For now JobFavors is unable to put together an old fashion media radio, TV and metropolitan newspapers ad campaign. Even if we did have war chest of advertising money, I still truly believe these generally aren’t good bets for small businesses like us. Instead, I’ve decide to take it to the streets!
                                                                                                                    Earlier this morning I witnessed an ingenious guerrilla marketing effort from Starbucks that included a gift card, a car, and a coffee cup.  The Starbucks coffee cup had been fastened to the roof of a car while driving in an area with high foot traffic.  Any pedestrian who was able to get the drivers attention and point out the cup on the roof would receive a $5.00 gift card to Starbucks.  Pretty cool idea.

This inspired me to think of several ways JobFavors could participate in such silly but effective campaign.  An idea which I personally will participate in is to dress up as a gorilla while wearing a JobFavors t-shirt for next two weeks as my daily attire.  Now I don’t have to worry about what to wear for the next two weeks!    

If anyone of you in the Los Angeles area happen to see a Gorilla wearing a JobFavors t-shirt handing out flyers, please be so kind to stop and say hello.

I will post pictures as they are ready. 

As many of you know, Jobfavors has only been around for a couple of months.  The entire team is excited about the future, and with that comes planning.  Typically, when I come across great ideas, I feel the need to share them with my friends and family.  Well, Jobfavors is now part of my family, and I will continue to share these ideas with our visitors.  I like to think of it as my favor for the day. 

A good friend recently introduced me to the works of Paul Graham (Paulgraham.com), an essayist who provides insight and advice on how startups can mitigate the risk of failure to achieve success.  I thought I’d share a few quotes that I found interesting.  

“If you’re going to spend years working on something, you’d think it might be wise to spend at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of going with the first that comes into your head.”

“Big projects tend to grow out of small ones.”

“One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there’s muck, there’s brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn’t pay well, for reasons of supply and demand.”

“When starting a company, never be ambivalent about your business. Going into business is like a hang-glider launch– you’d better do it wholeheartedly, or not at all. The purpose of a company and a startup especially, is to make money. You can’t have divided loyalties.  It’s hard enough to make money that you can’t do it by accident. Unless it’s your first priority, it’s unlikely to happen at all.”

When I first had the idea for Jobfavors, I had no programming experience other than converting photos from a jpeg into a format that suited my myspace page.  I knew nothing of Ajax aside from the fact that it makes web pages look more attractive; I certainly wasn’t a web guru, but instead was a guy in finance who really had a keen interest in the web industry.

Being stuck in finance kept my entrepreneurial ideas on the back burner. The only people who would hear my elevator pitches would be my girlfriend and brother, through almost daily phone calls.  It came to a point where I kept asking myself, what the heck do I do with my ideas?  How do I execute my idea?

I’ve realized that you do not need programming experience to get your idea and vision off the ground. If you can envision how your idea can grow into something viable, then you can put some kind of plan together, hire programmers, and concentrate on all the other aspects of the implementation aside from the actual programming.

To be honest, I got lucky by meeting a great programmer off a freelance site called www.scriptlance.com. It offers a platform to connect individuals who require professional programming or website design for their business with professional programmers.

Other ways to implement an idea is to post something on jobfavors; post a favor requesting people with technical skills who can help flush out your idea.  If you’re low on cash funds, offer equity.  You can also try LinkedIn.com to try to network with someone who is tech savvy.
 

Whatever route you pursue, you want to be careful not to get burned.  It’s vital that you perform the required due diligence: interviews, references, meetings, etc. are necessary.  Do everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your business idea.  Good luck!

Welcome to the newly redesigned JobFavors site! Please look around, we hope you will like what you see. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact us.