Technology

The other day, I launched a greeting card line. I drew some digital illustrations, uploaded them to a website, and ordered a fistful of each design in 5X7″ card format with matching envelopes. A few days later, the cards arrived. I carted them down to a local card store, met with the manager (we’re friends, I should divulge), and she took the whole lot to see what she could do with them.
I don’t know if it could be any easier.
Starting your own side business is easier these days than ever before. Technology has become abundant and relatively inexpensive (you can buy a web server for $500). Software is cheap or free (you’d have to work really hard to stump me on a free equivalent of most mainstream software you’re using). Distribution methods are more and more abundant. Even the difficulties in processing payment have been mostly solved by companies like PayPal.
Time is probably the most expensive investment of all. You’ve still got the day job, the family, and whatever else you’ve chosen to fill the hours between waking and sleeping. To that, I say, make sure whatever it is you’re thinking of doing is something you’re passionate about, and something you can pick up and put down when you need to shift priorities.
Cautions
I tend to like the idea of small side businesses instead of quitting the day job and putting it to The Man. I think it’s a safer option, and I think it relieves some of the pressures you’d face if you went full time right out of the gate. Read E-Myth Mastery by Michael Gerber (skip the bits about Sarah). It will give you a sense of what you’re NOT considering when you think of running a business for yourself full time. It’s very helpful in reminding you of all the other stuff you’ve got to do to maintain a business.
Options
Start slow, but consider scale. Whatever business you’re considering, see if it’s something where you can start it at one point and scale it up as you go along. With my card business, I did it super small, so small I could buy single cards if I want. But obviously, there’s not a lot of profit in that method, as the production cost goes up. When I’m ready to do more (if I want to bother), I’ll source through a printer that offers me a much reduced cost if I print in bulk. If I want to go even bigger than that, I’ll just find an agent or card company and sell the designs to them. That way, THEY can do all the parts of the business that I’m not interested in doing.
Bootstrap. See if you can do your idea for the least money possible. Are there inexpensive of free means to get what you need to launch on a small scale? Do you REALLY need business cards? Are you paying to host a website when you can get one for free? It cost me $22.90 to see if my cards will be of interest to anyone. That’s cheaper than dining out once.
Measure your time closely. One early idea I had for making money seemed foolproof. I could use about six cents worth of materials and make a $5 product. I knew there was a market. I could sell them easy-cheesy. And then I realized how much TIME it would take me to make these things. It turned my labor cost into something like $3.00 an hour. Unless I could find slaves to do it for me, it was clearly not a good business.
The best businesses are those where you don’t have to be there to make money. Residual incomes come from things like selling products, renting space, collecting licensing fees, and things where it’s not 1:1 with your time. Think about that.
Have you started your own small business? What did you do? What did you come up against that you didn’t expect?
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I was in a bead store this weekend visiting a friend who made quite a leap, from high end systems administration in a wireless company, to self-employed owner of a crafting business. A young lady and I were browsing the books when a woman came in and said:
“Hi. I know absolutely nothing about beads, and I want to fix this necklace. Can you help?”
The young lady and I exchanged a glance, and she said it first. “Wow. It’s really brave to start out by admitting you don’t know anything.”
She summed up my thoughts exactly.
People tend to have a hard time admitting what they don’t know. They want to seem capable, in control, up for the challenge. If you admit a lack of knowledge, it might mark you as less informed, less powerful.
I think the best state of understanding comes from admitting what little you know. But the key is this: you don’t admit ignorance as an excuse. You must admit that you’re new at this, and then be willing to try, to fail, to try harder.
Look at job openings. Have you ever passed up an opening because you couldn’t check off every box in the ad? Bah! Those descriptions are wish lists. I know. I write them when we have openings. Of COURSE I want you to have traveled to Tibet, to have written five best-selling Nonfiction works on technology in social settings. Will I accept you if you’ve got passion, a proven ability to learn, and commitment to trying new things? Damned straight, I will.
It’s even harder to admit your ignorance about things you feel are your core. The best creative minds, the best musicians and programmers and teachers of all stripe are the ones who repeatedly try new things, re-invent themselves, and challenge their boundaries on the things they do best.
Tiger Woods started out his golf career like that. He had a decent game, and was winning major tournaments, but not consistently. He decided to go back and reinvent himself (or at least that part of his game that was shaky). The results: he won more games than ever after a two year dip in his performance that was his new learning curve. Talk about gutsy. In the public eye, he went back to “school.”
Try it this week. See if you can open your head up to the idea that you don’t know everything. What will come of it?
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How do you decide what you will focus your energy on for any given day? Are you just basically reacting to the fires that raise the biggest alarms? Are you in some kind of zenlike connectivity to the core purpose that drives you? Somewhere in between, right? But then, how do you make SURE you’re focusing on what you want to spend your time doing? Here’s my two-step method:
Step 1: Figure out the Big Picture
In my professional life, the big picture in 2006 is “make it easy to do business with us.” The plan there is that we’re looking to land sales in a whole new market segment, and the sale will involve giving the customers as much of an education as they can stomach on our complex technology.
In my personal life, the big picture in 2006 is “paid for content”, “grow my capabilities”, and “develop a larger network of colleagues.” Pretty easy and clear, right?
It took a while to get both of those figured out, but now that I have them, they are the big picture, the map, the edges of my borders.
Step 2: Carve focus appropriately
This is the “getting things done” space of things. It doesn’t matter a rat’s ass that you have great intentions. It doesn’t matter that you make resolutions. Nothing matters if you don’t actually execute against what you say are the things that matter most to you. Here’s how I’m going to try approaching this in 2006:
Bubble Planning
I’m going to draw a big circle. In the middle of it, I’ll write my business goals (for the one at work) and my personal goals (for the one at home). Off that circle, I’ll draw three spokes or lines, leading down to three smaller circles. In THOSE circles, I’ll set up the three rules of my days. Here’s the business one:
Rule 1. – 2 hours of content minimum.
Rule 2. – 1 hour of meetings maximum.
Rule 3. – 1 hour of development minimum (development equals training me, training others).
Yes, I know that shows only four hours, but you know what? When you REALLY look at what you get done in a day, I challenge you to find more than four “useful” hours of work. The rest is tripe and social interaction.
My personal one looks almost the same, only I don’t have to go to meetings, and I doubled the development (which includes fitness).
(I like trying to align my personal goals with my professional ones, because it makes me feel less in conflict between what I’m doing to make a buck and what I’m doing to try and make the world a better place).
I think I’m going to fill in the bubbles when I accomplish the targets I’ve set out. Then, I can have a nifty looking little trend graph showing how I did. It’ll blend a sort of “radar” look with a little “footprint” trail of my success or my need for improvement.
What do you think?
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