Business 101: Importance of Knowing How Long to Try Something

As entrepreneurs we won’t always hit on every idea or initiative we embark on.  Which means we must have an idea on how long we should try a particular direction or action.  If we don’t know how long it should take to see results, we need to ask.  Though the fact we are asking after the action has gone into effect gives us a lesser chance of getting an honest answer out of someone.  Nobody wants to admit they are failing so someone with skin in game is likely to lean on optimistic side.  If you know that trying a new marketing campaign should take 6 months to increase sales before writing a check you know you can start judging folks if nothing has happened and you’re in month 5.  In short, note the mile stones the action should deliver so you can check expected results against actual results once you plan of action goes live.

FIRE RANT: Tulsa Outrage

Today, I like to speak about the Tulsa Massacre that happened in May 31 – June 1st in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The blacks had kind of their own mini-Atlanta or black neighborhood where professionals of all kinds thrived.  Therefore, many folks called the area Black Wall Street.  Some kind of race altercation occurred that resulted in majority of the neighborhood being burned down and many black Americans being killed.  The city never recovered and was restored to its previous levels of property value and success. Like many things in America’s history that aren’t flattering the incident was buried.  There wasn’t even a common decency to get an accurate account of how many lives were lost.  I really hadn’t heard of the Tulsa Massacre until summer 2020.  My dad said the same thing.  This incident angers me on multiple fronts.  First off, I get times were different and race relations are constantly evolving so blacks and whites had their own territory.  Blacks were thriving and minding their business and whatever altercation or incident that occurred between a few people led to burning down a whole community and killing countless souls?  It’s a gross overreaction filled with envy, evil, and any other word you can think of.  Second, the lack of honesty about the massacre, burying its occurrence, and poor effort to restore what was loss is disappointing.  Especially, when we know in present day things still aren’t the same for blacks in that community.  Third, the fact that there are other incidents like that, that happened in this country that have been covered up is frightening.  Some folks don’t want blacks in their community and want them isolated but we have examples of this set in the past where when that was created it was destroyed.  What hurts is that there aren’t many representations of that kind of black thriving community in the country outside again of like Atlanta.  Everywhere else blacks are thriving while mixed in with rest of country.  Don’t get me wrong, I personally don’t have a desire to only succeed around only those that look like me.  I rather succeed when everyone is a competitor against me.  However, you must wonder what kind of positive generational wealth in the form of businesses, property, careers, and education would the black community have in presence day if the Tulsa Massacre type events didn’t occur?

If I Ruled the World – Make Juneteenth National Holiday

So, there’s been a big push to make Juneteenth a holiday over the past year and it finally is one.  However, I must admit it’s a little hollow for me.  Juneteenth has been made a federal holiday meaning the only entities that really have to honor it is banks, government employees, and usually schools.  Anything else is up to the states to decide.  Meaning regular companies can go on as business as usual which takes away the punch of the day being relevant.  As a kid growing up, I used to obviously observe MLK Jr. Day every year as I was a student.  Well, when I got in the work force, I thought it mattered at work too and didn’t show up.  Will when I returned Tuesday, I realized that the company didn’t observe the day.  Luckily, I was an intern, and no one noticed I wasn’t there on Monday.  However, that was an odd experience I’ll never forget.  If I ruled the world and decided Juneteenth should be made a holiday, I would make it a national one.  If you are going to commit to the action, do it!

If I Ruled the World – Infrastructure: Build Me a City

The pandemic has given me a chance to do a lot of driving across the country for work.  Some of those drives included driving thru the middle of nowhere in areas where I didn’t see a McDonalds for several hours and had questionably paved highways.  I was driving on more of a dirt road than street and look out the window to see nothing but grass and fields everywhere.  I would think to myself seems like the land is wasted and not be maintained.  I wonder what it costs to create my own city from scratch.  We’ll if I were running things, I would set up a new infrastructure initiative based on creating greenfield cities.  During that would allow people to spread out and make more use of land.  I’m not talking about tearing down forests, just areas where there’s grassy land or corn fields that are poorly maintained.  Think of middle of nowhere Kansas or Iowa.  This would be funded partially by government but also would ask corporations to invest money into these initiative in exchange for some property to build businesses in these new cities.  Each city would have all the basic facilities like city hall, post office, public works, etc. paired with some of the usual big brand companies and several tourist attractions like theme parks, museums, casinos, and much more.  When all establish some satellite locations for big universities as we know universities stay loaded with money.  Most of these cities end goal would be to get to the size of place like Minneapolis, Cincinnati, or Milwaukee.  So, a city that’s not too big or too small but people have heard of it.

For the existing infrastructures issues the country has I would look at the most critical paths of our infrastructure and the conditions they are in and address them first.  Quality of infrastructure really affects the economy of an area.  If businesses, goods, and services can’t reach a location there will be less activity.  Less activity means less tourists, restaurants, sports teams, and jobs!  We might conclude that more states must use tollways to help fund infrastructure replenishments.  I would look at the type of vehicles folks drive closer and tie license plate renewal more to the type of car you drive.  For example, a Toyota Highlander and Toyota Yaris owner pay the same price for license plate fees.  Do you charge the Highlander owner less because they have a bigger car that carries more people?  If so, are you creating another problem because people will trade in their more gas efficient Yaris for bigger car?  I think in the end less vehicles on the road is better.  Anyway, again I would fix existing infrastructure issues by prioritizing the most used areas that need attention, consider more tollway fees for those highways, and add some costs to car license plates that charge folks more for the size vehicle they drive and add that to infrastructure funding pot.

Business 101: You Pay for What You Get

Sometimes, the cheapest thing your money can buy will get you cheap results at times.  I’m going thru a situation right now where I used Fiverr to hire a programmer for development of my app.  Now don’t get me wrong, the independent programmer has done a good job for the price I paid and developed my app in ways I wouldn’t have imagined when I first started.  However, when I look at some of the add on feature costs and the timeliness of the delivery there are some opportunities.  I say opportunities because I’m still waiting to close the project out so I can move on.  When you use a one-man band the service likely isn’t their full-time job and if it is they probably our swamped.  Therefore, when you look at costs of service and even product think about the entire costs cycle.  If this just a short term or on time transaction?  Is this person going to be servicing me long term, can they meet my needs long term?  Can they keep up with what I need from speed standpoint?  Cheapest or budget friendly decisions don’t always align with short term, long term, expert skillset, and speed.  You’ve been officially warned and please pray for me to this app development wrapped up so I can start making money!

God and You Podcast – Episode 18: Loneliness

Check out the latest God and You podcast episode, Loneliness.  For more episodes, click on the podcast tab.

Today’s podcast topic is “Loneliness”.  Focusing on God can dead you to the world and make you feel lonely in relation to other humans on earth.  Reason being that most people aren’t living the same Christ centered life.  If you are going to focus on God, you have to lean on him.  If can be supposedly boring and a thankless task.  Remember that when the world is lonely, they have an unquenchable thirst that’s never satisfied.  If we stop caring about the world’s standards for happiness God can sustain us.  He is enough.

God and You Podcast – Episode 16 – Demigods

ACCOUNTABILITY MONDAY – Week of 6/7/21

I set 4 goals for myself the week of 6/7/21 and to be transparent I’ve posted what they were. The red “x” indicates which ones I actually completed. I executed 3/6 of the goals.

This week wasn’t great for goals.  I had a lot of almost completions which don’t really mean nothing.  I ate pasta one time in middle of week. I violated the 16 hour intermittent fasting on the the last day of the week!  I never got a chance to reduce my music library storage.  However, I did reduce my picture storage by over 75%.  I ghosted ESPN and social media all week.  Lastly, I wrote and recorded the God and You Podcast episode 18 – Loneliness.

Bizzy Jimme

TONE SETTING SUNDAY – Week of 6/14/21

I challenge you all to make at least 4 non-routine goals for the upcoming week and reference them daily.  Use them to guide your actions when you have free time.  These are my goals for the week of 6/14/21.⁠

There will be 5 goals this week.  I will perform social media maintenance on all my accounts.  I plan on fasting until 4pm 6 days this week so I can focus on what God has for me instead of being worried about food.  The daily walking routine I started this past week will be supplemented with weight lifting and core workouts.  My music library will be reduce by 25%.  Lastly, I plan on executing the writing and recording of the 19th God and You Podcast episode, “Obedience”.

Bizzy Jimme

If I Ruled the World: Cameras for Cops

With all these police incidents both race related, and non-race related I think we can benefit from more cameras being available.  One of the first things we always hear when something sketchy goes down is we don’t know what lead up to the events.  Whether it’s a crooked cop planting something crack on someone, confrontation gone wrong, or transporting perpetuator from one spot to the next I think we can use more clarity.  Is there any reason that dashboard cams shouldn’t be on all the time?  If there is something a cop doesn’t want someone to see it probably means it isn’t right.  Same goes for body cams.  Anytime an officer responds and begins to engage a situation a body cam should be on.  I would challenge that maybe you tie the body cam to their walkie talkie.  Walkie goes out unless body cam is activated.  So, it’s basically saying if you don’t want anyone to see the situation you are encountering you don’t’ want help.  Or you are trying to hide your actions so much you rather go on solo mission.  Increased use of cameras would allow us to see things from an officer’s point of view.  It would also remove the guess work on details of situations.  Because I believe we all know that every cop’s interaction isn’t negative or fatal.  Heck, I’ve had 3 times in my life I’ve been pulled over by cops and got simple warning for speed, illegal turn, or busted light.  So, cops do give folks benefit of doubt at times.  There’s also times they overreact and there’s times the perpetrator escalates things.  We rely on technology for everything else nowadays.  Let’s take the human element out of the question and stop relying on people to remember the details if situations and get 1st person POV clarity ourselves when it comes to police matters.

If I Ruled the World: NBA Play-In Games Permanently Implemented

Several high profiles NBA players have spoken out against the NBA play-in games.  Mainly because it forces teams to not rest and tank the last 25% or so games of the season.  The point of the play-in games for the final two NBA playoff spots to be up for grabs via a few extra games at conclusion of regular season.  As a result, teams to have less incentive to trade away players and give up their seasons because they have a longer chance to still clinch the playoffs.  Additionally, if a team had an injured player during the season, it gives them more leeway to still be in the alive in playoff race.  I liked the fact that the last few weeks of the season you didn’t know who was going to make the playoffs.  I was checking the NBA standing on daily basis and I’m not even a big basketball fan.  Nor do I have a team I personally root for anymore.  If I were the commissioner of the NBA and or had vote on the future of the play-in tournament I would keep it as a permanent fixture of the league.