The Next Few Months...

I'm at an interesting stage in my entrepreneurial life. It's that make-or-break point that twenty years from now I will look back at and say that it was those few months that either propelled me to entrepreneurial prominence or set my life back about three years.

Here's the situation - despite all of it's success, SportsLizard.com is barely making money (breaking even for all intensive purposes) and I have roughly enough money saved to live on for 8-10 months (probably more like a year if I tap all of my resources). If at the end of that time, I haven't turned the business around, I will be completely broke, jobless, and waaaaaay behind where I would have been if I had just saved my money and kept making my salary as an Engineer. The good news, however, is that I have only been working full time on the business for three weeks and I have an aggressive, low cost, marketing plan that I haven't even begun to put in place (just thinking about where that could take the business pumps me up).

The past few weeks my only focus has been a drastic upgrade that I believe will give me the best "product" in my industry. What I mean by product is the overall experience of my site will be the most technologically advanced and user friendly sports collectibles site on the web. All of that work has resulted in a total negligence for everything else in the business (including the blog), but I felt that if I was entering the make or break time of my life that I better be selling the best damn product out there.

So although it's the most nerve racking time of my life, somehow I can't help but believe that this is what being an entrepreneur is all about. And most of the are successful entrepreneurs that I've read about have overcome much more than what I am facing. That is what continues to motivate and excite me. If nothing else, the next few months should be interesting...

Different Generations = Different Consumers

I've always heard that one of the best things that you can do to "legitimize" your web business is to provide consumers with a phone number and physical address to contact you, in addition to an email address. The theory is that by providing consumers with an address and phone number they feel like they are dealing with a "real" business run by a "real" person.

I had never completely bought into this theory - I for one could care less if you have a phone number for me. As long as you have an email address that I can contact you at, I am happy. Ever try to contact Google? Good luck finding their phone number, they don't have phone support.

But I realized that for a number of reasons it might not be a bad idea to do this, even though I didn't completely agree with the logic behind it. After all, I don't represent the average consumer and it wouldn't cost that much anyway. So for next to nothing I got a P.O. Box and a pre-paid cell phone a few months back and voila - I had a Contact Us page that made SportsLizard.com look like a "real" business.

I figured no one would ever call - I mean why would anyone call when they could just fill out the contact form or send an email? Being 23, most of the people I know are around the same age as me and most of us would rather search for an hour for an email address or try to figure it out ourselves rather than pick up the phone and call. I just figured it was like that for everyone.

But a funny thing happened this week - the phone rang...a lot, and most of the time it was older adults (I am classifying an "older" adult as someone not in my generation, lets say 35+, which in reality isn't old at all). These people decided that they would rather call than use all of the other options that I give - contact form, email address, AIM. All of the questions that they asked were relatively simple and could have been answered by looking around SportsLizard.com for five minutes. So why would they call?

Once I thought about it, I realized that they probably chose to call me as opposed to searching around or sending an email for a few reasons. First, it does validate a business to call them and speak with someone who actually cares about you, rather than searching around the site for an answer, especially for those people from a generation that isn't used to using their computer to do everything.

The second reason that I could come up with was that most customer service email sucks. Most places send you an auto reply and then don't reply to you for a week (if at all). If they do reply, the reply is usually copied and pasted from an answer list and doesn't really answer your question. It looks like they didn't read what you wrote. I have had this happen to me several times and it is EXTREMELY frustrating.

All of this leads me to two conclusions - first, providing an email address and a snail mail address provides a level of comfort to some and is probably a good idea after all. Second, by simply answering your emails quickly (try to do it within a few hours if you can) and with a personal touch, you can differentiate yourself from the competition. And as a small business, you need every advantage that you can get.

Motivation Slump

One thing I've always had is motivation. Especially when it comes to my business. Since the day I conceived the idea I have always been able to whatever was necessary for success. I've given up countless hours and thousands of dollars, not to mention leaving my career and moving back in with family to save money. That's why the past few days were a first for me.

Last week was my first full time week running SportsLizard.com. I started off with a bang - I came to the realization of just how much work I could get done with more time and less distractions. My largest accomplishment was launching Mobile SportsLizard.com on Saturday. But for some reason after that I fell into a rut.

I started becoming distracted by everything around me - friends/family/hobbies - all of those things I was worried about when I moved back to NY. I temporarily began to feel "comfortable" and with that comfort came a loss of motivation. Couple that with the fact that by quitting my job I don't get to see first hand what I DON'T want to do everyday, and I was in a hardcore slump. Working for myself was, for the first time, getting difficult.

I have no reason to be "comfortable" - the reality of the situation is that all of my comfort was flushed down the toilet when I quit my job. I have enough savings to live off of for 6-8 months and then I will be forced to get a job, something I don't want to do. In reality, I suppose it's not that big of a deal if I had to get a job, but I treat it as the equivalent of being sent to hell (again, to avoid the whole becoming "comfortable" thing.) Anyway, all of this means that I need to step it up NOW and prove that this business is profitable enough to make a comfortable living off of. There's not a doubt in my mind that it will be, but that only gets me so far. It's time for results.

So what got me out of my rut? This month is the two year anniversary of the day I decided that I wanted to run my own business and came up with the idea to run SportsLizard.com. This afternoon I pulled out the article that convinced me to change my direction in life and sat in the exact same chair to read it that I did two years ago. Then I picked up my original notebook where I scribbled down my first thoughts of SportsLizard.com. Then I went to my computer and looked at the reality of what I had done. Millions of people had an idea that day back in February 2004. How many have turned that idea into reality? And how many of those have had the success that SportsLizard.com has had? That fixed me quickly.

I'm sure that this won't be the last time that I slip for a day or two (I am human). The important thing is that, as an entrepreneur, you don't slip for a few weeks or months. You are likely the only thing driving your business forward. It's hard to succeed if you are 100% focused, but it's nearly impossible to succeed in spite of yourself if you lose focus.

The Time is Now

Back in the spring/summer of 2004 when I had decided to start my business and was reading every business book that I could get my hands on, one of the common themes that I picked up on was that to succeed you need to commit to taking action, and you need to commit to it now.

Now that I am on the other side of quitting my job to run my business, I feel like I hold a little more credibility on this topic. It seems obvious, but too many people either don't take action or make a lazy effort and pass it off as action.

Back then, I made a commitment to my business. But once I started my senior year of college and started getting job offers, I put the business on cruise control and my pathetic effort exerted towards the business resulted in nearly no success whatsoever.

Fast forward to this past summer. I had worked for six months and I had the same feeling that I had two years prior - that I didn't want to be an engineer, that I didn't want to work for someone else. I looked in the mirror and decided that I was going to do WHATEVER IT TAKES for my business to succeed.

I spent my remaining vacation time working on SportsLizard.com and it paid off with an honorable mention in the Microsoft Start Something Amazing Awards. After learning that the business was going to be mentioned in the #1 Sports Collectibles Magazine, I knew that the time to capitalize was now. Two months later, I am running my business full time. It is possible to do whatever you want to do with your life, but you need to take action towards it NOW.

I'm not saying everyone should run out and quit their job today. It takes planning to do it right. The key is that you are planning. That you have started working towards that goal of living your passion. That you're not just saying that it's something you want to do down the road.

Ever hear someone say "I'd love to start my own business someday but...."? Those are the people who ultimately won't start their own business. They are waiting for the "perfect" time to do it. The moment when all the planets align. It will never happen. You can always make up an excuse. Instead of thinking about excuses, think about what you can do NOW to move you closer to doing what you want to do.

So do you have a plan?

Yesterday, a friend of mine was talking to me about quitting my job to run my business full time. He asked me "so do you have a plan as far as what you are going to do with the business?" What I replied was "yes, I have a business plan" but that wasn't what I was thinking. The first thing that went through my head was - no, of course not. I quit my job to run my business but I have no clue what I'm doing. All of the success that SportsLizard.com has had thus far has been complete luck - not a function of hard work and good planning at all.

Sarcasm aside, I am getting frustrated with all of the questions. I am trying to handle them as best as I can, but it gets annoying when people ask questions that are either totally irrelevant or completely insult my intelligence. Based on what I've heard/read from other entrepreneurs is that it will never stop. Especially from friends and family, no matter how much you achieve. This isn't the first time I've mentioned this and it probably won't be the last. Over time I'll learn to deal with it (I hope), but for now it still makes me want to bang my head against a wall until I can't feel pain anymore.

My friends question did get me thinking about the importance of my business plan.
Since the time that I decided I wanted to start a business I have met dozens of other business owners with different levels of experience ranging from just starting their first business to being an angel investor (a private investor who invests in companies, similar to venture capitalists but working on their own as opposed to being part of a firm).

The one common theme that everyone has echoed is to have a business plan. A business plan is not just a document that you write to get funding for your business and then file away in a drawer. A business plan is a living document that should be revisited and edited frequently to reflect the current state of your business.

What I did for SportsLizard.com was write a complete business plan before I began. The business was self funded so the sole purpose was to have a plan to work from. Once a year I completely re-write that business plan to reflect the achievements and failures in the past year, as well as industry changes that will effect my business.

From this main plan, I developed an operations plan, which is nothing more than a list of tasks broken down by function (site programming, marketing, operations). Each task helps move the business toward achieving the major goals outlined in the business plan. If something you are doing ISN'T helping you meet your goals, then why are you doing it? Keeping an up to date business plan helps maintain the focus necessary to avoid the non value added tasks.

On a completely unrelated topic, I will be rooting for the Seahawks today. I have no real allegiance to either team but I am just sick of Joey Porter running his mouth so I want to see him lose (this is what I do when I don't particularly love either team, I pick a reason to hate one of them. Thank you Joey for your illogical and uneducated rants - you made it easy this time).