Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

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.

Revisiting the Wood Stove

The old is new again

I grew up in a house that was heated by a wood stove. After many years of racketing around in strange places where wood was not a common fuel, we are building a modern home in which a wood stove will once again be the major source of heat.

This Dutchwest noncatalytic wood stove may look like one of the old cast iron stoves, but a lot of technology has gone into making it far more efficient (approximately 70%).

An outside air connection is standard, meaning that all air necessary to support combustion is taken from outside of the home. No room air is used to support the fire. No vacuum is created in the room when the fire is burning briskly, because the combustion chamber is sealed. Air comes in from outside, feeds the flame and exhausts through the chimney without mixing with room air.

Regular wood stoves and fireplaces use room air for combustion and suck outside air in through every crack, which makes them virtually useless in subzero weather because they bring in cold air faster than they can heat the room.

This stove is primarily a convection heater, although it does provide a radiant heat. Room air is forced through heated passages in the stove by a blower and then it is dispersed through the room as a gentle flow of warm convection air. The stove can also be used for occasional cooking and is designed with a flat top for this purpose.

We opted to heat our new house with a wood stove, because we have enough wood already cut on the property to supply us for several years. We may install a heat pump next year after we have a chance to see how we manage using wood stove, ceiling fans and electric heaters in the more distant rooms. Power interruptions are common in this area, especially in the winter, so we need to make sure we can keep the house warm and cook food even when the power is out.

There is one little problem

The one problem I am running up against is a lack of current data on the construction of protective coverings for the floor and back wall surrounding the wood stove. We picked out a beautiful ceramic tile to protect the floor and wall from the heat of the wood stove, but the stove people seem to think that the weight of the 420 pound stove will crack the tiles, even though they will be mounted on 1/2" Wonderboard.

The tile people say, "No problem!" but they haven't done a stove installation in a very long time. On the other hand, the stove dealer's installers regaled me with a story about a recent installation where they put the stove down gently and the tiles began to creak as they walked away.

I am asking for information from those of you who are currently using wood stoves. What kinds of attractive stone, tile or brick have you found that combines heat resistance with ruggedness? This stove has heat shields on the back and bottom so heat is not the main concern. I look at the cast iron legs with their sharp edges and want to make sure that there is no way that the stoves weight will damage the hearth material under the stove.

I am open to any useful suggestion. Someone even suggested that I put a 24" x 36" slab of slate under the stove and use 12" tiles to cover the rest of the hearth and backstop.

Any suggestions from you experienced wood-burners?

The year is not winding down...

Instead, the pace of our lives is steadily increasing. So much so that I have recently been concerned about meeting my commitments. Since I am self-employed, my ability to meet commitments is an important factor in maintaining a good reputation. The last few months has left me feeling a bit stretched for time.

I spent many weekends at the Charlottesville City Market and built a respectable backlog of custom design assignments. I was managing to work my way through the backlog up to the point when we decided to build a new house. We had moved the construction date up to this year instead of next because of the looming shortage of building materials in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Being the general contractor for a remote jobsite has been more than a part-time job. As a result, my progress on custom designs has been slow.

This combination window bench and storage unit has been in the works for months. I was really pleased to complete it and have it ready for delivery today.

The bench is constructed of 1 inch edge-glued pine and the flush doors are 3/4 inch pine mounted on European hinges. The biggest challenge was to come up with a stain that would match my client's existing furniture.

As you can see in the final picture, the bench sits gracefully in the window alcove and matches the adjacent dresser. All's well that ends well. Both the client and I are pleased with the result.

Now I need to get busy and finish a few more projects before I have to pack up my tools and move them to my new workshop in Floyd.

The new workshop roof is one-third finished today. By Friday it should be completely shingled with skylights. Here is a photo I took last week when there were only standing walls.

Still putting one foot in front of the other

The pace of life seems to pick up speed as winter closes in. Days that seemed to drift by during Spring and Summer now flick by like the output of a runaway movie projector.

My workshop is jammed with incomplete projects. Realtors escort buyers through the house every few hours as I dodge around them putting final touches on the house and on my overdue projects. The phone rings constantly and Gretchen juggles cell and office phones all through the day. The cats run and hide while curious deer, like this young buck, wander up to my office window.

I sprinkled birdseed over the back yard to attract deer while we are showing the house.  Taking an idea from Seth Godin, I am trying to provide them with a remarkable buying experience. It seems to be working. Prospective buyers get all misty-eyed when they look down from the back deck. "Oh look! It's a herd of deer!"

We may have escaped the Silicon Valley rat race, but our propensity for taking on new challenges fills our days with things that need to be done yesterday. Gretchen put it best when she said yesterday, "I only have to work 24/7 and the rest of the time is mine!"

Breakfast includes clipboards as well as coffee. We eat and make notes whether breakfasting at home or in Charlottesville. When we have lunch out, I am likely to bring my laptop, if lunch can be combined with free wi-fi service. The pace may be almost the same as when we lived in San Jose, but the mood is lighter.

We march to a beat that we set for ourselves now. There is little of the hurry up and wait pattern of corporate life. There is more time spent doing things and less time spent trying to explain and justify things to people who are not really interested. The work is more satisfying, if lower paying.

It is a deliberate choice, because there are opportunities for self-employed people to do well financially at the cost of personal and family time. Happiness for us means generating income AND having time for each other. It is a dynamic balance like riding a bicycle and takes continuing attention, but it is a source of great personal satisfaction when done correctly!

In a few hours we will be off to Floyd again to see how the new house and workshop are coming. Our cats will be left in the care of their cat sitter and the house will be left in the care of our realtors, The Marjorie Adam Team. Blogging will continue if I can get to the Cafe Del Sol while it is open.

Stay tuned for more news about the realities of living in a house heated by this wood stove. I still need to consult with Fred First, the Sage of Goose Creek,  on the proper design and location of a wood shed. With snow just a few days away, I want to be prepared for the challenges of keeping a house warm and managing a wood pile. I have childhood memories of lugging firewood through snowdrifts and splitting wood in subzero weather. I would like to be better prepared for using wood as a fuel this time around.

Those of you who are using wood for heating are welcome to share your experiences. For example, what is the best way to store a day's supply of firewood indoors?

Which micro-business is right for you? - #2 in a series

If you followed the logic of the previous post, you might consider balancing the power and glory of a full B2B micro-business against the freedom of a one-person enterprise which leverages the Internet or deals directly with customers.

There are many variables to consider, but the great thing is that most are under your direct  control. Even financing is no longer the barrier it once was. Many self-employed people fund their fledgling enterprise with credit cards.

If you need enormous amounts of money to kick-start your new micro-business, there is something wrong with your business plan. You are still following the hallucinogenic logic of wild and wacky Internet start-ups. Forget the smoke and mirrors game, go with a plan that allows you to model your business on a small scale and see if it works first!

If you can't model your business with a relatively low-cost pilot project, then it is a high risk investment and is not something you should consider for self-employment.

If you are serious about supporting yourself with your micro-business, then avoid high-risk development projects. High-risk in this instance means that you must develop a technology or an infrastructure before you can begin to deal with the usual business challenges of finding customers and meeting their needs profitably. High risk development projects are best handled by large corporations or a consortium of companies.

What is a low-risk investment? If you are selling food, a low risk investment is tuning the menu to optimize sales. If you are selling craft work, a low risk investment is varying your product mix, but using the same basic raw materials and technology.

Be warned that a low-risk investment is easily copied by others, so you need to ensure that the product is only a fraction of what you actually deliver. Your customer service should be so outstanding that when others copy your product offerings, it makes no difference in your sales to good customers. Customers who buy on price alone are not reliable customers and will not build your micro-business.

To succeed as a micro-business, you must stand out of the crowd. You cannot succeed as a purveyor of commodity products. Your business plan must describe your strategy for success in a particular niche that gives you a competitive advantage.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

Why is a customer going to buy my product or service and not go to Wal-Mart, etc. and get it for less?

How do I satisfy this customer and make enough profit to justify doing it again.

What risks am I exposing myself to if my customer misuses my product or service?

If all of these are covered, is there any joy in running this business?

This may sound daunting, but every successful micro-business owner manages to find or create a situation that answers these questions and provides them with income and a challenge worth taking up.

May you do the same!

Choosing your micro-business - first in a new series

If my vision of our 21st century economic future is correct, your choice regarding a micro-business is not whether you will participate in a micro-business, but when.

I see a future in which a greater number of skilled individuals will look forward to developing their own micro-business, rather than spending their entire career as an employee. To frame what I am about to say, I will use these definitions from Lloyd Lemons, a twenty-year micro-business owner:

Micro-business owners are people who refer to themselves as soloists, independents, consultants, craftsmen, artists, freelancers, and free agents. Perhaps a more meaningful way to define the micro-business owner is as an idealistic individual who shuns the corporate life for something smaller, simpler, and more personally rewarding.

Lloyd has also captured the rewards that comes from creating your own micro-business.

    What a micro-business should be about...
    1. It should be about bending the world a little, to fit your purpose, by doing something you truly enjoy doing.
    2. It's about being a catalyst for your own ideas, and not a facilitator for someone else’s.
    3. It’s about personal freedom, largely brought about the integration of working and living.

If you can get your wits around that incredible vision, we can go on to discuss how you might choose a micro-business. The range of opportunities and lifestyles is vast.

You can provide consulting services for businesses and offer them flexibility and responsiveness that they cannot match with in-house resources. If you have the contacts and experience, this is a highly remunerative activity with many of the perks of corporate life. You get to wear power suits, carry a briefcase, and wear at least two kinds of electronic messaging systems. You also get to attend meetings with powerful people in distant places, so your frequent flyer miles accumulate and you stay current on the restaurants of a dozen cities. The only downside is that you are so closely locked to the rhythms of corporate life that you are for all intents and purposes, a contracted corporate employee without a benefits package.

At a less stratospheric level, you run your own business, either by yourself or with assistance from a small staff. You have developed a range of products or services and a means to deliver them profitably to customers on a regular basis so that your company continues to flourish and prosper. You call the shots and you ensure that customers are pleased with your service. Your customers refer other customers to you so your advertising costs stay at an acceptable level. You have all of the problems that any CEO faces, and you get to handle most of them yourself. You debug production, struggle with suppliers, refine designs, work nights to meet deadlines and sweep the floors and put the garbage out. Your earnings potential is open-ended, but you may need a 27-hour day to achieve the targets you have set.

At a more easily confronted level, you provide a service to individuals, or sell goods via the internet or in person on a part-time basis. This allows you to evaluate micro-business opportunities while continuing to receive income from your regular job. Your micro-business earnings, while they may eventually become substantial, are generally not sufficient to support your family for some time. It is vital that you arrange for more than one source of income.

You may continue to work at your present job or at a part-time job so that you have a regular income and some health insurance benefits. Some people work part-time because it gives them more flexibility to indulge in things they are passionate about like writing, or surfing, or performing music. Others work part-time to build a business of their own. The choices are many and they can lead to great personal rewards.

Once you make the decision to work for yourself, you may also realize that you are not locked in to any of these choices. You may find yourself led from surfing to running a clothing business. The choices are open ended. All you have to do is realize that the opportunities are there for you.

The life of a micro-business owner

If you are a cubicle dweller, you may have difficulty remembering what it was like to get up in the morning and be filled with enthusiasm about your day to come.

As a micro-business owner, you are much more likely to view your workday with a sense of joy. Everyday challenges provide inspiration, instead of a sense of futility or doom.

Even when you are hard-pressed to make ends meet, your freedom of choice is so much greater that problems are much more likely to be viewed as opportunities.

Life is a different game when you set your own schedule. You can adjust your work day to balance the conflicting needs of family and income generation.

As a writer-blogger-craftsman-publisher, who is a husband, grandfather, and cat owner, I get to juggle all sorts of conflicting demands. Since I have responsibility for setting my schedule, I have no one to blame if things go wrong. As a result, I try to make choices so things work out to benefit all concerned, including myself.

For example, I got up at 3:00am this morning so I would be able to secure a place at the Charlottesville City Market. I fed the cats and departed the house in stealth mode so that Gretchen could catch a few more hours of sleep. At 5:00am I joined my fellow micro-business associates (exhibitors and produce sellers) as we drank coffee and watched the police and towtrucks clearing the parking lot in preparation for the saturday morning City market. By 5:30am we were all busy setting up displays for the 7:00am opening of the market. From 7;00 to 12:00 noon, the pace was non-stop. Eager shoppers swarmed through the market looking for the freshest produce and for all sorts of food, fresh baked goods, and craft work. Check out the C'ville Market photo album for recent images of this Saturday morning event.

I met a few people who offered to help me get my book into various programs at UVA and into the UVA bookstore. I also had the pleasant experience of seeing two women come up to my book display and one said to the other, "That's the book I was telling you about!"

Word of mouth advertising. How sweet it is to actually see it in action!

I have a new Affordable Designs in Wood banner sign for the top of my van. No one mentions it, but I notice that I have more requests for design quotes than ever before. I actually had people standing in line waiting to talk to me about projects! I was elated, but I couldn't stop and enjoy the feeling, because I was sketching madly and taking down notes and email addresses.

Two of the other exhibitors came by during the morning and did a hasty browse through Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day. They still have day jobs while they are ramping up their own businesses. My book struck a nerve and they laugh and promise to return and pick up a copy.

I saw a change in how people approach my book this week. I sold two books where the person picked up the book, looked inside and bought the book within three minutes. One was a woman who bought it for her son, who works in IT. The other was a senior IT manager who had just been laid off because of outsourcing.

By noon, I am wasted. The heat and 100% hunidity has taken its toll, but the day was professionally and financially rewarding. I break down the exhibit, load everything back into the van, and head for home which is 20 miles away.

I unload the van, shuck off my sodden clothing, shower and crash for a few hours while Gretchen handles phone traffic and manages the affairs of her tree care company client. When I surface, all is quiet and I can catch up on my emails and fill an online order that has just been placed for my book.

Those of you who are considering self-publishing might well consider doing fulfillment yourselves. There is incredible satisfaction seeing orders arrive and being able to sign and ship the book the same day. I feel much closer to my book buyers than if they were getting books through a third party and I had no visibility on how well they were being serviced.

I get several chances to interact with buyers. I send them an email telling them when the order is being shipped. I write a note in the book when I sign it and I may write a note on the paid invoice asking them to email me if they have any questions.

This may sound like too much work to some of you, but it is completely voluntary and I get to choose my own priorities. At the end of each day, I am as happy as I have ever been in my life. I am making progress toward a known goal and meeting new and interesting people along the way. Life is definitely good...

Maybe it's time to check out home-based business opportunities

If you have been paying attention to this blog lately, you might have considered working for yourself, even if you are currently employed.

I think that's great insurance. The best time to investigate a home-based business is while you are still working. There is a wealth of information about this area and it will take some time to find a situation that is right for you. Your choices of customers, products and services are almost unlimited. You can narrow your choices by considering the hours you wish to spend, whether you wish to travel and by how much seed money you have.

There are excellent resources like Paul and Sarah Edwards who have been writing about working from home since 1985. Their book, The Best Home Businesses for People 50+, should be one of the first books you read if you are serious about working for yourself. They have done the research so you don't have to. Their list of 70 business you can start from home barely scratches the surface of what is available, but their approach will set you up to analyze other opportunities successfully.

They do an excellent job of categorizing opportunities by factors such as:

Start-up cost
Overhead
Potential earnings
Computer Skills required
Deadline pressure
Flexible hours
Overall stress

They also cover skills required, what to charge, and the best ways to get business. After reading this book, you will be well-prepared to seek out an opportunity of your own if none of the busines models they discuss excite you.

I did not read Paul and Sarah's book before launching my home-based businesses, because I learned of it only recently when they sent me a copy and congratulated me on publishing Danger Quicksand - have A Nice Day. I would have saved myself time and effort if I had known about this book earlier.

They are great role models for writers who self-publish. They have written something like 15 books about new and better ways to work and have sold one and a half million copies.

If you harbor yearnings to start your own business some day, you can do yourself a favor and see what Paul and Sarah have to say. It will be well worth your time.

Your biggest barriers to success can be overcome

To put it very simply, you cannot control something unless you take responsibility and have sufficient knowledge.

Let's start with the "R" word, responsibility. If you insist on making others take care of you, instead of taking responsibility for your own life and success, you end up in a company or under a government that dictates almost every activity in your life. Don't be surprised if the organization has its own ideas on what your life should be like.

Those of you who are or have been married may have encountered situations where a lack of responsibility made for an unhappy relationship. Whining, by the way, is a dead giveaway that the person doing the whining has not taken responsibility for his or her actions.

Your thrust toward success in life is powered by your willingness to take responsibility.

Let's consider the "K" word, knowledge. When you consider that you don't need to know any more about a person or subject, you give up any chance of controlling that part of your life which is affected by that person or subject. As soon as you take someone else's opinion about something, or someone, you are denying yourself access to actual knowledge.

Watching the evening news on TV is one sure way to get a biased view of life, people, and international affairs. Most news is actually an editorial exercise, so you are getting some anchor person's opinion about the State of the Union, who did what to whom, and you get very few facts. I suggest you go to the source the next time you hear an alarming report about anything. Google the matter until you come up with the original transcripts, not an Associated Press version or a NY Times version. Get eyewitness reports from a blogger. It's not that hard to do.

Listening to self-professed experts rather than using your own judgement, will cost you dearly. If you are going to make decisions, make them by relying on data that you can personally verify. If your sources are wrong, you will learn from the experience and will do better the next time.

Certainty of truth gives you incredible stability in the face of hecklers and naysayers. If you know the truth, you are freed from a craving for agreement from others. There is not enough time to persuade some people of truth. They may just have to figure it out on their own nickel.

Finally, there is the "C" word, control. Control is no more than making things start, change, and stop as required. It is an absolute necessity for driving a car and for all of the important things in life. Control is what gets  a student through school. It is also what is involved in creating a successful relationship. It is what enables a salesperson to sell and a manager to manage.

A person has to be able to accept control as well as exert control in order to operate successfully in  a group. For some, "control" is so loaded with bad memories that the mere idea of control makes them go bonkers. These are the few who will end up in restraints, if they can't manage to control themselves.

When you see someone who is in a bad way in life, they are usually not in control of their day-to-day existence. They are also missing knowledge or responsibility as I mentioned earlier.

The interesting thing about all of this is that no matter how badly a person may have screwed themselves up, they can begin recovering immediately by gaining a little more knowledge, taking a little more responsibility, and exerting a little more control. If a person works these three things back and forth, gaining a little ground in each area, it will not take long before they will make progress toward a better situation in life.

If you are up against a major stop in life, or trapped helplessly in your cubicle, try working your way out by improving your knowledge, responsibility, and your control a little bit at a time. I can testify that it works. Take the information and run with it.

Post-corporate income - How high do you set the bar?

This is the fifth in a series of essays about post-corporate life.

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. 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, if you don't have the skills to support your family outside of corporate employment.

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 12-16 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.

Being adequately prepared for eventual separation from the corporate mothership is the best security for you 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 downsize 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.

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?

How many have advice to offer to those who will enter post-corporate life in the near future?

Tag: post-corporate

Making a living outside the corporate mothership - Part 4 in a series

How is this done?

First of all, some rules never seem to change. Making a living in the post-corporate world depends on getting your products and services in front of the right people at the right time.

Big deal, you say. So how does an individual accomplish this if larger companies struggle with this and fail?

I think both have the same success rate. Some micro-businesses fail and some succeed spectacularly. The biggest difference is speed of execution and speed of recovery.

In a large corporation, a product launch of eighteen months is considered fast. Entire markets can appear and dissolve in less time than that.

A small company can change its product mix in less than a week. How does this apply? If you find a venue with buyers and they aren't buying your product, you go back home and revise your product offerings to match what prospects are asking for. The key is to ask customers what they want, if they are not buying what you have.

There are many steps involved in setting up a successful small business. The only two that I have space to discuss are:

(1) finding a supply of prospective customers and (2) presenting them with products they need, want, and are prepared to pay for.

The small business has more venues now than ever before. Ebay offers access to millions of prospects. At the other end of the spectrum, farmer's markets, craft shows, flea markets, and carts in malls offer access to prospects at widely varying costs. Success depends on finding an appropriate sales location that you can afford.

Examples from life

I have been selling Affordable Designs in Wood for about two years now and have gradually developed a sense of what people want and are willing to pay for. I have been promoting locally through word of mouth and through my Box-Carts website. Now I have found another venue with prospects who can afford my services and I am expanding to meet the demand.

My current venue of choice is the City Market in Charlottesville. It's not for everyone, because it is only open 5 hours a week in an outside location. The people who shop there are looking for produce and baked goods. Craft work and jewelry are not at the top of their list. Most of the buyers are city dwellers, but there are regular visitors from affluent enclaves outside the city. People do not linger to shop as the temperatures are stifling at this time of year. The vendor turnover is very low and there are 8 pages of names on the waiting list for assigned spaces. For a quick tour, see the C'ville Market Photo Album on the left sidebar.

This venue is attractive to me because there is a high percentage of regular patrons who return week after week. They have their regular stops, but they notice new booths when these appear on the outskirts of the market. I have seen a pattern of visitors to my booth. People will walk by one week and idly observe that I am there. The next week, they will say hello and may take a business card. Later, we will get into conversation and discuss a possible design solution for some problem they have. Sometimes this develops into a design and a proposal. I sell very little at the show, because most of my pieces are too large to put in a car. Instead, I develop a relationship with these people which eventually results in a referral or a purchase.

My friend, Jeanette Caruth, does very well at these non-craft fair venues. Her paintings now sell in a much higher range than a few months ago, and she can barely keep up with demand. Although her work regularly appears in galleries, she find most of her new customers at carefully selected farmer's markets. Painting is now a full-time occupation for her and she built her customer base by frequenting weekend markets until she found the ones that worked for her.

I interviewed a number of independent business people and will discuss their particular enterprises in future posts.

Can you envision life outside the corporate mothership?
What if there was no choice?

Tag: post-corporate

Seizing the opportunity in post-corporate life - part 3 in a series

To succeed in post-corporate life, you must become a business owner instead of an employee. This takes an entirely different mind-set than you may be used to.

Your economic survival suddenly depends on spending money only on things that will MAKE money, not on those things that are symbols of a rapidly vanishing lifestyle. If your big house can be written off as a legitimate business expense, great! If not, you had better think of better uses for that money. You might be able to buy a franchise to support and employ your family with the money you have tied up in your home.

There is plenty of opportunity, but for the most part, you are going to find it in the old-fashioned way, by satisfying other people's needs!

"How quaint!" you exclaim. But, I am a senior director with vast responsibilities and a membership in the country club, and children who are taking riding lessons and....

Correction. If you have entered the post-corporate zone, you WERE a senior manager/director/poobah/whatever and you had better start converting your assets into something that will generate income. You either figure out a way to do things that people need and will pay for or you will go into a dwindling spiral and end up in very bad shape.

Life outside the corporate mothership does not necessarily involve wearing Birkenstocks and foraging for edible plants. It can mean living on a boat in some out of the way marina, or guiding tourists, or selling real estate and living large in the most desirable areas of our country. It is an open-ended opportunity and you must think like a business owner to take advantage of what is there for you.

One of the biggest barriers that a successful middle manager faces is that she or he typically has had no contact with customers or any part of the real world that matters. When I was in a successful start-up some years ago, I was approached by a senior marketing manager from IBM who was considering a transition to a smaller, more interesting company. In two hours of conversation, I was unable to determine what he actually did! He made no decisions on features, pricing, forecasting and he never dealt with customers. He was sort of a liaison between groups that were coordinating other groups...you get the idea, I'm sure. He worked very hard and he made lots of money, but he had nothing of value for a company that was making and selling real-time computers to industry.

If you are in this kind of situation, you need to get real. By the time the corporation is done with you, it is vital that you have accumulated business skills that can scale to whatever you need to do next.

Post-corporate life has very few opportunities with layers and layers of organization to hide in and manipulate. You will need sales and marketing skills that you can put to work immediately. If you have design skills, they must be honed to the point that you can convert a customer need into a product efficiently and profitably. You need to hone your negotiating skills so you can establish a fair exchange for what you do or sell.

There are sources of information which will help you determine what opportunities exist and I will discuss them in future posts. But, before you can profitably use them, you need to examine your current mind-set and see if it needs readjustment from employee to business owner. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results of such an adjustment. It may open doors that you never expected.

Tag: post-corporate

Moving on to post-corporate life - #2 in the series

The transition from corporate to post-corporate life is as inevitable as moving out of your parents house to a life on your own. There comes a time when corporations can decide, as your parents may have done, that it would be better for all concerned if you would go elsewhere.

For some of us this is no problem, as we have been straining at the leash to go new places ever since we first learned how to walk. As soon as we learned all we needed to know about our house, our neighborhood, our job, etc. we were ready for another challenge. What's that over there? Who are those people doing those cool things? What are those books about? Inquiring minds want to know!

There can be a time, however, when we hit a rest point and we want to stop and enjoy the view. We have a comfortable job, the boss leaves us alone so we can work, and we are thinking about buying a new car, truck, or summer cabin. We think life is finally coming together, at last!

Wrong. Wrong! WRONG! Like Europe in the '30s, we are ignoring the winds of change that are sweeping steadily toward us. You cannot hide in your cubicle, secure in the knowledge that you are doing a great job for a boss who respects you and has shown his respect with real money, not just attaboys!

Your personal competition is no longer the fresh young faces just out of the University, it is the tens of thousands of bright young people in other lands who speak English as well as you do and several other languages as well! They are increasingly available, at salaries that CFOs slaver over.

Unfortunately, most of us have become commodities. Whether we are salespeople, program managers, systems analysts, or fast-track executives, our value to the company is increasingly measured by our hourly wages, not by our experience levels and knowledge of customer situations.

If, in the course of corporate events, it becomes necessary to lighten ship, the more experienced and more expensive people present an opportunity that bean-counters cannot resist. If you have not been troubled by layoffs, it is probably because you are below the radar. Yes you are a commodity, but you are so far down in the rank and file that your salary does not justify the trouble it would take to sever you from the organization.

Just don't expect that it will stay that way. If you continue to work hard and produce well, you will eventually begin to make enough money that you WILL become the subject of layoff discussions. The solution is NOT to do less or to knowingly make less money. The solution is to plan for your life after corporate life.

I will discuss this in more detail in following posts, but I would like to leave you with this thought. What if you were already prepared to shift over to working full-time for yourself or with a small team of other consultants? What if you had already done your homework and were set up with a fictitious name and a proper corporate structure, and were already generating income? You would probably be walking around smiling, while others in your company were chewing their nails and reading Want-Ads.

How many of you are well-prepared in case the corporate ship goes down? Who among you is unprepared? Maybe it's time to think about it.

Tag: post-corporate

Wake up call! Time to build a support network!

You, in that cubicle! You at that desk!
And you, in that hotel room far from home!

You have been working flat out to get the company through the quarter and now you are looking forward to a long weekend. You deserve it.

Your job will be safe if you have worked hard and made the right decisions, but what have you done to make your career more stable?

If you are like most of your co-workers, you have been working long hours in an increasingly unstable work environment and you are worried about your finances, your future, and your relationship with your manager.

The one thing you haven't done is to do any effective networking!

If you are like most professionals, you don't have time to meet people outside of your company and you have almost lost track of the people you used to work with. If the company decides to downsize or to outsource, you will be on your own with no help in sight.

In today's employment market, major changes in demand occur unpredictably. Six months ago, you were eagerly recruited. Next week there may be thousands like you on the street at the same time. You are not going to change the corporate business model, but you can ensure that you are well-connected to trusted friends no matter what happens at work.

Without a support network, you are like chaff in the wind, completely dependent on your company's management skills. That's a scary thought. You need to do something to protect yourself against adversity.

You survive best when you have an extensive network of trusted friends with whom you share information and and access to resources.

If you are confined to your cubicle most of the time, you need a secure online tool that helps you connect with friends and lets them introduce you to people you need to meet. There are several of these, but the one that really works for me is LinkedIn.

You can join LinkedIn on your own or be invited by a friend. People in LinkedIn have total control over their privacy and have total control over how they will connect to new people. In general, you can search for people by name of by company, but you cannot connect them directly. You must send your request to communicate with them through a network of connected friends. This is done very quickly and automatically, but the process of handling introductions is comfortable and professional.

For example, if I wanted to join a hot new startup, I would search LinkedIn using the name of the company to see if any executives were members. If I found the right people, but didn't know any of them, I would look on my search results page to see which of my personal connections could introduce me to them. The system automatically displays my options to connect to someone through four degrees of separation.

The system provides an automated way for me to write a message to the target person and accompany that with a request for someone to introduce me. The whole idea is to create a means to build and establish trust one link at a time. The process is amazingly fast.

Let's say that you upload the email addresses of twenty friends you trust, LinkedIn will immediately tell you which of them are already in the system. All you have to do is initiate requests to link up and within a day you may be connected through them to tens of thousands of people you might need to know.

You are still sitting in your cubicle with a spreadsheet that is making your head hurt, but your network of potential friends is expanding at great speed. You realize the power you have tapped when you get an email from an old acquaintance inviting you to connect with her or him.

With a week of work, you can build a network of friends and you will be helping each other to find information, find jobs, and even find investors. You can build the kind of close ties that give you peace of mind and ease you through the next corporate crisis.

LinkedIn a superb tool for networking. Do yourself a favor and investigate it. If you find it useful, feel free to look me up. Maybe we can help each other out!

Update: Des Walsh and Joe Bartling have more to add.

Going solo - a global trend

Leah Maclean's weblog, Secrets of Going Solo,  contains a wealth of information for those of you who have or are considering launching your own business. She has inaugurated a series of interviews which she calls Borrowed Wisdom and I was honored to be her inaugural interview.

It was quite an experience. She is an excellent interviewer and we covered topics and issues I have not had time to write about. I can readily see why she is an effective coach. Read the interview. I think you may find it entertaining.

If you have any interest in working for yourself, add her weblog to your blogroll. You will find that the challenges of self-employment are the same world-wide. She also has a coaching website and a newsletter that bears checking out.

Leah is a professional coach and mentor and is Director of Working Solo Pty Limited, a leading learning, development and coaching organization in Australia. Her passion is being a partner to those who have or will step into their own business. Leah wants to make it