SENO

That’s a question I asked myself earlier this week, as I struggled to balance my daily work life with my burgeoning entrepreneurial life. I have to believe it’s a common question that entrepreneurs ask themselves at some point in the process of developing/launching a new business. For me, the question arose because my original idea has begun to grow and develop. In fact, it’s merging with another, separate idea that I had floating around in my head.

(Side Note:  I realize, of course, that it may be difficult to understand exactly what I mean, as I am still being exceptionally vague about what I’m up to. I hope you can understand and go with the flow for a while, because I don’t think I can reveal the concept until I have it firmly pinned down and am a little farther down the road.)

So, this morphing of my original idea into a larger idea is leading to some trepidation on my part. Having accepted a new, full-time job, can I really pull off the launch of an idea that is getting bigger? Does this “bigger” idea even make sense? Should I keep the “merging” ideas separate after all?

While I work on answering these questions for myself, I plan to continue my background research. Because my plan involves launching a nonprofit organization (that’s about as specific as I’m going to get for a while), I decided to find some helpful resources related to launching or finding support for a nonprofit. I’ll include a full list of what I found in my next post, but I wanted to point out one in particular:

Stanford Social Review Article on “Creating High Impact Nonprofits”

This article is a precursor to the book Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. I’m sure some of you are well aware of this book or own a copy. If not, however, this article is a great (and free) summary.

Next week:  Back on schedule, I will share some advice and insight I’ve received during my recent research and background interviews.

So, sometimes life gets in the way. I suppose most of you who read this can relate.

No matter how committed you are to carrying out a vision, sometimes you have to pull back a bit and take care of the day-to-day concerns (like paying the bills). I’ve been caught up in these concerns and I’ve fallen behind on the plans I laid out in my first post.

For me, the past few months have been a time of transition. Until April, I had been working at a job that took me to Baton Rouge four days a week. It was exhausting.

When I left that job, it was to begin contract work here in New Orleans. The idea was that working on contract would provide me more time to focus on developing my idea and launching the venture. Well, for a time, things were generally going according to plan (though the contract work kept me busier than I thought it would) and I was proceeding with caution. But then, a funny thing happened:  My contract work led to a full-time offer. A good offer.

While I certainly had to think about it, in the end, it was a no-brainer. I’ve been enjoying what I’m doing and the people for whom I’ve been doing it. I accepted.

Now, don’t take this announcement the wrong way. This doesn’t mean that my blog here is wrapping up after only two posts. That is definitely not the case. I’m proceeding with my “side venture” one way or another and that means I will still be stumbling through all the standard start-up stuff, conducting all the background research I discussed in my previous post, and posting about my various struggles and (hopefully) successes. I hope you stick with me and, if you feel so inclined, chime in with advice when you see the need.