It seems like every year, more and more people choose to follow the entrepreneurial path that has guided my life.  Here are a few thoughts on the subject:

         • We have a small group up here in Fremont County called Entrepreneurs Anonymous.  We try to meet each month in Lander or Riverton and we talk about how to run a small business.

One of the guys who has started his own company told this story at a recent meeting: “Our little business is very small operation by any means of comparison. Yet it is truly an example of Wyoming entrepreneurship.

         “Not long ago, an agent for the IRS came by and wanted to talk about how we are paying people in our little company.

         “I told him that we have one seasonal part-time employee who delivers my products. We pay him a nice hourly rate and a bonus for any special sales he generates.”

         “Any other employees?” the agent asked.

         “Then I told him about the mentally-challenged guy who also works here.

         “He works about 18 hours a day. He even works most weekends and almost every Sunday morning.  He only makes about $1 per hour but I make it up to him by letting him have all the Scotch whiskey he wants and he even gets to sleep with my wife occasionally.”

“Hmmm,” The agent replied. “That is the guy I need to talk to. Where can I find him?”

         The businessman looked him in the eye, paused and said: “That would be me.”

         • Every so often the folks at the Lander office of Central Wyoming College ask me to teach a non-credit class on entrepreneurship.  

         And modestly, I must admit it always fills up and the grades they give me are pretty darned good.

         It pretty much involves all my years of owning businesses and starting businesses from scratch.   I have been doing it since a teenager and am closing in on a 50-year anniversary of that first enterprise.

         Funny, though, when I started doing this class I spent most of the time talking about business success.  It did not take long to realize that a portion of my program called “stinkers and clinkers” was the most memorable lesson they yearned to hear more about.

         This was a list of poor business decisions I had made or a recitation of just plain bad luck that can haunt you when you are a small businessperson. You know, events like a big competitor coming to town or a national recession.

         It is still painful to recount some of these experiences but it appears that budding entrepreneurs were really tuned in to hear about them.

         • Most of my life has been involved in the publishing business and that always involved selling advertising to small businesses.  These folks became loyal customers and dear friends.

         And their seasonal suffering became my suffering, too.

         How frustrating can it be to operate a thriving business in a small town for decades and then have a big-box chain store come into the region and take away all the profit?  It happens all the time.

         The longest-running business in Wyoming history, the Baldwin Store in Lander, was pretty much a casualty of that trend.  It also did not help when Wyoming and Lander were hit by the worst depression in their history in the 1980s.

         Most of the owners of small, local businesses need to be celebrated.  They are my heroes.  And they are vanishing.

         We also celebrate the local owners of national franchises like Ace Hardware, Taco John’s, Gamble’s and stores like this.  Although they are part of a national team, they are locally-owned and they suffer through the ups and downs like everyone else.

         My admiration for retailers swells when you realize they are sort of trapped in their buildings.  At least in my book business, I can go all over the area selling my wares.

         • After decades now of big box chain stores and huge malls, it is funny to me to see a resurgence of the tiny retail outlet, at least in some highly populated places. 

         We were in Dallas last month and one of most successful retail areas was an area populated by tiny little stores surrounded by fashionable coffee shops, restaurants and pubs.

Although literally every stick and every brick in that place was designed and built from the ground up. When it was done, it looked like a small town Main Street.  Amazing.