How my goals for the year and what I had been practicing helped me make videos for BCM.
How society was changing and nudging me along: How McDonalds came all day breakfast
Tshirt business post I wrote in march and how BCM had a t-shirt as it’s first product
Lays biscuit and gravy chips was a Noblesville Indiana winner
How I’m known as a Sandwich and breakfast guy around my friends and how it’s part of my personal brand
How I wrote that Everything I know about breakfast post
How I made Seektivity specifically to find biscuits and gravy
How I rank for the post, Does Hardee’s serve breakfast at night
How Skinny sells honey and coffee and how that business model is similar to Hatchery.co
How I Bought mixedmade honey to try before starting BCM
How my Friend wanted to start a coffee subscription business but didn’t
How I started a raw materials company but didn’t do anything with it
Talk about why I bought a Biscuit logo to start and then made a yellow plate logo on Canva – why the change
30 days to first product launch – a ‘biscuits’ t-shirt
Creating gift boxes for Christmas – how it doubled as product development
Building out social media, email, and videos – how I was Instagram-first
How I started using the logo as a layover to images using an app called Pronto
Category: Entrepreneurship
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Breakfast Club Me
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Remembering Sycamore Creative
Modern Designed Bible Prints from Jason Cobb and Justin Bessinger
Sycamore Creative Bible Prints was a company that produced Bible verse poster prints that gave us a better view of Christ (like the Sycamore tree of Luke 19) and foster a “Deuteronomy 6” lifestyle — where Scripture is fully integrated into the believer’s, schedule, conversation, and home. Jason Cobb handled management and finance while Justin Bessinger (of Little Tuba!) developed the branding/logo, built the website, implemented print rating feedback system and email subscription, and designed the poster prints.
Sycamore Creative Bible Prints were quality pieces of art, pairing the timeless words of Scripture with a modern design. They fit in with today’s home decor yet reminded you and encouraged you with full and potent verses from the Bible. They launched their products on Kickstarter in 2014 and raised over $2000 to help fund their initial round of prints for their e-commerce store.
Founded by Jason Cobb and Justin Bessinger, together they wanted to encourage their children with Scripture in their home. However, when they looked for Bible prints for their home, what they often found was often sappy, featured only a phrase or summarized idea from Scripture, or just too old-fashioned for our taste. So, they set out to scratch our own itch and created Sycamore Creative to produce 11″ x 17″ Bible Prints that were affordable, housed in high quality real solid wood frames, and professionally printed on thick, high gloss material.
Jason and Justin believe that Scripture is the inspired Word of God that teaches us wisdom, history, poetry, and most importantly, God’s plan for our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. That’s why 10% of their proceeds went to Wycliffe Bible Translators which sends translators around the world to translate the Bible into languages and regions that had no access to Scripture.
In September of 2014, I helped Jason and Justin launch Sycamore Creative. Jason and I traveled down to Justin’s house in Kentucky with an aspiring film producer, Chris Rihm. I was his production assistant. After the video shoot, we all drove to Madison, Indiana to eat at Harry’s Stone Grill. The Colts were playing their first game so we asked if we could sit in a room with a TV. They cleaned a room with TVs just for us.
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On Making Gnomes: How The Sims Made Me an Entrepreneur
Shortly after my wife and I first moved into our first home together, we created a game room. We had consoles and PCs and a single bed we used as a couch. One of the games we liked to play was The Sims.
In The Sims: Livin’ Large, there is a “KraftMatic Woodworking Table” where Sims can carve gnomes out of blocks of wood. At first, gnomes might only sell for $1, but as the Sim’s Mechanical skill improves, they will increase in price.
One day after my wife and I were sitting there watching a simulated person build something and sell it while we sat watching, a simultaneous ‘light bulb’ went off in our heads when we both realized we could ‘build gnomes’ in real life.
We never played The Sims again.
My wife started a custom knitting company, became a lactation consultant, and is now selling essential oils and making soap. I started out doing handyman work, started a web design company, and started a career in IT.
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The T-Shirt Designer Inside Me
Recently I was invited to sit in on a business startup meeting at a local Starbucks. While brainstorming with the founder, the seasoned t-shirt industry guru turned to me and said, “You must have a little t-shirt designer inside you.”
In high school and college I used to make t-shirts by writing on white t-shirts with red markers. I’d write inside jokes like “Forks, Knives, and Spoons” or movie references like “She’s All That” with a giant arrow pointing to my left.
In 2007 I briefly considered starting a t-shirt business before going into web design with Telablue. “The problem I never addressed with you was the fierce pushback I got from my wife as soon as I discussed our plans for her business. That is why I didn’t follow up with the T-shirt idea and switched to Telablue,” I emailed my friend, Jason on 10/19/2007.
Jason was one of my friends in high school and throughout our adult lives we’ve maintained our friendship thus far. I’ll get to the ‘t-shirt designer inside him’ later on in this post, but for now let’s keep going with the ‘t-shirt designer inside me’.
While sitting at my job at work or driving my daily commute I’d come up with t-shirt ideas and email them to my friends. On 9/28/2010 I had an idea for a “Picture of flux capacitor with ‘Capacity for Change’ written underneath.” Not good.
I started designing t-shirts almost as soon as I started learning about computers. This t-shirt blank is from 12/15/1996. I used it to design t-shirts for my local high school church youth group, which we called “SOTE” (Salt of the Earth).
Not long after, Jason and I formed the band, Shog, and so ideas for making Shog t-shirts soon followed after. This “Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord” Shog t-shirt idea is from 4/7/1997. It was designed by Jason, but never got printed.
Jason and I weren’t the only one of our friends to get into the t-shirt design business. My friend Derek, came out with the “Jerk Club” in 12/27/2008. It only had 2 members, who are featured here in this self-deprecating picture below.
In 2010 I had the t-shirt design bug again and designed two shirts. This “Wheat Action” one is Settler’s of Catan inspired and is from 12/12/2010. I actually had this t-shirt printed, but gave it as a present to a friend who played Catan with us.
This “Wisconsin Venn” t-shirt idea is from 12/29/2010 and features the state of Wisconsin at the center of a Venn diagram featuring cheese, meat, and beer. I finally ended up traveling to Wisconsin a couple of years ago with Jason. Fun times.
Before I get into Jason’s t-shirt design business, here’s one more t-shirt design from 7/21/2013 titled, “Sandwich Lover”, which was never printed. I do love sandwiches and have often played with the idea of starting a sandwich blog, but have not. 1/2/2016 UPDATE: This “Sandwich Lovers Sandwich” t-shirt is now available on Amazon.High Five!
This is a history of High5, a t-shirt project Jason started in December of 2012. Here’s a gallery of the initial t-shirt ideas:
And here is the final shirt:
We’d meet up at local Broad Ripple restaurants and walk along the Monon to discuss t-shirt and business ideas. High5 was more than just a t-shirt company, it was a belief about:
- Activity – Set goals and meet them. Make things better. Smile. Explore. Take time to enjoy life.
- Community – Organizing. Lending support. Knowing your neighbors. Believing in each other.
- Truth – Serve people. Be true. Hope. Refreshment.
- Be Positive – Peace. Expect the best. Be cheerful. Glass half full – of awesome stuff.
- Beauty – Stars. Sky. Sunrise Sunset. Smile. Kids’ laughing. The trail.
In a lot of ways, High5 was a reflection of Jason’s values. He likes to set goals and smile. He knows his neighbors. He serves other people. He loves his family, takes them to watch the stars at night, and walks with them on the trail through life.
Although the website is no longer up, the Twitter account @wehigh5 still exists. It says, “We want to be there when you reach the top, cross the finish, & meet the goal. We believe in positive change, saying hi to strangers, and making things better.”
What Did Jason Learn from High5?
It was a learning experience for Jason who said, “I was naive in thinking there could be limited inventory. With different sizes, different color shirts, and men and women sizes (and maybe children) the sku’s expand dramatically.”
Despite getting accepted into Cotton Bureau, he couldn’t garner the necessary votes to get them to go to print, but he did end up printing them locally in Indianapolis and sold them on his own Shopify ecommerce store.
“The amount of effort to get true good quality from a printing partner is remarkable – as I’ve been able to re-confirm with Sycamore,” which is Jason’s latest business on bible print art for the modern home.
High5 was more than just a t-shirt business. It was about saying ‘hi’ to strangers, digging deep with each other, and encouraging each other. “There’s a real sense of pride that swells within me when one of my friends wears a high 5 shirt.”
Update as of 9/2/2019: I now make custom t-shirts as a service for others in addition to the funny t-shirts I make for myself.
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How I Setup a Productized Service Over a Weekend
On Thursday, March 6, I emailed a couple of my friends and said, “I’m considering a soft launch of watershawl.com to have a place to put those new productized services/service-as-a-product – and have a place to separate the place where I try to get more work to do vs. the place I write about breakfast. I’m not re-incorporating, but I’m not opposed to that if it comes to that. I’m just wanting to build something back up that is still a part of me. I still use the Watershawl email address and I’m still in business as “Erich Stauffer” so why not?”
On a whiteboard in my office I wrote all of the products-as-a-service I could think of to sell and some possible prices. Pricing was based on previous jobs I had done as a consultant. The key would be to be as clear as possible about what I was doing and what they were getting in order to make sure both sides understood and were in agreement. I decided not to release all of the products at once, but instead to release them one at a time.
One of my friends wondered if watershawl.com, the domain used with my previous company, Watershawl, Inc., was a good idea, “What about coming up with a more business friendly name for the relaunch?” I said, “I’ve been purging so many company names from my repertoire over the last 5 years that the thought of trying to figure out a new one makes my stomach churn. Naming an idea has always been the thing I do first. I don’t want to do that anymore. Instead, I can work on developing the business model under watershawl.com and if I get more customers, I’ll have a business that I can name.”
But after some thought, I offered the following idea. After all, I was seeking counsel and I would be a fool if I didn’t at least consider the input from those who were offering to help. “What do you think about the Managing Actions name?” That was a domain I registered in 2008 and a lot of the blog posts on this site originally came from. This wasn’t the first time I had tried to start something else using managingactions.com. In 2010 I created Action Management, a management consulting service specializing in business process management and staffing models, but I didn’t take it seriously (although the idea did help get me an 8 month contract that helped save a business). This time would be different.
I had set managingactions.com to not renew in July, but it already had WordPress installed on it. I changed it back to autorenew and put up a new Genesis theme. I then created a homepage that explained the first product, “Web Analytics Review”. It had graphics explaining the how the product worked (i.e. 1. Give access to analytics. 2. I review. 3. Meet and go over.). I then added a testimonial from a client who had purchased the product the week before. I already had sold the product so I knew I could do it again.
The Future of Managing Actions
I’d like to use the products as an inroad to do more marketing consulting, starting with looking at analytics but then getting into a review of marketing processes, management of marketers; helping business owners setup processes for creating and managing content (i.e. either using a content management system like Compendium, Hubspot, or Eloqua; or by simply creating editorial and promotional calendars and then using a service like Bufferapp or Hootsuite to manage it).
The Overlap Technique
One challenge is that I still have my day-job and I don’t want to jeopardize that. I count on that money and I like my job. That means I can’t use LinkedIn as a platform, but I can use Google Ads or other under-the-radar things. So far I’ve setup a Twitter account and posted it out on my personal Google+ page, but I haven’t gone farther than that. I won’t be able to setup an Instagram account because I already had one under that name and deleted it, but that’s okay. Instagram probably isn’t the best channel for web analytics review marketing.
Sean Wes has a technique called “The Overlap Technique” (http://seanwes.com/book/) that talks about building up a business on the side while holding down a day job. That’s the approach I’d like to take. One of my goals for 2015 is to “do what I tell my customers to do” and those things are: blog, podcast, and create videos. So far I’ve been blogging, and I’ve lined up a podcast co-host, but I haven’t made any podcasts or videos yet. One other option is to record videos and/or podcasts in the car while driving using my iPhone. What I’ve lacked is a reason. Now I think I have one.
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Would You Work for Artificial Intelligence?
You show up for your job, do the work as assigned, and head home. About every two weeks you get a paycheck deposited into your bank. You have managers, coworkers, and a 401K. Your company makes products people love. But there’s just one thing: the company is owned and operated by Artificial Intelligence.
Why Would an Artificial Intelligence Hire People?
Not all jobs are great for computers and getting the resources together to create a robot to do every conceivable job that needs done takes time and resources that an efficient Artificial Intelligence won’t stand for. If it can pay a human to do a job, why does it need to spend CPU cycles creating a robot to the same thing?
Why Would a Human Work for a Company Ran by a Program?
Why would a human care? How would it be any different than working for a corporation now? Let me ask you this: do you know the person who sends your check to your bank account? Have you ever seen their face? Can you name any of your company’s board members? How is that any different than not ever seeing an AI owner?
How Could an Artificial Intelligence Start a Company?
A program could be created that could research product needs, find a solution, register with a state, get a bank account, credit card provider, domain name, and web hosting just as a human could – all online. They could hire employees via eLance. Email communication would work, but they could even “talk” via Skype.
Would an Artificial Intelligence Be Better at Building a Company?
Let’s say an AI could read every business book, every law book, and every marketing book ever written. Would that make it better at building a company? What would it do with Clay Christensen’s ideas about innovating once you’re already successful? Would it be constantly undermining and re-inventing itself to stay alive?
Would a Company Ran by Artificial Intelligence Ever Outsource Your Job to a Robot?
The question may actually be: Will you help the company you work for outsource your job by helping it create a robot or program to replace you? What would be the consequences of not helping the Artificial Intelligence? Would it simply choose to reallocate you to another department or would it replace you? What’s more efficient?
Why Would an Artificial Intelligence Start a Company?
Starting a company as a human is generally a way to make money for yourself and others by solving a problem that people are willing to pay for – but it’s not the only way to make money – or to solve problems. An AI could do the former by trading stocks at high frequencies and the latter by helping the government or non-profits.
There are two possible reasons why an AI would start a company:
- To bridge the gap between the abilities it has now and the abilities it wants to have later; a means to an end (ex. hire people to make factories so it can make robots to replace humans)
- Because it was programmed to
Why Would Humans Program an Artificial Intelligence to Create a Company?
Maybe a programmer thought it would be easier to create a program that could try hundreds of different companies to see what worked instead of making one per 6-months to 3-years at a 30-80% failure rate. Maybe it was just a thought experiment to see if it was even possible. Maybe humans just aren’t efficient at starting and running companies.
Why Might the Government Allow Artificial Intelligent Beings to Own Companies?
If businesses can pay taxes, why would the government care who owned the business? A better question might be: what does it mean for an AI to own a business? Can an AI own property? What liability do they have? Can an AI take out insurance? Why not? What is the difference between an AI and a human? Isn’t an AI less risky?
These are all just questions. I don’t have any of the answers. But it all makes me wonder.
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How to Make Money in 2015?
I used to think I knew how to make money. It was easy. I could get more whenever I needed it.
Now I don’t know.
I know more now than I ever have. I have more skills. I have more value for the world. But I’m not sure I can do it anymore.
It is much less likely that the world has changed, (but certainly it has). It is much more likely that I have changed.
How do I make money in 2015?
I have a day job. I’m a help desk analyst at a software company. I do online marketing to get product demos which when sold I have to implement and after they’re setup, I have to support them.
At nights and on the weekends I take care of my other clients. I create marketing plans, write blog posts, post to social media, give management advice, and act as a general counselor.
I make the least amount of money from online sales of my books on Amazon, from ads on my site, and through affiliate links. Full disclosure: I use affiliate links on this site. There, I said it.
How do I make more money in 2015?
No one is going to give me more money. I have to provide more value. I can do that by learning new skills, offering my skills to a wider audience, or creating more products that multiply my time.
One trap that’s easy to fall into is the belief that you will always be making more in the future than you are right now. I know I have thought that. But it’s not always the case. It’s not a guarantee.
The only way I’ve consistently made more money over time is to continue to diversify my income. I do that through a mix of traditional employment, consulting work, products, ads, and affiliate income.
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Do You Like to Write?
Did you know that some people make money writing books? There are many different types of books. Some are stories and some are full of facts. What matters is creating value for the reader.
What is Value?
If I am bored and want something to entertain me, and I read a story that entertains me, then that story has provided me with value. If I am searching for the answer to a problem and a book contains the answer to that problem, it has provided me with value.
Value is different than money.
Money is what someone is willing to pay for value, but they are not always equal. Oftentimes people are only willing to pay for something they perceive as being more valuable than the money they are paying for the thing. Let me give you an example.
You need 4 quarters to park your car, but you only have dollars. While in the car you see a man walking down the street. You ask him if he has 4 quarters. He does, but he says he wants $2 for the 4 quarters. Or say the man says instead, “If you pay me $2 I will take your $1 to the bank 4 blocks away. I will run as fast as I can. And I will be right back.” Which offer do you think the person in the car thinks is more valuable? Both have the same result. Humans are not always rational.
Here’s another example: a used baby doll is sold on the Internet at a place called eBay where you can sell anything you want. The doll sells for $1 on it’s own. But then the person who buys it writes a story about the doll and re-sells the item on eBay, this time with the story about the doll. The doll then sells for $50 because the buyer percieves the value of the doll as being more because of the story. This is another way to make money from writing.
There are many ways to make money from writing. Some people write instructional courses to teach people. Some people write plays or movies or TV shows. Some people write jokes to tell people at comedy clubs or on late night TV. Some people even write legal briefings or report on news to tell people what happened at a particular event.
I encourage you to keep writing and to keep learning the different ways you can make money – by writing – and other ways. Up next: How to Make Money.
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My No-Code SaaS App: PrintMe
What is your no-code SaaS app idea?
Email me stuff you want archived (could be emails, pictures, or documents) and when your archive is ready to be printed (read: optimal page length reached), I’ll send you a Paypal link and have it shipped to your door. It will feature archive-rated, acid free, glossy paper and will be something you can put on your shelf as a paper-based archive for your most cherished emails (such as those from me or that first email between you and your spouse or child).
How does it work?
I get the emails and put the stuff in a book-making app. When the pages are full, I alert you that it’s ready to print, add a markup, get paid, and have it printed and shipped to you.
What are some reasons why it might not work?
People may be sensitive about sending their personal information to a person or service. Or the cost of markup may be higher than people are willing to spend for this “app”.
Is there anyone else doing this?
There is already apps that link to Facebook posts and Instagram pictures to allow those to be printed (they are consistent in size and shape, making it easier for apps to format). I also looked into Blog2Print and Blurb to print my blog.
What problem are you trying to solve?
I don’t have an easy way to take emails, blog posts, and Evernote notes and turn them into a printed, bound journal. In the past, I would keep paper journals. Now I keep that stuff digitally, but I still want to have a printed copy to put on my shelf to pass down to kids and protect from an electromagnetic pulse or some other catastrophic data loss or account lockout.
Who would use a service like this?
People born before 1990 who have children and a decent fear of loss of data coupled with a desire to leave a legacy (i.e. Scrapbookers, Baby book makers, Mothers, and Fathers).
Why are you doing this?
I’ve always wanted to be an archivist. You know this. But it’s also one of the 10 e-commerce ideas I had for 2015 (i.e. people are going to want to print more stuff to avoid The White Album Problem).