Restarting the 5 hour weekly commitment

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?

Restarting the 5 hour weekly commitment

Renewing the Corporatepreneur

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.

Renewing the Corporatepreneur

Comment of the year

@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.

Comment of the year

This is it!

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!

This is it!

Disappointing results for Fall textbook season

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?

Disappointing results for Fall textbook season

5 hours a week = iPhone 4

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).

5 hours a week = iPhone 4

My fears

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.

My fears