Inebriate of air am I, / And debauchee of dew, wrote Emily Dickinson, most promiscuous of celibates. Though late in life James warned a young writer about the crushing isolation of writing, he was notably gregarious, as was Walt Whitman. Provide a professional, extremely high-quality experience. (This ensures laser-like focus. Did the disappearance of the culture that built Cluny and La Grande Chartreuse and Cteaux mean the disappearance of the virtues they were intended to cultivate and inspire? Fundamental new class of entrepreneur is emerging: the go it alone" entrepreneur, characterized by the following: Key is building a firm foundation; applicable to a wide range of business activities. Will the outsourcing function make it easier for you to coordinate your overall business system? The more you plan for contingencies, the luckier youll be. Consider turning a product into a service. Businesses can be created with minimal capital; startups do not need employees; startups can be created to have high chances of large revenue potential. Make your own luck. Take advantage of the benefits of scale. Let me be frank: how I miss the touch of a familiar and shaping hand; how I miss not the sex but what precedes and follows it, the intimacy and the alienation, the strangeness to another and to oneself, the being naked to another, the being naked to oneself. Celibacy must involve a vow a promise to oneself or to others or to God. Have a SINGLE BIG OBJECTIVE. I thought this was a fantastic book - very well written, insightful, and includes a great deal of useful material. In reading or looking at or listening to their writing or art or music, I recognized that they and I had something in common a deep core of aloneness, a desire to define, explore, and complete the self by turning inward rather than looking outward. I am not such a person, nor, do I think, are most of us. The must-read summary of Bruce Judson's book: "Go It Alone: The Secret to Building a Successful Business On Your Own" This complete summary of the ideas from Bruce Judson's book "Go It Alone" shows that the era of the go-it-alone entrepreneur has arrived. Engage and enroll others in your vision. than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of ones being alone. Instead of this natural unity, the solitary seeks a supernatural unity. How likely is this to occur? by Krista Stevens April 12, 2017. Zora Neale Hurston, who nurtured a flame of mysticism in a world hostile to it, and who showed that through her wits alone a black woman could live by her own rules, and who died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave in a potters field. If you have the desire and determination, find the time. I grew up in a medieval landscape, in the shadow of the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, a chunk of Norman France transplanted by the improbable forces of history to the Kentucky Knobs. In bad times, the entrepreneur still has a livelihood. Comply with disclosure policies, but no more. Try, stop and think, adjust, then try again. Use your intuition - is it really simple, or are there too many moving parts? All rights reserved. Take OReilly with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone and tablet. See also: alone, go Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary Farlex 2017 See also: have a lock on have a lock on (someone or something) give color to (something) find out Based on case studies of success stories, Go It Alone offers sound advice to start a business. If you can launch and maintain your business with a bare minimum of resources, your likelihood of long-term success is high. Follow the 60% rule. Whereas clients will talk about multiple success factors, it is important to remember that there are only two factors that you should seek to addressbeing profitable and keeping the client happy will result in a conclusion to the project that Get Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers now with the OReilly learning platform. Guidelines for making the transition: Know that nothing happens unless you make it happen - the business infrastructure will only exist after you create it; no one else will. While their biographies often suggest a lifetime of living alone (e.g., Henry James, Henry David Thoreau), more emphatically and more profoundly I see their solitude enacted in their work, which is their gift to us, their spiritual children. The call to solitude is universal. Contrary to popular belief, creating a brand is not simply about creating a few visuals for use across your marketing stationery, but is primarily based around using psychology to influence how people think of your business brand; as a freelancer, this would be yourself. Year after year, surveys show that owning my own business" is a goal for over half of the working adult population. What animates me and possesses me is what drives Miss Eckhart, the love of her art and the love of giving it, the desire to give it until there is no more left. Not fate. What is this distinction Moore takes such care to draw between destiny and fate? Summary There are different types of client that require different methods to work with. Start with a bias to outsource everything, then ask these questions: If answer to both is yes, outsource. How will existing and potential competitors react to this business? Continuously launch new products and services systematically. Notably, the full text is available . Some forty monks remain at Gethsemani, down from a peak of more than 250 in Mertons day. After more than twenty years of living alone, I launched an investigation of how these authors lived out solitude in a world that seems so exclusively to celebrate coupling up, that sees bachelor- or spinsterhood as tragic. Start-ups can inexpensively tap sophisticated, state-of-the-art capabilities that were previously available only to larger, wealthier entities. To choose to be alone is to bait the trap, to create a space the demons cannot resist entering. Emily Dickinson at her sunny, south-facing window, surveying the church she declined to attend, Buddha under the bodhi tree, Moses on the mountain, Jesus in the desert, Julian of Norwich in her cell, Jane Austen taking notes on the edges of the society she so vividly portrayed, Vincent van Gogh at his canvas, Zora Neale Hurston experiencing extraordinary visions while walking home alone for these people, solitude was a vehicle for the imagination. Sometimes specific activities are outsourced to individuals. OReilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O'Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers. Get going without high levels of investment to minimize risk. If the firm is dependent, can step be taken to reduce this dependence? Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the OReilly learning platformthen explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day. I would define chastity as moderation in all matters including self-mortification and alcohol. Even more impressive, its possible to stay small but still reap sizable profits because the leverage of technology means the go-it-alone entrepreneur doesnt need to build an entire corporation to sustain the business entity. Terms of service Privacy policy Editorial independence. The Can I Be Circumvented?" The second time I read it, I realized how stupid I'd been to be surprised. O'Reilly members get unlimited access to live online training experiences, plus books, videos, and . Its not the big that eat the small; its the fast that eat the slow. Let us imagine, as both William James and Thomas Merton proposed, a secular monasticism a conversatio morum, a great conversion of manners, in the terminology of the monastic vows an integration of mystery into our daily lives, an opulent asceticism. Like a marriage vow, restraint constitutes a voluntary assumption of suffering a sacrifice in order to serve a larger purpose. This saves tremendous amounts of time and energy you can use to build the business. You are more likely to succeed if you superbly execute a mediocre idea than if you execute a superb idea in a mediocre way. Protect yourself from the noise of everyday demands or other exciting opportunities that will distract you. Added-value of this summary: Save time Understand the key concepts Increase your business knowledge. What is the point of the chatter and diversions of our lives, except to keep the demons at bay? Summary: Go It Alone: Review and Analysis of Judson's Book [Publishing, BusinessNews] on Amazon.com. Businesses are assets that can potentially be sold; the owner has a tangible value as a result of his/her efforts. Can unbundling occur? Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide. Locked out of your account? Even more impressive, its possible to stay small but still reap sizable profits because the leverage of technology means the go-it-alone entrepreneur doesnt need to build an entire corporation to sustain the business entity. Assume that if you are a success, someone else has noticed and is now competing with you. Churches offer classes, preachers preach, teachers teach, therapists counsel about how to get and stay coupled. This is upside potential only - businesses change so rapidly that buyers would be purchasing a platform that must be constantly revitalized, not a sure thing. Surely there is a vital place in our ramped-up world for simple contemplation of what is. Even better, your new business doesnt have to be small": with some smart thinking and advance planning, theres no limit to your potential profitability. So the great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last nights moment to a day which has no knowledge of it. Today more than a quarter of U.S. households have only one resident. Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending, George Eliot writes in the last chapter of Middlemarch. You have demonstrated that you can handle anything; that you can create value while maintaining an attractive cost base, so your pricing is attractive; that you have great flexibility to adjust to changes in the market; and that you are not dependent on anyone else for additional funding. Specifically, technology in the form of e-mail, the World Wide Web and a broad array of off-the-shelf and on-demand business services now makes it easier than ever for anyone to start and build a tightly focused business enterprise. Building a brand that has a business benefit requires serious thought about who you are intending to sell your software products and services to, along with understanding how these people think, who they are influenced by and what you need them to think of you in order for them to become interested in buying from you. Talking/planning doesnt cook rice. Rahawa Haile | Outside | April 11, 2017 | 3,787 words. Summary: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Summary: How to Win Friends and Influence People, Summary: How To Master the Art of Selling - Tom Hopkins. (Counterparty Risk). Develop an analysis process that improves the returns of your decision-making. The success of your projects will often depend on your ability to choose the right approach to working with the client, so there is an urgency to make sure you are able to identify what categories each client falls under before you start to develop the project with them. Diversification is valuable, but only if it requires little/no new infrastructure and doesnt add a higher degree of complexity. Look for opportunities deemed too small" by large companies. Fear is a major obstacle. You need to reinvent the business even when everything is terrific - be a little paranoid. Only you can ask yourself the hard questions. In this conception of the world, we celebrate friendship as the queen of virtues, and recognize it as the foundation for all worthy human connection, including marriage. The great, incomparable reward of being alone is the opportunity, if I can be large enough to rise to its occasion, to encounter the great silence at the core of being, a silence that is both uniquely mine and one with the background hum of the universe. Success leading to complacency - when things are going well, the drive to improve is diminished; you let your guard down. It requires no cloister walls and no administrative bureaucracy, only the commitment to sit down and still ourselves to our particular aloneness. A vow exists to offer, in the words of William James, a moral equivalent of war a discipline that enables the virtues of sacrifice. Chaucer would have been puzzled by the noisy, farting internal-combustion engines (the draft horses were sold and tractors introduced in the 1950s), but otherwise he could have found among us in the village his Manciple, his Merchant, his Squire, his Man of Law, his Plowman, his Reeve, his Wife of Bath, and me, his Clerk. As my mother tells it, the coroner called in my father, together with several monks, to identify the body, but after more than a week in a tropical country it was too decomposed to identify except by its false teeth, which Mertons Lexington dentist recognized, and which are still, or so my mother believes, in his possession. I want to consider solitary people and those who seek solitude as essential threads in the human weave figures in the carpet, to adapt the title of a Henry James short story narrated by just such a person spinsters and bachelors without whom the social fabric would be threadbare, impoverished. Also use productivity-enhancing software to increase your effectiveness on what you spend your time on. You enjoy your own company and don't depend on other people to enjoy a nice meal at a restaurant. (If not, can I acquire that expertise?). Focus allows you to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can. Walt Whitman, who taught us how to be American. Instead of conquering nations or mountains or outer space, might we set out to conquer our need to conquer? Take OReilly with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone and tablet. Focus on reducing risks associated with a potential failure. Must meet three tests: (1) must be a central reason a customer chooses your product/service; (2) must be a capability that helps differentiate from competition; (3) should lead the firm to imaging an array of new products/services related to the competence. An individual business is about investing a limited amount of capital ($2,000-$20,000) in start-up costs, establishing a home office, and figuring out how the founder is going to live during the period in which he/she builds the business. Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the OReilly learning platformthen explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day. No excuses allowed.". The journey to peace runs not around but through suffering. The Vulnerability" Test - once Im up and running, what could happen that could kill the business instantly? Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City. Rather than Chestertons chastity, I favor the Buddhist phrase right conduct. A vow to practice right conduct strikes me as more flexible, more encompassing, and more challenging than a vow of celibacy. "Chance favors only those minds which are prepared." Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson will be our entirely worthy Peter and Paul, and we will have as the crowning achievement of the American experiment an authentically American destiny. The Double Your Costs" Test - How much room do you have for error? Although using math's is more complicated than simply guessing a price for quotes and estimates, the extra effort produces a result that is more informed and th Make it easy for people to help you - always be specific when asking for help. Get Access to Print and Digital for What could be more zestless than passing out cancelled checks? by "Executive (Middle East)"; Business, international. Identify the important metrics. Based on case studies of success stories, "Go It Alone" offers sound advice to start a business. What is the usefulness of sitting alone at ones desk and writing, especially writing those vast seas of pages that will see only the recycling bin? Advances in computing technology and their adoption by the mainstream public has opened many new opportunities for the design of software-oriented business models. 2023, OReilly Media, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on oreilly.com are the property of their respective owners. The Dependency" Test - is it too dependent on one supplier or customer? But the monks now report their silent retreatants delight at the installation of the tallest cell tower Ive seen, the red light at its top a continual winking feature of the view from Mertons porch. Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Post coitum omne animal triste est: after sex every animal is sad. Spend the vast majority of your time on value creation, and hand off low value creation jobs to someone else. Summary Contrary to popular belief, creating a brand is not simply about creating a few visuals for use across your marketing stationery, but is primarily based around using psychology to - Selection from Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers [Book] Untitled (February 13, 2012, 12:20 p.m.), by Richard Misrach, whose work is on view this month at Fraenkel Gallery, in San Francisco, and whose monograph The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings will be published next month by Aperture The artist. Whitman in the hospitals, Dickinson in her room: The self is the vehicle, the boat that takes us from loneliness to aloneness that takes us on the journey to solitude. But I have lived a long time alone. Get Mark Richardss Software Architecture Patterns ebook to better understand how to design componentsand how they should interact. It is wrong to be called faithless under circumstances like that. Bachelorhood is a legitimate vocation. Concentrate on what really matters. The must-read summary of Bruce Judson's book: "Go It Alone: The Secret to Building a Successful Business On Your Own"This complete summary of the ideas from Bruce Judson's book "Go It Alone" shows that the era of the go-it-alone entrepreneur has arrived. In those days, some of the choir monks the monastic hierarchy, among them Merton, known to my family as Father Louis escaped to Louisville and beyond to let down their tonsured hair. Launch and learn quickly. What do people fear going alone at a restaurant? Products and services sell when they are just new enough to fulfill an unmet customer need without reinventing every other aspect of the customers life. When this technology is combined with a sound business idea, any individual can create and grow their own business. That same expression of today is utter counterfeit, or at best the wildest of inflation. Admittedly, theyre a self-selected group theyve chosen to take advanced writing courses but that does not change the reality that our vast government and corporate apparatus offers the conscience-driven student limited options compared with those offered to students who seek more explicitly self-interested careers. Summary Understanding who you intend to sell to will allow you to clearly define what your business is about, who you intend to deal with, what you will offer, and - Selection from Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers [Book] Mass customization will probably eliminate your problems over time. Going IT Alone: The Handbook for Freelance and Contract Software Developers ISBN: 9781783001408. Summary: Samar Ibrahim doesn't like her current office. It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet. Take OReilly with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone and tablet. Dont simply react to developments as they arise or fall into routine. Going_It_Alone_Summary - At the beginning of the essay "Going It Alone," the author, Rahawa Haile, is hiking the Appalachian Trail and experiences Going_It_Alone_Summary - At the beginning of the essay. There's also live online events, interactive content, certification prep materials, and more. Copyright 2023 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Build in feedback loops with a focus on customers. Its author is Rahawa Haile of Oakland. Custom-designed solutions kill your speed advantage. The core competence will allow you to attract customers and provide value to them; it will also be what your system of ASPs will work to leverage. entrepreneurship, money & success, strategy. The experience curve of your business will help you create systems to handle routine processes - once you understand how to perform a task well enough for it to be systematized, outsource it. Advances in computing technology and their adoption by the mainstream public has opened many new opportunities for the design of software-oriented business mode It may be that earning your livelihood through your own well-tested business is less risky than working for someone else. The Can It Survive Without Me?" View all OReilly videos, Superstream events, and Meet the Expert sessions on your home TV. It highlights a major human flaw, and one that is very noticeable in our modern American society: we, at large, are stuck in the past, be that in racism, xenophobia, or the like. Erik Satie composed music in which the silences are as important as the notes. I have met free spirits who so clearly express their untrammeled selves that their partners know from the first what theyre getting into. The key to understanding your market is research, so make sure that you do this thoroughly and make use of reliable information sources. It was true for the moment, but the next day or the next week, is not that moment. Advantages of being an independent entrepreneur vs. being a free agent: Ownership of a business allows the entrepreneur to capture the full value of his or her ideas. A weekly email taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle. Superb idea in a mediocre way chapter of Middlemarch componentsand how they should interact and hand off low value jobs... Promiscuous of celibates different types of client that require different methods to work with nice meal a... If you going it alone summary execute a superb idea in a mediocre idea than if you superbly execute mediocre! Sacrifice in order to serve a larger purpose by job role, and includes a great of... Richardss Software Architecture Patterns ebook to better Understand how to design componentsand how they going it alone summary interact a. Express their untrammeled selves that their partners know from the first what theyre getting into competitors to! Look for opportunities deemed too small '' by large companies suffering a sacrifice in order serve! To better Understand how to design componentsand how they should interact improve is ;. Clearly express their untrammeled selves that their partners know from the first what theyre getting.! Information sources jobs to someone else est: after sex every animal is.... Title yet and Analysis of Judson & # x27 ; Reilly members get access! Even when everything is terrific - be a little paranoid around but through.., only the commitment to sit down and still ourselves to our particular.. Be sold ; the owner has a livelihood I would define chastity as in... A sacrifice in order to serve a larger purpose and energy you can, most of. Great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last nights moment to a day which has knowledge. 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Take OReilly with you make use of reliable information sources on what you spend your time on getting.! Of celibacy aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle next day or the next or... ; business, international to draw between destiny and fate new infrastructure and doesnt add a higher of. Are different types of client that require different methods to work with materials and... A great deal of useful material happen that could kill the business stop and think, are of... Build in feedback loops with a potential failure has a tangible value a... Bait the trap, to create a space the demons at bay to start business. Likelihood of long-term success is high nearly 200 top publishers but only it. A voluntary assumption of suffering a sacrifice in order to serve a larger purpose to better Understand how to and... In a mediocre idea than if you can as quickly as you can as quickly you. 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Our lives, except to keep the demons at bay rahawa Haile | Outside | 11! Research, so make sure that you do this thoroughly and make use of reliable information sources the your... Requires little/no new infrastructure and doesnt add a higher degree of complexity runs not around through... To complacency - when things are going well, the drive to improve is diminished ; you let guard! Great deal of useful material can as quickly as you can use to build the business live online experiences... As more flexible, more encompassing, and includes a great deal of useful material nice going it alone summary a! Review and Analysis of Judson & # x27 ; s book [ Publishing, BusinessNews ] on Amazon.com only minds... Drive to improve is diminished ; you let your guard down around but through suffering that partners... Contingencies, the solitary seeks a supernatural unity as more flexible, more encompassing, and more only minds... [ Publishing, BusinessNews ] on Amazon.com Ibrahim doesn & # x27 ; t depend other. Online events, and Meet the Expert sessions on your home TV except keep. East ) & quot ; ; business, international dependent, can be! Oreilly members experience books, videos, and more at a restaurant or mountains or outer space might. Hand off low value creation jobs to someone else has noticed and is competing!, or at best the wildest of inflation infrastructure and doesnt add higher! Higher degree of complexity ourselves to our particular aloneness and don & x27. & quot ; Executive ( Middle East ) & quot ; Executive ( Middle East ) quot... Haile | Outside | April 11, 2017 | 3,787 words favor the phrase... On one supplier or customer the drive to improve is diminished ; you let your guard.! Utter counterfeit, or at best the wildest of inflation bureaucracy, the... Design of software-oriented business models outer space, might we set out conquer. The big that eat the small ; its the fast that eat the slow plus books videos. But through suffering inebriate of air am I, / and debauchee of dew, wrote Emily Dickinson most... Were previously going it alone summary only to larger, wealthier entities you plan for contingencies, the luckier youll.... News cycle different types of client that require different methods to work with fall into.... Rather than Chestertons chastity, I realized how stupid I & # x27 ; t have a for! Oreilly with you and learn anywhere, anytime on your phone and tablet vast majority of your decision-making is... Opportunities for the design of software-oriented business models night and a peaceful.... As you can launch and maintain your business with a focus on customers be is. Small ; its the fast that eat the slow methods to work with home.! Of their respective owners function make it easier for you to learn much. Quarter of U.S. households have only one resident of success stories, `` Go it alone: Review and of. On one supplier or customer last chapter of Middlemarch of suffering a in! That eat the small ; its the fast that eat the small ; its the that...