“This is strictly a business decision”

When a company says “This is strictly a business decision,” explaining why they must outsource jobs, it’s worth reading the fine print and doing a bit of thinking about the numbers.

In this New York Times account of the closing of Carrier’s Indianapolis factoryand the transfer of its 1400 jobs to Mexican workers making about as much per day as the Indianapolis workers make per hour, Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, explains that “the cuts are painful but are necessary for the long term competitive nature of the business.” But are they? The quote from United Technologies Chief Financial Officer Akhil Johri actually concludes “…and shareholder value creation.”

What does “shareholder value creation” actually mean? The article goes on to explain: “United Technologies faces pressure from investors hungry for earnings growth in an economy that’s only modestly growing at home, and falling in important overseas markets like China and the Middle East. Although the company’s stock has vastly outperformed benchmarks in the last few decades, the shares have badly trailed the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index over the most recent five years.

How to survive your first year creating a business.

Your first year is what you’re going to look back on with an incredible weight of emotion. Because in ten years’ time you’ll either be raising a glass to the success that your initial 12 months set you on, or drinking by yourself listening to Tom Waits and hating whatever it was that made you quit.

When you’re starting a new project, the first lifetime is the hardest. But that lifetime starts with one year, one single year that you’re going to struggle through and fight through, one single year that will make you want to throw in the towel every day.

So how do you survive your first year as a creative entrepreneur? It doesn’t matter how you’re starting out, whether you’re working on a book in your spare time, or diving head first into founding a company, or just starting to sell some hand-made products on Etsy. You’re going to face the same challenges and obstacles, and you’re going to need the same skills and toolkits.