Taking a risk, making time to grow a new platform

Knowledge Collection Making a Living
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I decided to set up my own company, Flow Associates, in early 2006, with my business partner Mark Stevenson. This was partly a decision taken out of necessity, as I had resigned from a job and needed to pay the bills. My husband is an artist, so he doesn’t earn very much at all. Partly, however, it was a positive decision. I knew that it would suit me. I like to have freedom and flexibility. It’s important to me that I can choose my partners and clients on ethical grounds and compatibility. I can do excellent and rigorous work but if I’m less than fully motivated I can struggle to do my best. I’m not sure what I think of this movement but I do feel that my personality is absolutely fitting with the Wayseer type http://www.wayseers.org/

Over 6 years, we’ve done pretty well. We’ve paid ourselves less than we would have done in ‘proper jobs’ but have paid the bills and given freelance work to at least 50 people. We run the company in a lightweight way, working from home and using free tools as much as possible. We set up a branch in India, supporting Indian people to develop capacity to deliver cultural change and education.

However, there is a real tension, which I’ve sat on until recently, between a safe approach where you apply for tenders and deliver paid contracts for clients, or a more entrepreneurial and creative approach where you design really game-changing products and services and get them out there. I’ve dithered and faffed about taking a more entrepreneurial approach. I’ve never had enough time to really do it properly because I’m too busy servicing clients. Now, I’ve decided that we’re at such a pass in world affairs that I have to go for it with a platform called Flow Future. The hope is that this will not only reflect what we really want to do for ourselves but also tap into what organisations really need and are willing to pay for. It will take a lot of time and the trick is to make sure that all the time I’m spending on creative and domestic work, and on research and development, feeds extra value into this new offer.

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I know the feeling!

the trick is to make sure that all the time I’m spending on creative and domestic work, and on research and development, feeds extra value into this new offer.

I know just the feeling. It’s extreme optimization: trains rather than flight to get fewer disruptions and be able to continue working on your laptop while traveling; language courses on your MP3 player while working out; hanging out with nice people who also happen to send a lot of really interesting ideas your way. It worked for me, for many years. But now I wonder whether there is much left to optimize.

On the other hand, you seem to be better than I am at doing big, bold stuff in an unassuming way. How was Learning Without Frontiers?

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lean methods for creating a product that sell

The hope is that this will not only reflect what we really want to do for ourselves but also tap into what organisations really need and are willing to pay for
Since early 2011 I've been following the lean start-up movement. If you are not familiar with the lean start-up concepts: your hope is one of their core assumption: less guesses and more tested hypothesis on what the customers are willing to pay for

If you wanna know more I would suggest you to research the methods applied in the customer development phase:

  1. A brief introduction on the customer development phase
  2. a blog on customer development, lots of experience, look for the selected posts: http://www.cindyalvarez.com/
  3. another worthy blog on customer development: http://usersknow.blogspot.com/
  4. a book-manual summing up the cust dev phase (explained in the book at point 5)
  5. the first three chapters of the most-complete and practical book on the topic: Four steps to the epiphany. Good to have the complete pictures of all the phases but very long and detailed
Hope it'll be somehow helpful to the development of Flow Future and if you wanna chat about these topics or know how I'm using them for my product/service... I'll be happy to have a conversation on that: my email is higiacomo at gmail.com : )