Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Creating a job that satisfies...

While many job applicants are looking for the employment opportunity that will "light their fire", there are a growing number of entrepreneurs who have discovered that they can "light their own fire."

First of all, have you ever written down what it is that really "turns you on" in terms of work? We are talking professional opportunity here, economic opportunity, a chance to serve mankind and make a few bucks while you do that.

If you really take a hard look at this area, you might just discover what it is that reeeally gives you job satisfaction! It might just change your life.

The biggest trap you can fall into is to take a job only because it pays well. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions that weren't thought out very well. That high-paying job may involve dealing in products and services that will suck you down the rathole of compromising your integrity. If you are dealing with good people and delivering ethical products and services, the job satisfaction you get will mean as much as the money you make.

I wrote about ideal jobs some time ago and it generated interesting responses from some very talented people. What I didn't consider at the time was that it is possible to create a ideal job opportunity on your own! An ideal job is one which offers you a chance of living a more meaningful life and supporting your family at the same time.

In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to create several rewarding job opportunities. In the process, I have found some elements that were common to all of them.

These are some of the things that make a job satisfying for me. Your list will differ, I am sure.

Delivering a product or service that customers are excited about

Creating a product or service where aesthetic considerations are as important as strictly functional considerations.

Having a chance to develop the business from scratch

Breaking new ground in terms of developing a business model or a new approach to marketing and selling products or services

Creating a product or service that requires high quality workmanship or a high level of professional skill or both.

Working with highly motivated people in an environment with a minimum of hidden agendas

Having/creating a working environment with a rational mechanism for engaging with and disengaging from business relationships.

Working out a series of products and services that people want and are willing to pay for.

I am sure that you, with a few moments reflection, can add many more items to this list to describe an ideal job situation for yourself.

In the near future when many more of us will be self-employed, a technique for analyzing and developing satisfying work will become a universally necessity.

Perhaps you could start developing your list now, if you haven't already done so.

Starting a small town business - part 2 in the series

One of the most positive things about starting a business in a small town is that word-of-mouth advertising is like "being on Oprah" anywhere else in the world.

Within days of making my first move to create a custom framing business, I had people coming to me with news of equipment and supplies I could pick up and businesses I could buy. Even more would come and tell me that they had framing they needed to get done as soon as I had my shop set up.

This small town network helped in other ways too. Someone told me about a local merchants special being run this week in the local paper where I could get a full color ad for the price of a black and white ad. I scrambled around this morning and managed to create this ad just in time to make the ad deadline.

People have been asking me about this "conservation framing" I have been talking about so I roused myself to finish a brochure last night which explains what conservation framing is and why it is a good investment for your original art and keepsakes. Basically it is a framing process that protects your art against deterioration and environmental damage.

One of the first people who picked up the brochure today went home and looked at her framed artwork and discovered dead mosquitoes inside the glass of the picture frame!

She will be one of my first repair customers. Educational advertising works.

Since custom framing with archival materials is not a commodity product or service, I need to spend more time explaining what it is and why it is needed in my ads and in my literature than in selling.

I also need to use the word-of-mouth channel to spread the idea that a few dollars spent preserving art and keepsakes will pay huge dividends in terms of peace of mind. There is nothing so disappointing as to see a valued diploma or keepsake piece of art turning yellow around the edges. We resist personal aging as best we can and it is a shock to see our possessions aging unnecessarily before our eyes.

Those of you who are running a company singlehandedly, can appreciate that I had to put the framing on hold temporarily while I caught up on the promotional activity of the past two days. This weekend will give me some time to catch up with orders.

UPDATE: I finally got my act together and put up a website for Floyd Custom Framing.

Starting another small business from scratch - part 1

As some of you have suspected, I've been launching a small business in the last few weeks and have been so busy that I haven't had time to blog about it.

I thought I would write about the experience so that some might make use of the discoveries I've made in the process and others might have ideas that I've missed.

I am not writing this from the viewpoint of how one should do this sort of thing. It is being written because I took an approach that seemed to be so far off the beaten path that it just might work for someone else who is trying to come up with a way to start a company with very little seed money.

I've created Floyd Custom Framing,  a custom picture framing business, which sounds like an unlikely prospect for a guy who used to design computers, but I needed to use every bit of business and technical knowledge I have to make it happen. The startup costs, including insurance, equipment and supplies was covered with an ordinary credit card.

The timing may seem odd because America's picture framing business is in a long-term downtrend because of changing demographics. New Gen X and Gen Y home buyers do not seem to have the disposable income of the previous generations. Plus, every big box retailer is selling ready-made frames at what seems like pennies on the dollar.

So, you might ask, why this business? And why me?

The basic answer is that there has been no custom picture framer within 25 miles for several years and there is a growing number of artists who are turning out amazing work at an ever-increasing rate. They need custom picture framing at an attractive price to expand their business. I have seen this at a personal level because I was spending more time every month obtaining frames and mats for the pastels that Gretchen was turning out. It was getting to be a chore and the choices were limited.

I decided to teach myself conservation framing techniques and to convert my wood shop into a professional framing shop. The rest just seemed to follow naturally.

What I created is not your conventional retail store business. I don't have a storefront, but I have a display window in a prime location. I don't keep regular hours, but I have a backlog that is growing so fast that I have to scramble to handle it.

I have written my own software to create POS estimates and it also generates orders for framing supplies. I have a trusted supplier, Roanoke Moulding Designs where one of the owners has mentored me on the finer points of running a custom framing operation. I have had great feedback on my services so far and I am  finally getting around to writing a tri-fold brochure that describes what services I provide.

It amuses me that this venture violates every sensible startup procedure except one and that was discovering a market niche that was woefully under-supplied.

I was essentially coaxed into the business by my artist wife who needed a service that wasn't readily available. Once I discovered that the rest of the artists in the Art Under the Sun Gallery were in need of the same services, it all started to make sense.

It also aligns with my long-term purpose to help artists create viable businesses and contribute to sustainable economic development for this region.

I will try to cover more interesting bits about this startup in the next few posts. Feel free to ask questions and suggest alternatives I may have missed.

Stay tuned...

A funny thing happened on the Blue Ridge Parkway today

I encountered this "mutant" wild turkey that apparently has four legs. Now, if we can only cross-breed one of these with domestic fowl, we will have more drumsticks than we can shake a fork at.

This was an adult turkey guiding a flock of young turkeys across the Blue Ridge Parkway and one of the little ones must have been directly behind her. All in all there were about 15 young turkeys in the flock and her family procession stopped traffic for a few minutes.

This is just the tail end of the procession and  momma is bringing up the rear.

As the young turkeys made it to safety, the female turkey arched her back and slowly strutted the last few steps across the Parkway.

It made a grand finale to the procession.

It's showtime again at the Floyd Country Store

Ann Bower has just finished freshening up the roster of musicians for tonight's Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store. There will be some fine local musicians playing on stage and on the street around the store.

The weather appears to be cooling down so it should be a great night to wander down South Locust Street and listen to the groups of musicians playing Bluegrass music.

You will find that it's had to resist the infectious beat of this traditional music. After a few seconds, you will find yourself tapping out the rhythm and possibly doing a little flat-footing. It is a great way to meet new friends and renew old acquaintances.

My neighbor Tom King, who is almost my age, has just purchased a set of shoes with taps and has been practicing his footwork. I will be looking for him tonight to cheer him on.

If Bluegrass is not your thing, you might check out Cafe del Sol, the Blackwater Loft, or the Over the Moon Gallery to see what live music offerings are on tap for tonight.

Friday night in Floyd is fun for the entire family. We have 6 year old cloggers and 70 year old cloggers and they sure do dance up a storm. I will see if I can capture a few minutes of the fun on video.

Hope you are ready for a fun and relaxing weekend, wherever you are.

Three Marks on the Horizon - another article from Michael Yon

Michael Yon reports:

"Our military has increasing moral authority in Iraq, but the same cannot be said for our government at home..."

"...Some of our commanders could probably run for local offices in Iraq, and win. To say there has been no political progress in Iraq in 2007 is patently absurd, completely wrong and dangerously dismissive of the significant changes and improvements happening all across Iraq. Whether or not Americans are seeing it on the nightly news or reading it in their local papers, Iraqis are actively writing their children’s history...."

Read it all.

Country commuting

We were on our way to an appointment this morning and I snapped this photo to show how much this area of the country differs from our daily route in San Jose, California.

Where's the other lane, you say?

We are on it.

If you were coming the other way on this road, we could probably squeeze by each other with a little care and a friendly wave.

If you look at this picture again, you will see that we were making good time. All of the nearby trees are blurred.

It is a gravel road and the county scrapes it frequently enough so that the dreaded washboard effect doesn't last very long. There are roads nearby where the soil and the drainage seem to work together to produce instant washboards. Your car's suspension is at risk if you drive those roads often.

This is a major highway compared to Goose Creek Run which runs by Fred First's house on the other side of the county. On that road, you can reach out and touch the underbrush on either side in the lush summer months. If you meet someone coming the other way, one of you has to back up until a wider spot is found.

We spent a long time finding this part of the country where we could commute on roads like this and live at a slower and more satisfying pace. There is a lot more to see and there are enough open roads that we don't have to drive bumper to bumper.

In a rapidly evolving world, we take every moment to be thankful for the remaining miles of country road that still exist.  Next time you are in a road like this, treasure the moment.

Post-corporate reflections...

It's a balmy Sunday morning with a light breeze and butterflies circling above sleeping cats on the back deck. Inside our house in this quiet clearing in the woods, Gretchen is drawing a new still life and I am surfing the Internet in search of help with a software program for generating estimates.

Life is better then we could have imagined back in 2001 when I was separating from the corporate mothership. I had few prospects for continuing employment since I was 66 years old at the time and I was tired of the highly structured and politically correct life required in a large corporation.

We felt it was time that we reset our goals to adapt to a more human-sized lifestyle. We hoped to develop business opportunities that would provide us with income to live on and would allow us to integrate work and living into a unified whole.

In the ensuing six years, I have written two books and published one of them and written a thousand online articles about everything under the sun. We have consulted for a number of small businesses. I started a custom woodworking business and found that I could produce satisfying results by exhibiting at Farmer's Markets. I found the release and gratification in blogging that I had been seeking from writing books.

In the process, I rediscovered the importance of Rule #1 in starting your own business.

Lower your cost of living to the point where you can pay for rent and food doing odd consulting jobs or nothing at all for the foreseeable future.

We found that moving to the country and living modestly opened the door to many more opportunities for self-employment and non-income producing volunteer activity.

There are a lot of ways to launch a business now that would not have been possible just a few years ago. Today we have Internet access to forums and free information that help new entrepreneurs find expert advice to guide them through the tribulations of starting almost any new business or craft endeavor. Starting a home-based business is not rocket science, but is can be a challenge for those currently employed:

We all may have the capability to produce goods and services that others will pay for, but not everyone is comfortable dealing with the realities of finding prospective customers who want what we can provide.

That is why so many successful small business startups began by producing a product or service that everyone wanted but could not find. A woman in our old neighborhood started making candy in her kitchen and soon had to install a commercial kitchen in her basement to handle orders.

Right now, there are many of you who know of business opportunities in your own area that could generate stable income if managed properly. Some of these require so little start-up money that you could finance the business on your credit card. Whether it is custom carpentry, pool cleaning, pet sitting, organizing services for homes and offices, or tutoring struggling students, there is a need and someone will provide that particular service when enough customers are identified.

The important thing to remember is that you don't have to settle on just one business opportunity. As a self-employed business person, you have the flexibility to change business models as new opportunities emerge and old ones dry up.

For example some of our local musicians have found that there is a growing demand for music lessons which provide a healthy supplement to playing for tips at local venues and CD sales. These musicians are often contractors by day and performers on nights and weekends. They know the value of multiple sources of income and you should too.

Keep your eye open for people who need what you can provide and you will have more business than you might imagine. You may find yourself working seven days a week, but that is what most entrepreneurs do anyway. Just make sure that you are doing what really motivates you and the time will fly.

The major barriers to your success will be fear of moving out of your comfort zone and being stuck in the past glory of your role as a big cheese in some organization. Past glory does not pay the bills, nor does it make for an attractive lifestyle.

More and more people are joining the self-employment movement, some by choice and others through corporate attrition. You can create a life for yourself and there are a growing number of resources like a different kind of biz and Startup Nation which can give you some straight scoop on starting a home based business.

Meanwhile, I have to get back to work. I have estimates to complete so I can order materials Monday morning.

Gretchen has already left to open the Under the Sun Gallery for the Sunday afternoon Live Drawing session. (Today's models are two local belly dancers. Check Gretchen's website  later for the results.)

Wishing you all well. Enjoy the day...

UPDATE: Here is Gretchen's pastel drawing of the belly dancers. I rather like the finished product.

Friday night cat blogging

I am reading so many "elder bloggers" recently who are complaining about the unfairness of being treated as an older citizen, that I thought I would give equal time to the problems of the elder cat.

The elder cat has problems too, but no forum to solicit sympathy.

Sherman is aging asymmetrically. His whiskers on one side are coming in strong and white while the other side is very sparse but the whiskers are still black.

He still looks fit, which is quite a feat for an animal that sleeps about 20 hours a day and eats at least 3 times a day. His sister, Buffy, on the same diet and with less sleep, is quite rotund.

Now in his 15th year, he is beginning to show signs of slowing down. Jumping from the floor to the kitchen counter is done infrequently and with some difficulty.

He is more cautious about charging out the front door these days as we have two neighboring dogs who have taken it upon themselves to be our watchdogs and constant companions.

He seems to have resigned himself to watching local events from the security of our back deck which is only accessible from the house. From this lofty perch he can observe deer and local dogs without fear of being attacked.

He will occasionally request that I accompany him on outside expeditions. He has finally learned that I am willing to serve as a cat bodyguard and that he is safe from inquisitive dogs when I am with him.

He is not the most demonstrative animal I have lived with but he has his moments. If either Gretchen or I become ill, he will make every effort to sit right next to us until we are well again. He will also remove bandages and will attempt to clean wounds.

Once in a while, I will have minor scratches and splinters from working with wood and I put on a bandage and forget about it. In the middle of the night, I will feel Sherman gently pulling at the bandage in an effort to remove it. I thank him profusely for the attention and get him to settle down and go back to sleep.

When I attended FloydFest 2007, I wore a Tyvek wristband for several days and had to contend with Sherman fiddling with the wristband at odd hours of the night. For the last two days, my wristband looked rather tattered because it had cat teethmarks in it.

Cats require little attention for the most part. They are generally companionable and they can be a constant source of amusement. They don't need to be walked, but they enjoy company at the oddest times and places. Four AM is when they decide that they need quality time with us and we have not been able to discourage them from attempting to wake us up and get with the program.

Right now, they are concerned that I will be blogging all night. Their impatient actions seem to be saying, "Enough already! Let's all settle down for some quality sleep."

They evidently find it hard to sleep when I am pounding the keyboard and generating any level of excitement.

It's been a very challenging week. I may have launched another micro business. I will wait until it achieves a degree of stability before blogging about it. More later...

Have a good weekend!

Why Parents Decide to Homeschool

One of the most important trends I follow is homeschooling. I think that active home schooling is a positive sign in any area.

Nerd Mom hosts this weeks Carnival of Homeschooling and explores reasons parents decide to homeschool.

I especially liked her comment, "The final reason to homeschool is to produce productive adults who are smarter than me".