Hire Just One – Let’s Get Back to Work
Nov 10, 2010
I always say that this country would be much better off if businessmen and businesswomen ran it instead of career politicians. A story that aired last week on “The American Spirit” segment of the CBS Evening News reinforced this belief.
Unemployment in this country is at record highs. Despite President Obama’s promises to bring more jobs to this country and to lower unemployment, joblessness continues to climb. One businessman (and millionaire philanthropist) decided he was tired of waiting: he decided to take the bull by the horns and do something about it himself.
Gene Epstein pledged to donate $1,000 to charity for the first 250 small businesses that agree to hire just one new employee. What’s the big deal about that (other than it would mean $250,000 for charity)? According to Epstein, the impact could be HUGE:
“There’s 5,700,000 small businesses. If one out of 10 small businesses hired just one employee, we will bring in 570,000 new employees to payrolls.”
Epstein isn’t just sitting around hoping his “Hire Just One” campaign will catch on: he’s making things happen. He took out a full-page ad in his local newspaper. He’s doing interviews with national media outlets. And he has a truck whose side is a moving billboard. The result? So far, 196 small businesses have signed up to participate. And the list keeps growing.
Why is Epstein having success where so many others have failed? Simple: he is a businessman with a proven track record of hard work and success. He helped his mom open and run a small business to make ends meet after his dad died when he was only 11 years old. Since then, he has made millions as a car dealer and real estate investor. According to Epstein, “I’ve never found a downside risk of working hard.”
Come on, America: Wake up!! Don’t you see what a big difference one single businessman is making here? Imagine what could happen if businessmen and businesswomen were running our government! Aren’t you tired of seeing career politicians running our country into the ground because they aren’t running it like a business? Our government should be run like any other business – with a profitable P&L. If our country’s leaders attacked the unemployment problem with half the business sense that Epstein is putting into his “Hire Just One” campaign, this country might just get back to work.
LINK:
CBS News – Millionaire’s One-Man Stimulus Plan a Success
CAN YOU SAY 1929?
I have to agree with you JZ. But that is action, which seems to be the BIG problem with government. More effort goes into yelling about what someone is doing wrong, or stopping any action all together, than getting anything done. I fully support the concept of actually doing something. Taking action in lieu of a few dollars more profit. Building something here in this country, even if it means, dare I say, a little less profit. Too many times you hear ” We need to be bailed out,” but then hand out $165 million or billion in bonuses.
We need to change our thinking. We need to change how we solve problems. And to your point joining in and being part of the solution instead of blaiming anyone else is a BIG move in the right direction.
It is simple to say “Government bad, business good.” Remember, both government and businesses are made up of PEOPLE. There are good and bad people who work in government and in businesses. There are well run and poorly run businesses.
Government is not a monolith nor an institution. It is a collection of people and we all have a role to play. You want better goverment, YOU have to get involved. It is not an either/or, situation. Government has a role to play, Mr. Epstein has a role to play, and you have a role to play.
To get good employees I bet you pay them well. That is a sound, capitalist principle right? Do you want to apply that to government positions? Are you suggesting we pay goverment workers more? Not all business principles work in a government setting.
Instead of pointing your finger and being critical, go create something like Epstein did. What have YOU done Mr. Zimmerman besides going on Faux News to complain? Did you accept Mr. Epstein’s challenge and hire anyone? What $250,000 program have you launched for the unemployed?
Grace:
Yes, you are correct: there are well run and poorly run businesses. However, you’re missing the point of this post!!
Aren’t you tired of the way things work in Washington? Aren’t you tired of our government being run by career politicians who have no proven experience in the business world? Aren’t you tired of them running our government like there’s an endless supply of money out there?
In the business world, you cannot continue just to print money. However, because financially irresponsible career politicians are running our government instead of businesspeople, they just continue to print more money like there’s no tomorrow. That’s Monopoly, people, not the real world!!
In the real world, you must be financially responsible in the way you run your business, or you will go out of business. If we ran our government with that same sense of financial responsibility, this country would not be in the financial trouble it’s in today. Our country is a business. And we need experienced businesspeople to step up and run our government like a business.
Forget about more people getting involved. At the end of the day, we need to get these career politicians OUT, put businessmen and businesswomen with proven track records of success IN, and SHRINK government on a local and national level!!!
This is a ridiculous post. Something I stumbled across in a Google search and thought it was written by a first year journalism student trying to get all philosophical about the free market after an episode of Hannity. What a shame (though not surprising) to find it was written by a grown man and executive. No wonder we’re in a recession. If our business “leaders” really think like this Jordan Zimmerman, America has much bigger problems than housing prices and unemployment. Problems that won’t go away until this generation does.
Ridiculous:
Nobody twists your arm to read my blog. If you’re not interested or if you don’t have any constructive comments to make, then don’t read at all. I’m sorry it took up part of your obviously precious time that could have otherwise been spent catching up on recent episodes of Hannity.
There’s nothing ‘philosophical’ about this post. Gene Epstein is a brilliant businessman who is putting his business knowledge and experience to use by helping put America back to work. How can you find fault with that? Sounds like you’re a bitter, disgruntled employee. Or maybe you’re just a disgruntled person in general, someone who always looks at the world through negative eyes. This ‘generation’ has accomplished some amazing things even in the face of less than ideal economic conditions. And if you’re referring to my agency specifically, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Zimmerman has continued to grow and enjoy success even in the middle of the worst recession in decades.
Next time, instead of wasting your time and ours posting a stupid comment that serves absolutely no purpose, maybe you should take a few minutes to ask yourself why it is you’re so pissed off. You may even want to consider enrolling in some anger management classes or going to see a psychologist. Or maybe you can use some of your extra time taking journalism classes since you seem to have such an interest in my writing.
Government is no more or less *solely* responsible for the jobs situation,
as you imply, than they are for yeti overpopulation in Nevada.
Lots of things aren’t helping. For one, you’ve got businesses who won’t hire
someone who’s been unemployed for n days. This has been verified on numerous
occasions. That’s absolutely not going to help the situation, and will make
it worse. You have HR departments running the hiring process, and only
talking to people who fill checkboxes on a list, even though they aren’t
actually the manager who needs the person. How much time is wasted on
facebook trolling of potential candidates rather than hiring good people?
How many people are turned away because someone in HR saw they used a bad
word on the internet?
Banks managed to mismanage themselves into a corner, but now that they’ve
been bailed out, refuse to loan any money to anyone who would actually need
it. Being more responsible about credit? Good. What we have now? Ridiculous.
Requiring perfect credit to get any form of loan is not going to help
businesses grow in the least, and unlike companies with billion-dollar
incomes, small business needs credit to get off the ground. Even in this day
and age of the internet and cloud, you actually need money to start.
So we have a vicious cycle, several actually, and yet, the people with
capital are sitting back and yelling at the government, as if that’s the
only reason for the problem. We ALL created this problem, and we ALL have to
help fix it.
Gene Epstein’s idea is a great one. Why don’t you help? He’s a millionaire.
You are, from all accounts, a few zeros above that. Have you thrown in to
help expand his program? Or created a similar program to help? With your
assets, you personally could be a PHENOMENAL “Angel” to a lot of small
businesses. With your experience in areas that VCs tend to stay away from,
you could personally do a lot, given you resources. Before you castigate all
who disagree with you and summarily dismiss them for doing so, what are you
doing along the lines of Gene Epstein?
(No, I don’t have billions to work with. But I do my bit in small ways,
helping people I know who are looking bypass the barriers by helping them
get their feet in the door at companies with good fits. We all help in our
own way.)