If you back at the economy of the middle ages there were Lords and workers (serfs) as well as independent craft people. The names changed in the industrial revolution to owners and workers and in our service economy we are going back to the middle ages with exceptions. There are more service workers who own their own business or are entrepreneurs. 95% of them will make a living, only a few of them will become very rich but it is possible. If you ever worked in the government or corporate world – there was a wide variety of jobs but there were departments to take care of your needs. If you are an entrepreneur you need to do everything, until your company reaches a size where you have to learn to delegate more.

Arlene Dickinson who runs Venture Communications and is seen on programs such as Dragons’ Den in Canada has written a book about what is it like to be an entrepreneur and the title sums it up All In published by Collins, Toronto, 2013. To be an entrepreneur, one has to live and breathe your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week till you can learn to delegate to someone. Whether you are an entrepreneur, at some point in our lives we all act like one for a short time. Ms. Dickinson dismisses the work/life balance – it does not exist because you are tilted in one direction. The ideal is your partners and support network know this and accept you anyways. As your business develops you will be able to understand the cycles of it and learn what is more important to you. When do you give your time to others – family? friends? You can make it work because not every day will the sales and pressures of the job be the same – similar to all industries some months are longer than others.

You will need to embrace the mess and know how to clean it up. Along the way you will need to change your leadership over people. If you hire people, those people you hire are the lifeblood of your company and they want the company do well, the issue is do they want to work for and with you? why? do you offer them challenges and ability to make profits.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the ideal for these stocks is after you have made a decision to do nothing and let the dividends flow in. The stock price will go up and down but your concern is the dividends and you can set your cash flow tables to know when and how much money is expected and comes in. Then your task is to determine will the company continue to produce the dividends, at the task can be more high level – if the company is a utility company – is the region or city still growing. Yes then it can be a keeper. What is the expectation it will raise its dividend the next time?

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