Any Aspie business owners?

Post Reply New Topic

Good for you sodark. Every time you try you learn a bit more about what you are good at, and what you need to work with other people on. This is my third company and by now I am an old hand at it.

Here's a couple of my columns on good tools to help in business:

http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/article.php?sid=4719

http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/article.php?sid=5093

I've got a few in the making wow

yea...

when should i start eh?

seems like tomorow is always better...

whats the BIG idea eh HAHA awesome ill check those links out!! !!

So, are there any other business owners out there? Let's see the owners of 2011!

I currently run a business along with my cousin and it's been doing pretty well. I have plans of conducting market testing at the end of this year and expanding to a different city come next year, and that's when I start interfacing with "the real world", where I'll have to start depending on other people who aren't relatives. It's going to be interesting and it'll certainly teach me how well I can mesh with everyday people. I hope that it's not going to be like one aspie described it, that is, people trying to take advantage of you and manipulate you whenever possible. I know that's happened in the past where I was team member on a software team (Although, I think they thought they had a good reason to sabotage me, so it wasn't merely naivete at play, I think.), but I have hopes it'll be different in the real world when I get to pick the workers and (pseudo-)partner.

exciting what's your business about?

hi,

I run a business, have done for 11 years , the first 6 or so were entirely on my own. for 4 years i was also a lone parent with three children to look after.

My original work was consultancy and electronic engineering, it was less taxing as i worked from home as much as possible and being given specific problems to solve from companies made the social side less of an issue too as i didn't have to deal with work social issues as i may only be doing work for that company for 3 months.

Later on i had to change what i did as i was looking after my children on my own and could no longer spend time away from home and be at the beck and call of the companies large and small that needed my skills.

So i moved into an area i have a specific interest in, however it involves dealing with the general public!, whereas before i dealt with a manager or engineer, i now have a 1000+ everyday people customers.

That proved to be a massive challenge and has caused a lot of difficulties with interactions.

I also have to deal with Councils and politicians, that i have not got right yet sadly as they are "off the scale" on the neuro typical scale , especially with all the hidden agendas ,policies and objectives they have.

In the last few years i have a long suffering NT partner who deals with a lot of the customer facing admin stuff, however i have to visit them at their home or business to install our service.

The service we provide is excellent and of course down to the way i think and relate to the systems I created, it is all hardware and software with a radio element. I am able to visualise how radio waves propagate in my mind which has a massive advantage too.

Now the hard bit of course is trying to find other people like me who would work towards the same goal. I am guessing there are 100's of people in my county alone who fail repeatedly at the "mainstream bum on seat" jobs but would excel at this kind of work where the main relationship is between your mind and a machine..

Bill

Yes.

The good and bad of business ownership:
- You're your own boss (well, sort of... your clients are the ultimate final say.)
- You choose the jobs you want. You have to find your own clients. You are the customer relations-- unless you hire someone to do it.
- You have to maintain/buy the building, supplies, hire the employees, do the books, etc.-- or hire people to do it for you.
- If you screw up, you fail and lose money if you don't correct your mistakes soon enough.
- Money varies. Some months you could be rolling in money, other months might be more meager. Some months might be zero dollars, while still having overhead (building, employees, marketing, or other costs).
- You have to research and make informed decisions on the type of business you're starting and the likelihood of it succeeding in your city.
- You have to build a name for yourself/your company.
- You get to hire people and fire people.
- You're responsible for following all tax, employee, etc. regulations.
- Things go wrong and it's on you.

Yes.


I get by for the most part on word-of-mouth and my regulars. There are a few good ones that started by bringing me their mopeds and have gradually brought me more complex machines to refurbish
I make house calls and do commisioned work off-site; my only overhead is fuel, carb cleaner, and to acquire or replace the occasional tool
It happens in the form of underbidding the expected lead time for me
That didn't happen to me at first so it was a definite shock
My work was my identity and when I stopped having a place to go to every day I had to hit the ground running
I ran maybe 3 CL ads, the rest were referrals from the shop I used to work at


I have no employees, not exactly people lining up for this type of gig
The secondary motivation for doing good work