RufusEvison

I have now catalogued upwards of 800 of my books. I am still on the easy half of the books, but even then default values creep in so that the categorisation amy not be accurate. I do not feel this matters as long as the correct book is listed. If it comes to an insurance claim that is what matters and anything else is icing on the cake.

Rufus Evison

When I moved to London last year I lost a large amount of books in the move. I do not know which ones. I am aware of the loss because when I go to read an old favourite it is missing, series of books have holes in the middle, and large areas of books I used to have are practically empty. I do not know how many books have gone. I keep revising my estimate upwards, so it is certainly in the hundreds, but may be in the thousands. Some of the books that are missing are actually worth something. Something needs to be done to make sure this does not happen again.

Cataloguing will not necessarily solve the problem but would make an insurance claim easier. It may also help me to re-buy the ones I want of those that are missing. If things go in the future it might mean it is easier to spot a gap in time to get the books back. Over all it seems a good idea.

I have somewhere between 2000 and 4000 books left at a very rough estimate. I have a barcode scanner and some book cataloguing software (www.collectorz.com). I have all my books arranged roughly by category (General fiction, science fiction, cartoons, biography, reference, foreign language,) and alphabetically by author within their categories. I started to catalogue books in the study in a frenzy of activity over Christmas after I was given the scanner.

Now I am back at work I do not really have time to do this, but it needs to be done. More than half my books do not scan in successfully, so there is going to be a large amount of manual work in cataloguing, which is why this is worth having as a 43t goal. Once I have a goal on here I work towards it without losing track, so here it is.

Rufus Evison

With encouragement from Emma Drew I am pushing ahead with writing a set of handbooks for start up entrepreneurs. This would consist of four or five small handbooks which could later be bundled together into one compendium volume.

The expected titles will be along the following lines:

Seeds of an idea

A seed contains the full definition of a plant even though the environment determines exactly how it grows. A company without a similar depth of vision will wither and die.

Growing pains

Companies grow away from the values that made them successful in the first place. Why does this happen and how can you stop it? There are issues around size, culture and communications. Each level of delegation has its own effects. If you understand potential problems you are better placed to avoid them.

Getting funding

You need to decide whether you really need money and if so what is the best way to get it. For example if a VC gives you funding they will want a third of your company, but they will never admit that is the way it works. If you are going for VC money you need to know how to maximise the money in and minimise the equity out. I will talk about how to decide if you need money and what options are available.

Cutting loose

The difference between a lifestyle company and a scalable business is whether it can think for itself. If you want business success you need to learn to make yourself redundant.

Marketing Measurement

The CMO is said to have the shortest life expectancy on the board. This is because they generally do not have the figures to back up their decisions. There are a variety of hidden problems when measuring marketing. Generally a scientific approach is not taken and huge amounts of money are spent without full justification. If you want to market efficiently then measurement is key.

Currently I have only written around 15,000 words but I will try to have a crack at spending at least some time on this over the holiday.

Rufus Evison