A darned good day

Yes, I know there don’t seem to be many of these, but I can’t believe that I’m some kind of entrepreneurial head case. I bet there’s a whole lot of suffering and angst going on in the start-up community all the time.

It’s just that I’m probably one of the few talking about it. Business people in general don’t seem to like to let on what a tough time they’re having. Stiff upper lip, go-get-em attitude and all that. Very northern European. But I talk about it because I think it’s important for people – especially fellow entrepreneurs - to realize that starting a business or any creative project can be just plain hard and depleting. That it’s normal to feel crushed a lot. That they’re not alone. 

We have to learn to cope with all the bad days.

AND we have to learn to enjoy the heck out of the great ones, when they come along. It’s only fair. We keep having to make lemonade all the time, so when life gives us pure dark Belgian chocolate, we deserve to revel in it.  

I felt like I was handed two boxes of bonbons yesterday because I got several big free-lance assignments (we entrepreneurs have to eat while building the biz ….) and especially because I signed up two terrific new bloggers for the Geniocity.com site. I’ll reveal more about them in the next week or so. 

It was fabulous.

So for a few hours – maybe a whole 24 (!) – I’m going to bask in the sense of relief and elation suffusing my sore psyche and let a few of my nerve endings romp therapeutically in the metaphorical Godivas and use a generous number of extremely large words just because I want to.

Good day and ganache to everyone.             

Yum

What kind of dough gets your vote?

Barack Obama had some words for me last night.

He said, “We measure the strength of our economy, not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business.”

A little later, he spoke to me even more directly. “And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business or making her way in the world, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.”

He was speaking to you, too. For eight years now, we’ve all seen our economy turn into a feudal system where the resources and the future belong only to a tiny number of extremely wealthy, privileged people.  These people – the heads of major corporations, scions of rich families, big donors and personal friends of the politically powerful - have gotten richer and richer from insanely outsized salaries, golden parachutes, enormous bonuses, stock options and personal and corporate tax breaks while millions of ordinary people have tumbled into financial uncertainty or poverty.

To George W. Bush and his cadre, it has been more important to indulge the pathological greed of already moneyed people than to help the working poor and middle class keep their jobs and be able to afford food, heat, transportation, medical care and education.  This policy, if you can call it that, doesn’t make sense even for the rich – who will work in their industries and provide their services if everyone but them and their friends is too sick or unschooled or immobilized by gas prices to hold down what jobs remain? 

Obama has it right. The vitality and success of America come from its grassroots, from the creativity and initiative of its individual citizens. And all that has been largely ignored and neglected for eight years in which catastrophic wrongheadedness and decline have brought America to the brink of what, with all the home foreclosures and bank failures, has looked at times more like the coming of another Great Depression than a recession.       

So when Obama says he wants to eliminate the capital-gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups that create the high-paying, high-tech jobs that offer one of our nation’s best hopes for a prosperous future, I don’t just hear an idea that would help me keep Geniocity.com alive and growing. I hear a change in the wind, a hint that everyday Americans may once again, in time, be able to thrive and realize their best ideas and dreams through their own hard work, no matter who they are or how modest their circumstances.

For two terms now, Bush’s actions have said “let them eat cake.” John McCain wants to stay that course. But Obama wants to make it possible for each of us to make a better loaf of bread and own the bakery that produces it.

Can we afford to vote for anyone but him?

Creative Nerve: What It’s Really Like to Start a Business

EntrepreneurFest? My company has started getting invitations to take part in business shows and media promotions – the types of things designed, not just as ways to let the public or business community shop for services, but also to give companies that buy tables or booths or advertorial space the chance to do some marketing.

These things always look like great opportunities … until I see how much they cost. 

They’re never priced for start-ups like mine: small, undercapitalized, struggling. Doesn’t that describe an awful lot of start-ups?

What we founders of tiny (for now) creative enterprises need is collaborative promotions of our own on the edges of the big ones. They could be to mainstream business shows and promos what the Fringe is to the Edinburgh Festival, a lively showcase of the independent, nimble,  daringly different, even weird little efforts of entrepreneurs who are stretching the fabric of the industry establishment.

Tables, booths and ads here on the outskirts should cost little – maybe $50 for a two-day conference or a sixteenth-of-a page magazine space – and cheap-chic inventiveness should be the aim of the presentations. Stuff as many of us as possible onto the sidewalks or corridors of the business-show arenas or into the back pages of the booklet so the atmosphere provides a thrilling little hint of the chaotic and experimental, and the start-ups’ displays spill over into one another’s the way entrepreneurs’ ideas bubble out of the box. 

Humor, spontaneous interactions, impromptu collaborations, visual connections – a sort of live business improv theater promising adventure, discovery and fun to the openminded – wouldn’t that be a terrific contrast to the staid and proper business-card exchanges taking place among the suited masses in the main show? 

It might turn out to be something the general public demands to experience because it’s so much unexpected fun and showcases so many new ideas. And best of all, it would give start-ups an affordable and outstandingly cool way to promote themselves.

Any takers?