Freedom FROM Your Business

Fourth of July is a great time to reflect on your future with your business. July begins the third quarter and second half of the year.  

•  Maybe you see yourself as a major competitor in your industry and going public or being acquired?
•  Or are you just going to create a great retirement plan to keep your mind active and your wallet happy?
•  Maybe you see your business as something to provide for change in your community. 

To activate any of these ideas, you will have to start working ON your business not IN your business. Ask yourself what a future will look like with a plan, then WORK your plan!

Copyright 2011 Linda Lucas Fayerweather
www.ChangingLanes.biz
419-897-0528
Send Linda an email to start the activation of your next adventure in business. Coach Linda

Businesses: Made in America
My old home has a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging over the mantle. The mantle is from the estate of William Floyd's who signed the Declaration from New York state. The copy was originally hanging in Robert E. Griffin's office when he was General Manager of the Oldsmobile Plant in Lansing, Michigan. It then hung in my dad's offices when he was a school principal, my mom's office when she became director of a senior center and now in my historic home. Mr. Griffin would always talk about how in the USA anyone can be come anything!

Happy birthday America! Let's celebrate the week ahead by saluting some of the country's most tried-and-true products:

• Louisville Slugger - Made in Kentucky since 1884.
• Wonder Bread - Founded in 1921 and still going strong - 130+ million loaves are sold a year.
• Harley-Davidson - Two friends William Harley and Arthur Davidson made their first motorcycle in 1903. 2006 sales: 350,000 bikes.
• Ivory Soap - has been keeping Americans clean for 128 years.
• Crayola - Founded in 1903, nearly 3 billion crayons are produced annually.
• Woolrich Blankets - kept Civil War soldiers dry and warm and today they're still in use 177 years after Woolrich's founding.
• Jack Daniel's - has been distilled in Lynchburg Tenn. since 1866, but you can't drink whiskey there - the town has been dry since Prohibition!
• DuPont - Incorporated in Delaware in 1802 and was the major supplier of black powder for the War of 1812 - most known now for the inventions of nylon, corian and kevlar.
• Seth Thomas - clockmakers since 1813 - check it out in NYC Grand Central Station.
• Libbey, Inc. - glassmakers since 1888 and still in Toledo, Ohio.
• Both Hires and Vernors claim to be the oldest continuously made soft drinks in the United Sates - 1876 is the year they both claim and they are currently both owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
• Levi Strauss - 1873 is considered the birth of blue jeans when U.S.Patent No.139,121 was received for the still popular Levi's - for all shapes and sizes - still privately held by relatives of Levi Strauss.

Hope you have a wonderful Fourth of July. Celebrate your local businesses as small business is one of the unique strengths of this country! Here are a few quotes from the Founding Fathers:

"No one was either Tory or Whig; it was either dependence or independence." --Caesar Rodney

"In politics the middle way is none at all." --John Adams

"The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions." --John Hancock

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson