Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Rule #1 in starting your own business - revised and updated

I have written so many articles about starting a business and striking off in new directions that I can't believe I failed to mention one of the most basic rules of them all when it comes to starting your own business. This actually applies to startups of any size.

Rule #1 - Lower your cost of living to the point where you can pay for rent and food doing outside work while you struggle to generate enough income with your new business.

If you live in a comfortable suburban house and you bailed out or were ejected from the corporate mothership, don't expect that you are going to develop a viable business in less than six months and a decent customer base in less than a year. Many people report that it takes two years or more to start generating decent cash flow.

During that time you will be laying out money for equipment and training and you will still have to pay the mortgage and all the other expenses for your lovely home. You will burn through your 401K and any savings faster than you can believe.

You need to completely restructure your living arrangements so that your cost of living can be covered during the startup period and for some time beyond.

This calls for a great deal of resolve and understanding by all members of the family. Life is not going to continue in the same old way.

Sell the Land Rover and the McMansion and look for a living and workspace that doesn't leak too badly that you can buy for cash or on terms that result in a mortgage payment of a few hundred dollars a month. Buy a used van or pickup truck or a used car for cash.

Put enough money away to live on for six months and rethink your identity. You are starting over and you are no longer a senior manager of anything. You need to get busy and learn your new trade in a big hurry.

Take classes at a good craft school. Learn the ropes by working as an apprentice if you can. If your significant other is not engaged in learning a craft, she or he should find work that provides enough income that your bank balance does not dwindle.

Make everyone part of the new solution. Ideally, your new venture should provide work for all members of the family, but if the teenagers aren't interested in helping with your new venture, they need to find employment and an educational path that fits your new circumstances.

You don't have to follow this advice of course, because you can always search for another corporate berth instead of risking everything on your own business acumen.

However, you will probably have to sell the house and the Land Rover anyway if you are over fifty because it may take you a year to find a new job and it will pay less than your last job.

This may sound unduly grim, but it has been done by tens of thousands of people and they have emerged from the experience stronger and more self reliant than ever before. The freedom that comes from managing your own destiny more than makes up for the temporary hardships of starting your own business.

Find any successful small business owner, craftsperson or artist and ask how they lived until they became successful and you will hear a story much like I have described here.

Talk to business owners who quit after a short, unsuccessful attempt at starting a career and you will find that they ran out of money before they could become self-supporting.

You will also find that their lifestyle had a lot of creature comforts that did nothing to advance their careers.

Whether this change in life is a forced decision or a free choice, changing your lifestyle and cutting your costs to the bone will give you the best chance of a successful transition.

If you have gotten this far, it has probably occurred to you that this same advice applies if you are embarking on a career in any new field.

Your lifestyle has to be leaner and meaner than you ever imagined if you are to succeed.

Wishing you the very best.

( I wrote the original post in August 2006 and am still encountering people who envision launching new businesses which will provide seamless continuity of their comfortable suburban lives. Get over it. Startups are the most exciting adventure I can conceive of, but they involve drastic changes to your lifestyle.)

I have written so many articles about starting a business and striking off in new directions that I can't believe I failed to mention one of the most basic rules of them all when it comes to starting your own business. This actually applies to startups of any size.

Rule #1 - Lower your cost of living to the point where you can pay for rent and food doing outside work while you struggle to generate enough income with your new business.

If you live in a comfortable suburban house and you bailed out or were ejected from the corporate mothership, don't expect that you are going to develop a viable business in less than six months and a decent customer base in less than a year. Many people report that it takes two years or more to start generating decent cash flow.

During that time you will be laying out money for equipment and training and you will still have to pay the mortgage and all the other expenses for your lovely home. You will burn through your 401K and any savings faster than you can believe.

You need to completely restructure your living arrangements so that your cost of living can be covered during the startup period and for some time beyond.

This calls for a great deal of resolve and understanding by all members of the family. Life is not going to continue in the same old way.

Sell the Land Rover and the McMansion and look for a living and workspace that doesn't leak too badly that you can buy for cash or on terms that result in a mortgage payment of a few hundred dollars a month. Buy a used van or pickup truck or a used car for cash.

Put enough money away to live on for six months and rethink your identity. You are starting over and you are no longer a senior manager of anything. You need to get busy and learn your new trade in a big hurry.

Take classes at a good craft school. Learn the ropes by working as an apprentice if you can. If your significant other is not engaged in learning a craft, she or he should find work that provides enough income that your bank balance does not dwindle.

Make everyone part of the new solution. Ideally, your new venture should provide work for all members of the family, but if the teenagers aren't interested in helping with your new venture, they need to find employment and an educational path that fits your new circumstances.

You don't have to follow this advice of course, because you can always search for another corporate berth instead of risking everything on your own business acumen.

However, you will probably have to sell the house and the Land Rover anyway if you are over fifty because it may take you a year to find a new job and it will pay less than your last job.

This may sound unduly grim, but it has been done by tens of thousands of people and they have emerged from the experience stronger and more self reliant than ever before. The freedom that comes from managing your own destiny more than makes up for the temporary hardships of starting your own business.

Find any successful small business owner, craftsperson or artist and ask how they lived until they became successful and you will hear a story much like I have described here.

Talk to business owners who quit after a short, unsuccessful attempt at starting a career and you will find that they ran out of money before they could become self-supporting.

You will also find that their lifestyle had a lot of creature comforts that did nothing to advance their careers.

Whether this change in life is a forced decision or a free choice, changing your lifestyle and cutting your costs to the bone will give you the best chance of a successful transition.

If you have gotten this far, it has probably occurred to you that this same advice applies if you are embarking on a career in any new field.

Your lifestyle has to be leaner and meaner than you ever imagined if you are to succeed.

Wishing you the very best.

( I wrote the original post in August 2006 and am still encountering people who envision launching new businesses which will provide seamless continuity of their comfortable suburban lives. Get over it. Startups are the most exciting adventure I can conceive of, but they involve drastic changes to your lifestyle.)

Transferable skills - a big asset in post-corporate life

As a corporate employee, you tend to gain experience in relatively specialized areas. In fact, after a few years you may become unable to carry on a conversation about work with anyone outside your own industry.

The skills you accumulate in such a specialized environment will probably not be of much use when you are laid off or retire.

In a post-corporate environment, you may find that your ability to generate income comes from skills that you have never paid much attention to, because they fell outside your normal career activities.

The job skills which help you move from one career to the next during your business career may still be useful after your corporate life is history, but your real earning power may come from your ability to cook or to write or to entertain others in some way.

You may find yourself as a professional caretaker for people, or pets, or even houses. You may find yourself in the role of educator, or life coach, or in an administrative role in a non-profit organization far removed from anything you have ever done.

The possibilities and challenges are amazing and if you take full responsibility for your life, you may find yourself with more job satisfaction than you ever experienced as a corporate employee.

Post-corporate life is a different game than anything you ever did as an employee. For one thing, you may be self-employed and you will have all sorts of responsibilities and freedoms that you never had before.

You will learn to be very resourceful and you will eventually develop a network of people who may help you develop a business and will most certainly help you develop a lifestyle that maximizes your value to your network.

And the skills I mentioned at the beginning? They will probably be things that you have always enjoyed, but never figured that you would ever find use for them.

The way things are going now, you most certainly will need all of the skills you can muster.

Don't just dabble around with your hobbies. Try to do everything to the best of your abilities and to learn as much as possible about the techniques that you are employing. Try to gain a professional understanding of what you are doing, even if it is a hobby.

You never know, but your future livelihood may depend on that knowledge.

Are any of you earning a living from skills that were once a hobby?

21st Century Sweatshop

In the 21st century, you can easily put in a grueling 10 hour work day without ever leaving your home. Sometimes the biggest problem is pacing yourself. You can get involved in solving a knotty design problem and work non-stop for hours on end. Interruptions are few and they come mostly from four-footed members of the family who are checking if its time to be fed again.

The availability of fresh air and sunshine does wonders for my peace of mind and my morale. Under these conditions I am able to produce more work for my clients now than I ever could in a cubicle farm or even in my own private corporate office.

At the same time, I can find time to have coffee with friends or clients on a moments notice, if I want to.

I make sure that I spend at least 20% of my time marketing my services or thinking up new services to exchange for income. The absence of forced commuting gives me two to three hours of extra time every day for work, study or relaxation.

As a self-employed entrepreneur, I have no corporate safety net, no corporate insurance, but I don't have layers of inert or timid management to placate either.

When I was employed, even though I considered myself a top performer in my particular area, I worried constantly about corporate changes that would result in loss of income. The biggest discovery on leaving the corporate world was realizing how illusory the corporate safety actually was.

When you work at home, you don't get sick leave

Now, back to our regular programming...

For better or worse, working at home changes many rules in the workplace environment.

Sure, you can call in to a client and tell them you are too sick, or too contagious, to show up for a meeting, but the work still has to be done on schedule and in most cases you don't have anyone to turn over the tasks to.

It is a rare self-employed consultant who can turn to a family member and ask, "Can you flesh out this project schedule while I get a few hours of sleep?" You may be able to get a little proofreading, or a beverage of choice, but that's as far as it goes.

On the other hand, you can work away until your head fills up and your wastebasket is full of used tissues, then knock off for a few hours of sleep until you are ready to work again and nobody is going to complain that you slacking.

I have been doing this routine for the last 24 hours and while it seems arduous, it allows me to keep producing efficiently, if not consistently.

I also find that the enforced breaks make me look at the problems very carefully and I try to work smarter, rather than harder. When I don't have the stamina for a 8-hour design marathon, I try to see if I can break the task into more manageable pieces.

Most of the time, I can.

Life is interfering with blogging - again

Thanks for keeping the place going while I've been preoccupied with life. I appreciate your dropping by and commenting, even if I am not posting as much as I did earlier. My lack of blogging is due to a lack of time, not a lack of things to blog about. Life here in Floyd is going on at full tilt and we are right in the thick of the action.

I have not watched TV for many months which was no big loss, but not having time to read weblogs leaves me feeling cut off from life. I have a full-time job keeping up with my email traffic, preparing the house for winter and managing an increasing volume of activities at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts.

I find myself driving down country roads with all sorts of insights bubbling up and no time to jot them down. By the time I get to my destination, I plunge into chores or a pile of overdue tasks and my posts get pushed off for a more propitious moment.

I have more than a dozen interviews of artists and musicians in my backlog and have hundreds of photos and video clips to post so there is no lack of material. I even have some ideas to share on getting more enjoyment out of life. I hope I will be able to catch up during the long winter months when things are supposed to slow down. :)

More later.

The first stage of post-corporate life

This illustration helped me preserve my sanity back in 2001 when Sun Microsystems began a series of gyrations that culminated in the shedding of senior employees.

It was an amazing inspiration to me and remains so today. I am trying to locate the illustrator so I can order copies of this illustration and give the artist appropriate credit.

I saw this as a portrayal of a businessman opting out of the frenzy of corporate life, discarding shoes, tie and briefcase to sit barefoot on the beach in the afternoon sun. His plane is taking off without him and he is happily contemplating an alternative future.

I found this illustration on a greeting card and it jumped out at me as a more desirable life than the one i was living. I though how great it would be if I could experience that feeling of freedom. I didn't know how soon I would get to see it firsthand.

Within a short period of time, I and 450 other senior employees were jettisoned from Sun. I knew that at age 67, I needed a change of venue, because my 50-year-old compatriots were getting rebuffed at every turn. Gretchen and I spent a long weekend in Pacific Grove deciding what I was going to do for the rest of my life. The result was the beginning of  my post-corporate existence.

This illustration has hung over my desk as a reminder that separating from a group is not the end of life. It can be the beginning of a new and better one. The trick is finding a game that you really want to play, and staying away from games that are controlled by those who crave power.

If I were to put a caption to this illustration, it would be: "This is the life! Sometime soon, maybe next week, I should find an internet connection... :)"

If anyone can identify the illustrator, I would be very appreciative.

Early impressions of life in Floyd

I am a new settler in a place that poets, farmers,
and hard-working business people have helped create.

It is a community of many contrasts, many lifestyles,
yet there is a sense of community.

It feels more like home than anywhere else I have ever lived.

There are people here who live in houses
without electricity or inside plumbing.
If you like 19th century living we have it here.

If you want to live on a mountaintop
and reach out to the world with electric fingers,
we have that here also.

We are a county with one stoplight
and more creative genius than you could imagine.
This is Floyd, VA, a place which embraces
both outdoor plumbing and fibre optic infrastructure.

I live here now, far from the beaches of Los Angeles
and far from the frenzy of Silicon Valley.
The palm trees and traffic of South Florida
are but a dim memory now,
as are the people-hives in the ever-growing
megalopolis of Washington-NY-Boston.

I came here to build a new life in a post-corporate world,
to write books and build woodwork of my own design.
I want to put down roots into this community
and turn my swords of corporate life into plowshares
with which to turn up opportunities
for myself and others.

This is fertile soil for new ideas,
but it is no land of milk and honey.
If you want work, you had best bring it with you.
Wresting a living out of this rocky soil
is a challenge for farmer and craftsman alike.
Only a talented and industrious few
have created businesses that employ many others.

One of the best things going for Floyd
is the plug and play aspect of its culture.
If you settle here, you will probably fit right in somewhere.

You will see hand-tooled boots and bare feet
passing each other on the main drag,
and rusted pickups with doors wired shut
parked next to armored Mercedes SUVs.

There is still room enough for all of us
and there is still a sense of caring for others
that has been lost elsewhere.
I can sit and have morning coffee
ensconced between people buying mountaintop McMansions
and a group of disabled people on an outing from their care center.

In Floyd, we all seem to be welcome somewhere.

Here, people work hard, but they make time for play.
When I see children clogging on the sidewalk
at the Friday Night jamboree,
it makes me more certain than ever
that I have come to the right place.
In this community, enjoying life
does not set me apart from others.

I am a blogger and I have so much fun
it is probably illegal somewhere.
Fortunately, the spirit of play
is a non-taxable intoxicant,
and I can drink as deeply as I want.

Citizen publishing (blogging) sets my ideas free
and the barriers are so low that the process is frictionless.
I write. Others read. They comment and tell others.
More people visit and the word spreads.

When you get tired of big city life and 24x7 traffic
and are ready to strike out on your own,
come to Floyd or some place like it,
this is your chance to pitch in and contribute
where your efforts will have some effect.

If you come equipped with talent
and a determination to make things go right,
you will fit right in.

If you are employed, I am writing from your future...

What is facing you today

No matter where you are in the chain of command, you are moving inexorably toward the day you will be removed from your company's payroll. If you are competent and under the age of forty, you can hope that another company will scoop you up before you have time to file for unemployment.

If you are over 50, you had better hope that your corporate culture is not going through meltdown or the frantic convulsions that precede closing the doors. If so, you have a very small chance of being rehired at your current salary.

You may be one of the lucky ones who work for a company that has a strong and viable culture. If so, do everything you can to support your management team.

In case you think this is a scenario out of a reject Twilight Zone script, think again. Talk to your friends in Sun Microsystems who have been suffering through at least four years of declining corporate morale. I wrote about Sun in my book, Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day, but I didn't imagine that Sun's corporate culture would continue to decay to the point where it is now.

I recently received an email from a veteran Sun employee who says, "We are completely devalued now as employees and are being shuffled around with no regard given to our abilities or contributions....This place is destroying my soul."

I am sure that he is not alone in his misery and I am sure that Sun is not alone in its state of internal confusion. If you work for Sun Microsystems, however, you know the culture beyond repair, but you have the possibility that Google may decide to buy Sun and give a few of you a new chance. Not every company is a prospect for a buyout.

What you can do

You have at least two choices in the matter. You can do nothing and hope that the company will continue to employ you until your Social Security kicks in or you can make the hardest decision you have ever made and leave of your own accord to find work elsewhere.

I received another email today, this one from a Technical Writer with 20 years experience who has watched the dissolution of the field of technical writing. She is making a transition into content management with the hopes she can keep afloat financially. She is having a hard time making ends meet right now, but she is focused on building direct experience day by day, so I am confident she will find her way through this period of difficulty. She has also read my book, so I have a vested interest in seeing that she achieves her goals.

Too many corporations are like the Titanic, they are coming apart at the seams, but are steaming full speed ahead into a marketplace that is changing faster than they can respond to it.  They appear invincible and unsinkable from outside, but are riddled with decay and are managed by bozos who have cut themselves off from the people who operate the company.

The Titanic is an apt example of a doomed venture, because the ship was built of brittle, high sulfur steel and was captained by a calm dunderhead with a clueless bunch of directors to advise him.

If you feel that your company is listing to port or going down at the stern, pick up the phone and start networking immediately. If your company is strong and healthy, you have no need of this advice...today.

What will eventually happen

If you are like many of the people I meet every day, you will find a way to take control of your destiny and will find a place to live and work that allows you to support yourself and your family. It probably won't be easy at first, but you will find more satisfaction than you might ever expect.

Once you take charge of your life and stop expecting someone else to look after you or tell you what to do and when, you may just find that you are enjoying life again and are looking forward to the future instead of dreading it.

You will have successfully made the transition to post-corporate life. You will be joining one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. The rules are yet to be written, but the big difference is that you get to call the shots, not someone else. Make a little, make a lot, the choice is yours. At the end of the day, I think you will be more satisfied with life than you are now.

There are a lot of us working out our destinies in the corporate after-life. Come on in. There is plenty of room. You may enjoy it more than you think, especially if you prepare for it first.

Just remember, getting laid off is not the end. It can be the beginning of an unparallelled adventure.

Any of my readers care to corroborate or refute that statement?

Don't give up your day job - part 1 of a series

I spent much of last week working at my computer in the Cafe Del Sol in Floyd, where paintings and photographs by local artists cover the brightly colored walls.

The combination of great lattes, warm hospitality, and good friends drifting in and out of the Cafe makes for a relaxed working environment that is hard to match anywhere else.

The Cafe also hosts jazz groups on Friday nights and Spoken Word events which feature poetry and other readings by local talent. This artist-friendly environment is no accident. Sally Walker, proprietor of the Cafe Del Sol, is doing her part to help Floyd, VA grow as a cultural center.

Sally is not only a warm-hearted host, she is also a talented singer. On Friday night she hosted a jazz group consisting of John Winnicke and his friends. Several times during the evening, she came out from behind the counter to sing for an enthusiastic audience.

John Winnicki, on guitar in the center, led this quintet through several hours of relaxed, rhythmic, free-flowing jazz that kept the audience entranced. When they played, all conversation ceased. Their music would have done credit to much grander venues, although they would have probably had to play over loud conversation. In the intimate surroundings of the Cafe Del Sol, their music put people in  a mood of quiet reverie. It was a most enjoyable evening.

So, how does this all relate to keeping a day job? Sally Walker manages to combine her love of music and a desire to make a difference, and she does this by running a coffeeshop that is rapidly becoming one of the most important business and cultural incubators in Floyd.

Friends and business associates meet here every day and their activities impact events all over the county. Deals are discussed over coffee and pastries and business is transacted while you watch. There is a synergy here which affects all who enter.

Artists, musicians, and bloggers rub shoulders daily and are often introduced by Doug Thompson, journalist, photographer, and blogger, who has a talent for connecting interesting people together.

The musicians pictured above are all talented enough to earn a living from their music and some have done so, but they all have chosen day jobs now which allow them to live comfortably and to play together when they wish. They are contractors, chemical engineers, and musical instrument makers by day and locally reknown musicians at night. There is something to be said for keeping a day job.

When you depend on your art for your living, you have to go where you can find larger audiences and hopefully more money. For a musician, that often means going on the road and playing in distant locations. For an artist, that means traveling around the country to shows. Your life is often spent traveling and preparing for performances, rather than living a life that feeds the spirit as well as the body.

If you understand the concept of multiple sources of income, you can broaden your interests and use more of your skills to support yourself. Very few of us are one-trick ponies. Most of us can apply ourselves skillfully to a number of areas that can produce income. I want to explore this area in more detail in future posts, because this can make a huge difference in achieving a higher quality of life.

Any suggestions or comments so far?

Tag: career advice, day job

Themepunks - a fascinating view of a post-corporate world

Salon is serializing a new science fiction novella, Themepunks, by Cory Doctorow.  The story takes place in the very near future and features blogger Andrea Fleeks as the narrator and major agent of change in a riveting story that I could not stop reading. Cory knows his subject. He makes this story so real that it is like experiencing virtual reality. He hold your attention even in the presence of an overwhelming barrage of embedded advertisements, (See Disclaimer at end.)

The book is about a post-dotcom boom and bust, built on the ready availability of commodity hardware and open source code. It concerns itself with the lives of a blogger working for the San Jose Mercury, a team of visionary tech entrepreneurs, the CEO of Kodak/Duracell, a shanty town of Florida squatters, and a large cast of media people and other sharks.

Salon magazine has begun to serialize the book, and they will publish a section every Monday for ten weeks.  When the whole thing is done, Tor will publish it between covers, but Cory took the opportunity to do what Dickens did -- write a novel in serial form just a few weeks ahead of his readers.

His choice of an abandoned mall in Hollywood, Florida, as the location of an unlikely industrial renaissance is perfect.

When I read his novella, it was like deja vu all over again. In the Seventies, I was part of a startup which took over a partially abandoned shopping center a half-hour north of Hollywood, Florida.

We eventually we had  a hundred people and three Gardner-Denver wiring machines turning out computer systems before we moved to larger quarters.

Cory's use of a journalist/blogger as the narrator is a master stroke. I am hooked. Cory has my attention for the rest of the series.

Disclaimer:

The only downside to reading the Salon serialization is the crude and intrusive use of advertisements. To get to the story in the first place, you may have to wade through one of the lamest surveys I have ever taken. You can bypass much of it by clicking on the skip button, but you are deluged by multiple ads on every page of the story.

Savvy marketing people will be using this expensive and embarrassing effort by Salon and Marriott as a classic example of how to alienate prospects. Obviously no one at either company bothered to read the novella and see what the ad frequency looked like.

Removing 75-80% of the ads would make for a more normal content/ad balance.

I would be interested in your comments, because I think this could be a viable model for generating revenue, if the advertisers weren't so greedy as they are here.