To the Core of the Matter

This is one of those questions I get all the time:

• I've had this job for years and now I want a change. I've always dreampt of X business, am I crazy to try it?

This question has everything to do with "core skills". Those are the skills that you already have a firm grasp on. Skills that you have acquired in some way or other, in your life, that give you an understanding of the business that you want to start.

For instance, if you want to start a retail store, some of the skills that would be important would be:

• Sales experience
• Outgoing personality
• Organized
• Knowing a bit about the product that you want to sell
• Having connections with people who want to buy this kind of product if it is "niche"
• A grasp of basic bookkeeping
• Physical ability to lift and carry merchandise
• Ability to negotiate!
  

A retail business if a physical thing. It requires long hours, hauling of merchandise, moving things constantly. As muchtime as one spends talking to customers, one is also dealing with vendors, if the product is bought wholesale. It's a taxing thing! Take that same business online and you may have taken our the customer contact and the physical environment of a store, but you still need all the other skills.

What are your core skills?

Folks who work in one industry and find a "void" somewhere that they want to fill as a business person have a good way to enter self-employment. They already understand the industry from the inside out! Sure, there are still going to be lots for them to learn, but knowing the key players, what the industry requires and the "lay of the land" are huge benefits.

This is not to say that if you want to retire into something entirely different than what you did for your life's work, you won't succeed. What I would say is this, though: Talk to people who have stores if you want to open a store. Talk to people who offer a service to a niche market if that's your dream.

We all have "core skills" and your chance of success lies directly in the path of those skills. You can develop those other skills you may need to expand your business to the dream that you have. Start out with the ones you already have to build a firm platform or base in which to work from.

Having the business of your dreams may very well be a series of steps, instead of one giant leap from where you are to where you want to be.

Not Your Mother's Career Counselor

www.imageabstraction.com

When, if ever did you go to your first Career Counselor? After High School? During a mid-life crisis? After college? Chances are, there has been someone along the way with some opinions about what your life's work should be. They might have given you tests or asked questions and in the end, they were looking for a box to put you and your skill set into.

"Life's Work" is now an outdated concept for many of us. There will be many times we change what we do, how we do it and who we do it for. My last post was about the lifestyle connected to different professions. That's one example of some of the points that don't get covered in some career counseling.

I like to start all my new folks out with this question: What do you want your perfect day to look and feel like?

It's a kind of reverse engineering. Instead of asking a series of questions about what you're good at, I'd rather know what you'd like to do, day to day. Because when it comes down to it, you may love the "idea" of doing something, but the collection of tasks that make up that job really don't interest you.

Are you a musician who loves to be on stage but hates to practice? Are you a musician who loves to play in their bedroom but hates the stage? Ok, so that's an easy one. I love textile design, went to school in my late 20's to study it. I got my degree from Parson's School of Design, went out and started looking for a job. I was told it was going to be tough and not much pay. I really thought I was ready. I was training with professionals in the field! Two days into my first job I felt like I was in hell. A kind of hell I didn't even know existed.

I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was seriously doubting my sanity. No one asked me if I could work with no direction in a sweatshop-like environment using a set of skills I never actually learned in school. Oh, and for pennies. I've taken what I learned at Parson's and have used it a million times over in other ways. I have no regrets, except perhaps taking a tour of a studio with one of my instructors.

That experience has really shaped the questions I ask as a small business consultant. It's about all the moments that make up your day. As they say, it's more about the journey than the destination. Put yourself back in the sandbox, as it were, and ask yourself.

Your Business Lifestyle

www.imageabstraction.com

It's not unusual that I meet someone who starts a business in an industry that's new to them. For example, someone who has been in social work but has always dreampt of having a little gift shop. Six months down the line I hear them say, "But I didn't really understand how I'd never have weekends to myself!".

Every industry has it's own particular lifestyle. It's an important thing to factor in when you're considering starting your own venture. There are decisions you can make about the structure of your business and the culture you can create and then there are things that are inherent to that industry. A great example is a restaurant. Unless you're running a breakfast and lunch cafe, chances are you'll be working nights. The most important time to be in your restaurant will be the nights. It's a complete lifestyle. That may not go over well with your family.

"If I knew then what I know now..."

Do a little research in advance and see what kind of lifestyle, folks who are doing what you want to be doing, have. Even a consultant, like myself, the lifestyle varies person to person. Not everyone works this way but many do. Now that I'm working nationwide, my day spans both coasts and continues into the weekends. To some folks, that sounds like a nightmare. For me, it's what I'm comfortable with. I know myself professionally. I know how much I can handle and how to naturally structure my days. It works with my natural flow.

It's not just about starting your dream business, but making sure that the lifestyle of that business if compatible with your personality. I may have dreams of having a sheep farm, but there's no way I'm getting up that early, or giving up my city life. Know what you want and know yourself.

Some related posts here from the past are the series' on working at home, or working with your spouse.

Taking off

Painting by Angelia's Art

There are several metaphors that can used to describe the life-cycle of a business, but the two that come to mind involve "rebirth" as in a cat with nine lives, or reincarnation. But first, let's go through the stages that lead up to that rebirth:

A Sparkle in Someone's Eye
This is known as the "dream" state in which everything and nothing is possible. It's a thought. If you do something about it, you get to the next stage.

Pregnancy
All your ideas are "gestating" and it's the start of your business. You have taken some first steps, like writing a business plan or talking to people or maybe even thinking about a name.

Labor
This is when you know WHEN your business will start but you have very little idea of how it will all get done. It's "hurry up and wait", it's reading all the "what to expect" books but knowing that it's going to all be a surprise when you really start doing business.

Birth
Well, all the "heavy lifting" of the labor ends, the first day is over, the opening party is over and you have this small being that is now alive and needs to be cared for. It is your business. It cries your name in the night and is relentless in the attention needed to keep it alive.

Infancy
There's steady growth, things are changing everyday but your business still needs constant attention. Perhaps you've taken your first bit of time away from it since you started. Hired a "sitter" for your first night out. This is often the time when it becomes abundantly clear as to whether you can really work with a partner if you have one. Maybe you need to bring in more help?

Childhood
This is the somewhat predictable early growth stages that you've heard about. There are days when you love you business and days when you think you'll not come back from lunch. Ah, then you remember it's YOUR business.

Adolescence
A period of defiance in kids, in a business it could be the time when your vendors and customers and all that has been in place from the start, are not. The steadiness you got a little used to has ceased to be. You are now experiencing "growing pains" as you try and bring more folks into your business in some way. Perhaps you've outgrown your current technology? It seems like you need to throw a lot of money at the situation but it may not be the most responsible response.

Adulthood
Ah, you've seen most all of it. You've done most all of it. You have a confidence in what you're doing and how you're doing it. Sometimes you do get a run for your money from the new kids on the block. There's the re-education that you need to do to keep yourself on top of things.

Aging
Now the question is: Can you can truly keep up? You've been doing this a long time and your long range plans have not necessarily accounted for things like just being a bit tired of what you're doing. This time it's more than a "mid-life crisis". This time it's a matter of thinking about what's next: Passing the baton or calling it a day. Calling it a life and a business and moving to the next stage.

Death
You're done

Rebirth
Maybe not. Maybe there's a way to reinvent this thing. Ah, a spark in the eye!!!

I hope you all had as much fun reading this humorous take on the business life-cycle as I did in writing it. Of course, stages and come and go several times. I'd love to hear about yours.

Patterns of Success

I found Sarai though Neighborhood Notes and thought she'd be a great interview. Sure, this sort of thing is right up my alley, but I was particularly impressed with the quality of her product. How beautifully it's executed!

Sarai Mitnick is the founder of Colette Patterns, an independent sewing pattern company focused on beautiful and timeless styles for design-oriented sewers. Her background in User Experience and design has instilled a passion for simplicity, beauty, and ease of use that is reflected throughout her company and products. She resides in Portland, OR.

Q:What kind of market research did you do before starting your business? Was it just your experience as a consumer or something else?

I actually have a background in User Experience Research, which is something like a cousin to market research, so it was really important for me to understand my potential customers' needs and context. I spoke directly to a number of sewers, designed a small survey, and read through a lot of product reviews on the web. I also relied on more traditional forms of existing market research to determine things like market size, demographics, income.

I find it really helpful to combine quantitative and qualitative research because neither can give you a complete picture by themselves. For example, market stats told me that my target market was small but growing, and what they're demographics were. From there, it became easier to find people that matched that description and actually learn about their needs in a meaningful way, and what they found lacking or missing from current offerings.

Of course, if you're working on something you're passionate about, your own experience will always be a factor. I often find that's the best starting point for research! It's very powerful to start with a problem you have, then learn more about how it might also affect others and how you could meet those needs.

Q:What has been the easiest and alternately, the most challenging part of understanding how to start a business?

The easiest and most enjoyable for me has been adapting to working for myself. I love managing my own time and I'm very independent and self-motivated, so getting things done is never really a problem. I think I'm pretty good at the whole balancing act, although there's always room for improvement.

The most challenging for me was probably figuring out where to start. There is an almost unbelievable amount of work involved in starting a small business, so much that's not apparent from the outside!There are just a lot of aspects to manage. It really helped me to write a business plan to focus my energy and come up with a coherent plan and timetable.

Q:How extensive would you eventually like your pattern line to be and what kind of timeline do you imagine for your growth?

Eventually, I'd like it to be extensive enough to cover a range of categories.I love designing, and would really like to branch out into things like outerwear, lounge wear, etc.

I'm planning for slow and steady growth. This first year is all about investing in the business and making it sustainable. My goal is not to grow the business into something huge, but to have a wonderful company that supports me and that my customers love. Right now, I'm planning for another small line for the latter part of the year, investing in some infrastructure, and seeing where it goes from there!

Going it Alone or Not

Photo by Kevin Zim

Business Partner or just help along the way?

I have a lot of business friends who believe that business partners are the worst idea ever. It's kinda like those who have "lost in love". The business Lonely Hearts Club, so to speak. There are always going to be points when we need a community, a friend, or certainly a Mentor to help us with our business. Making a legal commitment to having a business partner is very much like being married. What are some of the reasons you might think about having a business partner?

• You and another person came up with a business idea together.
• You consistently need another set of skills.
• You can only work half time and you need someone else to Captain the ship with other half.
• You've met someone with great connections and they want "in" on your gig.

Just because these are reasons you are considering a business partner they are not necessarily the reasons why you SHOULD have a business partner. Some other options are:

• Allow the person who came up with this idea with you to have a "silent" stake in the business.
• Build up that skill set that you're lacking within yourself.
• Find someone with that skill set and hire them as a consultant until you learn the ropes.
• Take that person who you are considering as a partner and make them an employee so that you are the one taking the risks and they have a share in reaping the rewards.
• Find a way to "promote" this person with the great connections in a way that would benefit them or allow them to invest now to earn future income rewards.

I'm not going to talk you in or out of having a business partner. I would suggest getting an opinion though from a Small Biz consultant though because it creates a specific kind of business model that your plan needs to reflect.

Then, there's always the business partners you're married to and I've written quite a bit about that!

If You Start it Will They Come?

photo by Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org

The short answer is: Only if they know you exist!

Isn't that the truth. Such noise out there!

• Do you shout above the rest?

• Do you find only the people who you think you want to talk to?

• Do you take the attitude that the right people will "somehow" find you?

In as much as Social Media is restating the questions, I think the answers are coming up surprisingly the same. Finding your target market and keeping them engaged it the only way to make a business successful.

How to get someone's attention may be the flavor of the day, and human behavior as experienced on the internet may be a moving target, but there are some things you can count on:

• People are always buying more than a product.

• If the product you have isn't selling, don't assume the product is wrong.

• If the product you have is selling and then NOT, don't assume it's your marketing.

We live in a very "reactive" culture. One minute you're up, next minute you're down. We've been making movies and jokes about this for decades, but it's funny because it's true. So yes, if you start it they may come, but will they buy? Will they tell their friends? Will they come and buy again?

This brings us back to a more "scientific" notion about business plans and experiments. We don't want to waste our time on either without a pretty good notion of what's going to happen. But, if things don't play out the way you hypothesized, re-evaluating with a professional is the next best step.

Not Lost in Translation

I've been doing this "thing" for years and years and it has been through a couple of conversations that I realized I needed to define "it" for my audience here.

The "thing" I do in my business consulting/mentoring for creative professionals is this:
I translate Business-Speak into Art-Speak.

I bridge the gap between these two worlds to help creative people figure out how the heck to navigate the business world. This gal was born lucky with both the right and left sides of her brain pretty equally developed. It took me a while to see this in myself, but I can take a creative person and "spoon feed" them the business information they need to make their dream happen.

Now for the back story:
When I was in my twenties, I was a custom clothing designer and I realized soon enough that my language for form and color did not necessarily match the language of my clients. Did an accountant know how to tell me what they wanted to wear? No. Mostly not.

I started pulling pages from magazines, mostly fashion, and asked my clients to tell me about the person in each picture. From this Q&A I was able to glean some crucial information about that person's language of color and design. From there I asked them some questions about how they wished to be perceived in the world (in really specific circumstances, like a job interview, first date, etc.)

By asking these questions I was able to figure out what my client wanted to wear and then I could create it for them. All these years later, what this exercise in communication styles and perception styles taught me was the way various personalities learn and perceive. What I didn't know back then, is where it would take me to, so many years later.

Today I take many of these same skills (plus some) to see where my client wants to go in their life and career. From there, I create a plan and most importantly, at each step, I am communicating with them in a language that they understand, about what's going to happen and how they are going to get there.

Many of my first forays into this was when I went with my clients to visit their accountant or lawyer and acted as a translator. I was able to make sense of the legal and accounting terms bantered about and helped them make some really crucial business decisions. Suddenly their stress level went down and they no longer walked out of the door, not really understanding what just happened and what they paid this person for. Now they knew! Now they had the power of information in a way they could properly digest. I still get excited every time this happens!

In this age of "do it yourself", there are many things that new entrepreneurs try to do and fail. At that point, many just give it up. They truly think that they are not capable of "dealing" with the business world. It's like going to Japan, not understanding the language and feeling like it's your fault that you ordered Vanilla ice cream and you got Chocolate. It's not your fault!

I am so lucky to have the opportunity to do this kind of work and I truly hope I get the chance to share it with some of you, beyond this blog

Is it a New Business or The Old Business in New Clothes?

And why does that matter?
Old, new, revamped, re-branded.
How do I know when I have a new business?

For a change, I'm going to answer that one first from an accounting perspective:

• Does it have it's own expenses?

• Does it use different staff?

• Does it have a different client base?

So let's say that you answered "yes" to the questions above. Next comes:

• Do I have enough time for another business?

• Am I already doing this but not considering it another business?

• Will it be more complex if I pull this thing out into another business?

• Can it wear "training wheels" for a while longer so I can figure all the other questions out?

In most ways I could say yes and no to the above questions. All of them will depend on what else you have going on. I've seen folks add another business that was as high-powered as the one they started with and it was always a fight for attention. I've seen folks that have that split in a really comfortable way. I've also seen the first business completely fade after the second one is started and vice verse.

The bottom line is "Do not attempt this without professional help".
You will need legal and accounting help for sure to figure out where all the lines are and how to play safely within them for each entity. You will want to know how to organize the entities, and like with a doctor's opinion, feel free to get a second one.

Just like a relationship, your idea may be the next fabulous thing for your life, or it could be a distraction from making your primary business really work. If your first business is not functional, why would your second one? Yeah, a little tough love is needed here for the short-attention-span-impaired amongst you. Starting a new one when you're not in love with the old one anymore should done after a lot of soul-searching.

Don't let me steal your thunder though. This new business may be exactly what you need, and what happens as a result will be a surprise to us all! Look at the questions above and when you're ready, reach out for some help answering them.

What's My Business Idea?

You just got laid off and you're thinking about starting your own business...

1. You don't know if working for yourself is something that fits your personality
2. You're not sure how feasible your business idea is.
3. You may not have a clear business idea.

We all think about possible businesses according to what we're naturally interested in. I'm not going to talk you out of that. That's a good way to go for one big reason: If you don't love what you do, you won't do it well.
I could tell you so many stories of people going to franchise conventions or googling trending sites to see what's hot right now. I'm sure that must work for some people, but chances are it's not going to work for you. What will work is if you look at all the possibilities of what is connected to all the things you love to do.
I'll pick one out of my hat: You love Pilates and are an instructor. You see a trend in healthcare. Start a business catering to healthcare professionals at your local hospital and clinics at lunchtime!
Okay, another one: You're a PR professional (and probably have so many contacts you don't even need to read this) and you decide to help other small businesses get their first press release out to the business journals, etc. You find a list of new businesses that have started up in your town/city in the past 6 months.

Both of the examples given above are things that you can do with little to no capital (will be covered more in depth tomorrow) and can grow in different directions. Either going too broad, or too narrow in your idea will be problematic. An example of too broad may be, "I want to teach Fitness." Too narrow may be "I want to teach fitness to woman aged 20-40 who live in my neighborhood." I'm not saying that either of these will not eventually end up being your reality, but if you want to start that business plan, you're going to need something that you can research the feasibility of.
Today, I just want you to think about these things:

• What am I good at?
• What do I love to do?
• What do other people compliment me on?
• When I get up in the morning, what would be the thing that I might most like to be doing?

On this last one, you can think more broadly, like are you a morning or night person, or I like to go to the computer first, or I hate being on the phone, etc.

These are the questions I give my clients. What it would mean to work with a "mentor" like me is that I can guide you through these steps quickly and perhaps hear and see things in your answers that you don't perceive yourself. Even if I only spend an hour a week on the phone with you, it can help clearly define what it is perhaps that you're really wanting to do and "cut out" to do.
Tomorrow I'll talk about this again from a product-based business.
Start dreaming!

Where Are You Now? #1

This is the first in a series of scenarios described to help you find where you are and how you might benefit from a little professional mentoring.

You just got laid off and you're thinking about starting your own business...

1. But, you don't know if working for yourself is something that fits your personality
2. You're not sure how feasible your business idea is.
3. You may not have a clear business idea.
4. How much will it cost?
   
5. What? In this economy????

I'm going to take these issues one at a time and shed some light on them.
#1 is really about temperament, isn't it? Everyone's personality needs a little objective observation from someone like myself, but I'll give you some guidelines to think about:

• Do you feel most comfortable with an office to go to and a regular check?
• Do you feel most comfortable working in a team member or a leader?
• Are you curious?
• Do you do well in interviews?
• Do you know someone well who works for themselves?
  
• Do you know what you want your day to look like/feel like?

You may not know how to answer some, or even all of these questions right now. Not one of them is the sign of an entrepreneur unto themselves, but each one signals an aspect of personality that comes into play.
Working for yourself if you have it in you can be a great adventure. Learn to separate your fears from your actual nature and what makes you tick.

Keep reading as I move through the different phases or deciding whether or not to strike out on your own!