A major announcement

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.

A major announcement

Tiny steps make major leaps

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!

Tiny steps make major leaps

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

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.

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

To stay or not to stay?

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.

To stay or not to stay?

My 4 Hour Workweek Moment

The book 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris talks about working no more than four hours a week and from anywhere you want... including the beach. I had my 4-Hour Workweek moment last August, which gave me the vision of what I wanted in my life...

My dad's company sent him to a conference in Honolulu, Hawaii... Quite a boondoggle. My mom joined him, and I figure I would too. Free lodging in Hawaii, all I had to do was buy a plane ticket. My dad even offered to cover that to get me out there, but I really didn't need any more incentive to go so I told him thanks, but I'd be more than happy to pay my own way there. This was August of last year.

Rewind back three years... I was an MBA student, and I discovered that buying textbooks at the bookstore was a crock... you could buy books on Amazon.com for at least $20, if not $50-100 cheaper. So after graduation, I started playing around with creating a site that felt just like buying from the campus bookstore, but it pointed you to Amazon instead. I got some revenue out of it, but nothing major.

Back to last August... I had spent the spring of 2008 working on marketing and promoting the website. I dropped almost $1000 on marketing (doesn't sound like much, but I'm closer to the "corporate" part of corporateprenuership than "entrepreneur"). The start of the textbook buying season coincided with my trip to Hawaii. And since students weren't accessible in the summer, all the advertising was done in the spring. So all I could do was watch and see how much revenue would come in every day.

The resort had a wireless connection, and it was accessible from the beach. So every day, after sightseeing, I'd take a swim in the ocean, have dinner, shower, and head to the beach with my laptop. Since Hawaii was 6 hours behind, I was able to check the previous day's revenue while I was still up. Each day I checked... some days would be $30 days, but some days got as high as $120 days. By the end of the week, I was up to almost $500.

I was living the dream... money was rolling in, while I was basically working one hour a night. That's a 7 hour workweek (not quite 4 hours), but when that one hour a day is spent on a laptop on a beach, I think anyone would sign up for that. The money I made wouldn't even pay for my flight out there, but it was a major breakthrough to taste it for just that week. I considered this the first step in the long term goal of financial independence. My mom took a picture of me with my laptop on the beach, and I have it up on my wall so I can look at it every day.

Some people back home didn't get it... They felt like it was sad that I was working on vacation. On the contrary... people thought my working on the beach was replacing vacationing on the beach. I wanted working on the beach to replace working.

My 4 Hour Workweek Moment

Is it wrong to make money on the side while you're working?

It really shouldn't be if you're doing with integrity. Here's why. Let's say you put in your 40-50 hours a week at your job, work hard, deliver good results, and get paid $60,000 to do it. Then, in your time away from work, you make another $15,000 a year. Sure you don't put in the 60-70 hour weeks that some hard working colleague does. But you're not as sensitive to pay raises (or lack thereof) than someone who doesn't do it. So the company can get away with paying you a little less, and you're happy as a clamshell because you're essentially making $75,000 a year. If your colleague gets a pay raise that's lower than he expected, he might be looking elsewhere for a higher salary.

Let's take this a little further (now we're getting into uncharted territory). Let's say you have an eBay store or something and with an hour, you can buy and sell something that will make you $40. So in an hour, you've made $40. Let's say you put in another hour at work... that only nets you $30/hr (approximately what $60,000 a year equates to). Let's say you can do this every week, and somehow your company let you work 39 hours instead of 40, and paid you an hour less. You've made $10 more than you would've, and the company has an extra $30 in overtime to give to your hard working colleague who doesn't have anything on the side. So everyone wins.

Of course that doesn't happen in the real world, although some companies are doing reduced work schedules. However the perception is it's for mothers taking care of kids (which is getting outdated). Companies right now aren't prepared for this kind of thinking, so the short answer to this question is they shouldn't be, but they might. So a good compromise right now is to do things outside of working hours and employ the don't ask don't tell policy. But overall, we shouldn't need to apologize for wanting to make more out of ourselves.

Is it wrong to make money on the side while you're working?

Work hard and the company will take care of you

So what's the first thought that crosses your mind when you hear that? Many people are probably cynical, saying no more loyalty or what not, but there also is a positive ring to it... we're in an era now where we can set it up so we don't NEED the company to take care of us! So why try the entrepreneurship route? How the heck do you even spell entrepreneurship? Here are some reasons I can think of:

1. As a hedge to if something happens to the company you work for, or if you can't find a job when you get out of school. What I don't understand is people who are out of work who decide to get more education. If you're in need of money, why would you go pay more money to other people? Why not go out and try to make some money yourself?

2. As a way to give yourself a raise. Let's say you want a raise. You can work hard, continue to deliver results, and do what you can to show everyone that you deserve a raise. Then you can go state your case to your boss, who may or may not be able to give you a raise. Let's say he does. That raise then kicks in the next paycheck... maybe it's 5%. Maybe it's 10%. But it's maybe 6 months or a year later! If you've got your own business, you get a raise the second you deliver results.

3. A way to really leverage our strengths and keep you sane at work. You are in control over what venture you want to do. So you can pick stuff you're interested in and good at. For me, it's a great release when my ideas fall on deaf ears at work because it's not part of our "core competencies" or corporate strategy. It's a creative outlet for me that allows me to use the skills that my job doesn't let me use!

So that's why I do it. So far I've not been successful yet in turning a profit, but I'm gonna try until I get it! And hopefully blogging about it and hearing what everyone else's trials and tribulations are will keep me motivated.

Work hard and the company will take care of you

The Death of the 401k Match?

Working for a large corporation has always been seen as a safe, stable form of employment. This faith in safe jobs is being tested in this economic downturn as we have seen layoffs of corporate jobs to save company profits.
Lost in the news of a recession, layoffs, and bailouts is the news that may have the most long term impact on you and your family. Large companies like Motorola, Starbucks, FedEx, and Kodak have started to cut or eliminate contributions to employee 401k programs.
With this and the social security crisis, you may have to become responsible to fund 100% of your entire retirement. This means everyone must run their households like small businesses to ensure that they have enough profits at the end of the month to save for retirement before they are physically unable to work.

A brief history of retirement:

Pensions (Peaked in the 70's and 80's):
If you worked your career for a company you could retire with a lump sum or annual payment in the form of a pension. This combined with a healthy social security could support 100% of your retirement needs.

401k Matching (Peaked in the 80's and 90's):
To save money, companies did away with pensions and offered a 401k match. Generally this meant the company would contribute up to 33% of your 401k retirement.

On your own (2010 and beyond?):
Without any company matching and social security at risk, it may be up to everyone to find the money at the end of the month to save for retirement in the face of rising taxes to help offset our national debt.

Is your company providing you enough for you to save for retirement? Even if you do not wish to leave your job and work for yourself, could becoming a Corporatepreneur help you fund your retirement and future dreams?

We do not advocate over sized entitlements like free retirement. But, we do think it is important for people to adjust from a world where you could get help in saving for your retirement, to a world where you are on your own.

Just because you have to do it on your own, does not mean you have to do it alone.

The Death of the 401k Match?

5 Steps to Entrepreneurship

This site is really about “Where do I start?” Most of us probably have had moments in our job where we wanted to start our own business. We might have a great idea. We might be frustrated at work. We might feel like we can do better if we only had a chance. But the steady paycheck and security are hard to leave. So how do you have the best of both worlds? That’s what corporatepreneurship is all about!

We’ve identified five steps to “having your cake and eating it too” entrepreneurship:

1. The burning desire
2. Baby steps
3. Corporatepreneur
4. Entrepreneur
5. Financial freedom

Most people consider entrepreneurship to be risky. The classical way of thinking about entrepreneurship was this:

1. The burning desire
2. Baby steps
3. Corporatepreneur
2. Entrepreneur
3. Financial freedom

So you get an idea, quit our job, and sink a ton of money into it and chase your dreams. Holy cow that is risky! By adding the “baby steps” and “corporatepreneur” steps, you reduce your risk a ton. And you can increase your motivation to actually get things started!

Keep checking back on this site… better yet, subscribe to our RSS feed! Our hopes are to show people in the corporate world how you can do your own thing. And if you’re not in the corporate world, you can learn a thing or two also… mainly in the “baby steps” category. We’ll face head on things like “I don’t have time” “I don’t know where to begin” “It’ll require way too many resources” “I don’t have enough money” and other stuff like fear, procrastination, motivation, and inspiration. Of course they’ll be “useful” stuff like how to outsource stuff you don’t feel like doing for $4/hr, how stupidly easy it is to get paid by Amazon or Ebay, and why you should take the idea of a business plan and shove it.

5 Steps to Entrepreneurship

Great Quotes

I read this quote in "The 4-Hour Workweek" that I have to share. Especially since I often hear from friends, co-workers (and myself!) about the drudgery of the corporate world. This quote puts "the worst case career scenario" in perspective:

"Getting fired... is often a godsend. Someone else makes the [difficult] decision for you, and it's impossible to to sit in the wrong job for the rest of your life. Most people aren't lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 20-30 years of tolerating the mediocre." - "The 4-Hour Workweek"

Another related quote comes to mind

"All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer." - Niccolo Machiavelli

I have heard a lot of positive feedback from the Steve Jobs speech posted in my blog, however the Steve Tomlinson speech is even better! Since many people prefered to watch Steve Job's speech than to click the little play button of Steve Tomlinson's, I found a link to the text of his speech that is pretty close to the one I liked so much. I hope you have the strength to get through a fairly long text (10-15 min read).

Great Quotes

Are you reaching your potential?

If this doesn't make you want to run out of your cubicle and start your own business (finally), nothing will!

Are you reaching your potential?