Simulacra – cre8ica

I dont tend to follow traditional media like television news or newspapers but I’ve started reading the entreprenurial section of Financial Post recently.

Just caught this article Don’t get a job, make a job by Rick Spence. The article is about contolling and creating your own future instead of just getting a job.

I followed this path upon graduation from Ryerson in 98. I knew i could work on my resume and start pounding the streets like all my other fellow grads but to me that meant competing with everyone in my class for a job i wasnt even sure i wanted.

I spent my university career learning to live on little to nothing. i.e it was training for being ramen profitable in the future. So why get locked into a false sense of perceived comfort with a salary. Why not start at zero and create my own destiny.

My theory was if i had nothing and ended with nothing 10 or 20 years later it was still a great ride and if all went well i’d have no debt but would have a much better resume from it.

Well 13 years later I’ve built and lost a few businesses, learnt about running a company and most importantly found what i loved to do and turned it into a growing and viable entity.

I’ve always had a sense of freedom and unique perspective that so many others who have been “career tracking” have never had and i’m very lucky for it.

As for that resume from ’98… well i’ve never written one and wouldn’t even know where to start. I think i’d rather try writiing a book about my business adventures then try writting a resume.

Sorry it’s been a while since i’ve posted. The last month has kept me mostly offline focused on managing our new growth spurt and prepping for some industry related seminars that i sponsor and host.

Anyways I managed to take a bit of time for a coffee break and to catch-up on some reading. Is it sad that my extra curricular reading is small business magazines and trade publications?

I was reading an article in Fast Company about staying true to your business path and your principals. Winning small battles one at a time over the long term eventually allows a business to come out on top.

This is one of the principles I use to gain new wholesale clients. These customers are shop owners and my front line. They represent our products and our brand to our end customers.

My competition chooses to hit every trade show, every trade publication and will sponsor any type of industry related event. They host parties and invite big name artists and in principal this gets their name out and hopefully some product sold. I think this is a valid strategy for short term growth but i feel it more important to make my customers advocates who believe not only in our products but our business principals.

If our customers believe in us they will believe in our products and most importantly represent us to their customers in a positive manner.

Our strategy is less glitzy and much slower. It’s one customer at a time. But the payoff is huge when it’s a customer for life. A customer that will support us and be a part of the bigger picture.

The proof of this is in the sales. We spent 3 years developing not only our products but our name and our advocates. In 2010 we saw 225% growth. In 2011 we are already on the road to an additional 125% growth over 2010.  Not only are we gaining new clients, our current customers, the one who have believed in us and have been our advocates from the beginning are also ordering more then ever.

There is no quick win and even if there was it wouldn’t be  sustainable. We’re here for the long haul because we love what we do. We succeed only because our customers are as passionate about our success as we are.

I’ have readers ask me why I’m so open about my business and why I share production techniques and pricing strategies so openly.

Starting a business used to be a very private and anti-social endeavour. Business owners worked by themselves or with a closed team to create a new idea, production technique or business process which they kept in the vault and treated it as a competitive advantage.

With the internet and millions of like minded business owners instantly available we are now seeing niche oriented discussion forums and communities for every aspect of a small business or start-up. And millions of blogs to read about every interest you could imagine.

Now intellectual property, proprietary processes and or a competitive advantage is shared with the masses. In the internet age the key to a successful business is learning from other like minded people and using it within a unique niche market. People are actually willing to share their secrets in hopes that others will do the same.

Sharing ideas and business processes can create a new competitive advantage. Customers now want to be a part of the community they support. They want to spend their money with businesses that they trust. We now expect transparency and information before making a buying decision.

It’s difficult to share these ideas and be so open knowing your competition is reading as much as your customers are but it keeps you always forward thinking and innovating. More importantly it establishes your company as an industry expert and instils trust with your customers.

Hopefully the information I share is useful. I want our customers to know what really goes into producing the products they love and more importantly inspire people to pursue their passions.

This year I’m trying to find more balance in my life. I’ve always said my true passion is my business because it allows me to be creative and at the same time gives me a sense of accomplishment and an emotional high. I wonder if there any studies on the endorphin rush serial entrepreneurs get and how addictive it is at times. Sadly the obsession has detrimental effects in my personal life.

I spent 2010 working through the realization that I need to find balance and also find other interests and pursuits in my life other than work. In 2011 I’m trying to find ways to implement this.

My friend Dia from TubePets (I’m linking to her site in hopes she starts blogging about her passions) had a housewarming party and for the first time I held a snake. I’ve never been scared of snakes but the idea of holding one and having it wrap around me gives me a sense of anxiety so I just never tried. For some reason I started bonding with her snake as it curled up in my lap. (the wine may have had something to do with my lack of anxiety)

Dia mentioned wanting to go to the Reptile Expo in Toronto this weekend. It sounded fun and since I’ve never been to a reptile show I decided to take a break from work and join her in the adventure. I’m not looking to buy a snake but it seemed like a fun idea to see the world of reptiles and enjoy in her geekery and excitement of the industry.

I had a fabulous time seeing all the variations of snakes, lizards, turtles and frogs. What amazed me the most was that the entire reptile industry is built on hobbyists, collectors and small suppliers. There wasn’t a single giant corporate sponsor or Pets-R-Us type conglomerate in the building. It’s such an amazing niche market and community of enthusiasts who have found a way to earn a living and enjoy their passion at the same time.

The true key to success is doing what you are passionate about and sharing it with others.  Just be careful to find a balance between passion and your obsession as an entrepreneur.

Here’s some pictures of my adventures in the world of reptiles.

The best part of bootstrapping a small business is finding cost effective solutions. The best part about blogs and the internet is sharing these innovative and cost effective solutions. I posted my solution for a DIY Bottle Capper quite some time ago and wanted to share a new project i just finished.

We’ve seen a huge increase in demand for our aftercare products including Holey Butt’r and Tat2Butt’r. Last year we were only able to do 2L batches because of size limitations of the wax melter I had available to me. Wanting to stay ahead of the demand we invested in a new wax melter and volumetric dispensing system so we can now produce 8L batch sizes and fill tins 4x faster than we used to. This should help us meet the increase in demand.

The problem with the batch size is how to properly mix the waxes and oils evenly and effectively. I started looking for a high-performance disperser or homogenizer. My requirements were large volume capacity in a 110V system with a very high rpm motor. Searching for a system with these specifications put me into lab grade equipment with a starting price of $2000 to $5000.

I’m never content with simple solutions and certainly didn’t want to spend that much money unless I really needed to. As I described in my previous post we are now slowly moving away from being “Ramen Profitable” but continue to bootstrap the company so minimizing major expenditures is a requirement. I’m in the black and even though I’m not interested in selling the business I always look at our growth from the view of an outside investor. Hence my mandate is to run this company with a zero debt philosophy.

So back to needing a cost effective mixer. All types of mixers achieve mixing by rapidly changing the direction of the fluid, accelerating the fluid, or subjecting the fluid to cavitation. What I needed was a blade homogenizer. The blades on this class of homogenizer are either bottom or top driven and rotate at speeds of 6,000 to 50,000 rpm and can handle a range of liquid sample sizes from 0.01 ml to multi gallons.

Seemed simple enough. Here’s what I found…

Option 1. Stick blender
With the smaller batches we were able to use a simple high efficiency stick blender. This no longer worked now because of the volume

Option 2. Drill and paint mixer.
The standard hardware store paint mixer uses a cyclonic shaped blade to pull liquid in a centrifugal manner. Problem was the drill didn’t have the RPMs needed and I’d prefer a mixing head that was easier to clean and preferably stainless steel.

Option 3. Rotary tool and Cake Batter Head.
I found a cordless dremel I had and a cake mixer attachment that I modified to fit into the dremels small collet.
The higher rpms compared to a drill made for a good mixing speed but the mixing attachment left an inconsistent blend of the oils and wax.
I wasn’t able to find a mixing head attachment that was appropriate that could fit into a rotary tools small collet.

Solution Part 1. Roto-zip and Plaster mixing head.
I searched online and found a local sculpture supply company that had a plunge mixer which produces a quick hurricane action with minimal air entrapment. The head is cast with a burr-free finish for easy clean up. It had a 5/16″ shaft diameter which would work great on a low rpm drill but not on the high rpm rotary tool. I found a high rpm cutting tool called a roto-zip spiral saw. Essentially it’s a bigger rotary tool to cut dry wall etc. at 30,000 rpms. The best part is it had a 1/4″ collet which fit the plunge mixer shaft.

Solution Part 2.
In preliminary tests everything worked great but I wanted control for different viscosity mixes. I essentially needed a stepless speed control. I happened to have on old foot switch that came with a jewellers dremel. This is a simple resistance-based control system that can give variable speed in a manual foot switch. This worked out perfectly to adjust the speed and I had the added safety of instantly turning the unit off with my foot.

Now for the cost break down.
The Rotozip is about $80
The Plunge Mixer is about $10
The foot pedal can be found for about $40

So for $130 I found the perfect high performance blade homogenizer for large volume mixing. Much better than spending $2000 + dollars.