So you want to start a business….NOW?
January 13th, 2010 by Julia TaylorA New Year begins with sense of new things possible in our lives. So suppose you’ve been thinking about that business you’ve always been wanting to start. Economic times are tough. What advice would our community of CEOs give you?
Here’s the responses from some of our region’s top and innovative CEOs.
What advice would you give someone starting a company or a spin-off now? Opportunities? Cautions?
Sheldon Lubar, Chairman, Lubar & Company:
“Do all of your homework before you start and be certain you have commitments for the necessary start up money.”
Paul Purcell, Chairman/President/CEO, Robert W. Baird & Company:
“This is a good time to start a business form an economic point of view but very challenging from a political point of view with regard to increased health care costs, taxes and increased regulation.”
Dan Steininger, President, Steininger & Associates & BizStarts Milwaukee:
“Since the launch of BizStarts Milwaukee we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of new potential high-growth companies getting started. The deal flow to our Angel investment network, the Successful Entrepreneur Investors, has been up dramatically in 2009. We see that trend line continuing even stronger in 2010.
This is important because the Wisconsin economy has lost so many jobs. The key to job growth is to start new companies. Major corporations will continue to be reluctant employers of new employees. The trend line of downsizing by major corporations is not simply result of this recent recession but it’s been going on for the last quarter of a century.”
Jill Morin, Executive Officer, Kahler Slater:
“My advice to anyone starting a business is to be clear about the kind of company you want to be and the kinds of experiences you want to provide to your clients, your employees — all of your stakeholders. Having a vision for your future success that authentically differentiates you in the marketplace is the key to success. Then, hold to that vision, even when the going gets rough, and make it manifest in everything you do.”
Austin Ramirez, CEO, INCOVA Technologies:
“If you can access sufficient capital, now is a great time to launch a new business due to high availability of talented employees and the many changes in government and private sectors that have been forced by the recession will generate new value creation opportunities.”
Tim Sullivan, President & CEO, Bucyrus International:
“This is a tough domestic business environment. If you’re going to do it, make sure it either is filling a void left by a departing business; creating a new niche where demand can be clearly defined; or has something to do with where the real growth is happening, i.e., the developing and emerging international economies.”
Steve Roell, CEO, Johnson Controls:
“Understand your markets and how susceptible they are to economic volatility. Make sure you are capitalized to withstand the unexpected and that you’ve considered various contingency plans.
In terms of opportunities, the long viability of a business is tied to innovation that truly provides a unique value to your customer. If you have that idea and a sound business plan, this isn’t a bad time to access capital at reasonable rates.
Finally, look for opportunities to partner with another firm that gives you better market access to distribution, a customer base, sales force etc.”
Mark Furlong, President/CEO, M&I Corporation:
“A level of investor interest that will offer an opportunity to obtain what seems at that moment like excess capital, a business plan that will attract some extent of financing, a portion which should be longer-term in nature, and the experience and wisdom to execute your plan as intended, calling upon the expertise of trusted advisors, when necessary.”
David Raysich, Partner, Plunkett Raysich Architects, LLP:
“Starting a business today is a distinct advantage over starting a business in an economic boom. Every existing business is operating with a new normal. Your new business will be operating with the new normal but without all the easy spending baggage.”
The High Price of Bad Policy–Esau’s Porridge
September 28th, 2009 by Julia TaylorToday I attended a TRE (Transforming Economic Regions) Roundtable organized by the Land Grant Universities. Neil Noyes, President of the Virginia Tobacco Commission, riveted all of us with his incredible vision which is now a reality of transforming the textile mills, tobacco fields and coal mines of Virginia by investment of the State’s Tobacco Settlement Fund of $35 million in capital into 5 R&D facilities in energy opportunity fields–nuclear, carbon, composites and renewable energies. $100 million in grant match to incentivize research partnered with Virgina Commonwealth Institutions just rolled out a month ago and they are making their first $20 million investment. This is happening in the poor, rural communities of Virginia. They invested in infrastructure–the typical industrial parks, roads and water but also invested in two major fiber optics networks that span two large regional areas. There is no research university in either region which led to the formation of the 5 R&D facilities. Neil described this as based on inclusive networks that value collaboration, are responsive to private sector needs and are not passive but activist networks for change.
Remember what happened to Wisconsin’s Tobacco Settlement money? We took the Esau approach and sold our birthright for a quick budget fix bowl of porridge.
A New Way of Seeing
June 2nd, 2009 by Julia Taylor
Like most human beings I tend to measure ideas out against my personal experience and some universal perspectives–generally gathered in my post college years. This pic goes right back to a childhood of cows, farm equipment and that rural mess of equipment (the junk heap lot). This is where my life view began.
When I was a wee one, my most poignant memories are of art classes–in the lines, out of the lines, construction paper and awkward scissors, oil paint., clay, and color circles. Then I got a camera early on and all was lost. I LOVED sketching and photography. Two years into a college Arts Major degree, life intervened and I decided during one of those infamous down economic cycles to go to a more marketable major. There was this implicit promise that one could provide for our family needs through commercial means and support our artistic desires on the sides. I did buy in and I still do. I love photography, fine arts and performing arts. I understand the talent, the discipline and the sacrifice that artists need and make to survive on the side today. I also understand the mix it takes in a community to create the economic engine that drives all the cultural economies. It it is a two way innovation economy. Fortunately, I enjoy all the dimensions of regional economy . You need a very robust metro area to sustain artists economically on the strength of their art and there are probably three market areas in this country that can provide that type of catch-net. Given our strength as a second tier market, we have remarkable resiliency including the largest and oldest performing art fund in the country. It’s quite remarkable and we can say it because we have so many regional and global companies who passed 50, 75, 100 and even 150 years of accomplishments and have always supported the arts.
Its been a great business plan but now we need to fast forward to how we grow our market for innovation and creativity. We know that exposure to creativity can throw the switch for a innovative talent to grow. How do we keep our big tent of the arts open to all those children and young people to learn a new way of seeing, how to create and bring this talent to our everyday world of work and play.
Somebody else paid the entry ticket for us. They didn’t know us. They just paid forward.
It’s time for us to pay forward for each of those 400,00 children in our region that don’t even have the experience of of creativity outside of a TV set yet. They need the chance to learn a new way of seeing.
Keep the arts giving forward and thank someone who believed in each one of us without ever meeting any one of us. Invest in your future and region’s well-being.
Pay it forward.
http://cli.gs/UPAF
Social Media 1.01 according to JHTaylor
May 10th, 2009 by Julia TaylorA very quick discovery walk through of social media for everyone who looks at this phenomenon with amazement and blurry vision!
MySpace.com This is the space of teens, music and hormones. There are great sites with garage band music and playlists, photography and lots of little hourly and minutely connections. Sometime in the future, someone will figure out how to nuke myspace accounts upon request similar to yet to be developed less painful approaches to tattoo removal. It’s worthwhile joining just to know what your kids are up to.
Facebook.com The original college student only site is now owned by the Boomers. The largest group of new facebookers are 45 and over. Facebook created the verb of friending. Think about going to your local Cheers bar or coffee shop. You see people you know and catch up and they introduce you to their friends. You find people you knew in high school. Its is a virtual alumni party and calendar for birthdays, events and causes. It is a contained universe in some ways since you must agree to who is your friend. More arts groups, causes, non-profits, bars and other commercial sites are showing up and the lists of friends can be of great value in forwarding information and asking for support for events and efforts.
Twitter.com Tweeting is actually micro-blogging in 140 characters or less. It is the haiku of blogs. Twitter is going into a bar or coffee shop out of town full of friendly strangers. You find people you know, people you would like to know and others that pass by in a river of tweets. Twitter’s real power is the ability to connect people on issues, ideas and causes real-time. People use hashmarks to denote a trend, issue or idea like #GMCMKE or #Brewers and using a search function you can quickly find those who are also interested. Direct Messages or DMs keep messages private. Locally, twitter delivered people, calls and information on key issues like transit, water and public art. Authenticity counts so there needs to be personality behind the tweeter. Blasting out urls or headlines doesn’t work well. Anyone can follow you and so everything you tweet out there is visible to friend and foe.
Twitter is truly a river of conversation and I like to narrow the channel using apps like Tweetdeck where I can use columns to follow groups of key people, issues and topics. It sorts it all out. You can use apps that can connect all your sites–so one message on Facebook or twitter shows up on the other and tracks messages from both.
You can also stay up through phone apps. The iPhone particularly makes it easy to track all of the social media venues.
Friends ask me why people would be interested in daily events in someone’s life on twitter and I think it helps to open the door on who we are and our personality. People also want to know what is going on and what we think about issues and ideas so I think tweeting can say more about who we are and why we think and do what we do.
I may be tweeting about an issue like transit or water or the UN Global Cities Compact and the next tweet will be my daily grumble about getting on the treadmill. People tweet back and Retweet –the ultimate help and compliment. This sends my message onto their followers. The multiplier effect of RT (retweeting) is the power and strength of Twitter–it is how the word is spread.
I’ve met an amazing group of people on twitter. Getting together is called a “tweet-up” and I’ve had a chance to tweetup over coffee with folks I’ve met on twitter. New friends and new energy for a better Milwaukee–what could be better.
Leprechauns and Lizards in Palm Springs
March 19th, 2009 by Julia TaylorSt. Paddy’s Day in Palm Springs seems to mainly occur in Mexican restaurants. Somehow it fits the culture here.
Irish Eyes and Chips and Salsa
I talked a good friend of ours, Susan Freid, into the investment of an iTouch and spent some time loading up apps–lots of fun. She is looking for a good name for her iTouch so if you have any ideas–pass them on. Something interesting like Xavier.
Susan after buying the iTouch!
We visited twice with Jude and Nora Werra and Chris and Storm Eiser. Nice to catch up and enjoy the sun. Lunch was at Cheeky’s again. Tara should provide a Milwaukee discount!
A few Cheeky people!
Christine Rodriguez and her friend Jose Grijalva came to visit yesterday. We drove around old Palm Springs and found Elvis’s Honeymoon house and several Richard Neutra homes. What I didn’t know I could make up and probably be as correct as the tour buses that run down the street all the time. Then we went to the Aqua Caliente Reservation and hiked a bit through the Palm Canyons with a stream running through desert. We listened to Jose’s CDs of poetry and music and it was an idyllic day. When I get home I’ll do a blip of Jose’s song about Milwaukee–the water, the Calatrava and the people. “Lago, Dama, Gaviota y Fiesta”.
Christine and Jose
This morning, there was a lizard under the frig–probably the equivalent of a mouse in the kitchen in Milwaukee. He is now resting a bit confused on the patio outside. He was a bit of a nipper too!
Something is blooming and the air is really fragrant. We have a little cloud cover so it is great to write by the pool though it is getting quite warm already.
I’ve been playing with more iPhone Photo apps and while camerabag is still my favorite for effects–love that Lolo lens–try out Molopix and Redden. Molo does a tiling effect of camera shots and you can shoot rapid fire or slow.
Here’s Mr. Lizard from a few angles. Also Reddin takes makes everything except the color red monochromatic in an iPhone pic for a very fun effect.
4 shots of our kitchen lizard
I’ve been following the Bucks here through Twitter and @Bucksdotcom http://cli.gs/UPjDGY . I saw Charlie V get 4000 followers in a day following his little mid-game tweet but then his coach was ticked off at him. I thought it was a great fan connector myself. But Scott Skiles knows what he is doing and if Twittering during a game is distracting, then we will wait for post game tweets.
Tomorrow we pack up and head to LA for dinner with friends and family. We’ll stop by Christine’s place on the way and then fly out Saturday midday. It’s been a great, great easy going vacation.
See you back in MKE soon–hopefully, with spring in the air.
Art, Kindle and Emily Thomas’s Blog
March 8th, 2009 by Julia TaylorMary Louise Schumacher’s (@artcity) article today in the MKE Journal Sentinel pulls us out of the insulation of our usual circles into the eyes of a mother , Emily Thomas, who visits the Milwaukee Art Museum with her daughters. This family squirms some and views both the contemporary and traditional art almost comically. No connection through a docent tour, an audio tour or even a little advance reading of the reviews for this family.
We would never know of their views except for the Mom’s blog recapturing the visit. Technology opened the door of opinion though the door of conversation on art got stuck and never yanked open.
Technology is lifting the skirt on lots of discussions. We’re leaving on vacation soon and I’ve thought about the Kindle seriously. I have stacks of books I could bring but luggage limits make it costly and I’ve gotten used to finding things on line and clicking for instant gratification.
Lots of comments back from twitters both wondering the same thing and a few who own them. I just hate to commit to another gadget that is ready for the technology heap in a year and I don’t know if it could really replace the physicality of a book.
Maybe I’m a little like Emily above–willing to venture out some to new experiences but not out of my comfort zone. I also feel a little traitorous to my all friends who make their living with ink, whether newspapers, bookstores and even our great postal carrier.
So at @khinrichs suggestion, I compromised and downloaded the kindle app on my iphone and tried out a book. Surprisingly it works pretty well. Usually I have big problems reading much text on the 3 1/2 inch screen but I can read it easily and with swiping the pages, I feel like I am in “Evelyn Woodhead’s Sped Reding Course.” So for the time beginning, it’s a fair compromise.
Just checking back on line, there is a lot of talk about Emily Thomas and some –wow-significant reaction.
Maybe MAM could invite them in for a docent tour and some of the family art classes which has a good dose of art history in it. Sometimes it’s ok to start with a 3 1/2 inch screen and expand your vision from there.