You Don’t Need This Book

Indexing

Create a library of written works.
It will unfold into a timeless asset.

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Reading helps us understand the world.
Writing helps us understand ourselves.

Imagine if you had already started writing. You would have articulated thoughts into a collection of organized ideas. You would have also felt the energy that comes from writing about something you care about.

Now, imagine you moved past fear and began sharing your writing with others. With a growing library in place, even if traffic is uncertain, your future self can access an index of thoughtful goodness any time. This treasure trove becomes a handy reservoir for adding thickness to any interaction.

Along with helping to maintain intensity, our writing connects heart into what we think, talk, and build around. Does writing take time? Yes. Does publishing your writing online spark hesitations? Yes. Will writing welcome a creative release, help you think, and potentially deliver more art for you to ship?

Also yes.

Along this path, writer’s block is a tempting distraction. Life is busy, we’re oversubscribed, and writing requires the privilege of time. Even with all we take on, writer’s block is an illusion, an excuse not to ship the art. This paralysis is a symptom of low prioritization in our creative practice.That’s okay, provided we recognize the dip, preserve topics to revisit, and reprioritize writing when necessary.

Whether you listen to yourself in private (journaling) or share your heart in public, when you know you’re going to get something done, you become consciously introspective. You stay in-tune with what needs to be synthesized, while recursion and this indexing effect help sustain a healthy obsession. Even when a thesis is not obvious, you’re strong enough to explore what needs to be said. This becomes a habit that invites anyone to reach higher.

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Don’t wait for inspiration.
Let the work inspire you.

As with writing, the mainspring behind creative acts may not seem obvious, but trapping time is advantageous when the theme of this moment is referenced in the future.

A creative act is a wide-open construct with a kabillion examples. To throw one in for context, let’s use this book you’re sharing time with. For no reason, take a cool photo or video of the book in a creative setting. This is not a required action, but now it exists.

Seconds to years later, imagine texting a friend and this book is mentioned in conversation. The option to easily respond with a related and creative asset is now yours.

These creative acts require a quark of attention, but this practice earns intriguing depth that can be randomly included in planned and unknown ways. You won’t run out of film and these assets may go untouched, but we can’t use what we don’t have. From funny additions to a profound surprise, this type of b-roll adds flare to your writing and helps glue our stories of life together. Could you create supporting content later? Maybe, but then it’s work. The ease comes in our consistency. Having fun with b-roll ends up providing a supportive cast that extends your writings.

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When it’s natural, it’s nothing.

For now, get back to thinking by writing (again), then be generous with time as you creatively share it with us.

Brewed From Within
#91 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Escorting Execution

After a few early moves, developing a business plan is a hearty exercise. Business plans are less pivotal than scholars may preach, but developing a business plan does force you to pick through the specifics of any business. The detailed planning can pave a path toward sustainability and help you articulate opportunities to potential co-founders, new hires, outsourced talent, investors, and early adopters.

The first version of a business plan does not need to be long, but it should include a handful of key elements:

    1. Executive Summary
    2. Company Description
    3. Market Analysis
    4. Products & Services
    5. Marketing & Sales
    6. Operations
    7. Financials
    8. Appendix

One size does not fit all, and earlier moves like canvasing and wireframing will lighten the load as you flesh out details. To determine how particularized your business plan needs to be, consider who will be reviewing this dynamic document. Learn more and explore different templates online, then craft something you’re proud of.

Even without an audience, creating a business plan is rarely a waste of time. They can also become a required asset when you’re raising financial capital. Situations where you’ll likely need a business plan include grant applications, bank loans, and pitch competitions. Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) may request a business plan to warrant professional services as well.

As you build a business plan, use clarifying frameworks, concise content, and mark areas that may need to more frequent updates. This makes the document interesting, more digestible, and easier to maintain.

As you update this dynamic document, consider how your business plan supports other related resources that collectively paint the picture of your company. Sharp business plans integrate with a cool one-pager, slide decks that ignite verbal presentations, a pitch deck with similar content brought to life with enhanced visuals, and ongoing investor updates. This shapes a forwardable investor pack geared to keep your ideas from slipping toward someday.

Brewed From Within
#10 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Coworking

Coworking spaces provide entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs with an environment where everyone is working on their own thing, but doing it together.

When you choose to ride the lonely roller coaster of entrepreneurship, coworking can provide a cooperative, fun, and supportive environment. Coworking spaces are built to energize your work and provide a professional location to host meetings as well.

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Coworking Day is August 9th.

As you might imagine, working around others naturally leads to more interactions. A good coworking climate offers more than trendy office space. It provides members a sense of community. With so many good people in one place, coworking spaces often become a prime location for a variety of events as well. This allows you to get more involved with less effort required. Whether it’s educational sessions, random conversations throughout the day, impromptu happy hours, or larger community events, coworking connects you to more people who “get it.” The home office or local coffee shop is still great, but joining a coworking community allows you to focus on your work while enjoying a communal experience with more people who share an entrepreneurial spirit.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Incubators

Incubators warm you up until it’s time to hatch.

They are similar to coworking spaces, but incubators often focus on entrepreneurial education. This developmental focus attracts newer entrepreneurs and has incubators most often found in educational environments, with semester or year-long programs. Incubators can also be found outside educational environments. Public incubators may have less rigidity, but there’s still urgency that most entrepreneurs benefit from. The timelines of an incubator are not as compressed as accelerators, but there is usually a beginning and an end to these programs.

This rotational nature of incubators provide a cyclical, yet stabilizing effect within startup communities. Entrepreneurs working through incubator programs become stronger founders eager to stay connected. As founders transition out of an incubator, they add human, intellectual, network, and cultural capital to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Their departure also makes room for the next class of entrepreneurs eager to develop a business within the incubator.

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Wondering how your business should evolve? Work around other entrepreneurs.

Another common draw of an incubator, is less expensive office space. Low rent alone attracts early tenants, but here lies the motive for many unhealthy incubators. If an incubator is only about cheap office space, the lack of heart will suck the cool right out. A fixation on cheap rent leads to less interest in helping entrepreneurs. This leaves floundering tenants starving for community. As cultural starvation occurs, entrepreneurs migrate and programs fail.

Incubators must be safe cocoons for less experienced entrepreneurs. They should allow entrepreneurs to repeatedly test, fail, and improve alongside their peers. With a supportive space dedicated to nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit, incubators allow connected entrepreneurs to hatch fresh ideas ready to fly.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Accelerators

Accelerators are incubators on steroids.

These programs recruit scalable companies that have shown early promise. They coordinate dramatic transformation within a compact timeline.They are like early-stage investment firms, as they provide seed funding in exchange for equity. Accelerators hedge bets by connecting entrepreneurs to resources, mentors, customers, investors, and community allies.

The rise of the accelerator model is interesting. Accelerators help entrepreneurs build stronger companies, but they need money to function. How do they support the financial investments in each company? What about staff salaries, community events, and all the resources they provide? There’s usually an initial fund raised to start these programs. Some accelerators also have financial infusions from sponsoring organizations. With this financial foundation in place, accelerators then depend on the performance of the companies in their portfolio. When a portfolio company is acquired or exits, the accelerator’s equity converts to cash or ownership options in more successful businesses.

As an accelerator’s portfolio performs, its reach widens and the program prospers. This motivates program directors to pick the right companies. It also gives founders the confidence that the experience is built for them to succeed. These complementary relationships are how accelerators make a lasting impact in less time.

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Incubators vs. Accelerators vs. Venture Studios vs. Coworking

For entrepreneurs, so much potential makes it easy to fall in love with the idea of being an accelerator-backed company. As business owners consider applying to accelerators, it’s important to understand the terms. When startup accelerators first started in 2005, they were industry agnostic. As this collaboration-based investment strategy has evolved, industry-specific accelerators have also emerged. This means there are more accelerators than ever and not all of them will be the right fit. The educational, networked, and cultural experiences matter. Entrepreneurs must vet accelerators like they would other equity investors. Do terms of the accelerator align with the long-term goals of your company? Will the implied results outweigh an intense time commitment? Even if it’s temporary, will the team be required to relocate? How deep is the network of fellow founders who have worked through the accelerator? Do portfolio companies stay connected? If so, how does that connected landscape support your work beyond the program?

The accelerator experience can be life changing for a startup. Based on a deep understanding of each company, these action-packed programs #GiveFirst and help build on what’s working. They also quickly identify areas for improvement. This empathetic support combined with a shared mission to grow allows accelerators and their portfolio companies to be more successful as everyone collectively builds to go big.

By Ben McDougal, ago