What’s a Free Vector?
I’ve done a lot of interesting things in my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a solid education from three good universities, travel extensively around the world and live and work overseas for extended periods (Korea, the U.K and France), and enjoy a professional career as an attorney and business executive in some pretty interesting places doing some pretty interesting things.
Before embarking upon (yet another) career change, I took time to reflect on what motivates me personally and professionally. I wanted to do something that I was passionate about — something that I enjoyed doing, where I had at least some modicum of control over my work/life balance, and where I felt I could put my skills and experiences to good use. I’ve worked in law, business and education, with big publicly-traded companies and small start-ups, in the U.S. and abroad. Was there a common denominator to my admittedly schizophrenic career path?
What I discovered is that I like building things.
I enjoy the experience of new challenges and learning new things, and applying what I have experienced and learned to the next new challenge. I also found, through my stint as an instructor at the University of Washington Extension Program, that I enjoy sharing my experiences with others, so that they (and I) can hopefully derive some benefit from my past successes and mistakes.
Which brings us to Free Vector. One of the lessons I have learned over the years is that building a successful business involves a little luck and a lot of hard work — a blend of art and science, of soft skills and process — that can be learned and applied to increase the likelihood for success.
Lately I’ve been thinking of the “science” of business. I think there is an apt analogy between physics and business, where inertia describes your current state, trajectories are plotted through analysis and planning and a thorough understanding of the market opportunity, and the application of force (in the business world, mostly a factor of time and money) creates the velocity to achieve the desired results (trajectories, velocity and force are all described by vectors in physics, which is how I came up with the name).
Fortunately, you do not need to have a degree in physics to grow a successful business. However, a solid understanding of some basic principles and methodologies, coupled with passion and hard work, can greatly increase the likelihood for success.
When I was developing the curriculum for the strategy and business planning class at the University of Washington, I was struck by the lack of a standard text, or even consistent definition, for business development. Certainly there are excellent resources out there for developing a business plan (Rhonda Abrams guide, The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies, now in its fourth edition, is probably the gold standard here http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Business-Plan-4th-Strategies/dp/0966963563), and there are numerous case studies from the Harvard Business Review and elsewhere that can be used to illustrate key concepts, but I was hard-pressed to find a comprehensive text that treated business development as a separate and distinct discipline, like finance or sales and marketing.
What I’ve found is that business development (and by analogy, starting or growing a business) requires more breadth than depth. You need to know a little bit about a lot of different disciplines — sales, marketing, basic contracts and negotiation skills, finance, project management — and hopefully have some depth, experience and subject matter expertise in one or more of these areas. Industry knowledge and a passion obviously helps, as do strong interpersonal and communication skills.
I don’t know anyone who has the depth and knowledge of all of the areas required to build and run a successful business by themselves; I doubt in fact that such a person exists. What is important is finding the right people to rely on for information and experience that is outside your comfort level, or to put it another way:
- Know what you know,
- Know what you don’t know, and
- Know who to trust for the things you don’t know.
I know that I have a wealth of experience over a broad variety of topics (breadth), and that I have some deep expertise in some areas (depth). But I don’t have deep expertise in all areas. As such, with my own businesses and when and as needed for my clients, I often rely on trusted subject matter experts to help analyze and recommend courses of action for those areas that are outside my comfort zone.
My vision with Free Vector is to provide my clients with the resources, tools and expertise to help them understand how to articulate and realize their own business objectives, by bringing breadth and/or depth (not always my own) to the unique challenges of each client, in the capacity of a trusted advisor.
