Consumer Sentiment need to almost double for the US equity market tp approach historical multiple valuation levels... And remember - as we noted here - its the 80% that consume and the 80% are not benefitting from the wealth effect (much to the chagrin of the Fed). So next time your "manager" or investment advisor proclaims stocks are cheap compared to historical peak levels, perhaps its worth asking him with "risk" priced into the market at almost all-time lows, a Fed that is only capable of feeding the richest percentiles of the nation (the rich have never been more comfortable) Where is the next doubling of Sentiment coming from? Especially in light of the collapse in economic confidence that Washington is inspiring... And the cyclical budget-spend now over (and absolutely not expected to pick up anytme soon given the "negotiations")... As we noted before, Be Careful Of The Big Con... Be careful about being too quick to believe that the sluggish economic dynamic that has “dogged us” for the last 6 years is yet fully behind us. If we are correct then the Fed is likely going to have to agonize in the 4th quarter whether to stick with its implicit guidance and taper and even if they go ahead with that decision they may find themselves having to reverse it later. For the 3rd time in this 17 year period we MAY be looking at a 4 year 4 month rise in consumer confidence before a turn lower again. Average: 5 Your rating: None Average: 5 ( 1 vote) !-- - advertisements - .AR_2 .ob_empty {display: none;} .AR_2 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_2 {float: left;width:50%} .AR_2 li {list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;padding-bottom: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_2 .ob_org_header {color: #000000;text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .rec-link {color: #565656;text-decoration: none;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-link:hover {color: #565656;text-decoration: underline;font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 .rec-src-link {font-size: 12px;} .AR_3 li {padding-bottom: 10px;list-style: none outside none !important;font-size: 10px;line-height: 13px;margin:0;} .AR_3 .ob_dual_left, .AR_3 .ob_dual_right {float: left;padding-bottom: 0;padding-left: 2%;padding-top: 0;} .AR_3 .ob_org_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} .AR_3 .ob_ads_header {color: #000000; text-decoration:bold; margin-left: 0px; font-size:14px;line-height:35px;} -- - advertisements - Login or register to post comments 1288 reads Printer-friendly version Send to friend Similar Articles You Might Enjoy: How The Fed-Driven Multiple-Expansion "Robs From The Future" China, Japan Do Their Best To Add To The Overnight Multiple Expansion Charting The Diminishing Multiple Expansion Benefits Of Fed Action Charting The Bubble In Multiple Expansion Breaking Bad News From The Fed’s Z1: Expansions Tend To Explode Near Current Leverage Multiples
A Stunning 60% Of All Home Purchases Are "Cash Only" - A 200% Jump In Five Years Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/15/2013 17:29 -0400 10 Year Bond Bond Housing Bubble Housing Market Real estate recovery Remember when housing was the primary aspirational asset for a still existent US middle class, to be purchased with some equity down by your average 30 year-old hoping to start a family in his or her brand new home, and, as the name implies, aspire to reach the American dream? Those days are long gone. Back in those days the interest rate on the 10 Year bond mattered as it determined the prevailing marginal affordability of leveraged real estate. That is no longer the case, at least not for about 90% of Americans, because as Goldman shows, while before the great crisis only 20% of home purchases were "all cash", since then the number has soared threefold, and currently the estimated percentage of cash transactions (by count and amount) has hit a record 60%. In other words, less than half of all home purchases are debt-funded, and thus less than half of all home purchases are actually representative of what middle-class America is doing. Goldman's take: Exhibit 4 shows the estimated cash transactions as percent of total home sales both by transaction count and by transaction dollar amount. Relative to the pre-crisis years, percent cash transactions has risen by about 30 percentage points. This change is broadly in line with the increases suggested by DataQuick data. The 30 percentage point increase in percent cash transactions explains almost the entire decline in the “mortgage per dollar transaction” series (with the remainder explained by small changes in average LTV ratios per mortgage). We do not have data to assess who these all-cash homebuyers are, but presumably investors who have been purchasing distressed properties and turning them into rental units have played an important role. The WSJ has a few thoughts to add: The surprisingly large cash-share of purchases helps to explain why home sales have jumped over the past two years despite more muted increases in broad measures of new mortgage activity, such as the MBA’s mortgage application index. There’s no exact way to know who is responsible for all of these cash purchases, though they are likely to include some combination of investors, foreign buyers, and wealthy homeowners that don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a mortgage before closing on a sale. Mortgage lending standards have sharply tightened up since the housing bubble, with banks scrutinizing borrowers’ tax returns and bank statements to verify their incomes and the source of their down payment. Our personal thoughts: just like the stock market has been levitating on zero volume and virtually no broad distribution, so the entire housing market appears to have morphed into a "flip that house" investment vehicle used by the usual suspects (wealthy foreign oligarchs abusing the NAR's anti-money laundering exemption to park their stolen funds in the US, government sponsored firms such as BlackStone using near zero cost REO-to-Rent subsidies, and other 0.01%-ers) who piggyback on cash flows deriving from alternative cheap credit-funded investments and translate their profits into real-estate investments. It also means that if nobody used leverage (i.e., mortgages) to buy houses before, they certainly won't do it now, all the more so with interest rates soaring and purchase affordability imploding in front of everybody's eyes. Finally, due to the very thin marginal source of bidside interest (flipper flipping to flipper and so on), it means that most of America has not participated in this mirage "recovery", and all it will take to send the buoyant housing market crashing is for the one marginal buyer to become a seller. What they will next find, is that when dealing with a bidside orderbook that has zero depth, one indeed takes the escalator down from where the lofty heights achieved courtesy of Fed-funded stairs. Average: 4.882355 Your rating: None Average: 4.9 ( 17 votes)
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