Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Self employment income - How high do you set the bar?

This is from an article I wrote long before I moved to Floyd Virginia. If you are still feeling your way in the world of self employment, this may help you sort things out. If you are employed, but can see cracks appearing in the floor this may be something you will want to remember.

Rule One: Keep a roof over your head and stay healthy

When you leave the corporate mothership, you have a chance to re-examine your priorities. If your departure was forced upon you, you are facing a difficult period of adjustment. If you prepared yourself beforehand, you might have an easier time of it.

You may have been complaining about your work/life balance for years, but now you are faced with choices that must be made and work/life balance will not be in the top twenty issues you have to handle. You will probably find that keeping up with the rent or the mortgage is the biggest issue you have to confront.

If you have a spouse and children, a 30-40 hour work week may not be an option. If you began post-corporate life involuntarily, you may be working long hours at more than one job to support your family and keep things together.

Desperation is a great motivation. I can testify to that from personal experience. 

If you don't have the skills to support your family outside of corporate employment, it can make you plunge into a job worse than your last one, just to pay the bills. This is a choice you may have to make.

On the other hand, if you are used to hard work and are willing to mortgage your house or sell it in order to buy a franchise or start a business, you have a far better chance of making it as an independent businessman, especially if your family stands ready to support you by picking up additional responsibilities to free you up for your 10-16 hour workdays.

There are some hard choices to make with children in college. When family income is drastically cut, everyone has to bear the load of supporting the family. If a family pulls together, it becomes stronger. If the family indulges in shame, blame, and regret, nothing good comes of it. A sane family deals with adversity and emerges unscathed and wiser. The lessons learned will affect family planning for years to come.

If you are currently working for a corporate employer or even the government, being adequately prepared for eventual separation from the mothership is the best security you can provide for yourself and your family.

Rule Two: Don't take life seriously or you will do yourself great harm

Be determined that you will do what it takes to keep you family fed and sheltered, but don't look back with regret. No matter how bad things are right now, you made your choices based on the best information you had at the time. You may be saying, "What was I thinking?" but you need to discard that regret and figure out how to make better decisions in the future.

The road to salvation lies in increasing your self-determinism in the matter of work. If you are not prepared to make enough money to support your family as an independent business person, you need to pick up some employment until you gain the necessary skills and customers to make a go of it.

From personal experience, I know that launching a business always takes longer than expected, so you should be prepared to do part-time work somewhere until your business takes off.

If they drop you out of the mothership in your fifties, you may not find employment again for some years. On the other hand, you may no longer have a large family to support, so you may be able to down size and cut your expenses to the point where you can live on a much smaller income.

Whatever happens in your post-corporate years, you are totally responsible for the results. If you are realistic in your planning, you can make a go of it with very little seed money. A lot of micro-businesses are financed by credit cards. You have to make every dollar count and be prepared to work on a smaller scale than you ever expected in order to get started.

Roll up your sleeves, network like crazy, and solve problems for people and get paid for it. Be real and you will succeed.

Rule 3: Your past career is history - don't dwell on it. Use that experience to create a new life.

Adopt your new identity and make yourself comfortable being whoever your business requires you to be. As long as you take pride in your work and are delivering a superior product or service, people will respect you and continue to do business with you. That is what satisfying work is all about. It's not the job itself, it's what you make of it that counts.

You are on your own. If you survive it, you will transform yourself in ways you cannot imagine. If you can keep your sense of humor alive, it will be a much easier journey.

How many of you post-corporate pioneers been surprised at your ability to find business opportunities?
Do any of you have advice for those who will enter post-corporate life in the near future?

More Art coming through the Frame Shop

This pastel pencil drawing of Don Quixote by artist N S Goodwin has been stored away in a closet for 30 years and has never been framed or seen in public before. It is a marvelous take on the Don Quixote legend and it deserves to be admired.

What you see here is a computer-generated rendition of the mat and frame combination that will be used to protect and preserve this drawing.

An image of the finished frame will be posted on our framing website when it is complete.

I now get exposed to more art every week than I used to see in months and it is a deeply satisfying experience.

We have fine local artists and I get to see new works every day. This is an ongoing challenge because there are so many different objectives for framing a piece of art and there are so many constraints to take into consideration.

Art is a communication which evokes an emotional response in the viewer. Like any communication, the response depends on the mindset of the viewer as well as the intention and skill of the artist. Framing is almost subliminal. When done well, it should appear as a logical  extension of the artwork, not as a thing in itself.

The final result of a framing project should honor the message of the piece and present it to the expected audience in a way that tastefully maximizes the impact. When I hear that artwork we have framed has made a lasting and positive impression, I feel like we have made an appropriate contribution to the artist's original intention.

That is a desirable outcome for any project.

Keeping a small business on track

Life is interfering with blogging again. This is a clear example of the well-known principal that sufficient immersion in any activity prevents one from blogging about it as it happens. It is only after prolonged immersion, that ideas force themselves to be expressed.

Currently, we are experiencing a rush of custom picture framing business and it is taking up my every waking minute. Fortunately, my wife Gretchen has been able to lend a hand in keeping things organized.

She actually freed things up enough that we were able to attend a July 16 Business After Hours event sponsored by the Floyd Chamber of Commerce.

This month's event took place at the Hotel Floyd amphitheater with hors d’oeuvres provided by Chef Scott Hutchinson and music provided by acoustic blues and roots performer Scott Perry.

It is one of the few times I get to see the other small business owners of this county. We all have a great time swapping notes.

It appears that most of us are having to work harder to overcome rising costs and to attract new business in the face of a continuing drop in discretionary income.

The saving grace is that people still want and need things to celebrate life or to deal with the problems of life and it is a matter of providing customer experiences that encourage customers to visit and have their choices validated.

If a small business can make a customer feel good about a transaction or series of transactions, that is good for all concerned. The challenge is to provide that service or product in a way that allows the business to prosper.

This is a worthy challenge for any business, large or small:

How do we provide excellent customer experience and make enough profit to continue doing so?

Your comments are invited.

People who give of themselves

I am constantly amazed at the number of people in Floyd who put service to others above self interest. In this county where there is very little money to spare, there always seems to be people willing to give a helping hand to others.

McCabe Coolidge and Karen Day operate Wildfire Pots located under the Sun Music Hall in Floyd. When they are not making pots and creating artwork, they are heavily involved in food programs for school children and help distribute produce to folks who can't get around very well.

I caught them in the midst of preparing produce for distribution.

The fresh produce looks delicious in McCabe's pottery. Actually, we have found that everything looks better in his pottery. The forms are organic and every piece shows the touch of the artists hand.

They are open from 11 to 4 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturday.

If you are in the vicinity of the Sun Music hall, drop in and enjoy their hospitality.

McCabe and Karen have always provided space in their studios to promote other artists. It is just another aspect of their willingness to help others.

When you drop in at Wildfire, you will see work by other artists such as handcrafted jewelry and the fiber art of Glenda George in addition to McCabes unique pottery.

Karen is developing a new promo piece for their expanding activities and I felt it should have wider exposure. It tells their story on one small piece of handmade paper.

(click to enlarge)

What if your deer repellent attracts deer?

We have been warned that we should take steps to prevent deer from eating our vegetables.

Gretchen did all that was recommended and here are the results:

Gretchen had this to say:

So, I make up this really potent hot pepper spray in the blender, put it in a spray bottle and carefully apply to all our vegetables and flowers that the deer are starting to feast on. and then....two hours later, who should appear....

Ugh......

This buck was about twenty feet from the house and was eating the spiced vegetables with great relish. I think we need a different recipe.

Any suggestions?

(Photo by Gretchen St Lawrence using her new Canon SX100 IS with 10X zoom.)

Summertime, and life is sure busy

I will probably look back on these weeks of rain and bright sunshine and wish that I had taken a little more time to smell the roses and take pictures of this beautiful countryside.

A business out in the countryside requires every one of the tasks that fall to a business owner in an industrial area, with the additional challenge that right outside the door birds are singing and deer are happily grazing on our vegetables.

There is all that rustic beauty going to "waste" while we work away at computers while handling phone calls and paperwork.

The upside, of course, is that our place of work is only seventy feet from the dinner table at home and our commute takes less than three minutes even when carrying paperwork and a full cup of coffee.

Inside the workshop, serious craft work is accomplished to the background of classical music and the occasional thunder of a compressor. There is a continuous creative tension between the forces of order and disorder as represented my capable assistant and myself.

I am routinely creating chaos in my development of new processes and techniques, while Luan calmly puts in order while turning out one of a kind custom frames. The end result is that we accomplish a lot of necessary changes and growth while remaining relatively organized.

Our bustling activity is punctuated by the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway as clients arrive for scheduled appointments. Neighbor Tom King has graciously loaned us his dog and she greets every new visitor cheerfully before carefully checking their vehicle for doggy messages.

Our business has been open for almost a year and it continues to grow thanks to word of mouth promotion by friends and customers.

In response to those who have asked me to get with it and develop a logo, I am considering using this for now as it shows our county beauty, our technical expertise and includes our company name. We will be using a version of this on our business cards and will eventually incorporate it into our website.

Give us a call if you are in the neighborhood.

View from a Country Workshop

The contrast between the intense activity inside this workshop and the idyllic beauty immediately outside the workshop doorway is hard to believe.

My picture framing workload has increased to the point where I need computerized equipment and an employee who spends several days a week helping me get Floyd Custom Framing to the next level of efficiency.

Even so, I still spend 12 hours a day doing all of the myriad tasks that need to get done.

So it is a treat to look out the workshop door and down the serpentine gravel drive to see Gretchen chatting with neighbors down by the mailbox.

This is a like a Norman Rockwell illustration. Kids on bikes, dogs nosing about, women chatting and neighbor Tom King taking photographs of the impromptu gathering.

This is one of the moments I envisioned many years ago when corporations began shifting from comfortable offices to vast cubicle mazes and statistics began replacing accomplishments. This one brief shining moment validated all that Gretchen and I did as we transitioned from corporate life to self employment.

We work as hard as we ever did, but the rewards are immediate and we can stop and chat with the neighbors when the opportunity arises.

We are immersed in projects and deadlines, but we are surrounded by natural beauty and good friends. Who could ask for more?

This is the good life. It was worth all of the effort it took to get here.