Thinking Big for the Home CEO
I get a lot of e-mails and messages from all of my Startup Nation fans asking for advice about their home businesses and about situations that are relevant to entrepreneurs.
Here’s one:
Dear Stella
I went into business with my brother, but, he tends to arrive at the wrong decisions, i.e. the decisions that are opposite of my own well-thought-out conclusions. What can I do?
Signed,
Rich S.
Oh. Wait. Sorry. I don’t know how that one got in there.
Here’s the one I was after:
Stella—
I started a home business and really have only one competitor. Except that competitor is a HUGE corporation. I feel like the smaller end of the David and Goliath rock-tossing match. My thought is, maybe I need to look and act like a big business in order to compete against one. I was wondering: how can I operate more like a big business?
Sincerely,
Big Stone, No Slingshot
Dear Big Stone:
I’m glad you asked, I’ve just completed “Stella’s Top Ten List of Big Business Tactics for Home-based Businesses”
Here they are:
10. Never say the words, people or customers, call them markets or verticals.
9. Post rules of bathroom etiquette above your toilet.
8. Don’t talk to your employees… I mean, family members… send them memos.
7. Create buzz words. For example, the garage can be the “wheeled-vehicle repository.”
6. Use acronyms. The dining room table is “The D.R.T.”, or “DiRT”; the front porch swing becomes the “FroPS.”
5. Come up with a mission statement containing as many bland generalities as possible.
4. Randomly ask your children and spouse what they are doing to further the goals as described in the above mission statement.
3. Outsource your normal household duties, like lawn care and cleaning chores, to friends and family. Tell them it’s a “strategic move to reduce your operating margins.”
2. Shut off one room in the house, call it the executive suite, and limit access to other family members.
1. Re-name the family trip fund, “CEO options,” and take as much as you like for personal spending.
I hope that helps!
Stella
“Startup Stella contributes to this blog from her two-dimensional world, which you can learn more about by visiting this cartoon strip StartupNation created to share Stella’s quirky but classic entrepreneurial epiphanies with you.”
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am
Hey Stella!/Rich!, I’m new to the "Posting" scene. Do you mind if I join in? Coming from a long line of "family owned" businesses I had to laugh at this post. I even printed it out to show my family. Funny.
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
So Stella my dog is now a Mascot, not a family pet. My kitchen is a cafeteria, and my TV room is now a Media Research Center or MRC. I’ve also decided to lock up all the office materials so if you need paper or pens you’ll have to “sign the key out”, oh and I monitor my printer for color print outs too! Now I feel much more corporate.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Hey and welcome.
Now. Get all your family members to wear similar clothes and call it, "branding."
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:19 pm
fyi… "stella" is not me… but she is a StartupNation community member…
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
And I can say with definite assurance: I am not rich.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Friday can even be Hawaiian shirt day or Jeans day!
August 24th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Every day is Hawaiian shirt day for me!
September 6th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
it’s all about making money,, if your making it your happy, if not your mean and mad.