Business cards

As the details of the launch and operation of my small business started to take shape, it became necessary to get business cards to represent my brand. I wanted to have something in the business card format to distribute to people who wanted to learn more about my business, but I didn't want cards with my name on them because I felt that having both my day job cards and my small business cards would be a hassle. Instead, I had the cards printed with the name of the marketing contractor I hired. I handed them out for the both of us and it worked fine.

I didn't spend any time shopping around for a good price for card printing. Instead, I awarded the job to the shop my employer uses for everything. I figured that my day job cards were acceptable so it made sense for me to stay local and loyal. Unfortunately, I ended up paying around twenty five dollars for one hundred cards. I was pleased with the final product and the turn around time but I later learned that I had paid way too much.

I learned about vistaprint.com when a friend of mine mentioned I could have business cards printed online for free if I allowed the company to print their name somewhere on the card. Google returned vistaprint.com near the top when I searched along these lines. I didn't find a free option but I did get two hundred and fifty cards printed for under four dollars. The local shop charged me fifteen times what vistaprint.com charged on a cost per card basis. I am ordering another five hundred cards for my business so I can throw them around like Monopoly money in the local food and coffee shops (these are the places where my potential customers linger).

The shipment (shown below) arrived within three weeks even though I selected the six week cheap delivery option. You can pick the paper quality and even the cheap stuff I picked looks and feels like a real business card.

More background (part I):

OK, so now that I've run off two posts, I can officially say I am a blogger. In my first post, I gave a brief explanation of what this blog is all about. In my second post, I gave you a sample of what the content will actually look like. Taking advantage of time zones is not a secret weapon, its just clever. Moreover, its a great way for those of us with day jobs to reduce the amount of day tasks we have to deal with related to our side-projects.

Many entrepreneurship publications, blogs, podcasts, and more are available for you to tap into if you are looking to blaze your own trail by launching a business.* The trouble is, these experts give you the pep talk you need to quit your job, reel in your discretionary spending and jump in with both feet. I applaud any entrepreneur who takes these steps. Taking these steps is the hallmark sign of a true adventurer who shouldn't have had a day job in the first place. But what about the rest of us? What if the day job is your source of medical insurance? What if you need the day job to build your resume and track record for a few more years? What if you actually like your day job? In cases like ours, the small business doesn't have to wait, it simply needs to take place as a hobby or side-project (pick your favorite). That's right, you really can jump in using strictly your spare time. I did it and built a profitable business from scratch boosting my yearly income by almost ten percent. In the years to come, I'd like this number to approach one hundred. In fact, this is a great way to learn the ropes, get connected to key contacts, set up your legal elements and mull over your business model in a lower stakes game. That's what this blog is all about. We are a special group within the global community of entrepreneurs, and for us, the architecture is a bit different. We are employed and self-employed. We are building our careers in industry while having our entrepreneurial adventure in parallel. We are the ones who are confident that we can juggle it all.

With that said, our biggest challenge is to avoid fizzling out. We have our normal lives to go back to if our businesses don't work out. We can't let this become an excuse. Structuring the balance between all key components of life is critical to avoid this. For this reason, the best businesses to set up on the side are the ones that run themselves. All businesses require the entrepreneur's time and effort but there does exist innovative and elegant business models which fall into operational rhythms like a well-oiled machine. We'll get into this topic early and often.

Lakeside Eco-Taxi LLC is a new company located in Holland, Michigan. The company was launched in April of 2011 entirely as a side-project. By late spring, the company owned 3 bicycle taxis and leased them to a group of about 15 drivers to serve a pedestrian-heavy market around Hope College and Downtown Holland.

*I like a new podcast by Anthony Lacopo because its unvarnished and in its infant stages right now. As far as I can tell, the audience still has a lot of room to grow and he knows it. I added a link in my "ent. links" gadget (side of my blog page).

When your to-do list dominates your lunch hour, head west...

Frequently, as a part-time entrepreneur and full-time engineer, I find my lunch hour completely eaten up by tasks associated with my small business. The most demanding tasks falling into this short window are the ones requiring me to speak with someone on the phone during that person's regular business hours, like a banker or property manager. Wouldn't it be great to have access to these key contacts around say, dinner time?

This is possible for those of us in the Eastern, Central and Mountain time zones. By setting up your business accounts (bank accounts, insurance, etc.) in time zones that lag behind yours, you can save your calls to those accounts for after your day job. I discovered this trick on accident when I bought my business' insurance policy from a company in Portland, Oregon (even though my business is located in the Eastern time zone). This may not seem like a clever trick as much as an obvious observation but for me, the tendancy was to seek business services from the locals nearby.

Watch out for differences in state laws related to banking, insurance and taxes. The California office is less likely to know that your eastern state requires an extra piece of paperwork here and there. You have to find the right match to make it work for you, but its worth checking out firms to the west when shopping for services, just in case.

My Oregon-based insurance agent and I only speak during my evening hours (her afternoon) and its one less thing on my lunch hour to-do list.

Welcome to fun-trep

It's been on my to-do list for months to start writing. My new blog, Fun-trepreneurship will serve as a vehicle for documenting my note-worthy experiences gained while founding my small business and running things in my spare time.

Fun-trepreneurship is intended to be a guide for others who wish to dabble in small business ownership as a hobby. I'll be sharing things I could have only learned by stepping through the transient start-up process while working full-time in an unrelated field. This blog is for anyone interested enough to read and tailored specifically for those looking to moonlight by starting a small business for fun.

My tips, tricks and insight are unvarnished and don't necessarily align with academic business concepts. This is because as an engineer, I possess no formal business training. To balance things out, guest bloggers will appear from time to time with more seasoned or lingo-consistent insight.

If you've ever had a business idea that kept you up at night with excitement, convinced you had your mind wrapped around a concept that would absolutely work, you and I have something in common. If the time has come for your idea to take off, go for it! If you plan to limit your efforts to your spare time, stay tuned and I'll try to relay what I've learned as I learn it.