From my extensive business experience, if there is any one thing that leads to a slow (sometimes quick) demise of a startup or an established company, more often than not, it can be traced to greed.

The root causes of greed

When you first start a company, the pricing is usually insanely competitive even to the point of undercutting your main competitors. Many people believe that price, and price alone is the way to compete directly against the “big boys”. While this does work for a certain period of time, and can actually be profitable, eventually, overhead such as staff, phones, office space etc. all begin to take their toll leading to you having to raise your prices just to break-even. The root cause of greed for most companies starts-up this way, simply trying to stay afloat… I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who got greedy out of desire. It’s usually caused by something far more urgent, survival!

When greed gets out of hand

Alright, you have a rather new company, you hiked prices and can now afford to pay yourself somewhat of a living wage… great! This should be where things stop but inexperience (myself included) makes you wonder, “hey, that went so well, let’s hike things up a bit more so I can buy xyz”. Your clients grumble but the costs involved with leaving your company for another aren’t large enough to warrant a new fishing expedition. Hey, you got away with it! Hmmm… let’s do it again!

Greed catches-up with you sooner or later

Alright, you are living “large”, move to new offices, hire a bunch of new staff, get a new car, start-up some new (expensive) hobbies and life is amazing! What you fail to realize is that you are slowly pricing yourself out of a market that you helped develop. Sooner or later, the contracts that use to be “guaranteed” begin going to other companies, out of desperation, you match their price but in reality, you cannot. You see, your overhead has taken a toll on how “low” you can go while still breaking even! You have nice new offices, guess what, your clients notice this as well and if “entrepreneur to entrepreneur” you see this, you quickly realize that you, as the client, are the one paying “extra” for these digs. Most entrepreneurs are cheap when it comes to spending money, they have no problem buying a plane and other gadgets but when it comes to business, every penny counts! This is when things begin to go downhill.

Excuses Excuses

First you realize that your sales staff is spending A LOT of time on the road trying to close deals that just aren’t going the way you had hoped or experienced in the past. Your subcontractors, realizing you got a bit of money, begin hiking their prices (making your prices higher) and worse, you begin living project by project. You hear all the excuses but they always seem to come down to price and customer service. You want to hire more people to handle the work flow but your overhead is already too high, you want to fire some people but cannot afford the severance, you need to give your sales staff higher commissions but with lower prices, you are being squeezed from all sides. Throw-in a natural disaster and you are really screwed big time!

What to do?

Well, the above happened to me, it took me years to recover but I wouldn’t have wanted things to happen in any other way. The lessons I learned from my past failures have made me who I am today, far smarter with my money, far more efficient with my time and a miser when it comes to Return On (potential)Investment. Well, how do you avoid a business and the personal failure that comes with it? Here are some tips:

• Only hire staff you absolutely need and not before you have at least a few months salary to cover them in your bank account, in other words, don’t count your eggs before they have hatched.
• Subcontract as much as you can, I have found that you will always PROFIT from subcontractors, when you don’t have a project, they don’t cost you anything and when you do, you will always make a net profit at the end of the day.
• Sales people, unless you can afford otherwise, should have the vast majority of their compensation based on commission, sure you can help with gas and other expenses but it’s up to them to make a living off your product/services, not you.
• Learn from your failures and try to constantly improve not only yourself but how things run in general. I believe in a constant improvement philosophy and it has served me very well in both up and down times.
• Listen to your clients and always try to ask a “lost” client why you aren’t working for them anymore or why a negotiation for a new one didn’t go anywhere. Knowledge is power, especially when it can have a very large impact on your bottom line.
• Accept that chance will play an ENORMOUS role in whether your enterprise succeeds or fails. Entrepreneurs who say they are successful or wealthy because of them and had nothing to do with luck are so full of shit that they can build a mud house out of it. Just about every entrepreneur (successful and otherwise) has been deafly affected by luck.
• Don’t give up! If there is one thing you remember from this blog posting it is that you should NEVER GIVE UP on your dreams. Hope, no matter how small, is still hope. The minute you give-up the only guarantee you will have is failure! Sometimes it is good to refocus your energies elsewhere, learn from your mistakes and move on… but never loose hope on the bigger picture to improve the lives of you, your family and those you care about.

The Bottom Line

Greed is one of those dragons that every entrepreneur has to learn how to slay.

One of the most amazing aspects of being an entrepreneur is the absolute joy you get from being constantly forced to learn new things!

Enjoying the rewards, paying the costs

Honestly, what other type of non-job other then an entrepreneur can you be paid to do what you absolutely love to do and gamble, quite honestly, on all your past success to throw yourself into yet another higher level of possibility! The rewards of entrepreneurship as a lifestyle are as endless as it’s costs but the journey sure as hell is a fun one!

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - how it began

I started this site after many years of having this idea in the back of my head. I really love wood, I enjoy the flexibility that this material provides and its availability just about anywhere. Nothing beats the smell of pine or cedar… so, I decided, enough is enough… I am going to develop this site right now! That was back in October, at first, it was difficult developing an entire new level of standards and procedures, not to sound too technical but after years of producing industrial 3D animations, switching to wooden toys takes a little bit of work to pull-off correctly. For several years, I also really wanted to get into manufacturing, I have visited some amazing shop floors around North America and to be honest, I LOVE BIG MACHINES!

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - models from virtual to physical

So, back in October, I started essentially producing new virtual wood marvels on a weekly basis but about two months ago, my second dream was finally made available to me… manufacturing! I built all my wood marvels in my computer, they looked great and I got some great feedback from customers but being able to ship on-demand merchandise anywhere in the world is a whole other level of accomplishment. It took a few weeks but now I am as comfortable in the “manufacturing-on-demand” area as I am in the 3D one. I am not a professional in either by any stretch of the imagination, but I have developed enough knowledge of both industries to easily converse with engineers and other professionals on an even platform.

Just for the heck of it, you can see the evolution of the designs from one of the very first models I created to the second-to-last one (latest one is still rendering).

Shark (September 2007′ish)

Full Armor Gear Bull (June 2008′ish)

Case Study: WoodMarvels.com - book from virtual to physical

Now, this is where things get really interesting, I am a few weeks away from having a book published encompassing 25 of my top models available print-on-demand through BookSurge.com (an Amazon affiliate). Things have gone full circle, the models are produced on-demand in the physical world and now, my guides and books as well! Isn’t this really cool! One of my goals in my life was to publish several books, this is my first, at the age of 32 and I really enjoyed the process and can’t wait to actually hold in both my hands what where once but virtual items inhabiting the deep recesses of my mind.

Where do you go from here?

WoodMarvels.com has been a tremendous success, it has opened several doors in my life and I look forward to developing that property well into the future. My other properties are slowly growing and I am sure they will open as many doors if not more then what I have just shared with you… which is still but a glimpse of things to come. The fact that I managed to do this while traveling around the world, visiting one of my dream places (Cape Tribulation in Australia) and climbing mountains in South Korea really make these successes all the more enjoyable! I already have two other non-WoodMarvels.com books stewing in my mind which I hope to release next year. My priority is to get the next huge goal I have had in my mind for several years now… LegendaryLife.com. I wish I honestly could live a thousand years because I have so much yet to accomplish and experience, trying to cram all of this in one lifetime while still being able to enjoy that life is a very tall task indeed!

The Bottom Line

Nothing beats a dose of entrepreneurship to introduce some vitality into your life!

Buzvia: BookSurge.com (on-demand publisher), Ponoko.com (on-demand manufacturer), WoodMarvels.com (on-demand happiness!)

I figured it was only a matter of time before some people in the old establishment feared for their own livelihood and reputation when something new comes along that provides a better experience then what they are able to provide.

The experience with WoodMarvels.com

When I first launched woodmarvels,com, I had a number of haters, wood crafters hated the site because we provided blueprints and 3D animation for at an 80% discount to their “old” mail order businesses. Gone where the days of overpriced blueprints that took a week to receive in the mail. I saw messages saying “computer created blueprints are a dime a dozen”, “a real wood crafter doesn’t use computers”, “how can you build something without measurements!” and so on. What can I conclude? The haters out there seeing their livelihood which failed to evolve with the times facing obliteration, they are too lazy to learn how to create things in a computer which is far more efficient method (including environmentally friendly) but too entrenched in old methods of doing things. Other people support the site, it provides to them exactly what they need and want.

Experience with the International Association for the Study of Dreams

Here is an association that, to me, should be very welcoming of different and novel new ways of doing things… boy was I wrong! I posted a message on their forum that was full of anonymous posters helping others to interpret their dream that dreamclue.com is now available to them. The response? They deleted my post without even an explanation, not once but twice! I did the same on wikipedia with the same result. I can only conclude that dreamclue.com is their worst nightmare which they wished never saw the light of day! I had sent an e-mail to Dr. Van de Castle asking him to check dreamclue.com out to get his feedback and the response I got wasn’t what I was expecting.

“Dear Jon… In general, I’m not supportive of any approach to dreams in which a dictionary approach is made, and I don’t feel that represents a dynamic approach. To me, dynamic means an approach in which the dreamer’s individual and unique personality features are carefully examined in a way that the multilevel strands of meaning are carefully interwoven . ARBITRARILY TELLING anyone what their dream means is considered an unethical procedure, as you will note if you examine the ethical statement of our organization. The International Association for the Study of Dreams [ www.IASDreams.org ] ONLY the dreamer is entitled to say what their dream means . I am sending a copy of this response to our chair person in charge of ethics, so that she will be aware of your new venture, Sincerely, Robert Van de Castle , PH.D”

I thanked him for his time in my reply but to me there are a few points that he has failed to realize about dreamclue.com:

1. we are only providing ideas as to what a symbol means, it’s always up to the end user to decipher what the dream means to them, the first block of text on our home page clearly states this. Not only that, the journal available to members provides a field for just such a thing!
2. their own forum is full of strangers actually TELLING other strangers exactly what their dream means WITHOUT the systematic approach he preaches, yet their postings are not deleted like mine was.
3. there are “professional dream interpreters” out there charging 20 to 200 dollars AN HOUR to provide dream interpretations, selling tapes and books that cost a kings random. How the hell is this considered ethical when there is now a FREE, dynamic alternative with dreamclue.com?
4. we provide a feedback mechanism for others to post what a dream symbol meant to them, the term “arbitrary” is a term I consider an insult given the foundation that dreamclue.com is built upon.

Economic motives in maintaining the status quo

Now, I can’t blame them for hating what dreamclue.com represents, they make thousands of dollars a year selling “memberships” and have a vast store selling any and everything to do with dreams no matter how hookey they seem. Here, I am, a person providing a free alternative… I can’t blame them for deleting my posts within minutes of me posting on their site. I guess, if I was in their shoes, I would be shaking and hoping word didn’t get out too!

My challenge to dream interpreters the world over!

I challenge ANY “professional dream interpreter”, psychotherapist, metaphysician, psychologist, psychic, astrologist or otherwise to PROVE their books or sites helping others with their dream interpretations are any better then dreamclue.com. PROVE to me the superiority of your methods using the scientific method, otherwise, don’t even try to elevate yourselves above what dreamclue.com provides to its users.

The problem with the dream industry

Like the diet and health industries, the dream interpretation industry is ripe with gouging consumers in order to maintain the “professionalism” of this field. A field that is ripe with predators looking for a quick buck and creating dependent relationships that benefit only their pocket books. The dream industry should be open to new ideas and methods of doing things, not turning a blind-eye and discounting viable alternative out there. My goal is to provide tools that help people find out more about themselves, ultimately, to be self-reliant. This is exactly what this industry and many others I plan on conquering fear.

The Bottom Line

Waves are good… especially the ones you create yourself!

We are all a product of a dream, whether realized or otherwise, they are among the most powerful mechanisms in our lives that help guide us, give us new ideas and play around with alternative realities!

Why develop Dreamclue.com?

Well, I originally began on this project a little over a year ago now after realizing that there was a huge amount of knowledge we are all acquiring but forgetting nightly! I wanted to create a system that not only makes sense of our dreams but more importantly, allows us to record them for prosperity. Our dreams are also a visual medium, so the site had to be chalk full of imagery to help guide you through the exploration of the dreamworld. The results? Well, launching with over two thousand dream symbols written by yours truly and a quarter of the entries with photographs also taken by me, I have big expectations for this site!

How does Dreamclue.com work?

Dreams are our own business, so it has to be built anonymously, as such, like myfoodcount.com before it, the system has no clue who you are and it’s drop dead easy interface for adding and learning about the dreamworld only helps to make the exploration that much easier!

Other cool Dreamclue.com features

The site features both text and image based navigation, in addition to interesting statistics not only about your very own dreams but all the dreams on the site as well. You can also read other peoples dreams (they are rendered anonymous by our system) and even comment on any interpretation on the site!

What’s next?

A lot, will let all our visitors know when the time is right

The Bottom Line

Passion is a dangerous thing as it can only bread more passion!

If you run a business or are in charge of one, you know exactly what I mean when I say entrepreneurship is an endless journey of discovery, there is always an area that can use some testing and others some tweeking to maximize potential.

There is always room for improvement

No matter the industry, time of year or revenue projections (or lack thereof) there is always room for improvement, it can easily be said that a business that isn’t on a progressive cycle of improvement is one that is dead. Things change, customers change and challenges always pop-out of nowhere. A good entrepreneur takes things in stride, strives for perfection but knows the goal will never be hit. Panic is fine for contractors, customers and employees but nothing spells trouble like an entrepreneur ripping their hair out as soon as small fire busts into a raging inferno. If you are constantly looking for improvements, these small fires, more often then not, don’t find enough loose litter to explode. Test out new procedures, don’t fear change and don’t procrastinate in trying to find new areas of growth.

There is always room for being away

Whether you decide to take a day or a month off to re-evaluate your business, this is among the least understood but most beneficial things you can do. Getting ideas, at least for me and other entrepreneurs I know, usually come in the middle of the night or when they are outside of the office. When you are in an office, it’s like a war zone, everything is coming at you from all corners and your mind simply doesn’t have time to evaluate things as it’s too busy DOING things. Getting away allows the mind to relax, think about what happened and think of areas where improvements can be made.

Example of what happens with vacation time

For me, I always have ideas jumping out at me, I have to prioritize them and see how they evolve over time. One such idea was that behind one of my sites, WoodMarvels.com in which I wanted to sell wood project building guides electronically that where affordable, extremely high quality and included a 3D animations to help customers through the purchasing / building process. I looked around, suffice it to say, this would cost a fortune if you didn’t already have a server, over a decade of 3D animation experience and a host of projects under your belt… luckily for me, I had all this just sitting there ready to be used. So, I decided with 4 models that I built myself to launch the site in October of 2007. I then had a goal to make 50 by the end of the year… well, I got to 46 then realized that I had spent so much time building that there was a noticeable evolution that needed to be addressed. What did I decide to do? Well, we re-rendered everything at a higher resolution (close to 50 animations over a two week period), re-did ALL the imagery at a higher quality and not only that, launched an e-commerce store dedicated in the field of woodworking including re-doing all our blueprints with an in-layed grid format. The results? Well, we found new streams of revenue, sales are up 300% and a number of new doors have opened up for us with this site. WoodMarvels.com looked good before, the blueprints where fine but now the site is fantastic and the guides we sell for the individual projects are incredible! How did this come about? Well, I was hiking up a mountain one day and realized that WoodMarvels.com needed to be Marvelous… and it’s getting there big time now! The site itself was a small project I undertook for the heck of it after I discovered I had some extra spare time and now it’s evolving into a mighty division within i3DS.

Finding problems before they find you

As my example illustrates, there was nothing really wrong with what WoodMarvels.com was like before but there was room for improvement. If there aren’t any problems with a business, then you are either blind or ignorant in my opinion… there are ALWAYS problems. These problems usually start out as small annoyances, maybe it’s that pump-jack that has a squeeky wheel then eventually leads to a big skid of computers crashing down on a concrete floor or that receptionist that never seems to show up at time which may lead to a customer going to a competitor. Who knows what problems there are… but I guarantee you one thing, there are problems everywhere just waiting to explode… your job, as the boss is to find them ASAP and deal with them in a timely manner. Set-up weekly or monthly meetings depending on the size of your organization looking for waste, have contests to find the best “optimization idea” within your company or even just an “open door policy” can uncover a number of things that should but haven’t caught your attention yet.

The Bottom Line

Problems are opportunities in disguise… find them!

Buzvia: WoodMarvels.com - Create Unique Memories