Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Creative Nerve: What It’s Really Like to Start a Business

Note to self: Try not to need sleep, minor surgery or human relationships while starting a business.

I should have given myself that advice a couple of years ago, actually. Instead, I’ve relied on a policy of deprivation regardless of need in most cases, which does eventually backfire at the most inopportune moments – usually in my automobile, which morphs into a phonebooth, work station, lunchroom, vanity, attic, psychiatrist’s office, nap spot or cave on demand.  It’s like Harry Potter’s Room of Requirement: Whatever space you suddenly, desperately must have … it’s in the car! 

Someday, someone will invent an expandable, interlocking set of all-purpose rooms on wheels – like a telescoping office tower with plumbing – and right after the Geniocity webzine breaks the story, I’ll run out and buy two.

Parents know the car is the only real retreat they have left in a world full of clattering, trash-talking, text-messaging, belongings-scattering, iPod-blasting progeny. Well, ditto for entrepreneurs – I essentially live in mine when I’m not on the computer and once I get a laptop, my family may never see me again.

Entrepreneurs have to meet with so many people that they’re behind the wheel as much as traveling sales reps, no matter what their business is.  To economize on time and make my car-dwelling experience as aesthetic as it is convenient, I stock mine with all the necessaries of home and office. 

Scratch pads, paperclips, pens, phone charger, extra glasses, cheap calculator – all so obvious as to scarcely need mentioning. Also business cards, brochures, rate cards. I haven’t moved a tape measure and postal scale in yet, but I’m sure that’s next. File folders!

The mirrors are built in, thank goodness, but I also never move out of park without tissues, moist wipes and a standard bagful of emergency toiletries, as well. You can’t survive winter in my town without lip goo. And even if you never use the dental floss on your teeth, it makes a great clothesline for those unexpected items of laundry.

 A bottle of water (scoff all you like, tap tipplers) – replaced daily – and packets of almonds mean I’m never lunchless, though possibly under-flavenoided, and it takes only a few moments in the drive-thru for me to replicate a coffee shop in the front seat. Especially if I spill. (Extra napkins in the console compartment for the clean-up.)

A flashlight for security and re-reading the latest staff-plan revisions in parking lots on January afternoons. Maps, to back up the Mapquest directions to back up the GPS. A CD opener and an enormous range of tunes, because I never know when a meeting is going to leave me feeling like ”Death and the Maiden,” “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or ”American Idiot.”  

And a plastic knife. I guess I’d have a hard time using it to give myself that tonsillectomy I think I need, but just try sawing open a sealed aspirin bottle in the car without one.