"Very well said. Reminds me of the scene in Top Gun where Mav and Goose are standing outside the office listening to Viper get his ass chewed by the tower boss who spilled his coffee on himself when M&G did the fly-by. After he ran into the…"
When unemployment turns into entrepreneurship
They Say necessity is the father of invention. This is kind of similar.
I quit my job in April.
I know, I have heard them all before, but I knew that I wasn't getting any younger and I needed a change badly. This was supposed to be a cinch, quit my job, call in a few favors, and a couple of handshakes later I would be hawking some on Else's wares. Piece of cake right, especially for a super star sales guy who was responsible for more than a million dollars in business each year AND did a lot of the install and customer service field work. Boy was I surprised.
For 60 days, I was diligent in searching for work, in my field and any other field that could easily fit into my varied skill set. Then an old colleague contacted me telling me that he had been downsized too and we started discussing the beauty of unemployment. It wasn't too much longer after that, that we were reminded how our careers had been cut short the first time around because of petty jealously so hatched a plan that would lead us to a new(old) career and business ownership a short time later .
Most people don't realize that in post Korean War America the paradigm of the American dream shifted from one of proud small business ownership that can be handed down from one generation to one of "Get a good education, land a good job, retire after 40 years and get the gold watch". Sadly in 2009 less than 7% of Americans own their own business, making 93% of Americans working for someone else. We truly are a service oriented country.
As one of the newly 7%'ers I was hoping that I could hear similar tales of unemployment, or entrepreneurship from other members. If interested my new media company is Black Sky Broadcasting LLC, web site is www.blackskyradio.com. My business has been up and running for 30 days now and we have seen unprecedented growth and public approval. And not just for us personally but we have shown our advertisers a 300% increase in their web traffic and a 30% overall sales increase. Our web site has over 400K hits and roughly 10K daily listeners in 57 countries.
Looking forward to some good dialog
I quit my job in April.
I know, I have heard them all before, but I knew that I wasn't getting any younger and I needed a change badly. This was supposed to be a cinch, quit my job, call in a few favors, and a couple of handshakes later I would be hawking some on Else's wares. Piece of cake right, especially for a super star sales guy who was responsible for more than a million dollars in business each year AND did a lot of the install and customer service field work. Boy was I surprised.
For 60 days, I was diligent in searching for work, in my field and any other field that could easily fit into my varied skill set. Then an old colleague contacted me telling me that he had been downsized too and we started discussing the beauty of unemployment. It wasn't too much longer after that, that we were reminded how our careers had been cut short the first time around because of petty jealously so hatched a plan that would lead us to a new(old) career and business ownership a short time later .
Most people don't realize that in post Korean War America the paradigm of the American dream shifted from one of proud small business ownership that can be handed down from one generation to one of "Get a good education, land a good job, retire after 40 years and get the gold watch". Sadly in 2009 less than 7% of Americans own their own business, making 93% of Americans working for someone else. We truly are a service oriented country.
As one of the newly 7%'ers I was hoping that I could hear similar tales of unemployment, or entrepreneurship from other members. If interested my new media company is Black Sky Broadcasting LLC, web site is www.blackskyradio.com. My business has been up and running for 30 days now and we have seen unprecedented growth and public approval. And not just for us personally but we have shown our advertisers a 300% increase in their web traffic and a 30% overall sales increase. Our web site has over 400K hits and roughly 10K daily listeners in 57 countries.
Looking forward to some good dialog
Tags: anew, business, entrepreneurship, new, starting
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Peter O'Reilly on -
Congrats on the decision to start your own business. I was laid off in June and decided to start my own business. I had been working on a business plan since last October, and showing it around getting opinions. After being laid off, I had decided to go ahead and start implementing my plan. To be honest, this is taking much longer than I thought it would. I can't do everything myself, so I hired a marketing company to help me. They do great work, but it takes them awhile. Its a much larger process than I thought it would. RIght now, we're finally in the process of developing marketing materials and building a webpage. My advice to you is to sit down and write out a business plan. Make it thorough and leave no detail to the imagination. It might be a good idea to even take a job in the meantime. Also, show others your idea. Find professionals (lawyers, accountants, other entrepreneurs) and get their opinion. Finally, don't try to do everything yourself. You're only going to stress yourself out.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on -
Peter, we did this and it helped, but not near as much as going with what we already knew. With my degree in Advertising and my recent experience in marketing, naturally it made this exercise a lot easier. My business has been up and running for 30 days now and we have seen unprecedented growth and public approval. And not just for us personally but we have shown our advertisers a 300% increase in their web traffic and a 30% overall sales increase. Our web site has over 400K hits and roughly 10K daily listeners in 57 countries.
When you get your web site built, contact me and we'll talk advertising budgets and what Black Sky Radio can do to help you get your business, well more business. If you need a web hosting company I have a guy that is not only inexpensive, but also more reliable then a Timex. He also is running a special for the next 30 days, where new clients get 20% off a year's web hosting with the promo-code "blacksky" AND if you buy a small business package or larger web package they will throw in free web site design. :Let me know if you need anything else! Since I have been where you once are standing I know the fustration that you are feeling and I can seriously help!
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Clay McGehee on -
I can't imagine having to go back to work for someone else. I was laid off during the big defense industry cutbacks in the early 1990's. It was truly a traumatic experience for me. In the end though, it was the best thing that could possibly happen to me. Short story is that I ended up running for public office, losing and discovering that although I make a terrible candidate, there was a real need for software that would handle the financial disclosure reports that every candidate has to file. I ended up working for a tax software company owned by a friend from church. I did tech support and testing, but hadn't done any programming other than some college classes many years ago. A "student version" of a programming language was sitting of the shelf and the boss said "help yourself", so I took it home and learned to use it. I ended up writing a program to do the campaign reports, sending out free copies on floppy disks to candidates. It turned out to be pretty popular with candidates (after I fixed a pile of dumb mistakes that a seasoned programmer would know to avoid). That was in 1996 (I started writing the program in 1995 nights and weekends while I was still working for the tax software business). It eventually led to a contract with a state to provide software and support for all the candidates and PACs in that state, and direct sales to candidates in 3 other states. I work from home and just can't imagine having to commute to a job. God has richly blessed me.
1) Make sure you have some sort of income while you're getting started. Without that, it's too easy to be forced to quit just before things really start to take off.
2) Keep your expenses as low as possible and STAY OUT OF DEBT.
3) Some folks are big on farming out everything but their core tasks. I took the approach of "if you can figure out how to do it yourself, then do it yourself". Nobody is going to pay closer attention to your business than you.
4) Learn from your failures - unless you're incredibly fortunate, you'll make plenty of them along the way. I tried all sorts of different businesses before I found one that worked for me.
5) When things finally work out, don't start thinking of yourself as some sort of hotshot. Keep the same sense of humility you felt when you were struggling to get going and you could just sort of see a glimmer of hope down the road. I know that situations change, and what is quite successful now could easily become obsolete. Don't take success for granted.
6) What works for other folks will not necessarily work for you. I made plenty of false starts by trying to copy what someone else did without realizing that I did not have the personality or ability to pull off what they did - and I would have been miserable if it worked.
Best wishes - now stop dreaming and get to it.
Stephen McGehee
Adjutant Software, Inc.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on
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Great Story Stephen! Awesome guidelines!
I have been extremely busy making my broadcast company profitable , and with my world wide audience you may want to think about advertising on my station and taking your product to the far reaching corners of the globe!
Again, thanks for sharing and contact me if you want a rate card!
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Permalink Reply by Supplement X on -
In 30 days those numbers are astonishing...would love to learn more about you and your radio station.
X
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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on
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Send me an email to nightmare@blackskyradio.com and lets talk!
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Permalink Reply by Supplement X on
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e-mail sent
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