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Tag Archives: Entrepreneurial mindset

Exploring the Gaps

Here we go, off exploring and learning. Lee’s a lot happier about it than he appears to be!

We are deep in the exploration phase of our new direction. Books are rolling in the door. We are sharing interesting websites with each other. We are finding people to talk to. We are even looking into more classes to take. We like getting educated!

You might also benefit from the exercise of thinking about where there is a need in your community that is not being met. If you specialize in real estate, look there. If your avocation is elsewhere, look around and see where you could be of the most help. Entrepreneurs who succeed do so because they have a vision and see an unfilled gap, somewhere, in something. They have that entrepreneurial mindset we want to have, too.

Once you see a need, make sure you don’t reinvent the wheel. Check to see who else is working in your area. Learn from their mistakes. See where they need help and determine if you can help in that area.

It’s possible to make the world a better place AND feed your family. That’s our goal.

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What’s a Vacation?

Sun shining on a mountain cabin in Ruidoso, NM

This house was a wonderful opportunity for someone, just not for us.

One of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to do is to take a vacation. That is, if you define a vacation as a period of time where you get “away from it all.” More especially if it means a time when you do not work.

Our brains are never quiet. That’s not to say we never relax or that we never have fun. We do. We can never just do those things. We’re always thinking. That’s probably a good thing! No matter how much it irritates those around us who “just want to have fun.”

Christmas Investments?

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A Quick Way to Kill a Small Business…Or Not

Every decision you make has a consequence. To abuse the words of a wise bass player, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” and have a consequence.

I’ve seen it happen any number of times. An entrepreneur gets a business established, especially in a secondary or tertiary market—which I’ll call a rural market for simplicity’s sake. They earn a position of respect in the community. People look up to them, even ask them for advice on all kinds of topics. It’s really an ego booster. Everything is going well.

Then they make a decision that undermines their standing in the community and drives away half of their customers.

What is that fatal decision?

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What Do You See?

Closed Sonic Drive-In

What do you think of when you see something like this? If you’re first thought is, “I wonder how I can use this location to make money,” you may be an entrepreneur.

What do you see when you spot an abandoned building or a closed business?

The trick of being a successful entrepreneur, especially a commercial real estate investor, is to see opportunity where others see failure.

This fact was brought home to me by the recent closing of the Sonic Drive-In in the small town where I spend most of my time these days. This being a Small Town, the closure was a big deal and sent the small town grapevine into overtime. All kinds of reasons for the failure were floated until another business closed for failure to pay sales taxes to the state. (We know this because the state is auctioning off all their assets.)

But the one thing that nobody talked about in either case was: “What’s going to happen to the building?” Okay. Nobody talked about the loss of a handful of sub-minimum-wage jobs, either, and they certainly should have. Finding new jobs in a rural small town is no easy matter.

In kind of a combination of those two thoughts, my initial reaction on seeing the sign at the Sonic (I learned about the other closure much later) was, “I wonder what kind of business could go in that location.” You see, a drive-in is a very special-purpose building. There aren’t a lot of other options for using it. In fact, there are so few options and it is so costly to build that Sonic has a program to repurpose other commercial buildings as drive-ins.

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