Thursday, December 17, 2009

Where's Heath?


I currently have a boss who told us that her old boss used to always send emails to everyone when he was running late or out sick with the subject line "Where's Jack?"(replace Jack with the person's name). So now it's a running joke among our team that we use this when we aren't going to be around. I personally like it when I see this in the subject of an email especially when it's someone with whom I have a meeting scheduled for that day. But I digress.
So, you might be wondering: "Where's Heath?". Well, I'm right here and I'm sure you are there, or here, since you're reading this. My last posts discussed how I would be making an effort to be here as well sharing all the minutiae that was clogging my head...well, that was almost a year ago. Oops.
A quick update, or perusal of the web/facebook/twitter would tell you that I have been busy in the last year. Basically I have a very restless mind and I can't help but continually think of new products, new businesses, new ideas for the minutiae report, funny sayings, and ingenious ways to make millions - only one problem (according to my wife) - I never do anything about them. Well I didn't.
It was during one of these "Hey honey, I have a great idea" moments when she said one of the most pivotal things I have ever heard - "why don't you stop talking and do something already?!?" Oh, okay, I will. So I did. Soon after my last post in the minutiae report I found a really neat product for restoring the lenses on automotive headlights and decided that it could be a viable business concept - that of restoring headlights on cars.
You see I had a very common problem on my 1997 Honda Civic, one of the headlights was yellow, cloudy, and foggy looking and no matter how hard I scrubbed on it at the car wash, nothing would clean it. Until I mentioned this problem to my friend and car pool companion at the time. He just happened to have a dad who was a chemist and had invented a product and process for headlight restorations. He was running a distribution/service side "hustle" with this product and asked if I wanted to volunteer my car to be used as a demo vehicle when he went on his next sales call - um yes! Well the results were great and I mentioned to him at the time that I thought there was a big demand for this type of niche service company - he agreed - and I told him if he didn't live near me that I would want to do it. He chuckled.
Not long afterwards I used this idea as a project for my Marketing Strategy class (I'm getting my MBA currently and only have 2 classes left) which was a big hit and everything I discovered proved to me that it was a very viable business. Guess what, he got a job transfer and his "side business" suddenly became "my business". In a nutshell I have started 3 companies in the last few months and am starting a new one over the holiday break. I will thoroughly detail the entire process over the next couple of postings (in segments) including what I have learned, how I started a business in Colorado, which businesses I started, what they do, how I'm learning to market and how I'm coping with it all.
In the meantime you can check out my website for the headlight restoration company, Lumina Headlight Restoration, at www.luminaheadlight.com and let me know what you think. You can also follow me on facebook and twitter (LuminaHeadlight, exampleMKTG, and zot717). Oh, and by the way, how did the restoration work on my car's headlights? I know it's small, but look at the photo below and let me know what you think! (before on left, after on right).

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