I know it has been a while since I posted last, but business has kept me busy! Which is a good thing of course, but it does make it tough to keep up on some of my side activities like this blog. My NFL predictions and NFL rankings website is going really well, and all the work I have put into marketing it is starting to pay off. I have also been helping to promote a great little site on relationship humor and gift ideas, which has been fun and given me the opportunity to learn about different types of business. I have to say thanks to all the info I have learned from others on Digg, Squidoo, Technorati, Wordpress, Twitter, and Blog Central. They have been a huge help. If you are looking for more ways to promote your business, I suggest you take a look at all of the above. You won't regret it!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Early business decision making
I don’t want to spend much time on how I came to the decision of starting my own business. Instead I want to focus on the decisions made since then. The focus for today’s blog will be on a very early and important choice I had to make. Would I build the business entirely on my own, or would I look to bring in a partner, possibly even hire contract workers or employees to help me accomplish the work? In order to properly answer that question, I broke down the business as such:
- Want/Desire: Describes what my ideal business vision was.
- I really want as much control as I can hang on to, at least for the first few months to a year after startup. I have a vision of using some of the talent in my close friends down the road.
- Bringing in a partner right away would ease things for me a lot, but something about delegating responsibility to someone else doesn’t sit well with me.
- I definitely have a ‘Do It Yourself’ mentality.
- Budget: Covers how much money I would have to fund the start up and operating costs of the business.
- Poor credit in my past doesn’t leave me with many options for getting money through a business loan, so I only have my own money plus what I can get from private investors.
- Friends and family have been generous in offering some help, but none of them are in a position to be able to fund an expensive start up.
- Finding a partner that can bring more assets to the company would be a big help with start up costs, and help ease my burden on time. It would also mean splitting profits down the road.
- Capability: Rated how much experience I had with each aspect of the business, and how well I thought I could learn new material needed to build a proficient company.
- The core idea of the business was sports and statistics, both of which I love and have plenty of knowledge on. My work here was something akin to a painting, and I'm not going to have any one helping me make brush strokes or choosing colors.
- Web Design and Programming. I really enjoy programming, although I haven’t been working in that field for a few years now. I feel behind the curve, but with some extra effort and discipline I can learn everything I will need to build a well designed and functional website.
- Marketing. This is somewhat of a daunting aspect of the business for me. I have very little experience, and although I can make a convincing argument, I’m not a natural born sales person.
- Writing and content. In high school and college, writing was interesting to me, but I never put in the effort to become good at it. This will be an opportunity to improve my grammar and vocabulary, along with writing technique. The question I keep asking myself is can I improve soon enough. Poor writing and content would be a quick killer to the business.
This is how I ended up summarizing my results.
1. Want/Desire: Strongly towards build the business on my own.
2. Budget: Mildly towards build the business on my own.
3. Capabilities: Mildly towards find a partner or contract workers.
With two out of the three categories going for building the business myself, and the lone one being only mildly against it, I choose to build the business completely on my own. The business idea began back in November of ’07, and I think I made this decision by New Years ’08. It’s a little early to concretely say how it has worked out, since September will mark the start of the first football season for Inside the Numbers. I can say that I have learned more than I thought I even needed to back in January, and that nothing has happened that would make me regret going at it on my own.
Friday, July 25, 2008
We'll start with some passion and curiosity
