Start my own business

So I’ve started a blog about marketing and getting your business off the ground (which is where I am myself).

Basically, my blog’s target audience is you!

Check it out

I made the decision a while ago to start my own business, and I’m still doing it. I’ve made quite a bit of progress and run across quite a few obstacles and speed bumps. But I’m still surviving. (And enjoying it at times!)

Probably the hardest thing for me to deal with is how lonely I feel. While a lot of people my age are out partying it up, I’m at home building up infrastructure, getting together financial documents, and drafting up contracts. I average about 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night now.

This diagram from indexed kind of depresses me. :)

But soon I’ll have something set up that I can say I’ve built from nothing. It feels really empowering. All of this is in anticipation of that moment where I can declare, “I have something worth marketing!” and mean it. All of this is in anticipation of that moment where I can tell everyone all about it on my own web site, to new customers.

Things have been busy since I’ve adopted this goal.

I met with an accountant last week and have a financial plan in motion for 2007. Basically, I will be focusing on buying equipment and services I need. (Keep your fingers crossed that I can still afford a MacBook Pro after paying for professional services!) In terms of the bottom line, I need to break even. I also need to get good at keeping a paper trail of all of my income and expenses. I’m sure this is “old hat” for everyone, but it’s new to me!

I meet with a lawyer Thursday. We’ll be working on writing a contract for the type of agreement I’ll be making with my clients. This is good for me because it pressures me to define my business model and the terms I’ll need to make with my clients.

I’ve basically been polling everyone I know with my idea over the past couple weeks. The best feedback has been from my current client, but I’ve received much positive feedback.

This is great, but when all is said and done, I can’t wait to get back to building my product!

I was handed a decent check Saturday for a new project I’ll be taking on for a small business. Although I’ll feel stretched very thin over the next few weeks, it’s exciting to actually be earning money for my work.

In other related news, I am dragging ass on actually getting an agreement together with another prospective client. I think it all stems from my lack of desire to handle that part of the deal. I’m very good at doing the work, but I have a ton of room to grow in making business deals.

What’s worse, the deal would put me into the position where I’d be like a bank. I have no desire to do this sort of work. I either need to find someone that wants to do that kind of work, or I need to find a bank that wants to do that kind of work for me.

I love what Michael Arrington says about small being the new big :

Just find an entrenched business. Then eat their lunch as they watch, paralyzed.

Good advice if you’re looking for ideas.

“Success is a choice, not a coin flip. You succeed by deciding what you want, knowing why you want it, and committing to it.”

Good quote by Steve Pavlina

It really is kind of dumb to trade your time for wages. Why make your living at someone else’s discretion? Is your job really “safe” when said safety is someone else’s decision?

I’ve been toying around with a business idea. I want to build some web sites that make some money, and I want to stop living in cubicles, trying to fix other people’s messes.

I’ve found that I’m best suited to work with small business owners, and there is a large demand for my services from this demographic. The biggest problem with small business owners is that they don’t have the capital to spend thousands of dollars on a web site, and my work is worth thousands of dollars. So how can I get paid?

I’m considering starting a round of ventures where I become an actual business partner with small business owners and help them build web sites that make money. I then take a percentage of the profits from the sites. If the sites don’t make money, then I don’t make money either. My incentive to kick ass is the profit margin itself.

The trade-off these partners would face is that in the long-run, sharing profits is a bit costlier than paying a large sum of money up-front. But I’m certain some businesses would rather have a “bigger pie” to share with me than a “bigger piece of the pie” all to themselves. (In the second scenario, the business doesn’t benefit from having a kick-ass web site and therefore has the same sized pie they’re used to having. Mmm, pie.)

Is it easy? No. In effect, I’d be taking a risk along with the business owners. But the biggest risk would be my time (at this moment) and maybe my reputation. Also, I’d have to become savvy at making business negotiations in order for both parties to be satisfied with the deal.

What’s great is the opportunity to “cherry pick” the best opportunities. I get tired of building web sites for crap that no one cares about. I tend to stop caring myself. Now I’d have the opportunity to only choose jobs that I care about and then reap the rewards.

So here’s the bottom line. Benefits of my services: no money up front, my dedication to your site’s profit margin over the long run, and my interest in your mission. Risk of my services: sharing a fair share of your profits with me (which only becomes questionable when your site starts making tons of money in the first place… a good problem to have!).

Am I missing something here where this isn’t a good idea? Please help me think it through and help me rip it to pieces. Criticism is definitely welcomed. But please assume that I’m willing to work hard.