It’s a simple financial truth: You can’t invest–in anything–unless you have something to invest. That includes investing in your business.
You can’t grow your business if you instantly consume every dollar of profit that manages to come your way. An uncle of mine, a successful businessman who retired within the last decade, considers this to be the secret of his success: “We never took more out of the business,” he told me, “than we absolutely needed to survive.” Extra money didn’t go to buy a boat or a bigger TV. Instead, it went back into the business. Having done that for years, he and his wife are now living quite comfortably, well past “surviving”.
Investing in your business can be anything you spend money on for the business that nets an additional profit, either directly or indirectly. Advertising, development tools, third party libraries, contract artists, Web site design, and so on, are all investments, growing the business so that it can generate further income. And most of these investments require at least some amount of upfront payment just to get them started. Unless you have that money available, you’re not going to be able to pursue these investments.
This is yet another reason I think it’s foolish to quit your day job to pursue your dreams of independence. With no outside source of income, you begrudge every dollar. Investing in a new development tool or more advertising starts to seem like you’re stealing food, clothing, and shelter from yourself and your family. Ultimately, though, while you and yours might survive, your indie “cash cow” shrivels and starves from lack of nourishing re-investment.
On the other hand, even with a day job, it can be hard to let the money accumulate. When a hobby, sometimes seemingly out of the blue, begins showing a profit, your first inclination is to stamp “Windfall” on the revenue and use it to enjoy your new, slightly higher standard of living. The result on your business is the same: it starves.
Accumulation is the basis of wealth, and even a few hundred dollars each month can accumulate into a useful amount if you just give it time.
For the past months, I’ve found myself trying to think of ways to take the concept of “going indie” to the mass of humanity. Specifically, helping Joe and Jane Employee learn:
That their value is not directly tied to what they earn in their current job.
That the purpose of their job should be to support their life, not to be their life.
That creativity and art isn’t the sole purview of acclaimed artists, nor is creativity and art limited to “the arts.”
That “making it big” isn’t the only form of “making it.”
My recent reminiscences about my short-lived hunt for part-time work brought this to mind again.
This is still a thought-in-progress. I don’t have a grand plan yet, only an interest in helping people take more control of their lives, helping them stop putting off pursuing their dreams and start taking steps to making their dreams come true.
I talked about this with a friend of mine last night, and she was dubious. “Not everyone is like you,” she said. “You’re more intelligent, more motivated–”
“And better looking,” I interjected.
She ignored me, continuing, “–than the average person, and you have a profitable set of skills.”
I don’t know that I’m more intelligent than most people (like most people, of course, I do assume that), nor do I have preternatural stores of motivation. As for my “profitable set of skills”, my job hunt from 2001 through 2003 didn’t exactly go as planned (to sum up: the hunt didn’t end because I got hired; no, I just got tired of the repeated rejection).
In fact, I think I’ve been lucky in quite a few areas, like being able to take a “learn Delphi” project and leverage it into what has become, for all practical intents and purposes, my “day job”. Like having a supportive wife. Like taking my project to market via the incredible World Wide Web. Not all luck, of course. I’ve put a lot of work into building the product over the years (it turns 10 in June). Still, though, luck has played it’s part (another example: it might’ve been the luckiest thing for me to not have found a job, because that forced me to build my business more than I otherwise might’ve).
My friend has a Masters degree in American history, which she is the first to admit has almost as much financial potential as underwater basketweaving, but I think I might’ve been able to finally convince her that I see her as already living the indie lifestyle. She has a job she enjoys that pays enough to keep her solvent, with even some extra to pay down debt. And in her own time, she’s writing a book presenting a new approach to historical criticism and education. Does she expect to make a lot of money from her book? Not really. But she has aspirations of helping make history relevant again, and has even mapped out a series of articles and books to follow up the first.
In other words, she’s chosen a course for her life and is following it. That’s as fucking indie as you can get, I figure.
She remained unconvinced that the mass of humanity has the will to follow their own dreams. I’m a humanist, though, and generally optimistic about humanity and the human condition.
So…how special do you think you are? Or do you think it’s possible for even the teenager handing you the French fries over the counter, for even the man who empties your trash into the “honeywagon”, for even the woman who stays home with her kids, for even the 60+ hour/week middle manager to follow their dream? Do you think these people have no ambition? Or do you think that maybe they just haven’t realized that they have a choice?
At that time, I looked into the idea of getting a part-time job at local book stores. There were a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to earn some extra cash each month to make ends meet and help fend off starvation–both my own and my family’s. Second, I figured it would expand my social circle (when you work at home you don’t meet a lot of new people). And, finally, I buy enough books that the employee discount provided a real incentive.
Sadly, it was not to be:
* Evidently I should’ve “dumbed down” my application even more. I only scored one interview with a store manager, and he seemed very threatened by me. I probably shouldn’t have shown so much interest in how the store generated revenue and the overall business model of the store. (It’s a hobby/habit.)
* It probably would’ve helped had I been younger. Because the hours and the pay were not geared towards anyone with any kind of serious obligations or responsibilities.
* I doubt I come across as *anyone’s* ideal employee. An artifact of being my own boss too long.
It’s too bad, really. I could still use that employee discount.
More about the pay. After nearly a decade as a professional programmer, and a few years on my own, I was stunned to re-learn how little hourly employees in the USA actually earn. If I was forced to earn my living as a wage slave, I’d be *so* organizing a labor revolution. It’s ridiculous what people put up with. And a travesty how mercilessly corporations exploit their employees.
Fortunately, the whole “make a bit extra income” issue got solved not long after my book store career fizzled out. I still relied on book sales to do it. Sorta. I pitched a book proposal to a publisher, got accepted, and the advance (though hardly *huge*) more than sufficed to replace a 24-hour/week part-time job at bookstore wages–and took only about half as many hours per week.
I guess the moral of this story is: Hourly wages aren’t the only way to earn a bit of extra money. Look past the time clock. Keep your eyes open for opportunities to use your more valuable skills.
Before there were credit cards, debit cards, charge cards, purchase orders, wire transfers, checks, money orders, or even cash money, people traded for what they needed/wanted.
While we’re on the topic, other things I might be willing to swap for:
Photography accessories/supplies
Board games
And, to be complete, here are a couple things I seldom find tempting:
SEO (search engine optimization) offers/tips
A link on a Web page (unless it’s the front page of Google/Yahoo/etc.)
Not every sale has to be some form of cash. Sometimes you can get a substitute that’s useful and/or fun. So long as both sides get something of value to them (and no laws were broken; don’t go crazy), everybody wins.
And keep in mind that you don’t have to sit passively back and wait for people to make offers to you. If there’s something you want, review your assets and see if maybe you can provide something they need. Then ask. You seldom get anything in this life without asking for it.
Indie video game developers looking for new ways of telling interactive stories might find The Forge interesting.
The Forge is a community “dedicated to the promotion, creation, and review of independent role-playing games.” Yup, indie RPG’s, many of them self-published electronically using the Web.
And by all means, check out some of the RPG’s that have been discussed and designed at The Forge. Some of them, like Nicotine Girls by Paul Czege, are amazing examples of what can be done with simple rules and a little imagination.
“If it were only about maximizing profits, I’d probably have to take an approach similar to Big Fish Games, which would involve hiring people and trying to get bigger and bigger. But I don’t want to hire anyone, that would ruin the lifestyle. I want to remain a two person company.
“So my goal is to make the maximum possible revenue/profits that a two person company can make.”
Following in my tradition of simpleplans, I’m enacting the following Simple Plan for 2006:
Get up at 7am each day.
Don’t check my email before 12pm (noon).
I’m confident that by sticking to those two criterion, I’ll achieve most (if not all) of my more traditional goals for the year.
Oddly enough, 7am is an easier time for me to get up than 8am. 9am is too late to get much “morning benefit” out of it. And 10am…well…might as well sleep in til noon at that rate (and believe, I have).
A List of Morning Benefits:
I tend to be more creative.
I tend to be more productive.
And both of those probably relate to having the house to myself (wife & kids usually sleep later than that).
As for checking my email, I’ve noticed over the past few years that I can waste all sorts of time checking and re-checking my email. My productivity during any period of time is inversely proportional to the number of times I check my email. It just makes more sense to check my email, deal with it quickly, and then leave it alone for a while. And the easiest way to do that is to put off the first time I check it each day.
Checking my email too often has proven to be a weird addiction…an addiction fed by the arrival of a payment notification…
So, that’s it: Get up early (well, early-ish) and don’t let email be a distraction.
