A Bunch of New Age Crap?

You get laid off unexpectedly and scramble to track the details of your job search. You forget whom you called, which version of your cover letter you sent, and the name of the recruiter you worked with last time you were out of work.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

• How can I track my conversations with potential employers?

• Are gigantic spreadsheets the best way of doing this?

• Am I the only one who feels overwhelmed by the job search process?

• Is there an easier way to do this?

POSSIBLE BUSINESS IDEA

Tool that allows you to manage and track your job search over the course of your career.

REAL BUSINESS

www.jibberjobber.com

Use Your Interests to Narrow Your Field of Study

The work you just did in identifying things that spark your interest should guide the places you look for business opportunities.

While the examples I described above pertain to general situations in life, use the areas that interest you to look for specific opportunities.

For example, if you are passionate about martial arts and social media, spend time poring over every Web site, blog, competition, and television show that contains martial arts. Subscribe to every social media site you can find and poke around to see how they are set up, who uses them, and what purpose they serve. Then ask yourself:

• What would make this better?

• What is missing?

• What is really needed here?

• Why isn’t someone already addressing this problem?

• What are people hungry for?

• What could make this experience easier?

• How could I improve this by leaps and bounds?

• Who is serving this community well?

Sometimes you are able to link all your interests together in one business, and sometimes you find that one interest or opportunity stands above the rest.

The key is to use beginner mind and be open to possibilities.

Business Problems Looking for a Solution

The more you get used to looking at the world as full of problems to be solved, the more you will start to think about particular business models that will best solve the problems.

I spend a lot of time thinking about business ideas as I am wandering around the house collecting recyclables, or burping my baby, or pulling my three-year-old off a tall chair as he prepares to fly across the room like Spider-Man. Here are some specific ideas I have for useful businesses, based on thousands of questions I get from blog readers, and things I observe in the entrepreneur/social media/coaching environments I hang out in:

ACCOUNTANT/FINANCIAL ADVISER FOR PEOPLE WITH LESS THAN PERFECT FINANCIAL HISTORIES

Business problems:

• A lot of people who are smart, creative, and motivated are scared to death of starting a business because they don’t have a perfect financial history.

• Some of the financial problems faced by these people will affect their ability to secure financing, but most are crippled by a lack of confidence.

• Professionally trained financial advisers do not always understand the shame and emotional baggage that follow people in this situation and deliver financial advice and coaching in what is perceived as a judgmental and derogatory way.

• Some unscrupulous financial service providers prey on the financially uninformed and steal their money (my dear relative, who experienced a windfall of cash in the 1970s due to a good acting gig, fell under the spell of such a character, who promptly snorted her house, savings, and retirement up his nose, landing him in jail and making her penniless and heartbroken).

Sampling of key skills and experience:

• Personal or professional experience and knowledge

• Coaching skills—ability to address interpersonal issues that underlie poor financial habits

Ideas for structure:

• Teleclasses on very basic topics like “How to get a bank loan for your new business even if you don’t have perfect credit”

• 1:1 evaluations and coaching in person or over the phone without hawking specific products or trying to sell anything

• Virtual work groups that provide information and support as people build their businesses one step at a time

• Referral network with good local CPAs or tax lawyers, or at least consulting services to help people find good ones

MARKETING SPECIALIST FOR CRAFTSPEOPLE AT LOCAL AND REGIONAL ART SHOWS

Business problems:

• Artists who sell at craft shows are notoriously “old school” when it comes to business, preferring to deal in-person and keep operations and techno-gadgetry to a minimum. Because of this, they miss the opportunity to build relationships with patrons who visit their booth once a year, or to sell other pieces online.

• Customers who purchase pieces from favorite artists never hear from them again.

• Artists miss opportunities for referrals if they only sell at local art shows.

• There is a need for “grassroots selling meets Internet marketing”

Sampling of key skills and experience:

• Love of art and appreciation of fine craftsmanship

• Knowledge of both craft show marketing and Internet marketing

• Coaching skills

• Teaching skills

Ideas for business:

• Many of the sponsor organizations are committed not just to making money marketing off the shows, but to supporting the artists with workshops before major art shows. These workshops would be peppered with specific, easy-to-implement steps like collecting business cards or names of customers, in order to follow up after the show.

• Simple do-it-yourself marketing packages, designed in an easy-to-implement and attractive manner.

• Virtual teleclasses on specific topics. Make sure instructions are clear and technology is not complicated as many craft artists are known for not liking complex technology.

Are you starting to see how these pieces fit together?

Help Your Users Kick Ass

Solving problems is a great place to start, but blogger Kathy Sierra takes things one step further and asks, “How can you help your users kick ass?” Her insights are perfect for taking your general business idea and making it a truly market-changing one:

It’s not what you sell, it’s what you teach that matters.

Or rather, what you help someone learn.

Too many books and businesses take users through the first steps and then leave them stranded and alone still in the frustrating and painful stage! How many readers claim they actually finished or even got halfway through a technical book? How many users ever learn anything but the most basic features of the software—even when they’d be thrilled if they could do more? But it just isn’t worth it for them to struggle, so they stay with what they know, often using very inefficient steps to do something simply because that’s the only “safe” way they feel comfortable with.

Kicking ass is more fun regardless of the task. It’s more fun to know more. It’s more fun to be able to do more. It’s more fun to be able to help others do more.

I’ll say more on this later, but I can think of a lot of wasted ad dollars that might be better spent teaching. Red Bull, for example, wants to be the drink of choice for late-night dancers. But rather than simply sponsoring raves and keeping popular DJs well-stocked (like anyone else would in that business) they create new and better DJs. They offer the Red Bull Music Academy:

The Red Bull Music Academy is a unique environment where musical innovators shed light on the history, the motivations and the technology behind the tunes that we love. It’s a place where ideas are expanded and friendships are forged in real time. It’s where sonic theorists meet up with beat junkies and communicate the best way they know how—through music.

By helping more DJs (and wanna-be DJs) kick ass, they’ve done more to inspire real passion than any of their freebie promotions ever can.

So . . . how are you helping your users/customers/students/guests/ visitors/clients/members/readers kick ass? What are you teaching them? How are you helping them get past the painful parts and into the better-than-drugs flow state?¹

Plastics, Young Man!

If you have ever seen the classic movie The Graduate, starring a fresh-faced Dustin Hoffman, you remember the scene where his parents’ friend tells him “Plastics, young man!” imploring him to start his career in the latest booming industry.

I fondly recalled this quote as I dove into an issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, featuring “The 2007 Hot List: Best Businesses, Markets and Trends.”

Before looking into some examples of trends, here is a little context:

• We all know that by the time “hot trends” are published in a mainstream magazine they are not really “hot trends” anymore.

• Any trend is set within an economic and political context. So if the stock market crashes or a significant terror strike occurs or environmental havoc is wreaked in an area where you are starting a “hot trend” business, everything can change in an instant.

• As Guy Kawasaki said in an interview at StartupNation when asked what business trends were worth examining:

It’s not like you get up in the morning and say “I want to be an entrepreneur. Should I make chips, software, a dry cleaner, desks?” That is the wrong order. The right way is you love dry cleaning or software or chips and because of that love of and knowledge of that industry, you are going to change that industry. If you want to be an artist, be an artist! But don’t do it because you read in BusinessWeek that the market for art is getting bigger. Quite frankly, you might not have the talent.

So the best way to use market trend research in business design is to see it in two parts:

Part One: Do the work in chapter 3 to figure out the kinds of topics, ideas, people, and things that mesmerize, fascinate, light up, wake up, and energize your creative soul.

Part Two: Drink up as much information as you can about what is happening in the market and use these trends as creative springboards to “change the industry,” as Guy says, or to capture a market segment that will be perfectly served by you.

Here are some examples of trends from the issue that got wheels in my mind turning.

Green Products

I know, I know, this is nothing new based on all the news coverage lately, but I distinctly remember being a passionate recycler and tree hugger in college back in 1984 and found that other than among my granola-head friends and me in Northern California, these ideas were definitely not mainstream. There is an opportunity now like no other . . . where market conditions, media awareness, and political strength are really allied behind being green. For those of you who have been hiding your leafy nature behind a cube wall all these years, the timing could be great to really move forward some great planet-saving ideas.

Creative Funerals

I was both fascinated and creeped out by this trend, explained this way: “Baby boomers who demand that things be done ‘their way,’ coupled with innovative entrepreneurs and a trend toward cremations are shaking life into this lifeless industry. So bid farewell to the traditional church funeral and say hello to memorial services held on golf courses, ashes scattered by skydiving and remains launched into outer space.”

Minority Kids

“This segment is hotter than ever now that 45 percent of U.S. children under age 5 are part of a racial minority—Asian American, black or Hispanic. Children in these rapidly growing communities will need every sort of product imaginable—and winning their brand loyalty today is critical.” I find this trend personally fascinating since I have such a vast web of diverse friends and relatives. There are so many interesting ways to approach and segment these markets, and to address problems in a culturally appropriate manner. Mainstream media tends to classify “minority” groups as a big segment . . . but if you are from a minority background or have spent any time with people who are, you know that any broad-sweep category of “Asian” or “Latino” or “Native American” has tremendously complex and nuanced elements to each market.

These are just a handful of examples of interesting opportunities arising due to social, technological, and demographic changes.

Vague to Concrete

Hopefully by now your mind is percolating some interesting business ideas. When you get a few that feel exciting and seem really interesting, it is time to define them more specifically.

Here are five steps to help you do this:

Step 1: Wrap Your Arms Around the Field

Let’s say you want to start a graphic design business but don’t know where to begin. First, ask “How is graphic design packaged and sold?” You will most likely find out that it can be used in high-end advertising; product design and packaging; brand identity like logos, book illustration, T-shirt design, Web-based graphic design, etc. You can start your general search by Googling the term “graphic design” or looking up the Wikipedia definition, or by looking for some large international organizations that support graphic designers to see how they segment their user base.

Then you want to look at what kinds of graphic design businesses exist. These can be everything from a one-person side business in someone’s living room to large, multinational firms that handle huge contracts.

Step 2: Choose a Small Neighborhood to Explore

You decide that you’d like to work in the area of visual identity and branding for small to medium-size firms. You can focus your learning in this area by asking the following questions:

• Which kinds of services do firms like these offer?

• How are they packaged?

• What’s the process they use to move clients from no visual identity to a complete set of logos and templates and graphic standards?

• What do small and medium-sized businesses look for in graphic design firms?

• What problems do these firms hope to solve with good visual identity?

There can be some specific questions like how many projects can one graphic designer take on at a time, and which tools or technology are used to create the designs. The more you learn about these firms, the more questions you’ll come up with.

Step 3: Identify the Hotshots Doing This Work Successfully

By “hotshots” I don’t mean arrogant people who will treat you like a gadfly in their backside, I mean people whom you personally admire, who have compatible values and interests, and whom you would consider worthy mentors or competitors. If you can set up informational interviews, you can ask the following kinds of questions:

• Of all the skills that you use on a daily basis, which are the most important?

• How do you continually produce great work?

• What advice would you give to someone like me who’s starting out new in your field?

• How do you get new clients?

• What do you consider “subpar” work?

• What is the current market like for (insert field of interest)?

Pay close attention to both the technical expertise required to run a successful graphic design business in this area and the business expertise required to run a successful business.

Step 4: Carve a Niche

This is where you’ll reflect on the particular kind of work you want to do with a particular group of people you want to work with. For example, you want to do logo design for import-export companies with fewer than ten employees that do business in Asia. Or you want to design Web interfaces for medium-size sports marketing companies that cater to fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds. Or you want to offer blog banner design services to life coaches and therapists. I will give some more guidance on how to narrow your market in chapter 9.

Step 5: Shake a Tree

This is where you create a marketing plan, call up potential clients, look for overflow work from your respected mentor, or do whatever you can to get some work flowing your way. By this stage, you should be serious enough about your business idea to at least get some side work started, if not having the infrastructure in place to go into business for yourself full-time. (“Shake a tree,” for those who might be confused by the term, is my quaint metaphor for sales and marketing, since sometimes it feels like you have to “shake the tree” a little to get the juicy pear to fall down. Do not confuse it with the dreaded corporate term “low-hanging fruit.”)

I encourage you to walk through each of these steps as you’re considering a totally new field of work so that you make sure you have a good understanding of the overall field before you jump into something specific. Also know that if you get started in a specific field and find that it wasn’t what you thought it would be, congratulations. You can now check it off your list of things to try and go back to the drawing board of business ideas. Entrepreneurship is really about experimentation, so have fun with the learning process. Chapter 11 will give you some suggestions for testing your business ideas before committing to a large decision like quitting your job.

I’m Just Not That into You

All this thinking about and testing business ideas may make you feel a little overwhelmed with the sheer variety of options. Some of you may have been working on business ideas for many years. If you don’t start to pare down some ideas, you may get stuck trying to develop too many businesses and grind your progress to a halt.

I got inspired to think about the paring of ideas by the pop-culture hit book He’s Just Not That Into You: The No Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys. It aimed to help single women see the brutal truth that when a suitor didn’t call, was afraid to commit, or wasn’t emotionally engaged, it just meant one thing: he wasn’t “into” you. For centuries, women had been making up excuses for lukewarm romantic advances, thinking that either “he just wasn’t ready” or “he would come around with time, patience and saintly understanding.” Hogwash, said authors Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. Behavior speaks for itself, and the more time and energy you spend waiting around on a lukewarm romantic prospect, the less time and energy you have for a quality one.

This theory nicely relates to career and entrepreneurial pursuits.

How many “lukewarm” projects and endeavors have you been pursuing as if they were the ideal marriage candidates when the emotional signs all point to a temporary fling with someone of questionable character?

Here is how you can start to determine if your former “ burning flame” is now a “smoldering ember”:

• When you sit down to work on it, you don’t feel much of anything. Sometimes projects that have great value and purpose elicit tremendous emotion. This is because they are so meaningful that they bring up huge fears and anxieties. Lukewarm passions, on the other hand, often bring up the emotions of detachment and apathy.

• You find yourself justifying its value or purpose, but don’t really believe your own reasons. If your justifications are peppered with words and phrases like “should,” “makes sense,” “is the responsible thing to do,” and “I can’t back out now,” this is a sign that you are fooling yourself. A quick test is to listen to your answer to the question “How do I really feel?” Trust the answer.

• When you step back to view it in the context of your long-term strategies or goals, it either doesn’t fit or has a minor role. We spend a lot of time on “ busy work ” that makes us feel like we are doing the right things in our careers or business, but often is quite unimportant. Develop some rigorous criteria for what you will work on, based on being true to your essential self. Look to work on things that will leapfrog you to new creative and personal heights, not just plug along like an old, tired, and dutiful steam engine.

I am convinced that the truly successful people, those who enjoy every part of their life and have financial stability, are very picky about where they spend their time and energy. So prune relentlessly.

Lessons in Turning Your Business into a Passion: Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty

Mignon Fogarty started her podcast on a whim, wanting to share tips and tricks about her passion for grammar. In a short time, this home-grown effort turned into a full-time business, eventually placing Grammar Girl in the top twenty podcasts on iTunes. As of this printing, she has an average of 800,000 listeners, and she expanded her single podcast into a podcast network and a book, Quick & Dirty Tips.

What surprised you about the reality of turning your passion (grammar) into a full-time business?

I wouldn’t say it surprised me, but the hardest part of turning my passion into a full-time business is how little time I spend doing grammar-related activities and how much time I spend on general business administration. Some days I think to myself, “This is why musicians’ second albums are never as good as their first.” When you’re doing the groundwork to get started, you get to spend a lot of your time on the parts you love; but once you’re more successful—successful enough for it to be a real business—all this other stuff takes a huge chunk of your time. For musicians, I imagine it’s touring that takes their time away from writing a great second album. For me, it’s bookkeeping and managing people.

What advice would you give to someone who is pondering turning a natural passion into a business?

Before you start, it’s important to let go of your passion enough to objectively determine whether there’s a business model that will support your idea. Your passion will help sustain you when times get tough, but it won’t miraculously create a business where one doesn’t exist. Make a detailed financial plan, and gather as much information as you can about your market, your competition, and businesses in other areas that might be a model for what you are trying to do.

It’s really important to understand how much money you need to live, and a lot of people don’t have a good handle on that number. Figure out not only how much you need to survive, but how much you need to live a decent life and save for the future. It will almost certainly be necessary to make sacrifices in the beginning, but two years after you’ve launched, you should be making a decent living. No matter how passionate you are about your business, in the end it’s still a job, and it’s almost always more rewarding to spend your free time with your family and friends than to be slaving away for eighty hours a week just to make ends meet.

Probably the easiest way to turn your passion into your job is to do it gradually. If possible, don’t quit your day job before launching your business. If you want to podcast, start with a monthly show or a very short weekly show and see how it goes. If you want to open a yogurt shop, take a part-time job in someone else’s yogurt shop and learn everything you can about how to run the business. If you’re passionate enough, it won’t even feel like work. In many cases, if your idea is a good one, you’ll eventually become so busy or successful in your part-time endeavor that it will be clear when you should quit your day job and become a full-time independent business owner.

Is Your Idea the Next YouTube or a Jump to Conclusions Mat?

For those of you not familiar with the sometimes vulgar but hilarious 1999 movie Office Space, a parody of cubicle life, let me explain the term “Jump to Conclusions Mat.” One character named Tom Smykowski thinks he has the next million-dollar idea to follow the Pet Rock. Here is an excerpt from the scene where Tom shares his idea with coworkers:

Michael Bolton: You think the pet rock was a really great idea?

Tom Smykowski: Sure it was. The guy made a million dollars. You know, I had an idea like that once. A long time ago.

Peter Gibbons: Really, what was it, Tom?

Tom Smykowski: It was a “Jump to Conclusions” mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor . . . and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.

Michael Bolton: That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life, Tom.

Samir Nagheenanajar (shaking his head): Yes. This is horrible. This idea.

Your friends and coworkers may not be quite as direct as Tom Smykowski’s and will let you run away with a really terrible idea out of fear of hurting your feelings. While no one has an airtight formula for discerning whether a business idea is good or not, here are my initial thoughts on determining if your idea might be feasible or just an expensive hobby.

Signs Your Business Idea Might Be Feasible

1. You have a unique approach, skill, or capability that will allow you to serve this need better than anyone else.

2. You have the capacity, resources, and support for getting the business launched in a timely manner.

3. You have chosen an area in which you provide value beyond cheap production price.

4. Your target market not only is interested in what you have to offer, but has the money to pay for what you are selling.

5. You create a prototype and it generates buzz and interest.

6. You have a firm grasp of the financial metrics of your business.

7. If you require others to build your business, you have a network of smart and capable people who would like to work with you.

8. You welcome any and all feedback about your business idea, and use it to continually improve your product or service.

Signs Your Business Idea Might Be an Expensive Hobby

1. You “feel” there is a market based on hunches and a few conversations or, deep in your gut, you are not sure this is a good idea, but you are too proud to admit it.

2. When you discuss the idea with people who would be the target market for your product or service, they are either overcome by an embarrassing silence or are direct like Michael Bolton from Office Space and say “That is the worst business idea I have ever heard.”

3. When someone challenges your idea, you get very defensive and immediately change the subject, thinking “They obviously are not smart enough to get my brilliant idea.”

4. You spend hours, weeks, months, and sometimes years working on the idea without ever bringing it in front of either a potential investor or customer.

5. You are unable to describe the true need this product or service might fill in the eyes of your customer.

6. You have never undertaken a venture like this before and you don’t surround yourself with people who have.

7. Your personal network is very limited, and you don’t think anyone you may have worked with in the past would be willing to join you in your venture.

8. You view your venture as “all or nothing” and will only consider launching one business idea, regardless of feedback from others.

These lists are just some general guidelines and in no way predict if your business idea will actually be successful or not. I am sure that there is someone who met all the criteria for a “feasible” idea and went broke, and there is someone with indications pointing to an “expensive hobby” who is now sipping champagne on the beach in Monaco after selling their company to Google.

Life is like that.

You Are Responsible for Your Own Experience

FROM HUGH MACLEOD, “HOW TO BE CREATIVE ”

Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

Every creative person is looking for “The Big Idea.” You know, the one that is going to catapult them out from the murky depths of obscurity and on to the highest planes of incandescent lucidity.

The one that’s all love-at-first-sight with the Zeitgeist.

The one that’s going to get them invited to all the right parties, metaphorical or otherwise.

So naturally you ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle and doubt, how do you know whether or not it is “The One”?

Answer: You don’t.

There’s no glorious swelling of existential triumph.

That’s not what happens.

All you get is this rather kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I’m going to do it anyway.”

And you go do it anyway.

Second-rate ideas like glorious swellings far more. Keeps them alive longer.

(To read more of Hugh’s creative ideas, go to www.gapingvoid.com.)²

Market, Management, Resources, and Competitive Edge

Entrepreneur and business plan expert Tim Berry, who founded a successful software company and who acts as adviser to countless others, says this about what will turn a good idea into a real business:

The quick answer is market, management, resources, and competitive edge. Beyond that, what I’m looking for is whether or not the idea is an opportunity. Ideas are a dime a dozen, no real value. An opportunity, however, is an idea coupled with market potential, management, and resources to get it done. There’s a good potential return, a decent risk-return relationship, credibility, a team to implement, and a business to be built.

What’s an opportunity for one person or group or company isn’t necessarily an opportunity for the next person or group or company. General Motors can do things you and I can’t. We can do things they can’t. I look for the match between the scale of it and the resources to be applied.³

This is why I think it is important to spend some time in the business planning process, which we will do in detail in chapter 9. Don’t worry, you don’t have to create a gigantic Excel document or 120-slide PowerPoint presentation; you will just have the opportunity to assess your market, management, resources, and competitive edge. It will be fun, I promise.

Don’t Trip If You Don’t Pick the Perfect Idea the First Time. Really. Don’t.

A huge fear of aspiring entrepreneurs is that you will quit your job, go out and work for yourself, fail miserably, and have to slink back to the company you loathe with a huge “L for Loser” patch sewn on your sweater.

This is absurd and unrealistic.

If you remember the “conscious competence” learning model from chapter 4, it is impossible to go from “unconscious incompetence” (blissfully ignorant) to “unconscious competence” (gracefully skilled) without a lot of experience, mistakes, testing, and trying.

You can never guarantee the success of a new venture. There are too many factors out of your control, and too many new things to learn. So just do your very best to learn, plan, and test your ideas, and live by the following guidelines:

• Don’t risk more than you have to.

• Learn from your mistakes.

• Build, don’t burn bridges.

• Don’t sweat it if you have to go back and be your own venture capitalist for a while.