I was sipping that wonderful cup of coffee this morning in Moscow, Russia and doing some thinking’s that involved businesses that fail…
You see in America for 10 years I was a trouble shooter for ServiceMaster Inc. during the era that they had a huge Food Service business that they acquired by buying out American Foods. They were involved in the hospital and college food service contract business…
ServiceMaster no longer has this part of their business and I left ServiceMaster behind when they sold the collegiate food service part to DAKA. It was a French based company that I always said stood for, “Does Anyone Know Anything?” (DAKA)…
The one thing I knew how to do was make money on the corporate level. I was a bottom line person and that is what the corporate demands, a good solid bottom line. That shows profit. How you obtain that bottom line is done in varying ways some legal and some not legal. I know them all…
So lets get on to what this article is about. Now that you have some background in what I am really good at. Making Money…
Today I watched the doors on a business shut forever. It was my favorite store to buy food at. I have been a faithful customer and probably the last customer that they had. It was a thriving business and had huge potential. I also saw that it could be a gold mine. But I watched the under lining issue of a cheat of a owner and that would be the undoing of a good solid business…
In Russia as in America you have lots of thieves in the service and food industry. Thieves from the owners on down to the workers. Everyone wants that quick buck and they want it now. Long term viability is not in the picture. In fact I am not sure that most humans have the business sense to contemplate long term viability…
I use to teach classes on business and I taught how to stop thieves, how to make a profit, how to expand that business and twenty other related topics. My favorite was quantitative management and I have a secondary degree in that particular subject…
I study businesses in Russia and have found that there is no difference from Russia and America in business. The same bribes happen, the same cheating happens, the same failures happen and the same customer dissatisfaction happens…
But after I have done some studying of business in Russia. I have come to the conclusion that the potential in Russia is vastly higher to obtain profit levels than in Western world. The overhead that is demanded of your business is in essence nil in Russia compared to other parts of the world…
It is a shame because Russia is a paradise for ideas and businesses. Many Russians fail at business because they do not have the mind set to think long term or any term for that matter. I see business after business set up for the quick dollar and then they sell as fast as they can. Then they open another business and sell it as fast as they can. That first selling of a business creates a flood of similar businesses and the market becomes saturated in a finite area. Other words Russians all do what the other one does. That goes on whether you are in Moscow or a village…
Now remember that not all Russians are this way and the ones tat are not this way are billionaires and Russia has her fair share of billionaires…
So as I stated at the beginning I watched this little grocery store fail. It took off with a bang and then they tried to sell it. It failed to sell and by that time it was stripped of assets and it was too late to save it and make a respectable business out of it. Timing is everything when selling a business. Most likely they did not even know what to do to make it a viable business in the first place…
You gotta love these Russians. They are some of the greatest people on earth but when it comes to capitalistic viciousness they do not hold a candle to Americans…
For that, the average entrepreneur Russian will fail at business. Not because he does not have ample opportunity to succeed…
Windows to Russia!