Video Podcast Six

As you can see, there's an opportunity for you to strike out on your own no matter what your area of expertise or interest is.  I get the feeling for some of the more creative careers, it might be a little more fulfilling to do things for yourself versus working in the confines of an established business. Now for the links!

Here's Ben's website, should you need his creative expertise: http://www.benpowers.com/

If you need some help structuring your creative endeavor into a profit-making venture, look here for some Day One type guidelines.

If you're into classic Ford Bronco stuff, then you should go here.

Video Podcast Number Five

So, here's an interview with the owner of the gym where I work out. I wasn't kidding in my previous post; entrepreneurs are literally everywhere you look. John makes some very good points here, so pay attention. Ready?

So, had you thought about finding employees before you watched this? I hadn't, and I didn't realize what a daunting prospect it is until I stopped and thought about it. Also, expanding to a second location is a lot more challenging than you might think.

Now that I'm getting further into this blog an everything, do us both a favor and start talking to the entrepreneurs around you. You can learn a lot from them in a very short time and it doesn't cost you between $200-$300 an hour or so to do it, either.

Also, check out John's website. Better yet, come for a couple classes. It's pretty awesome.

Business Planning

So, I've talked to a few people already, and gotten mixed reviews, but I think my idea for a business is going to be a school. There are number of questions that pop up when I say this, to me and the people I'm talking to, not the least of which is "How will you make money with a school?" and my honest answer is I don't know. Maybe set up and run the school as a test model, then set out to consult?

I do know that there are a number of problems with the prevailing model and not too terribly many people are changing the system from within. I did find the article I posted previously quite inspiring, plus watching a presentation like this should tell us there's a bit of an issue with public funding, which will likely only get worse. I don't know for a certainty, but I'm pretty sure I could keep the cost-per-student lower than a public school (look here!), plus pay teachers a good deal more at the same time. I'm interested in a weekly project-based model where students work in groups, with rotating leadership assignments and peer evaluation in lieu of grading. I think more and different ideas will come as I set out the interview educators and administrators to find what works, what doesn't, and what's wrong with my idea in its current iteration.


So, here are a few things I'm going to be researching first:

How do you start a school?

Who wants to fund and/or invest in a school?

What sort of state requirements and/or laws are involved?

What's working currently in schools and what needs to be changed?

Can I start a school with ten students in a strip mall storefront?

Will parents send their children to an experimental school like I'm proposing?

Will the state still require mandatory testing?

I have found some interesting reading on the subject here, but I still have lots of work to do. Thankfully, both my jobs bring me in contact with lots of people, so I've already got an observation period lined up with a vice-principal of a local high school, plus I'm tapping my real-life social network to talk to friends of friends about their experiences teaching an administrating in both public and private schools. I'll update this shortly with those results and how they force me to change my thinking and ideas.

Fourth Video Podcast

Here's another video, though I'm a little irritated with myself for not asking better questions. In my defense, though, Trey is a really busy guy and I know he was putting something else off to take the time to talk to me.

So, Trey stressed that research is important, and here's a little help with that. Also, did you ever wonder how useful all these different social media services are for business? Look here and here. Anyhow, Minglewood is a fun place to see a show, so check out their website and go see for yourself.

Also, did you notice the people driving by and honking during the video? Rude! Makes me want to go the gas station and honk at them while they're working, but that's life.

Third Video Podcast

The following is an interview with my friend Paul Redding who along with a partner founded Mid-South Technical Resources.

Now, the first thing to consider is that growth can be a challenge with some consequences you may not have considered. This article has a few helpful tips on how to manage growth and this one has some good information regarding outsourcing your daily operations.

Now, maybe you're smarter than me and you're not learning anything new here, but doing these interviews is giving me a new insight on running your own business. I hope you're all getting something out of them because I've already got a few more in the can. After those, I will be pursuing people who have previous failure in business and see what sort of information and insights they can offer.

Second Video Podcast

So, I've been interviewing a few entrepreneurs I know, and it turns out they're everywhere. Literally everywhere you look. So, here's the first of my semi-informal interviews, and it's fitting since this is a friend of mine just starting out with a consulting business. Let's watch!

So, I hope we've all learned something here, but if you want more information, feel free to check out her website and contact her if you have some leads or any helpful networking opportunities.

Something I read.

So, here's something I read in a marginally popular magazine called Newsweek. This is exactly the kind of thing we're talking about in my entrepreneurship class (and I say this in case someone not in the class happens to read this and express any kind of interest). There are people outlined in the article who saw an opportunity instead of a problem, then took concrete action to literally change the world. It's very Buddhist, no? You know, be the change you want to see in the world and all that. Why can't more people see that direct action on their part leads to a situational improvement, whether or not they make money?


 So, since starting this class, I'm working on this view of things. I tend to be a bit cynical, but all the evidence I'm coming across says that there are ways to change how you look at things. Now, I'm not going to be one of those guys who gets into a program and then tries to convince everyone around him how much better their life could be, but I'm beginning to believe that part of recognizing the opportunity behind the problem is mostly a mental process. And, as with all things in life, you get out what you put in, so... shelving the cynicism. For now, at least.

Video Blog 1

Here's a short video I made as my wife was preparing for today's Cooper-Young Festival.

(I apologize if you tried to watch this before the 19th, apparently YouTube hates uncompressed video sound.)


Now, if you've watched this, you'll appreciate that I really don't expect the turmoil in the EU to really affect the sales of soap and crafts at local festivals, unless maybe a supplier whose product we use gets their sheep's milk from Greece, it could pose a problem when there's a general labor strike and for some reason transportation is completely shut down. The solution for us, though, would be pretty simple: we'd just use a different kind of sheep's milk when we made the soap.

I can appreciate, though, that if were in a different business, there would be some kind of immediate and appreciable effect on pricing, availability, and/or supply. As a for instance, there's a high quality product I use in my current (real) job that we sometimes have a problem importing due to overly complicated political machinations. The product comes from Italy and depending on the weather (political climate), it can get held up in customs, sometimes for months.

For the next video blog, I'm going to interview a real life entrepreneur and get some of the dirt on what it's really like getting a business up and running in today's environment.

Brainstorming a business idea.

This is possibly the simplest thing in the world, yet made complicated by our natural tendencies to discount our own ideas. I've had nine or ten ideas in the past week, but I talk myself out of even writing them down with excuses, rationalizations and fear. I think fear is probably the biggest obstacle in coming up with ideas; fear of failure, ridicule, and just the daunting prospect of moving from ideas to reality hold us back from really just unleashing our creativity and letting our ideas, good or bad, roll out in the first place. It becomes easier to come up with reasons why your ideas are no good before you even get them out. This app is a really neat way to get around a few of the self-defeating blocks.

But... as we've been discussing lately, there is plenty to fear and for many good reasons. The world is changing faster and in more complex ways than ever before, and from what I can tell, fear is at the root of it all. Or, in the case of the Syrian protesters, a certain fearlessness.  The old way of doing almost everything isn't going to work much longer and it's quickly becoming a world you have to keep learning or die (metaphorically speaking). On the upside of all this change and fear- opportunity. The coolest thing about everything being thrown into utter chaos is that opportunities abound for the men and women on the move and paying attention. Its not enough for opportunity to simply exist, though. You have to be able to recognize the opportunity behind the problems that have the entire world on edge and that seems to be the magic of brainstorming.

Somewhat unrelated, I am now the proud owner of a shiny new website bearing my name. Dave Barger said this was a good idea if it was available, and he seemed like a pretty sharp guy, so I did it. Now I have to figure out what to do with it, but one step at a time.

James Dyson

I read this when it was published and I was pretty impressed by how many times he kept on going when it would have been so much easier to just throw in the towel.

Read about it here.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when do you give up on an idea you really believe in?

Before it becomes this.

Haiku

I choose to learn now.
Will I succeed or fail?
I will learn two ways.