MacStartup

As an entrepreneur I talk with many that are in the same endeavor as I am: How to make a living at what I love to do?

And therein lies the issue that nearly all people with talent or an idea have difficulty with: Knowing the difference between the craft of your business from business of your craft.

Craft of your business. This is the genesis of your business, whether it is being a lawyer, doctor, writer, graphic artist, baker, chef, cook, programmer, TV personality, farmer, sculptor, painter, radio interviewer, any of other jobs that you can think of, or lastly, any of the Dirty Jobs that Mike Rowe has listed that people do that most of us never would have thought about. It is your talents and these skills that others are willing to pay you for and what the market will bear whether you make any money, make a living, or make millions.

What do I mean by what the market will bear? Well, once the car was introduced how many blacksmiths were needed to take care of all of the horse shoes that were needed? Or how about the buggy whips? Those people with those skills that helped the horse transportation industry changed into things related to the automobile industry, and so did the skills. Changes in the market means that your skills might no longer be needed. A good business owner keeps an eye on these changes and adjusts accordingly to where the market is going. Those that don’t watch the market, i.e. those that only see what they do as a job, will lose out. There are still blacksmiths and buggy whip makers, but not like there were a hundred or more years ago. New technologies have created new jobs and old ones are left behind.

Business of your craft. This part is where you have to figure out how to make more than just a living at what your craft is. It’s about making a profit from your sales, not just making sales. It’s about pricing, taxes, time, money, marketing, sales, effort, customers, accounting, customer service, vendors, contracts, government bureaucrats, suppliers, and a host of other issues that most people do not want to handle, they’d rather be doing what they love to do: Their craft. But, it’s something we all have to do. But there is help.

1. Study business concepts. You need to learn about these issues, and you do not have to be an expert at them either. Be forewarned: you NEED to understand these things, even at the concept level, because it is the basics of what is going on with your business.

2. Hire someone to do what you don’t love to do. Outsource these issues to others that LOVE to do what you don’t, like an bookkeeper or an accountant. This frees up your time and let’s others who love to do what you don’t a chance to get paid for what they love to do. But refer back to #1 above, you don’t want to be taken by embezzlers who “cook the books” for you and take your hard earned money.

That is why I wrote my book How to Start a Business: Mac Version to help those that love their craft to get the most out of the Mac with the business of their craft. That’s my craft.

So, love your craft, but learn how to make more than what a starving artist makes by learning about the business of your craft.

I leave you with a quote about how to view businesses:

‎”Some see private enterprise (business) as a predatory target to be shot; others as a cow to be milked; but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the plow.” — Thomas Jefferson

Here’s the list of the best blogs for young entrepreneurs, 50 Best Blogs for Young Entrepreneurs.

Do you have any other blogs you like?

Too often the pressure to give a great name to a product can be a daunting prospect, but here are some names of product and how they got them.

In the article The hidden (and not-so-hidden) meanings of 12 brands’ favorite numbers read how product names may not be as crucial as it’s made up to be.

As an entrepreneur using a Mac I, like anyone else, tries to control costs of my business. One of the factors in my business is the cost of my Mac. Most PC users point out that they can get cheaper PCs than Macs and therefore Macs are more expensive. While there is some truth to that matter, let’s find out where the costs lie in their argument.

There is a term called Total Cost of Ownership that tries to quantify the total cost of owning and running something, whether it be a car, truck, SUV, or even a computer. So what goes into owning a computer for a business? From strictly the computer perspective there are four areas that part of using a computer:

1. Cost of hardware – The computer itself, peripherals, cables, etc.
2. Cost of software – Licensing.
3. Cost of installation and configuration – How long does it take to install and configure your computer to where you are being productive.
4. Cost of training, use, and maintenance for three to five years of use – Here is where most people get lost in quantifying their costs because they don’t measure this affect on a user or users.

In my book, “How to Start a Business: Mac Version” I go into more detail in Chapter 2 about these above issues and show additional ones that most businesses need to know and understand that affect the costs of using a computer as a business owner: The Total Cost of Ownership.

To be accurate, the PC users do win the argument “out of the gate” that they are cheaper than a Mac. I grant that to them. But, and this is a big but, what else are PC users not telling you?

So how does a PC stand up to a Mac in Total Cost of Ownership? First, read my friend Mitch Rushing’s OpenSurge blog post “In Mac vs PC cost comparison – Downtime Statistics Key” about how these numbers figure out for Windows vs Windows and then Windows vs Mac.

I’ll let you read the results, but Macs win!

What are your thoughts?

As an entrepreneur and Mac user I regularly get asked questions, but it was not until I took at look at a handout list of questions that I began to think about the questions themselves. So here is a list of quote about questions that just might get you to thinking.

• A timid question will always receive a confident answer. Lord Darling
• To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. Albert Einstein
• Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Voltaire
• You see things; and you say, “Why”; But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” Karl Bismarck
• It is not every question that deserves an answer. Syrus (Publilius Syrus)
• Every clarification breeds new questions. Arthur Bloch
  
• A prudent question is one-half of wisdom. Francis Bacon
  
• The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. Anthony Jay
  
• You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. Naquib  Mahfouz
  
• Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing. Engineer’s Motto
  
• Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. Anthony Robbins
  
• No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. Charles Steinmetz
  
• To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask? Jim Rohn
  
• Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new. Og Mandino

The event that I attended speaker had arranged the questions on the handout so that the answer of each one built onto the next one. Much like building a house, you start with the foundation. And each subsequent question was essential to getting stuff done.

If you don’t ask, you won’t get an answer.

What are your questions?

As an entrepreneur using his Mac I can find many ways of learning new ideas. In the story about the Goose that laid the Golden Egg I find that I can apply it toward business.

As the story goes, the goose that lays the golden egg the owners get too greedy and decide to kill it to get at the gold, like right now. Problem is, they killed the opportunity for the goose to keep producing the golden eggs, and therefore their future chance of every getting any more gold.

The greed of those that want to get at the gold before “it’s time” and kill the goose is the moral of the story, but here are two other sides to the story.

First, but what about the owners that are so enamored with the golden egg they don’t see the source of the golden egg? The goose! They go spend the money from the egg on their immediate needs and wants and actually forget about the goose. Have you ever seen someone act like this? Impulsive with the gold. These are gold-getters.

Last, and the best solution, what about another goose owner that does NOT kill the goose, but keeps earning a living from the goose as it lays the eggs? These owners reap at the level of production that goose can produce. They feed it and take care of it and allow the goose to produce at it’s pace. No more, no less than the goose can. Smart business owners here. These are gold reapers.

I recently had someone ask me for a FREE copy of my book How to Start a Business: Mac Version so they could start a business with their Mac. I ask them that if they could find three people that will buy my book I’d give them a copy of my book as a commission for their work. They balked at this!

As I have seen in the past, if I had given them a free copy some would walk off with nary a “Thank You” or a positive response of any sort to someone’s generosity. You can see this in the “entitlement” or “I want something for nothing” crowd. They’d take the golden egg and vamoose. They’d forget about the goose that lays the golden egg completely.

You see this when you help others and don’t receive anything “in kind” back. Not that I’m expecting it, but it says a lot about the type of business people they are. Just watch for those that are gold-getters, they may not be the best ones to hang around with.

These are not business people, they’re freeloaders.

How do you see this story playing out in your world?

As an entrepreneur you’re always looking out to solve problems, but where do we get this skill? Is creativity learned? Is it innate? How are our next generations going to solve some of our future problems?

There’s a new trend in the US school system that started in the 1990s: killing creativity. This Newsweek article “The Creativity Crisis” outlines where the US is diverging from the rest of the world in instilling kids with creativity.