So I'm designing a product...

 So I'm designing a product. After checking out the most popular product currently being touted in the market I realize there are a lot of flaws. I tried at and realize that it is too general in its use. Well, for me at least. i realize sometimes when someone creates a product with no apparent focus it can be sort of useful. But for the niche that I am focusing on it it too general of a product to really serve as a useful product. 

This is fine. What I am shooting for is a specific group of people -- well, it's actually a very large group of working professionals who spend hours and hours working through the same old tasks. The pain point here is: most of that work can be streamlined with a certain product that can have most of the work already done beforehand. 

Why not? 

The purpose of a product or service is to provide "value." It's not because we want more work, but less. Anything that helps us to accomplish this and helps us to save time and money is providing value to the user. And that's why I think what I am making will be useful: its purpose is to save time and effort to acomplish some rather time consuming work. 

Well, we shall see. 

I'm also getting up earlier in the morning to spend some quality time just thinking. The silence is golden. With a glass of water and silence I can consider all the work from the days before but also the work ahead.  

Getting out of your own way

 I was looking for a quote online -- something I sort of remember hearing about over the years about Napoleon Bonaparte talking about it being easier to take over the world than to overcome ourselves. 

But I found this other quote by Napoleon Hill which says basically the same thing: 

“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.”

― Napoleon Hill

And that is exactly why I find myself struggling. Most of the time, I am fighting against old tendencies in order to push the needle forward. It takes a daily commitment to doing what I can to push the company forward. And I have to be honest: some days its easier than others. 

I am still figuring out what the heck I am doing as far as setting up my business. I had an idea earlier but it seems to have to change. It is not something I can discuss right now. But I can say that I am still figuring out which direction the prevailing winds of opportunity lie. And I am going with it to setup the home office to simplify the work. And that means making a list of items that I can do in order to automate whatever I can to help me to SAVE TIME and energy. 

And that's part of what it takes. 

Setting up this blog with Google Analytics

 Okay, so I'm figuring this out. I remember using Google Analytics years ago when you had to go and grab the JavaScript tag and then paste it into your Blogger html template. But that does not seem to be the case any longer. Instead you need to actually grab what is known as the "Measurement ID" from Google Analytics and within your settings page for your blog, add it to your Google Analytics profile, save the results and you are good to go. 

It helped that I asked ChatGPT a question, "Act like a Google Engineer and please explain whether or not I need to copy javascript from Google Analytics to Blogger in order to start tracking my blog." It responded that, no, I did not need to do that any longer. I just needed to do what I outlined above. 

Cool. 

Annoying in some ways. But glad I am beginning to figure it out now. 

Towards financial literacy

 On thing that pressed upon me time and again is that both my parents (God rest their souls -- Bless and keep them) while great parents were not very good with finances, and had little common sense about business. Both were technically geniuses. And both knew how to save for retirement. But apart from that they were not really well versed on the mindset of making money as an entrepreneur. I honestly do not see how they could have been otherwise: most of their lives were spent raising their kids. 

But even so I now realize that I am making a lot of their same mistakes. And that's also what has prompted me to start my own business, but also to do it on a shoestring, and to learn how to financially be more realistic about how business works. 

I think the problem is that it is easy to see life in the abstract and philosophical manner: to read articles about people who "made it" in the business world and to dole out ideas and/or excuses why / why not one is a success / failure. 

I think my dad was a lot like this. Extremely smart in many ways, but not about business. He was an abstract thinking. And since his passing a few years ago, I realize that he and I are a lot alike. I am looking myself in the mirror and seeing his face more often than not, and I am finding my manners shaping into his. 

But when I look at our young son across the breakfast table every morning, I realize I can not make the same choices my dad did. Life is just getting harder and harder, and the cost of living is just ridiculous. I made really good money right now. And perhaps twenty years ago I would not have to think about starting my own company, but twenty years ago is a far cry different from now.  And if I am going to give our son a fighting chance in this world, I need to be the one to clear the path. 

I need to be more. I need to work towards becoming more financially literate. 

I need to cultivate the business mindset that will get me to where I need to go. 

This will take time, I realize this. This is not an overnight undertaking. I need to make this into a routine. 

As I tell our son over and over again, "Day by day, in every way, bit by bit, better and better." I tell him to repeat that because as long as he (we) are always doing a bit better each day we will eventually get to where we want to go. 

So I am working on it. 

I recently bought a couple of books on Audible.com. I like audible. I do not have much time to read, so this helps. The books are Mindset, and the E-Myth Revisited. 

I heard both are fantastic so I guess we will see whether they will help me prop up the business. 

Hindsight is 20/20

 Perhaps the hardest part of getting things going is keeping oneself disciplined. Having an assistant would be nice. Maybe with A.I. on the horizon, artificial assistants will help. Dunno. Hard to say. I keep thinking about the movies, Terminator, iRobot, and even Steven Spielberg's film, A.I. But really, it is true: keeping oneself motivated every single day as you climb towards success is all about getting out of your own way. 

I recently signed up to blogspot to start this blog. I figured I am seeing so many success stories online I might as well write about my journey. Maybe it will be useful to some else. Maybe not. But it does prove to be a way to really get my thoughts down on "paper" and that is something. 

They say hindsight is 20 / 20, which is pretty true. Looking back things make more sense. Life seems to connect and the underlying logic of why things happened a certain way makes sense. I am here now writing this because a long chain reaction of events called my life led me to the conclusion that starting a company was the most logical thing for me to do. 

So in many ways I am grateful for all the events that led me here. 

I am grateful for the many sources of inspiration -- both painful and pleasant that have led me here to doing this. Because now I am the captain of my own destiny and I can do what I need to do to really help out the family. 

Even so when you have a vision, you need to be able to hold onto it while looking forward. You do not have to share it with other people -- at least not initially -- because sometimes when you talk too much about your idea, all energy you need to get started gets lost. 

Starting Up

 Perhaps one of the hardest things is to start-up your own company. It is even more difficult if you are in your mid-fifties and have to wade through a lifetime of programming that lays. mountain of doubt and worry to consider. 

I have struggled with that. And at this point I have realized after having spent the better part of my life in the rat race that I need to do something more significant than working for someone else. I need to take charge of my life and my financial destiny so as to be a better provider to my family. 

For the sake of anonymity (my wife will kill me if I do otherwise) I will say my name is Hugh. I live is Los Angeles and have been working in the IT field. I have a beautiful wife and a young child in elementary school. I make good money, but even so with all the inflation, and the general cost of living, I can not see my current income as being a reliable path towards building a solid financial future for my family. 

My career is, in short, what many would call the "single point of failure" -- should I lose my job at my age, or (worse) come down with a debilitating medical condition that insurance can not cover, my family will probably join the masses of people whom have had their lives destroyed by overwhelming medical costs. 

Or, should I (God forbid) pass away prematurely, even with our current plans, future looks a bit bleak. 

So I created a company. But I have had time sucked away from it for the better part of the last nine months. Apart from helping my wife finish up her schooling and taking care of the little one, and repairing the house, I have not been able to have any time for myself let alone work on the business in the way that I need to do in order to make it a success. 

But lately time has become more available, and I have made it through the first financial year with some minimal profits from some online work I did here and there. So now I'm going into year two and want to keep things moving forward. 

How do I accomplish this? I honestly do not know. I am writing this blog to share my adventure. Hopefully it will be useful to others (maybe you are in business too?) If so let me know what you think. We shall see.