My good friend Larkie recent­ly asked me “how come you nev­er blogged about busi­ness”? I thought about it a for a lit­tle while, then I admit­ted to him that I real­ly did not have any author­i­ty to talk about some­thing that I knew noth­ing about.

He was incred­u­lous , ” how come you write about crime and pol­i­tics”? I explained that I felt I had a con­tri­bu­tion to make hav­ing spent a decade in law enforce­ment, and hav­ing been impact­ed direct­ly by pol­i­tics all my life, I felt, as does oth­er cit­i­zens, I too had a point of view. I explained that I had no sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess­es to point to that would cause any­one to take any­thing I said about busi­ness seri­ous­ly. He looked at me quizzi­cal­ly as he stood there in my lit­tle mom and pop busi­ness, then he looked around and said if this isn’t suc­cess what is, do you have to make millions?

The truth is I have no idea whether it takes mil­lions or bil­lions in the bank for one to see him/​herself as a suc­cess, what I do know is that noth­ing defeats suc­cess more than the feel­ing that you are suc­cess­ful. Does it require mil­lions in the bank, or does it require one to sur­vive for over a decade in a small American city com­pet­ing with the big boys next door?

I know it is impor­tant to oper­ate on the premise that the cus­tomer is always right, I under­stand it is impor­tant to care about peo­ple and what they want, I under­stand it is impor­tant to make cus­tomers feel that they just received a deal when they make a pur­chase or received ser­vice from you. This can be accom­plished with a bal­anced mix of integri­ty, and an under­stand­ing of how to make num­bers work for you. Successful busi­ness lead­ers know how impor­tant it is to stay on the cut­ting edge of their indus­try , always mak­ing sure to have a leg up on the com­pe­ti­tion, always look­ing for the next big thing. The foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of busi­ness whether large or small are the same, one must under­stand the ter­rain and shape prod­uct and ser­vices to suit the customer.

Federal Reserve Building

The lat­est job num­bers here in the US point­ed to the fact that the lion’s share of the jobs being cre­at­ed are being cre­at­ed by small busi­ness­es, those are busi­ness­es that employ between one and fifty employ­ees, the large cor­po­ra­tions and com­pa­nies do not trust this coun­try and the peo­ple who made them filthy rich to rein­vest in them, they are sit­ting on a report­ed 2 tril­lion dol­lars in liq­uid cash , wait­ing and watch­ing for leg­is­la­tion by repub­li­cans that will give them even more tax breaks than Bush gave them, and remove safe­guards that pro­tects the environment.

Small Businesses have always been the back­bone of America, a coun­try that man­aged to fig­ure out how to col­lect tax­es , untill she got greedy and cre­at­ed a tax code even the writ­ers do not under­stand. It fol­lows there­fore that if it is the small stores and man­u­fac­tur­ing plants that lines every street of every ham­let, street ‚town, city, and state that are sus­tain­ing our econ­o­my, then that is where the invest­ment dol­lars should go, and not to the large fat cat cor­po­ra­tions and banks that hold us in contempt.

And while we are on the sub­ject of fat cat Banks, Bank of America recent­ly decid­ed to scrap plans to impose a $5 month­ly fee to its cus­tomers who use their deb­it cards for every-day busi­ness trans­ac­tions, this would have net­ted Bank of America Billions of dol­lars annu­al­ly. The deci­sion was forced by a grass-roots cam­paign and tens of thou­sands of Bank of America’s cus­tomers who vowed to take their mon­ey else­where. Bank of America’s exec­u­tives had arro­gant­ly stat­ed that their cus­tomers who expressed their deter­mi­na­tion to pull their accounts , quote “had choic­es”. And choic­es they did indeed have , some­one must have told the fat cats that was not a very wise posi­tion to take as they capit­u­lat­ed to account hold­ers who said no!

That is the America I love, the America where peo­ple real­ize they are the ones who have the pow­er, the pow­er of their pock­et-books, the pow­er to orga­nize and make their voic­es heard and their impact felt. There is how­ev­er anoth­er side to this dra­ma , many fear Bank of America will sim­ply with­draw this time, but find a way to impose the fee anoth­er way when it’s cus­tomers are not look­ing. This means that account hold­ers will have to stay vig­i­lant and make sure they do not sneak addi­tion­al fees in through the back door.

Still on the sub­ject of big banks, a few days ago I saw $15 charge on my busi­ness check­ing state­ment, so I called my friend­ly TD Bank North and asked to speak to my friend who works there. Well the Manager answered the phone he indi­cat­ed that my friend Pam was on anoth­er call , he gra­cious­ly vol­un­teered to take care of me so I told Tony the rea­son for my call. I asked him to explain what the very sim­ple but dis­con­cert­ing [charge] on my state­ment meant . Tony com­menced by sooth­ing me ‚” Mike you always kept a respectable bal­ance, but for one day last month you fell below $500 and that is where the charge comes in”. I was floored, I had used that bank and seen it gone through three dif­fer­ent name changes, and the only time my bal­ance went below $500 in ten years they socked me with a $15 fee. I real­ized then that we the cus­tomers meant noth­ing but a num­ber on a bal­ance sheet . I thanked Tony and hung up.

Bank of America’s cus­tomers can take heart, it could have been worse, they could have had TD Bank North as their bank.

No fault of Pam and Tony and all the oth­er fine peo­ple who works at my local branch,but that is absolute­ly not the best way to do business,that much I know .

have your say.