So the election is over...

And so goes one of the largest single office time waster. It is funny, what will we all do to fill the void of constaintly surfing, reading, emailing or gabbing about the election and the campaign? I'm not so naive as to think people will actually do more work. They will probably just have to be more clandestine in the non-work activities they do at work. Following the election and politics is traditionally a more acceptable way to waste company time than other pursuits.

Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians

I am currently reading "The e-Myth Revisted", and there is an interesting concept in it about the types of people ni an office: Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians. Entrepreneurs come up with lots of new ideas, some or which are actually implementable and fewer that are successful. Managers are very good at organizing and maintaining the status quo. Technicians are the only people who actually get any work done. The problem is, the majority of the promotions, money, etc. go to either the efficient managers or the lucky entrepreneurs. Most small business owners, however; are actually highly skilled technicians who are sick of pie in the sky entrepreneurs or draconian managers. The book's premise is that you need a little bit of all three of these personalities inside of yourself in order to have a truly successful small business. It's an interesting idea. I'll have to ponder it more as I read.

Case of the Mondays

Why are offices usually filled with highly negative people? If we all hate our jobs why do we keep doing them? I guess we are probably afraid of the alternative, afraid of the unknown. Adventuring is a game for the young, right? You can't try something new at this point in your life, you've already invested so much in your current position, blah, blah. I guess it is that inertia thing. Inertia is an object's resistance to change in its state of either motion or non-motion. The plus side is, when it's motion we're talking about, it's hard to slow you down. But dealing with non-motion, you have to find a way to start up. So I'm a little slow right now because the economy and other things I've found out about online retail have gotten me down. So I'm doing what I always do when I get like this: read more books. I just finised "The Magic of Thinking Big", and I am planning on starting "The e-Myth Revistied". Perhaps inspiration will follow.

Peaks and Valleys

So it has been a little while since I've updated my blog. I ran a marathon last weekend, and have been physically drained for a few days. But it does give me an opportunity to talk about an interesting feature in most people's work cycles: Peaks and Valleys. I think that a lot of people have large degrees of enthusiasm when starting a new endeavour. It is the "ignorant optimism" stage. Then they do some research, some investigation, and find some things they don't like and some roadblocks and reach the "enlightened pessimism" stage. Most folks fall off at this point. The trick is overcoming this, and using your new found knowledge to make things better and reach the "enlightened optimism stage."

The Work from Home Fantasy

Why do so many of us cube rats talk about the idea of working from home as if it were some Utopian ideal? I think maybe people just want to be at home, since it presents a desireable alternative to the soul-sucking office. I've met a lot of folks who have often said their dream is to own a bar. I think they are really saying "I'd like to hang out in a bar all day and get money for it." So my question is, if you could have money streaming in from another source, leaving you free to hang out wherever you want, be it at home or in a bar, wouldn't that be better than your money being tied to a physical location?
I think the true goal of the Slacktrepreneur should be cash flow that is not tied to his or her presence in a set location. The plus side is, the Internet makes this possible to an extent that was not available to prior generations.

Drop Ship

So, drop shipping appears to be the best method for a true Slacker Entrepreneur in making money without doing a lot of work. The basic idea is that a company sells you items at a wholesale price and you sell them on a retail market, and they ship them directly to the customer. You don't have to handle inventory at all. The problem is, there are a lot of companies out there that pose as drop shippers, and they are actually just middle men who take out a large cut. Actual drop shippers are a little more elusive, and I am suspecting that a person will have to make a pretty big volume commitment in order to get a profitable deal with a real drop shipper. If anyone out there has any ideas or experience, I'd love to hear it.

eBay!

I'm thinking about starting off on eBay as a retailer and joining the fray of eCommerce, providing I can get a wholesaler to drop ship for me. Basically I do not want to be involved in any of the packing, shipping, etc. I just want to unify producer and consumer online, and take a modest cut. Assuming such things can be done profitably, it should just be a matter of repetition and scaling the process up. I was thinking of then outsourcing the ad-placing, page maintainance, and shipping to some hourly employees found on elance.com, or some such site. Then I would focus on the big picture items of looking at sales trends and trying to focus the efforts into more profitable areas. The downside is with the contracting economy, margins may be a little more narrow. Anyway, it's a thought.