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

Riding it out. As the economy gets grimmer and grimmer, I’m moved to wonder by what brilliance of timing it was that I decided to start a business in 2008. Investors are zipping their pockets shut; consumers can barely afford food and gasoline; companies of all kinds have slashed their budgets.

Hardly a great time to be selling advertising and creative work such as art. 

And yet, I may have less cause for worry than many business owners. At only six weeks old, Geniocity.com hasn’t grown enough yet to require much overhead: no rent, no full-time employees, few regular monthly costs. Our big expenditures tend to be somewhat elective - design work, legal fees, promotional stuff.

I believe my company can get through these bad times by being extremely careful about the rate of our site development and retail expansion. We may suffer somewhat from our inability to grow as fast as planned, but I don’t think we’re in any real danger. With our bare-bones budget, Geniocity.com should to be able to hang on until policy, politics or the sheer passage of time cures our national financial crisis.

But that doesn’t mean the crisis doesn’t scare me. And we all have more to worry about than our individual enterprises – from bank lending practices to weaning ourselves off oil, there’s an awful lot that has to change before the economy can truly recover.

So what I’m planning to do to help Geniocity.com survive is basically what I would have done anyway, only more so: Take things slowly; stay within my means; choose next steps very carefully; and rely on my own legwork and creativity. The next few months aren’t going to be much fun for any of us, but like any challenge, this economy will force us to think and invent our way out of trouble.

By the time things turn around, we may find that we haven’t just survived – by coming up with creative solutions to our problems, we may actually have leaped past our original plans and expectations. 

And no matter how incrementally Geniocity.com has to evolve, we’re planning to be your source of news and ideas on all that innovative thinking and leaping.