This is a continuation of an entry I posted yesterday, examining the lessons I've learned over the last year of trying to teach myself business topics, specifically so that I can hopefully start a new commercial arts center here in Chicago next year.

The government is your friend. Being in the arts as I have over the last 16 years, I've tended over the years to see the government mostly as irrelevant at best, sometimes dangerous at worst. One of the great pleasant surprises of the last year, though, has been discovering how legitimately great the Small Business Administration here in the US really is, and how (at least here in Chicago) they really do want to help Capraesque people like me (with an idea and a dream, dagnabit, and, well, not much else).

Depending on the quality of your local office, and of the time you can afford to the internet, the SBA can be a wealth of not only pure information a small-business dreamer needs (especially statistical market information you would normally pay hundreds of dollars to access), but also a sounding board, a place where people with much more experience than you won't laugh at your ideas, but rather help you realize them. Plus in certain offices (like, again, Chicago's), the SBA will often partner with organizations like SCORE, so that simultaneously you can also get retired corporate executives to critically look over your business plan, sometimes even volunteer to sit on boards or be listed as consultants. I encourage all of those who dream of owning a small business to turn to their local office at the very beginning of the process.

Have the right attitude. That is, no attitude. Sure, pointers to resources and books are great, as are the opportunities to converse with peers and mentors. But what about the emotional process we go through when deciding at a later age to switch careers, to start a new business? If you're anything like me, you might start the process with a bit of fear, and a bit of defensiveness. One of the things, in fact, that I learned early in the process to do, was to let go of a lot of this fear, and to accept that I was starting over at something I didn't know a lot about.

It's like David Allen says, I think, in his popular Getting Things Done system: that great things can happen when we reach a "mind like water." I've had wonderful and really instructive experiences over the last year of my life, simply by entering certain situations admitting that I hardly know anything that's being discussed, and that I have something to learn from everyone there. I'm of firm belief that the self-taught business education will always go much smoother when you take this attitude yourself.

So thanks, Heath and the staff of FC Now, for letting me contribute to this year's BlogJam. I look forward to reporting back in a year from now, hopefully with news of my wannabe small business actually getting ready to open.