I Know What I'm Doing ==> Oops, Guess I Didn't, But It Wasn't My Fault

Kids are FIERCELY - I can do it - independent. Parents quickly drum that out of all but the most determined ones. Turn them into sheep kids who never grow out of being sheep. They, in turn, do the same to their children. And round and round it goes.

Some children are immune to it. They mentally resist sheepdom. They keep their independence. And it comes out, at some point. The sheep might think of them as "fringe people" or "eccentric" or "odd" or any number of words that really mean, "not like us."

The interesting thing about those independent ones is they have a tendency not to be pig headed. They can quite readily admit they do not know everything. And will accept new information if it makes sense - while they will stick to their guns until otherwise.

The sheep, on the other hand, never change their minds. They can't. Because as I previously wrote, they are really shells of other people's opinions, thoughts, images, etc.

You get funny results when you see a sheep trying to be independent. They fight for their independence and won't accept assistance from outside. They are the true "know it alls" we see around us.

A client of mine was like this. They just "knew it all" about their business. So much so, they are now out of business.

It all started with their job. They worked for a prestigious business in Sydney, doing managerial/supervisory type of work. They sold their house in Sydney and came to The Gold Coast to make their fortune. Bought a business in the same line as the one they had worked, and were set to take on the Gold Coasters and show them how the Sydney-ites did it.

Two years later they closed their doors and whimpered off to non-existence in a country town of 30,000 people. Hoping to salvage what little money they had left and start from the ground up.

During their two year experiment as business owners, I constantly asked them for discount vouchers I could give my other clients as "Thank You for doing business with me" gifts. They never printed them. They told me once they had some coming, but that never eventuated. They never marketed their business. Never ran ads or mailed "please come back" letters to their customers. But they did drive around in a new BMW and hired a mobile care detailer to detail it every week.

So what really went wrong here?

The total lack of marketing should give you a clue. While they knew how to manage such a business because they had managed someone else's in another state. They knew bupkiss about getting customers in the door. And while they might have been able to manage the business, they didn't really understand money management - otherwise they would have been driving a less expensive car and devoting the weekly car detailing money to something that would have brought customers into the business.

As a result, they slowly watched their money dwindle away over two years.

They did try to sell the business, to recover some of what they had spent. But no-one wants to buy a money-losing business without a customer list. So in the end they just closed the doors and walked away. And moved to a small country town where they could run the same kind of business but on a much smaller scale where they could even save additional money by doing most of the work themselves.

But even there they will be doomed to fail - UNLESS - they learn how to bring customers in the door. But that just won't happen. And it won't happen because they are sheep. They are the A-typical look at me and what I have yuppie. Image is important no matter the cost. I know best and no correspondence will be entered into. Even though I have never owned and run a business before and am a person with an employee mindset.

Michael Gerber would call them employees who had an entrepreneurial seizure. They THINK they can run a business because they know a certain part of someone else's business. In all cases, they are doomed to fail unless they can let go of their "I know how to do it" ego and accept hands-on wisdom from those who have done what they want to do.

Whenever they saw another business like theirs that appeared to be doing very well, and I asked them about it, they would say that such a business cannot be run like that. And trying to do so would see their customers disappear, if they did it. And yet, they never actually asked their customers what they wanted, or tested it to see if their customers would disappear. They "just knew". With the result being they closed their doors while the businesses they said couldn't be run that way, stay open and thrive.

The funny thing is, there was a business like theirs whose owner had tried before and gone bust. But he had learnt his mistakes and didn't make them again. He re-opened with a way to get customers into the door and kept doing the "customer generation" thing. Now he has five locations throughout the city and is doing fine thank you very much.

His products aren't any better than others who sell the same thing. But he markets his business. He has, what associates of mine have termed, a "PCGS" - Perpetual Customer Generation System.

You can have problems in every other area of your business and still get by - as long as - you have a way to get customers into the doors on a continuing basis.

My clients didn't have such a system. Nor did they have the slightest desire to have such a system, or discuss such a system, because they knew what they were doing. I think they believed in the mythical "open it and they will come" mumbo jumbo. As if somehow the ether would plop customers on their door step.

It reminds me of another "couple" I was speaking to in another city, who had opened the same type of business. I was told, "We know what we're doing. We've worked in six other business previously." And that was their downfall. Working in someone else's business doesn't mean you can run your own. Six months later they too closed their doors.

And so it is kind of ironic. The independent people who cannot be dictated to, are willing to admit they do not know it all, and to accept outside information, if it will help them in their independence. While the sheep, who are renowned for absorbing everyone else's opinions on all manner of things and not thinking for themselves, become incapable of accepting outside information, all to their own detriment.

Maybe it is, as one self-made multi-millionaire told me, they don't think they deserve success and undermine and sabotage their own efforts. While independent people do think they deserve success and endeavor to enhance their chances of achieving it.

One thing I do know. Those sheep who fail, always blame outside forces for it. It is never their own bad judgment to blame. It is always "market conditions".

Like the business I talked about. $100 a week on car lease fees and another $100 a week on cleaning the car, saw $10,800 a year disappear down a hole. I could do a LOT of marketing for $10,800 a year. But it wasn't their fault no-one wanted to come to their business, because no-one knew their business existed. It was "market conditions". Might make 'em feel better, but won't allow them to learn from their mistakes.

Intriguing Mystery Around Us Every Day Remains Mystery. Scientists So Baffled They Don't Even Attempt To Discover Reason Why

When we are babies, we explore and get into everything we can. At first, this is whatever is in arm's reach. But as we gain the ability of motion, our exploration widens. We get into cupboards, draws, everything. We are exploring machines. Everything is a thing to be explored.

As we get older, our exploration should move from the physical (what we see) into the mental (wondering why). We move from climbing trees to wondering why their leaves are green, or shaped like they are, or shiny on one side and less so on the other side, and so on.

Most adults don't get into the mental exploration too much. And it isn't because they can't, or haven't thought about it. It's due, I think, to a complete and total lack of interest in anything outside of pody life, or a drive of not wanting to stand out, which their mental exploring might see happen to them.

I don't suffer those pody afflictions. I find wonder in all kinds of odd things - odd as far as pody people are concerned. I know because I've been told by them. After expressing an observational question about something in our world, one pody told me, "You are really quite odd, aren't you?" And my local fruit shop guys tells me "You're not like anyone else." Which is all fine by me. I've seen how other people are. I'd rather not be like them, thanks.

Anyway. One question has been running around in my head for a while and I cannot find any scientific explanation as to why. Yep. It would seem that scientists have not bothered to ponder this mystery. No research grants have been given to find the answer. Nothing. And so I am left to speculate as to a reason why.

And the question?

Why is dust gray?

Whenever I sweep our floorboards, the dust swept up is gray. You can't see it, but after a sweep and pushing it all together, it forms large clumps of fluff-like dust. And it is gray. Even wiping down the top of the TV or whatnot reveals a gray dust. And this is puzzling.

We wear all kinds of different colored clothing. Curtain and carpet fibers all different colors. Airborne dust particles from outside are a different color again. And yet, when they accumulate to be seen by us, they are all gray.

I have a client whose business is dance instruction. And when visiting you can see dust clumps in the corners of the dance floor. And they are gray in color. And when they sweep their dance floor, the resultant large clump of dust is also gray.

What makes this even more puzzling is, when you put clothes into a clothes dryer, the fluff caught is not gray. It is usually white or almost black - depending on whether you did a light or dark load.

There may be a reason why dust is gray. And this is pure speculation on my part, as no study has been published that I can find.

What if, dust really is not gray at all? What if it is a multitude of color - BUT - it is so small we cannot see the individual specks of color. And what if, the light bouncing off of all those particles interferes with each other and becomes "blended" into an overall average of color? Just like load of lights in the dryer gives white fluff, and a load of darks give very dark fluff, even though there can be small specks of color in the fluff.

The mix of colors turns into a mix of light and dark which blends to form a gray, which we see.

The closest thing I can find in science to this is something called "Mie Scattering" - the scattering of light (without regard to wavelength) by larger particles, such as those of dust or fog in Earth's atmosphere. But Mie Scattering is more about small spherical shaped particles in the air than the random shapes of dust particles laying close together on the ground. Though the principle (the scattering of light waves) could be the same. And where we see white clouds due to Mie Scattering in the atmosphere, we see gray dust when the light scatters off of odd shaped dirt granules, clothes and fabric fibers, skins cells, bits of hair and the other elements that go into making up household dust.

Another funny thing is when you wash a window or floor, the dirty water is also gray. Maybe for the same reason? Or maybe we are so overwhelmed with brake-pad dust (which is gray) it taints everything else?

Who knows for sure? I only have a theory. And you may have a different one. And if you do, please leave it in the comments. Together we can get to the bottom of the mystery of why dust is gray.

Justice Done, At Last

Graffiti is an abomination. And those who do it are GUILTY of a criminal offense. That of willful destruction and damaging of other people's property. That the property can be "fixed" doesn't make it any less of a crime than smashing a car's window or putting a hammer to a car's door. As those items can also be "fixed."

For too long we have seen a court hamstrung by liberal-minded do-gooders making excuses why "children" do graffiti. And trying to reason why we cannot punish these poor little darlings for the crimes they commit.

Well. Praise be to the all knowing Brazil nut god for dropping a Brazil nut pod onto the head of some people and knocking some sense into them. For I have just heard of a wondrous graffiti solution being actioned in the town/city of Bundaberg.

It would appear that Bundaberg used to have a problem with graffiti. And that problem is disappearing rather fast. You see, when graffiti value-destroyers in Bundaberg are busted, their punishment is to clean up all the graffiti they did.

Recently, a city magistrate ordered six "youths" to clean off all the graffiti they had committed, and to have it done within two weeks. A reasonable request, if you ask me.

Well. As you can imagine. The parents of those little preciouses were not too happy about it. How dare a magistrate order their most angelic little-uns around. And fancy ordering them to clean up their own damage. Why. That's just not liberal-minded at all. After all, it wasn't the fault of those most endearing teenage toddlers for doing what they did. Oh no. It was the invisible jibble man what made them do it. And so, they complained to the magistrate and DEMANDED a meeting with him - to tell him a thing or two, as you can imagine such injustice, right?

So the magistrate had the meeting. And for all the parents' trouble, he slapped them EACH with a $100 fine for having no duty of care!

HA! Don't ya just love it?