Did I Make the Right Choice???

Today is the two-month anniversary of when I quit my job to run SportsLizard.com full time. For those of you who don't know my story, I graduated in 2004 with an engineering degree from RPI (top 20 school in my field) and had a good job as a quality engineer. Towards the end of 2005, I began to realize that for several reasons I could no longer travel down both paths - the entrepreneur path and the engineer path. So I made what most would consider a difficult decision, I quit my job.

The funny thing was, it wasn't a hard decision for me to make at all. Sure I would be losing my salary and benefits, but I would be gaining the opportunity to wake up every day and do what I love. How many people really get the opportunity to do that? Being 23 years old and single, I was able to quit the job and move back to NY to live with family without much hassle. The only thing I was really giving up was money, and we all know that money doesn't buy happiness.

Over the past two months EVERY SINGLE person I run into asks me how my business is doing and how I like being home. But it seems like most of them ask because they think that I made a knee-jerk decision that I'm going to regret. Call me crazy, but I can just tell by the way it rolls off their tongue. They NEVER would have "wasted" a degree from RPI the way I did. Whatever. Most of the time I just say "yes, it's going great" and smile because it's not even worth the fight.

Do I regret quitting my job? NO. AND I NEVER WILL. Do you know how I am so sure? Because each and every day I am thrilled to be living every single moment. I am fired up to get out of bed in the morning and I have trouble sleeping at night because I can't wait to get up and do it again the next day. I'm certain I never would experience that passion as an engineer in corporate America. Never - no matter how much money I made or what my status was. Never. There is no way that it can compete with the thrill of growing something from idea in your head to successful reality. I have a wall of various emails from satisfied customers that fires me up more than anything I'd ever get at a job. That's how I know.

Also, it shocks me how seemingly short sighted people are - there is no way that I won't be better off for my decision. If I stayed an engineer I can tell you exactly what my career path would have been. I'm sure that career path works fine for some, and I'm not saying everyone should do what I did, but I know that's not what I wanted and it wasn't the life I wanted to live. I want the life of an entrepreneur and now I am living it. Regardless of whether SportsLizard.com "succeeds" or not, I have already entered the life of an entrepreneur and I have no plan on leaving it. I'll do whatever it takes to continue this life. That might not seem "fun" or "stable" to others, but it is to me. Being an engineer is boring to me. I'm not saying you have to agree with me, but PLEASE respect that I feel like that.

So yes, I made the right decision.

Business Urban Legends - Part 3 - Myths 3 - 5

Wrapping up my last two posts regarding an awesome article on Entreprenur.com about startup myths, here are the final three myths that they discuss:

Myth #3: If You Don't Grow, You'll Die

Dispelling this myth is important. Most Entrepreneurs feel the pressure when they are writing their business plan to have this grand vision - they either need to go public or be swallowed up by an industry giant or they will be a failure. While both of those things can be good, they don't have to happen to be successful. Sometimes growing too fast can be bad for a company. Personally, had SportsLizard.com taken off faster I would have been a mess - I needed some time of slow growth to work out the kinks. The article says "chasing growth can lead small firms to discount their prices too deeply, take on large contracts that make them too reliant on one customer, or incur crushing debts to service big accounts that suddenly go somewhere else."

Myth #4: If It's Such a Good Idea, Somebody Would Have Thought of It Already

This one has always driven me nuts. I am sure that there were people 100 years ago saying the same thing. When I was a junior in college, I did an internship with a major consumer goods company (the same one that I was an engineer for after college for a year). After about a week of working there I came up with an idea for a device to improve product testing. It would solve a problem that they badly needed solved, but had never been able to figure out an effective way to do so. My idea got some backing from a few key people within the organization so another intern and I were given a $10,000 budget to build the thing. Before beginning, we were asked to consult with the "expert" mechanical engineer for design suggestions. He didn't think it was possible to do what we wanted to do, and then told us that "most of the good ideas have already been thought of." I couldn't believe that someone with his intelligence would say something like that. It drove me nuts. We successfully built that device and I vowed to never think like that.

Myth #5: You Can't Start a Business Without a Lot of Money

I love this one too. People are focused on nice offices and secretaries and company cars. I think you are BETTER off without a lot of funding. Focus on what you need, not what you'd like and continue to run your business this way as you grow. It will establish the shrewdness necessary to run a successful business. Many businesses operate on small margins and can't afford to spend without regard, so why start like that?

According to the article, "the average entrepreneur starting a one-person business plans to get underway with about $6,000, according to a 2003 SBA study."

Most internet entrepreneurs I know started with even less. Do you know how much I started SportsLizard.com with? $3,000. And that included this kick a** computer, not to mention there were things in that 3k that I didn't NEED. If I was starting a similar business today (sans the computer), I know I could do it for under $500.

Like I said, this was a GREAT article. Don't let any of these myths stop you.

Business Urban Legends - Part 2 - Myths 1 & 2

Continuing my last post regarding a great article on Entreprenur.com about startup myths, here are the first two myths that they discuss:

Myth #1: Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow

At first glance I thought that I would have a problem with them dispelling this "myth." After all, I'm a firm believer in doing what you love. However, after reading their interpretation of the myth I couldn't agree more. It's not enough to ONLY do what you love, you have to do something that people will actually pay for. You need customers!

You also need to have realistic expectations, something not everyone who's extremely passionate has. The article goes on to say "Successful entrepreneurs seem to blend passionate belief in the destiny of their venture with practical realizations."

Now, that said, I have yet to hear of something that someone loves to do that CAN'T be monetized in some way. One of my first blog posts was entitled Life is Short - Love What You Do, Do What You Love. In that post, I said that I believe that there are three steps to a successful and satisfying career - figure out what you are passionate about, find a way that you can make money doing it, and then do it. What the article is saying is that you can't skip over the "find a way that you can make money doing it" step and expect to be successful. Obvious - yes. Something that everyone does - not so much.

Myth #2: You'll Miss the Security of a Job

My initial reaction to this one is the exact opposite of the first myth - NO WAY do I miss the "security" of a job. I have always made the argument that it's MORE SECURE to run your own business. Jeffrey Henning, co-founder of Perseus Development Corp, says it perfectly in the article "When I quit my job, people were telling me I was crazy. I told them they had the illusion of security."

See, employees can lose their job at any time, for reasons completely unrelated to individual performance. When that happens, they have lost their ONLY source of income. "We have 20,000 customers, if I lose a customer, it isn't 100 percent of my income," Henning adds.

Not to mention that if I decide to quit my business, I can sell it and get some serious money - can people sell their jobs when they decide to leave? It's like the difference between buying a home and renting one. This is one of those things that I've tried over and over to tell people, but I just get blank stares from them and they think I'm crazy. I really don't see how this can't make sense to people, but it's not worth the fight so I don't even bother anymore. It really doesn't matter what they think...

Business Urban Legends - Part 1 - Intro

Reading is one of the things that I will never stop doing. No matter how busy I am, I take time out each day to read and learn. It is the ultimate investment in yourself. One of the most helpful things to me as a "rookie" internet entrepreneur has been to subscribe to 15-20 great email newsletters that keep me informed about what's going on in the industry. I recently came across a GREAT article in the Entrepreneur.com newsletter that I think warrants quite a bit of attention. In fact, the next several blog posts will be about this article.

The article is about the "Urban Legends" of business - the myths about business that tend to scare people off. We've all heard that "90% of all small businesses fail within the first five years." As an optimistic entrepreneur, it can be devastating to hear things like this, especially when many stats like that aren't true. The article hits the nail on the head when it comes to myths like that:

More startup entrepreneurs should resolve to ignore those stats because there is no truth to the widely cited figures indicating such high failure rates. In effect, they and some other widely held ideas about entrepreneurship are urban legends--misconceptions that discourage or mislead people who are starting or trying to grow businesses.

The article says that the SBA reports that almost half of new firms with at least one employee survive beyond four years. A far cry from 90% failing!

Another great point that the article makes is that many of those that do close (perhaps as high as 75%) DON'T close for financial reasons.

Starting a business is tough enough as it is. Unfortunately, one of the largest obstacles that people tend to face is all of the naysayers. I've commented about my frustrating experiences numerous times on this blog. No matter how focused you are, it is tough to have something that you pour your heart and soul into trashed. The result of all of the negativity is a skepticism that entrepreneur Wendy Kauffman expressed perfectly in the article:

"You end up being very careful about whom you talk to, because if all that negativity hits you on the wrong day, it can be very potent," she says. "You have to be the kind of person who says, 'I'm not going to listen to it.'"

I've noticed that I have developed a thicker and thicker skin as time has passed. It's not that I don't care what people think. I do care, and I will listen to any logical point that anyone wants to make. What I won't tolerate is negative comments attempting to put me down that stem from some deep hidden desire to feel gratification in seeing me fail.

Anyway, take the time to read the article. No matter what stage you are at in your entrepreneurial life you will get something out of it. In the next five posts, I'll break down each of the five myths and how they relate to my experiences.

Book Review - Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work

One of the most important things for every entrepreneur to do is read. There is a wealth of knowledge out there, and if you are willing to put in the time you can reap great benefits by reading some of the great business books out there.

With that, I've decided that every time I read a book, I'm going to review it on my blog. For the next few weeks I'll be playing catch up on all of the books I've read since I first had the desire to become an entrepreneur a few years back. First up is a book I just finished, Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work.




Did you ever wonder if some of those age old sayings about marketing are true? For instance, we’ve all heard “It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current customer.” But does anyone have any proof of that? That is exactly what a group of authors set out to do in Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work. The authors, Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Varva, Lerzan Aksoy, and Henri Wallard are all experts in consumer loyalty and use their wealth of knowledge to dispel common myths and offer insight into what really works.

The book chooses and interesting format – the first six chapters are devoted to dismiss over fifty common ‘loyalty myths’ and the final two chapters are used to learning about why customers are loyal and how a loyalty program should be managed. Each of the ‘loyalty myths’ chapters contains several ‘myths’ grouped together by common themes, such as Loyalty Myths That Subvert Company Goals and Loyalty Myths Regarding Employees. The chapters both begin and end with an example pulled from industry that encompasses all of the myths mentioned in the chapter, with the actual myths discussed in the middle.

The authors spend a couple of pages banishing each of the fifty three myths. Some of the myths are things that we tend to take for granted, such as “Companies tend to know their customers,” while others like “share-of-wallet increases as customer lifetimes increase” would seem intuitively true. For each and every one, the authors use solid historical data to dispel the myth and show the negative business effects of believing it.

The final two chapters focus on seven ‘loyalty truths’ such as “Don’t manage for customer retention before you manage for customer selection” and “Customer loyalty and brand imagery are far from independent; you must manage them hand-in-hand.” The authors do a good job of going through how to build and measure a loyalty program around these ‘truths.’

The book is an extremely fast paced, entertaining read. Anyone reading the book with an open mind will agree with the authors’ solid reasoning. In particular, business owners, CEO’s, and anyone in marketing or consumer affairs will directly benefit by eliminating these ‘myths’ from their business and implementing the ‘truths.’ This book can have a very real impact on your company’s bottom line. Many businesses mindlessly pour money into customer loyalty programs without taking the steps outlined in this book. For some companies, a loyalty program doesn’t even make sense. For others, their program needs a significant overhaul. This book will help you identify where your business is and give you the tools to make improvements.

The only downside with the book is the shear number of myths. Many of the ‘myths’ blend together and readers would probably be more likely to retain the ‘myths’ if there were ten as opposed to fifty-three (similar to the seven ‘truths’). The amount of myths also doesn’t allow for the authors to go into quite as much detail as one would like for each ‘myth.’ There are several myths that aren’t so much dispelled in the paragraph or two devoted to it, but within the context of the entire chapter. It just seems like it would have made more sense to combine many of the myths.

Overall, Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work is a tremendously entertaining and enlightening read. Anyone that has an interest in consumer loyalty will learn a great deal of directly applicable information that can save their company money and help differentiate them from the competition.

Irregardless Update

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will remember the rant I went on a few months back about people using the "word" irregardless (you know, that word that people use when they mean to say regardless or irrespective, but foolishly combine the two).

See, technically, it might be a word because it is on Dictionary.com. BUT, and this is a huge but, in the definition it says:

Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term.

Now, to me that means that it's NOT a word. The only reason that it's in the freaking dictionary to begin with is because people have misused the word for hundreds of years!

Why am I bringing this up again? Because until Friday I figured I was alone on my irregardless crusade. That is until a caller on Jim Rome (yes, I like Rome, and no I don't care if you don't like him) ended his call by saying that he just got out of a meeting where a co-worker used the word irregardless repeatedly. He proceeded to scream that irregardless IS NOT A WORD (at this point, I was beside myself. Finally, someone agrees with me). Well, that started a twenty minute discussion about the word irregardless. Rome basically concluded that it is a word because it is on dictionary.com. I obviously disagree (aint is on dictionary.com...is that a word?).

I suppose the important thing is not that Rome disagrees, it's that a national audience had to listen to twenty minutes of discussion about the word irregardless. That can only mean good things. If just one person has been influenced to stop using the word, it was worth it.

Just this second I got the idea to start irregardless.com - but it's taken by a freaking cafe called "The Irregardless Cafe." Noooooooo! I've got a lot of work left ahead of me, but mark my word, I will eradicate all use of the word irregardless before I die.

Wow, I just realized my posts have all been pretty critical lately. I promise to lighten it up a bit tomorrow.

PS When I used Blogger's spell checker on this post, it didn't recognize irregardless as a word. HA!

When Productivity Slows, Take a Mini-Vacation

The past month or so (my first running my business full time) I have worked harder and longer than at any point in my life. When my friend asked me to visit him in Boston this past weekend, my first instinct was to say no - after all, I have work to do! After thinking about it for a few days, I figured that I needed the break from work so I went up for the weekend.

Well, it turns out that going was the best decision that I could have made. I had been working with such an intensity that I was beginning to lose touch with reality. I was at the point where the first thing I thought about each morning was work and the last thing I thought about at night was work, along with pretty much every moment in between. One night a few weeks ago, I even dreamed about work.

I'm sure that this isn't uncommon for entrepreneurs, it's just that this has been my first prolonged exposure to being an "obsessive workaholic". The thing is, I LOVE it...I love the work that I am doing so it doesn't feel like I'm burning myself out, it just feels like I am doing something I enjoy all day long.

However, too much of ANYTHING isn't good for you. Today, my first full day back after the break, has been AWESOME. I have been 100% more productive than I was towards the end of last week. I feel as fresh as I did on my first full time day.

From now on I will be planning a few small things each week to get my mind completely away from the business. And anytime I'm forced to neglect those things for business for a short time, I'll make sure that I have a mini-vacation planned at the end to recharge my batteries.

Just another one of those things I'm learning about working for myself...

Human Beings Weren't Meant to Stare at a Computer Screen!?!?

A few weeks back I went online to re-order contacts and I got that kiss-of-death email telling me that my prescription had expired and I needed to get a new one. Reluctantly, I picked up the phone and made an appointment.

During the exam, the optometrist and I struck up a conversation and he asked me what I did for a living. When I told him that I ran an online business, he rolled his eyes at me. In my head, I was thinking "yea, yea, yea, I know it's not good for my eyes to look at a computer screen 10 hours a day, but what can I do." But that wasn't why he rolled his eyes. He continued to say "Human beings weren't meant to sit in front of a computer all day long." Needless to say that got my brain churning.

Ok buddy, so what exactly were human beings "meant" to do? Sit in a dark room all day looking at people's eyeballs and asking them to read lines off of a chart? Give me a break. I really don't understand the need for people to insult the career choices of others. Is it jealousy? Is it the need to assert themselves as somehow "superior" because they consider their career to be "better"? Or are they just plain insecure and putting down others makes them feel good?

Whatever it is, it seems a bit immature. Considering that I am doing something that I love to do, something that I am truly excited about and passionate to wake up and do each and every day, I can't understand why anyone would question that. I certainly would never be an eye doctor, but I very much respect his decision to become one. Just as it's good for the world to have optometrists, it's also good for the world to have entrepreneurs.

I seem to be getting a lot of those type of comments lately. I'm sure that part of it is that I'm 23, part of it is that I just quit a good job, part of it is that I'm an entrepreneur, and part of it is that my business is online. The thing that makes me sad is that part of it is also a societal problem with respecting other people and treating them with the dignity and respect that they deserve as humans.

Since I wasn't consulted when humans were constructed, I cannot say with 100% certainty what we were "meant" to do. What I can say is that it would be nice if people took the time to learn and understand and respect the decisions that others make in their lives and their careers rather than judging them based on pre-conceived ideals of what people "should" do.

Entrepreneurial Proverbs

Earlier today I stumbled upon this fantastic blog post on the O'Reilly Radar entitled "Entrepreneurial Proverbs". These "proverbs" are specifically intended for folk like myself looking to make the transition from the tech world to the business world. The article had such a profound effect on me that I printed it out for future reference (a rarity if you knew the way I conserved ink).

While each and every proverb has quite a bit of value, one particular quote by computer pioneer Howard Aiken in a proverb struck close to home and reassured me that some of the doubts that I expressed in my Humble Pie post a few days back were normal. The quote is "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

I suppose that sometimes I forget that not everyone's mind works like mine - not everyone thinks about change and improvement and growth as much as I do - not everyone "thinks" like an entrepreneur. When I launched my enhanced collectibles browsing, which I think falls into the "original" category, I figured that everyone who tried it out would be wowed.

When the initial responses were mixed, I immediately looked at myself and questioned if there was something that I had missed. When I mentioned it to fellow entrepreneurs, they all echoed Howard Aiken's sentiments - most people DON'T like change and it will probably take them a while to get used to it.

And the more that I think about it, it would be sort of strange if everyone embraced it immediately. I mean, what innovative technology DIDN'T struggle to get noticed? The other day I mentioned Chester Carlson and the photocopier and there are hundreds of other examples - Bill Gates with Microsoft among them. Now, obviously, I don't think that my innovation is on par with those things, but it does help fuel the fire to know that nearly all entrepreneurs struggled initially and that their immense persistence was as much a part of their success as the product itself.

Internet Explorer 7 Rocks....Well Sort Of

About 30 seconds ago I was all set to write a post about how amazing Internet Explorer 7 was - a post about how sweet all of the new features are and how I had tested my site and a bunch of other sites and they all looked great.

But then I went to Blogger.com, logged in, and started my post. I am sure I am not the first one to discover this, but the Blogger interface does not work with Internet Explorer 7! I started to type my post and nothing showed up! I was going to be proud of the fact that I was writing this post from IE7, but now I'll have to settle for good ole reliable Firefox.

Now, to be fair, IE7 is in BETA and Microsoft does not claim to have all of the bugs worked out. And the ONLY problem that I had with it was with Blogger. I tested SportsLizard.com out and everything looked and worked PERFECTLY. This is a huge deal for my business. Testing IE7 could have gone one of two ways: either everything goes well and it takes 15 minutes (exactly what happened) or there are all sorts of problems and redesigning my site becomes priority number one, resulting in me spending the next few months of my life perfecting my site for IE7 so that when the entire world begins using it this fall my site won't look like crap (thankfully, that didn't happen).

So what did I like so much about IE7? Among my favorite features:

• The futuristic style is appealing and extremely user friendly
• Tabbed browsing is on par with Firefox (finally)
• The search feature defaults with MSN, but lets you choose between others (Yahoo!, Google, Ask, AOL, etc)
• The RSS feed support is far superior to Firefox's live bookmarks. Whenever you land on a page with a feed, you are given the option to subscribe. The 'Favorites Center' in the upper right hand corner saves your feeds as well as your bookmarks. When you click on a feed, it is displayed in the browser window
• If you have multiple tabs open, you have the option to view 'Quick Tabs', a thumbnail overview of each of the tabs that you have open - very cool

I'm sure there's more, but that's what stood out after 15 minutes of toying around with it.

The impending release of IE7 is one of those things that makes me nervous - considering at least 90% of internet users will be browsing with it come this fall, it has the potential to force me to make drastic changes to accommodate it. Thankfully, I can sleep better tonight knowing that everything likely will be fine. Entrepreneurs are the type of people that like to control their own destiny, it's part of our nature. When things like this pop up, we understand that we have to deal with them, it just makes us happier when dealing with them takes 15 minutes and not 3 months.

Humble Pie

Every once in a while it's good to be humbled and this week it happened to me. I launched a new sports collectibles browsing application on SportsLizard.com that I had spent hundreds of hours developing. Now, I definitely don't think it's perfect, it has it's shortcomings certainly, but I do think that it is a solid first attempt at an innovative and creative way to quickly browse through products. So when I emailed 50 people that I knew to test it out for me, I expected the replies to reflect that.

Of course, what I would have liked to have done was surveyed 1000 collectors on what they thought about it. I would have loved to have held a focus group where I stood behind collectors and observed how they used the application. Well, all of that requires money that I don't have and therefore I had to rely on friends to test my product before launching. I figured that most people would say the same thing: "well it took me a few minutes to figure it out, but once I did it was really cool, and you know what else would make it even better.... " Boy was I wrong.

Now let me preface this with one thing - there were many people who did offer constructive criticism, and many of the best comments came from collectors themselves so overall I am content with the results of my little test. But many people also ruthlessly tore it apart. It shocked me that some people absolutely HATED it and said that it's something that they would never use, nor did they think anyone else would use it. How could that be? Could they not at least respect the proposed innovation? I was absolutely stunned. Once I got over the initial shock, however, I was able to make some sense of the whole thing.

I think the first thing that I had to understand is that some people are naturally negative. They rip apart everything - their bosses, the movies they see, the waitresses that serve them, and pretty much everything else in their lives and I shouldn't take that too personally. Second, the application IS very different and not everyone likes change. Sometimes it takes people a little while to warm up to something innovative. I recall Chester Carlson having to approach over 20 investors before the company that is now Xerox finally bought into the idea of the photocopier! I believe in this idea and there's not very much that's going to stop me.

The other thing that calmed me down was a story that a former co-worker had told me. Around the year 2000, he had just finished working on a consumer product that he had poured his heart and should into for five years. Right before it's release they held a focus group to get feedback on the product. Standing behind one of those two sided mirrors, he heard people rip apart every aspect of the product that he thought would be received warmly. He said it was the most humbling experience of his life. Now I can certainly say that I know how he felt. Oh, and for the record, that product is now VERY successful. Just another example of the initial reaction not correlating to the end result.

This week was certainly a learning experience that I will never forget. It's one of those things that every entrepreneur will likely go through - I just didn't think that it was going to happen to me on this one.