Continue reading »]]> I had this epiphany today.  I live in a city in southern china where everyone is always pretending to be the head of a factory, a multinational, or massive conglomerate.  Lots of posturing, lots of swag, very little actual company behind the shiny business cards.  I spent the afternoon with this factory owner from Harbin, China.  Super cool guy, actually.  He was explaining the in’s and out’s of his (and his brother’s) companies.  When I realized they were only little enterprises.  He has no office, just a smartphone.  No warehouse uses a logistics pick and pack style company to handle his distribution.  No fleet of company cars and private jets.

And he’s filthy rich.  He isn’t rolling into some high rise in Manhattan, if he was he’d be significantly less filthy rich.  He’s just adding to a sick pile of money opening a new business every couple years.  Lots of people like him over here in china.  I think the west could learn a thing or two from the east in this fact.  We spend so much money setting up our own little operations.  We wanna buy our coffee beans green, roast ‘em in our shop, grind ‘em in our grinder.  Brew the coffee and sell it to our customer while having cut out several middle men.

China (and a fair other eastern countries) have this weird notion of harmony.  That when we join with others we form something greater than the sum of our parts.  This dude from Harbin taught me quite a bit about the wrong approach I’d been hammering out on my own business.  I wanted my company to be big time.  Wanted it so bad that I’d forgotten what it’s purpose was in the beginning, namely, to make me money. 

Small businesses can make lots of money.  Better to have a couple of them, than one big monster that sometimes eats more than it brings you.  I’m going to start looking for ways to narrow the focus of my operation.  Make it do one thing.