So I am currently following a workout plan to build strength. I would like to gain muscle mass, the problem is that because I am one of those people with a super-hyper metabolism, it is extremely difficult for me to build muscle mass unless I eat a LOT in addition to the workouts, and it has to be good, clean food. Well I don't have the money for enough such food, I do have a bunch of big tubs of whey protein powder that my father bought for me though, but in order to be able to consume the protein necessary for serious mass building, I'd need to consume around eight shakes a day, and although this is a good powder (Optimum Nutrition), protein shakes still get sickening when you are on the fifth shake or higher.
So hopefully, I can ignore the mass and just mostly concentrate on building muscle strength, as muscle strength and muscle size are not per se the same thing, because a good deal of muscle strength relies on the nervous system. I am a weakling at the moment in terms of ability to lift heavy weights. I started out benching about 130 lbs, now I am at 150 lbs, a 20 lb increase, but I would like to get up to doing sets with 250 lbs, with at elast a 300 lb max. It will be very cool when I can where I can do multiple sets of six to eight reps with 300 lbs. I also intend to get where I can barbell squat and deadlift at least 300 lbs. These will provide an excellent base I think for then learning the Olympic lifts, and also for increasing my deadlift and barbell squat further.
A little later I am going to do my Monday workout, which consists of benchpress, military press, and pullups, we will see how my benchpress fairs this time. Hopefully I can maybe benchpress 160 lbs.
Monday, November 15, 2010
I Want to Build a Conglomerate
So my big entrepreneurial dream is to build a conglomerate. A BIG conglomerate though, like on the scale of General Electric, Siemens, Koch Industries, Tyco, 3M, Berkshire-Hathaway, etc...so I was doing some Googling on building a conglomerate, and basically most of the stuff that came up said that if you want to build a conglomerate, you are nuts. And also must have a healthy dose of ego.
Basically conglomerates were a thing of the past, mainly during the '50s and '60s, as they were seen as a way to reduce risk in a business, but now they are more rare as they are not seen as being able to create value for shareholders the way a business can that just focuses on a specific area can. This I can understand fully, I mean if General Motors starts trying to design and build flat-screen televisions, and Sony gets into the tire business, they probably will fumble.
But what about businesses where you basically have a holding company that owns wholly separate businesses that then report to the holding company. Perhaps these separate companies may share accounting, finance, legal, etc...services the holding company provides, but otherwise they operate wholly independent of one another...? (I would imagine they could each have their own such services as well, but this would be less efficient from the holding company's point of view). The thing is, if these companies operate wholly independently of each other, well I mean you will have different companies specializing in different things, all contributing to one "mother company," as opposed to one single company trying to work in multiple industries.
I was reading some articles that said conglomerates can work, but there is no guarantee, and they can take years to build, such as General Electric. Well of course, but no business is really guaranteed to work and the idea of building a conglomerate is not something you plan out to do overnight, that is something that would solely be a labor of love. I would want my conglomerate to remain private, like Koch Industries, so that I would not have to answer to any shareholder presures to increase quarterly earnings or anything like that. Kohler is another example of a conglomerate (albeit a smaller one) that is completely privately-owned and which has been built up over the years.
Another reason I was thinking a conglomerate could work is, for example, let's say you own a big trucking company. Let's say it is a billion-dollar company and privately-owned, such as J.B. Hunt. Now let's say you decide you want to start a new company, a brand-new consumer electronics company. This consumer electronics company will be under your holding company which also owns your trucking company. Now let's say you successfully build this consumer electronics company, for example as Vizio was built. So now your holding company is a conglomerate consisting of two wholly-separate companies, a trucking company and a consumer electronics company. How is this going to be bad? Your holding company is a conglomerate operating in two different industries, via two separate companies. Perhaps you could have them both share the same accounting, marketing, financial, legal, etc...services, but otherwise, they are separate.
Let's say eventually you add a third wholly separate business. I'd think a conglomerate like this, managed correctly, could do fine. Perhaps if publicly-owned, there might be problems, due to shareholders pressing for constant increases in quarterly earnings, which might cause the management to mess things up, but otherwise, I'd think such a conglomerate could work okay. A good idea would be to make sure that the member companies are mostly independent enough to be able to function though. If a member company cannot act on a market opportunity or respond to a problem without consulting with the holding company's management, then this will slow down the whole operation and turn it into one big, lumbering, slow bureaucratic machine, which would be bad. Instead, the member companies should be able to mostly operate independently, and just report to the holding company.
Basically conglomerates were a thing of the past, mainly during the '50s and '60s, as they were seen as a way to reduce risk in a business, but now they are more rare as they are not seen as being able to create value for shareholders the way a business can that just focuses on a specific area can. This I can understand fully, I mean if General Motors starts trying to design and build flat-screen televisions, and Sony gets into the tire business, they probably will fumble.
But what about businesses where you basically have a holding company that owns wholly separate businesses that then report to the holding company. Perhaps these separate companies may share accounting, finance, legal, etc...services the holding company provides, but otherwise they operate wholly independent of one another...? (I would imagine they could each have their own such services as well, but this would be less efficient from the holding company's point of view). The thing is, if these companies operate wholly independently of each other, well I mean you will have different companies specializing in different things, all contributing to one "mother company," as opposed to one single company trying to work in multiple industries.
I was reading some articles that said conglomerates can work, but there is no guarantee, and they can take years to build, such as General Electric. Well of course, but no business is really guaranteed to work and the idea of building a conglomerate is not something you plan out to do overnight, that is something that would solely be a labor of love. I would want my conglomerate to remain private, like Koch Industries, so that I would not have to answer to any shareholder presures to increase quarterly earnings or anything like that. Kohler is another example of a conglomerate (albeit a smaller one) that is completely privately-owned and which has been built up over the years.
Another reason I was thinking a conglomerate could work is, for example, let's say you own a big trucking company. Let's say it is a billion-dollar company and privately-owned, such as J.B. Hunt. Now let's say you decide you want to start a new company, a brand-new consumer electronics company. This consumer electronics company will be under your holding company which also owns your trucking company. Now let's say you successfully build this consumer electronics company, for example as Vizio was built. So now your holding company is a conglomerate consisting of two wholly-separate companies, a trucking company and a consumer electronics company. How is this going to be bad? Your holding company is a conglomerate operating in two different industries, via two separate companies. Perhaps you could have them both share the same accounting, marketing, financial, legal, etc...services, but otherwise, they are separate.
Let's say eventually you add a third wholly separate business. I'd think a conglomerate like this, managed correctly, could do fine. Perhaps if publicly-owned, there might be problems, due to shareholders pressing for constant increases in quarterly earnings, which might cause the management to mess things up, but otherwise, I'd think such a conglomerate could work okay. A good idea would be to make sure that the member companies are mostly independent enough to be able to function though. If a member company cannot act on a market opportunity or respond to a problem without consulting with the holding company's management, then this will slow down the whole operation and turn it into one big, lumbering, slow bureaucratic machine, which would be bad. Instead, the member companies should be able to mostly operate independently, and just report to the holding company.
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