A new year, same old me
I figure with the year 2008 well under way, it was time to sit down and come up with something philosophical. Those of you who know me, and those of you who don't and those of you who want to -- I think that covers everybody -- understand that from time to time I like to sit around wax philosophical. Not sure that's really a term, but for me that means sitting around and asking a lot of questions, drawing up scenarios of how things can play out, make general assumptions about random things - and sometimes things of consequence - or just send out other sage advice I get from a myriad of the self-help weekly emails that I'm signed up to. Where am I going with all of this you ask, good question and not one I'm sure I have the answer to. Ok, not really you know I have the answer I just like to hear myself type so I'm going to go on for a while.
I find myself this time of year looking for new things to do. I wouldn't call it a New Year's resolution - as I firmly believe that any day of the year is a good time to begin a new, not one drunken evening right after the holiday of your choice worshiping the deity of your choice and before the bills for your celebration and gift giving come in - more than a yearly ritual that seems to happen this time of year. You see, this time of year I find myself I always seem to find myself looking at different business opportunities far from what it is I really do for a living. Some of you out there are even wearing fruits of the labors from my past (and still current) endeavor of jewelry making - who knew that I had an inner artist trying to get out. Maybe it's just the newness of the year and taking time away from the job I have that pays the bills and has the benefits we all need to go visit the various Dr's it takes to cope with life these days that leads me to this yearly ritual.
Mind you, with the exception of the jewelry work - which started out as a stress reliever and has turned into an almost self-funding hobby - I rarely pursue these crazy business ideas of mine. I'm not quite sure what keeps me from pursuing some of these interests but I have some ideas:
I know that before my time is up, I need to run my own thing. Not for the money or the power or the recognition, but more that I'm a control freak when it comes to how other people do things. One of my self-proclaimed strengths is I can follow a process for a given period of time and come up with several unnecessary steps that can be eliminated. The biggest of my weaknesses is being able to take that knowledge and approach the people who own the process or perform it day-to-day and convince them they have a problem. The reason for this, people do not like to be pushed out of their comfort zone. Especially people who work in big companies who have fragile egos and who do not know when to admit that something they created needs improvement - even if that improvement would allow them to work on the things they know they need to work, yet complain about not having enough time to get done. It is this weakness that drives me to want to run my own thing, it is for my own sanity. The trade-off is giving up material things in the short-term to run my own thing. Oh, there is that whole what would my own thing look like or be. Like I said, I'm good at critiquing (ok call it criticism or telling people that they did it wrong) and not so good at the initial idea. For example, I can come up with a concept or strategy with hardly any effort. I can draw pretty pictures on a white board. You ask me to write that up into a document of any kind and BAM...all creativity stops. OK, if I can get somebody to take my original white board idea and put it down in some format, I'm good to go and can 'modify/improve' from there. Come to think of it, this is another thing that keeps me from doing my own thing. For my own thing, there will be nobody else to delegate to. Believe me, I've tried with all the paperwork necessary for my hobby. See, I have this genetic flaw of paperwork and all things form related (some would call it laziness, I call it a phobia or genetic flaw). This mostly stems from never understanding what is really being asked for in forms - maybe I over analyze who knows; send me a form to fill out asking me why it is and I'll get to it later. Oh, for my own thing there is all that paper work required. First order of business in my new thing, hire somebody to do all the paperwork.
Now that I'm in my fourth or fifth paragraph - I can't count either - I can finally get to the meat of this rambling: the different business ideas I've investigated. A few years ago, I looked at a concrete stamping business/franchise. One of those deals where you buy the stamps, do the training and have a territory to cover. On the surface it looked like an interesting gig - after all I don't know the first thing about concrete besides those people get up while it's dark to start pouring - however the financial data didn't look right - disclaimer: not calling anybody a crook, or implying that at all, what I'm saying is that the money in, the money out, the number of products i had to buy, rent, train - so I walked away from that one. This year I'm looking at franchising a service business - something that can't be outsourced to some foreign land so I don't have to worry about globalization (translation: working 24 hours a day). The guts of the business are run by a friend of mine - one with a solid financial background - so I know that there is the potential for returns with a small investment up front. The challenge with this one would be the logistics and having the time to actually sell the product. Good challenges to have, just not one that I'm willing to walk away from my bread and butter to do. That short-term versus long-term thing again.
Some of these ventures have been websites providing reminder services. There is a market for that idea a buddy of mine hatched and we refined together. I drew up 95% of the site and the functions needed during a conference call at work one day. Now if either of us had any code writing abilities we could get this thing off the ground. Or if I had $10K to pay a developer to work on the thing -- could be cheaper, I didn't dig too much beyond asking a few friends if the underlying concept would be cheap to deliver. That one is always in the back of my mind and with all the services you can sign up for now, this one would play nicely. May have to pull that one out and revisit it. For that idea, we both walked away from it more from the technical complexity than anything. I figure if I ever get laid off, I'll take what I have in mind for this opt-in service and run with it. There are sound business ideas - on the surface, which translates to I see how some people involved could increase their business or give this service away as part of a sale - but I'm not sure of the ultimate costs. There are several players in the field, so if built robust enough it could be used by any of them, long-term goal would be to actually sell off the technology to one of my customers. Hmmm, this is starting to sound good again.
Stay tuned for what's next on the radar. More than likely it'll be a whole lot of what I've done in the past - search for a role inside the large company I work for that makes me happy while dealing with much unhappiness with the dolt managing me at the time, only to actually find a decent leader to work under in a role I like to face the inevitable re-org that follows roughly 3 months after there appears to be peace in the work-world, cashing my paychecks along the way and hoping that our sales folks sell enough to meet the impossible goals set forth by the too rich to be working executive leadership team.
- Gio
I find myself this time of year looking for new things to do. I wouldn't call it a New Year's resolution - as I firmly believe that any day of the year is a good time to begin a new, not one drunken evening right after the holiday of your choice worshiping the deity of your choice and before the bills for your celebration and gift giving come in - more than a yearly ritual that seems to happen this time of year. You see, this time of year I find myself I always seem to find myself looking at different business opportunities far from what it is I really do for a living. Some of you out there are even wearing fruits of the labors from my past (and still current) endeavor of jewelry making - who knew that I had an inner artist trying to get out. Maybe it's just the newness of the year and taking time away from the job I have that pays the bills and has the benefits we all need to go visit the various Dr's it takes to cope with life these days that leads me to this yearly ritual.
Mind you, with the exception of the jewelry work - which started out as a stress reliever and has turned into an almost self-funding hobby - I rarely pursue these crazy business ideas of mine. I'm not quite sure what keeps me from pursuing some of these interests but I have some ideas:
- Leaving the safety of what I have by my own choice
- Working 60 hour weeks to get things off the ground while eating peanut butter and jelly for weeks, months, years on end while things are ramping up
- I don't really have to - let me rephrase that, I need to work. I enjoy the lifestyle I've become accustomed to. Until I get fired (which is a totally different blog all unto itself and believe me, I have plenty of examples of why my new boss is a complete moron -- which could be an insult to morons) there is no reason to take that chance and put myself out there
- Left to my own devices, I tend to be destructive - not tear down your house destructive, but ADD destructive
- I get bored easily - I'm great at coming up with the initial idea, passing it on for somebody else to work out the details, then picking it apart and getting to what it was I really wanted. Another way to describe it would be sitting down with the CEO and having him say "I want something sorta blue."
I know that before my time is up, I need to run my own thing. Not for the money or the power or the recognition, but more that I'm a control freak when it comes to how other people do things. One of my self-proclaimed strengths is I can follow a process for a given period of time and come up with several unnecessary steps that can be eliminated. The biggest of my weaknesses is being able to take that knowledge and approach the people who own the process or perform it day-to-day and convince them they have a problem. The reason for this, people do not like to be pushed out of their comfort zone. Especially people who work in big companies who have fragile egos and who do not know when to admit that something they created needs improvement - even if that improvement would allow them to work on the things they know they need to work, yet complain about not having enough time to get done. It is this weakness that drives me to want to run my own thing, it is for my own sanity. The trade-off is giving up material things in the short-term to run my own thing. Oh, there is that whole what would my own thing look like or be. Like I said, I'm good at critiquing (ok call it criticism or telling people that they did it wrong) and not so good at the initial idea. For example, I can come up with a concept or strategy with hardly any effort. I can draw pretty pictures on a white board. You ask me to write that up into a document of any kind and BAM...all creativity stops. OK, if I can get somebody to take my original white board idea and put it down in some format, I'm good to go and can 'modify/improve' from there. Come to think of it, this is another thing that keeps me from doing my own thing. For my own thing, there will be nobody else to delegate to. Believe me, I've tried with all the paperwork necessary for my hobby. See, I have this genetic flaw of paperwork and all things form related (some would call it laziness, I call it a phobia or genetic flaw). This mostly stems from never understanding what is really being asked for in forms - maybe I over analyze who knows; send me a form to fill out asking me why it is and I'll get to it later. Oh, for my own thing there is all that paper work required. First order of business in my new thing, hire somebody to do all the paperwork.
Now that I'm in my fourth or fifth paragraph - I can't count either - I can finally get to the meat of this rambling: the different business ideas I've investigated. A few years ago, I looked at a concrete stamping business/franchise. One of those deals where you buy the stamps, do the training and have a territory to cover. On the surface it looked like an interesting gig - after all I don't know the first thing about concrete besides those people get up while it's dark to start pouring - however the financial data didn't look right - disclaimer: not calling anybody a crook, or implying that at all, what I'm saying is that the money in, the money out, the number of products i had to buy, rent, train - so I walked away from that one. This year I'm looking at franchising a service business - something that can't be outsourced to some foreign land so I don't have to worry about globalization (translation: working 24 hours a day). The guts of the business are run by a friend of mine - one with a solid financial background - so I know that there is the potential for returns with a small investment up front. The challenge with this one would be the logistics and having the time to actually sell the product. Good challenges to have, just not one that I'm willing to walk away from my bread and butter to do. That short-term versus long-term thing again.
Some of these ventures have been websites providing reminder services. There is a market for that idea a buddy of mine hatched and we refined together. I drew up 95% of the site and the functions needed during a conference call at work one day. Now if either of us had any code writing abilities we could get this thing off the ground. Or if I had $10K to pay a developer to work on the thing -- could be cheaper, I didn't dig too much beyond asking a few friends if the underlying concept would be cheap to deliver. That one is always in the back of my mind and with all the services you can sign up for now, this one would play nicely. May have to pull that one out and revisit it. For that idea, we both walked away from it more from the technical complexity than anything. I figure if I ever get laid off, I'll take what I have in mind for this opt-in service and run with it. There are sound business ideas - on the surface, which translates to I see how some people involved could increase their business or give this service away as part of a sale - but I'm not sure of the ultimate costs. There are several players in the field, so if built robust enough it could be used by any of them, long-term goal would be to actually sell off the technology to one of my customers. Hmmm, this is starting to sound good again.
Stay tuned for what's next on the radar. More than likely it'll be a whole lot of what I've done in the past - search for a role inside the large company I work for that makes me happy while dealing with much unhappiness with the dolt managing me at the time, only to actually find a decent leader to work under in a role I like to face the inevitable re-org that follows roughly 3 months after there appears to be peace in the work-world, cashing my paychecks along the way and hoping that our sales folks sell enough to meet the impossible goals set forth by the too rich to be working executive leadership team.
- Gio
posted by Juan Giovanni at 11:55 PM
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