Back when we were starting up a local company called "Mastech" (today, this is IGate Corporation), we knew that we were on to something pretty powerful. We knew that our idea was solid and reasonable, and that so long as we kept on selling and marketing effectively, the entity would grow.

I remember thinking, "This thing is gonna be BIG. And, it is going to have A LOT of 'moving parts' … we had darn well better get the infrastructure right."

We did a decent job of this … nothing like what we did in two subsequent companies, but certainly we didn't choke on our own sales.

But there were times …

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I am 57 years old. Among other things, that means that I have been scratching out letters, proposals, contracts, memoranda, and other related business “missiles” for about 36 years. Notice I did not say, “emails.” I didn’t say “emails” because I have come to the conclusion that emails are truly a product of the devil’s own mind.

For two and a half decades, I ran eight companies and NONE of them had even the slightest email capability. And guess what? People did their jobs. Sales were made and product was built and installed. Customers paid their bills, too.

And I never once left my office at night feeling the “heavy guilt” of having unread emails in my inbox.

Just recently, I sent what I considered to be an extremely innocuous email to the owner of a company whose board I serve on. What he (thought he) read and what I (thought I) had written were as far apart as Hip-Hop and Country Western. To get into specific content would serve no purpose (and possibly “finger” this owner and friend). However, suffice to say, that my three paragraph email sent this man into apoplexy.

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Not long ago, I was invited to speak to a group of high school teachers about Entrepreneurship.

These teachers, all from the Pittsburgh Public School System, are tasked with instructing and motivating young people (generally 7^th through 12^th graders) to start and successfully operate their own small businesses.

During my presentation, a younger gentleman commented, “You know, I hear every word you are saying. But how do I, and in good conscience, tell a young student that there is also a downside to entrepreneurship? How do I let them know that they might lose everything they invested and maybe even more?

“For example”, he continued, “my senior year in college, we had a business that fixed up dilapidated houses and sold them for huge profits. I remember my buddies saying, ‘yeah, this is a great deal while you’re in college, but you are now graduating, and now, you need security. You need a real JOB.”

How many BILLION times have I heard this? Particularly here in western Pennsylvania, where it seems like no young person can get through high school, much less college, without being asked the question, “So, who are you going to work for when you graduate?”

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Customers. I Love ‘em.

They are the “raison d’etre” of every business, and not one of them must ever be taken for granted.

A few years back, I was in a pretty thick mess with a local “Mega-Bank”. In short, they lost a whole lot of my money.

And, while this was all going on, they were also running a promotion. It went like this, “Open a brand-new checking account of $10K or more, and we’ll give you two round-trip, overseas airplane tickets.”

Since I was already in (some pretty nasty) discussion with this particular bank’s executive management (about all the money they had managed to lose for me), I asked one of their muckety-muck execs the following question, “Like, where are MY plane tickets, scoob?” (“Scoob” being a reference to my kid’s favorite cartoon character, “Scooby-Doo”.)

I figured that I was owed maybe a few thousand of these premiums, since not only did I have a TON of money in their bank at that time, we had also put some $100,000,000 (that’s $100 MILLION) bucks through their bank over the past ten or so years.

Of course, I wasn’t technically opening a new account, so …. no Europe for me!

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