Erich Stauffer

Tag: Startups

  • The 10 Best Cities for Starting a Business in 2015

    According to a Forbes slideshow, the 10 best cities for starting a business in the United States is based on:

    • Average revenue of businesses
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees
    • Number of businesses per 100 people
    • Unemployment rate

    It’s unclear as to what order these cities are supposed to be in or what makes these metrics an indicator of the best place to start a business. I decided to analyze the data further to determine how each city ranked based on each metric.

    Here’s how the cities rank when compared by Average Revenue of Businesses:

    Average Revenue of Businesses in 2015

    In this category, Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas is #1:

    City Average Revenue of Businesses
    Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas $   2,778,973.00
    Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Connecticut $   2,145,214.00
    Fort Wayne, Indiana $   1,965,562.00
    Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky $   1,844,834.00
    Peoria, Illinois $   1,698,149.00
    Green Bay, Wisconsin $   1,594,448.00
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa $   1,514,835.00
    Boulder, Colorado $       721,489.00
    Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine $       716,382.00
    Wilmington, North Carolina $       665,548.00

    Here’s how the cities rank when compared by Percentage of Businesses with Paid Employees:

    Percentage of Businesses with Paid Employees

    In this category, Green Bay, Wisconsin is #1:

    City Percentage of Businesses with Paid Employees
    Green Bay, Wisconsin 31.1%
    Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky 27.5%
    Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine 27.5%
    Peoria, Illinois 27.2%
    Fort Wayne, Indiana 26.5%
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa 26.1%
    Boulder, Colorado 23.8%
    Wilmington, North Carolina 23.6%
    Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas 22.9%
    Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Connecticut 22.4%

    Here’s how the cities rank when compared by Number of Businesses per 100 People:

    Number of Businesses per 100 People

    In this category, Wilmington, North Carolina is #1:

    City Number of Businesses per 100 People
    Wilmington, North Carolina 15.1
    Boulder, Colorado 14.1
    Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Connecticut 11.8
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa 8.3
    Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky 8.2
    Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine 8.2
    Fort Wayne, Indiana 7.7
    Green Bay, Wisconsin 7.2
    Peoria, Illinois 7.1
    Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas 6.9

    Here’s how the cities rank when compared by their Unemployment Rate:

    Unemployment Rate

    In this category, Cedar Rapids, Iowa is #1.

    City Unemployment Rate
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa 3.8%
    Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine 4.5%
    Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky 4.8%
    Green Bay, Wisconsin 5.1%
    Boulder, Colorado 5.2%
    Peoria, Illinois 5.3%
    Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas 5.8%
    Fort Wayne, Indiana 6.3%
    Wilmington, North Carolina 6.8%
    Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Connecticut 6.8%

    Here is the full list, by city, for the best cities for starting a business in America in 2015:

    If you take the ‘best’ of each of the 4 categories, Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky is actually the best city for starting a business in 2015 (the lower the score, the better the rank):

    City Score
    Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky 14
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa 18
    Green Bay, Wisconsin 19
    Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine 20
    Boulder, Colorado 22
    Fort Wayne, Indiana 23
    Peoria, Illinois 24
    Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Conneticut 25
    Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas 26
    Wilmington, North Carolina 28

    1. Boulder, Colorado

    • Average revenue of businesses: $721,489
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 23.8%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 14.1
    • Unemployment rate: 5.2%

    2. Wilmington, North Carolina

    • Average revenue of businesses: $665,548
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 23.6%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 15.1
    • Unemployment rate: 6.8%

    3. Bridgeport – Stamford – Norwalk, Connecticut

    • Average revenue of businesses: $2,145,214
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 22.4%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 11.8
    • Unemployment rate: 6.8%

    4. Evansville, Indiana-Kentucky

    • Average revenue of businesses: $1,844,834
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 27.5%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 8.2
    • Unemployment rate: 4.8%

    5. Portland – South Portland – Biddleford, Maine

    • Average revenue of businesses: $716,382
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 27.5%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 8.2
    • Unemployment rate: 4.5%

    6. Cedar Rapids, Iowa

    • Average revenue of businesses: $1,514,835
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 26.1%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 8.3
    • Unemployment rate: 3.8%

    7. Beaumont – Port Arthur, Texas

    • Average revenue of businesses: $2,778,973
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 22.9%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 6.9
    • Unemployment rate: 5.8%

    8. Green Bay, Wisconsin

    • Average revenue of businesses: $1,594,448
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 31.1%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 7.2
    • Unemployment rate: 5.1%

    9. Fort Wayne, Indiana

    • Average revenue of businesses: $1,965,562
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 26.5%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 7.7
    • Unemployment rate: 6.3%

    10. Peoria, Illinois

    • Average revenue of businesses: $1,698,149
    • Percentage of businesses with paid employees: 27.2%
    • Number of businesses per 100 people: 7.1
    • Unemployment rate: 5.3%

  • From the Garden to the City: The Epic Entrepreneur’s Story

    Every entrepreneur has their own version of the classic “entrepreneur’s journey”. They usually share this story at the beginning of an interview or podcast. I’ve never been interviewed or been on a podcast so I decided to write my own. I’m choosing myself. 🙂

    White Lamborghini Toy Car

    Family Background

    From the time I was born my family moved about every four years. Two of those houses were in Missouri and two were in Indiana. When I lived in Missouri I was young, but I remember I had this white, Lamborghini Hot Wheels car. I remember telling my dad I wanted to start a Lamborghini car dealership when I was older so that I could sell Lamborghini’s to kids like me for a $1. I remember my whole family laughing at me.

    My mom volunteered at church events as a clown. She would come up to me and say, “I’m your mom,” and I’d say, “No you’re not!” and run away in fear. She sold Tupperware on the side. I remember her having Tupperware parties, but mostly I remember how much Tupperware we owned. I still use some of it today in my own house. This was my first view into entrepreneurship, which I sort of later followed when I was in Amway for a year.

    My dad worked at GM during the night and during the day would volunteer at the church doing maintenance work. He would change out light bulbs in the ceiling of the sanctuary using a giant ladder. I remember watching him and wondering if he was going to fall. I’m scared of heights. We did a lot of land sculpting at every church we ever attended. For some reason, my dad just liked moving dirt around. He liked how dirt shaped water’s direction.

    My First Businesses

    One day after moving to Indiana I was walking through a shopping center with my older brother and we went into a Hooks Drugstore. He bought some baseball cards with his allowance and I was hooked. I collected baseball cards, bought Beckett Magazine price guides, and traded with friends. I never made any money, but this was my first experience with buying, collecting, and curating something with the intent of future earnings. I had a trader in my neighborhood in Southport that shared with me his dream of opening up his own baseball card store. This inspired me. I wanted to open up my own baseball card store. One day he setup a professional-looking stand in his garage and operated a neighborhood store for a day. I really looked up to that guy and always wondered how he turned out. I don’t remember his name though.

    I also had small stints in buying candy and gum from the grocery store to sell at school. There was a time when “sour balls” just came out, which weren’t available from vending machines at school. I’d go to the grocery store, buy a bag, and sell them at school for 10 cents a piece. I actually didn’t sell any though. It was a complete failure. By the time I got into the game, I was already too late, the market was already saturated with other sellers. You see, it wasn’t my idea. I stole it from someone else – someone who had greater access to capital (their mom) and more prone to risk (willing to ask for the sale). Not only did my competitors have these things, they had prior experience selling Big Red and other types of gum. This is the same guy who later shot me in the back with his BB gun and gave me a bad haircut.

    His name was Joey. We were both in 5th grade and one day Joey and I were walking home from that same strip mall in Southport. We started to come up with a plan for a new type of business. We both liked going to the local Putt-Putt and playing arcade games so we thought it’d be cool to start a small theme park or game center where you could do things like ride go-carts or fly small aircraft in addition to your standard arcade. We drew out pictures and made grand plans. We were doing it for kids like us who didn’t have a place like that. We were our own customers. We were scratching our own itch. It was “selling Lamborghini’s for a dollar” all over again. It never happened.

    Business Education

    Middle school was pretty much the dark ages of my entrepreneurial journey, but in high school I really ramped up. I started an antique business with a friend, started taking business classes at school, began editing websites on the side, started a band, and subscribed to INC and Entrepreneur magazines. When we had Career Day at school I told a speaker I wanted to “own my own island”. I was rude and full of hot air. I didn’t understand at that time how much value I would have to provide the world in order for me to one day afford my own island. I didn’t learn that until much later.

    I kept studying business in the various colleges I attended. Each one taught me a little something different. At Kentucky Christian College I learned about how much I don’t like accounting. At Milligan I learned that first impressions make a lasting impression. At Ball State I learned about art. And at IUPUI I learned about computer science. I took 3 classes on Microsoft Office, 2 speech classes, and 1 marketing class. I took 2 years of Accounting in high school and 2 years of Accounting in college. I joined every business club I could find and failed 3 out of 4 of my math classes.

    I don’t feel that I learned that much from college, but there were a handful of professors that made an impact on me. Dr. Charlie Starr, a literature professor at KCC, taught me about symbolism in movies, and although I can’t remember all of their names, the most impactful teachers were my literature teachers. Those were the ones I seemed to connect with the most in high school and college. The other most impactful professor was Andy Harris at IUPUI. He taught me about computer science and STAIR, which is an iterative method of problem solving, similar to customer development.

    Business Development

    I made the mistake of thinking that a college education was the key to any sort of financial windfall. In fact it had the opposite effect. I became debt-ridden and after I graduated I was no better off in the job market than the day before I graduated. I even asked my employer at the time, Old National, for a raise, but they said no. It wasn’t until I went back to school at a technical school for a specific skill set that I was able to get a higher paying job. However I later learned that the thing that actually helped get me that job was what I was doing on the side: web design. They wanted someone who could do IT work and help out with their website.

    In my last year of IUPUI, Jason and I worked together to build a computer repair company called Neighborhood Geeks. After I graduated college, instead of going to classes in the morning I started going on IT service calls. I had no formal education as an computer technician, but I knew a lot about how Windows XP worked and had a good idea of how to troubleshoot problems. Google, like now, was our friend. After two years of not getting ahead in my day job at Old National, I started get CompTIA and Microsoft Certified. I still couldn’t find a better job so one day, I just quit.

    A coworker asked me what my boss, Corey, said when I quit. He said, “You filled out the wrong form.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Old National didn’t use to have a formal “2 Weeks Notice” form so years earlier Corey had me make one up for our department. I used the form I had made, but by the time I quit, Old National’s HR department had come up with their own form. I had worked there full time for 6 years. It literally took me an hour 1-way to get to work everyday. I drove through rain storms and snow storms. I made stupid mistakes that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I essentially grew up there, but it was time to move on.

    Career Development

    2 days later I got a job at a call center helping teachers learn how to use web-based software to make tests and quizzes for their students. It was brutal, but even in that environment, I added value. There was a particular problem that no one knew how to fix and people would often call in about it and we’d have to say we didn’t know. One day I decided to dig into the problem and I discovered what was causing it and how to work around it. I was one of the few people who didn’t get laid off during the slowdown, but that’s when I got the opportunity to work at IBM’s call center, so I left after working there 2 months.

    I worked at IBM 3 days before I got the job doing IT full-time. The first job I ever had was washing dishes for $4.25 an hour. I started Old National in Muncie at $7.47 an hour and ended in Indianapolis at over $12 an hour. The call center in Lebanon paid $10 an hour and IBM paid $11 an hour. My new job as an IT professional paid $20 an hour, which was quite a big jump for me at the time, but I stayed at that same rate for 5 years. Despite moving on to a business analyst position at another bank for 3 years and working as an interim manager at a dental office for 9 months, I stayed at that same rate until I went back to being an IT professional for a new rate of $25 an hour.

    But I was tired of “trading dollars for hours” like Robert Kiyosaki talks about in Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Even for the year in which I ran my own consulting business doing IT and web services I was still trading my time for money. I longed to move beyond the employee or self-employed roles (or the technician role in The E-Myth Revisited) and into the business owner or entrepreneur role, respectively. I needed a product or service I could sell systematically that took my time out of the value equation so that I wasn’t the one holding myself back from earning the income I wanted to fulfil my vision for the future.

    Vision and Mindset

    I’ve spent a lot of time learning about how to start a business. I’ve read Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start. I know you need to start with a mantra, make meaning, and have milestones. I read Jim Collin’s Good to Great. I know that you first have to get “the right people on the bus.” Eric Ries’ Lean Startup says to start with the product and ask people if they want it. There are many ways to start a business, but I know some of the worst include choosing a business name, buying business cards, incorporating, and designing a logo. None of those things bring in new customers or revenue. That’s how I developed the theme of #SellFirst, and it’s a tag I own on Twitter.

    “Sell First” is a mindset that says, “before I invest more time, energy, and money into this new business, I am first going to ask someone if they want to buy it.” I believe that sales is essentially “asking someone to buy something.” In high school Jason and I called this “spontaneous asking”. We found that when we asked for something, we were much more likely to get it than we did not ask for it. This seems obvious after the fact, but there is much fear in asking, which may be part of the fear people have of selling. I certainly still have that fear, but it’s something I’m learning to get over as I view it as more important than marketing. Marketing Supports Sales.

    I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts and motivational speaking lately and several reoccurring themes have emerged. The first one is the need for a vision of what you’re future will look like. This sets your mind in the direction it needs to go. The second is the need for mentors and education that gives you the information you’ll need to get to where you’re going. The third thing is hard work and the ability to temporarily discomfort yourself now for a better future later. Extraordinary effort now is greater than the same amount of effort spread out over time. The fourth thing is your product. When given the choice between working on anything else and your product, always choose to improve the product.

    Product Development

    I live in Tipton. I’ve lived there for most of the last 10 years. It’s a small town with little to nothing going on. I have to drive at least a half hour in any direction to see anything other than cornfields and pickup trucks. But it’s from this location that I’ve worked professionally for 10 years, developed and ran side and full-time businesses, and raised a family (I now have 5 kids). It’s out of this desolated place that I’ve come to shape my ideas of place and community. It’s how I came up with the ideas for Seektivity and Outure. I believed that it didn’t matter as much where you were, but who you were hanging out with and what you did with the situation. Even Tipton could be a cool place with the right people, the right knowledge, or the right stuff.

    I had a vision of a mobile app that allowed you to post and activities and things to do around you. If you discovered a tennis court you could add it to the app and tag it with “tennis” and the next person who came there might add “badminton”. In the same way, someone might find a baseball diamond and first tag it with “baseball” while someone else might tag it with “Wiffle ball” or “softball”. If Foursquare is for tagging places to go, Seektivity would be for tagging what there is to do at those places. There may be a hundred different fun things to do in Tipton, but without an informational tool like Seektivity, I would never know about them. In this way, people can transform their communities into more active and happier places to live.

    In late 2012 and early 2013 I started getting interested in physical products and ecommerce. That’s when I got the idea to create products to help Seektivity users get more out of their communities. Outure was developed out of a need to facilitate “activity in your own backyard.” I felt that outdoor adventure companies often glorified exotic places like mountaintops and sunny beaches while most of America lives in mostly flat, mostly dry areas of the country. That doesn’t mean there isn’t fun things they could be doing if they just had the right information, similarly interested people, and the right equipment. By providing the people with the gear to have fun in their own backyards, my mantra in both products is to “facilitate play”.

    Outdoor Adventure with Outure

    The Reality

    The reality is I’m not as great as I thought I was. I never finished making Seektivity. I got a minimally viable product (MVP) and stopped working on it in February of 2013. That same month I stopped being an entrepreneur and went back to work for a company that made me extremely uncomfortable for 7 months. In August of 2013 I switched jobs and began working on Outure and everyday I take a little step forward by posting a picture to Instagram or commenting on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter. I hired a VA in November to help write reviews of urban activity equipment sold on Amazon as an affiliate, but hope to one day open my own e-commerce store. That’s my vision and this is my reality.

  • e-Commerce Metric: Time to First Sale

    This is not just a record of the amount of time it took to get to first sale, a metric called “time to first sale”, but a story about what it took to go from idea to first sale. This is a story of how one idea can lead to another and how people can influence each other. This is the story of how Catchrs and Skinny Coconut Oil got started.

    TL;DR; After months of discussions and meetings that started in August of 2011, Skinny Coconut Oil officially launched on August 26, 2013 and had its first sale on August 31. From the first meeting specifically about coconut oil on April 4, 2013 to the first sale on August 31 was 3 months and 27 days, 5 days after the store opened.

    The Beginning

    How it Started

    In 2010, instead of starting a normal job after college like everyone else, Luke Geddie decided to take a year off and travel around the world. It was, “an adventure that would open their eyes to the rare beauty hidden in Southeast Asia.” Luke’s brother Matt accompanied him on parts of this trip and, “with their hearts set on exploration, Luke and Matt Geddie ventured through Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, India, and Vietnam with a desire to see and experience everything.” It was Luke’s time in Vietnam when he met Kim Vo, a local celebrity who introduced Luke to many different people, government officials, and business owners in Vietnam. Through these introductions Luke started to get a sense for the value he could provide the local Vietnamese economy by using the business skills he learned while in college and his connections back in the United States.

    On August 1, 2011 I left my day job at First Merchants and went full time consulting. 2 days later Luke’s mom, Joy, called to have me come over and help Luke’s brother’s computer ready for school. Luke had just got home from Vietnam after traveling abroad for a year and Joy wanted me to talk to him about some of the things I had been working on because she knew we were both entrepreneurial-minded. The three of us ended up going out to breakfast on August 18 and that’s when I told Luke about what I was doing with affiliate marketing. Luke started telling me about the ideas he had to have art created in Vietnam, which lead to the first business idea of “art catchers”. This eventually lead to the name of “Catchrs” and after the domain Catchrs was purchased on September 9, 2011 the first official Catchrs meeting was held on September 16.

    Loading the Semi

    The business idea went through several iterations, eventually becoming an import/export business. Luke continued working on the business in the United States where he incorporated Catchrs, LLC through the fall, but in December of 2011 he went back to Vietnam to build the business with his partner, Kim. Matt began going to school in New Zealand where he helped Luke and Catchrs by contacting manufacturers and shipping companies around the world. In May of 2012 I helped Luke launch the Catchrs website while simultaneously beginning to work full-time at his mother’s husband’s dentist office. It was during this time that I developed my relationship with Luke’s mother, Joy. After working with her husband’s business for 9 months, Joy and I decided to begin meeting regularly in February to see if there was any businesses we could start together.

    I had been learning more about e-commerce as a business as far back as November of 2012 when I began looking into drop-shipping and various e-commerce platforms. This is when I first got introduced to Andrew Youderian at eCommerceFuel.com. At the same time I had just started reading Hacker News and was learning more about programming and startups. In February I started working on a software project called Seektivity, but I quickly hit a hard wall in my software skills. I had also just started a new, stressful job that didn’t leave much time for anything else. However, this didn’t stop me from researching ideas at night while lying in bed. It was during one of these nights that I did a Google search for “where to buy…” and noticed that the second to top auto-complete said, “where to buy coconut oil”.

    On March 17, 2013 I reached out to Luke about the rise of 3D printing and on April 2 he asked to have a phone conversation about “traditional medicine and online marketing it in the USA”. On April 4 we had the phone call where we talked about all of the things he had to sell. One of those things was coconut oil. I wrote Luke on April 6, “I’m interested in that because Joy, Suzanne, and my friend, Jason’s wife, Krista, all use coconut oil for cooking and as a lotion. I’d be willing to pay you for a sample to send over so I can have them try it out. I own a website called topical-cream.com and the domain tropical-cream is currently available. I’m thinking that with a ‘cute’ enough package that this stuff could sell well in local boutiques, Fresh Market stores, Whole Foods, and on Amazon.” On April 6th, Luke offered a sample. By May 22 I still hadn’t received the sample so I emailed Luke an image of the Google Trend line for coconut oil.

    Coconut Oil Trend

    On May 27 he had the supplier re-send the sample of coconut oil. The original bottle had been mistakenly sent to Luke’s brother, Matt, in California, who would later become much more involved. On May 31 it was shipped from Canada and on June 5 it arrived at my house and by June 8 I had already met with Luke’s mom, Joy about it and had started to reach out to Matt who was still in California. Matt had experience launching his own product and was currently working as a marketing director. I saw him as an integral part of this process.

    On June 9 Luke returned to the United States along with Kim, his business partner from Vietnam. On June 11 we had our first meeting about coconut oil as a business and decided to call it “Premier Grove”. On Friday, June 14 we had our second meeting about the business. By July 3 we had a business plan for the company that had been renamed to “Skinny and Co” and who’s first product was named “Skinny Coconut Oil” after the tall and skinny shape of the original bottle. On July 12 we had our EIN for the corporation and could finally start setting up Shopify, Amazon, and Opensky.

    On July 9 Matt moved back to Indiana from California and we had our first meeting with Chris Murphy, a boyhood friend of Matt’s who had just graduated from college with a Marketing degree. His mom was best friends with Matt’s mother, Joy. Chris was all about “community” (he even loved the Community, the show). On July 10 Kim visited the United States from Vietnam and we all decided to offer Chris a position with Skinny and Co. He began working on the label design right away and by August 19 we had our first prototype.

    Skinny Coconut Oil Prototype

    After incorporating Skinny and Co. with the state of Indiana in July, the Skinny Coconut Oil website officially launched on August 26 and had its first sale on August 31. Although Luke had offered, I had no equity in either Catchrs, LLC or Skinny and Co. and I had only been paid for the web design work I did for Catchrs. My agreement with Skinny and Co. at that time was to get a percentage of online sales in exchange for my work building out the website’s content, doing SEO, and helping with social media.

    On September 3 we began working on our first brochure, an Oil Pulling Guide, and on September 26, Joy went to her printer to have flyers printed for the upcoming Gluten Free Living festival on October 5th. The printer kept staring at the flyer. She began asking questions about the coconut oil and shared how she sold raw chocolate and was looking for a coconut oil to sell, but she wanted to sell it as a subscription monthly. She sold one jar. This is the beginning of selling coconut oil as a subscription and it paved the way for the second event which was a health fair on September 28th in Southport, Indiana.

    Gluten Free Expo Skinny Coconut Oil Booth

    October 5th was a rainy day. I had to get up early in the morning to be in Richmond at 8 AM. At the same time, Matt and Chris were up early getting ready for the Gluten Free Living festival in Carmel. We had recently hired two interns, Michael and Stephanie, but only Michael was there that day. Rachel from the dentist office also stopped by to help sell. We sold almost 50 jars and I got my first check after 2 years of work. On the drive home Andrew Youderian gave me a “First Sale Shout Out” on his podcast. It was a good day.

    SEE also: The Skinny Coconut Oil Story

    Update: if you’re looking for a coconut oil that tastes, smells, and feels like Skinny Coconut Oil from Skinny & Co., check out Dignity Coconut Oil (affiliate link). Like Skinny, their coconut oil is raw and they use glass jars instead of plastic, but the best part is their mission to raise women out of poverty.

  • Leverage

    Mindvalley Insights recently emailed me an article entitled, How to Avoid Entrepreneurial ADD and Pick the Most Viable Ideas to Pursue, which I thoroughly enjoyed and prompted me to write this post. Below is that 7-minute talk where Vishen, CEO of Mindvalley Insights, shares how he uses the principal of leverage to pick business opportunities.

    This video is about how to choose opportunities that you either come up with or are presented to you. Vishen does it by quantifying leverage of existing and possible future opportunities. He uses his own businesses as examples, so I’ll some of my own companies and their subsequent opportunities: Telablue > Watershawl > Costpub/Tenet Marketing > Webories > Content Motors > A/B Insights > Coconut Oil > Apps/Database/Tracking. Vishen says to draw relationship lines between the different businesses/opportunities to see if there are any ways that one leverages the other. The more leverage, the more likely you should do it.

    This is similar to the advice Cal Newport gives, which I highlighted in How to Work a Life of Purpose: build up a body of work that you can leverage for future work. Become so good at what you do that you can do it anywhere any way you want. Whatever you have invested all of your adult working life and school on would be silly for you to not leverage going forward. Whatever you’ve been working on the most is unique. It’s rare and therefore valuable. You know what problems your industry has and are also able to create solutions for those problems. Maybe you’re not interested in solving them, but if not you, then who? There is no one with your perspective other than you.

    If you truly possess a competitive advantage, let me recommend that you do not diversify but instead leverage that skill-set to the maximum. Whatever you do, do it better than anybody else (and if you are one of these unicorns, I applaud you – send me your business plan and let me invest in your venture). – Ching Ho, Restauranteur | Designer | Adventurer

  • Thinking About a Starting a New Business?

    I’ve been thinking about starting a new business lately and I wanted to share my process with others as I do it to help those who might be thinking of starting their own business.

    Every business starts with an idea. That idea may come from you or from someone asking you to do their idea, but it all starts with an idea. Five years ago I had the idea to start my own web design business because friends and family kept asking me to develop web sites for them. I wasn’t really interested in it at first, but once I started getting more clients, I was hooked – especially when I saw the paychecks come in, but I had a rocky start. I wished there was someone there to help me get started when I was starting up.

    Inspired by Jim Halperts new business and coming off my last successful business, I have decided to start a new business on the side. One mistake I typically make is to get hung up on the business name and category too soon and too often. I often also jump to see what my future competitors are doing in that space. Instead what I should be doing is creating a product that someone would actually be willing to pay for and then asking them if they would pay for it. This is called customer development, but I don’t always do it. That’s got to change.

    Sell First

    One thing I like to do is to come up with an elevator pitch and make blanket statements like “I’d like to create a Salesforce.com for HR.” While I don’t want to get hung up on a business name just yet, I can’t move on until I’ve at least given the project a name so in this example I call it “Workflow” which I know I won’t be able to use, but that’s why it’s just a project name. Once I have a project name I start collecting information about the project in a hodgepodge of places from email threads to Evernote to Dropbox. All of this stuff is easy. That’s because it’s all fluff. You’ve got to get to the point where you have a minimally viable product (MVP), which is something you can sell. If someone doesn’t buy it, you don’t have a company. I call this philosophy “Sell First”.

    If your idea is a service then quantify, quantify, quantify your idea. Make what I call an “Applebee’s Menu” of your services. Draw pictures that explain what you do. If you’re not a graphic designer, then hire one or draw them yourself using a pencil and paper. The point is to level the playing field between you and your customer by creating a common interface (a picture) that explains to them what it is you are going to do for them and how much it costs. Think about what it’s like when you go into McDonalds: there is a giant menu of pictures on a board. You point to the picture you want with the number next to it and both you and McDonalds knows exactly what you’re going to get. That’s powerful and there are few service professionals who operate this way. Even if you don’t have a product, you can carve products out of the services you provide. Once you have them, ask someone to buy one. If they don’t, go back to the drawing board – literally.

    Simplify Your Idea

    The hardest part (I’ve found) about new ideas or organizations is in restricting yourself. Your business idea needs to be one sentence, maybe three words. A while back I read a book called The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, which I have also listed in 13 Books Every Entrepreneur Can Benefit From Reading. Even if you don’t read the whole book, the first chapter is very good and prescribes you to go after a “mantra”, “make meaning”, “define your business model”. and create “milestones, assumptions, and tasks”. Maybe you’re already doing some of these things. If so, good.

    I’m currently consulting with a new startup that wanted to start 5 organizations in three locations all at once. Part of my job there has been to reel them in and get them to focus on doing one thing first and doing that well. In the book, Little Bets by Peter Sims he talks about how successful companies try things on a small scale before they build out. Here’s an 8 minute video if you’re not interested in the book. Part of the reason I think people (including me) tend to want to make their business (or business ideas) wide in the beginning is because they aren’t sure what will work. Little Bets should help tease that out.

    Who Asked You to Start a Business, Anyway?

    In 2011 I wrote about all of the challenges you’ll be up against when you go to start a new business. Everyone from the government, to your neighbors, to other businesses, to your family will be trying to stop you every step of the way. But none of those compare with the biggest obstacle: yourself. You can plan all you want, but eventually someone has to Do the Work. While I believe management is important, it can be used for creative avoidance. If you can’t figure out what to do next, just do the next important thing. If you feel overwhelmed or depressed; if you feel like you can’t move, just do one thing. Do anything.

     

    When to Quit Your Day Job

    First of all, don’t quit your day job. At least not until you’ve made the decision and can stick with it for at least three days straight. While I started my own business on the side in 2007, I worked full time until 2011 when I quit my day job. I didn’t quit because I was making more on my side projects than my day job. I quit because I wasn’t having an impact, I wasn’t being utilized, and I felt like I was wasting my life. There were things I wanted to do and they didn’t include being 33% utilized for 8 hours a day. I would literally spend 2 hours in the bathroom a day and another 2 hours a day watching a movie at my desk. My manager had nothing for me to do and was absent most of the time. There was zero pressure on me to succeed and management was perfectly happy with me doing nothing at all. Everyone was happy except me.

    In How to Work a Life of Purpose I share how I learned what does make me happy. It turns out that following your passions has little to do with it. It matters much more that you adopt a craftsman’s mindset and deliberately practice to get over the performance plateau that so many of us reach, but few exceed. Once you begin to get better at something, you begin liking it more and happiness is a natural result. Quitting your job will not make you happy. Being the best at something can put you on a path to being happy. Being the best at something can allow you the career capital to start your own business or gain more autonomy in your existing job. What people desire the most is trust, respect, and autonomy in their jobs. You are responsible for building your own meaning and managing your own growth. No one else can do that for you.

    Starting a [Successful] Business is Hard

    Starting a business is fun. It’s exciting and full of opportunities. It’s easy to say what you’re going to do, make lists, name things, put them into categories, compare and contrast ideas, and draw stuff on a whiteboard. It’s easy to tell other people about your idea and write blog posts about it and tweet about it on Twitter. The hard part is making something useful, something that adds value to the transaction. The hard part is getting someone to pay money for that thing. The hard part is not giving up and not believing your own self-doubt when it inevitably creeps in. The hard part is not listening to the doubters who will tell you it’s okay to quit, that there is safety in the doing what everyone else does. But don’t listen to them. Do the work. Make the world better. We need you to help us. There are problems in the world that still need fixed.

    We still don’t have good ways to desalinate sea water or cheap ways to make electricity. We still don’t have cures for all kinds of disease or good methods for distributing ways to prevent them. These are big problems, but I can get more specific. There is currently no way to sync a Microsoft Exchange password on an iPhone with Microsoft Exchange. It’s a manual process that the user has to do. This one problem affects IT departments all over the globe and every time a user changes their password in Windows, their email on their phone stops working. That seems like a problem someone would be able to work on and there are plenty of companies all across the world who would gladly pay for that solution. If you know of one, please let me know in the comments and please share your new business ideas with me once they are up and running. Do the work! Cheers.

  • Jim Halpert’s Marketing Company, Athlead

    Jim Halpert is a character in the American version of The Office. One thing that interested me about the final season was Jim’s newly found entrepreneurial spirit. One of Jim’s college friends starts up a sports marketing company using an idea they had come up with in college and offers Jim a chance to partner with him. Jim initially says no after talking to his wife, Pam, but after seeing that Pete, also known as “New Jim”, is heading down the same career path as Jim, he decides to take the opportunity without telling Pam.

    Jim’s marketing company is called “Athlead”, which is as one Redditor described it, “Sports Marketing. ie. People like Jim are the guys who convince NASCAR that Pepsi should be the official cola of NASCAR,” while another described it as, “some kind of publicity firm for athletes.” According to The Office Wikia, “Athlead is a sports marketing company based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is run by Jim Halpert and several other employees.”

    Jim Halpert's Marketing Company

    When Darryl Philbin shows frustration with his job, Jim offers Darryl to join him in his potential opportunity, but Darryl tells him to tell Pam first, which he does. Pam seems to accept the idea of Jim taking the opportunity, but while Jim is excited, Pam is still upset he didn’t tell her immediately. Jim then impulsively agrees to put in $10K into the company, which angers Pam as that was more than what they agreed to put in and that Jim’s business partners claimed they were all set.

    Getting Permission

    Jim continues with his new business activities but finds that all of his business partners are in Philadelphia while he is still in Scranton. When the distractions Jim faces while talking over the phone prove too much, his friend says that him staying in Scranton isn’t working out for the business. He asks David Wallace if he can start working part time at Dunder Mifflin, handling any client problems from Philly. When David points out he might be needed in the office in some moments of crisis, Jim asks Stanley and Phyllis to cover for him, who agree, but not until after they take advantage of him. Jim takes Stanley and Phyllis on an expensive lunch. Stanley orders the most expensive items on the menu, and Phyllis proceeds to get drunk, prying a decorative wine bottle from a wooden partition, hoping it’s filled with wine. After the trio return from lunch, Phyllis laughingly tells him that of course, they’ll cover for him, “We love you guys.”.

    Darryl’s Day Job

    Jim is set to start his sports marketing job before Christmas and Darryl is under the impression that Jim forgot to offer him a position. When a drunken Darryl is ready to tell Jim off, Jim reveals that he talked to his friends about giving him a job. When Dwight Schrute learns that Darryl will be leaving Dunder-Mifflin to join Athlead, he tries to browbeat Darryl into staying by tallying up his perceived job failures since taking the Athlead job and holding a meeting on customer loyalty. While watching documentary footage of the event that has been uploaded onto the internet, Darryl laughs saying, “This is what I will miss when I move to Philadelphia.”

    The Office Christmas Party

    Before Jim leaves to start his sports marketing job in Philadelphia, he and Pam convince the office to allow Dwight to throw his version of a Christmas party so that Jim can poke fun at him. However, Jim leaves before the party is over, upsetting both Dwight and Pam. When Jim returns unexpectedly, Dwight gives him a hug, and they finish Dwight’s party with a tradition of breaking a pig rib.

    Jim and Pam Incorporated

    When Pam visits Athlead, Jim’s receptionist says, “We can’t wait for you and the kids to move to Philly,” and Pam looked surprised. From the moment Jim invested in Athlead, Pam’s attitude has been ‘This is taking Jim away from me’ instead of ‘this is making Jim happy in a new way.’ Obviously, they both need to be more honest about their futures, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect Pam to come to the conclusions that Jim has never been happy with his job apart from Pam’s part in it. He’s happy with his new marketing job, and if it becomes something sustainable for him, his life is going to change.

    Buy this t-shirt on Amazon (affiliate link)

    Neither Jim nor Pam were happy with their jobs in the first few seasons. Aside from his time with Pam and time spent making fun of Dwight, Jim had exactly one moment of genuine enjoyment of the job, and that was when he closed the sale at the golf course (which he did for Pam). Remember how Pam moved to New York for three months? Jim was nothing but supportive then and Jim was nothing but supportive when Pam quit to work for the Michael Scott Paper Company either. Jim is frustrated with the fact that Pam isn’t being as supportive, but here’s how she has been supportive:

    • While she was upset with Jim for not telling her about Athlead in the beginning, she still supported his decision to go.
    • She is raising two kids on her own while Jim is in Philadelphia, which Jim didn’t have to do when she did her two career experiments.
    • She has only complained to Jim one time about him not being there, and it was only after he was already lashing out at her.

    Office Conclusions

    I highlighted and include all of this because it’s interesting to see how the writers at The Office think about startups. It seems they’ve totally neglected things like product/market fit, lean methodologies, cost-benefit analysis, profit/loss statements, or business plans and simply focused on how one person’s decisions affect a group of people. There are two types of families in this show. There are the ones that exist at home and the ones that tie the office together. Both are equally important in this show’s eyes – much more than any business. And that seems to capture the essence of the show – that’s what Michael Scott always talked about. It wasn’t about selling paper. It was about loving people. That’s Dunder-Mifflin. Will that be Athlead too?

  • Time to Pretend by MGMT

    I really like the song, Time to Pretend, by MGMT. It has an interesting sound and a playful beat, but when I read the lyrics online, I was a little disappointed in the content. When I heard the lyrics in my head, they sounded much different – so I decided to re-write some of it to be more optimistic, but still keep the same tone:

    I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.
    Let’s make a startup, make some money, have the time of our lives.
    We’ll write some code up, get some funding, and dance with the stars.
    We’ll make the software, and the website, and drive elegant cars.

    This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
    We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun.
    Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do.
    Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute?

    …

    But there’s really nothing, nothing we can do
    Love can’t be forgotten, life can be the start up of you.

    The original lyrics are tainted with drug abuse and divorce while longing for a time when they used to spend time digging for worms in the sandbox at home. I remember picking cedar berries out of my friend’s sandbox, making highways, and rivers. It was a time to create with little fear of failing. The older you get, the harder life gets so why not fail early, fail often?

    I can see why MGMT may want to live recklessly and die young. It’s a cop out to the life intended for us. Life is hard, there is no doubt. But within those constraints, there is fun. Life can be a game that can be beaten. The fear in each of us is the fear of losing – so don’t lose. Choose to win. The only ones way to lose is to stop trying to win. So choose to win.

  • How I Made it as an Entrepreneur

    I got this email from an old friend today and wanted to post my reply to him:

    So how are things at Watershawl these days? You still able to make a living off of it all? I’m pretty anxious to hear all about what you’ve got going on these days. It seems like you’ve been away for a while now… it was sink or swim time and you swam!

    I’ve got that itch again. You know the one where I want to make money my way. I won’t lie they really take care of me there, and I’m learning tons every single day, but I’m starting to read blogs about making money from home and what not again. And it reminded me that I haven’t checked in with you for a while on where you’re at.

    Take Care,

    Jake

    My experience at Watershawl can best be described by the attached picture, but yes, I’m able to make a living off of it. The issues I have are not unique to my business though and that’s cash-flow (you know, the stuff the Cash Management guys talk about all the time). What that means is that although I make enough over time, it doesn’t always come in at the same rate I need it to go out for bills. In other words, it averages out alright, but isn’t always timed right. For example, this month I’m scheduled to make a $400 profit over my bills (something that never hardly happened when I had a normal job), but right now I don’t have anything. It’s like that pretty much every month and that’s because I didn’t have a savings account (and still don’t).

    I don’t think the itch to leave will ever really go away (unless you die inside), but there are ways to test the waters before you jump in. First of all, start thinking of your job as your biggest client and try to stop ‘expecting’ a paycheck and start trying to ‘earn’ a paycheck. This will put you in the mindset you’ll need when dealing with clients outside of a employee relationship. When I left I had 1 boss, but now I have over 20 (the number of current clients). My time is not my own. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. I have to work for them just like I had to work for my old job. The difference is that if I work more, I get more (and I can charge more). I also get to sleep in and do whatever I want. 🙂

    My recommendation to you would be to take advantage of where you’re at and LISTEN to what people are saying. What I mean by this is if you can start to hear what people’s problems are, stuff they complain about, and/or what their pain points are, that’s the beginning of discovering a product, service, or business that you could start in order to solve that need. You’re in a better position in some ways than I am for finding out that information. I would love to find out what problems commercial loan officers have or what problems their clients have. If you can find a problem that you can solve + a customer that is both willing and able to pay for that solution, you have a business idea.

    The key is to iterate your business idea until you have what’s called a product/market fit. Eric Ries talks about this in his book, Lean Startups, but you can also read Steve Blank‘s work on it. They’ve worked together so they have similar ideas. But basically, the premise is to 1) discover a problem 2) hypothesize a solution 3) interview potential customers about the solution 4) refine the solution. Once you get to a product that the customer would be MAD at you if you took away from them, you have a product/market fit and then you get funding and build like crazy. There are other subtle variations (like starting with a product instead of a customer), but being customer-centric in everything you do will pay dividends.

    One idea that I don’t mind sharing with you is a “LED light bulb replacement service” where you go to a company like a bank and say, “I’d like to save you 40% off your lighting bill and would be happy to show you how it works by converting one of your branches to LED lighting at cost – if you like it, we’ll do the rest of your branches too, if not, we’ll go on our way and thank you for your time.” Essentially, you’re going in, finding out how many bulbs they have, estimating the cost upfront and the cost savings, and then swapping them out in one day. You can even do a buy-back on existing fluorescent light bulbs that you can either trash or sell to someone else.

    A typical day for me is waking up around 8, checking my email for emergency work, working on some projects for customers (usually web edits), reading up on subjects in my field, visit a customer at their location or at a restaurant for a meeting, attend a networking meeting or meetup at night, and then in bed by midnight. I recently joined a networking group called BNI and am active on Meetup.com. I run my own group called Indianapolis Marketing and attend several others as well as Tech Point meetings, which are put on by a partnership with the State of Indiana. I use blogging to content market online, but that’s less successful than in-person networking for me. I’d be interested in hearing what you’re working on at work or in your ‘spare time’.

  • 10 Entrepreneur and Startup Board Games

    As an entrepreneur who is interested in startups and board games, I considered making my own entrepreneurship board game or a board game about starting up, but like any good business owner, I started with market research. It turns out there are already at least ten entrepreneur or startup board games either on the market already or in development. Some of them you may have heard of and others are brand new.

    Startup Fever by Louis Perrochon

    Set in the world of Internet startups, the pieces are employees – from engineers to salesmen to executives. Opponents try to steal them with better offers. As head of the company, you can choose to invest your resources in personnel or sales. There’s even an expansion that introduces venture capitalists and lawyers, for extra flavor. The goal, as in real-world product development, is to get the most users.

    ScrumBrawl by VicTim Games LLC (Bugher and Vic Moyer)

    The object of ScrumBrawl is to score three goals by moving orb tokens into a portal. To do so, players control fantasy creatures – 50 in all – whose characteristics determine how they interact. Players also battle each other’s creatures to keep them from scoring. At one point, the game was much more elaborate than its final version, but play testers told VicTim Games that the concept was too unwieldy.

    Fluke by Ida Byrd-Hill, Detroit, MI

    A Detroit mother has developed a board game that takes players from accidental inventions through the tricky realm of patents, portfolios and finally to corporate wealth – if they’re savvy enough. The player with the largest portfolio wins.

    GoVenture Entrepreneur Board Game by GoVenture

    Run your own business and compete, collaborate, and negotiate with other players. Game play is designed to recreate the real-life thrills and challenges of entrepreneurship in a fun and educational social learning experience. Activities are expertly designed to enable you to experience the true challenges of entrepreneurship, while at the same time, provide an engaging and experiential group learning opportunity.

    Zeros-To-Heros by Richard Mak

    Marketed as the “World’s 1st board game on Entrepreneurship” Zeros-To-Heros is the winner of MENSA Singapore SELECT Awards (2007) based on its originality, dynamic game play, ability to stimulate players’ intellect and fun. You start the game as an employee with ZERO capital and ZERO understanding of business. Take the exciting path to become your OWN BOSS and see whether you survive or become an entrepreneurial Hero.

    Hot Company® Board Game

    Students experience what it’s like to “be the boss” while experiencing the thrill of running a company and finding solutions that will lead to success. Each player or team is the “owner” of a hot new company. Roll the die, pick a card, and you’re in business! The object of the game is to get “your” company to turn a profit. Hot Company® develops a wide array of real-world business skills.

    I’m The Boss!®

    A game of deal-making and negotiation, where students are investors just trying to make a deal. Through intelligent negotiations, temporary alliances, and cut-throat bargaining, players can rake in millions. But watch out for the other investors at your bargaining table who meddle in your affairs and try to take over your deals. As the boss, you stand to gain the most, but you can find yourself quickly cut out of a deal. In the end, the winner is the investor with the most money.

    Rich Dad Cashflow for Kids

    CASHFLOW for Kids teaches children how to have money work for them. CASHFLOW for Kids is a complete educational package which includes the book “Rich Dad’s Guide to Raising Your Child’s Financial I.Q.” CASHFLOW for Kids is recommended for children ages 6 and older. Children learn the difference between good credit and bad credit, assets and liabilities, earned income and passive income, and income and expenses. Cashflow for Kids is an easy way for parents to teach their children about finance, but it requires an adult or older child who already understands the basics of finance to reinforce the lessons as they are experienced.

    Entrepreneur’s Accessory to Monopoly by The Third Dimension

    This game, subtitled “The Power-Business Venture Game”, is an unofficial expansion to Monopoly. It comes with a small board that fits exactly into the center of a standard Monopoly game board. The game plays like regular Monopoly but adds Corporations, Leverage Buyouts, Corporate Takeovers, Casinos and Financial Coups into the mix. Look for it on eBay, but Monopoly itself is a good economic game.

    Globalization by Sandstorm

    Build your global empire… one company at a time! As the head of a multi-national corporation with one goal in mind – to make money – players in Globalization attempt to outbid their competitors to acquire businesses within six different industries and grow their conglomerate. Streamline operating costs build additional factories sue your competitors or take one of your subsidiaries public for big returns! Your corporate strategy will impact which companies you buy and how to take your corporation worldwide. The first to reach a billion in net worth wins!

    Want more learning sets for kids?