Doing Well By Doing Good, Part 8 of an Occasional Series

Looking for Direction?

For those thinking of making a change towards more meaningful work in the time of economic stress, perhaps my experience may be helpful. The essence of entrepreneurship is bootstrapping. I described in an earlier posting how I leveraged the only resource I had, my time and enthusiasm, to build websites for my business. I did the same to obtain technology resources. My first small business, Childs Capital LLC, was selected as the grand-prize winner in the sales and marketing category of the 2006 Cisco Growing With Technology Awards. This prize included $25,000 worth of Cisco equipment of our choice and we opted for a complete Voice Over Internet Telephony system.  We were the grand-prize winner of the Visa Business Breakthrough for Small Businesses, which provided a $10,000 grant for small business services. We won second prize in the Microsoft Technology makeover award, which offered a $25,000 package through CompUSA and a $25,000 package through Microsoft. We won the Web-preneur award from IBM and American Express, the SAP Small Business of the Year Award and the technology grant of the Amber Foundation.  Winning the Professional Development Grant of the Web Foundation allowed me to take a fully paid course on DVD authoring at the Sony Training Institute in San Jose.  Taking the time to write the essays in support of the applications provided the small business with much needed resources. Incidentally, the photograph here appears on our Intranet as a navigation aid. After putting all of this technology in place, I put it to use and developed a style guide for our Internet and Intranet. I took this photograph of the country manager for Land O’Lakes in Guinea as we pulled our jeep over en route to Labé from Conakry. Reading the sign was difficult; heavy rains caused the metal sign to rust. Why would you have metal signs in a rainy climate? Good question. The signpost was twisted 90 degrees at the bottom, so it would hard to tell the original directional intent. This photo was completely unposed and illustrates the challenges of working in that part of the world. And a great image to capture the meaning of looking for directions or navigational aids. That is what I love about bootstrapping – it really opens your creativity!