Those Optimize Guys (Blog)

Outsource Proof Business Idea #2 - Diaper Service

Sergio T. Ruiz — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:11:57 -0400

Diaper Service

I have had so many converstations about this, I thought I should probably write it up. Not as much for everyone elese, but to make sure it really did sound like a good idea, and not another one of my whacky ideas with no legs. I figured if I saw this in writing, it would be pretty obvious if this would work.

One of the things I have heard from so many new mothers is that they would love to go off disposable diapers, and use cloth as much as possible. The main problem is that there is alot of work involved in making this happen. There has been much written about using the new types of cloth diapers, but there is still a bit of work involved.

How great would it be if you could have someone do the collecting, cleaning, and maintenance of these diapers?

The Service

Cloth diapers are not the same diapers we wore as kids. Before pampers, our moms would attached a stylized bandana to our butts and hope for the best. Now, cloth diapers are made with new leak proof materials with kid safe closures. The only problem with this, is there might be a bit of expense getting a business stocked up with these diapers. My first suggestion would be to contact the manufacturers and see if you could work out a deal to get diapers in bulk and on the cheap.

The service would enlist new moms at a weekly (or monthly) charge, and every few days, pick up their soiled diapers, and leave clean ones. One trip to the laundromat could clean a great big pile of such diapers. Yeah, I know it sounds kind of nasty for the ones who use the machine after you, but I am guessing that at a public laundromat, many more hideous things have been through the spin cycle.

It seems like with a minimal investment (enough to only bootstrap the business), such a business could get started for a very small amount of money (two hundred bucks?). Once the business starts making money, the first thing to attend to would be gathering more diapers and clients. It seems like it would scale very well.

Clientele

If it were me, I would do the following:

Keep an eye on the local newspaper. Send a postcard announcing your service to all new parents.
Keep all of your current clients stocked with postcards that they can give to their friends.
Maintain a Facebook page so that your new clients can share baby photos and stories. Above all, they can share their testimonials.

Does this have legs?

The more and more I think about it, this sounds like a great idea.

It is a nice local niche business that will not soon be outsourced.
It scales well. It would take a good deal of diapers to fill up an industrial sized load. Once you do fill one up, a second load does not take more time to process.
It appeals to the consumer's green sensibility.

As always, if anyone decides to try this, and makes it work, I would love to hear from you!

Outsource Proof Business Idea #1 - Salon Deliveries

Sergio T. Ruiz — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:32:00 -0400

The Problem

This is a business I have been thinking about for years. While this may not be applicable to all cities, it certainly is applicable for our area. I am sure there are thousands of areas like ours.

Our small city had 22 salons at last count. If there is an average of six stylists per salon, that is 132 potential clients and a potential of $1,980 dollars per week.

Salons Need Supplies

Each town has about as many salons as it has bars and churches. This is a big number. Salons purchase a great deal of supplies each week. In just about all cases, their needs are very well defined each week. It's simply a matter of filling out a grocery list and buying the items at the supply store. The catch is, these supply stores are specialized brick and mortar stores. Their clientele is very limited: only licensed cosmetologists are allowed to shop in them. Since the clientele is limited, these stores are not found on every street corner. In our case, the nearest supply store is 20 miles away.

A salon owner / independent contractor in this town must make this trip at least once a week. Sometimes twice. When you break the cost down to the stylist, it can be daunting.

This trip will take at least two gallons of gas, or $7.50.
This trip, by the time it's said and done, will cost about two and a half hours in time. This time could be more productively spent marketing the business and generally working smarter.

Enter Opportunity

Wouldn't it be nice to have a person who would make that trip for the stylist each week? wouldn't it be worth $15 to have them you this for them? They would only be paying $7.50 for the service, as they will save $7.50 on gas. in the end, they will be paying $3 for each hour that they can spend working on developing their business.

I can't imagine why no one is doing this yet.

The Business Plan

Well, I wouldn't call it a business plan, but a business outline. Here's a quick play by play:

Contact the supply house. Make arrangements to pick up completed (and paid ) orders from the supply house for delivery. While I have not looked into it, I am sure some arrangement could be made.
Start contacting stylists in the area and offering the service. Depending on the proximity to the supply store, adjust your rate to something reasonable.
Establish a schedule. Do your runs twice a week at first. As business grows, this can be adjusted.
Require payment at time of delivery. This is a business that you don't want to run a billing system for.

Startup Costs

Startup costs would be minimal. Design (it doesn't need to be done professionally) a postcard. Have it printed professionally, as contrary to popular belief, it might be faster and cheaper to have a pro do it.

Once you have bought your first stack of postcards, it's just a matter of making sure every stylist in town knows about your service.

Conclusion

Since this is something I have thought through for a very long time, I would love to hear a success story from someone doing this. Keep me posted!

Globalization Proof Small Business Ideas

Sergio T. Ruiz — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:42:54 -0400

Some Background

I tend to work in the field of "All things technical." The upside is that when I work on a project, its fruits are immediately visible to the entire world. This also has a great deal of downsides.

Once an idea comes to fruition in the form of a website or app, the whole world has access to deconstruct it.
After my group has done the work of creating the customer experience, it is out in the open for the entire world to improve on and compete against.
Since my group paid for the initial development, any other startup has access to that process for little (or no) investment.
Improving on an idea or customer experience is orders of magnitudes cheaper than developing a new idea.

While I am comfortable with the above risks, I am finding that this model does not fit well with a great deal of potential entrepreneurs' comfort levels and technical skills sets. This got me thinking about opportunities that might exist for people outside my technical world.

Business Ideas that are Less Technology Reliant

One of the biggest questions I get is, "How do I start a small business without having to learn the internet?" At first, this question boggled my mind. Initially, I thought that I was being asked how to start a business without having to learn something new. This is NOT what I was being asked. On further inspection, I found that they were really asking me: How do I start a small business while fully utilizing the skills I already have. My new understanding of what they were asking me made all the difference.

After thinking about this at depth, I realized that there are several businesses that could be completely self sustaining with minimal financial outlay and minimal technical expertise required.The could be:

Locally run: They would not require the entrepreneur to compete on a global scale.
Service based: They would allow the businessperson to provide services that a customer wants on a local scale.
Minimally reliant on bricks and mortar: While the economy has taken a dive, landlords have not gotten the message. They are perfectly content with leaving their properties vacant until the economy can fuel their requirements for rent dollars.
Outsource Proof: There are still businesses out there that cannot be shipped to China. Really, there are.

So Where are these Big Ideas?

Okay, okay. In the next few days, I will outline a few of these businesses that could be started in just a few days with minimal expense. I would love to hear more ideas from the readers, and most of all, I would love to hear your success stories with using these ideas or variants of such.

Addendum

As I complete the articles, I will list them here, so you can follow along with the home game.

Idea 1 - Salon Deliveries. Deliver supplies from brick and mortar shops to brick and mortar salons to save stylists time and money.
idea 2 - Diaper Service. Gather soiled cloth diapers from new mommies, and provide new, clean diapers.

Help us by Rating our Podcast

Sergio T. Ruiz — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:34:17 -0500

We really hope that you've gained something from listening to our podcast. Whether it be personal, professional, or technical, we put a great deal of time and energy into our podcast in the hopes that it makes your life easier.

If you have gained anything at all, we really hope that you'd stop by our itunes page and drop us a comment.

We'd love to hear from you!

Should Your Business use Targeted Advertising?

Sergio T. Ruiz — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 10:00:45 -0400

Some Background

Another call I get about once a week: can you help us get set up with Google AdWords? Wait! It Google AdWords costs money? Hmm.. Should we do it?

I get this call more than you'd think. A lot of times, I get this call after a company has run an AdWords campaign for several months (and a few thousand dollars). It's usually at this point where the company realizes that there is a little more to targeted advertising than they initially thought.

So, Should we set up AdWords?

Really, it depends. In order for this kind of marketing to be effective (because it is fairly expensive), a business needs to make sure that it has something to offer or something to receive from a visitor to this site. In most cases, there are two different things that a site might be looking to do: sell a visitor a product or service, or get a sales lead from them. Keep in mind that these ads are Pay Per Click. This means that you pay every time someone clicks your ad, regardless of they purchase status. You want to make sure that since you have paid money to get a visitor to a page on your site, you can make that money back.

Here are two examples of cases where AdWords makes sense.

Selling Goods and Services

In this case, a company sells a product. They may have a widget factory that sells deluxe widgets. In this case, they need to do some serious keyword searching to find if there is a market for deluxe widgets, and how much it costs to corral potential deluxe widget buyers. If deluxe widgets are a specialized enough item, and the internet marketplace is not flooded with them, they might find that they can cost effectively reach out to those buyers.

Once they have done this, they need to actively work on their campaign to do the following:

Optimize your site so that when a keyword search is captured, the user is delivered right to the page where they are able to immediately buy.
Find out which keywords are driving users to buy. You don't want to buy keywords that bring lookiloos to your site. You want people who buy to come to your site.

Collecting Leads

Qualified leads are valuable. For the most part, there needs to be a high profit margin to make these leads worth paying for, but this does happen every day. In order to use AdWords to gather qualified leads, there are a few things that you will need to do besides driving potential customers to a page. You can have them sign up for a mailing list, request more information, or fill out a survey. In all cases, there needs to be a "call to action." A task that a potential lead must do to prove that they are interested and worth pursuing.

Conclusions

Obviously, there is much more to this than meets the eye, and I have just skimmed over the top of the problem. This article really isn't a how-to as much as it is a "Should-I?" If you decide that your business is a good candidate for using targeted marketing, I would definitely suggest you enlist the help of a someone who has a working understanding of these concepts. Sure, you could learn to use the tools and manage your campaigns yourself, but you most likely have a business to run.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to drop us a line at any time.

Why You Should Learn a Markdown Language

Sergio T. Ruiz — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:50:24 -0500

Some Background

I get this call often: I was editing my site, and I messed it up! I can't see anything anymore! the site is broken!

Looking at their site, I generally find that they have left a ">" off one of their html tags, throwing anything that follows into oblivion. Usually, the page will render up until that point, and then it will stop. That is usually my first clue.

The other situation I find is that a client has spent a good deal of money on a web designer, and ended up with a nice looking site. When it comes time to add content to the site, the well meaning client will override (unknowingly) all of the styles they paid the designer to develop, and end up with a site that resembles a ransom note.

In both cases, the biggest rule that has been violated is that directly editing HTML and CSS as a content developer. There are a few problems with this:

HTML is not trivial to learn. As a programmer, it's trivial, but even programmers don't write HTML. We write programs that write HTML.
Making a mistake in HTML or CSS has unpredictable effects. Depending on the OS, browser, and the what you had for lunch, the page could render completely differently.
Directly editing HTML or CSS overrides the consistency of the design that your designer worked hard to build into your site.

There is a solution

The solution to the problem is to use a sort of shorthand for HTML generally referred to as markdown. Markdown takes normal looking text, and transforms it into compliant HTML. This means that you can develop your content as simply as typing it out, without getting any markup in your way.

There are a few different markdown languages you can work with. I won't go into too much detail on each, but the ones I am familiar with are:

Textile - This is built directly in to alot of web frameworks. You might find that you have this already installed on your system. If you are using wordpress, you can find a plugin here, that will allow you to start working in textile right away.
Markdown - I haven't use this one much, but I do know that it is compatible with just about everything.
Pier Sytnax - This is the language I am using now. Pier Markdown is used by the Pier CMS, and includes many other markups to add functionality to your site.

Ask your IT guy, or your webmaster to see if you can use markdown on your site.

So Show me Already!

Okay, here is what markdown will do for you:

Headers

One of the problems I see is that someone will build a header like so:

<h1>This is it!</h2>

This will not close out the h1 headers, so anything goes when it comes to rendering that headers, it's anyone's guess as to what might happen when this tries to render.

in textile, you would simply type:

h1. This is it!

and your text would render just fine.

Centering Text

I only include this for completeness sake. If you are haphazardly centering text, I would examine why you are doing this before you start doing it everywhere. You might either need to adjust your CSS, or forsake centering text. But here's how it's done:

In HTML:

<p style="text-align:center;">Centered Text</p>

in Textile:

 p= Centered Text

Lists

In HTML, a list looks like:

<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li><ul>
<li>Sub Item 1</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Item 2</li>
</ul>

Not only is this prone to accidents, it's hard to read. It's also alot of fumbling around to do when you're typing. Adding all this markup and making sure it's correct adds far too much complexity to just getting your thoughts out.

In textile, it would look like this:

* Item 1
** Sub Item 1
* Item 2

As you can see, it's much easier to read (and type!) the above. It's also less error prone.

Links

In HTML, a link to another site looks like:

<a href="http://www.codingforhire.com">Coding for Hire</a>

While in Textile, it looks like:

 "Coding for Hire":http://www.codingforhire.com"

Going Further

These are only very short examples, and this article is only meant to introduce you to the idea of markdown. From here, I will point you to a few other sites where you can see how to do more advanced (and far more efficient) things like tables, images, and links.

Textile Reference - From here, you can learn the whole of textile in just a few minutes.
Pier Syntax - If you are using PierCMS, this will allow you to get up to speed with their markdown.
Markdown - A full reference for the markdown system.

I guarantee that learning the one of the above systems (it should take no longer than an hour to learn one), will boost your productivity in HTML content development by at least 100%.

If you have done any of this, I would love to hear from you.

2011-01-23

sergio ruiz — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:11:02 -0500

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Fix Your Ugly Handwriting

Sergio T. Ruiz — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:03:24 -0500

The Backstory

A few years ago, I was reading another one of the trendy productivity books at the time, and ran across the call to purchase a label printer to label my folders in my filing system. Diligently, I did just that. I picked up a label maker at the local office supply place and went nuts.

I didn't even question why I was picking up such a gizmo, but I am guessing that it was to make sure I was able to read what was printed on the headers of the folders.

As I messed with the label maker, I realized that it was kind of a pain to deal with. It got jammed alot. It sometimes printed with bands in he letters. The keyboard was in alphabetical order, and not QWERTY. Messing with this, and messing with my piles of notes, I quickly found that I was putting a band aid on a problem that really should be dealt with directly.

The problem was, my handwriting SUCKED!

When I read my notes, my brain would struggle to decipher things that I had written only hours ago. It took far too much time to figure out what was going on with my notes. There had to be a better way.

The Fix

I decided that it was just too much work relying on all these machines to pick up the slack for my sloppy writing. I decided the best way to go about it was to bite the bullet and fix my writing.

The problem was, where to start?

Rather than trying to figure it out on my own, I decided to consult a pro. Not really like a coach, but find a book on fixing your handwriting. I searched around on Amazon, looking for a workbook type solution. The one I found was: Write Now: The Complete Program For Better Handwriting . I diligently worked through the book over the course of a few weeks, and found that my handwriting was totally transformed. It was easy to read, I was writing much faster and magnitudes more legibly.

Whereas I was reluctant to take notes before, because I knew it would be a pain to read them, I was now taking notes on everything because I knew it would be effortless to read them. I also started using a calligraphy pen (because it had such a broad nib) to make my labels, instead of fussing with a label maker.

I just looked back at my Amazon orders, and saw that I bought this book in May of 2007, and am still using its principles to have better writing.

Some Tips

Since I have adopted this about 3 1/2 years ago, I have found there are some tips that have made my quest for better handwriting more successful:

Use a good pen. Once you figure out how to write well, you can fully appreciate the design of a good pen. Try it.
Don't give up - the book may seem really simplistic. It will feel like you are in primary school again. Just stick with it. You only need to give it a few minutes a day.
Use a proper notebook - once you start fixing your writing, you will be taking more copious notes. Be sure to keep them together in something that looks nice and is functional.
Write some letters! - Since you will be enjoying your time behind the pen and paper, do someone a favor and drop them a hand written letter. Sure, it's old fashioned, but there is nothing wrong with that. It's good practice, too

Above all, if you decide to embark on the quest of fixing your handwriting, let me know how it works out!

Using OrgMode as a Life Manager

Sergio T. Ruiz — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:01:10 -0500

Some Background

For those of you following my series of articles on my current GTD system, this is the last installment in the series. I had to think about this for a bit, as I am afraid that the subject matter may be above and beyond the interest of the readership. I had to really think hard about it, but I think the principles of why I chose Org-Mode are sound.

I tried many different task based systems, including:

With most of the above applications, there is a mobile counterpart, which means that you can use them on your mobile device, and one way or another, sync them back to you desktop. I found that using these mobile systems sort of clunky, and didn't really fit into what I wanted. I wanted something quick, easy, and natural.

The Things I Didn't Like

By "tried," I mean that I actually used them in my daily work for a great deal of time. I didn't just work with them for a short time, and decide that they weren't my thing. I put some serious life work into them.

There were certain aspects of using them that I didn't really like.

I felt trapped by the GUI.
I couldn't move files in and out of the system easily.
There was way too much reliance on the mouse to get things done.
The systems didn't feel natural, like pen and paper.

Meanwhile, in chasing around the next best thing, I once again found that the best solution for me would be to use the old tried and true combination of emacs and org mode.

What I Liked

There are several things that made org-mode a natural fit for me. I have always been an emacs user. I use emacs daily, and am very comfortable using the myriad of shortcuts available. I found that orgmode presented me with some incredibly useful perks.

The ability to incorporate tasks anywhere in a document
The ability to write a document and export to tex and pdf immediately.
Adding and linking documents is incredibly easy
Generating a daily/weekly agenda view of things that need to get done is simple.
Changes made anywhere in the system are immediately global.
Best of all, the system works pretty much just like pen and paper.

The thing I was most comfortable with is that the system behaved much like a paper system. I could free form write notes and develop documents, and with a few simple commands, index, print (very pretty!), and get a detailed look at everything that needs to be done today, or during the week.

I use the Levenger Circa system, and one of the things that I really like to do is keep my documents printed out and handy. I use org-mode to print the agenda for meetings, then mark them up and update my GTD when I process these notes.

I also use org-mode for long term goal planning. Having access to a pretty printout for my notebook puts it in front of my eyes more often.

Some Caveats

One thing you should know up front about org-mode is that there is a steep learning curve. You must first learn your way around emacs. This could take some time. Then you need to learn org-mode. Once you have figured out org-mode, this shouldn't be too tough. Do keep in mind that I have been using emacs for decades and org-mode for years, and I am still learning on both systems.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a tutorial on org-mode, I can point you in the direction of some excellent resources.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at any time.

Some Places to Learn More

The Org Mode Website - This is the place where org-mode lives. Lots of great stuff here.
The Tutorial Page - This is a clearinghouse of great tutorials and videos. They are not super beginner friendly, but you can get through it if you pace yourself.
Intro Screencast - This is a great intro level screencast. Even if you are a current org-mode user, I would suggest watching it to get even more out of org-mode.
A More advanced GTD example - Once you are comfortable with the tools, this is a great read. Take special note of the author's use of refiling.

Other Free Form Systems

The productivity booster for me with org-mode is the ability to freely type and document my thoughts and ideas without the clutter of an imposed system. I have found two other systems that would work for a user without the severe requirements.

Taskpaper

I have never tried it, other than looking at the website, but it does look like it would handle many of the tasks that I use org-mode for. It looks like it's missing the task scheduling functions, but this might not be a deal killer for you.

Workflowy

I just ran into this the other day, and it looks like the online counterpart for taskpaper. I went through the tutorial, and it looks very promising. Good work, guys!

Workflowy: A Quick Look

Sergio T. Ruiz — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 10:00:13 -0500

Super Simple List Management

Yes, I promise I will get to my usage of Org-Mode this week, but I ran across this on MakeUseOf.com earlier today, and I thought it was something those of you looking to streamline your workflows should definitely take a look at. Watch the video below, then head on over to Make Use Of's full article for a complete overview of the program.

For those of you who are familiar with such things, think of Taskpaper, for the web.

I am still wondering how they are going to fund this project, as it's definitely worth spending a few bucks on.

If I wasn't so involved in Org-Mode I would definitely give this a spin.