janet’s advice for starting a new business on slate.com

http://hive.slate.com/hive/invent-your-future

“Inventing Your Future” on Slate.com

My single best piece of advice for starting a new business or remaking a career: Find the truth in everything. This is not a new idea. But when you think about it, this guiding principle applies to every aspect of starting a new business or remaking a career. Or other momentous undertaking. It’s a compass that continually helps you make adjustments to keep you on the path and point to what is true. If you’re reading this, maybe you have an idea for a new business, or an innovative approach to teaching, a discovery, or a story you want to write. This search for the truth is what keeps you going, as the days turn into weeks and months. If you’re honest with yourself, you can think clearly. Instead of lying awake worrying, you can sleep at night. It allows you to trust your intuition and to surround yourself with people who you can trust. Then risking everything; money, time, reputation, relationships and sanity, will all be worth it, no matter what happens.

One year ago, at fifty-one years old, I made a drastic decision to change careers and do something that I had no training or experience in doing. After thirty years of working as an illustrator for picture books, editorial and advertising clients, I realized I no longer loved doing illustration. And during the years that illustrators were learning Photoshop and making the switch to a digital style, I was raising my son and working part time making crafts for a national magazine. My freelance career had some wonderful moments but overall has been a bumpy ride. I’d been looking for illustration work, applying for jobs, considering going back to school, but at some point all those ideas fell away and one idea stood alone as the thing I was supposed to do. I began working on a toy idea which I had originally thought of fifteen years ago.

Newly remarried, my husband and I had bought a fixer-upper and I’d spent the good part of a year working on it. We were nearly out of money. We had no startup capital. Still, along with my husband’s confidence that I could do this, I felt sure that somehow we’d manage and everything would work out. I started asking those hard questions: Do I really have a good idea? Can I make this work as a business? I began on the adventure of creating a toy myself; working on the design, refining it, researching and testing materials, learning how to make molds, making prototypes, samples and packaging. Now the toy is ready to be made, and as I’m learning about manufacturing and figuring out how to do this next step, and I’m surrounded by people I trust, so it all feels possible.

Throughout this process, I found that being honest with myself and others kept me clear, open-minded and optimistic, even if I found myself admitting that I was afraid of failing, or worried about money, or knew that I didn’t have the answer to a problem.

Learn to ask yourself the hard questions. What is the right thing to do? Is this hurting anyone? Is this helping anyone? What is your motivation for wanting to start your business? Do you know your strengths and weaknesses? At the heart of wanting to start a business is the sense of wanting to making a difference, of having a life that matters and knowing yourself.