After working at a few different companies and increasing my business contacts in variety of industries, I noticed a disturbing trend.  I discovered that there was rarely a direct correlation between performance and promotions.  I continually saw unqualified people get a free ride up the corporate ladder while so many actual innovators and producers languished in corporate obscurity.  Equally troublesome was that the few employees (not owners) at the top rewarded themselves handsomely with huge salaries and bonuses while the majority of employees doing the really hard work were thrown veritable financial scraps.  I knew this would only worsen over the years, and I didn’t want to put my financial future in the hands of anyone but myself.  I knew bad things were on the financial horizon for the U.S., and reading America: Who Stole the Dream?, by Donald Barlett and James Steele, confirmed my intuitive suspicions.  I began putting together a plan to become self-employed and self-reliant.

Knowing I wanted to write books and become a public speaker, I figured the best way to get experience was to simply dive in and challenge myself with new experiences.  By doing this, I knew I could refine my skills and continually learn and improve my business offerings.  I sent class proposals to a number of adult night school centers and was accepted by all of them.  I taught classes on small business marketing, building personal brand equity, biographical writing, creative writing, journalism, budgeting, and entertainment marketing.  I was even an adjunct professor at Eastern University for a while, teaching ecommerce, domestic and international marketing, and managerial communication. 

I was working a full-time job throughout this entire period of time.  Despite the long hours and lack of sleep, I knew I was on the right track.  I was seeing the financial health of the country deteriorate despite the big houses and huge vehicles people were buying, ostensibly because everyone was so successful.  It was plain to me that there was no solid financial foundation to support all of this supposed growth and that it would eventually collapse.  It had to because it wasn’t sustainable.

The dot-com crash was no surprise to me.  Business people were mesmerized by a new medium and threw all of their business sense out the window.  The need to provide customers with excellent products and service didn’t disappear simply because customers were buying products they viewed on a screen.  Frankly, customers didn’t want to talk to a “Customer Service Dude” who was distracted by the sound of dogs barking as they ran through his department.  Further, any company that thought a reasonable cost per customer was $75 when the average sale was only $10 was clearly not going to stay in business very long.  Too many business people chose to ignore the traditional business strategies that have worked throughout history.  That’s why so many dot-coms failed.

Likewise, the housing market collapse wasn’t a surprise either.  I saw it coming in 2001 when I wanted to move and discovered home prices increasing so rapidly that I couldn’t afford to move.  Eventually it got so out of hand that people were bidding against each other by offering more than the asking price of homes.  That is sheer madness and completely unsustainable.  I actually thought the housing market would collapse sooner than it did.  Again, when people ignored the traditional market principles that had proven to be successful over time, they got into trouble.

What can be learned from all this?  Basically, that traditional business principles became traditional because they work.  That’s why they have been used for so long.  Listen to your grandparents.  They’re smart people.