I just read a press release disguised as an article on a new website that “is an integrated web portal that allows people with innovative ideas, talents, and skills to connect with like-minded individuals across the globe to help cultivate those ideas into successful business enterprises.”

Can someone tell me what the hell that means?

Sounds like an electronic club house for ‘wanna-be’s’. And the only one that’s going to turn this shell game into a successful business is the website itself (as long as it can find and attract enough ‘like-minded individuals’ to pay their fare).

The LAST thing you need when starting your business is to hang out with ‘like-minded’ individuals. Think about it, you’re just starting out, meaning that you’re clueless as to what’s coming next. So if you hang out with people just like you, you all end up wandering around in the dark trying to find your way. It’s nothing more than one big distraction with the potential to become a huge pity party when things don’t go right.

Instead go out and find others who have been there, done that and ask for a t-shirt. Get to know the entrepreneurs who’ve been at it 10-20-30 years and hang with them. 

It will help you separate from the back and ensure that you don’t become just another ‘wanna-be’. 

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

If you want to know there’s a God, saddle up with four close friends on a clear crisp Saturday morning at sunrise and hit the road. There’s nothing like feeling the cold air in your face while the sun comes to your left splashing bright orange and blue across the sky. Had Café Del Mar’s ‘Nueve’ playing softly on my Nano and all was right with the world. 

It was the start of what turned out to be a 385 mile trip Saturday through the back roads of Central Florida to Anna Maria Island and back. With the weather starting out in the low 60’s and never leaving the 70’s, it was a spectacular ride.

As you all know, I’m a big proponent of getting on the bike in order to think my way through issues and these days the pressure in my world has never been greater. But on this ride not one thought of business rolled through my head the entire time.

Instead I watched the birds take to the air as we rolled by and saw an old ride for the first time again en route to a part of the country I’d not ridden before. I laughed at fuel stops and enjoyed a great breakfast with friends on the Gulf of Mexico. Felt the wind buffet me as we rolled over the Skyway Bridge on our way through St. Pete and rolled with the cagers on Interstate 4 on the way home.

I didn’t solve a damn issue but the pressure definitely decreased simply because I stopped the background noise and just lived for the day.  It was a little slice of Heaven…

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

I just read a very interesting article in the New York Times about how the brain trust at Disney is considering an image makeover for Mickey Mouse. They are completely re-thinking his personality, what his house looks like and even how he interacts with children. “The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland. “

My initial reaction was – HOW STUPID IS THAT? (I think Michael Eisner wants to die just so he can turn over in his grave at the thought!)

My second reaction was – This failure will be fun to watch and I hope to be around for the full ride (pun intended) because it’s going to be long and painful. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I live in the Orlando area and am most certainly NOT a Disney fan. Speaking from experience, I find them to be corporate bullies in that they have the typical “I’m bigger than you so it’s my way or the highway” mentality when dealing with smaller companies. 

And where I’ve always found them to be arrogant, this is beyond belief…and funny. Has any of their leadership learned nothing from business the past 50 years? Did they ever, as the article says, hear of New Coke? This bone headed move is akin to Harley coming out with a lavender scooter. Just doesn’t fit.

But it’s not surprising when you look at what makes up the leadership of major corporations these days. They tend to hire people with initials after their names like MBA who swoop in and multiply like rabbits eventually taking over. The main problem I have with MBAs is that they equate everything to numbers and cunningly use them to blind their leaders.

Leadership can no longer see the company for what it is. Instead it only sees what it’s supposedly worth…according to their formula that is. And the worst case scenario is when the leader is a card carrying member of their cult. They begin chasing short term gains at the expense of everything – people, resources, partnerships and eventually in the most desperate of moves, their souls. If you want to see how devastating these MBA types can be you need only look at what they did to our banking system.

I can’t wait to see Minnie in leather…

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. http://www.bikersguidetobusiness.com/

It appears that as a whole, we’ve adjusted mentally to the current economic situation and fear has been replaced with disappointment and resentment. Lots of 20/20 hindsight by the more mature business crowd wishing they’d have made this move or that. And the younger crowd is more resentful for the older generation ‘blowing it’ thereby making it difficult for them to get started.

There are many qualified individuals out there, no matter their generation, underemployed, now working at restaurants waiting on those fortunate enough not to be effected by the downturn. Its frustration city and people are looking for answers.

So the buzzword of the day is ‘entrepreneurship’ and how it’s time to rise up and take control of your future. But the question is how, and during radio interviews for my book, I’m often asked what advice I give to entrepreneurs, new and old, now that times are tough. The advice I give is no different today than it was 5 or 10 years ago. Success is a process…find yours, stay true to it and you’ll make it.

Sure, in some cases it’s a matter of timing, but the fact is that there’s no perfect time to be in or enter the great game of business. I know because in a lot of ways, I’m doing both. I’m currently 53 years old – my 16 year old consulting business is OK, but feeling some negative effects of the economy. And, I’m also in the very early stages of launching a new Internet venture.

Good timing…bad timing…who the hell knows. The only thing I’m sure of is that the time is now and in order to be successful I simply have to figure out the playing field. The crazy thing is that both ventures evoke the same emotions as I’m faced with the same obstacles and experience the same fears and frustrations in each, but from different perspectives. One is looking down the mountain and the other is looking up. 

The key is going to be my ability to maintain 20/20 vision on each. I’ll let you know in subsequent blogs how I’m doing.

 Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – These are just my thoughts, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you.

Certainly today’s economic environment is a difficult one. In most cases, rapid growth is a thing of the past and success in business today means grinding it out, day in and day out. However, these difficult times can also be a false crutch for sub-par performance. 

I’ve recently been called back to help out two former clients, both of whom have been in business for decades and are considered leaders within their respective industries. Both however are beginning to struggle, and to their credit, are looking in the mirror rather than simply chalking it up to the economy. 

In one case, the CEO wants to figure out why her team isn’t performing up to the standards set a couple of years ago.  During the hour-long discussion, we created the agenda for a half-day work session with the group to get them back on track. When returning to my office, I pulled up my files on the company and found an agenda from a couple of years ago that was an exact duplicate of what we’d just composed for the upcoming meeting.  The only thing I needed to change was the date. 

Sure, some of the players have changed, but the core team is intact, so I now needed to find out why it is that a couple of years later we have to re-address the exact same issues as before. In meeting with the group, I discovered that the things (tools and processes) we’d implemented the first time around that led to direct and positive change were no longer being used.

There are a million and one reasons /excuses as to why, but it simply comes down to corporate ‘boredom’. For example, the meetings that we established back then were so groundbreaking but are now considered boring and a waste of time because the information shared is no longer new and exciting. So six months ago everyone agreed that their time could be better spent on more ‘important’ things and the meetings were disbanded. 

What they failed to see is that those boring meetings are where the real work is done. Those mundane topics are what lubricate the wheels of their organization and by no longer covering these ‘every day’ items, they were allowing them to fall through the cracks and slow down the growth of the company. 

Unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence as most companies are guilty of this type of devolution. But winning companies understand and value the mundane moments over those that cause us to go ‘aha’.

To equate it to sports, any player or team can have a game or two where they make the big play and win in dramatic fashion.  But the champions are the ones that consistently pay attention to and work on the little things that eventually become boring. The great Michael Jordan’s morning workout ritual was legendary as is the time Tiger Woods spends on the practice tee.

Day in and day out champions work on the little things that only count when the game begins.

 Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – These are my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you.

It’s 7:00 a.m. and I’m watching the sun come up over Manhattan from my room in the W Hotel in Hoboken New Jersey. I’m here for meetings later with my publisher and even though I’m not in New York proper, I have the perfect view of it all.

Directly across the river from my room stands the Empire State Building and the rest of the city that symbolizes all that is possible. And it’s now that I’ve truly come full circle.

As I wrote in a previous blog this stretch of my journey began with the tragedy of 9-11, but this writing isn’t about that. Nor is it a ‘look at me and how successful I am’ blog that are so prevalent across the web these days. I have by no means ‘made it’ and still have so much farther to go.

But I’m here right now at this crazy moment in time asking why and how did a Cajun boy from Louisiana sitting atop his 1972 Honda 100 end up here? 

WHY – because I’ve always been a dreamer that asked the question, “Why not me?”  Indeed all of the self help books tell you to visualize but in order to visualize, you first have to dream. What most don’t tell you is that the dream doesn’t have to be big; it only has to be important – to you.

When first straddling that Honda 100 I never envisioned sitting in this hotel room gazing at New York three weeks after my book has come out. Back then my dream was to graduate high school, ride that puppy to New Orleans, find a job and place to live…which I did, but on a Honda 350. 

Which leads me to the HOW.  Just like taking that ride into New Orleans, I dreamed one step at a time.  Yes, there was the overall dream of financial success, travel, meeting cool people and finding the perfect Margarita.  But there are so many intermediate dreams that we must lock into and not gloss over as we look over the horizon to the big one.  (I will find that perfect Margarita one day)

The problem, as I see it, isn’t that people aren’t dreaming, it’s that they tend to discount their smaller dreams as unimportant and as such, overlook them. But accomplishing one dream allows you to dream about the next with greater clarity.  And it’s within this state of clear that you figure out how to achieve that dream. It creates a wonderful domino effect that boosts your ability to dream more while honing the skills needed to achieve them. 

So, dreaming about making just a few more dollars or buying that second hand car doesn’t make you a loser compared to those who are dreaming of millions and a new Mercedes. Instead each achievement makes you stronger and more confident as you get that raise in pay and buy that new old car.

And then one day you find yourself sitting in a hotel room looking at the Empire State Building knowing that it’s been a long and twisty ride with many bumps and bruises along the way.  And that you wouldn’t have ridden it any other way. 

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are just my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

The reason life is like a baby in a swing is because if all you do is push, the swing eventually leaves your hands, flies over the bar and hits you in the butt, injuring both of you. In other words, for a happy baby/life you must know when to push it and when to let it come to you.

For most ‘Type-A’ entrepreneurs, this is damned near impossible. After all, we wouldn’t be where we are today or on the road to where we want to be without pushing long and hard. Therefore, the key is to know when we’re close to the point of tossing the baby over the bar.

For me it’s when I can no longer shake the little things.  They begin to really tick me off and I really begin to lose it over the bigger issues. Case in point – last week.

My new book, The Biker’s Guide to Business hit the shelves three weeks ago and I’ve been laser focused on its promotion.  I’ve assembled a great team and have reached out to other incredible resources. Now, it’s simply a matter of doing the work – of which there is a ton!

We’ve all been there, only so many hours in a day but the backhoe keeps dumping and dumping and dumping. Finally at the end of last week, it all became overwhelming as there were too many people to talk to, screwy interviews and things falling through the cracks. As a result, the background noise became deafening and my edges began to seriously fray.

So I took my own advice and shut it down. It was time for a lost weekend, so starting Friday at 6:00 p.m. the phone and the computer were turned off. On Saturday morning, after my workout I saddled up and hit the back roads.

It took about half a tank of gas for me to begin noticing the butterflies along the side of the road and the herons floating aimlessly above the marsh. I even slowed my pace enough to find that elusive pocket within the traffic flow where no one was in front or behind me for most of the ride. The only things left were the wind in my face and nature as my canvas. All became right again with the world.

Then on Sunday I was incredibly productive, not because I had to be, but because I wanted to be. Everything just fell into place and I regained my rhythm by simply giving up one day and re-calibrating my place in the world.

So if you’re moving faster and accomplishing less, stop the madness. All it takes is a day off by yourself doing something you love. Remember, it’s your ‘baby’.

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are just my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

For most of this year I’ve watched a very interesting trend in business, the changing of the management guard. Or as I call it – The Rise of the Thirty-Somethings.

On the surface you may think that companies are replacing their older managers for purely economic reasons – younger is cheaper. To an extent that is true, but it’s not the whole story. 

The main reason this change is taking place is attitude. You see, these thirty something managers and entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know and that’s a good thing.  This is, in large part, the first time they’ve faced really tough economic times with the capacity to do something about it. 

When 9-11 sent the economy into a tailspin, they were still in their twenties and mostly dealing with growing up along with the tough economic times, so the effect was somewhat lost on them. This time however, they have a decade or more of business experience under their belts, energy and best of all, no memory.

The older managers and leaders remember the good old days and are still longing for them. They struggle with the fact that their five year goal of retirement is now ten or fifteen years away. And who can blame them? It’s tough to wake up knowing that their life has become the tale of Sisyphus with that darned rock getting oh-so-close to the top only to roll back down the hill.

Unfortunately, business doesn’t care and makes no concessions for being close. It’s the toughest win/lose game out there and all about productivity. If your head’s not in the game, you lose – simple as that. 

So, if you’re a business owner wondering how to energize your company, skew younger.  And if you’re a forty to fifty something out there I highly recommend you check your attitude and leave the past behind.  If you don’t, you’re bound to become part of it. 

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are just my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

To be sure, we all know where we were and what we were doing on September 11, 2001 as everyone was deeply affected by the tragedy and loss of life. And, having never experienced a terrorist attack on our own soil, the country threw itself into the equivalent of neutral on the economic transmission of business and dropped the kickstand for a while. Commerce came to a screeching halt as businesses everywhere were hit hard – I know, because that day literally cratered my company.

On that fateful morning I and my team were in a planning meeting putting together the proposal that would, in our minds, win us the first contract on a project I’d literally bet the farm on. But it was not to be, as everything I’d worked on for the previous nine months was wiped off the table along with so many of my hopes for the future. In a matter of hours I found myself perilously close to the abyss that is failure, left to metaphorically pick the bits of pavement out of my butt from one hell of a wipeout.

Second to being told I had cancer, it was the most frightening and challenging time of my life as every fiber of my being was put to the test.  But I, like many others, picked myself up and began the difficult task of rebuilding my company.  And in doing so, I created my process for navigating one’s life and business through tough times.

Fast forward seven years and on September 11, 2008 the editorial team at John Wiley and Sons were deciding to take a flyer on a first time author with the concept for a book called The Biker’s Guide to Business. My agent called the next day, September 12 giving me the good news and once again, that fateful date of 9-11 shifted my life. I almost finished that last sentence with ‘for the better’, but in reality, the first 9-11 did too.  Only I didn’t know it at the time. 

Bikers know that there are two types of riders, those who have laid them down and those that will.  And it’s the same in life as we’re all going to face our own personal tragedies and challenges along the way.  And we may not know it at the time, but they occur for a reason and it’s up to us to find the lesson in each and if possible, carry on.

I recently heard a quote attributed to the great Jack Welch that goes “Great companies are built through tough times.” I submit that it can also apply to one’s life, but only if we’re paying attention. 

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are just my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com

I love to ride – anytime, anyplace, all day or all night, or both. 

This Labor Day weekend, rather than attend the barbeques or hit the beach I joined The Ribbon Riders, a group of female riders raising money for breast cancer and rode 1000 miles in 24 hours in order to attain Iron Butt status, something I’ve wanted for years. 

It began with Pam, one of the group’s founders, letting me know that they were doing it to raise money for their cause – breast cancer. And, after much groveling and pleading, the ladies agreed to let me ride with them – as long as it was in the back of the line. 

We lifted the kickstands at 5:00 a.m. and 20 hours in the saddle and 1059 total miles later we became Iron Butt Certified and members of the World’s Toughest Bikers. Along the way, I thought about this challenge and the others we all face each and every day. I came to the conclusion that there are only two types of challenges out there, the ones we want to accomplish and those that we have to accomplish. 

The first is by pure choice and the second is usually thrust upon us out of circumstance rather than consent. In either case, these challenges are difficult and thrilling and what makes them fun (or not) at the time is advanced notice.  We don’t like surprises and the notice offers us an opportunity to plan and therefore anticipate the needs and difficulties we’ll face along the way.   

Therefore the key in accomplishing those thrust upon us is to remember that it too is usually associated with something we love doing. It’s just hidden behind that mountain of doubt that comes from being blindsided.

Dwain – The BusinessBiker

As always – these are just my thoughts on the matter, I could be wrong.  So, if you disagree or simply want to pile on, please do so either here on the BLOG or email me directly at Navigator@BikersGuidetoBusiness.Com  I look forward to hearing from you. www.bikersguidetobusiness.com