Go It Alone

by Judson, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780060731137
• ISBN10: 0060731133
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

There is an epidemic of unhappiness in the American workplace. A full 70 percent of workers in the United States report that they are disengaged from their jobs. When asked, "Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?" only 20 percent of nearly 2 million employees said yes. It is no wonder that 56 percent of all Americans dream of starting their own business. So why don't they do so? Because starting one's own business is seen as difficult, expensive, and risky. In this extraordinary book, successful Go It Alone! entrepreneur Bruce Judson explains that the conventional wisdom about starting your own business is stunningly wrong. Using the leverage of technology -- e-mail, the World Wide Web, and the remarkable array of off-the-shelf business services now available -- it is dramatically easier to start your own business. Magnified by these new services, it is also possible to create, for the first time, a highly focused business. Bruce Judson shows you the practical steps that will allow nearly any individual to create a business, often using job skills that seem to require an entire corporation for support. It is no longer necessary to spend time on the tasks that don't add value. It is now possible to stay small but reap big profits. Go-it-alone businesses allow the individual the freedom to concentrate on their greatest skills. After reading this book, your motto will be "Do What You Do Best, Let Others Do the Rest."

Author Biography

Bruce Judson is a Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management.

Table of Contents

Introduction : conventional wisdom is just plain wrong	p. 1
Overview : the new go-it-alone business	p. 7
Principles for success	p. 17
The great shift in what's possible	p. 43
Do what you do best	p. 88
How to create your business system	p. 105
The myths about start-ups	p. 127
Why you don't want to be a free agent or a franchise	p. 138
Managing extreme outsourcing	p. 144
Lessons from some inventive companies	p. 155
Evaluating your proposed business	p. 165
When to quit your day job	p. 174
The race to liquidity : why venture capital is not for you	p. 183
Mistakes happen - learn from them	p. 187
Suddenly, just me	p. 184
Conclusion : fear is the enemy	p. 199
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Go It Alone!
THE SECRET TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS ON YOUR OWN

Chapter One

Overview: The New Go-It-Alone Business

The Emergence of the Go-It-Alone Entrepreneur

A fundamentally new class of entrepreneur is emerging: the go-it-alone entrepreneur. Businesses run by these entrepreneursare characterized by three defining criteria:

• The business is started with a minimal investment, and thefounder or founders retain full ownership and control of theenterprise.
• The business is run entirely by a small number of people,generally from one to six.
• The founder does not set out to create a small business. Heor she is working from the premise that the business hasunlimited revenue potential.

To the founder or founders, a go-it-alone enterprise is smallonly in the numbers of workers it employs. It's designed to generatesubstantial financial returns and to play a sizable role inthe business world.

The implications of these defining criteria are significant.When a business starts with a minimal investment, the enterprisemust focus on generating cash from the outset. This, inturn, suggests that the business is able to swiftly develop a payingcustomer base. Unlike many start-ups, go-it-alone businessesdon't have a gestation period where dedicated, full-time employees spend months developing plans and products.

Additionally, go-it-alone business is not simply a fancy termfor a free agent or a freelancer. These businesses provide theirfounders with far more stability than freelance work and morepersonal rewards than franchising. These entrepreneurs arebuilding a substantial asset. They have control of their own destiny.In difficult economic times, free agents and freelancers aretypically in the extraordinarily frustrating position of waitingfor the phone to ring. In contrast, go-it-alone entrepreneursalways a have focus for their energies and an asset that will providethem with an income stream.

Moreover, freelancers, free agents, and many small-businessowners typically work on an hourly or daily rate, or they chargeby the job. In all of these cases, they depend entirely on whatthey can produce as individuals, and their earnings are tied tothe clock. They have not established a business system thatallows them to magnify or leverage their skills. As a consequence,their earnings are inherently limited. Go-it-alone businessesdon't suffer from this income constraint.

It's equally important to recognize that go-it-alone businessescan be started by almost anyone working in almost anysector of the economy:

• Go-it-alone businesses are created by all types of people.They are not limited to young people with nothing to lose,masters of the Internet, or sophisticated former corporateexecutives. They include women, former corporate employeesof all kinds, seniors starting newly independent careers,people of all nationalities, stay-at-home parents who arerejoining the workforce, and individuals of all types and allages who are pursuing their passion, realizing greater financialrewards, and achieving far greater control of their lives.


• Go-it-alone enterprises create a wide range of products and services for businesses and consumers, as demonstratedby the examples and case studies in this book.

Successful go-it-alone businesses are not haphazard undertakings.If a go-it-alone business were a house, we would saythat it was built on a well-constructed foundation, using a blueprintthat involves several core engineering ideas. The ideas thatform this foundation are discussed next.

The Idea of Personal Leverage

Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world.
-- Archimedes

Achieving leverage and the amplification of your skills is thekeystone to becoming a successful go-it-alone entrepreneur. ARoman arch cannot exist without its keystone. Similarly, anentrepreneur can turn his or her unique skills into a keystonethat holds together a variety of outsourced services. Thus, asubstantial go-it-alone business depends on the effective applicationof leverage and extreme outsourcing. The impact of one ora few people's talents can now be magnified through the combinationof these two factors to an extent that was inconceivableeven a few short years ago.

One simple example of the kind of leverage that exists todayis generally evident in any Internet-based retailing effort:

• In the past, some of the functions required of any potentialstore proprietor included renting physical space, designingand furnishing the store, staffing the store during all hoursof operations, and attracting walk-in traffic to the storethrough local advertising and other means. All of theseactivities took time, a substantial upfront cash investment, and multiple employees—leading to a substantial start-upcost and substantial operating expenses.


• In contrast, powerful, easy-to-use tools now make it possiblefor anyone with an idea for a store in the online worldto get up and going at almost no cost -- in a matter of hours.The Yahoo! Store, for example, typically charges under $100per month and provides a full e-commerce suite. In the virtualworld, unlike the physical world, stores are generallyleased on a month-to-month basis: No large financial commitmentto a multiyear lease is required.

That is not to suggest that Internet retailing is always agood business or even that it is an easy business. In fact, it canbe an intensely competitive and often difficult business. Thepoint is that in the past, it was not possible for a single personwithout access to capital to even consider participating in thebusiness arena. Until recently, you either had to risk a great dealof money and time -- if you could afford both -- to start your ownretail business or had to remain an employee somewhere. Today,the cost and time involved in becoming your own boss hasdecreased dramatically ...

Go It Alone!
THE SECRET TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS ON YOUR OWN. Copyright © by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Go It Alone!: The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own by Bruce Judson
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.