Wednesday, March 20, 2002

A Reflection...

Greetings,

I've said before my job is to first be clear, which sometimes causes me to
make it all seem easy. Of course, like any job done well, it is hard, but
working in something you love you don't notice how hard it is, if at all.

There is another aspect to this. People ask me what I think of incubators,
or this assistance resource, or that program. Based on personal experience
and years of working with others, I feel impatience. "Get to the customer"
is my mantra.

But I do understand... building a business can be lonely, and to sign up for
some program at least gives you someone to interact and off which bounce
ideas. But I am not yet ready to endorse anything outside of a focus on
customers.

Perhaps a point I need to emphasize is that if you proceed alongn the tight
narrow path I lay out, you will in fact run into more people than you can
stand, to help you.

When you epxperience a problem that you'd like to slove, there will be plenty
of people in the very same field you can discuss this with.

When you visit the retailers who would sell your solution, you'll find them a
very strong and useful support group.

When you work with designers to develop your idea into workable designs, here
again you'll enjoy watching the creative and talented at work.

When you research the best place in the world to have your product made, the
contact with exotic peoples from around the world will be fascinating.

Working with the customsbrokers to work out the costs, logistics, rules, regs
and timing of your shipments will be enlightening.

Sharing what you've developed with sales reps will be gratufying as they
question all you've done and test what you have develop.

Talking over your situation with a small business accountant will school you
in the real world of making money at the small biz level.

Through all this and more there are the breakfasts, lunches and dinners, the
travel, the letters faxes and emails... countless meetings... one thing that
is not missing is someone to talk to or a source of encouragement.

Yes, some "hand-holding" is to be desired, but there will be no shortage of
that. Quite the contrary, with all there is to do who has time to check in
with the econ development dept or the world trade club?

I'll say it again: the customer is most important, but the product (or
service) is the hardest to come up with. I know it is a challenge, because I
have been there.

One more point: In Seattle the company I worked with had about one shipment
a week. When I moved to the company in San Francisco, they were ten times as
large. Were the shipments ten times as large? No, there were ten times as
many.

This is a profound point that has dawned on me only recently. At the small
business level, we make money on frequency, not volume. The fellow in SF was
richer than the fellow in Seattle because although the deals were the same
size, the SF importer did more deals.

Never worry about the size of the deal, only that it is terribly profitable.
So get going... make $1500 on an importation of $1200... and then work on
increasing the frequency, not the volume.

John