Business Formation: "Teach a person to fish"

One of the topics that recently attracted my attention involves Business Formation. 

By the numbers (data from FRED):

• New Retail Businesses started per month: 80k (I bet that doesn't include unlicensed distributors of undocumented pharmaceuticals)
• Professional Services 60k/month (Lawyers and typists and accountants and dog-groomer and so on)
• Construction 42k/month
• Transportation and warehousing 30k/month (includes ride-share)
• Health and Social Services 28k/month
• Accommodations and Food Services 24k/month
• Wholesale trading 9.2k/month 
• Manufacturing 6.3k/month
• Agriculture 3.6k/month
• Arts and Entertainment 0.9k per month 

The number of new businesses formed increased markedly after the first shock of Covid. 

It is my perception that some of these "businesses" formalized undocumented businesses. Maybe Darlene provided in-home, adult care as a sideline and got fired from her regular job. She formed an LLC to protect her assets against litigation.

Top reasons businesses fail

Running out of cash. Issues with cash flow, inadequate funding and/or inability to properly price products or services.

Market does not demonstrate enough demand for the products or services offered and fixed costs "eat" the business.

Competition.

Flawed business model that might predict unsustainable "fantasy" market growth or below prevailing costs for inputs.

Legal challenges.

Unwillingness to invest the hours required to make a new business succeed. Turning down customers because it would "stress" the owner/operator.

Unwillingness to seek professional support for niche, specialty skills like bookkeeping/accounting, legal, maintenance, insurance, advertising.

Buying when renting would conserve cash.

Take-away

Running a business requires a diverse skill-set. Starting a business requires that same skill-set plus a few more.

People who successfully started a business in the past are much more likely to successfully start another business in the future than the general population.

People who failed in all of their previous business start-ups tend to believe it is "luck" and seldom make the changes required to be successful in the future.

A few questions for my readers

The number of retail businesses surprised me. Are there economically sound reasons why people selling on Etsy and eBay might form "businesses"?

Is it your perception that the corporate model is falling apart and people are being pushed into the gig-economy? Is that one reason why "business formation" is growing even though the economy (outside of the Biden rain-shadow of spending) seems to be slowing down? 

Rainmap calibration data

 

I was working at the Upper Orchard when it started raining.

Looking at the bottom of the red disk, 3.7" minus 2.1" equals 1.6" of rain. The Raindrop app said we had 1.8" of rain which is close enough for me.

The ditch beside the road overflowed, telling me that the culvert beneath the drive was plugged. Sigh, another task to add to the to-do list.

I am not complaining about the rain. The only runoff I saw was stained with road-mud so I think nearly all of it is soaking in, even with 3.7" over the last 72 hours. 

Fake News Friday: Kylie Jenner video, un-cut

Raw video of Kylie Jenner recovering from anesthesia on the ride home from her lip augmentation procedure.

Proceed at your own risk: 

Summer time, when the living is easy...

 

A little more than 2" of rain in the Upper Orchard. I think one more storm cell tracked across the area after I saw 1.8" on the rainmap. I am VERY happy with that amount of rain.

A persimmon graft that finally decided to grow. It is going like gang-busters now. Note the deer exclusion cage.

My success rate on persimmons was pretty dismal until July hit and the buds started pushing. I am now 7-of-11 for grafted persimmons this year.

I even found time to catch a fish. 20-1/2" bowfin (dogfish).

Moving the mattress

The twenty-foot tow-strap worked like a charm. We had to fiddle with it but we ended up tying a loop with about 17' of it and putting four twists in the middle. That left us with the strap going diagonally across the corner with "legs" of about 36" on both ends.

I am not all that familiar with mattress sizes, but this one was a "California King", whatever that means. 

An intelligent person can learn something useful from almost anybody

 

 

One minute run-time

This "Short" showed up after the Youtube algorithms must have decided that I needed to see lots of videos on prison-culture. Maybe those fine people at Alphabet have plans for me.

For those who dislike giving Youtube any clicks: The man in the video tells us that he thought inmates were stupid in how they did their exercises. They were not even performing proper, full push-ups (for instance). But his eyes were opened when scrawny, weedy new inmates who adapted the prison methods showed much better gains than he was getting doing things "properly".

Then he breaks down how a single push-up activates a succession of muscles as it goes through the sequence from full-down to locked-at-top. By repeatedly performing a small portion of the push-up in isolation, each muscle-group can be exercised to exhaustion and not be held back by the least developed muscle (in any group) required to perform the full exercise.

He explains it from the perspective of the amount of time a muscle is under tension. Doing a full-range pushup gives the slightly stronger muscles a slight break every cycle and they are not nearly as challenged as they are when you simply move up-and-down through, say, the bottom six inches or the middle six inches of the exercise.

Primers

Primers are in-stock in most on-line stores that sell reloading supplies.

Some of the prices are pretty darned good: Rem 7-1/2 primers at $50/thousand and Fiocchi 209 shotgun primers for $61/thousand at Powder Valley.

Flake-type shotgun powders are in tight supply but spherical shotgun powders like Win 572, High Gun and Longshot seem to have much better availability.

There will always be supply shocks. If you reload and have a few extra dollars, you might take an inventory and fill any holes. 

Aches and pains

I helped somebody move from their third-floor apartment yesterday. He has tomorrow off, so we will hit it hard again. After that I lugged water for trees in the Hill Orchard and then went to the Eaton County Fair.

The day before that I was filling pot-holes in a 1/4 mile long driveway with a yard of crushed concrete and will probably another yard to finish the job.

For some reason I am tired and my muscles ache today.

It must be old-age.

Has anybody had any luck with making a Figure-8 out of straps and cradling them underneath the mattress like this? At least we could have something to grip an wrap around our forearms.

Does anybody have any tips for moving oversized box springs and huge, floppy mattresses. And before you ask, I know to empty the water out of water-bed mattresses....and this isn't a water-bed.

Worth repeating

 New guy shows up and is handed a stick of dynamite with a lighted fuse.

 New guy totally rocks, he exceeds all expectations. 

A Useful website

24 Hour Rainfall Totals

Clicking on the map I learned that we received 0.75 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. I assume they use rainfall intensity integrated over time to estimate the rainfall.

The resolution is impressive. I looked at the location where the Upper and Hill orchards are and as-of 10AM they had about 1.8" of rain while two miles north of them they only received 0.5".

This will help me make decisions about whether I will be lugging water or not. At this point, I think I am off-the-hook for a couple of weeks at the Upper orchard site. 

Looking south of Parma, I see they got almost 3" of rain while Battle Creek, some 30 miles west of them got zero.