CommerceCubes

Finding your voice when writing… or blogging

I personally before this hadn’t written in years before starting this blog. Only recently (about June 2006) did I really want to involve myself with writing again. At first I tried to write content that I thought people would want to write (didn’t work too well) and then I slowly started writing from the point of view of well, myself. Who better to write for me then me?

Why do I do it ? – In a few words why i created this was to connect with different people. I am not about to start slinging up ads everywhere, that is not my main focus. Maybe in the next year… maybe I’ll consider monetizing this publication but that is a ways down the road. The focus of my writing currently is business, technology and personal projects (such as this Blog ;))

Networking with a Blog is a great tool be it entrepreneur (a term I hate because it’s too general), professional cake decorator or auto mechanic. Who ever thought up blogs was a very smart person. People love to connect with other people who share similar interests, people looking for a profession opinion, or just want to read about someone else’s thoughts.

Another reason why I started to write again was that someone had asked me on a forum why I don’t have my own Blog. I didn’t have an answer to that so here we are today on CommerceCubes. Coming from a background of Computers and a strong interest in business maybe it was natural to find myself here. Personally and lately I’ve failed at a few business ventures I’ve been involved in and learned something from each of them. I’ve established a set of criteria based off of past experience

Criteria for Luc starting a business/income stream:

1. Must be able to focus on an idea for more then 5 minutes - My problem lately has been a complete lack of focus to really create something that I want to be apart of on a daily basis. I keep telling myself “Focus”. I also remember that I am not running a race with anyone else but myself so the thing I am doing is taking time to build something of great value and importance really matters to me.
2. Must appeal to my skill set - Realize that if you start in on a venture it’s got to involve some of your skills, abilities and appeal to you in general way and lately I personally know some of my skills and abilities but it appealing to me in a general way is something I have been missing.
3. Must be scalable and manageable - The other half for me is that it’s something I can run in some of my spare time because I like many others currently work fulltime currently. If you cannot leverage yourself in a business that makes $500 or a $1000 a month then how do you plan to leverage once you’re doing a $1,000,000 a year in profits… Have a read of a past post I did on leverage and why it’s so important. (http://commercecubes.com/publication/2006/09/did-anyone-say-leverage/)
4. Must be something people need and will pay for – If people need something then you’ve got a business. This is the problem with a great deal of tech companies that people start. They start thinking innovation before customers and their needs. Innovation is great and I love smart products and services but usually the way great companies in any industry got smart was by focusing on their customers first. You could almost turn it into a motto “Customers First!” and i am sure some companies have.

That criterion will change over time as things change with respect to life, business and I am sure I’ll be expanding on it. But I figure that’s a good enough starting point to begin with.

Most recently I’ve been helping people with their systems and businesses’, developing extra functionality for companies and that is more something to do then anything for me. Designing more or less “Business Intelligence” for my clients and their systems is enjoyable but I am looking to develop a system for myself in which to conduct business. Talk about being the teacher and wanting to become the student on this eh?

Everything from advanced database queries to analytic-type applications so that my clients can track their operations better and while I do find it exciting I don’t think it is something that is going to be long lasting for me. The reason is this, having an un-systemized business leaves you basically having a job whereas have a system you can choose to have a job or not have a job; the choice is yours.

One thing to remember about most customers is that they don’t like change as quickly as innovators do. Change for the best is always a good thing but most customers don’t see it that way. What they think is “What do you want me to do now?” Sometimes they will say “okay, I’ll follow you” and other times they will say “No way! I am out of here.” That’s a plus about free enterprise in my opinion, its all choice. Remember that is why competition exists for businesses… Choice!

Getting back from my rant, blogging is great because I can express thoughts, ideas and rants (like the one you just witnessed) and people are free to comment back. Recently I joined MindPetals, which is a Blog/article network for entrepreneurs out there and actually they were nice enough to welcome me into the fold yesterday. You can check it out by clicking here! (http://mindpetals.com/blog/2006/10/commercecubes/)

The interesting thing about MindPetals is that their sole audience is business owners, people developing businesses so articles that fall in the “Entrepreneurship” category of my site will make it there. I’ll say it again. This technology (Blog/RSS) is very interesting!

Luc

Writing to my heart’s content