Inspirational day today. Was actually quite exhausted today – and running on low energy. But, despite that has a very inspirational conversation with Gerry.
One of the things that I have been doing poorly on is that I have stopped thinking BIG! Last months, with full focus on accounting, and the necessary details – I have stopped looking at my BIG goal and BIG plan. Of course, all of the work we have done so far has been focused on moving to the BIG things BUT I personally found the vision and big thinking more elusive.
So, few things came to bear on me this week. First, iWeekend event where I was a mentor on Friday (and a lot of fun) and discussion of growth of RedStores.com
How so. Well, in iWeekend I listened and critiqued some 15 startup ideas from young budding entrepreneurs. Just listing to some of the wild, crazy, silly and cool ideas gave me ‘juice’ to feel this startup mode.
Another was that I watched Social Network movie – and remembered the days when I was there on the keyboard, much like Mark Zuckerberg coding and building things in code.
Another was discussion with Gerry about where we can take RedStores and what we can do with it. Truly – the ideas we are refining now are an accelerated vision of the business plan – and the strategy we are planning (content and ecommerce blend technology) is something to be truly something to get excited about.
And so, with all, it really hits me that I REALLY need to fund this business. In some way, if I am to face reality, is that I have been somewhat scared to go and get funding. Why? Well – it would mean I would have to deliver not just to myself but to others. I know I can deliver but the cost to deliver can be personally very tolling. And so, if I DON”T fund it, I truly have no pressure – what I have – with the optimization of last month will be running quite well. So, in a way, I’m building up to the big effort that it will be when funding comes on board, the work that will be required, the time, etc. Heavy load.
But also exciting. And fun. And challenging.
So, I’m now starting to look at perhaps isolating PearlsOnly from RedStores – and creating RedStores as a startup. Much like in iWeekend, creating a new corp entity for RedStores and funding it – without return expectations for 1 or 2 years. I’m thinking of dropping in a HK company and a service company in China. Investment would come into the HK entity BUT expectations and funding would be fro at least 2 years of no positive returns. I could fund a big part of this out of PearlsOnly operations and only bring on the piece I’m missing via investment.
Not quite sure what, but there is something very appealing about this structure.
Some interesting things that would come out of this, is that I would potentially re-org PearlsOnly to be managed on its own with its own GM – and myself dedicating 90% of effort into RedStores. With accounting system coming on board – this is very, very doable. There would be some issue with shared services, but I think very doable.
Anyways- this is somewhat of musings for now – but I’m finding this concept quite appealing.