Assess yourself: Should you launch a startup?

I fired Melissa.

We were bickering all the time. And she was saying I’m impossible to work for and I was saying she’s impossible to manage. The problem is I’m a mad raving lunatic about making sure that people who work for me like working for me.

When Ian, the guy who I was going to do a company with but then ended up not doing a company with, asked Ryan Healy and Ryan Paugh for references for me, they said I was loyal and caring and they both gave me so much credit for helping their careers and it just made me really really happy. I want to know I am making peoples’ lives better.

So when I told Melissa I was going to launch a company, she asked what her job would be, and I said, “Nothing. You are not in my company.” Read more

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Your spouse is always a partner in your business. Here’s how to make it work.

I stay up way too late at night running numbers for my new company. It’s incredible—me doing spreadsheets of financial projections—because I have dyscalculia, which means I was in special ed math and cannot do simple arithmetic, even now. But if you ask me how many people will take three or more seminars over the next four years, I can tell you the math I did to make that projection. Five-year projections come easily to me.

It’s just that I stay up all night doing it.

So when Matthew wakes me up to deal with pigs, the first thing I think is no. Not that I say no. He almost never asks for help with the animals, because I have no idea how to farm and we live next door to his parents, who have both been farming their whole lives, so of course when there is something important to do he asks them and not me.

Read more

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Take more risks to make life more fulfilling

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I’m driving to the Madison airport to pick up Ian, my new partner in my new secret startup. I’m wearing the sunglasses that Melissa’s boyfriend said make her look too rich and too Type-A. The glasses are perfect for today.

I am also wearing a new, green shirt that I got at JC Penney. Did you read about how the new CEO overhauled women’s fashion and alienated all the loyal customers? This makes me think it’s okay that I like the shirts they sell. (Or used to sell—since he just got fired for selling clothes I like.)

I email Melissa a picture of me driving with the shirt on. Then I call her. Read more

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For God’s sake, do the first thing on your to do list first

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Melissa says to me, “The reason you’re not writing is because you’re hiding. And if you hide something from blog readers you can’t cope. So you don’t write.”

I tell Melissa, “If you’re going to move to New York then David should put some of his huge salary in your bank account.”

Melissa says, “Don’t change the subject when you can’t face reality.” Read more

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Your approach to mistakes defines your success

One of the first things I wondered about the Farmer when I met him is why he was even reading my blog.

He told me, “I’m an entrepreneur.”

I was hooked. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I could see that I was going to learn a lot from him, and nothing gets me going like a steep learning curve.

That was five years ago. Today, I read all the farming magazines that come to the house, I sit in on meetings with the seed salesman and the accountant who specializes in farms. The Farmer has a rule that I can listen but I have to wait until the end for questions, because people in the farm community are too nice to tell me when I’m asking too many. “But you are,” he tells me. “Just trust me that you are.” Read more

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Start your own company! A week-long webinar with Penelope Trunk

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This is a webinar on how to get an idea for a business and launch it. It includes four days of of video sessions and email-based course materials. You can purchase this workshop for anytime, on-demand access. The cost is $195.

Get access now.

I’m giving a webinar on how to get an idea for a business and launch it. And, you’ll be pleased to know that I have never had a lot of money when I launched my businesses, so I’ll teach you how to launch a business the same way: with very little money.

I give lots of big speeches about entrepreneurship, but they are always closed to the public, so blog readers rarely hear them. Also, I do a lot of coaching sessions for entrepreneurs, evaluating their  ideas, getting them out of slumps, helping them raise money—all the stages of a business. And I keep thinking that so many of the calls are the same that I should do a webinar about the most frequent issues.

So the webinar will be one week long: October 15 – October 19. I’ll do a live video each day about how to launch your own business. At the end of each session I’ll take questions, and the last day will be all questions—you can ask me anything, live, and I’ll answer. If you miss any of the sessions, you can listen to the recording on your own schedule.

The cost of this webinar is $195. You can pay the fee via PayPal to penelope@penelopetrunk.com.  I’ll send you a confirmation and an introduction to the webinar which will include some fun initial reading and instructions for accessing the videos.

Download now!

Here are the topics we’ll cover: Read more

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Your biggest barrier to starting a business

Last month I gave a speech at the Natural Products Expo in California, and I took my son with me. Everyone’s an entrepreneur in my family, and my son’s first thought was that this would be a good way to expand his egg business. He knows the eggs he gets from our chicken coop garner a high price from natural food types.

“This isn’t where you sell regular food,” I tell him. “This is more like a convention for processed natural food. People can charge more money for processing eggs than selling just the eggs.”

“Maybe someone can process my eggs,” he suggested. Read more

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How I decide where to focus my energy

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Melissa’s in China, which means I have to wake up at four in the morning to talk, which means we have no phone calls, and her emails are unsatisfyingly delayed.

I miss her. She is with Steven, who I think is buying her a ring.

Going to China with Steven was a good idea because men love being in a foreign country with a woman who can speak the language. It’s similar to how men enjoy when a girl wears a wig or even a new necklace to have sex—they can pretend they are with someone new.  (I read this in Cosmo, which is great for women with Asperger’s because it’s a rule book for dealing with men.) Read more

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Savor success. Forget failure.

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My son already has experience taking care of an animal and selling it. Last year, his 4-H project was pigs. He showed them, then he sold them, and we even went to the carcass show, which is where fifty people go into a meat freezer with a agriculture professor and find out why one kid’s carcass got a blue ribbon and one kid’s got a white ribbon.

If you guessed marbling, you guessed right. But the Farmer says this is an outdated way to look at meat. He says you get lots of marbling from feeding animals corn instead of letting them graze on the grass, but corn feed is like candy feed because there’s so little nutrition.

Okay. So even though we fundamentally disagree with the carcass show judging process, my son did take care of animals and then kill them, which is no small feat for a kid transplanted from New York City to rural Wisconsin. Read more

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How to have faith in yourself

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Sunday nights at our house are dinner with me, the kids, the Farmer and the Ex. They are always fun dinners, and I always feel very lucky for that.

My six-year-old talked about his new baby cousin, Eva (who is pictured, in utero, above). “She has a terrible name,” he said, “for Pig Latin. Its Vaeay. It doesn’t work.”

We all do the vowel arranging in our heads and agree, Eva is not a good Pig Latin name.

“Mom has a great name! It’s Enelopepay.”

The Farmer says, “It sounds like it could be the name of her next company.”

The Ex says, “Yeah, emphasis on the pay.”

The three adults laugh.

And then I get nervous. About what I’m going to do next. If you have had three companies, people assume you will have a fourth. So I assume that, too. Which makes me nervous. Read more

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