Tag: cottage industry

  • The Resurrection of the Cottage Industry

    Photo by James Whitesmith via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Is this the best time ever to start a small business? It sure seems like it!

    • Countless brilliant minds, long cooped up in boring corporate jobs, are on unemployment and unable to find new corporate jobs.
    • The internet has made the world pretty flat. You have a good product? You can move it online for about the same per unit price as the big guys.
    • Culture has a distaste for big business. Enron, big banks, BP, Monsanto, Wal*Mart– we’re all questioning if we can trust giant. But we know we can trust local.
    • The genie has left the bottle. With all of that knowledge leaving big business… these folks know how to run a business, are well networked, and know all the tricks of their trade.
    • It’s never been cheaper. Seriously, in a bunch of states you can legally start a business for less than $100. Using existing free tools like Craigslist, Etsy, or Ebay you can advertise a product for free. (Or darn close to it.)
    • People are more willing to buy thoughts, ideas, designs, and concepts than ever before! Consultant isn’t just a fancy word for unemployed anymore.

    If you are thinking about it, let me encourage you on two quick things.

    1. There is no time like the present. I started my first company in 2005 and sold it in 2008. It wasn’t scary. It was fun!
    2. While I don’t agree with all the MBAs out there that you need a business plan to start a small business, I do think you need to do the 30 minutes of work in setting everything up legally. Get a Tax ID, get a business bank account, get a business license if its require, form the right tax entity to protect yourself. None of that is hard and you don’t need a lawyer to do any of that.

    Here’s a bi-product I love. All of those small businesses need a website. Which supports my cottage industry.

  • Re-branding the Recession

    recessionAre you tired of the recession yet? Maybe it comes from living in Detroit and hearing how the economy was slowing down for 3 straight years before the rest of the country went into recession? If you want to play an interesting game, take bets before the nightly news starts on how many news stories wll not mention the economy. They even weave it into the weather and sports! “The left fielder is in an economic slump of his own, he signed a new contract for the league minimum.”

    Talk of the economy tanking has become a self-fulfilling prophesy! Of course it is tanking, we are told there is no hope 100 times per day.

    I see something completely different. I see us on the horizon of a great cultural correction. I think we’re on the verge of a new wave of innovation not seen since the industrial revolution. The days of negative cash flow entrepreneurship are over as a new wave of cottage industry uses new media to compete with corporations… often with little or no capital investment… thus getting these new businesses in the black almost immediately. What I see today is opportunity!

    Don’t believe me? Check out Mark Cuban’s self-created Stimulus Plan. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, too. Propose a good idea and he’ll get you going in a month.

    Don’t believe me? We got YMX off the ground with almost no capital costs and turned a profit on the first day.

    Don’t believe me? My friend Bob Carter created a massive iPod repair business out of his basement and now employs several people. He turned what Apple said was junk into profit! Soon he’ll be franchising his idea across the country.

    Don’t believe me? Thousands of small businesses are being created right now and marketed through Etsy, Ebay, and Craigslist for little or no capital investment.

    Don’t believe me? Smart entrepreneurs are investing in a depressed real estate market. They are buying up neighborhoods to turn single-family homes into investment property. These are the Donald Trump’s of Main Street… they are using real money to make more money tomorrow.

    Don’t believe me? Community colleges across the country are jam packed as laid off workers learn new skills. And many of them will create their own small businesses.With no money to borrow almost all of them will be positive cash flow businesses from the start.

    I’m going to keep preaching this truth until people get it. Out of desperation comes innovation. Big companies depends on expensive research and development departments to come up with new products. How many billions of dollars were invested in concept cars in the last 10 years? And how many of them were profitable? See what I mean?

    But anyone who has a hungry family to feed can create a product the market wants. Tommorow’s poor are waiting for the government to bail the out. But just like in any industrial revolution… the ones who get started early and estrablish themselves early will have the advantage.

    This recession is a needed correction. Smart companies will learn to depend less on borrowing from a broken banking system and get in the black faster.

    There are millions of new ideas out there just waiting to be taken to market. Chances are you have one already. So what are you waiting for?