Then I discovered how expensive commercial smokers were.  It would take me about two years at my average rate of jerky consumption to recoup the costs of the hardware and supplies.  When living on a tight budget, this isn’t an easy sell to the pocketbook.

So I researched what it would take to build my own.  It would end up being cheaper, but far more difficult. Rather than continuing down this path I sucked it up and continued to shell out copious amounts of cash for my precious dried meats.

My brother pointed out how lazy this made me.  I had a solution to have low-cost, superior quality dried meat on hand at any time.  The only reason I didn’t take that option was because of the effort involved.  In reality, the high cost of the store-bought jerky I enjoyed was a luxury tax.

This past week, I was given a food drier as a gift.  It can dry fruit, vegetables, and, yes, even meat.  I actually made my first batch of jerky this week, too.  In just under 20 hours (most of which was spent in the drier on autopilot) I made a little over half a pound of jerky.  And it only cost me $5.

Let me summarize.  By getting up off the couch and investing my television-watching time elsewhere (the jerky required a total of 1 hour of actual labor to prep, process, and package), I produced twice as much product as I could have bought in the store for less than I would have spent.

My brother would probably be proud.  He taught me something about business.  Some things that we outsource – read: purchase as a finished good from an external supplier – could be handled in-house with a more favorable ROI.  Why pay $1 per copy to have a presentation bound at Kinko’s when the entire project will take 15 minutes and the raw materials cost $0.15 per copy?  (Assume 50 copies of your presentation.  Binding through Kinko’s would cost $50 and be entirely hand’s off.  Binding in-house would cost $7.50 for supplies and $2.50 for 15 minutes of labor for a $10/hr intern.  That’s a savings of $40 with the added benefit of being able to supervise every step.)

If applying a little economics to every day living can save me in the long run, it will have just as positive an impact my business.  What do you outsource that could probably be handled in-house for a lower production cost?

Typically, product development teams employ three different kinds of people: developers, designers, and the lucky few tasked with translating between the two groups.  It’s a highly complicated system prone to communication breakdowns and flat out failures of development.  Nowadays, a new category of professional has arisen: devigners.

Half developer, half designers.  Sort of like the centaur of the product development world.  These are people who know just enough design to rough something out in a close-to-finished fashion.  At the same time, they’re familiar enough with in-depth development techniques that they can roll up their sleeves and write code or engineer a prototype.

So a devigner is the new handyman in the tech development world – someone who can stand in for full time developers and designers at a moment’s notice, while belonging to neither category at the same time.  It’s an interesting concept – I like to think of myself as a devigner – but I’m not sure what the ramifications will be.

I’m a fairly decent graphic designer, and I think I can write code of a certain consistent quality.  But I know there are better designers and better programmers in the world.  Am I a replacement for the 3-tier development system?  On a good day I’d like to think so, but I know three heads are better than one.

So in a world with a restrictive economy, hiring one person might seem beneficial.  But how sustainable is the devigner role in the long run?

There are two ways to measure this, and they both have their places depending on the market you’re trying to reach.

Percentage of the market

If your market is somewhat small and the real total size is easily accessible, you can consider your critical mass to be a certain percentage of the total addressable market.  For a market on the size of 1-100k people, about 1% of the market would be sufficient.  Once more than one percent of your market is using (and is satisfied) with your current product it’s time to move on to more ambitious goals.  Market expansion, heavy advertising, product change and diversification – until you’ve captured at least 1% of your market, hold off on these potentially costly (and failure-prone) activities.

Customer demographic ratios

Sometimes, it’s impossible to know the size of your market.  Either it’s too large or too disperse to measure.  In this case, put your current customers into two different buckets: internal and external.  Anyone who has a financial incentive (you employ them, they’re a stockholder, they’re your spouse, they owe you money, etc.) to use your product should immediately be considered internal, whether they’d self-identify that way or not.

Now look at usage trends both across the entire customer base (everyone) and against just the external customers.  When the trends yield the same data for both groups, then you’ve captured just enough of the market that your internal users aren’t contaminating your data.  Until you reach this point, though, don’t make any long-term assessments of your enterprise based on the data you have – the data you do have is still heavily biased towards people who have a reason to see the company succeed, not towards your real customers.

Which method do I use?

In reality, you should look at both.  The first method is somewhat arbitrary and is useful for ventures that have little to no access to post-purchase customer information.  If you’re selling widgets from a brick-and-mortar storefront, this will likely be the only reliable metric you have.

If you can measure both, though, do so.  Then err on the side of creating a larger customer base.  If the Percentage model claims you need 1,000 customers to reach critical mass, but the Demographic model claims you only need 10, go with the larger number.  This will push out your objectives a bit farther, but it will also make your enterprise less risk-prone and pad your chances of success.

The public sector, on the other hand, has other motivations.  Most public services exist to fill a vital need.  So long as that need is being “adequately” filled, managers don’t push their staffs to work any harder.  Overtime is rare, and competition is more for personal fulfillment than to earn any kind of reward-based recognition.

This dichotomy leads to two very different worlds and work ethics.  Walk into any clothing store.  Within a few minutes, store personnel will greet you and offer to help you find what you’re looking for.  They’ll be ready to answer questions, suggest various products, and many will personally check you out when you’re finished shopping.  A high level of customer service for a low-paid employee of a “money-grubbing empire.”

Walk into a public service building like the DMV.  You won’t be greeted, you’ll have to press a button to take a number (if you can figure out where to get it), then you’ll wait patiently for up to an hour to have your number called.  You’ll be served by one of maybe ten staff members whose mood and temperament reflect their desire to be anywhere but behind a counter helping you.  A very low-level of service for an employee paid by the public – paid by you.

So to all of those who would disagree with my characterization of the motivation behind public sector jobs, I invite you to disagree.  How do you motivate your staff?  What other forms of drive have you seen among staffers in public venues?  I’ll admit that this reflects just my own personal experience, so I welcome your input.

At any given time, it might seem like your most prized accomplishments will be easy to remember in the future.  Unfortunately, they won’t be.  Six months from now when someone asks you to describe the results of your contribution to account X, you’ll be scratching your head.

“I know I did something really well, but I can’t quite remember the specifics.  I’ve done a lot of work since then …”

It’s important to write down the details of your accomplishments as you complete them – do this even if you’re still bound by NDA.  You won’t ever release your personal notes, but you’ll need them as reference later when preparing self-promotion materials or revising a resume.

Large businesses keep detailed records of their past actions, finances, and goals as reference material for when they prepare future reports.  Why should you be any different?  Keeping this information on hand will improve the quality of your marketing materials in the future, whether you’re promoting yourself, your services, or prepping for an informational interview with a colleague.

What methods or processes do you use to keep track of your past work?  How effective have these tools proven to be so far?