I am a believer in managing your own work, but I know that any success I have had has come from the good advice of many other people. Life is simply too short to make all the mistakes yourself, and then do the learning that comes from them. So you get advice from other people.

Rocky Mount/Edgecombe Community Development Corp.’s new Business Development Center in the Battleboro community held a free class for people that wanted to start their own businesses and 14 people attended. More on the class here. The basic thrust of the class was to give a dose of reality to those that want their own business - the class asked questions like:

Are you a self-starter?

“It will be up to you — not someone else telling you — to develop projects, organize your time and follow through on details.”

How well do you get along with different personalities?

“Can you deal with a demanding client, an unreliable vendor or cranky staff person in the best interest of your business?”

Do you have the physical and emotional stamina to run a business?

“Can you face 12-hour work days six or seven days a week?”

How will the business affect your family?

“The first few years of business start-up can be hard on family life. The strain of an unsupportive spouse may be hard to balance against the demands of starting a business. There also may be financial difficulties until the business becomes profitable, which could take months or years. You may have to adjust to a lower standard of living or put family assets at risk. Six students scored at a level where they are advised against going into business.”

If there is interest in the Tucson area for such a class, please leave your comments in the field below. If there is enough demand we will find a way to put it on. Please let us know.

This is not your typical get-rich-quick and pray on the desperation of the unemployed blog post. This is a start to a conversation about taking the sour lemons that the recession has given you and making them into your own version of lemonade, selling that lemonade locally, building a devoted following for your lemonade and then getting the fairy tale national distribution deal with Coca-Cola and remembering the recession that took your job as the best thing that ever happened to you.

Whew. You went from broke to rich in one paragraph. I guess my work is done here.

A time like this - major economic woes everywhere - is often when businesses get started. It is not because the climate is ideal (it is not!) but because we are humans and have a survival instinct. When people get laid off, they try and find work. When millions are laid off, then there is a lot of competition for even the crappiest of jobs. I know this personally from having advertised a crappy job and having a hundred applicants. It was unbelievable. So the next thing that will happen is people will decide to start a company because they can’t find work - or they will start hustling stuff on eBay that they buy at garage sales. Anything to eat.

One of the concepts behind ZonaShip is that we can be more than just a warehouse and order fulfillment partner. We figure we can help guide people that want to start their own business but are unsure of what to do. So go ahead and ask us a question - we will try and answer. ZonaShip is the 10th business that we have started, so we have a large collection of mistakes and remedies that we can share.