Adventures in Starting a Business

I admit, I made a mistake.  I thought it was a vision board, not a mood board at first.  On some levels being a mood board and not a business plan may actually show more window dressing and even less planning and thought for the business.

The photo(s) of the board drew a lot of criticism of too forced looking to be real and similar.  And that is true.  It is, I suspect, that influencer look influencing how the just so perfectly curated look that influencers spend a lot of time and effort - to look effortlessly.  Most small business offices I have been in never looked curated.  Messy was more like it.  I have worked in offices with positive, uplifting posters (which no one really talked about - they filled blank wall space).

But in the real world of business, there is nothing technically wrong with nice positive affirmations.  We can all use some positive pep talk.  But it isn't a business plan.    

Yeah, making positive statements or a vision board of what you want the people, the business to be is good, like having a defining one sentence be your core statement.  But it takes a lot more to pull a business from idea to reality.

And this seems to always be an underlying driver of problems for them.

Like the jam.  It is setting up the lines of supplies: the berries/sugar/other ingredients, the jars, the people/place where they make the jam, all the various health certifications, the label maker, the box for shipping it to store it, the warehouse to store boxes and people to get it into a box to take it to the post office to ship it where ever - a store front or home.  All this before getting into who/where do I advertise? 

The economics of how to do this.  What will this cost me to start up?  How does my product compare with the existing products I will be competing against?  How long will it be before I realistically can break even? What will it take to break even?  And only then I can begin to think about profitability.  

Before that, there were the issues with the trademark.  

Trademarks and patents can be expensive to get through the system.  You technically can do this on your own but the process may be smoother and faster if you use one of the lawyers who specialize in this niche.  They can help you think out how to avoid an expensive problem down the road.

When you apply for something, you need to review the prior approved applications to insure yours is different enough not to create a conflict which will stop your application in the tracks.  So if there is something already out there which is similar, you need to specify in the application of how yours is different because yours has this, that and is made of Y instead of something already approved or that yours is not just a mirror reversed image as the difference.  This is expensive to pay the lawyer to do, so a lot of people may do this on their own to pre-clear potential problems.  Trust me that it can be a little mind numbing to read.  Everybody has an idea and you have to think about all the different ways your product could be described so you can look for that as already existing.

When you apply, you want to list not just the initial shape (say a square box) but that it also is a ball, pyramid and some other shape options.  You don't someone to swoop down to make your product in a rectangle box and not be sue-able over it.  So it is starting small with only a square box but forward thinking on how to grow it in parallel lines as well as keeping others out of the market.

To a certain degree, this is why the application sort of had this tossing the kitchen sink look with so many diverse potential options to go in.

The other problem with the name is that the other company even sold the kinds of high end foods including jam and had been doing so for decades.  They weren't some mom and pop place with just a DBA.

And now here it is again with the new name and now the new logo.  I can maybe see making a mistake on this level once but doing it again?  and right after you did it the first time?    

There have been various business associations long before any of this.  They were stepping in to existing work so not like they saw the idea to where we are today.  Think about Clevr Blends.  Before that was Ethic.  Did not have to deal with the whole real start up questions, legal quandaries.

And moving on to work with a company who offered more of a turn key operation like Spotify - now Lemonada or the various Netflix shows.  They offer the experience, operations, workers, set up, formula and you drop your product in and out it comes.  Still not start to finish but more guidance on how to keep things rolling forward.  

Archewell has had a few wobbles. 

Talking about business start ups, we haven't heard anything about the Doria venture in a long time.   

And the latest is that they cannot sell clothing as there is a company out there which is too similar according to the Mail on Sunday/Daily Mail.  Is it coincidence that they have a parallel article about two owners who have a very similar name in San Francisco?  They do even have some similar products.  They get each other's shipments, shoppers.  It's really hard enough to be a small business but this makes things worse.  And exactly why you work hard at trying to avoid a similar fate.

Businesses need lots of hands on, constant attention to details.  This starts from day one until you or the business dies/gets sold.  A lot of early businesses don't last because there are so many different skills needed that just one person is unlikely to have all of them.  So, if it isn't in you, you have to hire people who can do this detail work but then you have to sorta let them do what they do well.  You have to listen to their advise.  After all, you are paying them for their knowledge and experience which you don't have. 

Where or how this will end up, I have no idea.  But it is interesting to watch people spending money reinventing the wheel.