Archive for August, 2011
New Ventures – Part 1
Posted by Brett in General Entrepreneurship on August 23, 2011
CAUTION! THIS POST IS KIND OF SELF ADVERTISING AT POINTS!
One cool aspect of founding, launching, and operating a new venture is it attracts calls and questions from other people with ideas and visions of starting their own companies. I really enjoy speaking with people about ideas they have, helping them brainstorm, and hopefully adding a little value to whatever it is they are looking to do. These conversations also tend to open up new opportunities for me and as I alluded to in my last post I am currently working on two new ventures that sprung up from conversations just like these.
The first is less of company and more of me taking advantage of everything I have learned in the last 2 years to help other companies improve their sales, web presence, finance or general operations. Every time I speak with another entrepreneur we uncover all kinds of low hanging fruit for their company. Essentially I have started consulting other business in anything from web site development and SEO to Sales execution to any of the other items above. I know how scarce resources are at companies right now, however, I truly believe I can add value for other companies.
I can really help companies uncover opportunities and then execute on the ideas that we come up with. I have actually started my first engagement and hope it will lead to more opportunities. The only thing that is going to prevent me from really exploring this new venture is my time.
This idea definitely has some legs. I love learning about new companies (large and small) and I really think I can add value in ideation and execution. It will certainly provide me the opportunity to learn a lot more about business and I also hope it may add a little cash flow to help support new ideas, ventures, and just life in general. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about what I can bring to the table or if you know of anyone that may be interested in speaking with me! It is amazing how much selling scrubs can teach you.
General Ramblings of an Entrepreneur
Posted by Brett in General Entrepreneurship, Lessons Learned on August 2, 2011
The last month has been a whirlwind; wedding, honeymoon, Lobster mini-season, scrubadoo.com and a new venture (or two). Needless to say lots of fun, some stress, and a lot of work. Here are a few random thoughts from the last month. I will hopefully get to a post about the new ventures in the near future.
- Vacations: I know I talk about this a lot, just a little more insight….I worked a little every day of our honeymoon and lobster mini-season. This was the first time I felt that scrubadoo really interfered with a vacation. We are growing pretty quickly which is keeping me extremely busy. No matter where I go, I can’t leave scrubadoo behind. These were the first vacations where I really felt the company was taking away from the ability to truly relaxing and fully enjoy myself. What is worse is that I am confident my scrubadoo requirements also affected the ability my wife (on the honeymoon) and friends at mini-season to fully enjoy their trips to the fullest. Needless to say I have an incredibly supportive and understanding wife. She backs scrubadoo and what I am doing 100%. I honestly felt terrible that scrubadoo had to come along with us., but this is the road we choose.
- Google Voice: Awesome. We have a local Minneapolis phone number set up through Google voice. While in Grand Cayman for the honeymoon when I needed to make phone calls to other places in the U.S. I was able to free of charge. It just called from my local Minneapolis number. It didn’t matter that I was out of the country.
- Support Group: I think I have written about my bi-monthly phone conversations with Brett, one of the founders of Forgetful Gentleman and Empower the Athlete, in previous posts. He has decided to start applying for jobs. He was a great sounding board and it was great to speak with someone else going through the same things as us on a regular basis. I will miss these conversations. Entrepreneurship is not easy. In the early stages it is a grind that works you ridiculous hours and in most cases leaves you very little to show for it.
- Sales Push (hitting the pavement part 2): We have not had much success from our trip to AZ for the convention with Synergy Home Care franchises. I am still confident it will lead to some wholesale scrub sales but at this point we have yet to break even on the trip. We are going to start approaching local private practices, nursing homes, and community colleges in the next two weeks. We will see if we can make a few sales happen.
- SEO companies: I have yet to find one that is worth even close to what they charge. We have officially brought 100% of all SEO efforts in house. Stay tuned for more on this. After speaking with and dealing with dozens of companies I have decided that it is an incredibly sleazy industry.
In general the last 2 months have been very slow for scrubadoo. We are still far larger than we were this time last year, but we have certainly hit the summer doldrums. Hopefully August will bring with it an uptick in medical scrub sales. Stay tuned, I should be back soon now that I have a little more time!