Читать книгу Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business - Dan Furman - Страница 17

9

Count On The Unexpected Happening

One of the best lessons I ever learned comes from doing home improvement projects. In short, the lesson is that the unexpected is always around the corner and can turn a seemingly simple project into a difficult one. Most people who are starting a business don’t think of this. If they did, many of them would have second thoughts. I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm, but be prepared for many unexpected and time-consuming things to crop up when you start a business. As I said, it’s a bit like doing home improvement projects.

Recently, my wife wanted a new light in the dining room. Never mind that my male brain thought the old one was fine; her female brain was horrified at the prospect of the old light hanging there even one more day, and she decided it had to be changed before our weekend visitors came. So anyway, I went to the attic to change the wiring for the new light, but unknown to me, the previous owner had wired the dimmer switch backwards (but it still worked).

This light had a dimmer on one wall, and a regular up-and-down switch on the other. However, I didn’t really notice it was wired backwards. So I rewired it correctly (thus causing it to actually be incorrect in relation to the other switch), and when I thought I was done, I turned the power back on. Nothing. Well, nothing but a very troubling huuum. When working with electricity, that’s never a good sound.

Result? Scratch one circuit breaker.

This project had already taken longer than I wanted, and now I had to go to the store to buy a new circuit breaker. Of course, having not bought circuit breakers in a few years, I forgot that I needed type A of a particular model. I bought type B. Type B didn’t fit (although it looked like it should).

By now this was really taking longer than I wanted, so, even though it went against all logic, I tried to make it fit.

Ten minutes of persuasion with my rubber mallet yielded no results, so back to the store I went for another breaker. This time, I brought the old one with me (which I should have done in the first place), and bought type A.

Back home type A still wouldn’t fit. Apparently my earlier persuasion with a mallet had bent the metal part the breaker slides into. A few taps with a hammer and a screwdriver, and success — it was now straight, and the breaker slid in.

Back to the attic. Then my wife told me, “Skip the dimmer switch — I don’t like it anyway. Let’s just use the one switch.” I paused for a second, realizing that had she told me this three hours ago, I could have avoided all this. Anyway, I rewired it all correctly (I really am a pretty good electrician), and we now have a nice new light.

My point in telling this story is to illustrate the multitude of things that can go wrong with just about anything you do. If it’s something you don’t do often, budget way more time than you think you will need. This simple “half hour” job took me four hours.

Things That Seem Simple Often Aren’t

Many aspects of your business will be harder than you think. And (as usual) many starting entrepreneurs are blind to this. Here’s an example from my own experience.

In my first business, I created and sold direct-mail coupons. The idea was to have 30 local business coupons in the pack, and have the pack sent to 10,000 local households. This meant I had to get 10,000 of each coupon printed. The printer didn’t collate the coupons, so I received 30 boxes, each containing 10,000 of a single coupon. I then paid a mailing service to sort them and stuff the envelopes. It worked out okay, but profits were very small.

For the second run, I decided to do the sorting and stuffing myself. I figured it would take a few nights to sort them.

That was my mistake. It took more than a few nights — it took a few weeks to do this. Think about it: 30 boxes, each with 10,000 coupons. My father and I devised a rack that held piles of all 30 coupons, like a post office mail rack. What you had to do was grab one from each slot in the rack (remember, there are 30), put the pile of 30 in an envelope, seal the envelope, and affix the mailing label. Taking into account refilling the rack and getting more envelopes ready, it took about a minute for each package.

So the entire job would take 10,000 minutes. That means it would take one person working nonstop for 24 hours, almost seven days. It would take four people, each working eight hours a day, almost five days.

Well, I didn’t have four people willing to work eight hours a day. I did have a few friends who were willing to help in the evening. The trouble was, we were all in our early twenties, so I had to bribe them with beer (this is the law when you want friends to help you for free).

So I know for a fact that it takes four people almost four weeks of evenings to do the job. (Subtract a few days if you substitute coffee for beer, but then you’re also subtracting the four people, so maybe that doesn’t work.)

Why I didn’t calculate this beforehand, I’ll never know. I just figured, “Oh, this’ll be easy.” Well, it wasn’t.

Not to mention how difficult it was to bring 10,000 bulk mail letters to the post office, which took me three trips in my little car. I could elaborate on other obstacles, but the whole experience is painful to remember.

Believe it or not, many people who are starting home-based businesses fail to think of obvious obstacles. Because if they did, many of them would have second thoughts. Thinking how much work something is tends to dampen enthusiasm.

I know someone who was going to start marketing a craft product he made out of a specific car part that “hot rod” drivers commonly replace. He was going to get this specific, hard-to-find part from Internet trading sites. In other words, the supply for his entire product line would be reliant on individual people selling unwanted parts. I asked, “How will you get the parts for 100 orders?” He didn’t have a good answer to this question, so he quickly changed the subject — it was something that he really didn’t want to think about.

I also know someone who wanted to start a painting service, but he did not have a truck or minivan or similar vehicle. So it was very difficult for him to transport ladders and five-gallon pails of paint to his various jobs. Transportation was something he really didn’t think about at first. Suffice it to say, he got a van really quickly.

Hey, I myself thought writing was easy until I got a complicated 20-page job. Ever write 20 pages on a boring subject? It’s a lot of things, but “easy” isn’t one of them.

In addition to underestimating the work involved, it’s also very common to overestimate sales. Remember in my first business when I figured on 30 different coupons per package? That was because the printer would print them in a sheet of 30 — I got the best price that way. So my costs were fixed — whether I sold 30 or 25, the printer would still use an entire sheet, and my mail pack would still have to go to 10,000 households.

I thought selling 30 coupons would be easy. It wasn’t. I ended up discounting a lot of them just to fill the pack, and I bartered a few away as well. My profit was slim indeed. I had overestimated my sales by a lot.

The lesson here is to always remember that nothing is as easy as it seems. Allot yourself the time and resources to make sure every angle is covered.