When I was a freshman in college I came back home for the summer and my dad and I started a business selling chia pets. We made them in our garage and shipped them to stores around California. Actually, they weren’t Chia pets (because that’s someone else’s trademark) so we called them Green Heads, but they were essentially Chia Pets. We bought pantyhose from Target, filled them with saw dust from a lumber mill close by and grass seeds from Home Depot and then sold them to gift shops. It was fun and it made us a few hundred bucks. I also learned a lot about retail and manufacturing.
My senior year in college I started a comic book shop with a couple of friends. Actually, to give credit where credit is due, my friends did most of the work since they weren’t actually in college but I helped with everything from manual labor to business relations. It was pretty rough but doable with a minimum of resources and a lot of hard work. The store did well and you can still find Alternate Realities in the Lincoln Mall in Rhode Island (thank you Sue and Howie so very much for the wonderful experience). Again, it was a learning experience for me and I came out of it with a healthy respect for the power of accounting and inventory management.
A few years ago I became interested in blogging and wanted to start my own blog business. I knew nothing about blogging or the technology involved so I read up, got help from a very cool friend (thanks Greg!) and started a blog called 60 in 3 with a topic of personal fitness. While I knew nothing about blogging, I did know a lot about fitness and I figured this would allow me to learn this whole internet thing
A year ago I had an idea for a Groupon like site but with a geolocation twist. I wrote up the idea, talked to an engineer friend of mine and tried to make a go of it. Sadly, the idea didn’t pan out and we had to shut things down a couple of months into the attempt but again I learned. I got to know free lance engineers and a really cool technical contracting firm out of the Ukraine with incredible iPhone app making skills.
Two months ago I was talking to my wife about my birthday presents. She had no idea what to give me and claimed that men were really difficult to give presents to. I disagreed and thought to myself “here’s a business opportunity if I ever saw one!” and now I proudly present to you, Diamonds or Dogs, a place for women to find gifts for the men in their lives (which will soon be a place for both men and women to find gifts for each other). The website took very little time or money to setup, mostly due to the knowledge I gained with 60 in 3 and Equally Happy. We’ll see how this little idea of mine goes but either way, I’m already learning.
Part Time Business
The interesting thing is that I’m doing this as a part time thing while also working a full time job, plus blogging. I say interesting, not because I want you to “oooh” and “ahhh” over how awesomely productive I am (although that would be nice) but because it’s an interesting decision with its upsides and downsides.
Upsides
- I have a full time job I can fall back on if this business idea fails
- I have an income stream to rely on
Downside
- I don’t have enough time to do all the work I need to do on Diamonds or Dogs. So things that should take a day take a week instead.
- I don’t have enough time to do justice to the other parts of my life, like my marriage
Honestly, I don’t think I could have done all this without my incredible wife and her support. Not only is she willing to proof read, write templates and do endless test runs, but she’s also willing to put up with a husband who disappears to his computer most nights for the past month and won’t shut up about his business idea. So thank you baby, you’re awesome!
The other things that help?
- No TV in the house – That reduced a lot of my wasted time
- Good planning – I write down exactly what I want to accomplish each day and then do nothing else
- An amazing friend network – I’ve been getting so much help from family and friends that I’m just awe struck by how lucky I am. My brother in law is doing reviews, my dad is writing up templates while on a business trip in Singapore, my ex girlfriend is doing graphic design for me and my friends are pitching in with ideas and technical support. I’m amazed by how much help I’m getting and all it took was asking. I was honest with them, told them what I was looking to do, gave them specifics on what I was looking for in terms of help (I didn’t say “can you help me with my site”, I said “can you help me with my site by writing a one page review every two weeks? Here’s a sample so you know what you’re getting into.”) and they did the rest. Thank you, all of you!
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Best of all, I’m having fun. I really hope this thing succeeds but if it doesn’t, I’ll still learn something and I’ll move on to the next idea.
