The Corporatepreneur

Post featured at 420Creative!

2012-01-26T19:57:00.002-05:00

My post about how a print ad out-ROIed Google Adwords made it to a design studio blog, 420 Creative.

See the post here.

How neat!

Marketing a BBQ Smoker

2011-11-14T18:28:00.000-05:00

One of the skills I knew I needed to develop after leaving the corporate world was
how to nap better
marketing and promotions. The easiest thing to do, of course, was buy Google ads. That's what I did for Tremore Breeze Smoker. It did very well, generating lots of hits and getting us on many BBQ sites. Overall, it costed about $300 over a month or so.

I didn't stop there though. My partner and I took a trip to the Heart of Kentucky Bourbon and BBQ Fest to see how the BBQ competition circuit was - we had decided to target competition teams for our smoker. The competitors had just turned in their food to the judges, so many of them were just sitting around enjoying a beer. We learned a ton just talking with them, and they were all amazingly friendly. We asked them about their smokers, what frustrated them, and what made them choose their current smoker. But the best question I asked a team captain was, "How did you find out about the smoker you bought?" The answer was he saw an ad in the Kansas City BBQ Society newsletter (called the "Bullsheet." one other thing I learned about these people is they love their puns). This was an amazing insight; people would buy their smokers based purely on an ad in a newsletter.

So I quickly created an ad and placed it in the Bullsheet. The ad costs about $300 for 6 months. Within days of it publishing, we were getting inquiries from our website and phone calls. We probably average about one inquiry a week, I would guess mostly from the Bullsheet ad. The people that contacted us were knowledgeable and had great questions. The return on investment from the Bullsheet ads were much better than the Google ads. We got a lot of website hits, but didn't get any inquiries from them. So we decided to kill the Google ads, and right now we're still reaping the benefits of the Bullsheet ads.

I was inspired to write about this after reading a great post on A Smart Bear Blog called How cold calling (properly) works better than AdWords. The post also talks about sales, or more specifically cold calling - another skill I aimed to learn. More on that later...

Google Doodles would've never happened at P&G

2011-09-07T00:18:00.003-04:00

Today Google paid tribute to Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday in what is becoming a very popular feature: The Google Doodle. Another great Doodle I remember is the tribute to Les Paul, where you could play a tune with strings on the Google logo. Coincidentally, I'm listening to an audiobook entitled "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59." It's told by Doug Edwards, one of the first brand managers Google brought in, and how he had to adjust to Google's lack of corporate-ness, coming from decades of big corporation experience.

Also coincidentally, I had just finished the chapter where he talks about the first Google Doodles. The people at Google wanted to have fun with Thanksgiving, Election Day, Mothers Day, etc. by making fun things happen with Google logo. But Edwards fought it, saying it was taught in all marketing books that you don't mess with your brand equity. Fortunately, he lost, and the rest is Doodle history.

As I'm going through the book, it just reminded me of how frustrating the corporate world is. He talks about how he was taught in his corporate experience that ideas were things to be stomped out before they drained resources, and how Google was so much different. He also talks about how, in the corporate world, you only did what was in your job description, for fear of stepping on toes. Many of the things he talked about wanting to stop or implement from the old corporate world got turned back, for the better.

No, I'm not going to apply for a job at Google. I doubt they're perfect either. But this really goes to show how the corporate world is broken. I really feel there will be a revolution in the future where big corporations get disrupted. Smaller companies with better cultures will get more out of their people, making them more successful. Hopefully, I'll never need to return to the corporate world again.

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | Derek Sivers

2011-07-20T07:51:00.000-04:00

I firmly believe a good leader knows when to lead and when to follow. I recently came across the concept of the "first follower" on Derrick Siver's blog, and he makes an awesome illustration of it with a video clip "First follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy:"

I've put this into action a few times. In an organization where I'm an officer, I've tried to use any influence I've built up to support another person's initiative. During meetings, when someone is trying to make a point but people weren't able to hear him/her, I'll say "so and so is trying to make a point" at the next natural break. This allows all points to be heard, which makes the organization better.

Be the first follower... and recognize people who are YOUR first followers!

Timely post: What to do with your inactive blogs

2011-07-15T23:03:00.000-04:00

Another timely post from Problogger entitled "5 Brilliant Things You Can Do with an Inactive Blog." As I said in the previous post, I was up to my neck in blogs... I guess if you're a successful blog on blogs, you must be good at blogging...

Blogs coming out of my ears!

2011-07-12T18:21:00.002-04:00

I've got a dilemma. Hoping for some advice from the community.

I have the opposite issues of what this Problogger post is talking about. I have so many topics I want to blog about that I end up starting myriad blogs. Here's what they are:

Corporatepreneur (this blog) - started with a couple friends to blog about entrepreneurship while working in the corporate world) ACTIVE
Nottheblog (notthebookstore.blogspot.com) - to promote NOTtheBookStore.com INACTIVE
Dale's Sabbatical (dalessabbatical.blogspot.com) - to update people about the 3 month sabbatical I was taking INACTIVE
Wok this Way (wokthisway.blogspot.com) - A blog discussing being Asian American in the midwest (have decent amount of content, INACTIVE now)
Forever Cheesehead (forevercheesehead.blogspot.com) - Blogging about Wisconsin sports outside of Wisconsin (SEMI-ACTIVE)
Cincyasian (cincyasian.com) - Where to get good (good enough at least) Asian food in Cincinnati (ACTIVE, but just started)
Breeze Blog (www.breezebbq.com/ask-a-bbq-expert-blog) - News on the Tremore Breeze Smoker (ACTIVE)

This doesn't include two blogs I consider personal, so not sharing publicly... even though it's findable. This also doesn't include two or three more blog topics I've considered starting, including one on investing in the stock market and another discussing baseball statistics.

The reason I started so many is because I feel like blogs need to be targeted in order to best get traffic. Each one has its own niche that I was hoping to exploit. But I realize I also need to be dedicated enough to a blog to give it proper content and to promote it properly. Plus, with my personal blogs, I want to keep it semi-private, and also because I'm sure it's a different audience that wants to read about my personal stuff than my public stuff. Or maybe that's not true?

What I've come up with is one blog that I can just blog about things that come to mind, and ideally have a good tagging system that allows sorting into RSS feeds that people who are interested in only one topic can subscribe to. I'm sure that's not ideal in terms of getting and holding traffic, but I can't seem to garner up enough inspiration to keep all those blogs full of content.

The article from Problogger was really good. I might go this route for now, and then see if niches naturally fall out of it. Any advice from the blogging community?

-Up to my neck in blogs

Pimp my ROAD office! Best remote locations to work

2011-07-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

I recently went on a 2.5 week, 14 city road trip out to the east coast (Adam, I almost looked you up but I ran out of time as I had a game to catch in Boston!). I went to see my Milwaukee Brewers play at Fenway Park in Boston and Yankee Stadium in NYC, and along the way visited a whole bunch of places. One thing I enjoy doing is working from different places, in essence showing that one can escape the artificial lights of the cubical world in exchange for more inspirational locales.

Out of all the place I visited, the #1 place to work was Battery Park in New York City. They had tables near one of the food stands where you had a view of the harbor and to top it off, the Statue of Liberty in the background. I happened to be there on an absolutely beautiful day. The park had free, fast AT&T wifi. You could not ask for anything more.

Statue of Liberty is in the distance above the left person's head

I only wish I could stay longer, but alas Katz Deli was calling my name...

NOTtheBookstore.com - end of an era

2011-04-17T09:57:00.000-04:00

The first venture I created that actually brought in revenue was a website called NOTtheBookstore.com. I started it in 2007. Last week, I made the decision to stop working on it and focus on other ventures.

I learned a lot from it:

Outsourcing tasks that don't make sense for me to do
I learned to use elance.com, and hired someone offshore to do data entry work that would've taken me hours. That experience taught me how to manage someone offshore, and helped me to think which tasks I should be focusing on and what tasks I should outsource. (Thanks to the book 4-hour Workweek for this concept).

Working with a site you didn't program is hard
I hired someone to program an upgrade to the website for the first time, adding the ability to pull data from Amazon to calculate just how much you'd save over the campus bookstore. But there were all these tweaks I wanted to do, and looking through all that code was daunting. I'm actually pretty proud of myself that I was able to make the tweaks I needed to, because I'm someone who's never heard of object oriented whatchamacallit before. It's because of this experience that I starting learning Wordpress and I'm going to start any new website I create with Wordpress so I have control over features.

Marketing and promotion
I've never needed to market or promote anything before in my life. I started with Facebook ads (back then, they were DIRT cheap) and on a whim contacted the Xavier Marketing Club. That started off a great 2 year relationship, in which I still keep in touch with 1-2 of them. I also realized that a college campus might be a great sales and promotion channel that companies aren't leveraging. You have a bunch of people, similar age, interests, all tightly packed in a small area. Really encourages word of mouth and viralness!

Continous improvement
After a couple of semesters of relative success, I stopped marketing at Xavier to focus on the bigger University of Cincinnati. Part of this was an experiment to see if it was self sustaining. It wasn't, as sales dropped a good amount. I learned that you need to constantly be in touch and looking to improve your business. Also, a good company with a low barrier to entry needs to reinvent itself all the time. I think NOTtheBookStore needed to be reinvented to add more and more value to the site.

Scale up
I tried to scale the success at XU to the University of Cincinnati, which had 5X the number of students. I went through the same process, worked with their marketing club, promoted with fliers and advertising in the school newspaper. But UC just never took off. I have a couple of theories: 1. A larger campus means a longer build up part of the curve before it tips. 2. On a larger campus, there's a lot more choices and a lot more noise, so your message gets diluted. Or maybe it just needed more time. I don't think I cracked the nut on this one, if anyone has thoughts I'd love to hear them!

All in all, a great experience. It gave me a glimpse of what things could be like. And it made me a real entrepreneur.

If anyone has more insights or advice as to more I can take away from this experience, please comment!

P.S. Here's a copy of the email I sent out to my student list:

Hello NOTtheBookStore fans and friends!

About 5 years ago, I was in year 3 of what turned out to be a 6 year stint in the Xavier University MBA program. I lamented to a friend about the cost of textbooks, and she told me she bought them on Amazon. “But how do you know what books you need for your classes?” I asked her. She told me to find it on the bookstore website.

In a different setting, one of my friends was talking to me about the Amazon affiliate program. Basically, if someone clicks on your Amazon link and buys something, you get a percentage of the sale as commission. At this point, the proverbial light bulb went off in my head: Why not help students save money on textbooks by showing them how much cheaper it was on Amazon?

NOTtheBookStore was born. The name and logo came to me as I was trying to fall asleep one night. I woke up, fired up my computer, and created the first logo: A BS with a slash through it. How funny and rebellious!

What the first NOTtheBookStore.com site looked like:

Over the next 5 years, NOTtheBookstore.com would evolve from a website that looked like an amateur programmed it (because I was an amateur) into something a little less amateur looking but professionally programmed. Along the way, I formed a relationship with the Xavier Marketing Club. They were an enthusiastic bunch, and I wasn’t sure who was enjoying it more: them for having something to work on that was very relevant to them, or me for working with great students and getting all the great publicity! Book sales shot up from about 50 in Spring of 2008 to over 400 in Fall of 2008 after the Marketing Club did its thing. I know for a fact that at least 2-3 people got great resume builders from the experience, and I’m really happy that NOTtheBookstore.com was able to provide that.

NOTtheBookStore.com was my first business venture. Overall, at best I think the venture broke even from a profit standpoint. But all the stuff I learned and all of the people I got to work with was priceless. That’s why I’m not really that sad to make the announcement right now that I’m closing down NOTtheBookstore.com as we know it. I will leave the site up with our story and to continue to show people how to save money on textbooks, but won’t be adding more books for future semesters.

It was truly fun while it lasted. There were many students who sent me emails or told me in person how great it was that someone was trying to help them out. One of the things I was deathly afraid of was giving the wrong book information on the site. One day I got an email from someone to tell me that the book was wrong for his class, and I was ready to respond with an apology. But his email went on to tell me what the right book was, and ended with “thanks for doing this and helping us save money!” It goes to show that if you’re sincere in trying to help people, they will not only be forgiving but will help you back.

Thank you all so much for using NOTtheBookStore.com and being part of this wonderful experience! I now have a company called Wild Ting Enterprises, in which I hope to start more of these types of ventures (www.wildting.com). I also have a blog called the Corporatepreneur (www.corporatepreneur.com). Please feel free to drop me a line and I wish you all the best!

Dale Ting

P.S. I also want to give a shout out to the University of Cincinnati American Marketing Association. They were wonderful as well, as we tried to expand NOTtheBookStore.com to UC for a couple of quarters.

Introducing Wild Ting Enterprises

2011-03-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to unveil today about a weeks worth of work coming up with the equity for my umbrella company, Wild Ting Enterprises. It was actually a lot of fun because I got to put down exactly what I was thinking. The process of designing the logo was actually extremely helpful in coming up with the equity, so I'll just talk about how the logo came about!

I wanted to start with the Chinese character for my last name. I always thought it was neat that the character itself looked a lot like the letter "T", which would be perfect for a logo with "Ting" in it. For those of you who don't read Chinese, that's the symbol that's in gold. I think it's neat that if you didn't read Chinese, it would be a neat looking logo. I had one person ask me why every logo design submitted had the "T" written that way. There's your answer Karen! This word is the third easiest Chinese character to write in the Chinese language (the easiest being the character for "one" which is just one line across, and second easiest "two" being two lines across).

The next part I wanted in the logo was the idea of many random things coming together into one. I wanted a "chaos theory" type concept, where out of randomness comes beautiful order. I'm a very random thinker. I tend to connect things that may appear to be very different on the surface but if you look more abstractly it's very clear. I'm not a detailed planner, I think in this "order out of randomness" style that many institutions tried to straighten out of me. I thought about doing something with fractals, which I still think is a pretty neat idea that I might incorporate into a logo in the future.

I ended up with a photomosiac concept... I'm sure you've seen them before, they're these computer generated pictures made up of a lot of smaller pictures. That's what the squares of different shades of red represent. The idea is taking many individual ventures, represented by individual pictures, which really have no pattern to them, and putting them together to form a bigger picture. There are also little squares in the process of coming into place in the upper right to indicate that I plan on constantly adding new ventures to the mosaic.

The color scheme comes out of the idea of a Chinese red envelope. These red envelopes are most known for being given out during Chinese New Year from your elders. They symbolize good fortune and contain money... both things a good business enterprise needs! I also like the idea of respecting those who have come before you and helping others who come after you (being a mentor and having a mentor). And finally, it's very fitting because my last day at P&G was on Chinese New Year Day.

So there you go! Feel free to check out the website, www.wildting.com. There I've listed a few placeholder ventures that I have been working on, or are planning to work on. This list isn't quite complete yet as I'm still converging on what ventures I'll be working on.

Anti dot.bomb model

2011-03-08T13:14:00.000-05:00

As I'm getting my umbrella entity set up, I'm trying to figure out what my company will stand for, what principles will guide it, and what we're trying to do. One thing I knew I didn't want was to do the dot.bomb business model, but I couldn't put my finger on what the anti-dot.bomb business model was. I think bootstrapping is as close as it gets. I ran across Chris Garrett's posting on Escape Velocity called Bootstrapping Rules that hit it right on the head. I like how Chris mentioned how this mentality changes your operating strategy. I definitely plan on incorporating these principles in my fledgling company!

Ta da!

2011-03-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

Well, after many years of adopting a "don't ask don't tell" type policy for my Corporatepreneurial ventures, I think I'm ready to talk about myself. It's only fitting that Adam let the secret out on his blog, as I've used him and others as role models to get myself to the point I am now.

My name is Dale Ting. I live in Cincinnati, OH and recently left a Fortune 50 company.... Of course, that company would be Procter and Gamble, makers of Tide, Downy, Bounce, Crest, Swiffer, Pringles, etc. etc. etc. (As an aside, P&G owns Gillette, which was Adam's former company's archnemisis. My idea for the product to end this "more blades" war would be to invent an infinity bladed razor. Basically, you have a just a field of billions of tiny razors. Then what would they do, infinity plus one?)

You'd be hard pressed to find a consumer products company bigger than P&G. I spent 10 years at P&G after graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a Chemical Engineering degree. So I'm another engineer turned entrepreneur. I've just now stopped referring to P&G as "we" - it's a hard habit to break after 10 years there. I've also just recently gotten more comfortable with calling myself an entrepreneur.

I'm also an ABC - American Born Chinese. This dynamic played out in the fears that I had to get over to make this move. I've mentioned my dad many times before in this blog, and one of the cultural things I had to get over was the strong desire to please your parents. My dad wasn't quite Tiger Mom (thank goodness) but the cultural values were there. I'm happy to report, my dad recently sent me an article that said people who were doing what fulfills them were happier and lived longer. He also has been helping me with one of the new ventures I've started up. So things have turned out great on that front as well.

I was originally going to go into entrepreneurship cold turkey... No income, only a bunch of ideas that needed vetting out. But I was lucky that an opportunity came along with a company called oneCARE, a much smaller company (actually 1000X smaller) who among other things licenses P&G brands and comes up with the smaller products off that brand (i.e. anything Bounce that's not dryer sheets, anything Tide that's not detergent). It was a perfect fit as they were located in Cincinnati and could use my experience with P&G. They also were great in providing me the flexibility to work part time so I could work on my entrepreneurial ventures. I hope to reward them for this opportunity by launching a bunch of products!

I'm hoping this post shows you the real human being behind this blog, and removes some barriers for me in networking with everyone out there.

Coming out... of the cubicle

2011-02-23T23:19:00.000-05:00

This is big news. Almost as big as the unveiling of Superman as Clark Kent. Or maybe Spiderman as Peter Parker. OK maybe not. Before I left my job with a Fortune 50 company, I wanted to keep under the radar a bit about my entrepreneurial aspirations. I made sure to keep things separate from the company, never using company resources to do my side things, and never doing anything that would be considered a conflict of interest with the company. But just to be sure, I wanted to do more of a don't ask don't tell thing.

Now, with my new company, I've been pretty transparent with my intentions. I work 3 days a week, with the other days giving me a chance to work on outside ventures. So now, I've decided to come of the cubicle so to speak. One friend of mine asked me how that would benefit me... I think it's cool for a couple reasons. It'll make me a little more real to the readers of this blog. And second, I might be able to get some valuable contacts or advice from the people here now that I can disclose the things I'm working on.

In the next post or two, I'll disclose the company I worked for and where I work now. And if I get brave enough, I'll even post what projects I'm working on! Thanks all for keeping up with the Corporatepreneur blog all these years. I'm really looking forward to this next phase!

Figuring out everything that's wrong with me - surprise!

2011-02-15T21:31:00.060-05:00

As I was winding down my time at my big corporation, I figured I'd take advantage of my medical benefits while I had them. I was also trying to figure out what my new years resolutions were, so I figured I'd be data based in my resolutions.

I had a few things I was concerned about, things that most Americans were concerned about. These things included my weight, cholesterol, and salt intake. I went and got a physical with a full workup. Everything was fine, except the cholesterol might've been a little high, so they wanted to do some follow-up. I asked my doctor about salt intake, and he said if you're not feeling your fingers swell up, that means your body is taking care of it fine.

The follow up on the cholesterol came back everything was fine. So OK, what do I need to set my New Years resolution to fix? Looking at myself in the mirror, I figured I had some room for improvement on my weight. So I went to the fitness center and asked for a body fat measurement. The lady gave me a thing to hold, and it measured 18%. OK, there's a number I can work on reducing. The only data point I knew about body fat was Shaquille O'Neal in his prime was 4%. I looked on the wall, where there was a poster of body fat percentages and what they meant. 18% correlated to moderately lean. The fitness lady said "Hmm, that's very good." So nothing to fix here I guess.

The company also offers counseling as a benefit, and people recommended I go see one before making a huge decision like this. I also wanted to work on this issue of mine where I'd never want to start anything. So I went to see a counselor. After a few sessions, I realized I knew and had thought of everything he was asking me about. Was I financially ready? Was I emotionally ready? Recall I had blogged earlier about all the fears I had and how I overcame them. He wasn't really helping with the "never starting anything" issue, so I figured it was something that everyone had issues with and I needed to get over myself. So, no issues here.

So after a physical, body fat measurement, and counseling session, I came to the conclusion: THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. The data said so. Sure, I can eat better and gain a bit more muscle and be a more efficient worker. But the way I am now shouldn't stop me from doing anything. I needed to stop thinking there was something with me and using that as an excuse for anything.

My goal, reward, and punishment for the next month or so

2011-02-10T08:47:00.001-05:00

Goal: From now until 3/27, not counting two weeks in there where I'm on vacation, I will book 15 hours per week of focused, concentrated work on business ideas. I recently discovered slimtimer.com which allows you to time yourself and tag what the time was used for.

Reward: My baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers, play in my current city, Cincinnati, on OPENING DAY 3/31. A friend with season tickets gave me the chance to buy 2 tickets, which I've purchased. If I make it, I will go to opening day. As a twist, I will treat the 2nd ticket to a friend who's been a peer mentor for me in the entrepreneurship world. This will not only get me motivated to complete this, but he will also be motivated to help me!

Punishment: I will sell or give away the tickets and donate $50 to a charity of a team I hate. I'm thinking New York Yankees right now, I'll hafta do some research on that.

Thanks again to Neville for providing the inspiration for this type of goal setting!

A major announcement

2011-02-04T23:45:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone. I'm happy to announce that I've joined the ranks of the people who've taken the plunge. Last week, I resigned from the Fortune 50 company I've worked at for 10 years. Originally, I was going to go cold turkey into entrepreneurship, but I got a great opportunity to work part time as a consultant while doing entrepreneurial ventures on the side.

More to come. Thanks to all who read this blog (should we call it "Preneur" now?) for your advice and support. It's a little surreal to me after reading about everyone else doing it, that I've done it myself.

Lessons from a Kindle

2011-01-10T01:07:00.031-05:00

Over the holidays, I received an Amazon Kindle for my birthday. I turned it on, took a look at the first page, and swiped my hand across the screen to go to the next page.

It took me a good 3-4 swipes before I realized that I needed to press the ">" button to go to the next page.

That got me thinking. The Fortune 50 company that I work for always laments about "Habit Adoption" being such a challenge. Many blamed failed product launches on habit adoption issues. We dump tons of marketing money into helping people form different habits. Why had I formed such a strong habit from my iPhone that it took me that much time to unlearn it for the Kindle?

Because it's freakin' intuitive. Run your hand across the screen, the page moves with it. It's really easy to get used to something that's intuitive. My Fortune 50 company (and other ones out there) should put the challenge to our design folks to make the product so freakin' easy to use that you don't hafta worry about habit adoption.

How to answer the "So what do you do?" question

2011-01-04T20:44:00.000-05:00

Paraphrasing from the movie The Social Network:

Hot Stanford co-ed, getting out of bed: Where do you work?
Lucky guy still in bed: I'm an entrepreneur.
HSCE: So you're unemployed?

One thing that I've wondered about is if my social status would take a hit if I didn't have a full time job (I don't have that much social status to begin with). How many people would understand I did it by choice? Although analyzing the situation more, the lucky guy was asked that question the next morning. Continuing with the dialogue:

Lucky guy: You ever heard of Napster?
HSCE: Yup
Lucky guy: I invented it
HSCE: Wow, I slept with the guy who invented Napster.

The moral of the story: If you don't have a full time job by choice, you can increase your social status by doing something cool, even if it doesn't make money. I.E., if you're gonna quit your job, go invent Napster!

My fears - 4 months later

2010-12-09T21:41:00.003-05:00

Four months ago, I posted my fears for all to see in the hopes of shrinking them down to size. Another benefit to posting them out there was it gave me something tangible to go off and work on. I'm happy to say 4 months later, although I haven't eliminated all of those fears, I've gotten a handle on them and feel really empowered to go after what I want. Here's an update to each:

Former Fear #1: My dad will be pissed/scared/hurt

One of the recent "thought experiments" I've done is to imagine I'm 90 years old and telling stories to people. When I say "60 years ago, when I was in my 30's, I..." there were two ways to complete that sentence. 1. I quit my job and went and got my MBA in real life. I (totally succeeded/totally bombed) and learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Or 2. I stayed in a well paying job where they didn't really use my skills and hung out for 30 years because I was afraid my dad (your great great grandpa) would be pissed/scared/hurt. Suddenly, it was clear what life was all about. My dad would get over it.

It was also very helpful that my younger sister and I are our biggest supporters. My sister, who lives near my parents, told me recently that she started working on my dad for me. She told me the whole line of questioning she used, starting with something like "Don't you want him to be happy? He's not happy where he is... he'll be fine, he's smart and resourceful." She's paying me back for our entire childhood where I paved the way for her (including the time she asked a girl to the Homecoming Dance for me, so when she got to high school our parents would let her go). She basically is saying "do what you need, I'll take care of dad."

Former Fear #2: I'll fail miserably and hafta take a job that's much worse than the job I left

In a corporation, they grade on a curve, so to speak. 6% of the organization has to be rated "below expectations." I joined this 6% club, mainly because my organization doesn't value entreprenurial type people. One of the reasons was I didn't use our standard tools for my non-standard projects. Doesn't that actually sound like a reason to promote someone? So I ask myself this question: Why do I need to take this?

I also put together another thought. If I quit and go get a "real life MBA" so to speak, doesn't that make me more attractive to the type of company I'd like to work at, should I decide to go back to a company? I also went out and talked to all my friends who own businesses to see if there were things I could offer them. One particular friend was very interested. So I'm covered, I won't crash and burn right away at least.

Former Fear #3: I just don't have the drive to do what it takes.

This trait of mine still rears its ugly head. I've done a lot of work trying to figure out why I'm like this and what would get me out of it. I recently read The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are, and it talks about first borns (which I am) and how they're perfectionists. I'm far from a perfectionist, but I read on anyway. Then it got to a part where it talked about another type of perfectionist: a frustrated perfectionist. This person is a perfectionist at heart, but is so afraid of criticism he gives up and doesn't finish things. This point hit home so much. I'm still working through this, and even looking to see if I can get some coaching.

I tried to work through this issue over the last 2-3 months by doing the 5 hours a week = iPhone 4 method. I tracked my work and booked hours, and I was able to do 5 hours a week for 2 months. After that, I upped it to 6 hours a week for a couple more weeks. This way I didn't have time to think about making something perfect, just book the hours. However, the last 3 weeks I haven't done any work on my projects. Blogging tonight is an attempt to get back on track. I think the issue is my project was to the point where I was close to involving other people; and that's when the fear of imperfection and criticism kicks in.

Former Fear #4: I'll never find a mate.

One thing I've started doing was to work on meeting people outside of work. Interestingly, Adam McFarland just put up a great post entitled Maintaining a social life after leaving the corporate world. I'm not necessarily doing it to find a mate, but more to prove to myself that a social life exists outside of the company. I've joined a minority young professional group (while I can still call myself a "young" professional) and met some great people there. And yes, I've also met a couple of people that interested me that didn't work for my company.

So things have gotten pretty clear to me. I'm taking the holidays to reflect on my next step, but my biggest fears have been brought under control.

Fantasy Stats Blog

2010-11-07T14:46:00.002-05:00

I have started a new online experiment with Fantasy Stats Blog.
For a few years now, I have been doing my own statistical rankings for Fantasy Baseball and Basketball leagues. Without going into all the bland details, I find that rankings tend to overvalue Points in basketball and HRs and RBIs in baseball. I also use it to balance my teams across each of the 8 normal categories used in Fantasy.

So I created this page to sell my rankings and team optimizer. For the few weeks before the NBA season started, I was using Google Adwords to try and sell my program for $9. Various football programs and subscriptions go for up to $25.

I sold a few but it did not cover the costs of Adwords. On Dale's advice, I have lowered the price for the rest of the post draft season to $1 to try and build a database of people who are willing to try it. Hopefully if they see the value in it for $1 they will be more likely to pay $9 next year to be able to draft with it.

Let me know any of your thoughts or comments. I think right now I have a defined product but need to work on the business model and marketing.

A money experiment - CP style!

2010-10-23T12:08:00.000-04:00

I've been taking some cues from Neville's Financial Blog lately, including setting up goals and giving yourself a punishment (like donating money to the Chicago Bears charity) for not hitting it and getting a reward (like an iPhone 4) when hitting it. Read about it here. I'm taking another cue from Nev today, and that's his Money Experiments, where the idea is you can make money with very little money. Nev's tried a few things, the most famous being enlisting a homeless guy to sell bottled water on the street.

My idea came on a recent trip to New Orleans. Walking down Decatur Street, where there are a ton of street artists, one particular piece of art caught my eye. It was a fabulous, slightly abstract painting of a jazz musician silhouetted against a lampost with "Bourbon Street" painted on it. It was painted on a wooden plank and looked like it would go great on my wall. And that's saying a ton, because I really don't care about decorating my house at all (the only decorations I had before cleaning it up to sell the house was a display of Univ of Wisconsin football ticket stubs from 1996-2000, a Yao Ming jersey, and a stadium chair from the old County Stadium in Milwaukee). The art was fabulous, so I immediately bought one for myself. I asked they artist if he had a website or if he sold his art on Ebay. He said no, it cost too much to ship, and something or other about someone else having a better website. I told him it was great and he should think about doing that.

A few days later we went back (the food is too good on Decatur Street) and I figured I'd buy one for my sister and one for my parents. Since he had a deal where if you buy 2 you can get the 3rd for half price, I thought I'd go ahead and buy a 3rd one and see if I could sell it on Ebay and make a profit. Hence, the beginning of my money experiment. I completed the experiment today, and I'm looking forward to showing you my results in the coming blog entries!

Restarting the 5 hour weekly commitment

2010-10-13T02:06:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like @Timothy didn't quite make his 5 hours a week goal. To his credit, he fulfilled his promise and bought some pink Chicago Bears shirts from their charity. Read about it here. I'm curious to see where he goes next!

With that, I'm re-starting my 5 hour a week commitment after taking a week off on vacation. I'm still trying to brainstorm what my reward and punishment would be. I think I'll keep the $100 donation to Bears Care as the punishment. I've kicked around a few ideas about the reward. One was to buy one of my friends lunch. That way, they'd be encouraging me to make it work. Another idea was to offer up a $10 gift card to Amazon to a random commenter if I completed the goal. That way the whole community would be encouraging me! Thoughts?

Renewing the Corporatepreneur

2010-09-29T20:19:00.002-04:00

As a 10 year corporatepreneur and an original contributor to this blog, I have been quiet this past year or so. The recession hurt my business like most, especially considering it was dependent on online ad rates. Having a corporate job did take some of the stress of the recession off, but I am now ready to renew my efforts as a corporatepreneur. My old business is still running at significantly lower income, but I have decided to take what I have learned to look for other new opportunities.
It is exciting to start with a blank slate after focusing on the same business metrics for so long. But at the same time it is daunting to think about all of the time, effort and work it took the first time. That is why I have gathered some statistics to support the theory we have all held here about the need for corporatepreneurs.

1. Retirement will be the new field of the Haves vs the Have Nots.
2. Any job, even a good one may not be enough to fund a modern retirement.

When I started in the corporate world, I saw a lot of people retiring at the normal 50-55 years of age. However, what I did not know was that so many of them did not really fund a lot of their retirement. They were the last generation to have pensions and benefitted from a great run through the 90s of the stock market.
In 1985 91% of employers offered a pension.
In 2005 61% of employers offered a pension.
In 2009 only 37% offer a traditional pension.
I am actually surprised how relatively high the last 2 numbers seem vs how it feels. However, the message is the same, traditional pensions are dead and everyone is on their own for retirement. And many companies have stopped any 401k matching programs.

The primary retirement question used to be WHEN you could retire. With people hoping to comfortably stop working at 55 or even 50. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, I thought the question for our generation would be not when but IF one could retire. I thought this shift was 20 years away, however with the recession and a massive debt crushing our economy, we may have already hit the time when a significant portion of the population could not retire at all. In a recent CNNMoney poll, 34% said they may never be able to retire. Even scarier, you can go to INGcompareMe.com to see how your retirement planning stacks up against 100,000 people who have entered their data. The average amount saved at every age group and income seemed shockingly low to me. I consider myself a dedicated saver for retirement and I still worry that I am not doing enough to prepare for retirement.
I read a recent article talking about moving the retirement age from 62 to 67 or even 70. They justified it saying it is necessary because of large debt and feasible because people are living longer and our service economy is not as hard as farming or labor allowing people to stay in the work force longer. All fair points, except for the fact that companies would need to want to keep people around until the age of 70. And looking around the office, I do not see too many people beyond 55. That means you may expect to have a 10 year gap between retiring from the corporate world and social security and Medicare benefits. Are any of us planning ahead for this second career? I have heard of people retiring to go into teaching or other types of work. I am certainly not against working in retirement because there are many health and social benefits, I would just like for it to be a choice and not a way to try and make ends meet.

The ultimate goal of a corporatepreneur is to have a business take off so that you can be your own boss. Even if that never happens it would be great to have a business fund a proper or early retirement. Or If none of those dreams come true, it would be great to have a business established and running that could ease the tradition into retirement.

I have to think in the next decade, we will move from anonymous blogs to whole communities helping each other achieve our goals.

Comment of the year

2010-09-28T21:29:00.000-04:00

@Timothy said, regarding my reward and punishment for my 5 hours a week goal:

Very nice! I was thinking of picking up a Galaxy from ATT. Toys are a perfect motivator. If the toy doesn't work, Bears Cares ought to do the trick, especially since the Bears just handed the Pack a loss.

This is it!

2010-09-26T22:27:00.001-04:00

In about 45 minutes, I will have fulfilled my 5 hours a week of work for 5 straight weeks. The closest I've come to not getting the 5 hours in was the last two weeks. Last week, I was taking a trip out to SF and had no hours booked up to the day I traveled. Thank goodness for Delta's wifi on the plane! I knocked out 2 hours on the 4.5 hour flight out there. I couldn't do more because 1. The battery on my Mac drained, and 2. There was about 30 min of turbulence that was bad enough that I couldn't type straight. Then on Friday, while everyone else was sleeping and I was still on Eastern time, I knocked out the remaining 3 hours, giving myself the 5 hours for the week. Not bad considering I didn't do any work on the weekend. This week the same thing happened. I had no hours booked through the week... just constantly had stuff going on and the messed up sleep schedule caused me to be really tired at night. Well I knocked out 2.5 hours on Saturday and I'm wrapping up the last 2.5 hours for tonight.

I've been tracking the work I've been doing and the time I've spent doing it. A majority of the time I've used to learn Wordpress for a new website I'm trying to start. It's fun going through the logs. On Sept 5, I spent 30 min at Starbucks downloading Wordpress. Then later, I spent an hour on my couch troubleshooting the wordpress installation (it's NEVER the 5 min installation they say!). But then as I went along, I started picking up what Wordpress was all about... picked a theme, figured out how to change widths of stuff, figured out what "the loop" was, and eventually getting to a point where I could do some stuff on the code level. It's awesome to see the progression!

I definitely want to keep this level of discipline in my work. I would like to get to a glidepath to get to 10 hours a week. I've been pretty good about the work being real execution work, with minimal brainstorming and theorizing work (I tend to gravitate towards that kind of work anyway, so it won't be an issue to try to limit it). It's still hard to get started, all the self doubt and wondering if what I'm doing is really worth it or not kicks in. But it's a great feeling when you're done with the hour and you figured out that Wordpress issue!

As for the iPhone 4... I cheated a little bit and bought it last week in SF because I wanted the better camera and video recording capability. But I was still going to make that donation if I didn't get the hours in, and I was more determined than ever to get the hours in so I wouldn't hafta face you guys!

Disappointing results for Fall textbook season

2010-08-22T23:01:00.002-04:00

The fall textbook season at Xavier University is just about done. This year's numbers were 25% of last year's fall semester (that's a 25 index for those corporate types that talk like that). Of course my reaction to that was to say "time to move on to another idea, this one is dead." But that's not very entrepreneurial. Plus after reading about all this stuff about failure and how one should learn from it, I really should try to learn from this!

So I started coming up with hypotheses as to why this was happening:

Competition. First, it seems like textbooks are a hot topic nowadays. Tons of sites out there are trying to get student's attention. The latest one is Chegg, which is a textbook rental site. As an aside, back in '07 when I was conceiving NOTtheBookstore.com, I also had the idea of a textbook rental business. I chose this model because it required a lot less capital to work with. So maybe there was a lot of competition, and people weren't using my site to buy from Amazon or Half anymore.

New textbook info requirements. The government passed a law requiring a school to post required textbooks and prices at the time of registration. Maybe this meant my site wasn't providing enough value for people to click through to, since one of the discerning features was it showed you what books you need. Now they already tell you!

Students now know to buy online. This was another value I thought the site brought, that is to tell people to buy online. When I started the site, I had no idea I could buy the same book for much cheaper online!

Finally, and I think this is probably the 80 for the 20 reason...

I didn't have any on-campus marketing presence, other than Facebook and newspaper ads. The Marketing Club and I took a break, and initially revenue was doing fine. So I concluded that it was self-sufficient. I'm thinking that conclusion has been disproven.

Some other supporting data... The drop in revenue corresponded to a drop in traffic. I haven't run the numbers yet, but by eyeballing it, it seems like the revenue per visit numbers are the same. So it's not that students came to the site and was disappointed in it. People who showed up bought something at the same rate. People also saved on average 50% off the bookstore price, which hasn't changed (in fact, I use that number in my ads). So it's not that book prices online have gone up either.

Conlcusions:

On campus marketing through the Marketing Club was essential. It's one thing to see something advertised on Facebook or in the school paper. It's another to have fellow students telling each other about it.

One opportunity for me is to put in a new "killer feature." Educating students on getting books online and having my site be their site isn't what it used to be. People already know about it. I need something to add value for the students to give them an incentive to use my site. I have some ideas, but not sure any of them are "killer." One is to provide a place for students to post tips for other students on whether the books are really needed, or cheapest places to buy the book.

Next action:

This is a no brainer. Get back in touch with the Marketing Club. I'd like to run a focus group and test some of these conclusions with them to see if I'm right.

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

5 hours a week = iPhone 4

2010-08-17T18:50:00.001-04:00

I've been captivated recently on Neville's blog on his project to blog every day for a month. He gave himself a punishment if he didn't do it... he would make a $300 donation to a local homeless shelter that he hated. If he did it, he'd spend it on what he called a "money experiment."

That got me thinking... what a cool concept! What can I do? His goal was to write more consistently. One thing I'd like to do better is to be more consistent in working on stuff outside of work. I recently canceled my cable, so I've got time. One goal I've been trying to hit is 5 hours a week of good solid work on my entrepreneurial exploits. It's not asking for much... I'm thinking 2 hours on Saturday, 2 hours on Sunday, and 1 hour spread out through the weekday.

So there's the goal... 5 hours a week of good solid work. What should the reward/punishment be? I just found out that I'm eligible for the iPhone 4. So the reward will be, if I can get 5 hours a week for 5 straight weeks, I will buy myself the iPhone 4. For the punishment... I'm thinking a $100 donation to the charity of one of my hated team rivals... Either the Yankees, the Bears, or the Minnesota Vikings (I'm a Brewers/Green Bay Packer fan). Well I checked out the Chicago Bears site, and they have a charity called "Bears Care." The Minnesota Vikings site talks about some outreach stuff, but doesn't exactly make it easy for you to donate money. (I see all kinds of headlines about rumors of Favre being on a plane to Minnesota... GOSH I HATE THE VIKINGS. I wish Favre would just retire!). Well, "Bears Care" wins out because I can't find any info on donating money on the Vikings site.

I will start this next Monday, 8/23. 5 hours of solid work a week. If I can do 5 weeks straight, I buy myself an iPhone4. If I can't, I make a $100 donation to the Bears Care foundation. (I don't know what's worse, giving up the money or being on their mailing list so I hafta get Bears stuff all the time. Makes me really motivated).

My fears

2010-08-01T21:50:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, an email came out at work that announced that voluntary packages were being offered to employees with certain criteria. Basically, the package is a way for a company to get rid of employees in a nice way... they basically pay you a good chunk of change to leave. I fit the general criteria, which got me to thinking if that would be something I'd want to take advantage of. A combined feeling of excitement and utter fear came over me. I'm at a point where I've saved up enough money, plus with the benefits that were being offered, I could survive for over a year at my current lifestyle assuming no income. Not a bad buffer to have as I try to figure out how to make an income outside of a corporation.

I was in this excited but utter fear state for a few days until they had the meeting to explain the program. I couldn't help but tell my dad, which if you remember from the sabbatical experience, probably wasn't the best person to tell first. That same look of "why are you doing this to me" came over him.

It turns out I wasn't eligible for the program, because in my department my position wasn't included in the offer. But it got me thinking, why was I so scared? I know I have skills that aren't being utilized. If I were picture myself on my deathbed looking back to where I am now, I would absolutely be disappointed at myself for continuing with the status quo when I have nothing to lose. I decided to read
Making the Courage Connection by Doug Hall for the second time, which helped a lot.

In the book, it talks about bringing your fear out and looking it right in the eye. In one of Martha Becks books (either Steering by Starlight or Finding your North Star, I forget which) she talks about the "Fear Dragon." So today, I'm going blog what my biggest fears are... I'm going to put those dragons out in the blogosphere and exaggerate the crap out of them, so hopefully you all can help me shrink it down to size.

Fear #1: My dad will be pissed/scared/hurt

I've blogged about my dad before. He loves me. I love him. But he just doesn't understand why I would even think about giving up all the security of a great paying job. He's going to be so worried about me all the time that he'll have health problems. He'll call me all the time in that worried, "why do you do this to me" tone.

Fear #2: I'll fail miserably and hafta take a job that's much worse than the job I left

My current Fortune 50 company pays very well and takes great care of their employees. If I leave, and then it turns out things are worse, I'll need to take a job at a worse corporation that doesn't treat their people as well. Plus I'll probably need to move cities and start completely over socially. I'm someone who likes a core group of friends and doesn't really like to mingle for the sake of mingling. This fear has really been accentuated by the last time I did something that went against my parent's advice and was risky: I got a puppy. I was scared to do it. My parents weren't real keen on the idea of me getting a dog, but I felt like I had done my homework and was ready. I was an emotional wreck with the puppy, feeling like I was neglecting it and all stressed out because of all the time it required. I was bailed out when my best friends were looking for a dog and took him, but that experience weighs on me whenever I have a risky commitment to make.

Fear #3: I just don't have the drive to do what it takes.

I have an issue with getting things done. I have a hard time starting things or getting this done because I'm so afraid that it'll just be a waste of time. I'm also afraid that I'll need to stick my neck out there and risk looking stupid. And finally I'm afraid I'll hafta ask people for help. I don't really like asking people for help, I just like to take care of it myself.

Fear #4: I'll never find a mate.

Most of my friends I've met through the company I work at (we are a major company in the city). I have no idea how I'd meet people to date if I'm working on a project at home without the company providing me a social circle. I'm not a bar guy. Plus if I did meet someone, instead of being able to say "I work for (Fortune 50 company)" I'd hafta say something like "I'm trying to figure out this entrepreneur stuff but still working on it" in which she would think "unemployed loser." It also doesn't help that I just ended a year long relationship recently.

So there they are, out in the open. Be happy to hear if others of you have had similar fears and what you did to overcome them.

Prepare to be disrupted

2010-07-20T19:50:00.003-04:00

Recently I cancelled my cable... That's right, no more Time Warner Cable. It all started when I was watching CSI one day. I used to be a big CSI fan, but I realized that I didn't really care about it and I was really just watching it for the sake of it being on. So I took the step to delete the subscription from my DVR. Then I realized, I really didn't watch that much TV. And even if I did, I could get CSI from other sources like Netflix or even over the air. The only thing I needed cable for was ESPN, and that was mainly for Monday Night Football.

I would save $67 a month by not having cable. I'd be happy to pay $5 a month for ESPN during football season. But there's no way to do that is there? On the contrary... when I go on Time Warner Cable's website, they keep shoving "bundles" in my face, saying how much you save by bundling their internet, cable, and phone services. Save money by spending more? That's a bunch of bull. There's no reason for Time Warner to offer a la carte services. What's the marginal cost for beaming me just ESPN vs. 250,000 channels? Nothing. The cables are already there.

This is a classic case of a company overshooting their customer. Clayton Christensen talks about it in his book Innovator's Solution. When that happens, they are ripe to be disrupted. Other companies who can offer a "good enough" product to get the job done, and structure themselves accordingly, can disrupt larger companies. Time Warner isn't competing with Dish Network or DirecTV. They're competing with my over the air HD antenna, my mlb.tv subscription, and my local sports bar. But they don't realize that... they're still running ads for bundling and showing me how much they're cheaper vs. Dish or DirecTV.

Or, their cost structure doesn't allow it... Or their accountants don't allow it. They probably have a king's ransom tied up in infrastructure costs. And on their books, they need to pay off the depreciation even though depreciation isn't a real cost. So they need to make a profit big enough to pay off depreciation. Little do they know they may be heading towards bankruptcy.

I love disruptive companies that take down big companies (that's maybe why I'm a Milwaukee Brewers fan and I hate the Yankees). My favorite company is Netflix, who took down Blockbuster with their new model. They had their cost structure set up to distribute movies by mail. Blockbuster had a million little retail stores. No way could they keep up with Netflix with their Total Access program. And guess what? Netflix may be in position to disrupt another big dinosaur: Time Warner Cable.

I posted a while back about how small companies can take down bigger companies. Go out and be disruptive!

Math is not linear

2010-05-02T11:35:00.000-04:00

Great presentation... echoing my thoughts about math, and education in general.

Math is not linear on Prezi

Rent vs. Buy: One person's actual data

2010-04-25T21:29:00.001-04:00

Recently, after doing my taxes and figuring out how much of a tax benefit I get for my mortgage, I thought to myself, "I wonder if owning a house really does pay out the way everyone says?" So I proceeded to tally up every expense and benefit owning a house had compared to if were to have rented a place at the same monthly payment. I've lived in my place for over 8 years. I figured it would be a great real life, raw hard core data example to share with people.

In a nutshell, after brainstorming everything I could possibly think of, it came out remarkably even. In other words, if I had rented a place for the same monthly payment I was making, I would have come up no worse for wear. In fact, I didn't even include any time costs, like mowing the lawn, weeding the yard, etc. Here's a breakdown of the costs I came up with:

The equity and appreciation that we hear so much about is offset by realtor and repair costs. What's this I keep hearing about "throwing your money away" when you're renting because you're not building equity? Well, too bad when you sell it you need a realtor. And when the roof needs fixing or the runoff water needs to be re-routed to the front because it's flooding the back, that comes out of your pocket too. Not that I have any personal experience of that.

Here are the assumptions I used to come up with the costs:

Years in house	8
Purchase Price	170000
Down payment investment	2.00%	Assumed rate of return if you had invested the down payment
Sold Price	184086	My own guess based off comps
Appreciation %	1.00%	Based off the sold price
Down payment	30000	20% of purchase price

Here's a breakdown of all the costs that went into the graph, and some more detail:

HOA fee	-150	per year	I live in a house, so this fee isn't too bad
Closing costs	-3000	one time
Insurance	-400	per year
Maintenance/Utilties	-38	per month	Garbage, water, and sewer
Down payment opportunity cost	-600	one time	Earnings if I had invested the down payment
Tax benefit	1050	per year	After the standard deduction, and 25% tax braket
Repairs	-9400	one time	See chart below
Realtor costs	-11045	one time	6% of sold cost
Appreciation	14085	one time	Based off my own estimate of comps
Equity built up	150	per month	Average over the 8 years

And here are all my repair costs, in gory detail:

Siding and wall damage from storm (deductible only, insurance covered all)	$1,000
New roof (plus deductible minus insurance)	$3,000
Roof boots (3X)	$300
Reroute runoff and drainage	$1,100
Landscaping	$1,200
New carpeting	$2,000
New drywall from fixed leaks	$800

Total Repairs	$9,400

These repair costs are even before anything a home inspector might come up with when I sell the house. Plus I need to re-seed my yard, it's looking a little sickly. And the back fence needs painting. Again, I didn't count the money I paid my neighbor kid to mow my lawn, or the hundreds of dollars of mulch, or fertilizer, or the tree I had to cut down that died... I better stop and continue this analysis before I lose everyone.

So what happened to all the great benefits that my parents and everyone else told me owning a house had? I tried to figure out what went wrong. The answer, as you might expect, is the housing market. I had a 1% appreciation per year over 8 years. I did a little sensitivity analysis... if I had gotten a 3% appreciation per year, I would've been $30,000 ahead! Whoa. OK, so let's say it was -1% (where it was in a lot of markets I bet). And the answer is... -$25,000. I think that's what everyone calls "underwater."

So this whole idea of owning a house as an asset boils down to how well the housing market does. And it's a huge swing. This is what economists call leverage... you borrow money to invest in something. So owning a house is an investment. It's owning a very risky investment. Would you put down $30,000 and buy shares of any stock? How about borrowing $170,000 on that $30,000 and buying up that stock? So why would you do the same on a house?

Here's raw data. Buying a house is a very risky investment. All the equity built up and the tax benefits gets sucked up in realtor fees and repairs.

Yes, it's the American dream. I plan on selling this house, but I will probably buy another one in the future. It's great to own your home so you aren't at the mercy of a landlord or a lease. But go into it knowing it's very risky, and be able to mitigate that risk by having a LOT of money in reserve. Buy a house because you want to live in a house, not because it's an investment. And make sure you can truly afford everything that comes along with it (see above).

An update

2010-03-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

Thought I’d give an update since my last posting. In a nutshell, I’ve been focused on NOTtheBookStore.com and less on the violins e-commerce site. Last quarter I tried expanding to the University of Cincinnati, with a little help from their marketing club student organization. UC’s quarter ended this week, which meant a whirlwind turnaround for textbooks. And the marketing club has gathered steam and started doing their promotional fliers and other activities.

This semester will be very interesting. UC is four times bigger than Xavier, where I had previously been targeting and have been breaking even (most of the costs are for marketing). UC is a pivotal test to see if the idea scales to bigger schools. So far it’s been slow, but with Xavier it took about a year before things took off to the point of breaking even. If UC takes off, it would give me enough confidence to hire someone to revamp the site and improve the design and flow.

The violins site has taken a back seat for the last month or so. My contact with the Chinese supplier has been quiet. She’s a family friend, so I’m confident that if I took the time to contact her again she’d help me out. I did some initial work with a Shopify site, but I wish it were more of a drag and drop. Most sites I’ve worked with, the drag and drop part of it is too simple, but programming with CSS has been too difficult. Google’s Blogger so far has the easiest to work with from a layouts standpoint. There’s still a skill gap there. Another gap has been the use of Photoshop or Illustrator to design graphics. I could really use that skill so I can update the graphics on the site easier.

I’ve started reading the book “The Other 8 Hours” based off of Adam’s recommendation. It’s inspired me to continue to do a little every day, even if it’s as small as 10-15 minutes. Hopefully the time will add up and eventually I’ll get something successful! I’ve deleted all my back episodes of CSI and took it off my DVR. Hopefully this will buy me the time I need every day!

Go away grammar police

2010-02-20T15:19:00.000-05:00

I received a comment from my “The bigger they are the harder they fall” entry recently. It was from “Anonymous” and he/she said:

“I’d prefer it if you said ‘have to’ instead of ‘hafta’. It’s just childish and hurts credibility.”

I remember grammar and its role in blogs being a topic of debate from other blogs. Here are my thoughts.

First of all, I’m very happy that someone reads this blog and is inspired enough to post a comment on it. I hope this person is a regular reader and gets something out of this blog. But I kinda – sorry kind of – doubt it. This person chooses to pick on grammar instead of commenting on content. This person would have much more credibility in my mind if he/she said “Interesting insights on how small companies can compete with big ones. Oh by the way, I’d prefer it if you said…” The other thing that tells me this person isn’t a real reader is he (I’ll use “he” from now on) almost takes personal offense to it. He uses “I’d prefer it” instead of “The right way to use it is…” And calling it childish is another clue (yes, I know starting a sentence with “and” isn’t grammatically correct either).

I know my grammar. I probably know it better than 90% of the people in the US. I did well in English class. I know my subjects and predicates, pronouns and antecedents, and parallel structure. But there’s another part of English class that people forget: the “arts” side of English, like poems, prose, and different styles that don’t follow grammar rules. Remember Catcher in the Rye? Have at it grammar geeks. My blog, and I bet most blogs out there, don’t aspire to be New York Times articles. There’s more Catcher in the Rye type poetic license. So what do you hafta say about that?

The foray: Step 1

2010-01-31T19:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the people in the blogosphere (does anyone use that word anymore?) for the help. I had some pretty interesting tidbits, from some offerings of wisdom to some recommendations.

@kvr said: "Besides if you don't see a way to earn back $25 a month then maybe your in the wrong business." That woke me up.

An anonymous commenter suggested a site to check out, which I did. It talked about general things to look for in an e-commerce site host.

@Adam McFarland said: "It sounds like you have a good 'in' to get these violins at a good price from a company that not everyone has access to. That's a huge competitive advantage to start with." I hadn't thought of the connection with China as a competitive advantage. I still revert to thinking only about the product and not the business holistically.

@nethy on Adam's blog suggested Weebly. I checked it out, it actually was pretty neat... drag and drop web designing. For a product with a high price point like violins, may not be the best. But I definitely see a use for it for future endeavors.

What put me over the top was a post on Neville's Financial blog about how interest rates in a savings account were laughably low. I'm losing money by it sitting in a savings account that pays interest rates below inflation. So now's a good time to invest it! Neville responded to my comment and offered up a post he did about starting his e-commerce site. I actually had read it a long time ago, but I plan to do it again now that I've got $25 sunk into it. :)

So... I just signed up for Shopify. And for good measure I entered their e-commerce contest where the top selling site got $100,000. Just for fun. Thanks all for the encouragement. The first baby step is done. The next one will be to figure out how to make the site look professional.

A foray into e-commerce

2010-01-27T22:41:00.002-05:00

My dad, who works a lot with China, one day asked me if I had any interests in selling violins. He had a contact who manufactured violins, and since I'm a violin player myself he figured he'd ask. I was intrigued, since I had just bought a new violin (the first since high school), and someone told me it was actually made in China. Turns out Chinese-made violins have gotten pretty good.

I got a catalog from the manufacturer, and the prices seemed low enough to get a good margin. My parents, who happened to be heading to China for a visit, bought two sample violins and lugged them on the plane back. Over the holidays, I played it and had a violin teacher friend of mine play it too. He confirmed the market price would be something where I could make a nice margin.

But how do I go about selling violins? I had no interest in setting up a retail store. So I figured starting by selling on-line was the way to go. There are lots of questions. Are people willing to buy a violin on-line? Who do I market this to? How do I set up an e-commerce site? I had an idea... why not sell Chinese made violins to Chinese people? Not to propagate stereotypes, but that's quite a large market (I myself belong to the Chinese violin playing demographic). It would be pretty easy to target advertising, and you'd think the trust factor would be there.

I was pretty pumped up about this over the holidays. I even got a fortune that said "An interesting musical opportunity is in your future." (Apparently taking pictures of fortunes with the iPhone doesn't work that well.) Recently, I figured I should take the next step... which I believe is to set up an e-commerce site. I'd ideally love to set up a cheap, if not free, site where people could click on a "buy" button. Then I could at least test the idea to see if any traffic was generated.

But this proved to be a little dauting. I asked Adam McFarland on his blog, and he suggested Shopify. I checked it out, but it was $25 a month. So I did some Google-ing, and found a tutorial on how to set up an ecommerce website with Wordpress in 5 minutes. Then I discovered the difference between Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com. I needed to host my own site in order to set up the e-commerce plug in. After way too many hours of researching hosting sites, I paid $80 or so to set up a bluehost.com site for a year.

It took me about 2-3 hours to set up the Wordpress e-commerce site (had to do a little debugging). I then had trouble customizing the site to look decent. So it was back to the drawing board.

I checked back on Adam's site and @nethy suggested I try Weebly, which allowed you to drag and drop your way to an e-commerce site for free. I tried that out, but I wasn't happy with shopping cart because it dumped me off on Paypal. I figured if someone was going to pay that kind of money for a violin, it'd hafta at least look like the cart was on my site. So back to the drawing board again.

I looked at Godaddy's e-commerce solution... $9 a month. It got bad reviews. 1and1's web hosting was $9.99 setup fee, and required a year subscription. Its reviews said it was hard to use for newbies (that's me!). Yahoo was like $30+ with a percentage of revenue too. I think my next step is going to be Shopify, Adam's original suggestion.

I keep wondering if I'm overcomplicating this process. I'm already out $80 for hosting. I'm to the point where I think I need to just suck it up and try one of these sites, thinking I'll never learn if I don't try. And now I'm wondering if this is even a good idea. Any advice from the experienced crowd out there?

Richard Branson: Life at 30,000 feet

2010-01-20T07:39:00.000-05:00

Richard Branson is the definition of the serial entrepreneur - but what I love is that while he keeps launching businesses he doesn't just sell them off and move on - he continues to build his portfolio of companies. I also love that he is a dreamed - as evidenced by Virgin Galactic - one of the 1st space tourism companies! Richard Branson's companies employ 55,000 people with revenues of $25 Billion. He has obviously become quite rich but has also given back by providing so many employment opportunities to others (see list below). Enjoy this interview with "Sir Richard."

Richard Branson talks to TED's Chris Anderson about the ups and the downs of his career, from his multibillionaire success to his multiple near-death experiences -- and reveals some of his (very surprising) motivations.

Virgin brands (under various ownership)
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group)
AirAsia X — long-haul budget airline operating from Malaysia (20% owned by Virgin Group)
Oüı FM — rock radio station in France and Asia
V Festival — two-day music festival held in two separate locations in the United Kingdom
V Festival (Australia) — an Australian version of the V Festival
Virgin Festival — a North American version of the V Festival
Virgin Active — a health club chain in South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the UK
Virgin America — a United States budget airline based at San Francisco International Airport
Virgin Atlantic Airways — an international carrier based at Heathrow Airport, London
Virgin Balloon Flights — a hot air balloon operator
Virgin Blue — an Australian-based airline operating in the South Pacific
Blue Holidays — The holiday program of Virgin Blue, now a joint venture between Virgin Blue and Zuji
Pacific Blue — a Virgin Blue subsidiary based in New Zealand
Polynesian Blue — a Virgin Blue subsidiary based in Samoa
V Australia — a planned Virgin Blue international subsidiary set to offer flights between Australia and the USA
Virgin Books — publisher, retailer and distributor of books
Virgin Brides — bridal wear shop in Manchester, UK
Virgin Charter — a private jet online marketplace
Virgin Comics — comic book producer
Virgin Drinks — drink manufacturer
Virgin Cola — carbonated cola soft drink
Virgin Vodka — alcoholic beverage
Virgin Experience Days — corporate and consumer experience events
Virgin Flowers — Internet florist
Virgin Galactic — a venture to market and operate commercial space flights, using spacecraft designed by Scaled Composites
Virgin Games — online games and gambling
Virgin Green Fund (originally known as Virgin Fuels) — venture capital firm for investing in petroleum alternatives
Virgin Health Bank[2] — a business enabling parents—to—be to store their baby's stem cells
Virgin HealthMiles
Virgin Holidays — UK travel agency and tour operator for worldwide destinations served by Virgin Atlantic and its partner companies
Virgin Holidays Cruises — UK cruise holiday agent
Virgin Limited Edition — exclusive hotel operator
Kasbah Tamadot — exclusive Moroccan holiday destination
Lady B — luxurious Catamaran available for Caribbean charters
The Lodge — ski lodge
Natirar — private spa located in Somerset County, New Jersey
Necker Island — exclusive island in British Virgin Islands for private hire
The Roof Gardens and Babylon — 1.5 acres (6,100 m2) open air gardens, venue, nightclub and restaurant in Kensington, London
Ulusaba — exclusive game reserve in South Africa
Virgin Limobike — passenger bike service in London
Virgin Limousines — chauffeured limousine service in San Francisco and Northern California
Virgin Media — provider or home telephone, cable television, broadband and mobile services to the United Kingdom
Virgin Media Television — a British television network, made up of Virgin 1, Trouble, Bravo, Living TV & 50% stake in UKTV
Virgin 1 — a general entertainment channel on Freeview, Virgin Media and Sky Digital
Virgin Mobile — brand used by several companies providing mobile phone service around the world
Virgin Mobile UK — provides mobile phone service in the United Kingdom, now part of Virgin Media
Virgin Mobile Australia — provider of mobile phone service in Australia
Virgin Mobile Canada — provider of mobile phone service in Canada
Virgin Mobile South Africa — provider of mobile phone service in South Africa
Virgin Mobile USA — provider of mobile phone service in the United States
Virgin Mobile France — provider of mobile phone service in France
Virgin Mobile India — provider of mobile phone service in India
Virgin Money — providers of financial services
Virgin Credit Card
Virgin Nigeria — international, regional and domestic Nigerian airline
Virgin Play — a Spanish publisher of video games, once part of the now defunct Virgin Interactive.
Virgin Radio — Virgin branded radio stations around the world.
Virgin Radio Asia — collection of station operating in India and Thailand including Virgin Soft, Hitz, Easy FM and Oui
Virgin 99.9FM - a Canadian radio station, broadcasting a hot adult contemporary format at 99.9 on the FM dial in Toronto, Ontario. The station is owned by Astral Media. Formerly branded as 99.9 Mix FM, it adopted its current brand on 2008-08-25, pursuant to a licence from the Virgin Group.
Virgin Radio (France) — -(Lagardère Active) a rebranding of the "Europe 2" radio station
Virgin Radio Groove — (TIML Golden Square Limited) soul, motown and disco music station broadcast on DAB, internet and Satellite TV
Virgin Radio Italia — (Finelco) An Italian radio station
Virgin Records — record label now owned by EMI
Virgin Spa — shop chain retailing Virgin Cosmetics product
Virgin Trains — a railway operator in the United Kingdom
Virgin Unite — charitable foundation
Virgin Vacations — U.S. travel agency
Virgin Vie At Home — retailer of body care, cosmetics, homeware and jewellery products through the Internet, direct selling and Virgin Vie stores
Virgin Vines — A Californian—based company, created in 2005 and producer of Red and White wines
Virgin Voucher — gift voucher scheme, also functions as a staff reward scheme
Virgin Ware — clothes brand and retailer

Learn small, profit big

2010-01-15T10:53:00.000-05:00

I majored in Chemical Engineering. My dad is a well-known hop chemist in the beer industry (yes, he gets free beer). To most people, chemists and chemical engineers are pretty much the same (it's only one word different!). But there's one thing that separates a Chemical Engineer from a chemist... and that's scale-up.

My dad works in a lab, working with beakers and flasks. A chemical engineer works in a pilot plant and in a plant. We take what the chemist learned in the lab and figure out what fundamentally needs to happen (transformations) to make the product we need. We do this on the lab scale, then pilot plant scale, and finally at the plant.

These transformations are the same no matter what scale you're on... for instance, "remove water" is a fundamental transformation. Notice that "drying" is NOT a fundamental transformation... Why? Because removing water is what needs to happen. Drying is only one way to do it. Can you think of other ways to remove water? Freeze drying? Sucking it out? Zapping it with microwaves?

Once we've figured out what the transformations we need are, we try to quantify it and determine what measures are the same on every scale. For our "remove water" example, the quantity may be "remove water until product has 5% water." This is true in the lab, pilot plant, or manufacturing plant the size of the moon. In the plant, this could be a 10 million watt Yankee direct contact dryer. In the lab, it could be a stack of Bounty towels.

What's the advantage of doing all this work? Why not just run it at the plant? The reason is a run in the lab probably costs $<100. A run in the plant could cost $10K, $20K, maybe even $100K or more. There's a saying: "Make mistakes in the lab, profits in the plant."

Entrepreneurs should take that to heart. Too many "entrepreneurs" make their mistakes in the plant... Think of all the dot bombs who got $50 million in funding and failed. That's why entrepreneurship is so "risky." On the other hand there are people who start small and when they scale up just multiply everything by 2 or 3 or whatever. They don't figure out what the fundamental measures are.

For NOTtheBookStore venture, I'm trying to apply these principles. I could try to get $1 million in funding, spread it to 100 schools, and go straight to the plant. But instead I'm testing it with 2 schools, one that's 6,000 students and one that's 30,000 students. The fundamental measure I'm testing is conversion rate... i.e. how much I make per visitor to my site. I want to see if that's constant with a bigger school. This is very important so I know how much I can spend on advertising. I also learned that the marketing is the most important part right now; Facebook ads by themselves don't cut it. So I'm also testing ROI for various marketing avenues.

If I show that the bigger school has the same or better conversion, and it makes a profit, I know I have a scalable venture and can start expanding. I also know how to expand it and what marketing avenues to use. If it doesn't make a profit, I can find out by blowing only $1000 or so. I'm making my mistakes in the lab, and hopefully someday my profits in the plant.

Re-entry after the sabbatical

2010-01-10T10:51:00.001-05:00

I've now been back to work for 2 months now after my 3 month sabbatical. As you can probably see, one of the things that's happened is I've been able to post less. I still have tons of ideas for blog posts, but making the connection between idea and execution has been a lot harder with 10 hours a day, 5 days a week spoken for.

I enjoy the camaraderie with my co-workers back at work. I also like having all of the resources available to me that a large company has. As I'm working my project, 10-20 other people are working other aspects of it that I don't need to worry about. And the fat paycheck does wonders to replenish the hole in the savings account (before you think I'm really high in this company, I want to tell you that "fat" means fat for a single guy in a city with a very low cost of living).

But the frustration of being in the corporate world still gnaws at me. We still have functional silos that I hate dealing with. The organization chart for the function that represents the consumer and the function that represents production doesn't cross until the general manager (4 levels above me). Which means any decision that requires a trade-off between the functions must be made by someone who thinks about my project for maybe 1 hour a week. Which means we need to have endless meetings and create endless documents and presentations to frame the issue for the general manager, who then makes a call based off a high level view of the project and the company's strategies.

Enough of the complaining. One of the things I'm grappling with is how to find time to work on the outside of work stuff. Another development that has affected my free time is I'm in a relationship that has really progressed in the past few months. (She doesn't quite get the allure of blogging. When I come across people like that, I blog about them. That either causes them to read the blog, or if they don't, I can talk about them without fear of repercussion). The only goal that ranks above being financially independent is being in a great relationship and family. However, she completely buys into the vision of being financially independent, so the prospects are good for finding a win-win at some point! Meanwhile, I'm still working the balance.

Being back at work has given me the challenge of trying to find time for my own projects. The techniques I've learned about have really helped me keep things rolling, but I'd love for things to progress faster. Being on sabbatical had different challenges... it was more getting myself motivated and developing self-discipline.

What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

2009-12-12T07:53:00.003-05:00

This is a great speech by Malcom Gladwell about what makes us most happy may not be the "best" or ideal product - rather a more segmented approach to meeting people's needs. If I were to run this to it's obvious conclusion - I believe the web has empowered people to develop products or content to meet very specific niches unlike anytime before. No longer is the entire country watching Johnny Carson simultaneously on TV - we are instead choosing our most passionate interests from a sea of options. I think this takes power away from the "one large widget corporation" and gives numerous entrepreneurs the opportunity to be masters of entire segments of widgets.

Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry's pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce -- and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness.

Tiny steps make major leaps

2009-12-09T19:08:00.002-05:00

Pamela Slim from the Escape From Cubicle Nation recently posted a blog entry entitled Tiny steps make major leaps. The idea is very similar to a blog I posted a while back called One small step for man. Pamela compares trying to lose weight with trying to leave the cubicle world. Interesting read on Pam's take on a similar subject!

ALPHABETICAL ORDER SUCKS!

2009-11-22T10:12:00.002-05:00

This is probably one of those things that scarred me as a kid and I've not gotten over it. My last name is in the back end of the alphabet, and how many freakin' times did I hafta go last because of the first letter of my last name? Alphabetical order is not random order! It gives people earlier in the alphabet an unfair advantage. If I contributed to a project with a team of 5, anytime our names are listed I'm last. Do people even read that far down?

Seth Godin on his blog talks about times to NOT use alphabetical order. Namely, when you're not searching for something specific. Why not order it in a way that it makes sense to? By popularity? I have an example of a different way of ordering something that makes more sense to the end user. I was recently at a new Holiday Inn hotel, and the little cheat sheet of TV channels were listed like this:

Genius! No one goes into a hotel room, picks up the remote, and goes "I wonder what's on channel 2. Or on channel 8. Or channel 45." You go "What channel is ESPN on?"

No one gets fired for punting

2009-11-19T19:48:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, decided to go for it on 4th down and 2 from their own 28 yard line near the end of the game, up 6 points. The Patriots didn't make it, and Belichick was vilified by the press.

Was it Belichick being bold? Was it his lack of confidence in his defense? Was he thinking he was smarter than everyone else in the world?

Well it turns out, he was right. According to Advanced NFL Stats blog, going for it gave him a 79% win probability. Punting gave him a 70% win probability. So if the goal of the game was to win, he made the right decision.

Punting would have been the safe decision. If the Colts drive for a TD, the defense would've been blamed. But punting would have been the wrong decision. But no one gets fired for punting.

The corporate world is like all 29 other coaches in the NFL. People in the corporate world are there because it's safe and secure. People get rewarded for making the safe decision instead of the right decision. There are numerous times where I've pushed and pushed for the risky decision when I saw that the safe route was too risky. I remember trying to convince my boss one day to change the method of production for a new product because the current method wouldn't get us to the point of the project making money. I literally said it's like being down by 8, scoring a touchdown, then kicking the extra point because going for 2 was too risky. (Incidentally, the product has now launched, using the method of production I pushed for... you can probably get it at Wal-Mart. Email me if you want to know what it is).

In a corporation, no one gets fired for punting, even if it means a higher probability of losing the game. No one gets fired for making their employees do hundreds of man-hours of paperwork before approving funding, even if it means wasted money due to all the extra salary paid out for work that doesn't increase the chance of the project succeeding. No one gets fired for requiring a hospital like clean room when manufacturing a product, even when the product is used to clean dirt.

I blogged earlier about how small companies can take down a large corporation. Here's another way. Think like Bill Belichick. Go for it on 4th and 2 to win the game while the corporations are punting.

Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes

2009-11-11T07:21:00.003-05:00

Short and to the point - here's a good video about what it takes to succeed. I think while it may seem simple - I feel that each step could use a lot of focus to bring it to life.

Why do people succeed? Is it because they’re smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

The last day of the sabbatical

2009-11-06T16:18:00.002-05:00

Today is the last day of my 3 month sabbatical. It's been very relaxing, and it definitely recharges your batteries. On Monday, I return to the corporate world. Now, I pause and reflect on some things I've accomplished, discovered, or figured out during my 3 months off...

It's a really nice break mentally. Your life is a lot simpler when you aren't required to be anywhere at a particular time. You have no bosses telling you what to do, and no organizational things you hafta worry about. My alarm clock broke about a day into the sabbatical, and I haven't had one in my room since. When I wake up, I don't know what time it is until I boot up the computer. I usually wake up around 8-9 AM on my own, but not being jolted awake is very therapeutic.

I feel like my capability to take !@#$! is a lot higher. If you asked me a month into the sabbatical about going back to work, I would tell you I dread it with all my soul. Right now, although of course I'd prefer to not need to go back, I feel OK with it and that I can handle it. I think even a 2 week vacation isn't enough; you aren't able to completely unplug. A 3 month vacation where you're working on something also doesn't really cut it. The ability to not have anything on your mind, and the ability to work on whitespace for an extended period of time is really cleansing for my mind.

One thing I was able to accomplish was cleaning out an extra bedroom and making it a home office. I live alone, and I used to do all my work in the family room on the couch with an IKEA laptop desk. A couple months ago I packed up the pile of books that were on the desk and shipped it off to Half Price Books. I now have a nice desk that faces out the window that I work from. I still would like to "pimp my home office" sometime (maybe add a fridge and a tea maker, maybe a sound system so I can work to some classical music?), but just having a nice space with a window really inspired me. Plus I would keep my laptop there, so when I woke up in the morning it would be the first place I'd head... and it'd get me started on my day fast.

I discovered the Pomodoro technique, which helped me overcome my natural weak points. I tend to not want to focus on one thing at a time, jumping around to do other things. I do this because I'm a curious person, but also because I tend to doubt myself and wonder if what I'm doing really is going to help the big picture. But setting a timer and requiring yourself to 25 min with no distractions was really effective for me.

With this technique, I feel more confident that I can continue to work on the ultimate goal of financial independence while working in the corporate world. I can set aside 25 min of my time daily to advance my projects. My home office is a nice place to work now. Panera's are the best place to work (outside of the 11-2 lunch rush), with ample space, free soda refills, and a nice environment. Barnes and Noble and Borders now offer free wifi and are great places to work too. Starbucks also has free wifi now if you buy something with their gift card, and there's of course one on every corner. I was able to figure out what to get at these places now, since I don't drink coffee and I don't like Panera's food all that much... I get a iced or hot tea, with milk and sweetener. With all that, I can easily set aside a chunk of time to move forward with my projects.

I'm OK working on my own. One concern I had was if I would miss the human interaction with my co-workers. And honestly I don't (nothing against them, they're great to hang out with). I have friends who are entrepreneurs and corporatepreneurs, and I have lunch with them. I figureed out that my company IM system links with AIM, so I was able to keep in touch with my good friends. I definitely see less people than at work, but it's the equivalent of working at a small company.

The burn rate is real. Usually I take my paycheck, pay off all my bills, and deposit the rest into savings. For the first time, I had to do it backwards... figure out how much my bills were, pull that amount out of my savings, and pay my bills. That was quite a shock to the system watching my savings account dwindle like that. Usually a bad month was when there was nothing going into savings. This just made me want to have a good cash flow in from another source before quitting my day job. For me, having my day job fund my ventures is still a pretty good model.

So on Monday, I rejoin the corporate world. It's been a great 3 months. Hopefully the next time it'll be for good!

Inspiring video about sabbaticals

2009-11-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

Thanks Tom for this TED video about from Stefan Sagmeister... Stefan closes his design studio for a year every seven years. The best part of this talk was the illustration of little pieces of retirement put into the working years (about 1:30 into the video).

As I enter the last week of MY 3 month sabbatical, I plan on taking some time to reflect on what I've learned and accomplished in the last 3 months. But one thing I can say for sure right now: it was definitely a great thing to do. Enjoy the video!

Hitting 4 hours a day - with the help of a tomato

2009-10-27T13:35:00.002-04:00

I blogged earlier about how I was struggling trying to reach my goal of 4 hours of good work a day. I'm happy to report that the last two weeks have been very productive and I've gotten to 4 hours a day!

I went over the tipping point with the help of a technique I read on a blog... I would love to give the kudos, but I honestly can't remember where I got it from. It's called the "Pomodoro Technique" (after looking into this technique some more, I discovered pomodoro means tomato. You'll hafta check it out yourself to find out why it's called that).

In a nutshell, you basically set a timer for 25 minutes (one Pomodoro). You start the timer, and you have to work on one task for 25 straight minutes. If you stop and do something else, you have to start the 25 minutes over. If you're tempted to do something else, you should just write it down, then decide if it's worth it to start over. You must stop at the end of the 25 min, and take a 5 or 30 min break (depending on how many you've done already).

The technique is great because it makes you focus on one task; as I mentioned in previous posts, I have a hard time doing that. But I like that it recognizes distractions occur, and it has you write down the distraction so you can get to it during your breaks. Or you combine them together to form a whole 25 minute session. The forced 25 minute session (technically you're not allowed to go over) also gives you some sense of urgency to get your task completed so you also are inspired to be efficient.

I used this method to tackle important tasks that I procrastinate on. I procrastinate because the task appears too big to tackle, or tasks where I feel some self doubt on. For instance, as I mentioned before, I hired a programmer to help with the latest NOTtheBookStore.com. His part is done, but I have a lot of things I still wish to change on the site. Taking one look at the code floored me. But I set my iPhone to 25 minutes one day, with the goal to figure out how to change the design of the front home page. I ended up figuring out how to do it, and along the way learning about organizing functions, object oriented php, css, and why Internet Explorer is a pain in the ass for web designers.

I relax the forced 25 minute rule... if I need to keep going I do. I know I'm not motivated by deadlines as much as normal people, and the bigger issue for me is getting going and staying going. I tend to doubt the "big picture" when I dig into things, so when things are moving and I don't have that problem, I want to keep it going!

So with two weeks and counting on my sabbatical, I'm starting to hit max productivity. This is a great learning because once I go back to the "Corporate" part of my Corporatepreneurship, I know I can do 1-2 hour chunks after work and keep up the "preneurship" part.

Why you owe it to the world to run with your ideas

2009-10-19T14:07:00.002-04:00

When I was maybe 13-14 years old, my family drove down to Chicago to visit my aunt and my uncle. I remember us going out to some tennis courts near where they lived and hitting around a bit with the family. My dad just didn't look right the whole time, looking like he was in pain. Later that day, we found out his stomach was bothering him a lot. My dad loves spicy food (he was born in the Hunan province of China, which is known for spicy food), but he started having these ulcers and had to cut way back.

The next day, we were going to drive back to Milwaukee, and my dad was so bad he couldn't drive. My mom, who didn't drive the mini-van much, gave it a go even though my uncle offered to drive us back. We did fine, as I sat in the front seat and helped navigate. My dad laid down in the second row of seats, still suffering from pain. When we neared the Milwaukee area, he let out an audible groan, and my mom started getting scared and we decided to go to the hospital where a family friend practiced. We helped my dad out of the car to the emergency room, where they put him in a wheelchair. I'll never forget the image of my dad in obvious pain sitting in a wheelchair clutching his insurance card.

I don't remember how long my dad stayed in the hospital, probably a day or two, but I do remember what happened next. Ulcers were through to be a weakening of the stomach lining, causing your stomach acid to irritate the stomach. It was also conventional wisdom to think that stress would cause the acid levels of your stomach to increase, causing ulcers. But one of the doctors treating my dad had read about a new line of thinking for ulcers based off some new research that showed that ulcers were caused by bacteria. They put my dad on anti-biotics and Pepto Bismol, and within a few weeks he was cured.

The doctors that helped discover this bacteria being the cause of ulcers deservedly won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2005. I love this story for many reasons, of course number one being the quality of life my dad now enjoys. The second part of this story I love is how people took a different approach from conventional wisdom and solved an age old problem.

This is where entrepreneurs fit in. They're the ones that zig when everyone zags, and are passionate about their goals enough to keep pushing on even when others constantly shoot you down. The doctors were willing to think outside the box and not be dissuaded by public skepticism. One of the doctors actually drank some of the bacteria himself to prove to others that it was the cause of ulcers. How many problems are out there right now because people refuse to believe anything other than conventional wisdom? Is there a cure for cancer out there that we're not seeing because everyone thinks cancer is a mutation of cells in the body? Maybe it's caused by bacteria, or a fungus? I have no idea, but I wonder what alternate theories there are out there. On a business note, are there opportunities out there that everyone's passing up? Or even discouraging you from doing because they think it's ludicrous? If you think you're right, you owe it to the world to at least try.

My dad has never relapsed and eats spicy food now whenever he can find someone else to enjoy it with (my mom doesn't eat spicy food at all!). One of my favorite images of him now is watching him eating something so spicy it makes him sweat. He usually follows that up by saying, "mmm that's good!" All because someone challenged conventional wisdom and believed in their idea.

Do schools kill creativity?

2009-10-09T07:25:00.003-04:00

YES. [End of blog]

Just kidding - but seriously I am concerned about how poorly prepared for the real world our education system makes people. ESPECIALLY future entrepreneurs. Any school system (especially before college) is primarily based on funneling people into a "this is how it's done' way of thinking. Fortunately others are beginning to see this as evidenced by this great video! Schools make people afraid to make mistakes and learn to try new things. My favorite entrepreneurial quote is something along the lines of "it took [insert famous business person here] 5 tries before they had a successful business". My take is - if this is the case - get busy failing because true success takes time and experimentation.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

The story of NOTtheBookStore.com

2009-09-24T17:50:00.008-04:00

I've been mentioning a site that I've been focusing my efforts on, NOTtheBookStore.com I figure I'd blog a little bit more about it here!

The gist of the site is, it helps college students order textbooks online instead of at the campus bookstore. The site shows you which books you need, you can order from Amazon or Half, and then see how much you saved over buying from the campus bookstore (usually a lot).

Incidentally, the name of the site came to me in a half asleep state... I actually got out of bed, started up my computer, and drew up an initial logo. The name basically says that the site is NOT the campus bookstore and its high prices, instead it's on your side. The logo is eye catching, as it looks like "no BS" (or no bulls@#t) making it even more rebellious.

I started with a little bit of html code a few years ago, and created a site that looked like a 6 year old designed it. I entered in a few books from Xavier University (where I got my MBA) by hand, and then tried to figure out how to use Google adwords. It didn't really amount to much traffic, but then I got my first break when Facebook offered up "Facebook Flyers" that allowed me to advertise to Xavier students only. It was a cheap way to get the exact traffic I needed. I ended up with maybe 50 books sold that semester.

I knew I needed a better way to advertise on campus... it was so hard to do it during the summer when students weren't there. I tried hanging up some fliers, but it was hard to find places that allowed you to do that. Plus I didn't want the site to look trashy. I'm a big fan of student organizations (I was the president of my major's professional organization back in the day), so on a whim I contacted the Xavier Marketing Club. They responded immediately, and for the next year or so I've been working with them to come up with promotions for the site. The students loved it, as they were getting real world experience on a marketing project that was so near to their heart, and I was getting great exposure on campus and furthering the site's equity of being "for the student." I also revamped the site, buying a $25 template on line. That semester, I sold around 350 books... which all occurred during a vacation to Hawaii, where I got to track it while sitting on a wifi enabled beach (my 4 Hour Workweek moment).

This year, the Xavier Marketing Club did their thing again, and I ended up hiring a programmer to revamp the site and add some features. There were a good number of delays, to be fair much of it could be attributed to me, so the site didn't go live in time for this fall. The site ended up selling 400 books, which was a small increase from last year, but I was hoping for a 2X increase. The new site got up and running in time for me to add another school to the list, the University of Cincinnati. So far with only Facebook ads, the site has sold a grand total of 4 books.

So what's next? Well first, I'd like to see if a bigger school will bring economies of scale (UC has 4X the students of XU). I've already contacted UC's marketing club, and we're going to have our first meeting in a few weeks. I also think the site still needs a lot of optimization... I did get some features added, but now it takes a lot more clicks to get to a sale. And I'm not sure the features are intuitive. It's hard to deal with the website because someone else programmed it, and despite the fact that he did a really good job of being organized and giving me lots of documentation explaining what he did, it might be a bit over my head. So now I'm trying to understand what he did enough so I can make little tweaks to the site. I wish I had the programming expertise that Adam or Jason have!

So that's that. I'd love any advice or feedback!

Technology's long tail

2009-09-23T16:44:00.001-04:00

Here's a great video about how technology slowly builds until a tipping point. This video is from the perspective of WIRED magazine in terms of how they cover the adoption of technology but also how critical mass of one technology (like DVD players) influences other technology tipping points like Netflix or Plasma TVs.

Chris Anderson, the editor of WIRED, explores the four key stages of any viable technology: setting the right price, gaining market share, displacing an established technology and, finally, becoming ubiquitous.

End of the first sabbatical trimester

2009-09-14T17:09:00.000-04:00

It's been a little over a month since the sabbatical started, so about 1/3 of the way done. Here are a few of my thoughts/impressions at this juncture, and some updates:

The day goes by really fast. The first week or so, it was because I would wake up, read up on my fantasy leagues, play some Mario Kart Wii... But since then, I haven't watched any TV, played any video games, nor sat around wasting time during the day, and a below average amount during the evening. Granted, the reason for that is because the Milwaukee Brewers fell out of the playoff race and the fall TV season hasn't started yet, but it goes to show that even when you're not wasting time, the day goes fast.

I set a goal to get 4 hours of business related work done a day. I'm still struggling very hard to get there... I'm still at 2-3 hours. I discovered that my house is not conducive to getting my work done, because it's a mess from lack of maintenance since I've been living there the last 8 years. So I've spent a good amount of time fixing it up, with the latest project decluttering (4 bags to Goodwill last week) and painting the kitchen. I want to make "pimp my home office" the next project. I figure if I can make my office an inviting place to work, it'll get me to 4 hours a day a lot easier. Right now I'm compensating by going to Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Panera, and trying to discover new places to work. I still plan on going to these places to work, but the home office might get me the incremental hours I'm looking for...

The biggest learning for me is to focus on one thing at a time. It's REALLY hard to do that. I'm a divergent thinker, lots of random ideas and thoughts I like to chase. It is one of my strengths, but I do need to hunker down and focus if I want any of those ideas to take off! So I've changed my line of thinking. My original goal was to start 3 ventures, to get failures out of the way. Now I'm going to focus on one project, NOTtheBookStore.com, and then with any leftover time in my 4 hour a day goal, I'll work on other things.

Overall, this has been a great experience. It's been a great mental break from corporate life. The work I do for my own ventures doesn't feel that much like work... it's more getting over fears. I think because of that, I'm not mentally drained at the end of the day like I am from work. Plus not having to fight traffic helps too. In the next "trimester" of my sabbatical, I hope to get to 4 hours of work a day or more, really driving NTBS, and making my house a place I love to work at.

The paradox of choice

2009-09-13T06:14:00.003-04:00

Here's a great speech on the paradox of choice (it is also a great book). I think the entrepreneurial spin I would put on it is this: One of the many reasons it is so hard to start a business is because you just don't know what business to start.

I think many people never get started because they have the drive to be their own boss - but of what business? If you are looking for a job it's easy - there are only a narrow set of jobs that you are "qualified" for based on your degree or education. As for being an entrepreneur - there is no formal "qualification" to do anything - and sometimes that means nothing gets done if you don't know where to start. This video helps explain why...

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

1 week into the sabbatical

2009-08-17T18:55:00.003-04:00

I'm now one week into the SEEF3M... one of the objectives was to feel what being an entrepreneur was like. I've definitely accomplished that:

At night, I can't wait for the morning to come so I can get up and work on stuff. Slightly different than my day job.
It's really easy to just let the day go away... It's amazing how fast a day goes! I find myself working maybe 2-3 hours a day of real work, which was discouraging to me until I figured that at my corporate job, that's about how much real work you do too. But through Toodledoo, I'm trying to get myself more efficient and accomplish more in a day.
My main project, NOTtheBookstore.com, is in the middle of selling season for the fall semester, and it's going pretty slow. I'm barely breaking even on revenue with all of the marketing costs I spent on it. So that's led me to freaking out that I'm not getting a paycheck and wondering how I'm gonna make money. I guess just like an entrepreneur eh?

If you asked me today how I'm feeling, I would be thinking "Thank god I have a real job to go back to" instead of "this freedom is great." Last week it was the latter, but a little dose of reality today. I'm doing some traveling over the next couple weeks, but still plan on doing some work each day. Hopefully I can work on getting some new projects going and get re-encouraged again!

Starbucks is loud... Barnes and Noble has free wifi?

2009-08-12T16:46:00.003-04:00

This is more of a "Twitter" post, but since I don't have Twitter I'll borrow the blog:

Sitting at Starbucks doing some SEEFADing. Starbucks is really loud, with the blenders and the loud soul music that's blaring. Where else could one SEEFAD... I remember reading Barnes and Noble offering up free wifi now. I'll hafta check it out...

DOH I think I went over the character limit. And there goes the !#@!@! blender again, the employees must need earplugs to be under OSHA compliance...

The task to end all tasks: GTD

2009-08-11T14:41:00.006-04:00

I'm about 1.5 days into my 3 month leave (it actually started on Friday, but I'll take that as a day off. I used it to clean the house a bit). I decided that the #1 thing I need to do is to get GTD going. With every task in my head, I tried to break down step by step until I got to the "next action." And the next action was always "get my GTD system working." So here goes.

I had tried a few times with a few tools, but it all fell apart. I looked online for help, and there are a LOT of GTD lovers out there (not even counting Jason and Scott, who commented on this blog). Here are two of the posts I found:

I then took an inventory of the tools I had:

Microsoft OneNote
Google Notebook
Toodledoo plus iPhone app
Gmail

I was already getting overwhelmed and starting to overanalyze. So then I figured out what really needed to be done. I needed something to collect materials (inboxes), sort/organize into categories, allow me to use it on my iPhone, and a place to store reference and someday/maybe items. Then I tried to figure out which tool was best for which "job to be done."

Then I had the relevaltion: the thing I really need is something to sort/organize. I could always collect "inbox" stuff from a bunch of different sources, just needed to keep a master list handy so I don't miss any. For sort/organize, Toodledoo, OneNote, and Google Notebook were all fine. For on the go for my iPhone, Toodledoo had a really good iPhone app that I had already bought. For someday/maybe and reference items, OneNote was the best because it allowed you to type anywhere you wanted and clip screenshots. OneNote really fits my "scattered thinking" style, so I was just about to choose it until I realized that it's a Microsoft product, and I was really close to switching over to a Mac!

So I'm going to give Toodledoo a renewed shot. I just wish I had done this when my free trial of "Toodledoo Pro" was still going, because it allowed you to do "sub-tasks." That would be extremely helpful for me to define steps to get me to a next action. Anyone have thoughts on if the upgrade is worth it?

There's only one thing I'd like to be able to do that I haven't figured out how yet. It's if I take a picture of something, what's the best way to get it into my workflow? Toodledoo doesn't support attachments via email, and OneNote doesn't allow you to get emails.

And so it officially begins...

2009-08-06T23:16:00.003-04:00

The three month leave of absence begins as of tomorrow. I think the first order of business will be to do a renewal of my goals... starting from high level to what I want to accomplish in my 3 months, down to what I want to accomplish today.

One thing I really would like to get right is to get a system working that allows me to do the "GTD (Getting Things Done)" concept... I'm a scattered thinker, so having this method buttoned up would allow me to know exactly what to do when I feel like doing something else for 10 minutes. Right now I tend to check the stock market, play Mario Kart, and see how many people have read this blog (not many if I don't post new entries). I've struggled with many different methods; an iPhone ap (Toodledoo), Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Excel, and iPrioritize. I've read tips on how to use Outlook, Gmail, etc. I think I have a couple of issues: 1. I don't take the time to maintain my GTD list, and 2. I haven't found the right tools yet. If anyone has tips, I'd love to hear them!

A made up story about Shaquille O'Neal

2009-07-24T09:15:00.000-04:00

Coach: Hey Shaq, thanks for coming into my office for your performance review.

Shaq: No problem.

Coach: Well, I wanted to tell you that you're not quite up to our standards, and we're going to put you on a performance improvement plan.

Shaq: Really? What do I need to improve?

Coach: Well, the main thing is we really need to see more basketball mastery out of you. You tend to miss a lot of shots, and you pass the ball on to others a lot instead of taking it up the court yourself. That's not what we're looking for in a point guard.

Shaq: I'm not sure what I can do, I've been trying really hard and it seems like nothing I do really works. I've been working on my dribbling skills, and I pass the ball to other people because they can do a better job of it than I can.

Coach: But to be on this team, you need to demonstrate basketball mastery. And unfortunately I haven't seen that out of you yet. So I'm going to schedule weekly one on ones with you and have you work with our ball-handling coach on Tuesdays, and our jump shot coach on Fridays. Then in 6 months, we'll schedule a time to meet up and I'm confident you'll improve. But if we don't see any improvement, we might have to release you.

Shaq: Coach, I've been thinking, maybe point guard isn't the right position for me to play.

Coach: Really, why do you say that?

Shaq: First of all, I'm 7 feet tall and I weigh 325 pounds. I think if you let me play center, I'd be able to dunk over anyone who'd be guarding me.

Coach: I definitely see that you're tall, and you are pretty muscular. But in order to be successful on this team, you need to demonstrate basketball mastery in the role you are in right now. After you do that, you can consider a change to center. So I want you to concentrate on your ball handling skills and your jump shots, and I want to see you bring the ball up the court instead of passing it on to the shorter and quicker players.

Shaq: Coach, I will do my best, but I really think if you gave me a chance to play center, I could demonstrate my basketball mastery skills by rebounding and scoring near the rim.

Coach: Basketball mastery skills are fundamental and they are the same in any role. So you need to demonstrate them in your current role as a point guard. After you've proven yourself, then someone in the center department might be willing to take you on.

Shaq: Um, OK...

Follow up

So Shaq goes out and tries to demonstrate his basketball mastery skills by taking the ball up the court and working on his jump shot. But he struggles, turning the ball over a lot and missing a lot of shots. He ends up being put on the bench, where he sits there today as a 3rd string point guard, never getting a chance to play center, and the world will never know how good of a center he could have been...

Countdown to the sabbatical!

2009-07-20T21:31:00.003-04:00

Last week I turned in my leave of absence form to HR... And it's suddenly it's feeling a lot more real that this is actually going to happen! I've spent the last few days working on finishing up some things, transitioning my work to my replacement, and starting to do some pre-work in finding my new role for when I return. I sent out an announcement to my project team today, and the best response I got was "You lucky SOB." August 5th will be my last day in the office for three months... Only 12 business days left!

I read an update about the guy who left his corporate job to join a baseball league in Germany on the Escape From Cubicle Nation blog. One thing that hit home with me was how his parents didn't exactly agree with his decision, just like mine, and it encourages me his parents are starting to come around (my dad still avoids the subject when I bring it up). He's enjoying his time and doesn't regret doing what he did. Here's to me having the same experience with what I'm calling my SEEF3M!

The stem cell fallacy

2009-07-18T19:30:00.001-04:00

No, this blog didn’t turn into a political activist blog for or against stem cell research. Yes, this is going to be an analogy. This came to me recently as I was discussing my post-sabbatical future with my boss. He’s done a lot to help me out, but it’s hard for me to get the recognition I deserve because I’m in a very non-traditional engineering role (i.e. one that’s entrepreneurial with projects that are outside the box and usually much smaller than typical). So to stay in my function I’d probably need to do more traditional roles so I could get the recognition (i.e. promotions and raises).

I’m at the point now where I’ve been around long enough that I have a little more say in my career, and I know enough about career paths to be able to know what I want. In the past, I did what I was told and went and did a traditional role. I don’t feel like the company got the most out of me.

What bothers me is corporations think we’re stem cells. At the risk of oversimplifying, stems cells are undifferentiated cells and can grow into whatever type of cell it’s placed near. If a stem cell is placed near a liver cell it grows into a liver cell. If it’s placed near a heart cell it grows into a heart cell.

Corporations think we’re all like that. You put me in a traditional engineering role, and I will turn into a traditional engineering person. You put me in an operations role, and I will turn into an operations person.

Well, I’m just not like that. The issue is everywhere I go, they assume that. If I want to go into marketing, they want me to turn into a marketing person. If I want to go into R&D, they want me to turn into an R&D person.

Corporations think of themselves as one person and the employees as cells within that body. We’re more like an ecosystem, individual organisms that interact with each other and evolve as conditions dictate. Why can't they recognize that?

Notes from the blogosphere

2009-07-15T18:52:00.002-04:00

There were three mention worthy posts from A Smart Bear and Adam McFarland's blogs this past week:

From "Adam McFarland":

Funding your first business - This was a neat take on what path to take to your first business. The path to the corporate world is really well worn (go to school, get a job, work for 30 years, retire). Adam proposes a neat path to the entrepreneurship world, starting with a "non-career job," providing a service, then finally getting to the point of starting a business. It's really close to a Corporatepreneur path. Maybe the subject of another post!

From idea to cashflow - Adam responds to a request I had to describe how he went from getting an idea to getting cashflow. In the corporate world, we're given ideas and told to execute them using their systems. How do we go from idea to cashflow on our own? Good post, I'm hoping that he talks a little bit more on the nuts and bolts to starting a business, i.e. how the heck do you get to be a distributor? Do you just call someone up?

From "A Smart Bear":

Sacrifice your health for a startup - Here's Jason being all contrarian again. :) In this post, he feels like you need to work really hard to the point of sacrificing your health and friends/family in order for a startup to be successful. I don't have that kind of drive, so am I doomed to start? Can I be an 80 for 20 type person and still be successful?

Open-source economics

2009-07-12T13:22:00.003-04:00

Here's another great TED video about how business in the information age has to be approached differently than business from the industrial age. The change is based on technology, the web, and collaboration.

Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. Yochai Benkler has been called "the leading intellectual of the information age." He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization and economic production.

Bloginage

2009-06-27T17:11:00.002-04:00

So once in a while I like to do a "Bloginage" which is a takeoff of the word "blog" and "badinage." The word badinage, which I learned in a game of cranium, basically means "banter." So I'm just gonna banter a bit, giving some snippets of random stuff...

So about the upcoming leave of absence (or SEEF3M), the analogy I had earlier was I felt like I had senioritis. You know, when all you can think of is graduating and being free from all this homework. Well, since I'm a little over a month away now, I have a new analogy from my college days: It feels like final exam month. I have all this stuff I need to get done at work before I can leave for summer vacation!

I've inched my way out of the dip... The new project I'm looking at trying out is a single use wipe for use on the exterior of cars. It's not a ground breaking idea, but it'll let me learn about selling a physical product. Also, I'm thinking this as an example of a commercial innovation: the product is very similar (if not the same) as an existing product, but you position it in a way so it solves a different problem for the consumer.

I had a short meeting with the wipes vendor and learned about the typical issues with this kind of business model. Minimum order quantity is 50,000 wipes. The cost isn't too bad (in the thosands of dollars for 50K wipes). But then I figured in fulfillment and shipping costs, and I'd prob at best break even if I charged $0.50 a wipe. Adam, how do you make money using this model? :) Next step is some testing with people...

I've gotten some buzz on NotTheBookstore.com, as 3 students have signed up for my mailing list in the same week. The mailing list is invaluable; these are people who voluntarily want to be reminded to buy your product. I haven't rolled out the new site yet, but I've gotten to the point now where I've redesigned one page and have sent it in to my programmer.

I find it interesting that Brad was in "The Dip" just as I was at the same time...

I've always wondered if this blog would ever make money for us. It's been great as a way to get inspiration and meet people similar to you in this journey, so even if it doesn't make me a penny it'll be worth it. But last week, someone bought a copy of the E-Myth that I blogged about. So our first pennies of revenue! Funny how such a small thing inspires you so much...

As usual, things just kinda flow when you just start writing and instead of a bunch of small snippets I end up with a pretty long post!

Way-new collaboration

2009-06-16T13:06:00.001-04:00

This is another great video from TED talking about how collaboration is the future of business. I think business is seen as a zero-sum game - if I win someone else has to lose. Well this video argues how that was based on a biological scarcity of resources mindset - and not how business works.

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

I've hit "The Dip"

2009-06-08T16:04:00.004-04:00

So as you've probably noticed, I haven't been blogging as much lately. I think I've hit "The Dip"(the concept described by the Seth Godin book). The lack of blogging correlates to the lack of stuff getting done in general on my entrepreneurial pursuits:

Notthebookstore.com - I hired a programmer to revamp the site and add some nice features to it. The guy did an awesome job. I trust him so much that I paid him in full before I launched the site, trusting that he'll be there if I had issues. But now I'm stuck in The Dip, with the old site still up and the new site still to go. I know I want to tweak the new site, put up some content to feature the new stuff. But every time I've thought about it, I've found something else to do.

New project - I took the first baby step on a new product idea I had (it's not new or ingenious by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm afraid to talk about it because I don't wanna jinx it! It does have something to do with cars, so Adam I might be contacting you for advice since you have a lot of experience with Detailed Image). I contacted a supplier, and the person has responded and has asked me for my contact info so we can talk about it. I've procrastinated giving him that info, even though it would be a great next step to keep the chain moving.

So today, instead of procrastinating some more or thinking up excuses not to do something, I've decided I would blog with reckless abandon and not think about perfection or if this post makes sense or not. This is one of those cases where it's better to do something and have it be not quite perfect than to not do anything at all. So here it is! I'm sitting at Panera Bread drinking below average ice tea (hmm, maybe that's a subject of a future blog... how I would design the perfect place to SEEFAD). My goal is to take the next step in the two things I listed above (I've already taken the next step for this blog by posting this!)

Entrepreneural thinking squashed at school

2009-05-26T11:29:00.001-04:00

A follow up to the previous blog about how entrepreneurship is not taught in our schools... This story actually shows how this type of thinking was squashed.

Back in 7th grade, we had these "assignment notebooks." These were booklets, with each page printed front and back with columns labeled "Subject" "Assignment" and "Due Date." We had 9 class hours in a day, so 9 rows were below each of the columns. Every day, we were to fill in our 9 subjects in the first column, our assignment for the class in the second column, and the due date in the third column. Our Reading teacher would check on our assignment notebooks one by one and grade them.

Well I got sick of writing the same subjects every day in the first column. So I put a cover on my assignment notebook, and in the front flap I wrote down my subjects. Every day, I would flip the page and tuck it into the front flap, and then voila! The subjects would already be there. So now what to do about the right side pages... I created a strip of paper like a bookmark, wrote my class subjects on it, and connected it to the cover. Then I could flip the page and fold the connected bookmark down, and voila, I'd have all my subjects showing for that day.

My Reading teacher took one look, shook her head, and said "no no no. None of this." And gave me a C+ for the book.

It's this kind of thinking that needs to change in our schooling system. In real life, this type of thing could be patented, sold, and made a lot of people's lives better.

Best response to my leave of absence yet

2009-05-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

So word of the pending personal leave of absence is starting to spread around my project teams... Most people have a hint of jealousy, one colleague said "You're lucky, I hafta wait until I retire and the kids get out of college before I can do that." Yes, one other reason why I'm doing it is just because I can. I have no baggage... I'm single, unattached, and only have a goldfish that depends on me.

I had this IM exchange with a co-worker:

Him: I hear you're going on a sabbatical
Me: Yup, gonna take some time off just because I can
Him: Rumor has it that it's paternity leave.

I told him I wish I was bad ass enough to hafta deny it, but no one would believe it anyway!

Career Day

2009-05-19T08:00:00.002-04:00

I was recently asked to speak at a Career Day at a local High School. For my corporate career, of course, not my entrepreneur career. I was so glad to see a school have a career day. My High School never had a formal career day. It was an eye opening experience that showed me we are failing our youth by not giving them the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves.
The purpose of this blog is to speak to those who are starting to see more and want more out of their own efforts. For most of us, it came from direct learning in our 20's as we started to work full time in the corporate world. I wish there would have been more resources like this blog and the other blogs we have been able to connect with when I was just starting out 9 years ago.
I think since seeing Career Day, there is a big point I have been missing. Most of us who are or want to be corporatepreneurs have now gotten into the habit of seeking out and finding our own sources of information. From our personal life experiences, there are those of us who reject the normal careers or normal life as the best that could be done with our talents and interests. We have learned to stand firm in our beliefs when faced with those who ask "why couldn't you be happy climbing the corporate ladder and achieving a comfortable living by all normal means?" Once you convince yourself that you want more out of life, it is easy for you to avoid the onslaught of social pressure to just live a normal life. That does not mean we don't feel the social pressure, which has been the topic of many recent blogs, but we at least know enough to balance that with what we hear within ourselves.
The point is we are failing our youth because we do not give them enough support and information to let them feel comfortable with choosing their own path rather than forcing them to take tests to fit their interests into preexisting career paths that will leave them longing for more by their 30's. The reason for this is because we do not even give them enough information and tools to learn enough about how the real world works.
When my brother in law was looking at colleges and majors, I sat down with him for a night talking about life. I was so jealous of the information he had access to at his finger tips. Online, we were able to get information about the various costs of schools he was considering. We were able to go to Salary.com to see the starting salaries of the types of careers he was considering at the time, and even print out sample paychecks for budget planning. From Rent.com or any Housing sites we were able to look up the types of houses he could afford on a given salary and even look for new cars he could afford. This is an amazing amount of information to have at your fingertips. I never had this much access growing up. If I had I am sure I would have spent hours upon hours playing Fantasy Real Life.
From the types of questions I got at Career Day, it was quite clear to me that no one was sharing these tools with kids to help them begin to understand the impact of their choices. Especially these days when kids expect to get onto MTV Cribs but have no idea how to get started.
I think as corporatepreneurs, we are used to searching far and wide for our tools and information because no one shares any information and the perfect plan for one of our businesses may not reapply at all to another business we may choose to start. While always looking to improve my corporatepreneur life, I have been able to at times look back and enjoy the journey for what it has been. I do see giving back as a big part of my corporatepreneur plans and one reason I jumped at the chance to speak to a High School. I have already created a scholarship at my Alma Matter. But, now I think we need to start share our life lessons to more of our youth, to share with them the tools we have learned about how to live your own life.

Entrepreneurship just isn't taught right

2009-05-16T10:56:00.003-04:00

One of the hardest things I've had to deal with about entrepreneurship is that I just plain don't know how to do it. I've been taught to go to school, get good grades, work for a big company, get a good pension, and retire. My dad, who on the one hand tells me I need to work for myself because it sucks having a boss telling you what to do, also gets scared when I talk of the goal of becoming one full time (or taking a 3 month personal leave of absence to try it out). My schooling taught me how to take a derivative, F=ma, how to identify a subject and a predicate, and how to spell (how irrelevant does learning how to spell well feel now as I right click and fix my spelling error). All my friends (prior to finding out that some of them were closet entrepreneurs) worked in the corporate world.

My one entrepreneurship class taught me how to write a business plan... Basically a document to attempt to inspire someone to just give me money for my pie in the sky idea. I made BS financial projections, entered in gory details about how I plan on marketing on TV and radio, and all this "planning" stuff... In the military there's a quote: "No plan survives the battlefield."

I've always wanted to teach a class to students who are currently working to show them that entrepreneurship isn't about that. It's actually part of the reason for starting this blog. I've come across the blog of Bill Wales, an entrepreneurship professor at Skidmore College who GETS IT. Hopefully more classes will be taught like the way he's teaching it.

The rise of the amateur professional

2009-05-12T12:40:00.005-04:00

Sometimes large companies create products for profit - or for a specific business model. This talk argues how the BEST products are designed by the users - the people who want the product. An example here is how the mountain bike was not designed by a large bike company - but by the biking enthusiasts. No longer can companies design products and then get a read from "passive" consumers who say they like it or not - now I believe the call is for entrepreneurs to design in collaboration with consumers.

In this deceptively casual talk, Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't.

Lessons from The Office

2009-04-30T18:36:00.005-04:00

On a recent series of The Office episodes, Michael Scott, the main character, decides to quit the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company and start his own company, the Michael Scott Paper Company. In a Jerry McGuire-esque scene, he asks who's going with him... and Pam, the really cute administrative assistant, goes with him. This plotline lasts for maybe 2-3 episodes, and of course it's pretty ridiculous. But there are a few tidbits we can get from these episodes...

One small step for man...

The day after Michael and Pam quit, they gather at Michael's apartment. He has a nervous breakdown. So unsung hero Pam tries to help him:

"When I feel overwhelmed, I like to make a list of things to do, and then start with the easy stuff. We need to come up with one realistic thing we can do today."

Pam is employing our "one small step for man" approach, which I blogged about here.

Benefits: The supposed holy grail

A little later, it's Pam's turn to have a nervous breakdown:

"I had a job. I had benefits!"

I've always thought benefits were overrated. Then again I've never had to be without them. But can't you convert "benefits" to a monetary figure? Health insurance can be bought. It probably isn't cheap, but it can be bought. So put in a number. $1000 a month? That just means you add $1000 a month to your opportunity cost hurdle. I actually tried to get some quotes, and I found health insurance for $100 a month. It probably only covers a horrible disaster, but isn't that what insurance is for anyway?

The folly of not including your time as a cost

So Michael and company deliver their first orders of paper in a van that used to be owned by a Korean church. They get up at 4 AM to get their deliveries in on time. When they're done, they sit around the office tired but happy about their first orders. Michael then suggests they add a loft to the office. Pam suggest hiring a delivery service so she doesn't hafta wake up at 4 AM to do this work. Michael keeps on fantasizing about adding a loft.

The point here is you hafta account for your own time as a cost. Working long hours, working hard, being the hero isn't sustainable because there's only a certain number of hours in a day. Michael and Pam basically are getting paid to be delivery people instead of being business owners. If you can't afford to hire a delivery person and you hafta do it yourself, you're working in your business instead of on your business. This concept is explained really well in the book The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.

Better have a good idea of cost structure before lowering prices

Michael ends up getting a lot of clients because he undercuts his old employer's prices. But his accountant tells him that as his company grows, he won't be profitable. Michael ends up calling his clients back and asking for more money to stay afloat. Obviously, he doesn't have much luck with it.

Michael just offered paper at really low prices... which can be a good strategy, but your cost structure has to support it. You can't just cut prices and take lower profits, because your costs will continue to grow as your sales do. Wal Mart can have lower prices because of their cost structure. They are so huge that they have all kinds of economies of scale, like being able to ship full trucks and having the power to get lower prices from their suppliers. They don't just lower prices without these things.

"Jobs are safer"

So, in a plot twist worthy of a sitcom, Dunder Mifflin wants to buy out Michael's paper company because they're losing clients. They offer him $60,000... after much celebrating Michael changes his mind and asks for their jobs back instead because "jobs are safer."

Well, jobs are safer when you aren't a true entrepreneur. Michael and Pam proved that, quitting on an impulse because they didn't like their new boss and trying to start their own paper company without testing it out first (Corporatepreneurship?) nor thinking about their business model.

Not bad content for a funny sitcom, eh?

DRTV and Thank God I'm a Corporatepreneur

2009-04-25T02:27:00.003-04:00

Dale's SEEF3M is going to be awesome. Who wouldn't want to work for yourself full time even for just 3 months. But I thought I'd offer my perspective. For those who don't know Dale and I don't run any businesses together (at least not yet) but we are friends and routinely meet to share what we are up to and in general how to better be Entrepreneurs. We also try to keep each other motivated and of course - share code if we've solved a specific issue before.

So I am really glad to be a Corporatepreneur this year... here's why.

For the past 8 years I have made money from a somewhat popular gaming website from banner ads. And I have to say while it took a few years to really take off - when it did things were way better than I ever expected. In fact for the past 3-4 years I could have lived off of that income alone - but didn't. People who know always thought I was crazy, and in a way I was. I guess I figured I could run a business part time and work full tie - why not do it. At the minimum I'd be taking years off my retirement income.

Also over that time I got married, bought a house, etc etc and long story short - people count on me now.

So over the past year my Entrepreneurial income has been drastically lower - and it wouldn't be enough for me to live on at my current lifestyle (see my blog The Paradox of Replacement Income).

Anyways - since the last year has been so rough for making money from advertising - my partners and I decided to take advantage of the low ad rates and think of a business model that could capitalize on these low rates. We've decided to try and sell a product on TV (as seen on TV type).

If you have seen the Snuggie - know that they have sold millions of them. Some people see this and think the Snuggie is dumb, I see it as a brilliant DRTV product. So stay tuned because I'll keep you posted on the DRTV journey. We are working out what out product could be, then we'll shoot a commercial.

In the meantime - be sure to catch Pitchmen on Discovery as it give you some great behind the scenes of the DRTV world.

One person is seriously derailing my entrepreneurial drive

2009-04-23T09:09:00.004-04:00

It's my boss. And it's not what you think...

Last week I had a regular meeting with him. Before I had a chance to start updating him on all of the projects I was working on, he said one sec... and pulled out a sheet of paper with my raise for this year. I wasn't expecting much with this economy, but it was more than I expected. He told me that he thought highly of me and I was doing great work. Now typically you write that off as hot air, but he put his money where his mouth was.

I've worked with this person before. About 5 years ago, I was struggling with the company. When I was called into my previous boss's office, I actually thought that this could be it. But instead they came to talk to me to offer me a "change in scenery" role, with this guy as my new boss. He basically told me from the beginning that he believed in me and didn't care about the previous stuff. In a twist of fate, fast forward 5 years and he became my boss again.

So now I'm thinking, with a boss like that, why can't I just stick around, collect a nice paycheck, and be happy???

The bigger they are... the harder they fall

2009-04-20T23:26:00.001-04:00

Jason Cohen's post in his Smart Bear blog (check out fear #6 and his answer to #6 later in the blog) gave me this idea for a post that I think we at the Corporatepreneur know a thing or two about... inefficiencies at big companies. Let me tell you some things about big companies that an entrepreneur can exploit.

Overhead: Big companies hafta pay pensions, bonuses, cushy office chairs, and salaries of people who are not quite ready to retire yet but have stopped working.

How to exploit: If you can find a better cost structure (i.e. selling something online instead of through big warehouses), you can not only beat big companies but they will run away from you because they don't want to dilute their margins (the books Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution talk about this)

Functional Silos: Big companies have lots of functions (R&D, Marketing, production, Finance) and with each function there are numerous managers. Each function feels like they need to carve out their influence and create their empire. A lot of times products are sub-optimized because each function is trying to serve their best interests, not the best interests of the company as a whole.

How to exploit: Since you have a more holistic view, you can create a product that's good on all fronts. Plus, you can tweak things on a whim to improve them for a particular customer, or adjust prices as you see fit, or even name a product something you dreamed up last night. Any one of these things at a large company requires meetings and pre-meetings about these meetings. You can change things on a whim to delight your customer. Or make more money.

Risk Averse: At big companies, people are always trying to CYA (Cover Your Ass). You don't take risks, because failure gets you fired. You hafta test things a million times, document all the stuff you learn and why you made a certain decision, and get all kinds of approvals from people. Sometimes something as simple as the color of a package needs to get VP sign off.

How to exploit: An entrepreneur can take calculated risks and beat a big company at it any time. Want to try to sell something online? Google it, maybe read a few blogs like Adam McFarland's, get on Yahoo small business, and do it. At a big company, you'd probably hire consultants and have numerous team meetings. Want to try a new ad slogan? Go for it. At a big company, you hafta go through legal, who's on vacation this week, then marketing will get mad at you because you've stepped on their toes.

I could go on forever, but it's good to keep blog entries short and sweet. Jason, hopefully this helps illustrate #6 for you.

Most Small-Business Owners Don't Plan to "Fully" Retire

2009-04-20T01:49:00.000-04:00

Here's a relatively recent article I found from Gallup that goes back to my point that if you are doing what you love, you won't WANT to retire!

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/104866/Four-SmallBusiness-Owners-Dont-Plan-Retire.aspx

PRINCETON, NJ -- Only 11% of small-business owners say they plan to retire and stop working in their businesses in the long run, according to the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey.

Declining and Delaying Retirement

Nine in 10 small-business owners say they are satisfied with being small-business owners -- 21% are extremely satisfied, 37% very satisfied, and 31% somewhat satisfied. Perhaps most indicative of their contentment, 83% say they would do it again and become small-business owners instead of doing something else. In other words, small-business owners overwhelmingly like what they do.

Because small-business owners like their work and have the option to continue working past retirement, it may not be surprising that 40% say they will continue to work as long as their health allows them to do so -- essentially the same as the 38% who felt this way in 2005. Another 47% say they eventually plan to cut back on the work they do but maintain their involvement in their businesses -- up from 42% in 2005. The percentage of small-business owners actually planning to retire and stop working in their businesses fell from 19% in 2005 to 11% in the most recent survey.

Thirty-eight percent of small-business owners say they will retire or cut back on their work at a different time than they had originally planned. Six in 10 of these owners say they will retire later than planned and many of those delaying retirement will do so for financial reasons. Sixty-two percent of small-business owners say they expect their small businesses to keep going after they stop working, while one in three feel their businesses will stop -- essentially the same as in 2005.

A Good Time to Have Retirement Flexibility

An April 2007 Gallup Poll showed that only 53% of Americans thought they would have enough money to live comfortably when they retire. Obviously, current economic conditions are even less conducive to retirement than they were last year, given declining housing prices, a weak stock market, low interest rates on most safe forms of savings and investment, and surging food and energy prices. As a result, it is not surprising that earlier this year, 45% of Americans said they were worried that they would have to retire at a later age than they had originally planned.

In the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey of last October, a much higher 79% of small-business owners said they thought they would have enough money to live comfortably in retirement. In part, this may be because small-business owners tend to have higher incomes than the average American. More importantly, however, small-business owners also have more flexibility than the average American in deciding whether and when they will retire.

This ability to time one's retirement may be of even more importance in the months ahead. Last Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing another drop in U.S. jobs makes it obvious that the U.S. economy is now experiencing a recession. During such an economic downturn, many companies lay off employees and encourage early retirement as their business slows. As a result, many Americans may soon be more worried -- not that they will have to work to a later age than they had hoped, but that they will have to retire earlier than they desire and with far fewer resources than they had hoped.

Survey Methods

Results for the total dataset are based on telephone interviews with 600 small-business owners, conducted Oct. 4-14, 2007. For results based on the total sample of small-business owners, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ± 4 percentage points. The margins of error for subgroups will be slightly larger.

Other results are based on telephone interviews with 1,008 national adults, conducted April 2-5, 2007. For results based on this sample, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Places to SEEFAD

2009-04-16T19:37:00.003-04:00

So where's a good place to do a SEEFAD? We've tried a number of places, and here are some of our favorites:

Panera Bread - Free wi-fi, plenty of tables and booths available, nice touch with fireplaces and high backs on seats to give a little privacy. Decent number of plugs. It's large enough to not be crowded, and has a nice ambience. In all but one of the Panera's I've gone to, I've felt welcome to hang out for a while.* Avoid the lunch rush, but other than that a great place to go.

Starbucks - I don't even drink coffee, but when Starbucks offered free Wi-fi when you use a Starbucks gift card, I was hooked. The nice thing about Starbucks is there are so many of them around, and so far about 80% of the ones I went to had the free Wi-fi. It feels a little more crowded than Panera, but they have better selection of drinks. I usually get an iced tea or a hot chocolate (their hot chocolate is actually really good).

Caribou Coffee - All the ones I've been to have free Wi-fi, some with purchase some without. A nice alternative to Starbucks, I'm still trying to find a good non-coffee drink. The ones I've gone to were a little more crowded, but not a bad place to hang out.

Bruegger's Bagels - I know one I went to has free wi-fi for sure, the other one I believe has it too. I don't go too often because there aren't that many, and bagels don't do it for me. But they have a decent ambience and I like a smoked salmon bagel.

I always thought some place should have free wi-fi, charge a few bucks and give you all you can drink and all you can eat snacks during non-lunch hours. I mean how much can you eat between 1:30 and 5 anyway? Maybe charge $3-5, which would be more than the drink I ordered here at Starbucks (albeit not much more).

Any good places you've tried out? Feel free to comment!

*There was one Panera in West Chester, OH where the manager was being really obvious that he didn't want our type there... he was overly fakey cheerful in nudging us out, eventually the wifi turned off because it was near lunchtime. So on the way out I confronted him, and he said it was a "business decision" and wouldn't budge when I brought up that the restaurant was like 40% full and we had bought a few drinks... even told him I was a shareholder and therefore really interested in them making money, but he kept his fake smile and even said have a nice day in an exaggerated tone of voice on the way out. I hope he realizes how much incremental profit he lost by me never going there again.

Someone else tries a SEEFAD...

2009-04-14T18:30:00.003-04:00

So regular follower Brad Allmendinger gave SEEFAD a try for himself... had some really good insights! Check out his post about it here...

What is Corporatepreneurship

2009-04-09T00:05:00.000-04:00

This blog has been going for about three months now... Figured it be a good time to reflect a bit on "Corporatepreneurship" and why we started this blog. We got the term "Corporatepreneur" by adding "corporate" and "entrepreneur." We all work at a very large, Fortune 50 company as our "day job" and are or aspire to be entrepreneurs at all other times.

So why are we both? Speaking for myself, there's a few reasons... From the corporation side, I don't know enough about entrepreneurship to make enough money to do it full time. I get a nice steady paycheck from my current job. I enjoy the camaraderie with my co-workers. I'm scared to leave my job to be an entrepreneur. All the role models, education, and messages I ever got was for the corporate world.

The fun part is from the entrepreneur side. Why? I'll never live up to my potential in the corporate world. I can make a much bigger difference as an entrepreneur. There are so many ideas I want to try that the corporate world will never try. I believe my strengths fit an entrepreneur very well. I can make a lot more money and reach my dreams as an entrepreneur.

There's a lot of unique pros and cons to this double life. Pros: You don't hafta worry about putting food on the table and paying the bills. You can learn a lot in the corporate world that you can reapply to the entrepreneur world. You can fund your own ventures.

Cons: By the time you get home from your 9-5, you're tired and all you feel like doing is sitting down and watching TV. Sometimes you hafta work longer hours and run out of time at night. You can't do any ventures that require you to be available during the day. You can't sink all of your passion into your venture because you've got a day job to worry about that's first priority. Your employer may get paranoid about you doing something on the side.

We've come up with a bunch of ways to live this double life. SEEFADs make you take time out to work on your stuff and allow you to feel the life of being a entrepreneur. We try to find business models that don't require constant involvement. I'm looking to take a personal leave of abscence, which kinda gives me the best of both worlds.

Hopefully this blog will touch people out there in the corporate world who've always had the itch, and show them that it is possible. We've also gotten great contributions from people who've done it and can share experiences. And maybe I'll be in the position where I'll hafta think up a new name for this blog someday...

Institutions vs. collaboration (Why the corporate world is too slow)

2009-04-08T12:26:00.000-04:00

I found this video and although it's a bit dated (2005) the examples really hit home with me because it discusses how the web has changed collaboration and how businesses can't compete with the speed and scale of collaboration. A point that stuck out to me as well was how corporations (in addition to having to centrally organize the work) needs to hire managers just to make people do what they want! Collaborators are already self-selected to do the things they are interested in - so they don't need "bossing" and the work is better. The challenge here is to pull the various work together - and that's what the wed does best!

In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.

Other's responses to my SEEF3M

2009-04-05T15:41:00.001-04:00

So I've had a chance to tell a few co-workers and friends about my upcoming leave of absence. Of course they ask "What are you planning to do with it?" And I test the waters out by saying:

"Make enough money so I don't hafta come back."

I usually use this one as a gauge on what conversation to have with the person. There are two responses:

1. Ha ha. Better go buy a lottery ticket!
2. Awesome... what ideas do you have?

People who answer #1, I say "Yup, I plan on buying a lottery ticket my first day off!" And then I have the "I'm gonna go on a roadtrip, enjoy life, and it's something to do when I'm still single" conversation.

People who answer #2, I tell them about notthebookstore.com, and my thinking that you hafta fail 10 times before you hit something, so I want to get 2-3 failures out of the way during the 3 months.

It's been really interesting talking to people type #2. There are more people than I imagine who Corporateprenuer... i.e. have some sort of business on the side, or have the desire to. One guy told me all about the stuff that his entrepreneur wife does, owning franchises and stuff. He also made a point to tell me that it was great that I was doing this.

One really interesting response was from my dad. I brought up the idea to him a month ago (I haven't even told him I've already discussed this with my boss). In a "why are you doing this to me" tone of voice, he said "Why would you want to do that in this economy? I don't think it's a good move." He was almost hurting for me, which is pretty frustrating because when I'm hurting, the only person that needs to be hurting is me. And I'm not even hurting. Guess that's parents for you. Well, I haven't brought up the subject since... I probably won't until everything's official.

So, in a nutshell, everyone has been supportive except for one person... and he'll live, I'm sure my sister and I have done worse things to him in the past. The most meaningful support and encouragement I've gotten (other than my co-horts in this blog) has been from Jason Cohen of A Smart Bear blog and Adam McFarland (his blog here), because the vision is to be in their shoes someday... and it's nice to know there are people out there who get it.

Early Retirement or Freedom?

2009-04-01T01:21:00.002-04:00

It can be a long path from deciding to start your own business to the day when you start to make some steady profits. But once that day comes, it can be very empowering. You will find you have less stress at work, you won't worry as much about being late or having to get brownie points from the boss you can't stand.

That doesn't mean the hard decisions are behind you, that is another reason we started this blog. In fact, it is often once you start to see the fruits of your labor that the really tough decisions need to be made.
As tax season starts to roll around, you can be faced with one of those decisions.

Is my Business a path to freedom from a corporate job, or an early retirement vehicle to retire before 50?

You may start and stop several businesses over the years while working full time. But once you start to have a very serious business, you have to decide if this is the idea to give you true freedom or you path to an early retirement. Answering that question can have a huge impact on how you structure your business, especially from a tax standpoint. But, it may also have a bigger impact on how you want to approach your life and what your true ultimate goals will be for your efforts.

Early Retirement

If you choose to use your business income as a retiement vehicle, you have some really good options. The Simplified Employee Pension Individual Retirement Account (SEP IRA Wikipedia) is a great option for you. Unlike your company 401k that caps our around $16,000, the SEP IRA allows you to contribute 25% of your business income (up to $46,000 in 2008) into a retirement account.

Match that up with any retirement plan in the corporate world and it will be very hard to beat. I see this alone as reason enough to start your own business, especially in the face of this economy where large companies like Motorola and FedEx are stopping 401k contributions.

However, just like normal IRA's you won't be able to access that money until 59 1/2. If your goal is to eventually leave your job to work for yourself full time, we would highly advise you to make sure you have a significant amount of emergency savings (up to 2 years expenses) available in case you run into hard times like we are experiencing now. That may make the SEP IRA not the right choice for you or your company.

Path to Freedom

If you want to build up a cash reserve before heading out on your own, then you may want to have access to your business income before the age of 60. Especially if you think it will require an investment to grow your business to the point where it can support you and your family.

In this case you can hedge your bets by placing some business income into taxable savings accounts like CD's, index funds or bonds to grow the money while you wait to build up enough to make your move. You may not be able to take advantage of all of the tax benefits available to you, but you can give yourself the flexibility to delay this decision until you have more confidence in your business or in your ultimate goals for your life.

It is very important for you to discuss these options with your accountant and in some cases your lawyer. We are big fans of Legal and Tax advice and paying well for good advice. But paying for good advice is not the end of the hard work. It is also very important for you to take control of your business direction. It is very likely that your accountant will advise you to start an SEP IRA because on paper it is a great tax benefit. However, if this benefit does not help you reach your ultimate goal, then you need to be honest with your advisers and they can help you meet your needs as best they can.

To date, none of us have chosen to start SEP IRAs. We have instead chosen to reinvest the income or place it into taxable accounts that give us flexibility to make future decisions. This is another reason why I am such a fan of Canada's version of the 401k, the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (that is for another blog). Despite not starting an SEP IRA, the business income has allowed us to maximize our corporate 401ks and other options available to us.

We would love to hear from anyone who has faced this decision. As you start your path to being a Corporatepreneur, you will learn that no one can tell you the exact right way to run your business or make the best decisions for you. You need to gather as much info as you can about your options and find out which is the right pat for you.

Most Small Business Owners Feel Successful

2009-03-27T01:16:00.000-04:00

Below is a great article from Gallup that I thought was very motivating from the GALLUP NEWS SERVICE.

source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/24103/Most-Small-Business-Owners-Feel-Successful.aspx

PRINCETON, NJ -- Today's economic environment is extremely challenging for small business owners given surging gas prices at the pump and more than two years of interest rate increases. Despite all the difficulties facing the nation's small business owners, however, most feel successful and given the choice, say they would do it over again according to the most recent Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll. Most also say being a small business owner has made them better off financially.

Most Feel Successful

Nine in 10 small business owners say they feel successful. In fact, 47% feel extremely successful (8%) or very successful (39%). Nearly half (45%) feel somewhat successful while only 6% feel not too successful and just 1% feel not at all successful.

Eighty-seven percent of small business owners also say they are satisfied being a small business owner, with just 12% saying they are not.

Most Would Do It Again
What if small business owners were given another chance to choose between being a small business owners and doing something else? Eighty-three percent say they would do it over again and choose to be a small business owner.

Most Say They Are Financially Better Off

Three in four small business owners say they are better off financially being a small business owner than they would be working for some other company. However, just about half feel they make more money per hour as a small business owner than they would as an employee of another company.

A Passion for the Job
Being a small business owner clearly has many rewards. Even during challenging times, most small business owners would do it again. Still, this survey and previous Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index surveys suggest small business owners must have a passion for what they do. They find themselves working many hours and discover working hard becomes an essential part of their work-life balance.

Survey Methods

Results for the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll are based on telephone interviews with 602 small business owners conducted May 22-June 9, 2006. For results based on the total sample of investors, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

More on the leave of absence... SEEF3M

2009-03-24T14:39:00.002-04:00

I've given my 3 month leave of absence a name... It's gonna be called "SEEF3M" If that doesn't make sense to you, check out this previous post.

Yesterday was the first time I had a "oh my god what have I done" moment. I had just had a couple friends over for a BBQ lunch and they had left. I suddenly felt very unproductive and unsure of whether I wanted to go through with this. I think it was because I was left alone after a good time with friends. My second biggest fear for the leave or entrepreneurship in general is that I will go stir crazy from the lack of human interaction (the biggest fear of course is losing all my money and not being able to afford a place to live).

I took today off as a vacation day (so a traditional "SEEFAD") and am now sitting in Caribou Coffee. I'm feeling much better about the decision and am looking forward to it again. Things are moving forward with the website (I just hired my first programmer!) and I'm excited to work with him.

I did it...

2009-03-23T21:50:00.004-04:00

Last week, I did one of those things that could be life changing... I put in for a 3 month personal leave of absence. Now that doesn't sound too dramatic (nor risky, because it's a normal benefit we get and I basically come back to the same job afterwards). But I've always followed the "right" path... went to school, got an engineering degree, got a job at a Fortune 50 corporation where I have a "secure" job. Taking 3 months off is one of those things that's both scary and exciting for me.

People ask what I want to do with my 3 months off... I tell them ideally to make enough money so I don't hafta come back. But 3 months is a bit of a stretch to accomplish that (although I will buy a lottery ticket on my first day off). So I will settle for significantly advancing my textbook website and starting 2-3 low barrier to entry type businesses.

I will be using this as a safe way to test out living the lifestyle of an entrepreneur: no paycheck and no one to blame but yourself for anything. I know it could be really easy to just piss away three months, but hopefully the giant sucking sound (sorry Mr. Perot) of my monthly expenses draining my savings will motivate me to make the most of my time off.

So now, I've got a major case of senioritis... which I haven't gotten in 8 years. The leave isn't for another 4 months! I plan on blogging about my experience on this blog, and hopefully have people continue to keep me motivated and encouraged... and maybe inspire others too.

Small business owners would do it all again

2009-03-21T01:39:00.000-04:00

It's hard to find data on entrepreneurship - so while this data from Gallup is a bit outdated - I believe that the sentiment is the same...

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/9586/Would-Small-Business-Owners-All-Again.aspx

Anyone who has run a small business knows that it can be a
challenging way to make a living. Small-business owners wear many
different hats. They typically have little leeway with regard to
pricing -- they're usually price-takers on the buy-side with
no ability to leverage their suppliers, and price-givers on
the sell-side with no ability to leverage their customers. The
government generally makes the whole situation worse, forcing small
business owners to deal with enormous regulatory burdens and
paperwork that was designed with much larger companies in mind.

Given these day-to-day challenges and the relatively poor
business environment of the past few years, it probably wouldn't be
too surprising to find that many of the nation's small business
owners are discouraged and wish they had done something else with
their lives. However, just the opposite is true, according to the
new Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey* (see "Small
Businesses Offer Hope for Job Creation" for more on this new
Index).

Small Business Owner Satisfaction

More than 8 in 10 of the nation's small business owners say they
are satisfied with being a small business owner. More than half
(56%) are very or extremely satisfied, and 30% are somewhat
satisfied. Only 13% say they are not too satisfied or not at all
satisfied.

"http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/finanComme/20031028_1.gif" width=
"440" alt="" border="0">

Small Business Owner Success

Nearly all small business owners feel that they are at least
somewhat successful at what they do. Forty-one percent feel that
they are very or extremely successful at being a small business
owner. Another 56% say they feel somewhat successful, while only 3%
say they feel they are not too successful or not at all
successful.

"http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/finanComme/20031028_2.gif" width=
"440" alt="" border="0">

Better Off Financially?

Three-fourths of small business owners say they are better off
financially than they would be working for some other company in
the same field.

"http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/finanComme/20031028_3.gif" width=
"440" alt="" border="0">

Although the majority of small business owners feel that they
are better off financially than they would be otherwise, they also
recognize that they usually work considerably more hours than
employees of other companies do. Do small business owners feel
they're better off financially simply because they work so many
hours?

On this question, small business owners are more evenly divided
-- about half of the nation's small business owners (48%) feel that
they earn more per hour in their business than they would earn as
an employee of another company. Thirty-six percent say they earn
less per hour, and 14% say they earn about the same.

"http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/finanComme/20031028_4.gif" width=
"440" alt="" border="0">

Do It Again?

Despite the poor economic conditions of the past several years
and the inherent challenges they face, small business owners are
not only satisfied with their occupation, but almost uniformly feel
successful. Add to this that most feel they are better off
financially than they would be otherwise, and it is not surprising
that 81% of the nation's small business owners say they would
become small business owners again instead of doing something else.
Nor is it unreasonable to expect public policy-makers to do more to
build on this success, by more aggressively encouraging Americans
to become small business owners.

"http://media.gallup.com/GPTB/finanComme/20031028_5.gif" width=
"440" alt="" border="0">

*The new Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index is not based
on a survey of the bank's small business customers. Instead, it is
based on a nationally representative random survey of small
business owners from across the United States. For this initial
baseline survey report, Gallup conducted telephone interviews with
591 small business owners (having $20 million or less in annual
sales) over the period of Aug. 5 to Aug. 20, 2003. For results
based on this total sample of small business owners, one can say
with 95% confidence that the margin of error is ±4
percentage points.

Entrepreneurs don't need to retire?

2009-03-16T01:37:00.000-04:00

Here's another great article from the Gallup poll that I believe is still relevant. Many Americans working in the corporate world are counting the days until they can retire. But what if you were your won boss and doing something you love? Then you basically don't need to retire...

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/20626/Many-SmallBusiness-Owners-Will-Work-Until-They-Drop.aspx

Among the advantages of being a small-business owner is the ability to decide for yourself how you'll handle your retirement. While many younger Americans may look forward to retirement as a time to stop working, as people grow older they often begin to see retirement simply as a change in lifestyle -- not a time to sit on the beach and cease being productive.

A recent Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey* shows that fewer than one in five small-business owners plan to stop working and retire over the long term. While nearly two in three expect their businesses to keep going after they stop working, only two in five of these people think a family member will take over and run their businesses in the future. For many small-business owners, then, the sale of their business is clearly a significant potential source of retirement assets.

Most Owners Plan to Stay Involved

In the long run, 42% of small-business owners say they plan to cut back on work but maintain involvement in their businesses. Thirty-eight percent say they will never retire until forced to do so for health reasons. Just 19% say they expect to retire and stop working.

Most Owners Expect Their Businesses to Keep Going

Sixty-three percent of small-business owners say they expect their businesses to keep going after they are no longer working, while 34% say their businesses will come to a stop.

Most Owners Say Their Businesses Will Be Sold

Of those small-business owners who expect their businesses to continue after they stop working, only 41% think someone in their families will keep it going. Twenty-one percent of small-business owners expect to sell the business to someone or a group of people currently working for it. One in three expect to sell it to someone or a group of people outside the business.

Why Should Small-Business Owners "Retire"?

Ninety-six percent of small-business owners say they are successful, 91% say they are satisfied being small-business owners, and 84% say if they had to do it all over again, they would still become small-business owners. In sum, many small-business owners love what they do and have been successful at turning something they enjoy doing into a good living.

So is it really surprising that they don't want to stop working and retire? As they get older, it makes sense that these owners will slow down and work fewer hours but stay involved in the business they enjoy. It also makes sense that they'll stop working altogether only when forced to do so for health reasons.

In this regard, it's interesting to note that many other Americans who do not own their own businesses dream of "retirement" as a time when they can start their own small business by converting their hobby or something else they love to do into something that will allow them to maintain their desired lifestyle in retirement. Obviously, many of today's small-business owners are a step ahead in achieving this kind of "retirement" goal.

*Results for the total dataset are based on telephone interviews with 600 small-business owners, conducted Sept. 26-Oct. 6, 2005. For results based on the sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money

2009-03-12T12:12:00.003-04:00

I am lucky - I was able to start my business without raising having to raise Venture Capital (VC) - but I have known several friends who thought bigger and needed to raise VC funds. Some made out fine - others crashed and burned with their pitch. Hopefully this video will help you hear a "YES".

Thinking startup? David S. Rose's rapid-fire TED U talk on pitching to a venture capitalist tells you the 10 things you need to know about yourself -- and prove to a VC -- before you fire up your slideshow.

Mark Cuban - my hero

2009-03-10T23:57:00.000-04:00

In my entrepreneurship class during my MBA, we started off by introducing ourselves and then saying who our business hero was. I said Mark Cuban, because I wanted to ultimately own a sports team after I made it big. One girl in the class asked, "Isn't he that annoying guy?"

Well Cuban has a blog, and on that blog he's doing his own economic stimulus package. He's going to fund people who post comments on his blog that he sees fit. Check out the posting here, and take note of the "rules" he has.

Take note of rules #3 and #4:

3. It MUST BE CASH FLOW BREAK EVEN within 60 days
4. It must be profitable within 90 days.

Now I see why this guy is my hero. He follows the principle of be patient for growth and impatient for profit. Too many companies have the delusions of grandeur and want $50 million for a website with no business model (i.e. some way to make money).

Lesson to people looking to be an entrepreneur... Figure how to make a little profit. It'll go a long way towards getting funding.

To stay or not to stay?

2009-03-07T23:12:00.003-05:00

Couple of thoughts on Tom's earlier blog about the paradox of replacement income...

I believe staying in the corporate world after matching your salary is part of a priority call you and your family made. It's very analogous to someone who decides to take a job that requires longer hours in exchange for higher pay (except in Tom's case, he's decided to keep a job that requires 40 hours a week in exchange for higher pay). If your priority is to leave your corporate job, it requires some planning and a lot of choices to be made. Much like if the decision is made for a woman (or a man) to quit working to take care of the kids instead of having a dual income.

For most people, when income goes up (no matter how you get it), they fall into the "gas" law. A gas expands to fill the space it's contained in. Expenses expand to fill the amount of money you make. The money you make can be from a raise in your corporate job or in your own business.

Tom's entry gave me great insights in my quest for significant income outside of the corporate world... that I need to consciously plan on what my financial priorities are and make the right choices along the way. If my priority is to leave my job, then I need to plan for that. If it isn't, I can make different choices.

Now this point is all moot if you can make your time more valuable... if you can make more money per incremental hour doing your own thing than at work, then you would actually lose money by staying in your job.

It's risky NOT to be an entrepreneur

2009-03-05T07:25:00.001-05:00

Everyone talks about how risky entrepreneurship is - and if you just take a blind leap it can be. But as you have seen from our postings here at the Corporatepreneur we don't think entrepreneurship has to be risky. In fact with a solid plan it can significantly decrease the risks and stresses in your life.

i believe starting a business on the side while still working a full-time job is a safe way to go. Please be conscious of any COI's (conflicts of interest) or other issues with you current job, but as long as you aren't competing with your employer either for your time or customers - you should be fine. And then you can keep that steady paycheck while growing something on the side.

Here are the risks of NOT trying to start your own business with some articles from some of my other favorite entrepreneur blogs.

1) You could become "that guy" or "that gal"
2) Your corporate job isn't secure anyway
3) You risk not living up to your TRUE potential!

I think the Corporatepreneur approach offers the not only the safest way to start a business - but the safest way to live your life. You keep doing what you are doing with the upside of finding your own entrepreneurial niche!

The Wealthiest Americans are Business Owners

2009-03-02T07:18:00.000-05:00

The TaxFoundation.org puts a summary together of individual income tax payers. I kept this one from a few years back because I thought the comment they had on business owners was important. Basically if you really want to be rich - start a business!

Source: TaxFoundation.org

Over the past 25 years, the number of taxpayers reporting business activity on their individual tax returns has grown at an exceptionally rapid rate. Between 1980 and 2004, as shown in Chart #7, the total number of sole proprietorships, partnerships, farms, and S-Corporations more than doubled, from 13.3 million in 1980 to 27.5 million in 2004.

S-Corporations alone grew almost seven-fold, from 545,389 in 1980 to roughly 3.5 million in 2004, and they now far exceed the number of conventional C-Corporations. When we look carefully at the distribution of these tax returns, a clear picture emerges: an extraordinarily high proportion of high-income taxpayers have some form of business income (schedule C, E, or F) and as their incomes rise, so too does the likelihood that they have business activity.

Overall, as is shown in Chart #8, 43 percent of taxpayers in the top 20 percent have business income, twice the percentage of those in the middle income group. Of those taxpayers in the top 1 percent – those earning more than $300,000 and subject to the highest marginal tax rates – nearly three quarters have business income. And for taxpayers with incomes above $1 million per year, nearly 83 percent have business income.

Remarkably, because so many taxpayers now have business income (or are paying their business’s taxes through their individual tax form), Tax Foundation economists estimate that taxpayers with business income paid 54.3 percent of all individual income taxes in 2004.

What this means is that calls to shift the tax burden even further up the income scale will, in fact, end up penalizing business owners and entrepreneurs, endangering our long-term economic vitality.

Here's my take on the data - if you work hard as an employee you can make $100,000 - $200,000 per year. BUT if you want to make $500,000 or more in a year, you probably have to be either a sports athelete or a business owner.

What makes you an Entrepreneur?

2009-02-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

Far too often TV glamorizes the entire lot of entrepreneurs as those who throw caution to the wind, put everything on the line and make a billion dollar bet on the "next big thing". Well - you don't have to work too long to start your own business to figure out that this is total BS. Starting a business is a much slower and more organic process. And as per the foundation of this Corporatepreneur blog - often the transition to business owner includes a long period of continuing to work a full time job while growing something on the side to the point that it could sustain you

From Wikipedia the definition of an entrepreneur is as follows:

An entrepreneur is an individual who efficiently and effectively combines the four factors of production. Those factors are land (natural resources), labor (human input into production using available resources), capital (any type of equipment used in production i.e. machinery) and Enterprise (intelligence, knowledge, and creativity.)

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, as many new ventures fail. Entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service. Entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and organize their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions.

Some observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity, but the emerging evidence indicates they are more passionate experts than gamblers.

I think this is much more appropriate. An entrepreneur is not a haphazard toss of the dice but a longer term approach to finding opportunities that match your talents and turning it into something of value.

What's your experience with being an Entrepreneur?

Thank goodness for the Corporatepreneur Blog!

2009-02-24T07:41:00.003-05:00

I hate to toot our own horn - but I am so thankful for the Corporatepreneur Blog! I know it's early in our run here and who knows where this is going, but thank goodness we have a home for intelligent and real advice about entrepreneurship.

I was doing some research for a new blog post when this headline grabbed my attention "New Business Website Offers Support for Entrepreneurs". And I thought - sounds great! So I clicked on the article and then went to the site they referenced, and it came across to me as nothing but a "get rich quick / work from home" scam! (I feel that we need a cool acronym for the GRQ/WFM scam sites).

Here's a screen shot from a portion of that web page (not even 1/2 a page down):

This doesn't look like a site designed to help entrepreneurs - it looks like an attempt for someone to get rich quick by duping people attempting to get rich quick into scams. Don't fall for it! Hopefully by know you know that we believe entrepreneurship is a longer-term process about building something of value.

Though as much as I was again pissed off by this website, I can't say I was too surprised. One of the main reasons we started this blog was because we couldn't find anything out there quite like this. We wanted a place for intellectual minds to converse about entrepreneurship and we wanted a blog that WE were interested in following daily as well! (hence the entrepreneurial feeds to the right of the page as well as a new dilbert cartoon at the very bottom of the page everyday). We are going to continue to work hard to make THIS the place for entrepreneurs or wannabe-entrepreneurs. So feel free to comment with any improvements you'd like to see.

Maybe my entrepreneurial advice from all of this is if you keep looking and can't find something out there that you want - you must go and create it because there probably are plenty of others out there like you who would want the exact same thing.

Tips for starting a business while working full time: Elance Blog

2009-02-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

Came across this blog entry on Elance entitled "Tips for Incubating your Small Business Idea While Still Working Full-Time." Tip #5 smells like SEEFAD!

The Paradox of Replacement Income

2009-02-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

What is one of the first things you said when you started thinking about starting your own business? I am going to guess one of them was along the lines of "if only I could make as much money as I do in my [insert boring corporate job title] by starting my own business - I'd quit this [insert boring corporate job title] today!"

This theme is quite common and quite understandable. And hey - if you could instantly replace your corporate income by working for yourself and doing something you love - who wouldn't?

But - as you probably know by now - there are no "get rich quick" co-outs here on the Corporatepreneur Blog. And making money in your own business takes time. We know - we are 8 years into the Corporatepreneur world and it took us 6 years of running our own business before our business generated enough income to match that of our full-time corporate jobs. But then what? Did we quit working in the corporate world and start living the high life? No. And here's the surprising tale of how it may be likely that you would make the same decision to stay at your corporate job too.

Let's assume that you are planning to start your business in 2010. And just for conversation, let's say you are making $50,000 in your day job and get a 4% raise per year. Below is a graph depicting a 10 year time horizon for your side business income to become equal to that of your corporate job (at that time).

Not too bad right? In 10 years time you have made a substantial amount of money from your side business and it now equals your corporate income.

I first want to assure you that such a scenario is possible - I don't think it is an exaggerated "get rich quick" scenario but I do think it is a life changing situation not only financially but emotionally and in many ways spiritually (but that is for another blog).

So what's the problem? Well - in this hypothetical example - you now make enough money working for yourself that you could replace your corporate income and quit your full-time job for that crappy boss. Well - not so fast! Because this is a gradual process (it's really not because look how much faster your business income grew compared to a fair market salary increase in the corporate world - but that's what entrepreneurship is all about) - and it take 10 years for your incomes to be equal - you have now grown accustom to a lifestyle of making 1.5-2.0 times your corporate income alone. Maybe you have bought a new car or your wife has decided to stay home with the children as a result of this new side business windfall. Or maybe you have become an avid saver for retirement.

Whatever the reason - my caution is this - when you start out wishing you could just replace your corporate income with a side business you may find out that there really isn't a good time to take a 50% pay cut (reduce your income by half).

And this my friends - is one of the awkward stages of being a Corporatepreneur that this blog is all about. These are real life situations that anyone of us would love to have as a "problem" when we start out - but become a real challenge years into starting your own business.

I have been excited to write this blog because when it happened to me it took me by surprise - did it surprise you? Let us know by posting a comment.

PS - The income scenario above has been watered down. Below is a more "realistic" example of how your income might grow in a side business over 10 years. As you can see in the entrepreneurial world the financial gains can be as big as the variability. Entrepreneurs are not on a "pay scale" and often the growth of your business is unpredictable. It doesn't follow a nice curve! In fact - there is no guarantee that you will make the same amount year to year - making the leap to working for yourself full-time a challenge.

One small step for man

2009-02-16T11:13:00.001-05:00

So a lot of people have these great ideas, but they say stuff like “I don’t have time.” Or “I don’t know how.” The answer to these questions (yes it’s another question) is: What’s the next step you CAN take? It doesn’t matter how small a step. It’s infinitely better than taking 0 steps. And if you can be disciplined enough to string together a bunch of these tiny steps, pretty soon you look back and you’re a ton further than you ever thought you’d be. Two proverbs come to mind.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

So what do you think is the most important bite? Or the most important step? You might think it’s the first one. But the most important step is the last step you took plus one. In other words, the next step. It doesn’t matter how small that next step is, as long as you’re taking that next step regularly you’ll be amazed at how much progress you can make.

Have you ever been to Disney World? You get in one of those really long lines for a ride. You step to the end and look at the miles of people in line, winding back and forth like a snake about 20 times before it goes into a building, and who knows how long it goes for inside that building. So you get in line and hunker down for the long haul. As the people in front of you step forward, you take a few steps forward. A few minutes of conversation later, the line moves up another couple steps. You follow. After a few more minutes, you turn the first bend and double back and for the first time you can look at all the schmucks who are BEHIND you in line. And it goes way back. By simply getting in line, taking a few steps at a time, you’re suddenly a ton further than everyone else.

I was having lunch with someone recently, and we were throwing around some business ideas. Then he said to me “boy, you’re so much further than I’ll ever be at starting a business.” Which was really shocking to me because I haven’t even gotten anything to make enough money to even buy him lunch yet. But I took a look back, and if you would’ve told my 2 years ago self that I would even be talking about revenues and expenses at all, and that someone who say that to me, I would’ve been really happy with my future self. And it all started because I started dabbling with some php (which I still suck at) and one of the co-authors on this blog gave me about 3 lines of code to help me out.

I’ll give you another analogy. I’ve been trying to get myself stronger, so a friend challenged me to do 25 pushups by a certain time. My baseline was about 20 at that time. And man was it a struggle to get to 20. One time I got to 20 and was just about to die when I told myself, heck, let’s shoot for 21 just to break that psychological barrier. So I pushed and got 21. The next few times I hit 21. So then I shot for 22. I struggled but got to 22 comfortably. I don’t remember how long ago that was (the friend and I never did follow up on the 25 limit) but I can tell you now I’m at 34. All by taking one seemingly insignificant step at a time.

So go out and figure out what’s one small step you can take. Be creative. If you want to fly to outer space, the first step is to Google “space tourism” and figure out how much it costs. The next step may be to check out this blog to figure out how to start to make that kind of money. Or it maybe to Google “php” and figure out what that is.

The Call of the Entrepreneur on Fox Business Channel

2009-02-13T02:16:00.000-05:00

Just a few weeks ago I found and posted the trailer from the Acton Institute video called the Call of the Entrepreneur. In this video Rev. Robert A. Sirico is interviewed on America's Nightly Scorecard to discuss Acton Media's documentary and entrepreneurship in general.

There are two things I took away from this video:
1) Entrepreneurs are not about greed and money but about maximizing their talents in production and efficiency for society (Sorry - I've been reading the Wealth of Nations again).
2) Entrepreneurship is not a religious evil but maybe even a calling to put your god given abilities to work for mankind.

Maybe those are too touchy-feely for you but I strongly believe entrepreneurship is more about following your passions than following greed. See for yourself in this video:

Rise of the Entrepreneur

2009-02-10T00:03:00.002-05:00

I do believe that Entrepreneurship is on the rise. There are far too many intelligent people working full time for companies. Soon these entrepreneurial types realize that they feel suffocated in the corporate world. They are full of ideas but poor in power and responsibilities to influence large companies in a meaningful way. They begin to seek an outlet for their creative energies, they desire to be more and have more. They focus on results rather than politics and seniority.

We are those people. And if you are reading this, you are probably one of us.

So it goes without saying that we have pseudonyms or "pen names" when we write. No need to explain - you get it.

So here's the problem, entrepreneurship is on the rise, but we are still viewed as "odd balls." Viewed as people who just can't be happy with "the way things are" - the status quo. But it wasn't always like this. Let's review.

Most people today work in the corporate world. We go to work everyday - working for someone else ("the man"). But this is a carry over from the industrial age. A time when people were mere cogs in the industrial revolution. A time when workers clocked in and clocked out, happy to receive a steady pay for steady work. But the problem with this era was that people became lazy. They no longer wanted to think for themselves. Just show up at work, do what you are told, and collect your check. After years and years of this you will have seniority over the newer generation and you can tell them how "things have always been done here."

But before the industrial age, almost everyone was an entrepreneur! And by that I mean they owned their own business, had to manage their own marketing, supply, everything. People back then were blacksmiths, coopers, farmers, bakers. Then mass production came along and no longer where people blacksmithing their own tools, they now worked on the assembly line for craftsman. I am exaggerating but you get the point. Soon the mom and pop shops were taken over by corporations who mass produced everything. Voila! The industrial age.

Another terrible hangover from the industrial age is management. Suddenly mass labor required organization which gave rise to a highly esteemed position of manager (typically someone with seniority!). The problem with managers is that very often they have no wealth creation skills of their own, or they have forgotten them. These are people who rely on the corporate world for their strength and power and get work done through others.

Then came along the rise of the information age. Suddenly anyone with a computer can own a business. The barriers to enter the business world on your own decreased exponentially. No longer did you need large sums of money to buy equipment or employee assembly line workers. Suddenly the processing power of computers on the internet gave the individual power again.

So here we are. In the era of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell. All of whom literally started businesses out of their own garages. What's the point of this whole blog? Well times - they are a changing, and the more you hold on to working the status quo - the further behind you are! Don't believe me? (and why should you we don't know each other and I am using a fake name to disguise my identity from my "day job"). Below is a chart I took from the Tax Foundation's 2006 report: "Putting a Face on Tax Returns".

As you can see today, the wealthiest people in America tend to be those who own their own business. Isn't it time you start yours?

Retreating back to the corporate world

2009-02-07T07:09:00.000-05:00

I found this facinating article about a 29 year old entrepreneur in Kenya who had take a full-time job because when the economy turned sour she could no longer make it on her own with her business.

I think some may see this as a cautionary tale about why the awkward stage of the Corporatepreneur (where you work full-time in the corporate world but have a side business as well) can be a prolonged period and it is difficult to know when to make the leap.

I will give this article a different spin. If you make the leap - what is the worst thing that could happen? You'd have to get a job again. Like you have now. Only you gave yourself a shot to follow a different path.

Someone once told me (that's what I always say when I heard something but have no idea where to go and find the source again) that anyone can go get a job. You can always become an employee again. I don't mean to say you'll find the best job ever - but really the worst case scenario is having to work for the man again - and that's where most entrepreneurs are coming from anyways.

So the risks attached to taking the "big leap" sometimes aren't nearly as large as we make them out to be.

Pimp my Home Office

2009-02-04T15:19:00.001-05:00

It's never too early to start planning how awesome your home office is going to be when you are working for yourself and can't spend the incoming fortune on a home office remodel fast enough.

Fortunately my wife watches HGTV and while I usually can't stand to see what they are doing - they have a cool section online featuring the best Home Offices.

I also found this great article from Inc.com about Setting Up a Home Office.

(Where are the best places to work outside of the home? Check out Best Places to SEEFAD and Pimp My Road Office)

Since I have always wanted a "Masterpiece Theater" home office, here's a few pictures I could find close to my dream home office:

How would you describe your dream home office?

The Call of the Entrepreneur

2009-02-01T02:02:00.002-05:00

As you might remember from the Steve Tomlinson video I posted - I am a big fan of the idea behind the Acton Institute and the life of meaning work. Apparently they are coming out with a documentary about entrepreneurship and here is the trailer.

The trailer for a new documentary being released by the Acton Institute that focuses on the stories of three entrepreneurs. A study of the call to create wealth and the benefit of business and free markets to society. Check out http://www.calloftheentrepreneur.com for information about premieres and related materials.