The Success Traps - Personal Success Strategies from The BizCATS

How important is your small business or startup? I know it's important to you, but did you think it was important to the rest of us as well? It actually matters whether or not you succeed! Yup, what you're doing in your little biz may just be the key to recovering our economy - not what the big guys are doing! Read the article below which was sent to me today from my good friends at SCORE ...

"Job Growth in U.S. Driven Entirely by Startups, According to  Kauffman Foundation Study." Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation  Press Release 7/07/10.http://bit.ly/byg7Kh

U.S. Job Growth Driven Entirely by Start-ups, Report Finds          (7/9/10)

Although conventional wisdom suggests that the annual net job  gain at existing companies is positive, the fact is that net job  growth in the U.S. economy occurs only through start-up firms,  a new report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation finds.  (http://www.kauffman.org/ )

Based on the U.S. Census Bureau's business dynamics statistics,  the report, The Importance of Startups in Job Creation and Job  Destruction, found that both on average and for all but seven  years between 1977 and 2005, existing firms were net job
destroyers, losing a combined one million jobs per year. In contrast, during their first year new firms added an average of three mil-  lion jobs. The report also found that while job growth patterns  at both start-ups and existing firms were pro-cyclical, there  was much more variance in job growth patterns at existing firms.

Indeed, during recessionary years job creation at start-ups  remained relatively stable, while net job losses at existing  firms were highly sensitive to the business cycle.

And it's not just net job creation that start-ups dominate. Although older firms lose more jobs than they create, the gross  flows decline as firms age. On average, one-year-old firms create  nearly one million jobs, while ten-year-old firms generate only  300,000. In other words, the notion that firms bulk up as they  age is not supported by data.

Because start-ups that develop organically are the principal  driver of job growth in the economy, job-creation policies aimed  at luring larger, established employers inevitably will fail,  said the report's author, Tim Kane. Such city and state policies  are doomed not only because they are zero-sum but because they  are based on unrealistic employment growth models, added Kane.

"These findings imply that America should be thinking differently  about the standard employment policy paradigm," said Robert E.  Litan, Kauffman Foundation vice president of research and policy.

"Policy makers tend to focus on changes in the national or state  unemployment rate, or on layoffs by existing companies. But the  data from this report suggest that growth would be best boosted  by supporting start-up firms."

If there is one truism it's that every person wants to be more successful. Success, of course, means different things to different people, tho. For one it's becoming a top CEO and for another it's having a happy life living on a farm. But both are equally valid. The point is that both people spend their lives working to be more successful at whatever it is that makes up their definition of success.

Another truth, and an unfortunate one, is that most folks view their definition of success as the only one that counts. A salesman defines selling the most and making the most money as success and often can't understand why someone else isn't motivated the same way. A highly competitive athlete strives to become world class and can't understand why someone else is quite content to be an amateur. A dad is happy just to stay home with his kids but his friends can't figure out why he doesn't want a career.

I like to think about what I call "The Success Traps"; that is, the attitudes and beliefs that keep people from becoming happy and fulfilled, i.e., successful. And one of them - perhaps the biggest - is when we let other people define success for us. For example, the "athlete" who comes to believe that nothing less than being #1 is acceptable but who's personal "success makeup" doesn't match that goal will most likely not achieve it. And if they do achieve it - even worse - will never feel happy. It's kind of like the saying that money doesn't buy happiness ... unless making money is what makes you happy. Get it?

It seems to me that we all need to spend a lot more time figuring out exactly what it is we truly want for ourselves ... and then be willing to work for it even if it doesn't fit the crowd. There's nothing either right or wrong with that stay-at-home Dad even if you could never imagine doing that - it's just a difference in what makes one person happy.

I hope you'll enjoy these thought on The Success Traps ...

 

-- Tim