#83 12/23/13 can a flat panel monitor be your studio?

Small Business...
At one point in the far past we owned four small retail stores in the greeting card and gift sector.  They were creative, progressive, a bit "out there" and were a lot of fun and a lot of work.  Since that time we've had other ventures, including a small importing business that actually advertised in Rolling Stone magazine.  I've never met anyone else who advertised in Rolling Stone magazine.  That makes me feel special.

Now my daughter and wife own a small cafe that features home made soups, great sandwiches and salads and a pantry section that includes regional products and preserves and jams developed by my wife over the past fifteen years.

This is all about twenty or so years after the previous retail venture.  It's creative, progressive, a bit "out there," is a lot of fun and a lot of work.  The holidays were the major part of our retail store sales and the holidays are a major part of this cafe venture.  We've had to sort of forgo Christmas this year and will celebrate in about a week.

Small business is great.  I would much rather do this than work for someone else but of course you can usually do better working for someone else than yourself in a financial sense.  When you work for yourself you can never quit.  There is always something else to do.

Process Versus Goals...
"Set some goals for the New Year"

"Set a savings goal"

"Set a goal to eat better"

"Set a goal to lose weight"

In the business world we set goals all the time and most of them are about financial performance or the work we need to do to get the those performance metrics.  Frankly most of those are failures.  You usually are successful or a failure because of something that you did not or could not anticipate.  The 2008 recession was missed by many, even though all the warning signs were there early in 2008.  Our early small business retail venture did not anticipate the move to electronic messaging nor the dramatic increase of mail.  Our current venture took a deep breath when a Chipotle, a Five Guys and a Leeann Chin opened just down the street and Target's 10% weekend discount in response to their credit card theft was totally unanticipated.

So you mediate the ups and downs of goals by running through scenarios.  In my former life I pushed scenarios for years to no avail.  With my own IT staff I would periodically order lunch and beverages, call them into a room and give them some sort of doomsday scenario and give them three hours to do a workout and move-forward plan.  The scenario exercise turns goals into working sessions.  Goals become an ongoing process improvement project, not just a metric that is reviewed quarterly.  The bean counters rarely understand this approach and those within who you can see a light flicker can rarely pull it off.

Commit to a process.  Work on it every day.  Incremental improvement and accomplishment will reward you.  Despite comments that real creativity cannot come from a flat panel display, it can when your world is one of ideas, of words and phrases.  Setting a goal of writing each day is worthless.  Committing to a time and a place and making the keys on the QWERTY keyboard move, regardless of volume or quality will get you the volume and quality.

More on this to follow...the small business calls.  It's 11:32 PM and I have to be up and active about 6:00 AM.  Christmas Day will be a nice day, quiet but a time for reflection and .... process.