End of June
It’s the last day of June and, as promised, I wanted to start letting you in on my current plans for business.

NOTE: If you want the story and insight in to how I came to my business plan, read everything in this post; if you only want the business part, you can skip down to the section “My plans”.

I’ve had a number of great conversations over the past few months with some very encouraging and knowledgeable people. While what I wanted to do was a bit fuzzy when I started, things are becoming much clearer.

Dan Andrews from the Tropical MBA had a great podcast that came out Monday. In it he brought up the point that those of us looking to escape the template life often overlook the very industry that we have the most current experience in. We look for markets and niches in the hopes that we can find money all the while forgetting that we are working in a market that makes enough money for someone to pay us to do our job.

After speaking with him on the phone last week, I took a step back from what I had been working on and did some re-evaluation. I never want to become emotionally attached to a good idea if a great one is presenting itself instead. Because of that, I am willing to put my original idea that I was going to release this month on the back burner in order to pursue something that makes much more sense.

My current experience makes more sense
I’ve mentioned before that my current career pays me quite well. Now, let me tell you WHY it pays me really well.

Excuse me while I talk about myself for a moment. It might sound like I’m coming off as egotistical, but that is not my intention. Unfortunately, if I do not talk openly, you won’t understand the reason behind my decisions. My intent is to be humble; humble means speaking about who you really are, not boasting OR downplaying yourself since neither of those reveals your true self. So…we cool? Ok, let’s go.

I’m in the Business Intelligence industry which basically means that I help companies make sense of their data by transforming it into useful information. I can take a company with disorganized data and centralize it so that they have one standard they use for business decisions. More often than not, just doing that is the full breadth of someone’s career. In fact, depending on how big a company is, this process often involves multiple people.

But that is not the full extent of what I know or do. Having started on the business side and not the technology side, I consciously take a company’s data further by helping them make sense of it and presenting it in such a way that it aids in decision making. This involves a number of different tools all of which the point is to help business make intelligent decisions, hence the name “Business Intelligence”.

One of the significant skills that causes me to stand out from the crowd is my ability to look at things from outside of the normal technology mindset. Instead of just fulfilling requests, I’m known for helping people figure out how to actually make their lives easier. Often, this is a matter of getting to the “why” of a request and not just answering the “how”. In my experience, this ability is not as common as you might hope. My ability to talk like a normal person and not just in ones and zeros (i.e. geek speak) further propels me to the top of my peers.

In a previous job, my ability to get to the “why” and not just the “how” allowed me to create a process that saved my employer over $2 million! Regardless of what industry you are in, that’s a big win. Unfortunately, I never saw a penny of that in either a salary increase or bonus. What I did see from it was the value of looking outside of the box to find expensive problems that needed to be solved. There were many other situations where I saved the company significant chunks of money, time, and resources.

I don’t get paid a lot of money because I just show up for my job; I get paid a lot because having the ability to repeatedly save companies large sums of dollars has established me as an expert.

But I want to leave the template life, right?
It’s true, I don’t want to live out the template life that I continually talk about. Because of that I felt that I had to look somewhere else, in some other industry, market, niche, whatever.

Unfortunately, since we usually identify our current paid skill set with the template, those of us wanting to leave it often toss the baby out with the bath water in search of some sexier market. Probably not the wisest thing to do.

If I’m an expert enough to save companies large chunks of money, why on earth would that not be the first place that I look?

My plans

My plans (from a somewhat mid-level viewpoint) are as follows:

1. Establish a new website

I intend to establish a secondary home on the internet specific to Business Intelligence since its look and feel will be different as I take into account the market I will be reaching.

Regarding this site (Heroic Destiny), it will stay intact just as it is since it’s goal is to chronicle my journey as an entrepreneur. I will continue posting updates regularly, though the frequency will decrease once I begin establishing my new site. Both sites serve a purpose to me and my long term plans so I intend on maintaining both of them.

2. Share a portion of my expertise freely

My current/past employers know my skill level; other companies have no clue I exist. That’s a pretty big gap to fill! The goal of the new website will be to create a centralized location for showcasing expertise in my field. My intent is to take the knowledge and resources I use daily and begin sharing them strategically. There are a number of resources that I have created that just plain make my life easier. Sharing them will help establish my place in the market as an expert.

I intend to build more of a library than just the typical blog. My thought is that a library is viewed as a source of information while we often look at the date of a blog post and discredit its relevance based if we deem it too old. That being said, I will still establish a blog, but I am working on how I will differentiate what goes in it verses the library. (Still ironing out pieces of this.)

3. Reapply what I’ve learned in this market

I love the lifestyle design and information markets. I’ve learned so much from reading until my mind is ready to explode, watching hundreds (it feels like) of product launches, and interacting on social media. Now it’s time to take that knowledge to a different market. Unfortunately, the Business Intelligence crowd does not seem to have many (any?) established experts or gurus who make themselves available through social media. I hope to change that!

For me, this is an exciting part of my plan. I love social media and how it has developed over the past few years. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to become an entrepreneur, I would still be fascinated by all of it. Using it for business is a natural extension of what I love doing. I know it’s not for everyone, but for me it is art.

4. Begin targeting customers based on feedback

I certainly don’t think that people are going to flock to my door (i.e. email address) just because I put this information out there. However, I have a lot of knowledge about who my target audience is. I am deeply intimate with the problems they face on a daily basis. I know them because I am them.

My goal in providing free information is to gain credibility. Once I begin establishing that, I will begin targeting specific customers based on feedback. This is also super exciting to me as I love this part. I know it has its challenges, but finding the customer in this industry is something that I already do now. Makes sense to give them something they can pay me for.

5. Scale and expand

My initial customers will most likely be handled exclusively by me. I intend to market my ability to work remotely as a plus: no location or equipment fees and location independent. The benefit to me starting up while working a “normal” job is that I can do both simultaneously in the beginning. Yes, it will be rough. Yes, it will probably suck. But yes, it is a step towards my dreams.

Once I begin seeing more customers, I will expand. My goal is to become the problem solver for my customers and manage a team of people who execute the solutions. Yes, there are headaches in managing people, but I’ve managed groups as large as 42 people in the past so you might say I have some experience with it.

Either way, there is a lot that can be streamlined and put into a consistent process. By doing the work of the first customers myself, I can establish a method that I train others to follow. This part is obviously the most time consuming and has the most unknowns, so I have the least to offer in the way of details just yet. But think of all the cool material I will have to post on this site as I learn all this “fun” business knowledge. Ha!

Whew!

What’s next?
So, that is my current plan. Honestly, my previous plan that I had intended to reveal was almost identical to this one except that it was in another market. I’m sure I will have some rough edges to smooth out, but I believe the core thoughts behind this plan will work. In fact, based on how well it works, I will probably use versions of it moving forward.

At this point, I am withholding the name of the new site just until I secure a couple of things around the name. I will also probably establish a bit of the library before opening it up. My goal is not to overly perfect it before going live (and thus never actually go live), but I do have some goals before opening it up that I intend to meet.

I have details that fit in to this mid-level view that I will reveal as I begin to implement them. Since I don’t have intention of doing anything sneaky, I don’t feel as if I have anything specific to hide. Rather, I want to make sure that I don’t become emotionally attached to ideas I’ve posted that need to change. Ideally, this would never happen; realistically, I know it could (would).

As I mentioned, this plan will indeed impact my current posting schedule. At this point, I don’t have a set date as to when that will start or how impacted it will need to be. My guess is that I will probably implement the new schedule sometime mid to late July but I have no clue regarding frequency just yet.

The good thing is that I currently have an employer in this industry. That means that everything I do during my work hours could potentially be transformed into content. Lucky me!

And there you have it.

Ok, I’m going to go pass out after writing that one. Thank you if you made it this far!!!!!