A Friday funny for the jaded & cynical...A to K

[PBO]

The Entrepreneur's Dictionary of Humor

© Copyright Mark W. Lund 2008

A is for Alligator Farm. Why should Aunt Annie have all the fun? There are thousands of cowboys in Utah needing alligator boots, and no gatorculture in a 2000 mile radius. A great opportunity for someone who likes to work with state government. After all, if the state can stock Strawberry Reservoir with salmon, why can't you stock Utah Lake with lizards? And harvesting would be just about as easy as trolling with a poodle!

B is for banker. There is a pervasive myth that bankers can only say "no." In reality bankers are an important part of the entrepreneur's world and often say "yes." A simple experiment will prove the myth a lie. Just go in to your local loan officer and ask him if he thinks raising alligators in Utah Lake is loony. If he is too shy to say "yes" you will still be able to clearly read the "yes" behind his big friendly smile.

B is for Best Practices. In a business plan Best Practices means what you are doing now. Implementing Best Practices means you are going to write down what you are doing now and put it in a binder labeled Best Practices. Worst practices consist of taking another company's binder and applying it to your company.

B is for BS, short for business semantics.

C is for consultant. If you can use sizzle, buzz and paradigm in the same sentence you are probably a consultant. If you can fit them into an executive summary without blushing you have probably done this in a previous incarnation. It is so easy to make fun of consultants that even Dogbert became one, but consultants are as important as bankers in the entrepreneur's tool box. After all it was a consultant that introduced Eve to a new paradigm by encouraging her to think outside the box.

C is for Corporate Ladder. Why climb someone else's corporate ladder when as an entrepreneur you could start at the top? The reason that there is so much kicking, spitting, and gouging happening on the corporate ladder is that you can have all that fun without moving outside your comfort zone. And corporate infighting may be your most valuable talent.

D is for dot com. Thousands of dot com startups soon learned that bricks and mortars are dangerous weapons.

E is for e. As in e-commerce, e-banking, and e-coli. The e in e-commerce is supposed to stand for electronic, but really stands for empty-headed (try it, it works). At one point in time adding an e to any word was a sign of class like e-commerce and Towne Center. Now it just shows you don't know how to spell.

E is for execution. Venture capitalists insist that the plan be executed or the founder be executed, or preferably both.

F is for freedom. One of the great appeals to owning your own business is the freedom to work your own hours. This is in fact true. You can work any 100 hours a week as long as 40 of them are M-F 8-5.

F is for Full Disclosure. Politicians need to show that they are not unduly influenced by outside influences. This process involves filling out a form which lists any bimbos, diseases, hit contracts, or unregistered body parts that couldn't otherwise be covered up.

G is for garage, one of the best assets an entrepreneur can have. You can use it to start an electronics company, grow earthworms, or store 10,000 unsold pet rocks.

H is for H-Bomb, which is what the Federal Government invented to cause chaos and devastation. Soon afterwards they came up with the Environmental Protection Agency, which is so much more effective that they have given up on H-bombs.

H is also for half, which is an important part of the lingo of bankers and venture capitalists, as in half-baked, half-cocked, half-assed, half-truth, half wit, halfhearted, and halfway house. An important bill collection technique for entrepreneurs is the half-nelson.

I is for intrapreneurial. Corporations have long noticed how entrepreneurs are much better at getting things done, so they postulated that if they got the entrepreneurial spirit going in their corporations things would get done. So they took a prefix from the Latin meaning within, and added it to the Old French word for undertake and produced a word meaning "do-it-yourself undertaker." Intrapreneurs have the bureaucracy of the Roman Empire and the fire and drive of the French. Intrapreneurs learned that they got ahead quicker with intraoffice politics than they could by actually developing products. After all the reason that small companies work is empowerment and risk. The managers didn't want to empower anybody, and the workers weren't interested in risk.

I is for inhalation therapy. Useful for the entrepreneur afflicted with hyperbole-induced asthma and when hyperventilating at investors conferences.

I is for IP, or intellectual property. Intellectual property is the property that you think you have before the lawyers work you over. Often all the assets a company has is intellectual property, since it rents the building, furniture and computers. Since this asset can be rendered useless and unsalvageable if the company fails, IP is also for instant poverty.

J is for jalapeno. If you are looking for business ideas, what could be hotter than hot sauce? The problem with hot sauce is coming up with a good name. "Sudden Death" is already taken, so where could you go from there? Pets! It is known that birds are immune to peppers, but mammals aren't, so maybe a Tabasco-spiked bird feed to keep squirrels out of your bird feeder. Or pepper spray for tents to keep chipmunks from chewing a hole in your North Face. Have you heard about the man who bought a pit bull and in no time had him eating out of his leg? Maybe that will give you some ideas. . .

J is for just-in-time (JIT). During the high prime-rate days of the 1980s companies discovered this method to cut costs by not holding manufacturing inventory. Since interest rates have dropped it no longer makes sense, but like all management placebos it persists like mildew in the shower. Since the real cost of JIT is not being able to ship due to unpredictable problems in the supply chain it has been renamed to JITTGB, or "just in time to go broke."

K is for kissing booth. An oft-used source of high-risk capital.