I love saving the environment and I a big proponent of having your cake and eating it too. Flip and Tumble produce bags are a great example of this. I've been using them for years. They eliminate the waste of plastic disposable bags. They look good. They feel good. They store well in your refrigerator. They reduce your waste so you don't have to take your trash out so often. I buy mine on Amazon. Flip and Tumble.
I was getting into a discussion with someone about using the process of Sketch Notes to deal with recipes. I like to sketch recipes before I follow them. This is an example of Macaroni and Cheese Italian Style from Cook's Illustrated own Jack Bishop and his cookbook a Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen.
Basically the recipe involves mixing the cheeses, cooked pasta, and a béchamel sauce. I like to sketch recipes and start with the core concept at the center. In this case, the core is mixing the three major components together.
Above the core, I like to put the prepare work, and below the finish work. I hope it helps or inspires. It certainly is tasty!
I have come from a very abusive and neglectful background that resembled slavery and so many simple things that are obvious to others are not to me. One of those is "why do we need to receive empathy?" I'm so used to paying attention the needs of others over my own, I often find myself unwittingly having people in my life that our not empathetic or caring. They tend to not like when I seek their input on feelings or are dismissive.
I have searched the internet and am well read, but I have not found anything on why do need to receive empathy.
I have had a tendency to feel guilty about expecting empathy from others. I think that needing others to care about me or pay attention to me somehow makes me "needy" or "too sensitive." It also implies that I depend upon others for their approval. All these are bad things or are they?
As humans, why do we seek empathy from others? Clearly we are social creatures, and we need others. It is easy to believe that needing others is a sign of weakness because needing others makes us vulnerable and we can get hurt when we are rejected. It's easier to say "We should take responsibility for our feelings" rather than admit we need others.
Wanting empathy for others, I have discovered, is a good thing for them. We want empathy most when we are experiencing strong emotions, and we tend to want it from people we trust and care about. When we have strong emotions we struggle to understand what exactly it is that we are feeling and how do we want to deal with that in the context ourselves and the world at large. We want to clarify our feelings and gain perspective so that we can behave wisely.
If I am angry at an employee because I believe they are not respecting me, that's important. How I deal with that affects a lot of people: my company, the finances, the employee and their family, and my own family. I want empathy because it helps me act responsibly. When others can relate to my feelings and enter my emotional world, what they are doing is helping me better understand what is going on within me and how that affects both myself and the world at large. This is in society's best interest.
In fact what I have learned, is that expecting empathy from others is actually respectful to others.
I've never liked the idea of financing a business. Why does a business need financing? I mean money's not free and it has to get paid back eventually, and with interest. It's always lurking over your shoulder. It's a balance sheet liability that makes it hard to sell the company or even give it to your children. Plus, finding money is hard work that takes away from what the business is really trying to do.
At the end of the day if the business is so good it has to solve the problems of not enough sales and too many expenses. Financing makes it easy to avoid the real problems.
Consider JSA Technologies an Internet banking company that works with colleges and universities. It was financed by customers. They wanted to be on the Internet so badly that they were willing to pay upfront. Big name clients too. The first product was not so hot, but it was good enough and they keep building on it. Now they are growing faster than ever.
In regards to financing, we are talking about debt with no revenue attached. Having customers pay you upfront is fine, even desirable, because assuming that you didn't over promise, then at least you have guaranteed revenues at the end, as well as references.
I tend to look at financing this way, if someone had a cure for cancer would financing be a problem? People would probably be in line and pay upfront, even just for the hope. A company's product or sales technique should be so good, that it can sell before it's completed. If that's not possible, then maybe it's not that great.
One of the main allures of financing is that it gives you the money to build your product. Unfortunately until you sell the product you'll never really know if the market wants it. Even with the best products, it often just takes time, or there are other weird market forces at play. I know I tend to drift into fantasies like Kevin Costner, "if I build it they will come." I imagine being done and everyone coming rushing, and me being rich and throwing money in the air. Then I wake up.
Financing can also play into our insecurities and psychology. We are afraid to admit that we are good enough as we are. We are afraid to release the less than perfect product. Sometimes though, it's actually our openness and vulnerability which makes us trustable and builds clients. Being good enough doesn't mean sacrificing quality, but accepting that we are okay as we are, and it's because we respect ourselves we keep trying to do better.
Every time I go onto Facebook I am always reminded that despite all their money the site often doesn't work properly for me. I'm sure you can find plenty of successful products that fall short.
In some sense this ties into sales. I don't like sales, although I can do it. It's not that I don't like people or that I am trying to be someone I am not, but it's hard. It's hard to put yourself out there.
Financing can make it easy to turn a blind eye to sales. We can justify our lack of sales by saying our website is not ready, the brochure is not good enough, we don't have a sales person, or we don't have business cards. You don't really need any of these things.
I had a friend teach me this lesson. For one of my first clients I was so desperate for business that I sold myself too cheap. I didn't have a website. I didn't have business cards. I didn't have a brochure. I did have a signed contract for $15K with a Fortune 500 company. Proud of myself, I told my friend. He said "What?" He immediately picked up the phone and called the company, without my permission, and said "This contract is worth at least $75K. Why are you paying him $15K? You're taking advantage of him. Seriously?" The customer ended up paying me $75K, even though they didn't have to. The quality of sales.
In the most complex circumstances I find there is a way to get money. Sometimes there is a great deal of money required upfront particularly when dealing with heaving machinery or very complex technology.
I have a friend who started a company selling extremely complex machines used in extracting natural resources (I'm keeping his details private). There was huge upfront R&D required but he did it without financing. How? He tried to put together a board of directors. The directors started to get a little competitive and one of them went all in. This may sound like financing, but the investor needed this technology to grow his business. There was a built-in revenue source. After two years the company was bought for deep figures.
When I started my first company without financing, everyone laughed at me. I don't tend to be a confident or charismatic person, and they were like "you?" Instead they counseled me on "get bigger or go home," and how VC was mandatory. Today, they are all gone with the exception of one, and he conceded that getting investment had been a bad choice for him. He became a slave to his investors and could never really invest in making the company what he wanted. He did end up doing quite well, but not without his share of stress that he said he would have rather done without.
Not having money can be scary, but it can also be a good thing because you can use it to build exclusivity. Do you really need to be as big as possible? Is it better to limit what you offer and have people waiting in demand? Are the other advantages to not having money? Like perhaps getting a job and increasing your opportunities, financial security, and thinking more clearly?
Poor pricing is another way in which financing can get muddled. It's easy to sell too cheap because you have the cash, or too high because you are over confident. Or perhaps you're scared and you compromise and lose sight of the real value of your product. Eventually these things can catch up to you.
In some sense, I know I may be tending to dogmatic in my view on financing, because clearly there are companies that can make it with financing, but for me, that's too hard and too much stress. Perhaps that's the heart of it for me. Why do I want to do this in the first place? What do I expect to achieve? While the fantasy of fame and fortune is nice, I would rather have a modest business that is profitable, low stress, and allows me to invest in having fun and spending time with my family, and having deep meaningful relationships. Maybe no one will recognize me. I don't care. In this way I agree with Timothy Ferris of the Four Hour Work Week.
At the end of the day I rarely find a compelling reason for financing. Maybe others do, but it doesn't work for me.
