A good hour of any work day of mine is spent quiet, away from everything. Usually this is a walk. I do not take my phone. This time away is super productive to me. That’s why I include it as part of my “work” day. I usually don’t go out with any sort of agenda. It’s just time for myself. But inevitably as I walk and enjoy being outside, the sky, the trees, the...
In a lot of ways, creating a business is much like being an artist. There is no one way to create art, and certainly no one way to create a business. You can even fail at it, junk it, try again. Develop your craft and get better each time. For me personally, I’ve always followed my own path for how I wanted to do it. Most of the time I made it up as I went along. Sometimes it worked...
There’s a lot of things I’ve just done without realizing it. I’ve operated naturally on my own, but now I have a word for it since it’s something that is spoken more in today’s world: Being a Solopreneur. For the last 20+ years, I’ve operated all my businesses out of my home desk. That desk used to be in my living room, now I have a dedicated bedroom office...
A lot of people dream of taking a hobby of theirs into a full-time business. But should they? I would consider this long and hard. One of my hobbies is collecting pinball machines. I’ve built an arcade in the basement of my home. I get a lot of pleasure from it, both from the experience today with it, and also how it goes back to when I was young and the memories I have of being in arcades...
I’m not sure how many times I’ve come across new entrepreneurs who get caught up in busy work, instead of doing what it is they are here to do. That is generally one of my first bits of advice – stop the busy work. Start generating money, the quicker the better. What is busy work? Websites, social media, promo pieces, writing a book for promotion, head shots, business cards and...
I remember years ago coming across some “diploma mill” that would give you a degree or something for little effort (and a lot of money), and one of the things they’d give you a lot of credit for was “life experience”. At the time I thought that was the biggest joke in the world. Now, in that specific case, it was a joke because they were just using it as a way to...
When working alone as a solopreneur, one of the key components you will have to figure out is how to automate as much as possible. Otherwise it turns into a real grind, and you are spending way too long doing manual things. Automation can take many forms and you’ll build them specific to your business needs. Here are some that I’ve personally done, to give you some ideas. 1) An email...
Lifestyle Business is a term I’ve learned recently that would apply to pretty much everything I’ve ever done. I didn’t build businesses to grow exponentially, or to be sold off, or to plan for exits. I built businesses to provide for me the lifestyle I wanted. As long as it was doing that, then it was a success. It’s also a whole lot more stress free. In general Lifestyle...
There’s a great business metaphor featured in the book Blue Oceans Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. The gist is: Find “Blue Oceans” to operate a business in, free from competition. Avoid the bloody “Red Oceans” where everyone is fighting it out. As you develop business ideas and markets, keep this in mind. The best and easiest thing to do is: don’t...
When speaking to people today starting out their businesses, one of the pieces of advice I will generally give is that this is going to take longer than you thought or hoped for. My rule of thumb, based on my own experiences, is that you better be committed to seeing it through for 3 years. Three years to figure out your market, grow the business to something that can support your goal of success...
This was originally posted at my DJ site, anabolic-frolic.com. StealthSeminar, a webinar software company I co-founded in 2010, just celebrated its users generating over 1 billion dollars (USD) using the platform. What’s more amazing is that the software that I created and has been used by over 20 million people owes its existence to my DJ past, and specifically technology I created to host the...
One thing that has saved my ass over and over again is whenever I’ve had a business idea I’ve always worked it on “on paper” first. I usually use Excel. Back in my music promoting days, every event I ever planned I calculated in Excel. I still have all my old files and they are interesting to review. There is no “rocket science” about them, but they track all...
Young entrepreneurs have an advantage you lose later in life – time. I can clearly remember being around 20 years old, and making a decision to pursue my music passion, knowing I could spend a couple of years on it and see where it goes. I ended up sleeping on the floor of my small office for 2 years, poor, trying to make something happen. A lifetime later, I simply couldn’t make that...