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Business Notes
Feb
05
2010
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 05 February 2010 |
 Whenever I begin a workshop on exit, or succession planning for business owners, I begin with the obvious and much avoided question, “ If a catastrophic event removed you from your business today, what would happen to it? To your family? To your employees? To your customers and vendors?
This question is particularly difficult for owners of privately-help businesses with fairly simple infrastructures. Most entrepreneurs are optimistic, and so involved in their businesses, that they typically put off long-term exit planning. Therefore, this question raises potentially painful issues, because they know the answer, and that their procrastination can have devastating effects.
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Jan
29
2010
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 29 January 2010 |
I just arrived home from an evening at the King Ferry Hotel, visiting with my friend Nancy Shaw. We chatted the evening away, connecting on so many levels. And the most striking part of our conversation all night came just before my partner Michael alerted me to “be prepared to exit the vehicle,” which is what he usually says when he’s dropping me of somewhere, usually about 10 minutes late. (He tries so hard to be a good timekeeper, and I make his job really miserable at times. I’ve accepted that fact that I’ve been born with a defective clock and compass implanted in my brain…)
At any rate, just prior to being given a ten minute warning, Nancy and I were discussing the joys of living simply. ( Who would ever want to cut this discussion short?!) She recalled that a while ago I told her that Michael and I decided to give his grandkids experiences for gifts – we realized that we couldn’t give them any things that would make lasting impressions, but we could give them memorable experiences.
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Jan
15
2010
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 15 January 2010 |
I was at the gym recently, and while on the elliptical, read a short expose about Bernie Madoff in Vanity Fair, which I picked up off the magazine rack by the treadmills. It was written by his longtime personal assistant, who was totally unaware of his behavior until he was arrested. Reeling from the effects of such a violation of trust, her feelings did a 180 from total dedication to and admiration of Madoff to feelings of disgust and real hate.
We all love to hate Bernie Madoff. His greed. His arrogance. His lies. How he bilked his best friends out of their riches. His betrayal of trust, ruthlessly absconding with his clients’ life savings, leaving them destitute while living in the lap of luxury.
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Jan
08
2010
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 08 January 2010 |
I wanted to write about sustainability for my first entry of the New Year, and found inspiration from a Christmas card a dear friend sent me. The front of the card reads “Wherever you stand be the soul of that place,” by Rumi. How 2010, a Christmas card quoting a mystic Sufi poet! ( actually, it was a blank card, with a hand-written Merry Christmas message on the inside.)
Nevertheless, the message is two-fold and very Aquarian: of the conscience of sustainability coupled with a celebration of spiritual unity. I’d like to make a connection of these ideas to business.
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Dec
18
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 18 December 2009 |
I went online to review the buzz that followed Obama’s meeting with a dozen top bankers at the White House on the 14th. While he admonished the “fat cats on Wall Street” for their role in keeping money tight for Main Street and larger small businesses, he failed to address one major hole into which the economy leaked significantly – the TARP funds.
Whatever happened to the 700+ BILLION DOLLARS that helped bail out the banks (beside what was used for executive bonuses and to fund bank acquisitions)???? And why, still, isn’t it being used to help American businesses?
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Dec
03
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 04 December 2009 |
With the release of The Secret a few years ago, there’s been an ongoing buzz in ever widening circles beyond the New Age strata about the art and science of manifestation.
From the get-go I believed the authors of The Secret were capitalizing on the unexpected cult success of What the Bleep?, and put together a watered down version of teachings that have been available for millennia. While the principles of manifestation may now be explained using quantum physics, the power of mind has produced in human beings fantastic results for ages. Witness the great pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu, to name a few.
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Nov
13
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 13 November 2009 |
I was at a get together of many old friends and acquaintances this past weekend. All of us gathered together were women, most straddling midlife in various and sundry situations, personally and professionally. Of the 35 or so of us, most are employees in a professional capacity working in privately-held businesses, non-profit organizations, or public institutions, one woman recently retired, and three of us are self-employed. I had an interesting conversation with a friend, Anne, who was an HR executive, and laid off by her employer six months ago.
She decided not to panic and to look carefully for the right situation. She’s been interviewing for positions, locally and nationally, similar to her last employment gig. She has also begun a process that includes a re-evaluation of her life path. Anne began really examining how she wants to invest her energies in her work life in the years to come. Having left the corporate world, she feels free to wonder whether she might want to own her own business. Among other options, she’s begun looking at different franchises to purchase.
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Oct
16
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 16 October 2009 |
Many of you may have reacted with mixed thoughts to the article in the Ithaca Journal this past Tuesday, about the action against Providence Hobbies by the New York State Tax Authority. Having worked with small businesses throughout upstate New York the past eight years, I find Jeff Wity’s experience more than symbolic of the dire situation of our current economy, and specifically, of small business, the backbone of our economy.
Anyone who has not experienced the high risk rights of passage of entrepreneurship, such as being required to secure business lines of credit with personal assets, and who passes judgment regarding a business owner’s seeming failure or success, has little understanding of the business landscape on “Main Street.”
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Oct
09
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 09 October 2009 |
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How often do you stop and really take time to think about your personal happiness? I recall many years ago, when I would discuss with my mom any frustration with my chosen lot in life, she would respond: “I just always wanted you to be happy.” Wow. Many years later I realize the profundity of her wish for me. Then, I thought she was ridiculous. Happy? OK, content…gratified, satisfied, rewarded…happy seemed too, well, simple. Oh yeah?
We Americans have the unfortunate task of stripping the Protestant Work Ethic cum Horatio Alger myth from our collective consciousness. First of all, hard work does not by definition create a golden egg. Secondly, financial success has little to do with one’s happiness. Studies galore have shown that once safety and survival issues are satisfied, there is little to no difference in the level of happiness between the haves and have-nots.
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Sep
25
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 25 September 2009 |
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Is it important for you to be inspired in your work? Whether one finds great meaning in one’s work, or one works to provide creature comforts for ones’ family and oneself, or both, work itself is a paramount force in the lives of most Americans. Statistics abound documenting the dramatic increase in number of days on the job for Americans workers over not only the past several decades, but even over the past ten years.
Eight years ago my partner Michael gave me a book to read that literally spoke directly to my lifelong desire to make a difference in the world through my work. It was Matthew Fox’s 'The Reinvention of Work,' which celebrates work as a spiritual path. I recently learned a great word for being inspired, or “spoken to” through books – “bibliomancy.”
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Sep
18
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 18 September 2009 |
When my daughter was between two and three years old, I wouldn’t say we suffered through the typical tantrums of the terrible twos. But surely we lived with a child whose answer to every question was “No!” I quickly learned the art of providing options.
For example, at bedtime I never asked, “Stephanie, are you ready for bed?” Instead, I’d pose, in the most cheerful, inquisitive voice I could muster without her seeing through me, “Tonight, do you want to put on your red or your blue jammies?’
Worked like a charm, every time. She’d be so thrilled with the ability to make her own decision, that she would forget that she didn’t want to go to bed, and instead, put her jammies on, brush her teeth, and head right into the sack! Who was being taught the lesson? That would be moi – a lesson in the art of options.
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Sep
11
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 11 September 2009 |
Tonight ushered in one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen on Cayuga Lake. That’s saying A LOT. Whether you’re a west sider, who favors the sunrise, or an east sider, who prefers to watch the sun go down, everyone around here is pretty smug about our window on the sun god’s glorious retreat into the horizon. Another perk of living in the Finger Lakes – nice big vistas and gorgeous sunsets over rolling hills.
The glory of this particular sunset made me smile, realizing that we often refer to our “golden” years as the sunset of our lives. Smile, because, just as the sun falls below the horizon, its rays permeate the heavens with the most radiant shades of salmon, orange, and red, only to fade to night before us, and a new day to those on the other side of the world, as well as a new dawn for us only hours later.
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Aug
28
2009
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by Patricia Brown, Integrated Business Ventures
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Friday, 28 August 2009 |
I was perusing Norm Brodsky’s blog on the Inc. Magazine online edition, and read an article close to my partner Michael’s and my hearts. It was actually written in August of 2007, about when we began telling many business owners who were emotionally ready to leave their businesses, but still waiting for the “best time”, to “Sell!” Funny, that’s the title of Norm’ s article.
What he said then is even more salient now. It was back in 2007 that Michael was telling anyone who would listen that multiples were the highest they’d be for years to come, maybe ever. He also predicted the impending implosion of the real estate bubble and the tumbling of the financial house of cards built by hedge fund managers bent on reaping obscene rewards from financial shell games played within the loopholes of financial regulation.
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