Thanks guys for reading and commenting on my posts. It means a lot to me.I heard this morning on the news that the US lost another 80,000 jobs in March. Thats added to the 50,000 lost in February. Wow! Thats a lot of jobs. So now its more important than ever to start a new business. Any business is good. The food business is good but tricky. But if you hit a winning formula, you have a block buster. It seems you might have a bit of an edge if you have a chocolate business. Ive discovered that a lot of people are passionate about chocolate. (I always knew that but its recently been driven home from our interaction with the chocoholics of the country.)I attended the Beer and Wine Festival here in Portland last week looking for a great Stout for my Chip and Ale Brownie Shotz. (Currently Rogue Chocolate Stout is the leader, but if you have other suggestions, let me know. Ill send you free samples.) Lo and behold, I found a chocolate company right in the middle of the whole thing. Very nice lady. She has collected many unique and exclusive chocolates and has tastings and pairings. The site is at http://www.tastechocolate.net . I like to promote other businesses as much as I can right now. Another product thats really good is at http://www.somethingsweeeet.com . Actually, they have lots of products including brownies. You might think it odd that I would promote another company that has a similar product. But I dont see anyone as competition. If you consider that there are more than three hundred million people in this country alone and I would say at least half of them eat some sort of dessert at some point during the month (probably chocolate), that creates a huge customer base. Theres room for everyone.A couple of comments I would make about Gwens post. I think a lot of people who start businesses think, Ill start a chocolate business because I like to make chocolates or Ill start a car repair business because I like to repair cars. I think you should start a business to start a business, no matter what service or product it creates. There are a lot of similarities between businesses, any businesses. Starting a business should be about starting the business, not what it does. The less you can do in your business, the better it will succeed. Business is about setting up a series of systems that work together to produce something, (goods or services, doesnt matter). Its about working ON your business, not IN your business. (If you just want to make chocolates, work for Godiva or Sees or any of the dozens of other chocolate makers. Youll save yourself a lot of headaches.) Because of that, you can find lots of support. A couple of agencies that are available to everyone are the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Both of these offer business classes and seminars in starting and developing a business. But more importantly (at least for me) they helped in expanding my network. Also, look at joining the Chamber of Commerce in your town. Here its called the Portland Business Alliance. Again, its about mixing it up with people.As far as someone stealing your idea, I think sometimes thats an excuse to not get your business going. Ideas are one thing, a full blown business is another. One can come to you in the middle of the night in a flash, the other takes months and even years of concerted effort and generally great expense to achieve. Thats what makes an idea valuable. Even having a finished prototype is no guarantee of having a successful business no matter how much time and money you put into it. Of course you have to have a great product (or service) but thats about the system of quality control. So when you start your business, think in terms of integrated systems. Design your business so it is self sustaining and needs as little input from you as possible. Then when you have that one up and running, start another. Start as many as you can. We have at least 130,000 jobs to fill!

One thing Ive learned about a start up business is that there is a disconnect between production and sales. You either have too much product and cant sell it or you have too many sales and cant fill them. It can be very nerve racking but I think its fairly par for the course. Especially when youre manufacturing a brand new product like I am with Brownie Shotz. If youre buying your product, the same thing holds true. How much do you buy so that your not left with too much or too little inventory. Service companies are a little easier because you obviously don't have to contend with product.I just hired a new sales rep who is really good. Hes been keeping me hopping trying to fill orders. But now I have cash flow issues. Its usual for items to be sold at net 10 or 15 or some similar time period. When youre on a real shoestring like I am, it can be very difficult to keep all operations running smoothly. So you have to take it one day at a time and sometimes, one hour at a time. But weve all lived long enough to know that things change. Thats the only constant; change. So you have to keep at it. No matter what. If you keep honestly working at it, it usually changes for the better.By the way, Brownie Shotz are now available at:Camas Fresh Produce in Camas WACin-Sational Memories in Aberdeen WABonnie's Wine and Gifts in Prosser WALloyd Athletic Club in Portland OR (it's my gym and where my Brownie Shotz taste testers are)J Cafe in Portland ORThe Chart House in Portland OR (catering)Flossie and Maude's in Lake Oswego ORI do a lot of design work for people (logos, etc) who want to start businesses and some of them say, But what if I fail? I dont think that if you start a business, theres any way for you to fail if you keep plugging at it. You might not have the right formula for success yet so you have to try different things, sometimes starting over from scratch. But even if you start over from scratch, you learned some important lessons from the previous attempt (or attempts) so its really a continuation of the old business. I think it goes to the heart of being an entrepreneur. No matter what new business you start, you carry some of the old business lessons with you. After all, were really all entrepreneurs, (at least if youve ever earned a paycheck). The busboy sells his services to a restaurant to get money to live on. (I dont mean to say that being a busboy is the lowest job but name 2 famous busboys.) The only difference between him and the CEO of the top Fortune 5 company (is there a Fortune Five, I wonder?) is magnitude and attitude. If the busboy decides to learn from his work situation and grow, he may start his own restaurant. Thats the neat thing about this country. You can only be kept down if you keep yourself down. No one can tell you that you cant start a business, no matter how many times youve failed before.Think of the importance of starting a business. Its very hard to start a business totally by yourself. Oh, you might have to start alone at the beginning, but even then, you probably have to use some materials or services offered by some other businesses. That creates jobs even if not in your company yet. And then, before you know it, you need outside help to deliver your products to market. So you hire the kid next door whos going to school. As long as you keep plugging away at your business, its going to grow. If it doesnt, then you rework your business plan until it does. Soon, youre creating significant jobs.Right now theres a lot of concern about recession. Lots of people are getting laid off. People need jobs. Where do most of the jobs come from in this country? According to labor statistics, from small business. Where do small businesses come from? From entrepreneurs.The other important thing about starting a business is the very uncertainty of it. You can perfect youre business plan until the cows come home but until you actually mix it up with other people, (your customers, your employees) you never really know what might happen. Mysterious forces seem to take over and connections are made that wouldnt have happened if you hadnt started your business. You make new discoveries, learn new things, meet new people and there you have the butterfly effect. And none of it would have happened if you hadnt started your business. So quit pussy-footing around and start youre damn business! And if youve started a business and find it tough, suck it up and make it work! What else are you going to do with your life?The time is good to start a business. Even if the economy is bad, even if you dont think you have the resources, even if your not sure of what youre doing, start. I received this article the other day. Seems relavent. http://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/SR-1037C_intuit_future_sm_bus.pdf This blog entry is dedicated to Carol, my number 1 (and only, I might add) fan.

Terrific! Someone out there has encouraged me to continue my story (thanks Carol) so thats enough for me.Well, after the first blush of starting a new business wore off a bit, it came time to figure out how to really make Brownie Shotz a going concern. For the first few months, I kept baking brownies in my kitchen, refining my product as I went along. I made a few sales but it was very evident from the start Id need help, especially in the enrobing process. Hand dipping brownies was tedious and very time consuming. I figured there were two options for full scale production, either set up a bakery myself or find a co-packer. I preferred finding a co-packer like my Beer Chip friend had done but I couldnt find anyone that had both baking and enrobing capabilities under one roof.In May, a friend of mine I knew from Fizzy Fruit had also become a consultant for the SBDC and told me one of his clients had found a commercial kitchen for lease. Maybe it would be possible for us to share a space, he suggested. In my Gung Ho frame of mind, I was all for getting the space. But as we started looking into it, we found there were too many problems with the space itself and much of the equipment was too old to operate properly. So after a couple of months of back and forth, it was decided that it was not a viable option after all. Fortunately for me, I didnt have the necessary funds to get the place on my own or I probably would have and been strapped with a huge overhead lease payment every month. It was then I decided that not having a lot of money to begin with was not necessarily such a bad thing. Id just have to be more creative.Another friend suggested that instead of looking to find one company that could do all the production, I divide it up and find one company to bake and one to enrobe. Duh! Why didnt I think of that! Sometimes you just have to find someone to listen to you so you can get your problems out of your head and look at them more objectively.And sometimes fate takes a hand. Just about that time, the ladies I was going to rent the kitchen with called and said they had met a commercial baker who had two huge ovens and he baked products for Sysco. He was looking for other companies who needed baking facilities on a per project basis and he had bakers that needed to keep busy. That was perfect.Then my friend at the Food Innovation Center called me and said she had arranged a tour of a local candy maker. I asked if I could go with her and we toured this amazing place that had a huge enrobing line and they also did private label products. So there it was. I had my production facilities set up. By this time, it was November. (Time certainly flies when your trying to start a business!)As anyone knows who has ever tried to organize even 2 people, much less 2 independent companies, it can be very time consuming. Scheduling conflicts, mistakes in production (totally my fault, by the way) and other unforeseen time eaters cropped up so it wasnt until the end of February that I finally had all the kinks worked out of my system and I could see how my production line would work. After one more mishap (again totally my fault) the first 36 cases of Brownie Shotz rolled off the line. I was able to pick them up from the enrober the Thursday before we were supposed to leave for the Oregon Chocolate Festival on Friday. Pretty intense. That was two weeks ago and the beginning of the sales and marketing of Brownie Shotz in earnest. I was afraid to make too many sales before I got production set up but now I can produce as much as I need so I can fill orders of any size.Now that Brownie Shotz has been born into the world, I have to nurture it and make it grow. My resources are few right now but my expectations are high. Ill continue with what Ive learned so far in my next blog.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Brownie Shotz and I wanted to mark the occasion somehow. I thought I would relate my adventures thus far. (I wanted to do this yesterday but I got too busy). So anyhow, one year ago (the first day of spring) I had dinner with a friend and one of her clients. The client (whom I hadn't met before) had started a potato chip business several months earlier. As he related the story of how he started, I became more and more interested. Instead of having an old home recipe or a passion for potato chips in general, he told of how he had been watching a segment on the Food Network show "Unwrapped" about how Kettle Chips developed its flavors.He said he was drinking a beer at the time. As he watched, he thought to himself, "I bet I could come up with a potato chip flavor." As he took another swig from his beer, he had (as Donny Deutsch would say) an "Aha" moment." BEER CHIPS ! That's a good name," he thought to himself.He immediately went to see if the domain name was available, and lo and behold, it was! He immediately registered the name and went on to look it up in the trademark registry. It was available there as well so he grabbed that."So," he related, "in about 15 minutes and a couple of hundred dollars, I had my intellectual property."He decided to continue the exercise and the next day found a company somewhere back east that co-packed for the snack food industry. He contacted them and told them of his idea and wondered if they could create a couple of samples for him. Sure enough in a few days, a small box of samples appeared at his doorstep. He was in business.As I sat there listening to him, I began to search my memory files for an idea. Now I've been a designer for a long time and keep ideas filed away for possible future use. One idea I had had many years before when I was designing a lot of premiere parties and corporate events in Los Angeles was to create some sort of brownie sampler. The caterers I used to work with would often have little bite sized brownies of various flavors on their dessert tables. The idea kept recurring to me anytime I would have a brownie or see a brownie through the years. (The idea first occurred to me back in the late '80's mind you). Now it was my turn for an "aha moment".As I walked back home from dinner, my mind started formulating the idea of a brownie sampler. I had just come off a gig where I did branding and identity development for a company called Fizzy Fruit so I had learned a good deal about the food industry and what it takes to get a food product to market. Concept was king I had learned so I decided to come up with a catchy name for my new company. "BROWNIE SHOTZ" seemed pretty good. I would end it with a "Z" because I had learned from the Fizzy Fruit experience that the Trademark people won't give you a trademark on words that can be found in the dictionary.When I got home, I nervously looked up "BROWNIE SHOTZ.COM". To my surprise, the domain was available. I immediately registered it as well as Brownie Shotz.info, .net, .biz as well as Brownie Shots, with an "s" and the attendant dots. I also registered the name with the US Department of Patents and Trademarks.The next day, I went to my friend at the Food Innovation Center in Portland to get her advice. "Go home and bake." she recommended. So that's what I did. Over the next several days, I developed my recipes and came up with 3 flavors."These are great," she said when I went back. "They would be even better enrobed in chocolate." she suggested. "Plus it would extend their shelf life" That's very important in the food world. So I went to a local candy supplier and got some coveteur chocolate. That's when Brownie Shotz was really born. Now, I had a concept and a product. All I had to do now was figure out how to produce it on a commercial scale.But that's a story for another time. Right now I have stuff to do for Brownie Shotz. Let me know if you want to hear more about how I'm developing my business or if I'm just typing to hear myself type.By the way, if you read this Donny, I could use a little of that "Deutsch effect" you talk about!