Free Enterprise in Three Minutes with Ray Keating – Episode #67: The Central Role of the Entrepreneur

Ray Keating discusses the central role that entrepreneurship – that the entrepreneur – plays in the economy. Tune in now!

PRESS CLUB C Podcast with Ray Keating – Episode #12: Gaining Insights on Becoming an Entrepreneur from Chris Ullman

If you’re thinking about diving into the entrepreneurial waters, you need to listen to the conversation Ray has with Chris Ullman. Based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and his expertise in advising business executives, Chris offers great insights on a wide array of topics central to becoming and working as an entrepreneur. And by the way, Chris makes clear that entrepreneurship is not limited by age, as he hung out his own shingle at the age of 55. Tune in now!

Interview with Entrepreneurship and Disney Expert Lou Mongello

In the seventh episode of the PRESS CLUB C Podcast, Ray Keating interviews Lou Mongello - leading expert on entrepreneurship and Disney!

Need some positive stuff right now? Ray did, so he turned to Lou Mongello for an interview about entrepreneurship, opportunity and more, including Disney! Lou and Ray talk about assorted aspects of becoming and being an entrepreneur in tough times and beyond. It’s a positive chat largely focused on opportunity. 

For good measure, Lou and Ray have a bit too much fun talking about Disney, and playing “Tell Me Your Favorites.” To paraphrase what Lou says on his own fabulous WDW Radio Podcast: Sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation, and find out why Lou Mongello has inspired so many.

Big Benefits for Small Business from NAFTA

My piece on big benefits for small businesses from NAFTA 

Go to http://sbecouncil.org/2018/02/28/nafta-big-benefits-for-small-businesses/

Free Enterprise in Three Minutes: Protectionism Sucks!

Free Enterprise in Three Minutes with Ray Keating podcast - Tune in and find out why protectionism sucks in a mere three minutes!

Go to http://www.buzzsprout.com/155969/651383-episode-3-protectionism-sucks

Free Enterprise in Three Minutes Podcast Launched!

Free Enterprise in Three Minutes is a podcast meant to provide three-minute (give or take a few seconds) answers to important questions about free enterprise, the economy, business and related issues. Ray Keating is an economist, columnist, author and podcaster who cuts through the economic mumbo-jumbo, tosses aside the economic mistakes often made in the media and in political circles, and quickly gets at economic reality. Who says free enterprise and economics have to be mind-numbing? That's not the case with Free Enterprise in Three Minutes with Ray Keating.

The first episode? "Is Free Enterprise About Greed?"

Tune in at http://www.buzzsprout.com/155969

Throwback Thursday: Learning from a Classic Business Thinker

by Ray Keating

One of the best things about writing and researching in your career is that the learning never stops. This column, which originally ran in Long Island Business News in December 2014, serves up some insights learned from Peter Drucker on managing one’s career…

An anniversary snuck up on me the other day. It turns out that 2014 marked a quarter century of my writing on the economy, policy, business, and more.

That includes being a weekly newspaper columnist for the now-defunct “New York City Tribune,” then for “Newsday,” and for nearly seven years now with “Long Island Business News.” Toss in seven-plus years of teaching in the business school at Dowling College, serving as an economist in the policy world for nearly two-dozen years, and writing ten books, and I’ve been at this knowledge worker thing for a long time.

One of the best parts of these gigs is that the process of learning has never stopped. I always learn when I write. Also, teaching management classes provides assorted lessons or refreshers for my career. That occurred this semester as I turned to one of the classic business thinkers of the past 75 years – Peter Drucker.

Drucker, who died in 2005 at the age of 95, provided insights on management, in the broadest sense of the word, from the late 1930s into the twenty-first century. “BusinessWeek” once referred to him as “the man who invented management.”

Regarding his contributions, the website of the Peter Drucker Institute sums up: Drucker “predicted many of the major developments of the late 20th century, including privatization and decentralization, the rise of Japan to economic world power, the decisive importance of marketing and innovation, and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In the late 1950s, Drucker coined the term ‘knowledge worker,’ and he spent the rest of his life examining an age in which an unprecedented number of people use their brains more than their backs.”

I appreciated Drucker’s plain talk that innovation is just as much about hard work, persistence, analyzing opportunities and focus, as it is about inspiration and ingenuity. He wrote about “systematic innovation” and the “discipline of innovation.” Most people default to innovation being mysterious and ethereal. But innovation is grounded in the real world; after all, it is the act of bringing a new or improved product or process to the marketplace. Drucker summed up, “If diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, talent, ingenuity, and knowledge are of no avail.”

This semester, I introduced students and myself to Drucker’s Harvard Business Review article “Managing Oneself.” It’s a fascinating piece focused on managing, developing and preparing yourself in order to stay “engaged over a 50-year working life.” He offered a systematic process of assessing your own strengths, preferred working and learning styles, values compared to the firm’s values, and coming to understand how and where you can make the best contributions.

Interestingly, though, for both my much younger students and me, what seemed to hit home was Drucker’s discussion of preparing for and launching an eventual second or parallel career. He noted that most midlife crises are about boredom, as even those who are very good at their jobs still eventually might find a lack of learning, contribution or challenge, despite having another 20-25 years of work ahead.

The students were interested in Drucker’s advice to start preparing for a second career long before entering the second half of your career. I found it interesting that I already had undertaken this process when I started writing novels a few years ago. The students became interested in planning ahead, while I reflected on managing in the midst of the second/parallel career.

I’ve always taught students that your career will be more satisfying if you think of yourself as an entrepreneur, that you are your own small business. Drucker put it just a bit different: “In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer.” Thinking this way offers a different perspective on your career, whether you own a business or have one boss. As your own CEO or small business, you both have control and must work to make your customers (such as your boss) happy. That’s business, including managing yourself.

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Mr. Keating is an economist and novelist who writes on a wide range of topics. His Pastor Stephen Grant novels have received considerable acclaim, including The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel being a finalist for KFUO radio’s Book of the Year 2014, and Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel winning for Book of the Year 2015.

The Pastor Stephen Grant Novels are available at Amazon…

Murderer’s Row: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

The River: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

An Advent for Religious Liberty: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel

Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel