While many of us might have great ideas and products that are currently in development, it is equally important to think how you want to pursuit those ideas out into the world. Their is the old method of creating prototypes and samples, then trying to get companies to license them from you in order to free your time for more projects. Which can be an amazing way to do things, it gives you the opportunity to focus your energies on what you love to do and leave some of the other less fun work to the professionals.

But what about those of us who like to do things the more challenging way? What I mean by that, is design, produce and distribute everything yourself. While this approach offers the possibility of much more reward and control, it involves tons of work and a greater chance for failure.

Luckily as we all go through life, we pick up skills, knowledge and abilities in different areas. Because I am a freelance Illustrator, I am used to running my own business, working with clients, managing finances, building websites and all of that fun stuff. My brothers Josh and Ben have also experienced a world of development in working with people, dealing with different industries and managing their own side projects and development. The magic then happened when we decided to put all of our strengths together.

As an individual with a desire to start a business you either have to do everything yourself (most likely what you will be doing in the beginning) or find someone who can do it for/with you. That means research, study, trial and error, and an undetermined amount of exposing yourself to new things. The trick is to get started right now, and keep going. You will find out real quick whether or not it is something you want to handle. The amount of time you have to put into setting up the structure for information, finances, team management, development, testing and countless other areas almost overshadows the joy in creating your product. But it is something you really only have to do once if you do your best to be thorough. And in the end you will have all the ability you need to direct and instruct others to help you in the most effective way possible.

But it is all done with almost no reinforcement at all, meaning you are basically on your own for now. That is the real challenge. Not knowing if your countless hours will be for nothing or if your ideas will fail. Can you push on? Can you fight the fear? Only you, yourself know the answer to that and I encourage you to simply try if that is what you dream of. But we at Gaia Game Studios are here to help. I am going to share as much as I can about building this business and hope that it helps others who are fighting the good fight. Because, in the end, that is how I got started, by following what others have done and what others have shared.

I would like to share a short experience that I went through just before I began my illustration career, in the hopes that it will inspire you to pursuit your dreams, no matter the outcome. I worked for almost a decade in an office full of all types of personalities. We were all, for the most part, well paid and taken care of. Yet some were miserable while others quite happy in the environment. I began to question my own direction in life and began to ask all 30+ employees about their dreams, goal and aspirations. Some of what I found was common sense, like the fact that the happiest people were acting out their dreams, working towards goals or living the goals they hoped for. Equally, those who had other dreams and goals, not relating them to their current position, were quite miserable.

But what pushed me over the end into changing everything about my life and direction was one woman. She was the happiest secretary I have ever met. She never complained, she smiled and talked lovingly to every person who approached her and made everyone feel better just to work along side her. But how could she be so happy, when she said numerous times that being a secretary was not what she wanted for herself? She explained to me that when she was younger, she went out and built a business, ran it for several years before it fell apart. Again I wondered how this made her happy, so I asked her about it. She said that the reason she is so happy with her current life, is because she went out reached for her goals, no matter that it ultimately failed. She said she could have kept running the business and probably could have pulled it out of the slump it was in, but their was no need in her mind. She felt fulfilled, she accomplished what she set out to do, experienced all that it was and opted to have a simpler existence working for others. You see she was not happy because she was rich, or because she was living a dream life. She was happy because she tried, and that was the only difference between her and the miserable people who only had excuses for why they did not or would not try.

So if it is your dream to run a business, then try. Even if you fail, you can be just as happy as those who are living their dreams.

 

~~~Andrew Gaia