As an entrepreneur, you must be a jack of all trades and must be ready to do just about anything. If you feel certain things are not worthy of your time or are too beneath you, then starting businesses is not for you. It really is that simple. Here’s a short story that highlights what you, as an entrepreneur, should be ready to do.
This past week my two partners and I at VendorCity decided to change our plans and launch nationally instead of locally (we were going to start in just Boston and New Hampshire). For the most part, technically, this was not a huge hurdle because we had “sorta” planned for it but we had not spent any significant effort thinking the issue through. We knew eventually we would have to geocode this (put client’s in a region based upon their zipcode) but felt that we could do it quicker for now by manually by selecting cities in each state as the nearest “metro” area.
Well, there’s lots of good resources out there but upon closer examination we discovered that these ecomonic lists of cities and regions have significant gaps especially when it comes to geography. So, I had the distinct pleasure of spending my Sunday afternoon and evening going state by state looking at the major metro areas and then filling in the gaps with smaller, well-placed metros so that most people in that area wouldn’t have to drive 2+ hours to interact with a vendor.
Now, we could have just used the major metros and, for the most part, it would have served the vast majority of our users. But, for example, would we have been serving Keene, NH if we lumped them in with Boston, MA or to a lesser extent Nashua / Manchester, NH? Maybe, maybe not. But now they have a chance to look at vendors very specific to their area and can still add in those adjecent regions if they are willing and interested in finding vendors in those areas.
I shared this example because I personally found it very tedious work and is the kind of thing that drives me crazy….I just hate to do it. And, I could have looked at the task and said to hell with it, let’s just use what the US Census has for metro areas. And it would have been okay but it would not have allowed us to connect as well at a personal level with the largest number of people out there who really self-identify themselves based upon their area.
So, roll up your sleeves and be ready to get dirty because in the end, if you truly are an entrepreneur, you’ll love it.
