Goodbye Straws, Small Bank (Big Impact), and Dealing With Rejection

Save Money and Exercise Corporate Social Responsibility in One Easy Step

Right now, the world hates plastic straws. Citizens living in cities across the United States have voiced their anti-plastic straw stance—and they’ve voiced it loud and clear.

Who all is on board? Alaska Airlines. Starbucks SeaWorld. Cruise liners. The restaurants where they aren’t popping a straw in your ice water. (You’ll have to ask for it...) Even UK Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed a ban on plastic straws, the useless drink stirrers, and plastic cotton buds by the end of this year.

Plastic straws are not easily recyclable. They’ve made their way into the ocean, affected marine life, and are the 7th most common piece of trash picked up along the shoreline.

What do straws have to do with your small business? Global trends and shifts in the cultural psyche become hot topics. When you jump on board with trends, like eliminating plastic straws from your establishment, selling stainless steel straws options, or participating in #PlasticFreeJuly programs, you’re of-the-era. You’re relevant. Use the hype to make a stance or take a stand. Or, simply include the hype and conversation into your day-to-day business and see what good comes of it.

Take Note from the Tiny Bank in Arkansas Who Is Making it Big

Bank of the Ozarks is an institution in Little Rock, Arkansas. The man in charge of the operations, George Gleason, was known as a “respected but little-known community banker.” But small-town Gleason is today known as the country’s largest construction lender. The largest.

The relatively small bank in the sleepy state of Arkansas is taking the cake when it comes to “multifamily housing, hotels, and other commercial properties.” Data from Real Capital Analytics Inc. can back it up.

For the Bank of the Ozarks, 80 percent of their portfolio is vested in real estate. Forty percent is dedicated to construction and land development, the riskiest of the risky when it comes to loans.

How’d Bank of the Ozarks get to this position of power? While other banks and lending institutions shied away from loans like these during the recession, Bank of the Ozarks jumped in. But not because they had insider information. They researched population growth. Household formation. Job creation. Areas poised for growth. Long story short? How did they get to the top?

They did their homework.

Gleason himself is a specific and knowledgeable man. He says, “If you do the work, you can predict items with some degree of precision.”

Precision, it seems, certainly pays off.  

Want to be an entrepreneur? You’ll have to deal with the rejection.

We’ve all been there, that deflated feeling when they say “no” sucks. But being an entrepreneur means you'll experience rejection; a lot of it. How you deal with rejection is what sets you up for growth and well on your way to accomplishing your goals. Here's are a few tips:

1. Take a moment to really feel the rejection. (Ouch. Notice the burn.)

2. Evaluate what the rejection is teaching you. (Could you learn something from this?)

3. Decide what you’ll do next. (There are many roads you could take. Which way will you go?)

4. And finally, use that rejection to fuel your own motivations. (What are you really working towards?)

Keep going. Be tactical. Put one foot in front of the other. Plow through the “nos” until you reach your next (and glorious!) “yes.”