So during the past couple of weeks, I have been getting quite a few awesome responses from my readers through Twitter, email, and the blog itself. Through that I have met a lot of great people like Aminata, Lily, and Jason.
As you guys know by now, I have a very explain-y style, which results in longer posts. I tend to pack a lot of information into one blogpost, and that makes my blog a bit tougher for reader adaption compared to Jun’s short and friendly blogposts. It also takes me a long time to write these posts, which is tough when you are an entrepreneur that works 90 hours a week.
Sometimes I contemplate if time spent on this blog is worth it, since it takes hundreds or even thousands of hours of committed work without much ROI to it. However, its times like that when I suddenly get the most encouraging messages from readers. I want to include here one that completely made my day last week. This particular one is from Facebook:
In the past few years, I have moved quite regularly as an entrepreneur nomad. I realized that most of the time, when people want a new house/apartment, they base it on the first five seconds they walk into the place. They either love it or they don’t. If those five seconds were phenomenal, then it’s time to check if the price is affordable.
Here’s a list of non-obvious things that you may not check but one-way or another impacts your quality of everyday life while you live there.
1. The Shower
Most people just check if the water works properly when checking out the bathroom. However, one of the things you should check is how long does it take the water to become hot. A good shower experience can dramatically change your attitude during the day. Some places take a long time for the water to warm up, and you not only waste a lot of water at a time when water might be in deficit, you end up waiting cold and naked in the bathroom for longer when you are in need for that refreshing feeling.
Needless to say, how powerful the shower is should take a big part of your shower experience too. Showers that have nice massaging power is much better in getting you relaxed and refreshed than ones that just “get you wet.”
OK, this is just something that I have to show. This might be old for some folks, but I’m sure lots of you have never seen this yet. I’m starting to like Jon Stewart more now.
Jon basically grills Jim Cramer of playing the market and basically cussing to Jim’s face. It gets more intense on the third video.
The show speaks for itself, so I won’t say much more.
You guys might be wondering what we have been doing these days, as Jun, Joe and I have been mostly writing about interesting topics on our blog but not really updating about Future Delivery. What do we have in our sleeves?
Well, you guys may already know we’re working on what we think could be an industry-changing site called Viralogy. Viralogy aims to help personal bloggers become discovered and also create a Social Media Rank. While we’re still getting out of our Alpha stage (with strangers playing with it), we are excited to first launch a new project called Awesome Bloggers.
When I talk to my friends outside of the startup world, one of the most common questions I get from them is “how do you start?” I usually tell them, “You just start. Figure out what you want to do, find people who have complementary skills to do it with you, and learn everything you can from the internet.” Then they’ll usually follow up with “But I don’t have a lot of money or any great ideas. Isn’t it very risky?”
You don’t need a lot of money or a great idea to be an entrepreneur
Many people have the false impression that they need a lot of money and a great idea to be an entrepreneur. That’s actually not true. Sure, its risky, but if you don’t have much money, what’s there to lose? Since I was 18, I started an online retailing company selling electronic products, a company that imports components of construction machinery (didn’t take off due to partnership misalignment in values), a non-profit for professional networking services, a small business consulting company, the premiere business organization in UCLA (not really a company, so consider that taking a break), Future Delivery and the company I have right now, RewardMe.
The first step towards entrepreneurship could be small
When I first started, I obviously didn’t have any money. The whole thing came as an accident when I raffled myself two football tickets and sold them on eBay. I felt something was lightened up within me, as if I have found a calling. So then I decided to trade TI-83 Calculators, which is something everyone needs for school. I would go on eBay during hours when everyone was asleep so I can buy the calculators without anyone bidding against me, and I would sell them during times when there were a lot of bid competition. If you used eBay before, you know it’s all about how many people are bidding against each other when your listing ends. Just like that, I would buy a calculator for $40 at 2AM, and then sell it for $60 at 1PM. A pretty good margin.
However, I was not satisfied. I kept finding people on eBay selling brand new products that are a lot cheaper than retail prices, and I wanted to do that too. I thought that these people must have bought in bulk and I would never be able to compete with them. But I lightened up when I found out about Dropshipping.