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Posts Tagged ‘business’

At times running a business can feel like you’re wrestling an octopus. You know all the book-keeping, HR, Marketing, Insurance, production and taxes that the captains of industry get other people to do for them? For now, all those duties fall to you, sunshine. Which job will you do first? How will you do them? Will you do it right? God help you if you don’t do it right! 70% of businesses fail within their first year, you know!

I haven’t been in the entrepreneur game long, but I find there’s one little strategy that gets me going in the morning: I start.

Every morning, I open my project management software, my e-mail, and a text editor, and I start. Bad work, the kind you’ll kick yourself later for doing is infinitely better than no work done at all. So what if it’s not the best balance sheet/business card/website/elevator pitch in the entire world? As of right now, you may be the only person on this enterprise, and therefore you’re the best you’ve got. You can get help if you’re really stuck, but help might not know what you want if you don’t pick up that keyboard and start. So if you’re an entrepreneur, staring a blank laptop, you will be much better off if you gather the trappings of what you think you’re supposed to do. Whether it’s a book for research, your schedule for this week, or your bank account spreadsheet, your purpose will become that much clearer if you Just. Start.

It was another raucous New Year’s in Seattle. I made new friends, tried new drinks and made a complete ass of myself on the new Microsoft Kinect. After we had convalesced from hang-overs and sleep deprivation, my friends and  I decided on a change of pace. The Tsubaki Shinto Shrine in Everett was hosting its yearly New Year ceremonies for the year of the Rabbit. Sara and I hadn’t been to one of these Shrines since our trip to Japan, so we were curious to experience one without the jet-lag!

It was sunny when we set out to find the shrine, but as we drove into the small forest, where it was located, it was like a Yuki-onna(Snow Woman) had descended on the place. Cars were having trouble with the parking because of the ice. Icicles hung down from the well where we were supposed to wash our hands before entering the shrine. Luckily, the volunteers had set up a bonfire for us.

We registered for the ceremony and bought a few Omamori charms at the gift shop. The ceremonies were being held once every 45 minutes, so we waited on the second floor of the shrine and had tea. When it was time, we were led into a large room with an elaborate shrine at the front containing offerings of food and drink. There were chairs to sit on, but I decided to be a trooper and kneel at the front. A drum sounded, and the priest came out. He gave us instructions for when to bow in English and in Japanese. He waved a wand called an Onusa and chanted the prayers with a solemn sing-song tone and cadence. He called out the names of those attending and blessed them. When he was finished, he gave a short sermon about the 2011, the Year of the Rabbit. It is to be a year of great change. We shouldn’t necessarily accept things as they are, but to use our energy to create a new world from the old. We should also make these changes from a place of thankfulness, not negativity and pessimism.

Maybe I was caught up in the pageantry of the whole thing, but that priest’s sermon sort of felt right. I do want to create a new reality for myself, my friends and my family. I want to take a good hard look at what I’m doing, and if it doesn’t reflect my goals or values, I have to change it. My first order of business is to get re-acquainted…with everyone. I know my success doesn’t just come from my own work. The community decides. Customers, colleagues, friends, or people just watching your story develop are part of the same tapestry. If I want their approval, I’m going to have to listen to what moves them, what excites them, even what scares them, and try to help where I can. This year’s going to be full of crazy money making schemes and fierce conversations. Every week’s going to have a story, a product, or at least something that I can present to the world. I want this to be the year that I will make happen, but I want to have everyone else on the ride with me.

A while back I wrote about the impending closure of Dino Town, which was once Chilliwack’s Bedrock city. It turns out there was more to that story than was told in that Vancouver Sun Article. The paper had sugarcoated the truth a bit, as newspapers are sometimes wont to do. Bedrock City wasn’t a lost battle in the on-going generation war. The loss of the license that turned it into “Dino Town” wasn’t even an attempt by Time Warner to reel their brands in. Bedrock City lost the Flinstone license because it was contractually bonded to the man who originally built the park, Bob Ell. Soon after I had posted my article on Dino town, Bob got in touch with me over Twitter. He had left his number, so I phoned him up. This is what he had to say.

In Bob’s opinion, the park closed due to poor management and a lack of investment in the park itself. He had faced the same issues of declining attendance  in the early 80′s. After 10 years, it was difficult to maintain interest in the park. So, he enlisted the help of Mike Vance, Dean of Disney University and a consultant for companies like Kraft, Mars and General Electric. They created new attractions every year using some of the first computer aided storyboarding software on an original Macintosh computer. Through this cycle of constant re-invention, kids could join the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, join the Bedrock fire department, steer a rock barge, and even control a brontosaurus.

Bedrock was serving 100,000 customers in its heyday. Entrepreneurs were coming from miles around to the park’s office literally begging to buy a license to build more parks. When the park was sold in 1994, the new owners saw the yearly updates as a waste of money. Attendance frittered away to a mere 40,000.

There is an important lesson in this story. We would have still had Bedrock City, or at least a decent place to take our kids, had the owners of Dino Town kept up with the culture of innovation and hard work that made the park so popular. This same lesson applies to any business in your own backyard. There are too many operations out there where the owners and employees have just given up. They may be in charge of an unassailable franchise, or inherited the family business, but either way consumers suffer for it. It doesn’t have to be this way. These so-called institutions are nothing but fair game for people with the passion and persistence to build something better. Take a good look around. What are people in your town missing? What would it take to give them what they want? What would you build?

You know a company has jumped the shark when it starts giving you long involved surveys to fill out. I’m not talking about little five point “rate your service” radio buttons in an online form, I’m talking homework, where you have to fill 20 questions and rate your answers from not likely to very likely. When a company does this, it means that they have gotten too big. They now have an internal culture they have to please with reams and reams of chart porn explaining why they have to do anything except warm chairs in a board room.

It means that they are now officially out of ideas and are reduced to begging their customers for information. God forbid that the management makes a decision, or heaven forfend they ask their front-line employees! Fortunately, it’s also an uncommon indicator of opportunity. Where ever there is a place where a large company cannot fill a need and cannot expand its reach, there exists a small niche where anyone, anyone at all, can carve out a small business empire.

I’ve read Seth Godin’s book on “Tribes”. It’s not as airy-fairy as the associated literature has led me to believe. Getting a “Tribe” is not just about finding like-minded people. It’s about giving something of yourself to help people. Notice I did not say “establish yourself as an expert”, another phrase I keep hearing on marketing blogs. To those bloggers, a “Tribe” is just a cool word for self-promotion. They don’t give something of themselves. They just want an echo chamber to tell them how brilliant they are. When you actually do the work that is worthy of attracting a “tribe”, whether it’s an e-book, a video, or some handy piece of open source programming, that work stands on its own. It will get people talking, listening, and even criticizing, but it’s not about your name, it’s about the work. There’s no fame or fortune to be had, just a symbol of your gifts and abilities. Believe me, that’s plenty.

My first week in the Fraser Valley Self Employment program consisted of workshops in Business Planning, Marketing, and Competition analysis. My class was quite small. Four people, including myself. There was a Music Teacher/Producer, an International Tax Accountant, and a Senior Care specialist. The sessions were very information-dense. It’s scary to think how many entrepreneurs try to go into business without knowing how to do a balance sheet or register with all levels of government. However, I think our most important take-away from those workshops was not the knowledge, but a chance to get our first taste of the culture of business.

There we were, circling a conference room table with wildly divergent forms of companies. It was almost addicting to hear all of the concerns and strategies involved in all of our companies. Did you know you could clean a house with lemon juice and steeped tea? How about the SOCANN tariff, and how that will affect the music industry? Were you aware of all the bugs that exist in commercially available accounting software? Each one of us had something to contribute. The presenters had almost as much to learn from us as we did from them. With no titles besides the ones we had given ourselves, our knowledge was one of the only things we had that proved that we belonged in this program. Our eagerness to help was the other trait that proved our worth. Not only could we offer our skills, but our network contacts as well. As time went on, I felt as though we were all on the boards of each other’s companies, brainstorming new ideas that would take us all to the top.

For all the talk about rational self-interest in business, my workshop group felt like a very egalitarian place to be. We all wanted to help each other.  Everyone was willing to share information, and they wanted to know what you thought in return. I’ll be interested to see my classmates in months to come after these workshops. Hopefully, I’ll even be able to send them a few leads.

I got the call Thursday that my SeedsBC funding was approved. As of today, I have stopped looking for work. I have a new job. For the next 40 weeks, I’ll be receiving funding and training to start a new web design business. For the next couple of weeks or so, I’ll be attending workshops on marketing, accounting, and business planning. After that, I’ll start calling up the sales leads I picked up during my application process and go on from there.

I feel like say something inspiring or Seth Godin-like about this, but it just doesn’t feel like the right time. This is not a product launch. It wasn’t even a tough decision to make. Freelance contracting made me money. Sending out resumes did not. I’m not exactly throwing off my chains and seizing the means of production. This is just the first, faltering step on a long journey.

Entrepreneurship, for the most part, is still something I’ve only read about in books. I have no doubt a lot of its details are obscured by the triumphalism and tragedy that makes for good business publishing. But I can’t give in to the fear of the unknown. As of now, there is no boss I can beg for my job back. I signed a contract with my government that I would give this venture my full attention. I have a mortgage and car insurance that can’t be paid with anything less than profit. It sounds like pressure, but to me it’s comforting. We spend our whole lives looking for direction, wondering where to put our energies. The only direction I have now is forward.

A common complaint about living in Abbotsford is that there are no good bookstores. We have four, but your choice is Coles in Seven Oaks, Hemingway’s used bookstore, the House of James Christian bookstore, and Food for Thought if crystals and tarot cards are your thing.

Sure, it’s an eclectic selection, but we’re a city of over 125,000 people. We deserve some kind of ostentatious literary presence in our town. I watch every big box development with baited breath. Maybe the shell of Linens & Things will be resurrected as a Chapters. Perhaps that giant red thing will be- aw, it’s just a Shopper’s Drugmart. It’s like we’re the town that doesn’t like to read.

To make matters worse, I think we’ve just passed the point where big box bookstores are profitable. Most of the books I buy are marketed and purchased entirely online. I see an interview or a video from the author and I just sashay down to the Chapters website where everything is (almost) always in stock and cheaper than the brick and mortar store.

Is the idle pleasure of browsing a bookstore doomed to antiquity?

Having an actual physical store is different enough from online retail that we should have them well into the future. The question is how to monetize real life stores. I think we’ll see something akin to the hyper-competitive retail market I saw in Tokyo. Every store had to compete with hundreds just like it in the area. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to try and get customers to spend time shopping. There were streetside barkers, brightly coloured (and colourfully written) deal signs, animated displays, and don’t get me started with the cross-promotion! Who would have thought of using a maid cafe to market transformable cell-phone robot toys? Whatever form brick and mortar retail takes, the common factor is going to be the passion of the salespeople. As much as I hate using that word, if you are going to sling books like a machine, you might as well get replaced by one.

The controversial chairman of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, has made plans to announce a pay subscription model for his publications to be viewed on the iPad and other such devices. The plan is expected to include the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Times and will expand into News Corp.’s entertainment properties.

All I have to say is: Good for Rupert Murdoch. News Corp lost 5 billion dollars last year. You could say he’s only doing this because he’s old and the pay subscription model is the only thing he understands, but really it’s either this or shutter the newspapers entirely. That move would certainly cause more shareholders to flee, further reducing News Corp.’s share price, causing him to shut down more divisions, and on it goes until the company implodes. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation.

It’s going to be interesting to see if this works. Subscription based services have failed in the past, but that was at a time before you had online payment methods like paypal and 1-click. Today, millions are being made through subscription-based web software, a situation unthinkable in the last decade. It’ll also be a true test of where political opinion lies in the world today.  There was a time when companies like News Corp. could hide their inviability through cheap debt. Now thanks to the recession, we are actually going to see if people are willing to pay money to keep the conservative echo chamber alive.

When people hear the story of Vicky Harrison, they are quick to comfort themselves with all kinds of qualifiers. They leave comments like, she left school, she had mental issues that weren’t reported on or she took the easy way out. None of them seem to address why this had to happen. Vicky had been looking for a job for almost 2 years after leaving college. After over 200 rejections, her self-worth was so low that she took her own life.

I’m not asking why she died. I want to know why she had to send out 200 applications in the first place. Does this system of finding a job produce better workers?

Vicky’s plight is not unique. While the article was from the UK, here in BC the unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds is 15.9 percent, almost twice the provincial average of 8.1 percent. Her suicide is probably just a symptom of thousands, possibly millions of young people who might be suffering debilitating mental issues because they can’t find jobs.

It doesn’t make sense. A generation ago, people that age were getting married and having kids on top of starting careers with things like pensions and a mandatory retirement age. In all likelihood, they were less educated than the current crop of young adults. It’s like we’ve gone from a culture that worshipped youth to one that completely abhors it.

It’s tempting to blame the demographically larger baby boomers for this, but this has been going on ever since Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X” was published 20 years ago. I think it has more to do with the fact that we live in the most policy-choked, paternalistic, and gentrified labor system ever produced by human civilization. There are so many rules and regulations in private companies that they end up killing all initiative and decision making. No one wants to bear the cost of training new and unproven workers in that kind of situation.

I don’t know how we’re going fix this system, but we can start by admitting that it’s broken. Most young workers are going to have to find their fortunes outside of official channels like resumes and reference letters. It’s cruel and dangerous to tell them otherwise. Change will come, but it’s not going to be found in the company handbook.