• In primary school, they push you to study hard – so you can get into a good high school.
• In high school, they push you to study hard, so you can score a high ATAR – so you can get into university.
• At uni, they push you to study hard, so you can maintain a high WAM – so employers will interview you.
• All through your career, they push you to work hard, so you can achieve a high performance review – so you can get that payrise.
• That payrise means the world to you – a newer car, a mortgage repayment – or an overdue holiday…

Animator Alan Watts, puts this in a great way…

If you find yourself on the net, reading random yearbook blogs, procrasting and wasting time; you’ve got to ask yourself – what are you doing?! Start singing and dancing – find that passion, and you will never work another day in your life!

I’m no life coach, but I wanted to hopefully inspire someone – (some random blog reading procrastinator), to do something that is special to them. Since starting and working at Rockstar full-time, I honestly feel like I’ve haven’t “worked” a single day. It’s such a fantastic feeling – every day is a school-holiday. Each day, you’re doing stuff – your hobby – doing something different that is really enjoyable inside.

Today (a Sunday), was spent all day finalising a Business Activity Statement. Hours of accounting boredom, pulling hair out, and spreadsheets, followed by hours of scrubbing, vacuuming, and polishing the studio. It’s now all finally finished at 1:51am!

The thing is, there have been plenty of other hard-working and not so fun days like today. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because it’s still somehow enjoyable! I think that it’s still enjoyable because I know that at the end of the day, I’m the person getting the end-benefit.

I don’t think starting a business is for everyone. You have to have a particular mindset and skill-set. But if it is for you – go for it. How do you know if it’s for you? Well you already know it inside.

In general, I’m a big believer that no matter what you do: the less your job task feels like “work” – the more you should do of it!

• iPhone m4r file
• Nokia/other mp3 file

Tell all your cool friends, and find out more info!

Choose the right apps

The yearbook is easy to create – but only if you use the right tools. There are many different apps you could use including Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Apple Pages. Because you’ll be working with large image files, it’s best to use a fast/powerful computer, using one of these programs which can handle large yearbook files.

If you’ve just started out creating your files and not entirely sure you’re doing the right thing, feel free to send the file to Rockstar to check – obligation free!

Use Online effectively

Where possible, collect information such as photos and reports online. It will save heaps of time. Rockstar can set up a free and private website for your project, where you can collect information from your community. Be in control, and chose the best photos and info to download into your yearbook application.

Online is great, but be careful with trying to do too much. Editing large images online is extremely frustrating and time-wasting. Anyone claiming to offer online publishing is kidding themselves, and offering something that is extremely limiting – you don’t have freedom about how you want your yearbook pages to look! It’s like trying to sketch a picture using a thick blunt permanent marker that is running out of ink!

Understand what a “page” is

When it comes time to getting a quotation for your project, it’s likely you’ll be asked how many pages you’ll require. A “page” is a single side of a piece of paper. Each page has one page number. A piece of paper has 2 pages on it – 1 on each side. So if you need 100 pages for your yearbook – you’ll have 50 pieces of paper bound together.

More random tips to come…!

Different types of businesses (continued)

1. Sell your time
2. Sell products you make
3. Sell products you don’t make, but value-add to

Category 1: If you’re passionate about doing a productive activity that you like, for example tutoring, gardening, being a make-up artist,then you are perhaps selling your time. When selling your time, you’ll have an opportunity to do for a living, what you love doing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. The best analogy I can think of is that you’ll feel like you’re permanently on school or uni holidays forever.

If you’re a little more excited about the act of making money using a system of sourcing and selling things, then you fall into category 2 or 3. One could argue that entrepreneurship starts when you’re in business, not to sell your time.

Sell products you make

You could be quite creative, and on the side create handmade pieces of jewellery, crafts, or food. Selling your creations at markets, stores, online, or via resellers are examples of the business practice here.

Sell products you don’t make, but value add

Value adding is where you create a new product or service by joining together other smaller processes. You might start off with a bread-roll that you source from a baker, … buy a series of small paper-boxes from another supplier ,… insert the bread in the box, …and there you have it – your new product: Bread-in-a-Box! yeah!!

If you’re excited about getting into your own business because you have that spark, but not terribly creative to make your own products or sell your time, then perhaps the best way to get into business is to find ways in the market to value add. Create new products and services, that give value to your customers, by joining together other products and services that your customer would not have done otherwise.

For example: To start up fashion clothing line, you don’t necessarily have to be good with textiles. By value-adding, you can source the production of textiles from a supplier, do something really special or unique to it via another supplier, then sell the end product as your own.

A great beauty of value adding is that you’re not selling your time. You’re selling other people’s time and therefore not limited to your 24-hours in a day – only by how much your supplier(s) can handle. Your profit margin is made in the value of combining the once separate items into one new product or service.

In this series of blog posts on starting your own business, I’ve discovered that I’m really bad at focussed writing. Compared to writing essays, blog posts can be really brain-draining. (or maybe it’s just me). There are a lot of things I want to elaborate on however in future posts:

• cash-flow and start-up costs: is it really an issue, or are you just making excuses?
• tips on starting out: working from home, what to buy, what not to buy, working another pt job
• not obvious – but important stuff on dealing with people: suppliers, customers, employees

You’ve spent 6 years slaving away at high school and finally you’ve reached the finish line. No more assemblys, teachers, or last minute rushed assignments!… Well, unless you go to uni.

The HSC/VCE is just the last final hurdle. You’ve worked hard all year, and you’re at final stretch before you’re finally free.

Finishing school is a huge milestone. It’s one of the many great steps you’ll take in your lifetime. But no matter where life takes you, you’ll always remember your high school days and miss all those things you thought you hated at the time. When your parents said that your time at school would be the best time of your life, they were absolutely right…. Unless, again, you go to uni.

Through all the hard work (and hard partying…) of the HSC year, a number of schools found the time to put together an awesome yearbook. It may have been a mad rush at the end to get everything together, but it’s always worth it.

Special congrats to all the schools who have worked with Rockstar this year to create their Yearbook. Some yearbooks we’ve seen so far include…

Arthur Phillip High School

Assumption College Kilmore

Bulli High School

Castle Hill High School

Cranbrook School

Elizabeth Macarthur High School

Kincoppal Rose Bay

Mac Robertson Girls' High School

Mordialloc College

Mount Waverley Secondary College

Muirfield High School

North Sydney Girls High School

Riverside Girls High School

Robert Townson High School

South Sydney High School

St Michael's Grammar School

Sydney Girls High School

You guys all did a fantastic job. Best of luck in the HSC/VCE and whatever the future may bring!!!

Why are you going to start your business?

You should figure out why you are interested in starting a business. It will usually be for a combination of these reasons:

• for an enjoyable job, to keep occupied
• to make money and be rich!
• for independence, the challenge, and desire to try

The relative importance of these three reasons will be different for everyone. It’s a good idea to question yourself and be honest, because different types of businesses are better suited to each reason.

Ways to make money

The process of making money effectively and relatively easily, could be done in one of two ways

1. make/do something once, and sell it at a high profit margin
2. make/do something once, and sell many of them, at low margin each

Being a tutor, a gardener, or any profession where you sell your time, can be considered falling under category 1 – you are selling your time. Being McDonalds and selling Big Macs could be considered category 2 – you are selling your ingredients to a Big Mac.

Of course, there are many more ways to make money. I would however argue that you’re wasting your time if you make/do something once, and sell it at a low profit margin.

If you can work out a way to make/do something once, and sell many of them at a high margin, then you’re definitely on to something.

Different types of businesses

With this in mind, you should think about the type of business you’d like to go into. You could either:

1. Sell your time
2. Sell products you make
3. Sell products you don’t make, but value-add to

Before we go any further, please don’t consider franchising as “starting your own business” – it’s not. Franchising is literally just buying your job. Yes, being a franchisee perhaps has more freedom and responsibility than being an employee. But, you are very much tied to operating rules, territories, tied to paying commissions and fees, and your “success” is managed carefully by head office. Franchises are for (older) people who enjoy hand-rails and guide-ropes. If you feel you’re better than this, don’t franchise.

Selling your time

If you are going into business “for an enjoyable job, to keep occupied”, then you’re possibly thinking about selling your time. One thing to consider about this type of business is that there is always business admin work involved. You may or may not enjoy the admin work.

Your financial success will be very much linear, and tied to how frequently you can work, or how well you can increase your hourly rate.

A way to expand this is to type of business is to sub-contract, or employ others who sell their time. For example, you are a maths tutor, who sells tutoring services provided by your other friends (pimping them out).

Gahhh, suddenly getting very tired, and this will have to be continued….

I’ve proof read this a few times, but apologies for the tardiness. It’s been a 14 hour work day (but still enjoyable), and I’m listening to a sad song…

A common remark we get, when meeting parents with children is:

“Ohhhh… my son/daughter never gets in the school yearbook!… They only put in the top sporty or academic students!!!”.

Just wanted to clear something up…. It doesn’t work like that.

The yearbook is the type of project where you take what you can get. There are rarely enough high quality photos available to “choose” from.

No one sits there filtering out photos of children who are not the top sporty or academic students. (….and if you’re sure they do, you’re sending your children to the wrong school).

School yearbook editors (that Rockstar work with) will, 9 times out of 10 painstakingly sift through photos to get the widest variety of students.

If you’d like to ensure your children are featured in your school’s yearbook:

1. volunteer to take photos at school events
2. encourage teaching staff to take more photos