There’s someone online that I’ve known for ten years, and we’ve never met in person. When I first met him, he was a young adult in his third year of college half a country away, working towards his dream of belonging to a professional orchestra playing French horn. He competed for individual honors and awards, and worked closely with music instructors who had great things to say about his work.

There came a time in his life when he assessed his life, and decided it’d be more responsible for him to be gainfully employed, and so he left the state university, began working in retail as a salesman of electronic doodads, and gained a comfortable life, had a couple interesting relationships, and picked up a couple of pets along the way. To this day he still wishes to pursue music, but it is not a practical way to make a living, and he persists in not only the retail position he started with, but has taken on a number of other sales jobs he has participated in concurrently, juggling up to three formal jobs at a time.

Not only that, but he also maintains two major online businesses, and is looking to create three more. In fact, that is why I’m writing this entry, because all those years ago, he talked with me about how he wished he could take the entrepreneurial track, and own his own business online. He was fuzzy about what he wanted to sell, until a few years ago when he started working for someone who sold a single product line, made in China and shipped overseas. My friend eventually started his own business to compete directly with his then-boss, because the gentleman was doing unethical and negative things, and my friend felt he could do better.

Throughout all of this, he interfaced with me nearly daily, to talk about his ideas, gather information about how the internet can be used to conduct business, what tools he needed to acquire in order to begin, and how to protect himself against as many failures as could be foreseen between the two of us. We grew from friends into business partners, with him fronting the entire cost of getting his business off the ground, and me guiding him and providing both perspective and knowledge concerning all there is to do online. I had a hand in most everything from consulting him on technologies and business practices, to what he required in other employees, to brainstorming a problem-solving session, to editing photos and web content for his website, editing videos, audio files, and word copy. I provided him a plethora of resources both human and technological, continually updated him on the latest technologies and services that could augment his business, and I have even stepped in to become a part-time employee to answer phones and take orders, update his website in real time, and interact with his designers in order to convey an idea. I’m the one who provides tech support and network administration when he needs it, as well.

There is very little that I cannot do for him, and it’s generally easy to find someone who can provide whenever I cannot. Our friendship and partnership remains solid, and we remain in daily contact to this day. There’s always another photo of another product to be edited and uploaded, another block of text to be added to the storefront, a new technological fun thing to play with and incorporate into the business.

It’s amazing what can come of a simple conversation in a chat program online, between two people who feel similarly about managing small businesses, especially when that conversation spans years.

Probably related:

• January 19, 2012 -- Being a Professional
• November 14, 2011 -- In More Professional News…
• January 11, 2012 -- Links, Gigs, and Biz!