And I'm off! (...1)

This is it, the end of the blog, but not, by far, the end of the Ruskin Project.  Once my kitchen reno started, I failed miserably at steering away from posts about my kitchen.  Clearly I need a job related to home rehab work.  Construction management perhaps?  How do I find work combining or making use of my media interest, passion for home renovation, love of cooking, and penchant for endurance sports?  These three things take up most of my time and draw me in time and time again, no matter how many challenges there seem to be.

TriBuy.co, the biz venture I'm working on, is combining a few of my interests.  This site will launch in about a week with a splash page allowing visitors to learn about us, sign up to be notified when we launch our fully functional site (December, we hope!), and take a survey or email us feedback.  It's an exciting new business to be a part of and I doubt I would have begun this had I not been laid off.

My home projects and thoughts of buying and flipping a condo are beginning to stir...  Perhaps a plan will be in place soon on this front. 

Overall, I'm so incredibly grateful for this time to explore and learn and let myself see what pops up that I want to do.  How lucky I feel to step down off the work treadmill for a while and run about doing whatever I want, whenever I want, to learn as much as I want!  After many weeks now of getting to feel and think through my interests, I'm looking forward to taking on a focused job hunt.  It will be a rewarding challenge, not a daunting task.  But only because I feel relaxed and excited about it, instead of fearful and pessimistic.

Bring on the next chapter!

Ahhhh Summer...No Need for My Radiators Now (...21)

There's no way to feel bad about being laid off when the sky is blue and there's a light breeze in the air.  I walked to a biz venture meeting in the late afternoon.  We ate fresh farm veggies and grilled steak and chicken while we worked.  It's a ton of work, this project, but I've never felt more motivated, stimulated, and excited.  With each meeting I'm aware of how much we don't know just as much as I'm aware of how much progress we've made and how much passion we have for our goals!

Yesterday morning, we got down and dirty doing the nasty job of detaching the kitchen radiator from the floor pipe.  The valve was rusted and painted on quite well, but with a few twists and turns and creaks and grunts and a whole lotta leg muscle, it came undone!

My plan for the radiator is to skip the $200 acid wash and refinishing job (it also includes replacing the valve connector) that a local service shop offers.  Instead I'm going to use steel wool and 80 grit sandpaper to take care of the loose paint and rust, wipe it down, and then spray the radiator with a red metal primer. Then I'll spot paint those areas with high heat enamel paint that I hope I can find to match the mostly-in-good-shape silver coated radiator.  It will get a new valve and then get reconnected.  Let's hope it doesn't leak once I'm threw with it!

What Entity do We Want to Be? (...29)

I'm trying to digest the information and advice in an article called "Choice of Entity for Entrepreneurs" by Scott Edward Walker.  Much of the information in this article is unfamiliar to me.  It's not too tough to wrap my brain around the options he describes. but it is tough to make a decision on what will work best for us now, while we're bootstrapping this oroject, and in the future, when potentially we seek outside funding.  There's a lot of information to consider here.  What I didn't know before reading this article was that the choice of entity for a startup company isn't so much dependent on what your business is or how you plan to operate it (online vs a brick and mortar type of store) but whether you plan to seek VC funding at some point.  When this is the case, according to the article, you should form a corporation (C or S) and not an LLC.  Heck, I'm about to form a corporation!

A second article I read this morning is called "For Startups, the Forecast is "Cloudy" by Kurt Dobbins.  Kurt begins by declaring that the timing for starting a new company couldn't be better.  His reason is that despite the current economic environment, the resources available now versus a decade ago for building a business are more widely available and for less cost.  This is because of the "cloudy" environment we're in, meaning much of the resources for creating a business are available on the web.  Dobbins says "For a startup, being cloudy means using or consuming infrastructure and services over the Internet, on-demand, as needed."  This means the costs of doing business or even needing a physical space to do business is greatly reduced.  In the article he shows a chart comparing how his experience with starting two companies changed dramatically over a decade.  It's remarkable and inspiring to see the contrast.  He also writes that the "cloud" reality creates a new business mantra, which is to launch sooner and make fixes later.  It's a lot different than the idea of creating a product and sending it to market perfectly polished, as in when you're selling something in a brick and mortar store.  Online businesses are ever changing.  You can give them a go, see how they work, and modify as needed.  As a budding entrepreneur, this article encourages me to think perhaps we are not in over our heads imagining we can make our biz venture take flight before long!

 

 

I Need a Vote (...34)

Or suggestions on another version to try...which of these suits your fancy?

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Option 6

Live in the Wild! (...43)

The biz venture site is live in the wild!  Well...not just yet, but it's coming soon.  For now, I'm just excited to have created a useful front page with our logo and contact info.  Check it out at tribuy.co!  

On the iPhone!

On the iPad!

On the laptop!

 

Geeky excitement over successful validation!

Planting the Seeds (...44)

I don't intend for this post and it's title to have a contrived, cloying tone.  I know what I'm about to write will come across that way...but it's only by accident.  To plant a seed means to do something that will develop more in the future.  That's what today was about.  Today I did this, literally, with flower seeds, bought at home depot.  And tonight I did this, but figuratively, with the biz venture. 

The flower seeds...

Step 1: open seed packets and read instructions...

Step 2: add potting soil, drop in seeds, more soil, and water, then wait... 

The biz venture...

It's amazing what interacting with the right people can do for your development!  My partners and I attended a fantastic event tonight at "Critical Mass" in the Cambridge Innovation Center, a meeting area set up to help provide space and structure for small companies.  About 50 entrepreneurs gathered tonight to meet, network, ask questions, and connect with many of the local VC companies, lawyers, and developers.  The event was sponsored by Highland Ventures as part of a program they run to provide founders with resources for their startup initiative.  We went to the event hoping to make connections with a few people who could help us take the next steps we need to make with our company. We did! We also gained a lot practice pitching our idea and answering questions about our business model.  We learned what questions we need to be able to answer and what funders will expect to see before considering a investment.  We also learned about helpful, free services, some companies offer to startups as a way of building relationships with budding businesses (notice cloying reference to my title).  It was a great experience, great practice for us, and very useful info, all in a couple hours.  It's energizing and motivating to rub shoulders with others who want to work on their own new ideas.  Lots and lots of work ahead, but the seeds of our idea are firmly planted.  



 

Cobbler and Coding (...51)

Today moved along at a rapid fire pace.  After a welcome rest this weekend, I got down to business when I woke up this morning.  One thing I've learned about getting my to-dos done is to finish the least desirable things first.  That doesn't always happen, but I try to make it happen.  It spurs me on to do everything else.  Today, that's just what I did.  After doing the things I had to get to, there were two things I wanted to get to:

1. Continue to learn PHP to do web pages for the biz venture
2. Bake peach cobbler

I have no pictures to share of PHP code.  Luckily, finally, thankfully, I was able to see a web page successfully in my browser (thank you, Alex!).  I'd been watching tutorials, following examples, and seeing nothing but 404 Errors.  It turns out I was doing my work without saving the pages to my server folder...amateur mistake.  That, and I had some errors in my code...I'm learning.

I do have pictures of the peach cobbler!  I'm not sharing the recipe, however... it's not worth repeating.  It tasted good at 9:30pm when my head hurt from trying to learn PHP and I needed a boost of energy, but it isn't so good that I'll make it again.

Almond flour, yogurt, and honey crust covered with peaches, cinnamon, butter, and honey.

Before

Ta dah!

Learning Some Language Skills (...53)

I'm spending my morning learning some very basic PHP (scripting language for web development) and Codeigniter (web application framework) in order to create a few web pages for the biz venture.  My approach is to watch the tutorials, several times, mimic the code, then make some modifications to it to see how it works.  With only basic html knowledge, I understand only half of what the tutorials discuss.  Patience and faking confidence is key to being successful at this project.  Right now nothing is working when I load my practice pages.  It's not surprising, but it's frustrating.  My goal today is to get one page to display in my browser the way it's supposed to.  Here's a sample of this morning's efforts:

What's in a Day? (...57)

Here's how my day went today:

• 6am:  35 mile bike ride

• 8am:  multi-egg omelet with cheese, broccoli, peppers, rice cakes on the side, and coffee...yum

• 10am to 12:  a few visitors, research work (for the biz venture!)

• 12:45: lunch with a longtime pal, amazing triathlete, and 6 month pregnant friend, Julia!

• 3pm:  purchased 2 pillows for my porch from Marshall's where I got a great deal because some thread was coming lose on the covers.  I'll make my own zippered cushion covers with outdoor fabric...I'm realizing foam inserts are waaaayyyyy too expensive ($64/yard!) so buying discount pillows and recovering makes more sense.

• 4:30pm:  watched tutorials on how to use CodeIgniter, a web application "that helps you write incredible PHP programs."  I hope it gives incredible help to write helpful programs, because I am feeling a lot bewildered so far.

• 6:45 to 8:45pm:  biz venture meeting

• 10:30:  Now, I'm headin' to bed in order to rise early so I can swim in lovely Walden Pond...

40 days have passed since I was laid off! (...58)

40 days have passed since I was laid off!  It's nerve-wracking to take note of the amount of time that's gone by.  Have I done enough with this time so far? Am I using it for the right projects?  Am I talking to who I should talk to? Networking enough?  Exploring what I'm interested in enough?

I'm heading to an interesting networking eventt, combined with a talk tonight put on by the popular online sales site, Rue La La.  It's titled "Why consumers are addicted to private sales web sites (Hint: The hard wiring of your brain makes the deals impossible to resist)."  Since I'm working on an online venture with two friends, it's a good topic that will speak directly to part of the service we hope to provide, private sales.  I call it a venture, because it is just that.  Based on what we think is a great idea, we're taking on a project with an uncertain outcome.  And what a great experience it is!  The uncertainty seems insignificant compared to the challenge creating something ourselves and learning anything we need to in order to make this a successful business.  If it is not, we will have gained a lot of knowledge in the process.  I like this perspective.  It's the perspective I'm reminding myself, often, to take during this layoff period.  Whatever I end up doing during this time, I'm learning a good deal about what I want to be doing and I'm certain I'll mold a good career for myself out of the experiences I'm having.

Update post-talk: The Rue La La event, despite direction mishaps and locked doors to the building where the event was being held, was exactly what I'd hoped it would be!  I took notes on related books that were referenced and on private sale website strategies. The speaker, Rue La La's SVP of Member Experience, Colin Hynes, gave a clear breakdown of his company's strategy as well as how it needs to change as consumer purchasing habits change.  He used a few video clips to illustrate his points. One video in particular was Dan Ariely's TED talk, "Are we in control of our own decisions?"  In the clip we watched, Ariely, a behavioral economist, discuss people's decisions regarding organ donation.  Watch the clip for interesting illustrations.  Perhaps you'll think more carefully the next time you fill our a form or buy something online...

Overall it was an interesting discussion from a business perspective, but also from a personal perspective. I found myself thinking "oh gosh! I do that..."  when hearing how consumers act in response to private sales.