Tag Archives: opportunity

5 Tips for Starting a New Job

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Charlie B

In my last post, discussing how to reduce stress related to work, I mentioned that I have recently been offered a promotion, which brings with it a host of new challenges and opportunities. Along with the positive, comes a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in Career Satisfaction | Tagged career satisfaction, motivation, opportunity | 1 Comment

Conventional Wisdom Will Kill You

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Charlie B

I heard this phrase at a creativity seminar, and it caught my eye. Conventional wisdom exists to help mitigate risks. In business, we often use conventional wisdom to reject ideas quickly, but this can be a critical mistake. Some high … Continue reading →

Posted in Bootstrapping as Method | Tagged awareness, building expertise, entrepreneur, opportunity | Leave a comment

Modern Day Careerism

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Charlie B

A lot of people talk about starting their own business. A small percentage of those people actually work towards it, and an even smaller percentage actually manage to start something. Why is this? I was recently in a meeting for … Continue reading →

Posted in Career Satisfaction | Tagged career satisfaction, entrepeneur, inspiration, opportunity, small business, startup | 2 Comments

SaaS and New Business Models

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Charlie B

My previous work on gaming came to a standstill several months ago. Many things happened to cause me to abandon my foray into the gaming market. Project Darkstar was shut down by Oracle. It has since re-emerged as Red Dwarf … Continue reading →

Posted in Bootstrapping as Method, Startup Challenges | Tagged opportunity, planning, product design | Leave a comment

Indy Game Economics 101

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Charlie B

I recently entered the Indy gaming market, a crowded market if ever there was one. I liken being an Indy game designer / programmer to being a first cut author, except without an entire publishing industry looking for hot talent. Imagine being an author and getting your first book put on Amazon for download, or included in an online store along with millions of other titles, many of which have name brand recognition, thousands or millions of dollars in marketing spend backing them, or a lower price point (free). Your book is new, it touches universal themes, the writing is solid, and the characters alive. Still, it is useless unless people see it and buy it. How is such an author to make enough to feed the family?

New Direction: Gaming

Posted on September 27, 2009 by Charlie B

To be perfectly honest, when I started this blog, I already knew that my current direction was towards creating multi-player games with niche appeal for profit. It came to me one day a few months back as I was brainstorming and looking over a few ideas I had for my next venture. The problem I usually came up against was the problem of passion. Most ideas made good business sense, but weren’t very interesting from a lifestyle perspective. I always asked myself: Do I really want to be working on this for the next x months and then supporting it for y years if it is successful? Generally the answer was no, especially when I did a bit of market research.

Turn Every Opportunity Into A Business Opportunity

Posted on August 29, 2009 by Charlie B

How can you start to evaluate every day occurrences for opportunities? Like most things, it starts with looking inside yourself. Getting to know your own strengths and weaknesses (and not the kind that we might state in a job interview, but the real “I’m scared of this thing inside of me so I’ll pretend I know everything and argue with anyone who says differently” kind of weakness). There are three main places to find long term opportunity: The people you interact with, the events you observe around you, and the random everyday happenings of life. Continue reading →

Posted in Bootstrapping as Method | Tagged awareness, building expertise, opportunity, relationships | 2 Comments