For the past two years I’ve been hard at work getting a business started. Along the way I’ve learned a lot and it has changed me. The biggest learning I’m arriving at is that going completely solo is a whole hell of a lot harder than I thought. There are so many things that get in the way that it becomes nearly impossible to accomplish anything. I honestly think that it is amazing that I’ve pulled off as much as I have. I’ve done some great projects for clients, created a product all the way up to bringing it to market, started over, learned some new stuff, started over, learned some new stuff, started over, learned some new stuff, started over, learn some new stuff….. Eventually the meta learning take place and you quit the cycle. So what now?
Now I understand why having other people along for the ride is a great idea. A spouse can be helpful but in ways your relationship makes that difficult. There will be disagreements about how to proceed. There will be times when your partner needs to kick your ass to get you moving. If that your wife it can make things awkward. My wife tries to help and has done a great job keeping me focused on completing the book, but it hasn’t been easy on her. So what am I going to do about it? I’m going to get some other people in the boat with me.
What shape that will take and how things are done isn’t clear to me. But I don’t think that is the problem. The real problem is selling it to other people. Regardless of the form there will be work involved. The idea is that there is a big payday on the other side, but there is work in between. In some cases a lot of work.
I plan to keep the team small. Ten will be too many and three too small. Five or seven is likely to be the right size. I’ve already got the technical crap covered and if the volume is too much I’ll outsource the work. The other things I think are needed are:
· A drill instructor type who can keep everything moving
· A marketing type who gets both tactical and strategic marketing
· A graphics artist type who can make things look good
· A writer type who writes well
My expectation is that everybody on the team will share and teach each other so we can all help each other to shoulder the burden of building up what I have envisioned. The goal is to do it with minimal capital investment. To do it quickly and do it in such a manner that it requires minimal maintenance on our part freeing us up to create new products. Ultimately, the goal is to make it fun.
This is a new realm for me to go in to because it will mean letting go a little and letting other people play too. It isn’t entirely comfortable for me, but I don’t think I can achieve my vision on my own. I’m going to continue writing about this so you’ll get to see what happens and hopefully take a whack at it yourself.