Parenting your Business

Much in the same way parents would think about their child, entrepreneurs must be concerned about business. The love, the health, the development must all be considered in the context of external factors.

From birth your project needs you to provide its nutrients, shelter or location, security and attention. A gestation period is important for you to prepare or plan for every foreseeable and unforeseeable event. A good plan must include how to deal with intangibles when difficult situations arise, if for one reason or another you are unable to provide inputs on time or some tragedy affects your ability to function, the plan must address and point to solutions to give you the strength to carry on.

Guiding a Nations Youth

Many among us wonder why crime has become so wide spread and brutal. Some say that it was always so, it is just being more widely reported due to the technology now available to journalists. Others say that the education system lacks discipline and has excluded and failed many. Yet others say that the police are not doing their work. The most widely accepted explanation is based on the financial rewards of illegal drugs and the trafficking of said drugs leading to turf wars and the need for guns to protect such turfs. Whatever the reasons, the solution is to build a strong morally based, highly educated and tolerant society.

Teaching the Parents

Education is a corner stone of a great society and as such, must be adequately funded and accessible and available to the entire population. Failure to do so will lead to more money being spent on national security. Learning is a constant that happens in any circumstance, from birth to death and at any location, but teaching needs a formal setting and an equipped (classroom, laboratory, grounds, etc.) site to be effective. Curriculum or course design requires research and development and must be constantly updated and understood by the teachers who are to deliver it. A safe living (home and neighborhood) environment is essential to learning.

Efficiency drives Business

Along with Religious morals and Government regulations, Business activity is one of the corner stones of a great society, delivering essential goods and services directly or indirectly to consumers, creating and sustaining the desired economic activities that fuels growth and improving upon the existing standard of life. Business cannot achieve its core objective, provide jobs or offer a reasonable return on investment without being mindful of the actual and attainable levels of efficiency.

Efficiency; the ability to get things done without waste of energy or time, using processes to generate solutions, paying fairly for and encouraging productivity and innovation, making the best out of the least, none of which can be measured using a balance sheet or budget.

Agriculture Issues

Any plan to deal with Agriculture and Food Production has to be discussed in terms of financial feasibility and social responsibility. Agriculture must be seen as both a money making venture and as a health security issue. It is the profit-making aspect of the sector that encourages the risk-takers to invest; the capital component, the skilled personnel, the time and effort. The haunting reality that the human body must have proper forms of nutrients to be healthy and productive must drive Governments’ actions.

Buyer Beware, Seller Be Careful

People have always expected more from their leaders, even when they understand that expectations are similar to a quenchless thirst, the more you get the more you want. Today’s leaders fully recognize that an educated population is essential to improving lifestyles and will question each and every decision along the way, thus challenging the leadership. Many wanting to go slower, study and analyze the direction plotted and take stock of progress. Others want to go faster, build and expand upon the existing facilities and provide for the future now. This division is political and if the “many” outnumber the “others”, the election winners set the agenda, the pace and are responsible for the state of the economy. Hence, all public financial projections or budget statements are political in nature.

Information Power

The key to success in every aspect of life comes from setting measurable and attainable goals. Dreams may guide an objective but until practical plans are formulated all you have is the dream. Thoughts of winning a lot of money (lottery), inheriting a fortune or even just working hard are all just dreams that need to be transformed into more sensible statements. “I will work for a salary that allows me to invest ten percent of my disposable income in a lottery.”, “Because my family operates business I will work and educate myself to one day in the future lead that business.” or “I will work, continue to educate myself and invest fifty percent of disposable income in marketable securities (stocks, bonds and real estate).” These statements must be further expanded into detailed plans and strategies that define, firstly, what is meant by work, educate and invest, secondly, the time frame associated with particular tasks and most importantly, who will help or hinder specific actions.

Restaurant Business

The Restaurant business is a complex one comprising three different sectors; the Service Sector, the Trade Sector and the Manufacturing Sector, each with its own challenges. To succeed management must master costing and pricing issues in each of the three sectors and define the type and scale of the operation.


Service Sector, Entertainment Industry with a simple costing formula management can target the demographic (age group and disposable income) it wants to invite by creating the necessary ambiance, in which location is the key. This can range from a clean watch-the-cook, side walk café, food bar with specialty service staff and quick check-out to a full service, five star layout with in-house live-entertainment with special theme nights. The more combination of settings used the more difficult the costing formula and the pricing strategies; whether to charge an entrance fee, add a service charge on to the bill or absorb the cost into the bill.

Energy Issues

With the invention and wide usage of the circuit board in many personal devices and electric motors driving production, human beings have become as dependent on electricity as they are on water. Hence meeting the projected electricity generation needs is today’s biggest priority.

With battery technology becoming more efficient in its storage capacity and its ability to be transported, light weight smaller devices that are highly portable are presently available and transforming the communication industry and all other sectors dependent on communications. Soon with longer times between charges, larger equipment employing electric motors that can perform heavier duties will use electricity stored in moveable batteries, hence modifying both the transportation and manufacturing industries.

Life Intangibles

We all are very busy whether in our Personal, Professional or Business lives, but are we productive and to what end. The reward for productive activities is happiness and the greater level of happiness present is the only defense against life’s inevitable misfortunes. Lives cannot be strictly measured by the assignment of net worth or net asset values. Lives are, much more complicated, filled with more intangible issues.

Business relies heavily on managerial and accounting reports and to a lesser degree on its reputation to define itself and to build equity for future growth. Professionals also rely on financial and accounting reports but more on their reputation, defining themselves by the size of their clientele (people who seek their advice). Persons never use money or accounting methods to value childhood (the starting period of their lives) but rely a great deal on family name and reputation, gifts of birth. Hence, accounting reports should be used to guide monetary decisions towards (life’s top priority) building and maintaining a good name. Money from illegal or unethical activities will destroy the family name.