DIY Business Association

By Amy Cuevas Schroeder

I just spent an incredible week meeting with my soon-to-be business partners and Nate Cooper of Reboot Workshop, creating systems for members of the DIYTogether Beta Group, pivoting with our web development plans, sealing a deal with General Assembly for our upcoming DIYTogether 2012 event, and here I am at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, thirsty for more entrepreneurial juice.

When it comes to creating a successful business, I can’t get enough inspirational quotes, stories and examples from entrepreneurship magazines, blogs and books (I’m at the 25% point with Steve Jobs, but can’t wait to read Collaborate or Perish).

I hope Entrepreneur Editor-in-Chief Amy C. Cosper doesn’t mind that I quote her column from the February 2012 issue (with Tazo founder Steven Smith on the cover) before the content’s been posted on entrepreneur.com:

“It’s a constant challenge to define what makes an entrepreneur, an equation that is more art than science….

An entrepreneur creates something where there was nothing. You cannot buy your way into it. …

Think about the word entrepreneur. It is no longer captive to business schools and business books. It has evolved into something much more meaningful. It is the spirit of how we approach things—anything.

Being told you are an entrepreneurial thinker is always the highest form of compliment. It’s akin to saying, ‘You are taking a very creative and innovative approach to something.’

It may sound odd, but at many universities, musicians, scientists and accountants are now being educated on how to think entrepreneurially within their disciplines. Which at the end of the day makes things very complicated at the editorial headquarters of Entrepreneur. —@EntMagazineAmy

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Follow me/us on Twitter: @diybusiness @amyschroeder

Facebook.com/diybusiness

By Amy Schroeder

I’m so glad I found a copy of the October 30, 2011, New York Times Magazine in my apartment building’s paper recycling bin this morning.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have landed on “The Lynda Barry School for Drawing Spirals, Confronting Demons, Learning to Sing, Being Terrified and Maybe Becoming a Capital-W Writer,” by Dan Kois.

Lynda Barry teaching at Miami Dade. We pulled this photo from thenewyorktimes.com. (Photo by Colby Katz)

On the eve of the release of her Blabber Blabber Blabber (Drawn & Quarterly) the first in a 10-volume, 30-year retrospective series of her work of producing Ernie Pook’s Comeek for alternative weekly newspapers, she is reinventing herself as a writing teacher.

Wait, scratch that—she is now a creativity guru, and it’s totally working.

Barry is taking an anti-fancy pants approach and catering to “bartenders, janitors, office workers, hairdressers, musicians and ANYONE who has given up on ‘being a writer’ but still wonders what it might be like to write.” In other words, she explains, she’s taking an anti–Jonathan Franzen approach.

Famous writer politics aside, we’re particularly fond of Barry’s interest in where ideas come from, because her goal is to help people tap into what she considers to be an innate creativity. In the Times piece, she explains:

“Kids don’t plan to play,” she told her class in the first day. “They don’t go: ‘Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It’s gonna be a three-act.’ ”

Narrative, Barry believes, is so hard-wired into human beings that creativity can come as naturally to adults as it does to children. They need only to access the deep part of the brain that controls that storytelling instinct.

Barry calls that state of mind “the image world” and feels it’s as central to a person’s well-being as the immune system.

Cutting to the chase, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could get her to speak at a DIYTogether Conference in 2012?

We think so, too, so we’re going to email her right now. If she says yes, we’ll post about it.

This lit magazine’s art direction makes me want to get busy and do stuff

By Amy Schroeder

MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine has been making cool concepts and covers for years, but the last few issues are really doing it for me:

MAKE issue 10

MAKE issue 9

By Amy Schroeder

“Be a sponge. Curiosity is life. Assumption is death. Look around.”

Pretty cool words from the leader of Nike.

In fact, the entire Fast Company cover story about Mark Parker—“The World’s Most Creative CEO”—is one of the most inspiring articles I’ve read in a while.

In a way, Parker is a perfect role model for creative entrepreneurs. As a former marathoner who souped up his sneaks DIY-style in college, Parker joined Nike in 1979 as a footwear designer and product tester. Over the years, he’s moved up the ladder and led a number of innovative campaigns including the Nike Air Michael Jordan brand and a series of limited-edition artist-commissioned shoes by artists like Futura 2000.

In 1980, Nike grossed $270 million. Speed up to 2010, and Parker is largely responsible for the company’s earnings of $19 billion. Not bad for someone who likes to talk about running with waiters and hangs out with designers, eh? “A lot of people I hang out with are creatives,” he says in the September 2010 Fast Company profile, saying that he’s attracted to people who are intense and obsessed with their art. “I like the eccentricity, to be surprised.”

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Amy Schroeder, the founder of Venus Zine, also is the founder of the DIY Business Association. She reads business magazines and books like some people devour romance novels.

Daniel Pink’s Free Agent Nation is still a helpful read, even nine years since its release

By Amy Schroeder

Feeling a little down in the dumps about the freelance way of life?

It happens to the best of us.

For a good kick in the entrepreneurial arse, you might want to read Free Agent Nation, Daniel Pink’s first book, the one he published before the best-selling A Whole New Mind (another great read for creative types). Free Agent Nation covers the ups and downs (but mostly ups) of being an independent employee, free of working for the man or the woman. The gist of the book, or movement, really, is to figure out the best ways to navigate the free-agent scence creatively and efficiently—with the help of others. After all, as a freelancer, you may be free, but you’re definitely not alone. In fact, more than 25 million Americans are self-employed.

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself was published waaay back in 2001, but it’s still—and, perhaps even moreso—relevant in 2010, considering the current state of corporate layoffs.

Here are the top four quotes from the book that have stuck with me:

“The essence of free agency is to distinguish one’s self from the group—to craft one’s own unique style of work rather than adapt to a standardized form.”

“Full-time independent contractors earn an average of 15% more than their employee counterparts.”

“Independent professionals are twice as likely as W-2 workers to have personal incomes above $75K per year.”

“As a free agent, your network is your safety net. The vaster it is and the tighter its connections, the more likely you’ll be able to survive.”

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Amy Schroeder, the founder of Venus Zine, also is the founder of the DIY Business Association. She’s crazy-obsessed with entrepreneurship.

Illustration by Jason Schneider for The Atlantic

Busting your balls to sell ads on your site? Investing all of your energy into blogging and social networking?

Maybe these aren’t the solutions to online success for your DIY business. In “The Closing the Digital Frontier” in the July/August issue of The Atlantic, writer Michael Hirschorn gives a timely overview of the Internet’s history.

He also makes a valid argument for why traditional online content is on its way out and why the app model—“where content is more likely to be accessed via smartly curated ‘stores’ like iTunes, Amazon, or Netflix”—is completely changing the Internet financial model.

In the article, he says, “The Web will be here forever, but it will hardly be the delightfully free-form open plain of the early years. Its colonization was inevitable.”

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What say you?

Can you envision your business fitting into the app model? If so, how? Post your comments below or on the DIY Business Association Facebook discussions board.

So this is about the best piece of business advice we’ve heard all day: Emotions and business don’t mix.

DIY businesses in particular are bound to think with their hearts—we are the passionate entrepreneurs, after all—but just think of some of the damage you could do.

Read more down-and-dirty advice in Neil Patel’s “10 Mistakes You’ll Make When Starting a Business.”

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WHAT SAY YOU?

Should DIY business owners think with their hearts or with their heads…or both? Post your comments below or head over to the DIY Business Association Facebook page to sound off.