“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” — Theodore Roosevelt Learn the hard things. Do the hard things. Why? Because many people do not want to. The harder things are to do, the
November 13th, 2015
Startup Lessons Learned- The Lean Approach
Startup Lessons Learned- The Lean Approach My workplace (not my startup) has been pushing a “lean” environment for five years, so I am not new the “lean” principle. I was just beginning to think about LivestockCity when Eric Ries wrote his book about Lean Startups. Truthfully, I am not sure I was a fan of the lean concept back then for a variety of reasons, so I had no interest
November 2nd, 2015
The Nontraditional Startup Entrepreneur – Part II
In Part I, I discussed my searching of what to do in life as it pertains to a career and discovering that I am happiest when pursuing entrepreneurial projects much more that a steady high paying but mundane career. The problem with that is my discovery happened later in life after marriage and children and “settling down”, hence making me a nontraditional startup entrepreneur by today’s standards. In this follow
October 21st, 2015
The Nontraditional Startup Entrepreneur – Part 1
(Note: Originally Posted on Medium.com) The Nontraditional Startup Entrepreneur – Part 1 I am a member of “Generation X”, defined by Google as “the generation born after that of the baby boomers (roughly from the early 1960s to mid 1970s), often perceived to be disaffected and directionless.” It’s a stereotype that many GenX’ers have or had no goals, no direction, no clue what we want to do in life, and actually,
August 17th, 2015
Four Entrepreneurs That Inspired Me
If you are new to startups or exploring the possibility of a startup, here are four sntrepreneurs you should be following. I know some of you already know of them, but I did not know any of them two years ago. Of course this is in addition to some well known entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban and Sir Richard Branson, that you should already be following. Jason Calacanis – Jason
July 13th, 2015
Trials of Startups – Funding
Here’s my take on investor funding: We are not actively seeking it presently, but if we are approached by investors, we are definitely open to investments. Could we have moved faster with an investment? Absolutely. Did having no funding slow us down? Yes. Did having no investors stop us? Not at all. It has taken us longer, and we are not able to hire any employees full time, but
May 22nd, 2015
Lessons Learned From Building A Startup.
Building a startup is not an easy task. After “The Social Network” movie came out, many people, especially the college age population, were deeply inspired to also enter the world of startups (that’s another blog post to be written later), thinking it will be as simple as the movie made it seem. But trust me, it isn’t, and statistically, nearly all startups will wind up failing. But there are things
April 9th, 2015
Hanging Out in DC at Disruption Corp with Entrepreneurs and Investors
I was invited to attend an event in D.C. at a company called Disruption, run by Paul Singh. This was a great event. Investors answered questions on stage and 10 startups pitched in a competition to be one of the four startups to compete for $36,000 in June against other Southeast startups. I got to meet Paul Singh, which is someone I have wanted to meet for a while. Being
March 19th, 2015
“Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell
If you don’t know who Malcolm Gladwell is, you should. He is one of my favorite authors that makes interesting observations about people, and writes about it. I have read (or listened) to one other book from Malcolm called “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” that I also highly recommend you read. These books really do have application for entrepreneurs and startups. I had 15
March 16th, 2015
Startups: LivestockCity goes live (Sort of)
In 2003, after having a few llamas for a couple years, I started a website called “LlamaSalesList.Com.” The site provided a fast and easy way to quickly find show quality llamas from across the U.S. and Canada. Eventually we began offering online auctions for llamas and later began “AlpacaSalesList.Com.” These two sites eventually led to a new venture, LivestockCity, a site for ALL livestock owners. LivestockCity offers everything its