Larkland Morley’s Professional Blog

From Lay-off to Business Owner

Here is a great example that I believe in so much. Don’t get me wrong there are risk but then in today’s economy there is a risk in finding and keeping a job too.

Read now – Former Nortel Employee

Funding your Startup Business

Haven’t posted anything for some time now, but this is an area that I have been researching a lot almost a year now.

I decided to check a few of those government funded groups to provide new business help and what I realize is that most times what they throw at you is the textbook. This is very much the case in terms of financing. They basically say go and talk to the bank. No creativity at all.

First of all even if you can get a good loan from the bank personally, its a not a good idea long term to do this. In general, its best to form a corporation and get business funding through that corporation.

Now to get to the point about Corporations and funding, one simple approach is to purchase an existing company.  Now, I am sure your question is; where should I get money to purchase a company since my goal in the first place is to get funding?

The company you will purchase will not have an established business as such but would have a developed credit profile generated by the existing owners. These companies are called Shelf Corporations.  The pricing could be based on the age and other factors like how much funding you can get right off the bat.

I am sure the nagging question. Whats the cost like for something like this? The price range from what I have seen is about $10K to $20K and that gets you a company with about $200K to $500K in funding which is most times a line of credit. Now you could get those numbers with personal credit but this is just the start for these guys, one group I know, provides a Shelf Corporation that gets you about $2M in funding within a 2 year period with not much additional cost. They also help you develop a business plan geared towards funding sources.

In the end, your focus would be generating the maximum $20K to purchase the corporation and then its smooth sailing from there. You may not have to use the money but with funding you have credibility to raise other funds to put your business in Top Gear.

I am thinking of people that lost their jobs recently in this economy, you could use this to fund a franchise business, services, software development or any business type that fits your fancy.

Check out this little write up I did on the topic – Business Funding Guide.

If you want more direct details on sources, let me know.

Wasting your time with Business Plan?

I had a shock tonight when I ran into a study that says that most times business plans are no use to getting funding from venture capitalist. Wow, this is earth shattering.

Why is this the case? It seem from what the study is saying that knowing the funders actually helps more with ultimately getting funding.

Here is what I summarize from this.

1. Focus on networking to launch your new business. Find out where VCs hang out and make effort to meet them and make bounds.

2. Still do your business plan as that would help you organize your business and convince you that the end game will be good. The exercise is necessary to have a viable business anyway.

You can read more about the study here.

Accelerating your Skill Development

What I can say for myself, is that I have been very attracted by technology to the point where I have made lateral moves in my career to the extent where I am senior in many respects but may not have held as senior a position as someone with my level of experience should have. Today, I will use the framework SFIA or Skills For the Information Age guidelines on general levels of responsibilities in any organization to explain my points.

In SFIA, you have 7 basic levels and each level has its own attribute. For example each would have: Autonomy, Influence, Complexity and Business skills for that level.

The general levels are as follows:

1. Follow

2. Assist

3. Apply

4. Enable

5. Ensure, Advise

6. Initiate, Influence

7.  Set Strategy, Envision

Notice this approach is not about specific knowledge at each level while that could be part of the overall competency framework. It does focus on how the knowledge is applied in each case regardless of your job family whether its software development or pure project management.

To the case about accelerating your career to the next level so to speak. Here is the challenge, you may very well, have great skills for level 7 but maybe stuck at level 4-5 in your career but how do you break the deadlock.

Here are some general ideas you could explore.

1. Research the level you are after and gain as much knowledge as you can.

2. Confront your Manager to set clear deliverables and rewards to match your effort going forward. Asking for tasks that would allow you to demonstrate certain skills.  Ask for feedback.

3. Find people at the level desired and develop relationship with them in order to learn how they go about work. This could turn into a full time mentor.

4. If your current job does not have any prospects, go for another company or department.

On the more personal side there many things you can do help your credibility on the relevant subject. Some of those I have are.

1. Start a blog to provide your opinion on the relevant topic. Link this your social networking profiles such as linkedin.com, facebook.com and many others.

2. Look for respectable training and/or certification in the relevant field. Some fields may not have certification per se, but a post-graduate course in the area could help.

3. Get proactive and talk to people on the topic in forums (online or in person). Maybe you could setup a mastermind group around the topic with like minded individuals.

4. Join online groups on the topic, then read and provide comments as appropriate on topics that is of interest to you.  This is also a great way to publicize your blog or website.

In summary, the whole idea of my post is to first find out what you want, then develop a plan to get it and of course execute on that plan. There are lots of ways to acquire knowledge for free nowadays I think what you always need is guidance so in closing, the best way ever is to have a mentor in the specific area of interest.

Now, a word of caution is that some mentors will teach you short cut ways that can be good in some ways, but what you want is to really contribute value not just have a position. There are lots of people in high level positions whom do not have the qualities we discussed earlier, however wearing your moral hat, you will succeed long term even it takes longer to get what you really wanted.

Again, not to lose this point, get a mentor or advisor.

The Emergence of Netbooks

I have been considering a netbook for my daughter to use for her general computing needs. I did not realize that things have changed so much in this arena. I guess sleeping at the switch.

Anyway, this article has some great insights on the trends in this space. Read here.

Humility always Win in any situation!

This will be a short blog post but had to mention since I ran into this great article on one of those high flying guys that have fallen. He made the right choice and humbled himself and I am sure it will be a change for the better for him.

Humility can go with confidence actually, it does not mean you have to be cocky to be confident either. Most times it means understanding any given situation, get the facts and present your honest opinion. How many times you deal with people that presents an opinion that’s wrong which they know but will not back down? This is where humility comes in.

Here is the article again – Enjoy

Looking at Social Media Ideas

Here is a great video that discusses some Social Media. Very informative.

Developing a business Plan

Well, plan to discuss a lot about business on this blog, since thats the mode that I am in right now. There is a lot of information out there that’s useful and can take you to the next step. Here is one from the SBA.

Re-Cap on my Exit from Nortel

I had several posting on my last few weeks at Nortel and the week after. Since my previous blog hosting got complicated. I will just do a quick update on what happen and looking to the future.

1.  I have been with Nortel exactly 10 years, in fact today would make it 10 years exactly since I started March 15, 1999.  With Vacation from my layoff date I can definitely count these days easily.

2. Early February, 2009, Nortel announce that they would discontinue the mobile WiMAX program which is where I was posted. We were all put on notice to find a job since there is very little room on the 3GPP/LTE project.

3. Consequently, Verizon, Nortel’s main customer for LTE decides they wanted to announce which vendors will build their LTE network. At this point for most employees, this was not optimistic as very unlikely a company would work with another company in bankruptcy. Eventually, the news was not good, so even the chances of getting a new job on that project was in more danger.

4.  The afternoon of February 25th, we got the expected e-mail to meet with the WiMAX director in one of the bigger rooms the next morning. At that point, it was clear that things are basically done from my side at Nortel. Fortunately, with the usual pretending from management that they had a selection process, I could tell it was not working out for me so I had taken home all of my valuable items and clean my desk.

5. February 26, was finally my last day at Nortel.  Based on the Bankrutpcy decisions that Nortel made. There would be no severance and your notice day is your last day totally. At the end of that day you are deleted from Nortel. Incidentally, I was leaving at about 3:30 or so to get home. I went to the main building to catch the bus home.  Missed the first bus so I had to wait for the next one and I wanted to use the rest room but I did not have a badge anymore, so I ask the security to let me walk up to the rest room. He claimed I could not be allowed except with an escort. Of course, it was sad for a company you work with for 10 years, but you know I am bigger than that.

Summary

Its about 2 weeks now since I leave Nortel, and while there is the threat of economic challenge of no severance, a small Employment Insurance payment, I feel so relieved actually. I have accumulated very good skills in life and do believe that I will do well and much better than I was doing there.

The interesting thing is that the bad news continues for Nortel and instead of trying to renew management to re-build the company, they are fighting to pay bonuses to the same people that brought it down. It seem we are living in an era of real greed and selfishness. Its not just Nortel, you can see the behaviors on Wall Street which is why the world economy is not doing well.

I have to reflect and say that this is the point where one has to look forward to the messiah as we are going through a period of real rapid ethical and moral decay. Only the messiah will have the credibility to lead this world and restore some sense of love in society.

My prediction which is unfortunate is that Nortel will not come to much actually.  I am hoping that the remaining employees will get some relief with a take over or something but the indications for the company is not looking very good.

I will still be a Nortel person in spirit as I really do not plan to work for anyone for 10 years again. The focus will be building a business and moving into a more independent approach to life with a plan of course.

More interesting post will be coming very soon…

Transferring Personal Skills to Business Building

Traditional thinking would have us think that having a job working for someone is the basic essential of life itself. As we have seen in the last few years this model is changing rapidly especially in North America. Don’t get me wrong, you can work for someone and enjoy life to the fullest but there are ways to approach that scenario to make it more fulfilling too.

There are several ways to have a business. One way is to invest such as buying stock or a little more active such as participate in the strategy and significant part of the funding. The other option is to actively run a business and this can have different models to consider. Case in point is that you could be the Chairman making major strategy decisions while getting others to execute or it could be the case where you are a one man show.

In the investor type business approach, you could keep your regular job for the fun of it or you could now do some other activities while your investment continues to grow with the company.

I am planning to provide as much research as I can on the business building side of things and I have developed a new blog to cover most of this called the Business Start-up Guide Blog.

It could be much easier to start a business than you may think. For example if you are a technical professional, you could incorporate a company for $220 or more then seek technical contracts in the company name (lots of tax advantages). As things grow you could get others to help under contract while you look at more long term strategies. I will cover some of these scenarios in the blog.

One of the most sticky point is financing. I have a cool idea of how to get very good financing for your business through your company. Can’t wait to share that and I am testing it out as we speak.

Until next time…