Launching This Biz: Stupid Naivete and the Chance for Glory

I’ve been tossing around this business idea in various forms for about a year now. And it dawned on me a few weeks ago that, in the 12 months since I first conceived it, that’s all I’ve done: toss it around. Sure, I’ve developed a web presence, honed my writing skills a bit, and refined it a little. But ultimately, I’m only a few baby steps beyond where I was the first day. I’m ready to do something about it.

I’m not sure my business idea is going to make any money at all. I don’t even know if I’m going to find a single client. I kind of have a hunch that my target market has too shoestring-ish of an operating budget to even consider paying for the service I am developing. There is at least one sizeable, previously established organization in my area that does pretty much the same thing I want to do, and they do it for free as a nonprofit. And with the necessarily low pricing structure I think I would initially need, I certainly will not be quitting my day job on that profit anytime soon.

So why am I even investigating what could be a flop of a small business idea? Because I think it would be a blast. It could mean a lot of fun for a lot of people, and some great experience and exposure in a field I one day want to call my career. It could attract customers for businesses I have been dealing with for years. It could eventually mean a location independent lifestyle. It could be amazing.

My point is this: I may have a million reasons why something won’t work. But until I actually try it, I won’t know for sure. And it will eat at me if I don’t know. So what the heck.
Here’s to stupid naiveté and the chance for glory.

Settlers of Catan is a Better Business Game Than Monopoly

Every time I hear someone talking about Monopoly being a game that “teaches you about business,” I can’t help but disagree. While Monopoly a great game with a long history and an instantly recognizable brand, I think Settlers of Catan is a more accurate board game representation of what running a business is really like.

For those of you unfamiliar with Settlers, you can read about it here. While they are both a lot of fun, I tend to prefer Settlers, and here is the reason:

Settlers of Catan has a reduced, more realistic degree of randomness.

In a game of Monopoly, everything you have built can be completely destroyed just by accidentally landing on someone’s triple-hotel properties twice in a row (or even once, in some cases). While there is a fair amount of strategy involved in Monopoly, you accept from the beginning that there is a possibility you can be completely wiped out in 2-3 turns, and you might not be able to do a single thing about it.

While die-rolling is present in Settlers to give it a little uncertainty, the ultimate result of the game is usually not completely changed by a player having a couple of bad turns. You develop a general strategy at the beginning of the game, and hone it to a specific, long-term plan as you gain more resources and make more deals. At most, a few unfortunate rolls will force you to reevaluate your resource-trading strategy in order to make sure you maintain your success.

Monopoly is not a business game. It is a gambling game. This is fun every once in awhile, but it’s just a little grating to hear Monopoly so widely heralded as the “game that teaches you about business.”

I know Settlers of Catan has not proliferated anywhere close to the extent that a game like Monopoly has, but if you ever get the chance, play it with some friends, or on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s a blast, and quite frankly, I think it’s far more realistic from a business point of view.
I’d love to hear the thoughts of those of you who’ve played both. Do you think Monopoly’s higher stakes more accurately portray your own experiences in the business world?

3 Big Mistakes Businesses Make With Their Blogs

I can’t tell you how many businesses’ blogs are out there that were clearly only started because some “social media guru” told the owner, “Your company needs a blog! NOW!” While many types of businesses can benefit greatly from participating extensively in the blogging arena, lots of them get it completely wrong. Jeremy Griffin of Ignite Social Media even recently wrote a blog post giving detailing situations when social media is not the answer.
Here are some signs of doomed blogging strategies:
1. The bloggers do not respond to comments: Comments are there for a reason. They facilitate conversation and encourage discussion about the topics on the blog. They are a way for readers to give feedback, share opinions, and communicate with the blogger and other readers. Now, I understand that many blogs get a ridiculous amount of traffic and comments, so I don’t expect every single idiotic hater’s diatribe to be dignified with recognition. But if you are not responding to at least some of the relevant comments on your blog posts, readers (i.e. customers) will soon realize you really don’t give a damn what they have to say, and will go elsewhere.
2. The blog is purely an advertisement: This is the big offender. If your business has a “blog,” yet all it contains is an endless stream of updates about your website and testimonials about your products, potential customers will call “BS!” on you in a second. Successful blogs provide valuable, relevant content, and do it in a targeted, engaging way. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it is absolutely okay to occasionally tie yourself, your business, or your products into the bigger issues in your posts. But constantly talking about yourself and nothing else drives people away from your brand.
3. There is no visible person behind the blog: People want to communicate with other people, not companies. If you do not have regular bloggers with photos, short bios, and some actually personality, your readership and customer response will be lackluster.

What other bad blogging strategies have you seen? Is your company currently using any of these on their blog?

Is Your Weird, Stupid Business Idea Really That Weird and Stupid?

Do you have a fascinating business or project idea that you have never tried because you just know there is no audience for it? So many interesting ideas get squelched because their creators discount their value before they ever test them out. But with a little courage and curiosity, you might just find they have more value than you think.

Not too long ago, I tried a little experiment to test my writing skills and also my ability to think outside the box. I started a blog called GoblinStop.com, which married topics related to social media (one of my newer interests) with Dungeons and Dragons (something I’ve been doing for most of the last half of my life). This was purely meant to be an amusing diversion, as I thought there surely would be no audience for such an odd combination of subjects.

After the first blog entry gained me exactly 3 page hits, probably all of which were accidental, I started writing notes in Facebook with sample text and links to the site, and I even started adding images to each. I had also begun playing around with Reddit some recently, so in addition to forwarding others’ blog posts and articles, I placed links to my own entries on the RPG board. I even used Twitter a couple of times to link to posts. Within a month, I was consistently getting between 150 and 200 hits a day, and I even got offered a full time blogging job for a copy-writing company (unfortunately they couldn’t work with me quite enough on my school schedule, so I had to decline). I know this is small potatoes for many bloggers, but it impressed me that such a niche topic would gain that much of a following in just a month.

That little taste of success has caused me to seriously reconsider GoblinStop.com’s viability, and I have taken a little hiatus from the site to regroup and consider if and how I might be able to really turn this into something. It still might be a stretch, but now I have tested the waters a bit and I know there is a bigger audience than I thought.

And that’s what this post is all about. We tend to beat our own ideas to death before we ever test them out, coming up with seemingly endless reasons why they wouldn’t work. I’ll bet you can think of 50 reasons why your business idea would fail miserably, but how will you ever know unless you try it, even just on a small scale? The truth is that you don’t know if a market exists for your ideas until you share them with some people.

What business ideas have you had that seem kind of crazy/weird? What advice would you offer someone who is tiptoeing to the edge, getting ready to take the entrepreneurial plunge?

Do You Want to Believe?

What is it that you want to do? Whatever it is, you have to want it. Do you have grandiose hopes to change the world? Or maybe you just have a small goal you hope to achieve by 2 weeks from now. No matter what your goals are, and no matter what plans you put in motion to realize them, you have to believe with every fiber of your being that they are possible.

We often confuse dreams with goals. A dream is something that you wish would happen. A goal is an achievement that you are actively working toward. There is a lot of great writing out there about goal-setting (this post by Silvana Avinami is a fantastic example), but you aren’t going to achieve anything unless you honestly know deep within your soul that you can make it happen.
Here are some ways to determine how convinced you are of the viability of your goals:

· Write about it: It is easy for all of our thoughts to get jumbled into one big ball of Yes-I-Can attitude before you have really considered the ins and outs of your plan. If you simply start free-writing your thoughts and feelings about it, you will start to see some recurring themes that will tell you if some things may need to be addressed before you charge in full steam ahead.
· Talk to a friend: A close friend will tell you if your plans are viable or not. They know you well and can tell how much you really believe in what you intend to do. If you are being unreasonable, or are unprepared, you will certainly hear about it.
· Research, research, research: Find personal accounts from people who have set the same or similar goals and achieved them. How did they do it? What sacrifices and special plans did they have to make? What obstacles did they run into? How long did it take them? After finding all this out, measure your own tolerances and time tables against their experiences. Is it something you still want to put the effort into?

This post is not to discourage anyone from going after something they want. Just make sure that you really do want it before you put the blood, sweat, and tears into it. Because if you don’t want it, you won’t get it. Do you believe?