I was reminiscing yesterday about the past. Well, I guess that makes sense since it’s hard to reminisce about the present or future.
Anyway, my mind drifted back to August 1993. I was working in the best corporate job I ever had. I was doing PR for Egghead Software. It was the only place I ever worked where everybody seemed to love being there. There were no bitchers or whiners – a rarity to be sure. And I was working some really great people, including my cohorts in crime, Heidi, Tamese and Megan.
I still remember the day it all ended. I was in my office across from the conference room in the executive wing. I saw Meagan go in, followed by Tamese. They came out in tears. I’d seen it all before at the bank I had worked at – I had been the one that had to create the separation packets there when heads were about to roll.
My turn. I walked in and sat down. There in the room was the VP of Human Resources, Jim Ritch and the new CEO, our fourth in a year. The CEO started to talk. Something about making hard choices, then blah, blah, blah.
As he spoke, I thought back to last Christmas season. I had somehow talked the powers to be to let me write a play for the annual Christmas party. It was a take off of “A Christmas Carol.” Ironically, the role of Ghost of Egghead Future – you know, the scary skeletor-guy with the big sickle in his hand – was played by none other than HR Director Jim.
I stopped the CEO short. I said, “Getting laid off, right?” He and Jim fumbled over what to do next, so I took the pressure off. “Cool, what’s the buyout?” They explained the separation package and off I went to clean out my desk.
A representative from HR came in. She was to escort me from the building and take my keycard. No biggy. I chatted with her as a packed. I packed some of my stuff, packed some of their stuff. Four boxes full, plus the large stuffed sheep I kept as a reminder that most people are indeed sheep, not sheep herders.
And off I went. I called a girl I knew who was doing a location scout for a commercial. I told her I’d love to come along. We spent the day driving through the Kitsap Peninsula, looking for locations. On one road, she suddenty pulled over and gave me a big kiss. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”
A few weeks later, my now girlfriend disappeared briefly. This was before the days of cellphones, but I finally tracked her down at her new apartment. She was sitting on the floor of her living room, well into the seventh or eighth beer. A ripped open case of Budweiser sat next to her. “I got laid offffff,” she slurred. It turns out Egghead Software was their biggest client so when the cuts came, her company got the ax and so did she.
It was then that it all began. I told her that we should just start a new company. Why answer to these bozos when we could do our own thing and be in total control of our futures.
She was in. We decided to celebrate our unemployment with a trip to Leavenworth, a small mountain town that looked like it was right out a page of a travel magazine on the Swiss Alps. After enjoying the town, we headed back to the Icicle Inn bed and breakfast.
Over a bottle of wine in front of the fire, we tossed names back and forth. Finally, it hit us: CommuniCreations. Communications with a Creative bent. We were in business.
It was right out of one of those old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movies where they decide to put on a show. We didn’t know a thing about starting a business. By now we had moved in together and with a soon to be maxed out credit card, we bought a Mac computer and a LaserWriter, which back then cost $1099 alone. We were in business.
We only had one problem. We had no clients. And we didn’t have any idea how to get them. We didn’t have the Internet back then.
Fortunately, she had begun to pick up some production work, serving as a production assistant and producer for some commercials. I ended up doing some writing and event planning work for Associated Grocers, a company that had previously fired me.
To make a long story short, we made a go of it. We didn’t know any better, and yet we made the best of it. Eventually, we grew to have four full time employees. We even moved into a nice office in downtown Port Orchard. We were pillars of the community – really big fish in a small, small pond.
Now, almost 17 years later, CommuniCreations is located on the 8th floor of a condo on North Hutchinson Island. It has a lovely view of the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River Lagoon. Thanks to the Internet, I work with clients all over the world and when people ask me what I do for a living, I reply: “I sit in my house, make stuff up and clients send me checks.”
Of course, it’s a little more involved than that, but explaining that I do copywriting, web and graphic design and marketing consulting usually causes people’s eyes to gloss over.
If I had to do it all over again, I would have done so many things differently. I made every mistake a person could make starting a business. I could fill several books with all the bad decisions born from my often blissful ignorance.
There are just so many reasons why CommuniCreations shouldn’t be here today. But yet, here it is. While so many others have fallen by the wayside, we (and that’s really me) sallies forth. I am proof that you can take an idea for a business and make it work.
Which is why I wonder why more people, especially those who have been unemployed for two years or more, haven’t at least attempted the same thing. Certainly, starting a business these days is much easier than it was back in 1993. The Internet allows you to set up a storefront today and start finding customers tomorrow. You can set up virtual stores that feature items made in China – the Chinese even handle all the warehousing and shipping, you do nothing but run the front side. Then there are places like Elance and Guru where people post jobs for projects ranging from legal help and accounting to engineering and design.
And yet, people I’ve come across wait and wait and wait for their job in construction or whatever to return. Why?
Then it occurs to me. There’s a secret to starting your own business. You have to have passion.
I only realized this over the weekend as I talked to the Pickle Pirate. He makes fresh pickles. It’s a small business with dreams of becoming a big business. The Pickle Pirate is passionate about pickles. He lives and breathes them. His eyes light up when he talks about his plans for the future. His energy and enthusiasm is absolutely contagious. He can visualize his future, he can touch it and taste it. Even though it doesn’t exist in the physical world, it does in his mind. And he won’t stop until he makes it real.
And that’s what I think is the secret of starting a business. A lot of people think they could start this or that business, but they lack the passion to see it through. They aren’t willing to make the sacrifices required, take the risks necessary and most important, don’t have the courage (or stupidity) to pick themselves up over and over again when they hit the inevitable roadblocks and brick walls.
I often share the observation that a friend once shared once shared with me. He said, “There are two types of people in the world. There are settlers. And then there are gamblers and whores. The settlers are just happy to be settlers. They trudge off to work each day, perfectly content. They settle. Then there are the whores and gamblers who take risks – they live by the roll of the dice and their wits. They are the ones who start businesses.”
I am indeed a gambler and an occasional whore. I still have that passion for what I do, even after all these years. I was never meant to be a settler, I guess. And that’s just fine with me.
Going back to rolling the dice on the Treasure Coast,
– Robb