Alpha Dogs is a book written by Donna Fenm published by Collins, New York, 2005. If you know the publication Inc, the magazine for small and medium sizes business, Ms. Fenn writes at the magazine. The chapter headings are Seduce your customers; Convert your employees into true believers; Transform with technology; Stake a hometown claim; Innovate the mundane; Market your brand; Build a village; and Embrace reinvention. You will need to do all of them.

Embrace Reinvention – in some businesses, it seems the products sell themselves and you seemingly just have to open the doors and the business walks in. Over time something will change, the people, the environment, the reason why people originally rushed into the doors. This is an opportunity to reinvent the business, for there are still people desiring the product and things can change. The example in the book is Mike’s Famous Harley Davidson located in New Castle, Delaware. The product is Harley Davidson motorcycles which were very popular, then the brand went down, the company had to be sold and reinvented, now is doing very well. To ride the new wave, Mike Schwartz saw what could happen and bought the dealership and changed it. First he had a dream of adding things that would attract families such as a restaurant and motorcycle museum to have people drop into the site, and some may or may not buy a motorcycle. Fortunately he learned about selling motorcycles and including the famous as famous service. It took a number of months to years to learn what was important and what was not. The restaurant had focused on what Mike likes, it was changed to a good basic roadhouse menu which make money. Mike saw the trend but to capitalize on the trend took good managers who could complement Mike and give discipline to the business.

In summary, to be successful in business is hard work. Sometimes it seems easy for the business needs to be responsive, dynamic, take nothing for granted. The business has to be resilient and sustainable and refuses to accept that size is limiting. A lot can go wrong, but more things can go right if you stick to your core values of why you are in business in the first place.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, to continually make profits is a very good thing. Unless there is monopoly, and there are fewer and fewer of them, it takes good solid management to continue to make money. It takes good employees, training systems and a host of other things to keep customers coming back to your products and services. When you see good ones embrace them, learn from them and more importantly invest in them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions