This week, I’ve been looking for some next steps, some new possibilities to explore and try to find opportunity. I’ve been examining resources and tools and industries, trying to understand how they all work. I’ve been listening to podcasts from successful entrepreneurs, financial gurus, professional mentors and life coaches. I’ve been talking to friends and family about what they’ve seen or heard or liked. Then I noticed a trend: my natural instincts had taken over and, like I’d been trained to do, I’d just been collecting data.

Don’t get me wrong, data is important. In fact, it’s absolutely critical. To try and do something well, maybe the best, I truly believe you have to fundamentally understand it.

But this week, I’ve discovered I need to be a little bit more like Picasso. All of the information I’d gathered all week has left one major impression on me:

In our world today, if you have an idea, you can think it, draw it, print it, test it, mass produce it, market it, sell it and ship it within days or weeks, sometimes for less than the cost of the iphone you used to google “how to get a patent”… and probably without leaving your chair. We have cheap 3D printers, desk-sized CNC machines and lasers, and free online CAD software. We have thousands of capable manufacturers willing and able to make custom designed items in days at huge capacity, and they operate over email and take paypal. You can design custom packaging in minutes, brands and logos in hours, and drag-and-drop a functioning and secure webstore in a day or two, much of it for free or close to it. It is easier and more possible than it’s ever been to create a thing. I think back to my 4th grade classroom, with the often seen Walt Disney quote on a motivational poster “If you can dream it, you can do it”. Sure, cute for an elementary student, but this is more true in a practical, physical sense than ever before. Almost ANYTHING you can come up with can be designed and made quickly, well, and at a reasonable cost. As I continue to learn about the tools that are out there, I am blown away by the capability of our world.

Now having collected some more data, it's time to step out of my comfort zone for a while. I think it’s time to put my Picasso hat on, and look for something that no one else can see… I’m confident that when I find it, the world can help me create the way to share it. So this week, I’ll keep looking… not for more data or more facts or more tools, but for a real solution that only I can find.

The Adventure Continues!

The auction itself was fun, it had a good reasonable mix of furniture, tools, antiques, and household stuff. Pretty high quality items, lots of cool things to check out, and a lot of pretty good deals. After a week of pretty limited success, I was ready to be a little bit more aggressive and hopefully get some good items for resale.

When we got home, I did a little research on some of the purchases. The $1 random box of junk yielded some small wooden boxes and other little collectibles, but the coolest items were two small, very old mechanical pencils, one of which looks like it's made out of silver! Also, the bike rack I grabbed for $1 is a Yakima, a premium brand, and they are $200++ new, so I might be able to get close to half that used. I think the chairs were an ok investment, I think the set could be worth $150 or more. Of course, we will still have to see what I can actually sell them for (and how fast). I listed most of the items on ebay (small stuff) and Craigslist (large stuff that's tough to ship), and will be trying on the local Facebook yardsale site as well.

Hopefully, I will be busy selling all of these items this week and turn some good profit. In total, I spent $61 at the auction, a pretty good chunk of the current project budget. I need to turn some of this into cash ASAP!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the week, and maybe we can see some return on the investment soon.