This will be the first of a series of ‘teasers’ on my new book Finding the Sweet Spot, available from most booksellers or online from the sites listed in the right sidebar. A complete set of reviews of the book (thank you, reviewers!) can be found on Beth Patterson’s site here. I‘ve spent most of my professional life helping entrepreneurs succeed. After I’d worked with over a hundred, I began to notice something special about a small number of them. Their people smiled all the time. They loved their work. They didn’t work especially hard. Their customers loved them, so much that they rarely had to do any marketing — word of mouth was enough. They were partnerships of equals, working together, with no ‘boss’. They had few or no debts, and were beholden to no one. They were connected to, responsive to, and responsible to, their people, customers and the communities in which they worked. They were environmentally sustainable and economically resilient, not vulnerable to vagaries of the market or economy. They had created the kind of workplaces that made you say “Boy! I’d love to work in a place like that!” So I studied them, to try to find what made them special, different from all the rest. I found they had mostly done six things differently from all other entrepreneurs. When I looked at these six things, they seemed obvious to me, until I realized that none of these things is taught in business school, and none of them is the “conventional wisdom” of what starting your own business is about. So I decided to write a book about them, in the hopes that others could use this “formula” to escape from wage slavery and create their own responsible, sustainable, joyful enterprises — what I have come to call Natural Enterprises. Chelsea Green agreed to publish the book under the name Finding the Sweet Spot. Here, in a nutshell, are the six things these remarkable entrepreneurs did differently:
Finding the Sweet Spot starts you on your journey to Natural Enterprise, and contains a full set of resources, including books by successful Natural Entrepreneurs like Dave Smith and John Abrams who tell you their stories in greater detail. As I watch our economy unraveling, I am more and more convinced that we need to create a whole Natural Economy of responsible, sustainable, joyful, Natural Enterprises, and that the time is now. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the book and help me make it happen. Category: Natural Enterprise
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--- My Best 200 Posts, 2003-22 by category, from newest to oldest ---
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Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
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How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
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The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
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A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
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The Dawn of Everything
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A Harvest of Myths
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So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
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The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
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No Noble Savages
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Learning From Nature
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Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
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The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
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What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
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Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
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Dear Dave:I´m Eduardo, an CPA from Argentina, I follow your blog from a long time, but I have a problem, I couldn´t buy your book in my country.If you have anyone that could come to Argentina, please send me a copy and I will pay the book here. Please contact me at eduardofurio@yahoo.com.arThe ONLY posibility of being a ¨survivor¨ in this global crisis will be implementing your ideas about self sustainability.Many thanks, truly yoursEduardo
Sorry, I had en error, my website is http://www.furioconsultores.com.ar
David.I read your postings regularly, thank you for many creative ideas. A couple of things you might want to consider if the publishers let you: 1. make the book available as an e-book for downloading and reading; 2. even better, make it available as a free e-book. This would enable people from developing countries to benefit, as well as get you more widely known globally and extend your audience so your ideas are more widely embraced. A number of authors (and musicians) do this very successfully free, or for an unspecified donation. This seems to be the future of ‘open’ communication and publishing…see MIT Open courseware as one example and one writer’s blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/the_next_free_e.html.Thanks again for your writings and work.Paul
How about people with means could buy a copy to be provided free to people who request or need a free copy.Or you could buy and read it and then pass it on – everyone I know needs a good dose of Dave.
M3D5GF hi! hooli?