FunAdvice on Entrepreneurship: Jeremy Goodrich

Darren Rowse closed his interview saying, “Baby steps first.”

It was interesting to learn that the famous Mr. ProBlogger started as a humble amateur geek. Of course, we all start from zero, but when we see someone successful, we often forget that. His advice was quite common sense, but I think that is the whole point. Don’t wait for the big secret to reveal itself to you. Get started, even on a small scale. (Photo by leefotos)

This week, there was a comment that I had to delete because it was rude not just to me but to one of the interview guests of the series. It claimed that I better interview “real entrepreneurs” Not sure what she means – I have not interviewed Bill Gates yet, but my guests are those who have built profitable businesses that resonate with who they are. (It is an honor system – I ask, and I trust the interviewees’ response.)

So we continue this Interview With Successful Entrepreneurs series to hear from a young man who has started a bunch of online businesses – some successful and some not. Jeremy Goodrich runs FunAdvice, a popular online Q&A community, and SEO consultation company Asenyo.

1. Tell us a bit about your business and why you started it.

Asenyo.com is a boutique SEO consulting company I co-founded with my wife & business parter of the last eight years. I say eight because it’s been that long since we started our first business in college together and over the years, we’ve sold two of them.

Today, we are profitable and successful in our SEO consulting business, last year, clients of ours were acquired for more than $500 million, which was truly exceptional. In our spare time, we’re nurturing FunAdvice.com, which we’re going to transition to eventually to further reduce our working hours & focus more on living life, rather than working, even if it’s working for ourselves.

The main reason I started FunAdvice was I wanted a community site. Back in 2003, my business partner, Ericson Smith & I, had been working together for a few years, however, we’d never tried a community based site. So given our mutual experience having fun on community sites like WebmasterWorld and Slashdot.org, we put one together.

FunAdvice initially focused on relationship advice – the first five categories were love, sex, marriage, relationships, and dating. We thought that, as relationships are an issue that we all have to deal with in our lives, it made sense to us to focus in on that narrow field. Eventually, we realized our mistake, as people want to be able to ask questions in various aspects of their lives at the one site they frequent. So we now have wide range of categories.

2. What were the three biggest challenges when you were starting off as a new entrepreneur?

The biggest one for me personally was developing the confidence in my skills to push hard enough to bring the business together. In the first few businesses I helped start after an initial success, I’d get shy about looking for new business, which is key to growth. And as a result of my shyness, I didn’t network enough nor ask colleagues enough for assistance on how I should put things together, which would have helped a great deal. For example, my first consulting company imploded in 2001 less than three months after I started it, directly as a result of not constantly being on the lookout for new sales, and being shy about getting referrals.

Second to that, I’d say experience. Some people seem to have a knack for doing it right the first time, and for me, every business I’ve started has taught me unique things. In many ways, starting different businesses to solve different problems has helped me hone and refine an approach to growing an idea into a business which is difficult for a lot of people I talk to that haven’t made the leap to striking out on their own.

Time management has also been an issue for me, while it’s gotten better over the years, I never believe I’m using my time online, at work or doing business as efficiently and as effectively as possible. For example, when I first started out full time on my latest business, I was working sixty plus hours a week, as was my wife & business partner, Widhadh. However, now between us our schedule has shrunk to forty hours a week, each, which is much more tolerable. It’s not that we’re getting less done, it’s that we’re making better use of the time we spend on business tasks. In the next year, I hope to get done what I do now in thirty hours a week.

3. And how did you work through these challenges?

My own personal self confidence improved through a lot of speaking, networking and continued outreach. At my last full time job in 2005, I setup as part of my job several speaking engagements for other staff members to attend. Developing and hosting a talk on my area of expertise wasn’t a requirement for my position, however, it helped a lot with building my confidence to help reach out to people. Since then as a consultant in my company, I’ve been consistently training client staff, holding training sessions and doing more to manage my contacts through email and phone calls. Your network is your biggest asset and anything you can do to increase that network adds to your bottom line as an entrepreneur.

In terms of experience, starting eight different internet businesses has taught me a lot. The form filing of setting up the company through to employee, contractor and IP related issues, nothing helps to get you a well rounded education like walking through the various processes yourself. While I don’t consider myself an expert in building a business, I am confident that I know bits and pieces of most of the common business processes by way of doing. The second thing I’ve done is read a lot. First I read tons of classic marketing books, PR books, presentation books and now I read more management, leadership and varied theme business books to broaden my knowledge base. Even if the case studies in most works aren’t internet companies, there is still a lot to learn that can be directly applied to your online venture.

To get better at time management, I’ve started to segment out my work day into different buckets, generally started to “take the evening off” as in, work till 5 and not return to the computer, and switched to a Mac portable, as well as bought an iPhone. It’s the first PDA I’ve really gotten mileage out of, and the Mac just seems to work better, faster, than my two year old XP machine. Scheduling meetings and “work” on a calendar is also very helpful. By allotting time in advance to various tasks, I can see how my week is going very clearly, and it forces me to schedule things further out, rather than add “just one” extra meeting to an already full work week.

4. What is the best part of being an entrepreneur for you?

The best part of being an entrepreneur for me is knowing the work you do is fulfilling a dream you had and seeing the changes in people’s lives. Making money is nice but I think that creating a business has inherent obligations such as community development, social activism and generally making a positive impact on society as a whole. Too often, I think businesses are excited about making a profit with little or not thought to their social obligations such as leaving the world a better place than that which they found. To me, it’s the chance to both succeed in financial terms and social terms which embodies the entrepreneurial spirit.

5. Any advice for people who dream to have their own business and yet find it hard to make the leap?

If you can, start small and do it part time while you still have a day job. Yes, I know, it’s hard and time consuming to do it that way, however if it’s an exciting opportunity to you then it should be possible to find the time to get things started. Even if you only work on it three to five hours a week, you can get things rolling enough before you take the full time plunge to make sure that the idea is solid, you know what you’re going to do in the market, you know where to start, and you have a three to six month plan.

I’m personally not a fan of formal business plans or mission statements, however it is useful to know what you’re going to spend your time on daily before you take the plunge. That way if you do get things up and running, you’re not scared of the unknown and it is a routine from day one.

Also have in mind goals, milestones and a basic cash flow plan, so you know what targets you have to hit in sales to stay in business, which is ultimately how you have the runway to hit the product or service milestones that you make.

My takeaway

I think once you start your own business, you get in the flow of things, and starting the next is not that much of a wonder. Yet starting eight businesses is amazing, and I admire his courage and energy.

It’s a lot to compete against big bro sites like Yahoo Answers. I checked FunAdvice, and seems like he carved out a niche and a nice friendly atmosphere that are attractive to many.

My best wishes to Jeremy. (Considering his age, I can’t help wondering how many more businesses he will be starting in this life . . .)

Gratitude And Stepping Out Of My Comfort Zone, Online Gratitude Journal #12

Are you rejecting happiness to stay in your comfort zone?

It’s a strange concept when you first hear it. What idiots want to reject happiness? Are you kidding? You want as much happiness, as much abundance, as much love, as ever possible, right? (Photo by Mr. Greenjeans)

That last phrase is the key: “as ever possible” Who decides how much is possible? YOU, yourself, because you create your own life. If you think only such and such amount of happiness is possible for you, then you are unconsciously rejecting the rest of it. And this keeps you comfortably where you are.

How I freaked out with the massive flow of happiness and abundance

Strange thing happened to me this Tuesday. As you know, I have a business called Akashic Record Reading (if you didn’t know, please check it out before I raise the rate). It’s a new business, and it’s starting to get some attention. Like Hunter Nuttall did a two part interview with me this week. Now, on Tuesday, first workday of the week in the US after the Labor Day, I received enough orders to fill my schedule for the next 10 days. And they don’t seem to be related to Hunter’s interview. I received some more orders since that are related to the interview, but the ones that came on Tuesday seemed to just came my way out of the blue, through Google.

You know how I felt?

1^st order: Wow, I have an order today. Nice!

2^nd order: Another order. My lucky day!

3^rd order: This is so cool! I must be in the flow!!

(skipping the middle part)

2^nd last order: . . . (I freaked out. I was panting to write email confirmations. So I decided to take a break and went out.)

(Upon coming home and checking my PC) Another order!!

It was scary. Really. It takes a lot to receive the massive gift from the Universe. I knew about the concept I explained in the beginning, so I knew I need to stay open to welcome even more energy flow rather than closing down and going back to my cozy little low level, but really, for a few moments, it felt it would have been easier to go back.

Similar issue happens when I receive compliments. One compliment makes me happy. Two, nice. Three, um . . . Four, I’d feel like I want to run away and hide under the blanket. It feels tooooo good to be true. It’s takes guts to take that seems tooooo good to be true.

Gratitude! Gratitude let me overcome these discomfort. Thank you.

(Now you know how you can train me in this “Stepping out of my comfort zone”? Shower little Akemi with praises in the comments . . .)

New posting schedule and tagline

This Gratitude Friday series will be a bi-weekly feature going forward. Not that I don’t have enough gratitude, but because there is a growing backlog of other articles I want to write. In addition to the growing backlog of my real job orders. So please pardon me.

Also, I’m testing new tagline. One of the things Men with Pens pointed out in their Drive-by critique was “Yes to Me? What, yes to me or yes to you, Akemi?” It is ambiguous, but at the same time, some readers say it intrigues curiosity. So the tagline needs to define the scope of this blog and settle this ambiguity.

So far, I came up with these ideas:

Yes to Me – Self Actualization in Entrepreneurship & Life

Yes to Me – Inside Out Approach to Entrepreneurial Life

What do yo think? I know my readers are very intelligent, so pitch in your idea! Thank you.

My Law of Attraction Dream Money Project, Week 11, $102,400

Aaaaagh, it’s now six digit! Again, this much of abundance makes me . . . makes me . . . not uncomfortable ^_^ I’m past my fear that lots of money might make me unapproachable, might attract bad people, and all other might’s . . . working . . .

I’m learning to open up to the flow and this is a cause for celebration! And it seems the more I celebrate, the more goodies come my way, so let’s make a big bash and share the goodies with lots of people.

I want to hold a lunch reception at my local art museum. And I will make it a free day at the museum for all. I always thought art is for everyone. If you can afford to buy the painting you like, that is great. But even if you are not, you can go to the museum and enjoy the best. Portland Museum is very nice, but it charges a pretty good fee to enter, the kind of money some people might hesitate to spend casually. So for this day, it’s on me. Come and enjoy.

I don’t know the financial details of that museum, but I guess $102,400 is plenty to do this. If there are changes, let’s upgrade the foods for reception. How about all organic, locally-grown feast?

Blessings to you all, enjoy the weekend!

A Year Without Paychecks

I realize the paycheck mentality runs deep in us.

The temperature is dropping quickly and it’s suddenly fall in Oregon. It’s been almost a year since I quit my corporate job. When I did so, I thought I was free of the paycheck mentality. I was never the kind of worker who would spend hours in overtime, forgetting my own life and merging into the corporate system. Moreover, I had no problem asking for the best rate for the kind of work I did, so I thought I had good self-esteem and independence. (Photo by Michael Dawes)

Boy, what little did I know. I now realize that was exactly the sign of the paycheck mentality. And I find myself shyly coming out of that conditioned mentality finally.

Three signs of hidden paycheck mentality

Paycheck mentality is usually defined as the tendency to seek security and stability over freedom. It is also about dependency.

That is the basic idea, but here are three more critical signs that you are brainwashed in the corporate world, whether you currently work in there or not:

1. You think money for your work in terms of time spent doing the work.
2. You let others decide your value.
3. You compare yourself to others, real or imaginary.

Let me explain into details.

You think money for your work in terms of time spent doing the work.

Most corporate workers are paid by a certain rate, whether it is described as hourly or annual. From factory line workers to their president. You may think the president is different, but if he or she is not the owner, the situation is pretty much the same. It’s just their wage is set by the year and maybe comes with potential bonus.

But a business makes money by delivering value. There are a lot of factors involved, but fundamentally, the more value a business delivers to more people, the more money it makes. So why are the workers in that business are paid by the hour rather than the value they create and deliver?

For efficient handling of paychecks and stability of workforce, I guess.

The problem is, when I left the corporate world, I carried over this corporate paycheck mentality. I was thinking “Well, I made $XXX per hour before, so my first target is to make as much money as I did before.” When I was taking professional coach training course, I also checked other coaches’ rate and figured out what I may be able to claim as a new coach.

Total BS. As a business owner, I need to charge my service based on the value it delivers, not how much time I spend on it. For example, a good coach who can change the life of the client can claim humongous amount (like this guy). On the other hand, if the coaching is really not much more than a friendly chit-chat, that is close to free, and nobody would care about that coach’s livelihood.

I’m currently reviewing my rate for my Akashic Record Reading. There are some business considerations, but I think I’ve got the basic attitude right, finally.

You let others decide your value.

Closely related to point #1, look what I did before to determine the rate of my service. I checked others’ rate. When I was an employee, I did the same, and again, I thought I was doing great because I was not afraid of asking for the top rate.

But no matter how assertive I was, I was NOT the person who determined my rate. My boss had the final say, and I had to either take it or leave it.

I was so used to this “I’m a brilliant assertive employee who can ask for the top rate.” mentality that I didn’t notice what a dis-empowering approach it was. After all, everyone in the company was letting someone else to determine their value, either meekly or assertively – including my boss, the president.

Now that I’m the owner of my business, however, I need to determine my own value. Honestly, it still feels scary to me.

You compare yourself to others, real or imaginary.

This is the flip side of point #2. Because the paycheck is set in the pay system, I always compared myself to others to determine how I was doing as employee. When the company was purchased by another, I compared myself with my counterpart in the new company. Sometimes I compared myself with the imaginary figure described in magazines or movies.

Not that the comparison started in the corporate world. It started long before I entered the corporate world, in the school system, which is just a system to make more employees.

And when I compared myself to others, I NEVER felt good about myself. I was a straight A student – well, actually, better than that, I broke many academic records of my high school, and when I attended the college in US, I graduated with honor – but there was always someone ahead of me. Like that math genius you see in Little Man Tate. And I knew my #1 rank in test scores was something so fragile, unreliable stuff. I wasn’t even doing what I liked doing.

Enough. I don’t want to bring the same comparison-based (fake) self-esteem to my business. Focus on delivering value to my clients. If I can deliver value and make my clients happy, I’m good in my business.

The entrepreneur mentality is about realizing the power within yourself.

This is the best part of being an entrepreneur. It is empowering and liberating. But it took me a whole year to just realize how badly I was conditioned in paycheck mentality.

I recently read a great post written by home-based business marketing expert Naomi Dunford. Well, actually, it was the email she quoted in the post that I felt strongly. It’s an email written by personal development blogger Hunter Nuttall with the subject line of “How to Work from Home When You Have No Fucking Talent”. Here is the excerpt:

“. . . People who are fabulous copywriters can be you or Brian Clark or James Chartrand . . . (more name dropping about “talented” entrepreneurs.) The company I work at is likely to shut down in early October, which is actually great timing because that’s about the point when my tolerance for a corporate environment will be exhausted. I’m looking at what options might be available . . .”

While we all wait for Naomi’s new eBook that addresses this issue, here is my 2c: That is paycheck mentality, Hunter. Wake up. Stop comparing yourself to those big names, see what you can do to create and deliver value, and start doing it. It took me a year, but you are better prepared than I was a year ago (I basically just walked off and moved myself across the continent).

People who has done it knows. Here is Harry’s comment to that post.

“This is so surreal. I’m reading Hunter’s email and thinking, “But I’m a regular Joe, too.” The thing is, we all start at ground zero. I was scared shitless two years ago when I lost my cushy, high-paying, regular 9-5 job. It’s difficult to let go of that security blanket the weekly paycheck provides. James and I had talent, yes. We also had an idea. But that didn’t make it any easier.”

Best wishes to all who are starting to believe in your hidden talents and willing to take action.

Special Thanks

Coincidentally Hunter just published a great interview – of me as Akashic record reader. Please check it out.

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