It was great to meet some people for a couple of reasons. First, I was able to get real world feedback on the ideas that I’m working on, in particular the training business. It was also great to get out into the world and breathe fresh air, both in a real and a metaphorical sense. Deep huh?

Anyway, meeting these people was great to keep the motivation up as they were pretty positive about the ideas I was discussing with them. It got me to the point that I’m confident that people will buy the training offering and I now need to develop it.

So, as this update is a little late the motivation was and is still powerful and my measure of progress was Not too bad. I need to get some wins on the board this week I think. It’s time to get into the dirty details of product development!

Can you guess what language the update is in this week?

One thing that I have learned (note that this does not by any means mean that I’m an expert) over the years is that people, not money, make the world go round, money comes later

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think that personal relationships are what greases life’s cogs. Whether is personal or business relationships, it’s all the same.

Where am I going with this? Well, when you’re trying to start a business, you can’t do it in isolation. You need to meet people. You need to get the word out. Meet people in real life, meet people online, build friendships!

In traditional thought, this is where the term networking usually enters the conversation. For some reason though, I hate the term “Networking”. It’s so clinical. It also conjures up long and uncomfortable silences, bad finger food, too many trips to the bar and forgetting the names of people you didn’t want to meet in the first place. I guess this is really semantics though as it’s all about your attitude. If you treat it as networking, then it’s going to be painful for those that don’t like “networking”.

The best way I’ve found is that you simply need to make friends. I think this is a much better way (and term) for building your personal networks. Just make friends. Be open to meeting new people at all times. Simply be friendly. Don’t be afraid to ask about them and don’t be afraid to talk about yourself (or your ideas), just make sure it’s a two way street. It’s amazing what may come of it. You can’t also expect something to come of your conversation immediately. Just having met someone means that you may be front of mind as soon as an opportunity arises.

Now, I’m not the best conversationalist but you know what they say, Practice makes Progress!

A case in point. When I arrived, I found someone through my friend network would was willing to talk to me about my idea. They provided me with two contacts who I’ve met and they provided me with more contacts. And so on and so forth. Before long through the power of expotential growth, I’ll have plenty of people that I’ve met and some new friends to boot.

So, what would my tips be:

1. Meet people. Avoid the vacuum. Have fun!
2. Meet people through the attitude of making friends. Not “Networking”. This can sometimes seem false if you’re heart isn’t in it.
3. Make sure you always ask if there’s someone else the person you’re meeting thinks you should talk to. Preferably through an introduction.

Image attribution:

So, what’s been happening?  I’ve been busy beavering away at getting a basic website developed for one of my projects.  It did involve a necessary step in what I consider was ultimately the wrong direction.  I did technical work myself!  I know, I know.  Not the ideal situation but I couldn’t find someone to do it for the price of a case of beer so I resigned and did it myself.  I learnt more about web design and implementation than I care to share here or even really use in the future but it had to be done.  All I lost was a week of effort that I could be spending on other things…  I did get to listen to lots of podcasts and radio though and some goals were kicked so not all was lost.

Through my ditching and office activities I also heard/read a few good quotes this week:

1. Try hard, fail fast, learn and move on (or something like that) – Jason Calicanis, This Week in Startups podcast
2. Don’t mistake activity with progress (or something like that) – From the book Who Moved My Cheese (I think) by Dr Spencer Johnson

Heard any good quotes lately that have inspired, invigorated or enraged you?

So, in summary this week was very busy and at times frustrating.  More importantly, rather than just being active, I was making progress and this did wonders for the motivation.  This weeks Motivation = Powerful! and the Progress = Better than pitiful.

What does next week hold?  Well, I’ve got some introductions that I’ll need to prepare for.  I need to get 2-3 more people from each one to continue the networking and build those contacts.

I’ll let you know how it goes next Friday.  Au revoir!

ps.  Through the power of google translate I’ll be seeing how many numbers I can get up to in different languages.  Fun huh?

So, without further ado, what’s happened this week? 

Well, apart from finishing setting up a working space after the move to Melbourne, it was getting down to business in planning for the education and training business.  If you saw the last post, this was quite important as it helped communicate what I’m working on to my wife.  Well, that was a success. Oh, and as a small side benefit I managed to gain an understanding the market, the segments and a beginning of the different training offerings that would match the requirements.  The next step is to now get a pitch together and get out there and talk to people to refine my assumptions.

furcle didn’t get to much traction this week due to the above.  Next week I will outsource the development of the placeholder web page to start soliciting people to help with testing and feedback of the service.

So, the week gone Motivation = Not too bad and Progress = Pitiful.  I’m thinking next week will be much better!

Until next time!  And in the mean time, let me know if you’re having a win yourself.  Making any progress?

I know some people don’t like the use of the term partner for their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, defacto, wife, husband love of their life, soul mate or all of the above but I thought it looked good in the title. Now, I hope I haven’t scared you off yet, It gets better… I think.

This weekend gone, I got a bit of a grilling from my partner (wife). We were driving back from a nice lunch in the country to celebrate a birthday for one of our friends and I was feeling pretty good about the coming week. At some point, I’m not really sure when, I must have said something that started a bit of a grilling session. “Can you smell bacon” I hear you say? I would say just a fleeting whiff. One that you’re not sure if you imagined.

It all boiled down (boiled bacon?) to her not know what I was up to at the moment and how I was progressing. Now this raises three questions and probable answers for me:

1. Why doesn’t she read Ditch the Office to keep up?I like to think because it’s easier to get it from the horse’s mouth. I’m hoping that it’s not because Ditch the Office is boring. If you think it’s the later, let me know what you think would be more interesting. There’s a comments link at the end of this post.
2. Does Ditch the Office really keep people up to date?I don’t think so at the moment. I’ve made some improvements and will be blogging more regularly to keep people up to date, including a weekly progress and motivation post – look out!
3. How can I keep my biggest partner and investor up to date and involved?Make sure the old conversation machine keeps rolling along so she knows what’s happening. You, lucky reader, don’t need to be part of this one. There’s only room for the two of us in our bed.

Anyway, back to it. Since the move to Melbourne, I’ve started working on another idea – training businesses in the benefits of web and digital technologies.

1. iweb – nope, templates pretty much fixed although I hear you can engineer your own… too hard.
2. rapidweaver – as above although I did get some good info from @WebKarnage on twitter on how to modify rapideweaver templates. I need to get savvy with style sheets and the like though…
3. Flux 2 – also on a lead from @WebKarnage. This looks like a great and almighty web design application, however don’t talk to me about learning curve. I can see mountain goats from here. This does seem the most promising though but it does seem a little rough around the edges and there’s very little documentation or tutorial information around. Maybe someone could tell me how to centre my block of text so it’s always in the centre regardless of browser size?
4. Dreamweaver – Another almighty web design application. I think Dreamwever is a career, not a piece of software. Not for me.
5. Nvu/KompoZer – I stopped as soon as I couldn’t drag the furcle logo to where I wanted it to be on the page. That logo image REALLY wants to stay stuck to to top left of the page…
6. Sandvox – I thought it was supposed to be WYSIWYG but turned out to be WYSIWYG in templates. No good.
7. Random searching of google using the same search phrase hoping that different results will be returned… Oh dear.

Sorry for the rant. I don’t like wasting time unproductively. I suppose I could have just have had someone do it for me and saved myself the trouble. In these times of more time on my hands and less cashola rolling in, I need to be able to do more of this stuff myself. Arrgh, the conflict. Maybe it’s time to call in a favour with mates currency – a case of beer.

* WYSIWYG = What you see is what you get = Draw it and they will come

** adventures may be result of incompetence or general lack of interest in spending time on stuff that wont work first time. If you know I’m wrong – let me know!

*** picture from e-magic on flickr

Google Docs is great if you want to do basic documents, spreadsheets and presentations but sometimes you need to use the old Microsoft Office or Keynote and then you’re typically resigned to emailing items around which makes it tough to keep track of documents.

Enter DropBox. A tool that synchronises data onto the web where and allows you to seamlessly access that data from any computer or share it with specific people for collaboration purposes. I’ve been using it the last couple of weeks and have found it invaluable. With the free account, you get 2 GB of free storage and there are paid accounts above that for more storage.

I’ve updated the resources list with links to Dropbox. I’d recommend it.

• Arrive, buy beer and meet some friendly people
• Talk by successful business owner (in this case Kristina Karisson from Kikki K stationary stores)
  
• Some more refreshments and discussions with friendly people

I met a few great people to start the networks in Melbourne and the talk by Kristina was great. I think I’ll attend again.

I’ve included a link in the resources as well for The Hive.

Rather than a rock solid business opportunity, I’ve been handed time. That’s right, time. My wife recently took a job that required we relocate from Sydney, Australia to Melbourne, Australia and my existing employer didn’t exist in Melbourne. So, what to do? Get back on the job market? Search for some contract work?

After some discussion, we decided that it would be good if I could dedicate some time to getting some of my initiatives off the ground. It had nothing to do with me campaigning for it. Nothing at all. I’m sure Jody is enjoying the breakfast and coffee deal that she’s now getting as well.

And no, I don’t really consider this to be the realisation of the goal to Ditch the Office even though technically that’s the case. I think that I need to be actually earning some cash to fund my high flying lifestyle before I can truly say that I’ve achieved the goal. Shame really.

Either way, everyone says the same thing now. “That’s a great opportunity” and “you should grab it with both hands”. Well, that’s what I intend to do, once I can get my hands away from blowing my nose with this damn cold*…

* If you’re following the swine flu pandemic news, it turns out that Victoria is leading the race with a healthy lead for the most infections. I think I’ve got a head cold, but you never know.