I’ll be in live audio as the guest of host John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing this Tuesday as part of his Small business coaching expert series podcasts. That’s Tuesday at 2 pm CDT, noon PDT and 3 pm EDT. The session is free but you need to enroll first (which is also free).
I had a good time on the Jim Blasingame show last Thursday, a nice break from vacation … here’s the audio:
http://www.askjim.biz/embed/interview_widget.php?v=1&f=20080508-B
<a href="http://zaicast.smallbusinessadvocate.com:8000/media/jbsba/2008/05/20080508-B.mp3">my recent interview with Jim Blasingame</a> (on the <a href="http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com">Small Business Advocate</a> show)
Yes, you can. Maybe not all businesses. Maybe not any business. Some businesses, though, can start in three weeks. My first business started the day a former client called and asked my to do a market study in Venezuela. That changed things from one day to the next.
That’s a true story. If you’re curious, I posted that one a few months ago on this blog as The First Day of a New Business. That’s one example. There are millions.
There are 21 million companies in the United States without employees. I wonder how many of them started up in 3 weeks or less.
A 2006 study sponsored by Wells Fargo and Conducted by Gallup found that the average startup cost was about $10,000. I wonder how many of those started in three weeks or less.
It would be easier to count the businesses that can’t start in three weeks, because there are a lot fewer of them.
Even in those cases, however, you can play with the definitions. You can call it starting in three weeks if you get the team together, the basic idea settled, the first legal steps taken, and you start the search for the location and start the search for funding.
Why do I care? That’s a reasonable question. Yesterday Sabrina Parsons and I finished our compete draft of a book called "Start Your Business in Three Weeks," to be published by Entrepreneur Press next fall.
That was the second book draft I’ve sent to Entrepreneur in two months, and the last for a long time. Of course I/we didn’t write them that fast, they were both a long time coming. That’s what happens, I guess, when you name a new CEO for a company and task its long-time president with blogging writing, teaching, and speaking.
Yesterday I implemented a DabbleDB database of my blog posts and columns and such, including this blog and Up and Running, plus a few posts on Small Business Trends and Huffington Post, my blog on Allbusiness.com (which doesn’t get many posts these days).
The DabbleDB idea is working quite well, if you are (as I am) willing to compromise sometimes and do things the way the technology wants (or rather, the way the programmers want). It’s free too, because I’ve allowed it to go into the public domain.
I’m working on a better keyword search, but in the meantime you can use the search facility on your browser (probably in your edit menu) to search for any specific word or phrase.
The nice thing is that anybody with an editor password can update the database at any time, it automatically flows into what’s available on this page.
The other nice thing is, well, er, 687 posts. I can see why that might be irrelevant to you, but it’s very convenient for me. I get an instant hit on what I wrote where.
If you’re curious about DabbleDB, that’s at www.dabbledb.com. I’m going to be looking at the Amazon database facility that’s just recently been set up to go along with the S3 storage and Web facilities, but in the meantime, this seems to work.
This coming Saturday, Jan. 19th, I’ll be in Corvallis, Oregon speaking on “Essentials of Business Planning for Nonprofits,” as part of an event sponsored by Financial Stewardship Resources.
On Friday, Jan. 25, I’ll be in Miami as a panelist in the Women’s Congress session on succession planning.
On Thursday, February 7, I’m giving a workshop in the Portland, Oregon area on Plan-as-you-go Business Planning. That’s from 1 pm to 5 pm, starts out with plan-as-you-go planning and goes into one-on-one coaching and tutorial for your specific business plan.
So I’m tired today, writing from the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford (UK), where I’ll be speaking to MBA students on Monday. Oxford has a very attractive MBA program. Alan Gleeson, Managing Director of Palo Alto Software Ltd here in the UK, is a graduate.
Not much else to say. Given that I spent last night on a plane, probably better I stay brief.
One advantage of living in Eugene, OR, is that when you get to Oxford in early January, the cold gray weather is not all that different from home.
I’m very proud to be scheduled on Jim Blasingame’s 10th anniversary radio show at 8:30 am EST on Tuesday Nov. 13. You’ll be able to listen live by clicking onto Jim’s home page at the Small Business Advocate and the archived recording will be up later, so you can still listen even if you can’t make the live session.
If you don’t already know Jim’s Small Business Advocate show and the accompanying website — I’ve recommended it on this blog in the past — now is a good time to go there and start exploring. Jim has an amazing inventory of archived shows, great advice, and excellent value. He’s an excellent interviewer and he’s been bringing in expert guests for 10 years now, five days a week, two or more hours per day.
Check out his archive.
I’m going to be Anita Campbell’s guest tomorrow on Small Business Trends Radio at 1:30 pm EST which is also 10:30 am PST and a couple of hours in between as well. There’s a "listen live" link on the home page.
The topic is Plan as You Go Business Planning, my most recent attitude adjustment on the growing need for agile and flexible business planning that assumes rapid change and constant uncertainty. The closest thing to that already posted here is the Not so Big Business Plan post from a few weeks ago.
Please join us!
I’ll be doing two workshops next week at the annual ASBDC convention in Denver. It’s taking place at the Hyatt Regency at the Colorado Convention Center. SBDC stands for Small Business Development Center. There are about 1,000 of them in the United States. They meet around this time every year and I’ve been attending since 1995 and doing workshops since 1998.
If you’re going to this year’s convention please join me for either or both of these workshops.
–Tim
I’ll be doing a half hour of Small Business Advocate radio Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Jim Blasingame’s Small Business Advocate radio show. Please join us.
Just click this link to listen to the show.
— Tim
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