Bad Companies or Bad Leaders?

I see in articles and management training that people don't leave companies they leave bad leaders.  I think people over estimate people leaving because of bad leaders.  I think people leave just as often because of bad companies as they do bad leaders.  But companies and business experts have pushed this idea on managers that if people leave it is their fault. But even the best managers and leaders will struggle to keep top talent if the company is paying below industry average, has poor benefits, doesn't have a good work life balance, and/or doesn't give the tools or training employees need to grow.  Also companies that don't promote from within will see people leave if they don't see advancement opportunities.  

Bad Company + Good Leaders = People Leaving

Good Company + Bad Leaders = People Leaving

Companies should hold managers and leaders accountable for how they treat employees, but should also look at the company culture, pay, benefits, and how it compares to others in their industry.  

Great Capitalism Quotes

"Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution." Ben Shapiro 

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." Winston Churchill

"Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome." Bill Gates

"Now you know my credo: Free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. And let me add to that from our Founding Fathers: Our Creator endowed us with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, freedom." Lawrence Kudlow

"The more moral the people are in their business dealings, the less paperwork you need, the more handshakes you can have, the more the wheels of capitalism work better because there's trust in the marketplace. Business ethics is not a joke. And, in fact, I think most businesses that I've dealt with encourage exactly that type of behavior." Rick Santorum

"Capitalism - for the record - has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the world." Trish Regan

"Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics." Ben Shapiro

"The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat." Ben Shapiro

"Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the cold war, is that the engine of capitalism, the individual, is mightier than any collective." Rand Paul

"A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank." Ron Paul

"Capitalism is always evaluated against dreams. Utopia is a dream. It doesn't exist." Rush Limbaugh

"Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other." Ben Shapiro

"History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom." Milton Friedman

"I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave - it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box." Henry Rollins

"I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it." Thomas Friedman

"Fighting for free enterprise means standing up for free markets. The freedom to succeed includes the freedom to fail. We must defend entrepreneurial capitalism against the onslaught of the American Left." Mike Pence

"If you don't believe in winning, you don't believe in free enterprise, capitalism, our way of life." Tom Landry

"Our position should not be on how to eliminate the competition at all expenses, but we should focus on what we're going to do in order to make sure that Americans turn to the road of prosperity with the trajectory of capitalism, because making a profit is not an evil." Tim Scott

"America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to." Larry Elder

"Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It's about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production." Alex Tabarrok

"Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people." Dennis Prager

"Every success story in this country was because of capitalism. " Mike Lindell

"The greatness of America is capitalism, free market capitalism. The exceptionalism of American business." Fran Tarkenton

"America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." Ayn Rand

"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system." Milton Friedman 

"In practice, socialism didn’t work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy. In the vast library of socialist theory (and in all of Marx’s compendious works), there is hardly a chapter devoted to the creation of wealth to what will cause human beings to work and to innovate, or to what will make their efforts efficient. Socialism is a plan of morally sanctioned theft. It is about dividing up what others have created. Consequently, socialist economies don’t work; they create poverty instead of wealth. This is unarguable historical fact now, but that has not prompted the left to have second thoughts." David Horowitz

“All systems are capitalist. It’s just a matter of who owns and controls the capital — ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.” Ronald Reagan

“We have been ruled by men who live by illusions … the illusion that there is some other way of creating wealth than hard work and satisfying your customers.” Margaret Thatcher

“A market economy based on private property, buttressed by the rule of law, is truly the best environment for mankind. People will work harder and with ingenuity if they know they have earned rewards from that labor. When the rewards are given to them for nothing, there is frustration and despair. Capitalism benefits more people than any other economic system. To work for oneself and reap the rewards is a basic human aspiration.” Sally Julian

“Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.” Ayn Rand

“Equality, as understood by the American Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the most just society, imperfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human characteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended, are both engines of liberty.” Mark Levin

"Capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge." Albert Einstein

"Capitalism God's way of determining who is smart and who is poor." Ron Swanson

"Capitalism is the only society in human history in which neither tradition nor conscious direction supervises the total effort of the community; it is the only society in which the future, the needs for tomorrow, are entirely left to an automatic system." Robert Heilbroner

Crypto Slang

Diamond hands

Or as Elon Musk put it in a May tweet: 💎🙌. Diamond hands is a meme popularized by crypto and stock traders on Reddit. It connotes a hardcore adherence to the HODL philosophy (see below) — and is often used by online groups that have banded together to try to drive up the price of a memecoin or other asset. (The related-but-derogatory term for skittish traders? “Paper hands”/🧻🤲. )

FOMO

Stands  for “fear of missing out” — and is generally most intense when markets are rising fast. FOMO can lead to emotional trading and bad decision making — it’s dangerous because hindsight is 20/20, making it all too easy to regret the gains you would have made if you had only timed all your trades perfectly. (Nobody times all of their trades perfectly.)

A good way to reduce FOMO is to have a strategy and stick to it, especially if you believe that the asset you’re investing in will rise in value over the longer term. One popular option is dollar-cost averaging (or DCA),  in which you invest the same amount every week or month without worrying about what the market is doing.

The flippening

The flippening is a hypothetical event in which Ethereum’s market cap will one day eclipse Bitcoin’s. It can also be used to describe any similar situation where a smaller or less-established token or protocol  might overtake a larger rival.

HODL

HODL is probably the most prevalent piece of crypto slang. It originally came from a drunken typo in the subject line of a 2013 Bitcoin forum post: “I AM HODLING”. (It should have read “holding.”)  

HODL — usually pronounced “hoddle” — simply means to buy and hold for the long term, no matter what the market is doing. Bitcoin fans have even retroactively turned it into an acronym that stands for “hold on for dear life.” 

The original forum post is riddled with typos, but the underlying message was prescient. At the time, Bitcoin’s value had plummeted from $1242 to $480 in a month. Panicked traders were bailing out, but GameKyuuubi — real name Mike, a programmer — wasn’t selling: “In a zero-sum game such as this,” he wrote, “traders can only take your money if you sell.”

The sentiment soon spread throughout the Bitcoin community and countless memes ensued.  Crypto has experienced multiple bull and bear cycles, but so far at least, HODL has been good advice — with Bitcoin emerging as one of the best-performing assets of the last decade. (As mentioned in the FOMO entry above, one good way to HODL is via DCA.)

Memecoin

Dogecoin (DOGE) is the original memecoin — it’s literally a cryptocurrency based on a meme that was popular around the time it was invented. But in 2021, when Dogecoin dramatically rose in value, a huge wave of other tokens with absurd names emerged (in part made possible by decentralized exchanges like Sushiswap, which allow anyone to easily list a token). In May 2021, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin donated more than $1 billion in DOGE-inspired memecoins like AKITA, SHIB, and Dogelon Mars (ELON) towards COVID-relief efforts in India and other causes. The coins had been deposited in Buterin’s crypto wallet in an attempt to make traders believe he was an investor.

Moon (or mooning)

When a cryptocurrency is seeing strong upward momentum, traders tend to describe it as going “to the moon” or “mooning.” 

Pump and dump

A coordinated effort to artificially inflate the price of an asset and cash out before it tumbles back to earth. Cryptocurrencies with smaller market caps are particularly vulnerable to pump and dump schemes. A group of traders will work together to drive up the price of a specific small-cap altcoin. As prices rise, the schemers will promote the opportunity on Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Facebook, YouTube comments, and elsewhere, attracting more investors and driving the price up further. When the asset hit their target value, the original group will cash out — taking big profits and leaving everyone else “holding the bag” as the token collapses.

Whale

The biggest holders of crypto are known as whales. For Bitcoin, anyone with more than 1000 BTC is generally considered a whale. Unlike the vast majority of crypto traders, whales have the potential to move markets with their trades. As of mid-May 2021, the top 100 Bitcoin addresses (out of more than 800,000 active addresses) held more than 20 percent of all BTC according to bitinfocharts.com.

Bad Manager or Maybe It's You

I see all the time quotes on how people don't leave bad companies, but bad managers.   Or I see people complain about their boss, because they ask them to work overtime, come in on their day off, or set high expectations.  Don't get me wrong I know their are bad managers and bosses our there, but is that really the issue?  Those people that complain about bad managerd, is it really that they have a bad manager or is the problem them?

I started to think back at all of my former managers, supervisors, and bosses over my almost 30 years in the workforce.   I would say that I've had around 60 bosses that were 1, 2, or 3 levels above me that I could honestly evaluate their management and leadership.  Out of those 60 I would say 5 were bad and I really didn't gain anything from that relationship except how not to manage.  Another 5 were very good at the beginning, but something happened at the end to ruin the relationship.  But even those 5, I would say I still learned from them and gain valuable experience.   Fact is the vast majority of my former managers, supervisors, leaders, and bosses have all been good, very good, or great.  Many I have even come back to work for after leaving, worked for at another company, and/or still have really good relationships with to this day.  And some are now people I call friends.  

And while I'm not going to say I'm the greatest manager, leader, or boss ever I would say 80% to 90% of the people that have worked for me in the past would call me a good boss.   The ones that wouldn't were usually the ones I had to hold accountable for attendance, performance, or behavioral issues.   

My point is if most of us were honest we all usually have good bosses.  We like to complain about our boss as that is just something people do.  But people who really think they have a bad boss should first look at themselves in the mirror.  Are you coming to work on time?  Are you ready to work when you get there?  How is your job performance?  Are you meeting your goals and deadlines?  Do you offer to work extra to help the team?  Do you complain when asked to work overtime?  How is your attitude?  Do your other team members actually enjoy working with you?  How are you at taking direction?

Before you start to blame your boss for why you don't like your job ask yourself how could you make the job better.  If you want to be promoted ask yourself what you could do to go above and beyond what is expected?  If you want to make more money what do you need to improve on to be worth more.  It is easy to blame others for when you aren't where you want to be.  But a lot harder to look at yourself and say what can I do.

Do Not Bring You Troubles to Work

Work shouldn't be a place where you come to air out your problems.  When I'm at work I'm there to work. I don't mind talking about life in general, but work shouldn't be a place to work out all your troubles.  I've also told employees before that come to work upset about something outside work to think about work as a safe place.  

Here is what I might say, "While at work you can't actually deal with whatever is going on outside of work.  And whatever the problem it will be there when you get off work.  So for the next few hours while working let that other stuff go and focus on the task at hand.  While at work you don't have to stress about things outside work, because you can't do anything about it.  So just enjoy this freedom from that trouble for now and put your energy into your work."  

Most people have found this helpful.

How Not To Be Poor

From The Brookings Institute; There are only 3 simple rules you must follow to almost guarantee you will not end up in poverty.  "At least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.  Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year)."

These rules should be taught in school from elementary to high school.  We should teach it in our homes and churches.   This is simple and yet powerful.   

Who are the Rich

The National Study of Millionaires by the Dave Ramsey Group showed that 79% of millionaires did not receive any inheritance at all from their parents or other family members. Eight out of ten millionaires invested in their company’s 401(k) plan. In fact, they worked, saved and invested for an average of 28 years before hitting the million-dollar mark, and most of them reached that milestone at age 49. 

When it comes to education it’s the degree itself that matters, not where the degree comes from. Almost two-thirds of millionaires (62%) graduated from public state schools, while only 8% went to a prestigious private school. The top five careers for millionaires include engineer, accountant, teacher, management and attorney. Nearly half (47%) of millionaires came from homes where neither parent graduated from college or trade school.

And this trend doesn't stop with millionaires. The latest Forbes Billionaires List puts the total number of billionaires globally at 2,755. Some of those on the list made their fortunes through inheritance, but research from Wealth X has found that the majority of billionaires are actually self-made, clocking in at 68% of the total. More than two-thirds of individuals with a net worth of $30 million or more are considered "self-made. Further, a second study by Fidelity Investments found that 88% of all millionaires are self-made, meaning they did not inherit their wealth.

The almost $4 trillion owned by U.S. billionaires is about 3.5 percent of all privately held wealth in the U.S., estimated at $112 trillion. There are a little more than 18 million people who are millionaires that control just over $4 trillion.  

There are a total of 46.8 million millionaires worldwide and they collectively own approximately $158.3 trillion or 44% of wealth. But the 44% is an unfair look as 2 billion people live on less than $10k a year because they live in unfree societies.   

Wealth isn't a set number. There isn't just so many dollars to go around. Wealth and the economy isn't a pie where if one person gets a bigger slice someone else is getting a smaller one. Wealth is something created. 3/4 of all millionaires are self-made. They inherited nothing. Money is created by creating goods and services people want. It isn't taken from others. It is freely exchanged. That is how Wealth is created.

Rubber Terms of Conservative and Liberal

"The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men." Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966

This is even more true today.  We see that many who call themselves conservatives and Republicans are really that in name only.  They will say they are for small and limited government, but in reality they just want to grow the government at a slower rate than the liberals and Progressives.  And when it comes to limiting the power of government what they really mean is limiting the power of the other party.  As long as they are in control they are okay with a powerful government.

"Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production." “The Roots of War,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966

The Democrats are split between liberals and Progressives, who are actually socialist.  But the progressive/socialist wing is the most powerful.   They see capitalism and capitalis as evil and Americans as weak sheep who must be taken care of by their divine rule.

"When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights." The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964

America is $30 trillion in debt and we have less freedom than ever.  Both parties are only interested in one thing:   their own power.  And we have no one to blame than ourselves as we are the ones who elected them.

The Rich and Corporations Paying their Fair Share

Democrats love telling us how the rich and corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes.  But look at who actually pays the most taxes.  The top 1% pay 20% of taxes.  The top 5% pay 50% of taxes.  The top 50% pay 90% of taxes.  

As for corporations when you raise raise taxes on corporations you raise taxes on small businesses too.  But here is the thing to remember no corporation pays taxes.   When we tax corporations they pass that cost onto the consumer or they don't give raises or hire new people.  When we tax corporations it is an indirect tax on all of us.

Laissez-faire Today

Laissez-faire is an economic philosophy of free-market capitalism that opposes government intervention.  The only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.  

Liberals, Democrats, Leftist, Progressives, and Socialists will read that and say you just want businesses to do whatever they want.  They don't understand the difference between government enforcement of laws and government intervention into the free market. 

Laissez-faire today is different from the 18th or 19th century, but still no less important.  Government's job today is to make sure that individuals and businesses aren't committing crimes like stealing, fraud, monopolies, child labor, unsafe working conditions, and slavery.  But what government shouldn't be doing is picking winners and losers in the economy.  They shouldn't be bailing out companies that make bad decisions.  They shouldn't be passing laws to help one industry over another.  There shouldn't be over taxation on businesses that especially hurt small business.  And they shouldn't be interfering in things like price setting, limiting competition, or deciding wages. And government spending shouldn't be used as a way to stimulate the economy.  Government should try to be as less involved in business as absolutely necessary. 

The 77 Cent Wage Gap is a Myth

You've likely heard that woman earn only 77 cents compared to men in the workforce.  But this number is extremely misleading.  The 77-cents statistic is calculated by dividing the median earnings of all women by the median earnings of all men. If the average income of all men is, $100,000, and the average income of all women is, $77,000, that would mean that women earn 77 cents of what a man earns.  But even a study by AAUW and the Labor Department shows that the actual wage gap is only 5 to 7 cents when you factor in the choices made by both men and women in the workforce. 

A Georgetown University study found in the top 5 best-paying college majors, women out-represent men in only 1 of the top-paying 5 majors. But in the 5 worst paying college majors men only out represent women in 1 field.  Usually men are entering the higher paying fields of mathematics, engineering, computer science, and technology.   Women are more likely to enter education, social services, and human services which are lower paying.  

Even within the same profession, men and women make different career choices that impact their pay.   Male nurses earn 18% more than female nurses. Male nurses tend to search out the better paying specialties, they work longer hours, and find jobs in cities with the highest compensation.  Because of this men make more money, because of the choices they make compared to the choices women make. 

We see something similar with doctors.  Female physicians tend to make less than their male counterparts.  But women are far more likely than men to enter lower paying specialties like pediatrics or family medicine compared to men who become cardiologist or anesthesiologist which are higher paying.  Women are also more likely to work part-time and women who work full-time put in about 7 percent fewer hours than men.  Women doctors also take long leaves of absence.  Many women in general choose to leave their careers to raise kids.  So when they do come back to work, the men who continued to work are further in their career meaning they are now making more money.  

Another reason women make less is they are more likely to take the first salary offer of a new job, while men are more likely to counter offer.  Women are less likely than men to ask for raise.  And women value benefits like more time off over a higher salary. If women were actually making 77 cents less than men, businesses would hire only women.  The profits they would make would be too big to pass up.  

The bigger issue that needs to be addressed to help women make more money is to encourage young girls to enter the STEM majors and careers at higher levels. Instead of complaining about some unfair treatment of women because of their gender.

I Am A Capitalist

I am a Capitalist.   I could also be called a Classical Liberal like John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Blaire White, and Dave Rubin.  I'm also a conservative like Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Jack Kemp, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, and Ben Shapiro.  I'm likely a Libertarian like Bob Barr, Clint Eastwood, John Stossel, Rand Paul, Vince Vaughn, Greg Gutfeld, Kat Timpf, and Donald Rainwater.  But I mostly fall under the term Capitalist like Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, John Rockefeller, JC Penny, Henry Ford, Milton Freeman, Ray Croc, Truett Cathy, Sam Walton, Zig Zeigler, Ken Blanchard, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk. 

Dogecoin: Disinflationary not Deflationary

While there is no cap on the total number of Dogecoin that can be made, the cap of 10,000 Dogecoin per block means that as Dogecoin's block time is 1 minute, approximately up to 5 billion new Dogecoin will enter circulation every year.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin doesn't have a cap. In order to keep the network secure and operational, there's always an incentive of 5 billion coins per year for miners. By the end of 2030, there will be 180 billion Dogecoin in circulation.  As a comparison 6.3 billion Federal Reserve notes are printed every year at value of $188.3 billion.  This is just actually paper and coin minted, not how much is created in the economy and debt spending by government that is digital currency. 

Most altcoins, as they’ve been designed so far, are deflationary. This means there’s a hard cap on the number of coins that will ever be in existence. Bitcoin, for example, is designed to not have any more bitcoins come into existence after 2040. Other variants (Litecoin) have similar setups. However, one of the downsides of deflation is that it essentially encourages hoarding, as the perceived real value of the currency increases over time. Accordingly, academic researchers showed last year that 64 percent of all bitcoins have never been spent.

Dogecoin just might have a better chance of being used and transacted in the long-term. (After all, there's still just a handful of businesses that accept dogecoins as payment.)  Doge is disinflationary.

"As long as it’s at a steady and predictable rate, you would want that inflation rate to more or less match the growth of the global economy,” James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University. “In order for a currency to survive, it’s got to be useful. One of the problems we learned with gold standard was that it’s too inflexible—it takes too long for gold miners to dig it up out of the ground. Having a nice, steady, predictable money supply is actually a good thing.”

So it is possible for Dogecoin to actually become a useful currency.  It might never be worth $50,000, but there are predictions if will be worth up to $30 by 2030.  That is only $5.3 trillion in value. The US government has spent $5.3 trillion on Covid relief. The US economy is $23 trillion. China is $20 trillion. Japan is almost $6 trillion. And cryptocurrency isn't a US currency, but a currency that can be used worldwide. So I see this as possible as Doge will grow as the economy grows.

You Are Good Enough

So I started a new job a few weeks ago.  It is very new and different.  And it has been a struggle going from the expert at my last job to the new guy that knows nothing.  But I have gotten so much encouragement from family, friends, and those in my network that it really lifted me up.  And then looking through my timelines I see so many people in retail losing thier job and my heart breaks.  It made me thankful for where I am right now in work and life.  Sometimes we just have those moments where we don't think we are good enough, but then others remind you that you are good enough.  

So if you ever feel you are not good enough, just remember you are good enough.  You can do it.  If you have lost your job don't lose hope.  Keep moving forward.  Times are tough now, but I believe in America and the free market.  We are going to see a great comeback.  We just all have to keep fighting and never give up.  

Thank you to all those that remained me of this.

The Bee and Underwear

Here is a story that happened at work a few years ago.

A lady walks into the store.  The lady has one of the biggest beehive hair styles I've ever seen. 

She hands me a bag and says, "I bought these and I need more of these in the same size."  I look in the bag and see underwear.  I assume they are new and she just needs more.  I pull one out to check the size, but notice the size is worn off.  I ask, "Are these used."  She says, "Yes, but I washed them."

At that moment a bee flies out of her beehive hair.   So I'm standing there swatting at the bee with the used pair of underwear.  

Working in retail.

Skills Are Important

President Trump signed an executive order saying that skills and not just a college degree will be used in hiring decisions for federal jobs.  This is a great thing for those of us that don't have a college degree, but do have a lifetime of work experience and skills.  A college education is important, but not more important than skills learned in the workforce or military.  There isn't one person who has recently graduated college that has my level knowledge or skills in my industry.  They do start off ahead of me compared to when I started out in the workforce.  And a college education gives them a great foundation to start.  But someone who has 10 plus years of work experience will be as qualified or more than someone who recently graduated college.  And that is why this is good.  It looks at everyone as an individual based on their overall background and not just based on a degree.  There are many talented people both with and without degrees.  And when you are hiring people you should hire based on the total person.  You should look at education, work experience, life skills, and good old fashion common sense.  This should set a good precedent for businesses too, as they may look to more workers that might have the experience and skills needed, but just not the formal education.  

My Boss at DXL

Today, my boss at DXL retired.  While I'm very happy for her, I'm also heartbroken.  Cathy is one of the best managers I've ever had the pleasure of working for and she will be missed.  Cathy always put her people first and would fight for us at her own expense.  She held us to high standards and herself to even a higher standard.  She lead by example and wasn't above getting dirty.  She had no problem helping a store get merchandise out or helping customers.  What made her special is that she would listen to you and even allow you to get angry.  She had great empathy for her people.  

Professionally Cathy gave me opportunities to grow and did everything in her power to help me reach the next level. She wanted me to be successful and did everything she could to help me succeed.  Personally I always felt that she truly cared about me and my family.  When my mom died she made the long trip to come see me on the day of her funeral.  Cathy is both a great boss and an even better friend.  I am a better manager and person for having worked for and with Cathy.

Cathy, I hope you know your team loves you and we are all grateful for having you as a boss and friend.

Bad Bosses or Bad Companies

I see quotes all the time about how people don't leave bad jobs, but bad bosses.  But this is too simplistic.  People will leave a job because of a bad boss.  But people also leave great bosses, when the company is bad.  Low wages, poor benefits, or bad work life balance will bleed good employees. And people will stay with a great company even if they have a bad boss, because many people know that the bad boss won't last.  Ultimately people stay or leave a job based on what is best for them and their family, not just because they have a good or bad boss.

The problem with this idea is that it removes all responsibility of the company to take care of and retain employees.  It just says it is all the responsibility of the managers to retain employees.   Companies want to retain good employees then here are 4 suggestions:

1.  Offer better than average pay.

2.  Hold managers accountable for retention of employees.  Managers that have high turnover likely are not treating their people right.  They need to be retrained or replaced.

3.  Offer an a late carte approach to benefits that fit the lifestyle of each employee.  Some employees might want more PTO time, others lower healthcare premiums, and another more flexible schedule.  Companies need to get creative. 

4.  Set goals that are achievable.  No one wants to feel like a failure.  Build people up over breaking them down.

A Tax Democrats Don't Like

I find it so funny that I'm hearing the media and some Democrats complaining about the Trump tariffs on Chinese goods.   They are saying that tariffs are a tax.  A tax that consumers will have to pay as the cost of goods increases.  I agree.

What is funny to me is that this is the same media and Democrats that tell us raising the minimum wage doesn't affect the cost of goods and that employers can afford it.  When it comes to increasing taxes on businesses they say that companies can afford to pay their fair share.   They promote higher taxes and a higher minimum wage as good on the economy.

But when Trump rasies taxes through taxes it is a burden that hurts the economy and companies just pass on the tax to consumers.

You would think Democrats and the media would love these tariffs/taxes as it would actually take away some of the benefits of the Trump tax cuts.  I guess these Democrats finally found a tax they don't like...a tax by Trump.

Corporations Do not Pay Taxes

So some people are upset that Amazon didn't pay any federal tax.  Of course that isn't completely true since they pay the social security and Medicare tax, plus state and local taxes.  And they have to collect sales tax.  But here is the thing to remember no corporation pays taxes.   When we tax corporations they pass that cost onto the consumer or they don't give raises or hire new people.  When we tax corporations it is an indirect tax on all of us.