Anatomy of the Hall of Records

These days, I've become a kind of poster child for chasing your dreams and doing what you love. Once Justin and I figured out what we REALLY want to do with our lives I found it so liberating that I want everyone to experience this amazing feeling.

I started consulting to help people with their business plans and to be a general cheerleader for those that want to go in to business for themselves. I'm working on a seminar right now to tackle some of the issues that a lot of people starting out face.

I thought I might use the blog as a testing ground for some of these seminar ideas, the first being, figure out what you really want to do. I think that the best results are yielded from a three step process:

1) make a list of activities from your past AND things you'd love to do (even in your wildest dreams)
2) from that list, make a list of some of the problems or needs of these activities
3) create new businesses by solving the problem or filling the need

The need can be as simple as your part of town needs a _____________ (fill in the blank).

When I asked Justin what he really wanted to do in life, he had already achieved his one true dream, which was to tour the world playing drums in a band (He toured Asia and South America with a top 40 band in the early part of the 2000's). He said that his second dream was to own a record store.

I asked myself the same question and said I always wanted to own a bar. I had worked in the bar business for 8 years and always found myself approaching the owners, picking their brains.

Now comes part two:
What are some of the problems with a record store? Well, for one, they are closing at alarming rates. The profit potential on a record is half of regular retail and a quarter of a restaurant profit. Simply put, a lot of stores can't afford to be in business.

So we came up with a solution. We needed an additional revenue stream in order to keep the record store afloat. By combining a record store with a bar, we can preserve the community and educational aspect of the record store by selling beer, wine, coffee and food. In fact, it will even ENHANCE the community feeling of the store.

I strongly believe that if you solve a problem or fill a need with your business, it gives you that much more motivation to see it through.

And the best part about doing this little exercise is that we figured out even more businesses to create down the road. We didn't stop with just a record store and a bar. We kept adding to the list and came up with four or five businesses that we didn't even know we had any passion for!

I can't wait to fulfill all of them and to help others along the way!!