Do new businesses last?

This is a quote from Dan Miller's book "48 days to the work you love":

"According to Dun and Bradstreet census of 250,000 businesses, almost 70% of all firms that start in any given year are still around in some form 10 years later. The study pinpointed the true failure rate at less than 1% of all businesses per year."

I'd never heard those stats before. Very interesting! Of course, I love starting things. I bought a book on how to write business plans just because I'm so interested in that kind of thing.

By the way, this curriculum was really good! We all learned a lot. If you want to take the course at either Hidden Valley location, we'll be relaunching those groups in September.

Listening to a leadership seminar online

I'm listening to an online leadership seminar on innovation. He just said something hilarious about how innovative churches view failure. He said we need to "Fail fast and Fail cheap." I love it! The first one means you are attempting new things and the second one means you don't bet the farm on every risk. Is this a part of your life? Do you fail fast, fail cheap? Do you fear failure? To explore this further, you can go online to www.hiddenv.com and listen to the message from 4/25/2010. We talk about this very idea.

An amazing video

A friend just sent me a video that you have to go watch. Go to youtube and search for ESPN + Ed Thomas. It's almost 14 minutes long, but it's one amazing story.

Why do advertisers hate men?

Can anyone explain to me why advertisers hate men? Why does "Progressive" continually portray men as wimpy, mousy, soggy push-overs? Now American TV has a new commercial with the same thing. The dad is a total idiot, but thank God for the brilliant wife and kids. What's the deal? Are we intentionally trying to destroy the image of what it means to be a man? Just a question...

CLASS 101

Just finished a late night with a huge CLASS 101. This is a great class that explains all you need to know about HVCC. Very fun!

Hiring secrets from a genius

As I mentioned earlier, I love Jack Welch's book "Winning". His section on hiring is the best I've ever read. Here are some of the highlights...

The first test: Integrity
The second test: Intelligence
The third test: Maturity

Not too earth-shattering so far, but then he said some other things. At their company, he looks for the 4-E's and the 1-P.

E - Positive Energy: This is the ability to go and thrive on action. They relish change

E - Energize others: They get other people revved up! This takes knowledge and persuasive ability

E - Edge: This is the ability to make the tough yes/no decisions of leadership

E - Execute: The ability to get the job done

P - Passion: These people just LOVE to do the work

Great stuff! I learned a long time ago that you should ONLY hire "get it done" kinds of people. You throw in the ability to energize others and passion and you will really have something.

There's more, but I'm tired of typing. I'll give you the rest later.

Another great day at Hidden Valley. We broke our all time record for a non-Easter day at both locations again. 527 in Dodgeville and 245 in Richland Center.

After the service today, I spoke with lots of families. One man has been coming for the last several weeks and it's the first time he's been to church in years. He loves it!

Great book to read

I loved Jack Welch's book "Winning". Great section on hiring.

My first post

This is something that I've been asked to do for years. I'm going to give it a try and see what happens.