DIBS also empowers you to clearly understand these methodologies are for product development only . . . and that management of your overall business is a separate and equally important responsibility that must be pursued in parallel. Time, after all, does not wait for business management while you are focused on product development.

DIBS empowers you to potentially use a Lean Sigma Six (LSS) approach to managing your business. DIBS also empowers you to understand LSS is not incredibly conducive to the unscheduled nature of independence and innovation – thus requiring a customization to LSS to allow and protect independence and innovation in your product development gauntlet.

DIBS empowers you to be as innovative and original within that CTC as your decisions allow. Your decisions determine the level and quality of resources at your disposal. The depth at which you procure and manage those resources determines the level of innovation and originality your products display. If you are new to the ways of being in business for yourself – no matter your age – your relative inexperience behooves you to avoid the adlibs and do your DIBS . . . so you can remove beginner bibs and be counted among established and reliable businesses sooner than you ever dreamed.

DIBS empowers you to create and maintain a prioritized balance and budget for those resources –

 
– Office Space – You may be choosing between one or more leased spaces in local, national, and international locations, or you may just prefer the rent-free home-office approach for you and your employees. "Rent-free" in this case only refers to renting actual office space . . . versus converting a spare room in your apartment or house for office space. You may even be considering virtual office space, along with a powerful dose of blind faith in the risks and rewards that come with remote employees (and the secure online systems and services which must support them).

– Parking Facilities – You may be considering parking spaces for personnel, extra spaces for visiting investors and contractors, or you may just prefer the rent-free, park in front of your home-office approach for you and your employees. Then, again, some employees may have to endure parking permits where they live – for which you may or may not want to provide a monthly stipend.

– Utilities – You may be selecting services for electricity, water, natural gas, exterior / interior property maintenance, waste disposal, and an office cleaning crew, or you may just prefer using the services you already established for your rent-free home office.

– Personnel – You may be considering a variety of components when selecting and pursuing your personnel:

Employee Skills – Admin, biz dev, artists, content designers, engineers, audio technicians, QA, web designers, producers, on-site marketing, field agents for premium product support or on-site sales demonstrations, and many more.

Employee Types – Full-time, part-time, contract, in-house, outsource, or a hybrid combination.

Employee Benefit Depths – Full, partial, or no benefits.

Employee Benefit Coverages – Employee only, employee + dependent, or employee + family, and how much of the monthly cost will be paid by your business versus the out-of-pocket expense to your employees.

Employee Benefit Types – Medical, prescription coverage, financial (bonus, royalty, stock, deferred, or a hybrid combination).

Employee Benefit Qualities – PPO, HMO, or POS – wellness services.

Employee Pay Rates / Status – Hourly, per consultation, per project, salaried, on retainer.

Employee Relocation Assistance – This may simply be "assistance" in which $1,000-2,000 USD is offered to an employment candidate as a taxable income "signing bonus." You may also establish offer letter language stipulating repayment of any relocation amount if a candidate is terminated before 90 days of employment.  Assistance may also turn into a full blown relocation package of $10,000+ USD for certain high production / high reward candidates. Each candidate is unique on a professional and personal level, and your potential approach to relocation can be an absolute deal-breaker if your "chosen one" is being asked to move life, family, and belongings across the country.

Your personnel choices – and their associated benefits / compensation packages – will narrow or become more flexible as the direction of your business matures and the depth of your product line grows.

– Hardware and Software – It is a rare business that does not require some hardware and software solutions, and you will be considering a potential combination of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) or custom, purchase or lease, individual units or site licenses, and backup redundancy systems for one or more physical or virtual office locations. And in a "reversal of redundancy," you may also want to consider software solutions which recognize each other (at an embedded or import / export level), as the alternative can create HUGE decentralization risks, with inaccurately / obsolete duplicate data and effort.

– Communication / Networking Solutions / Security – You may be considering a potential combination of an ADT-style security system for your office space, access cards for employees (which are rather expensive when lost), a full-blooded office phone system, hard line and mobile Internet solutions, air cards for mobile demo systems, and mobile hot spots (supporting multiple devices) for off-site team meetings.

DIBS empowers you to create and maintain accelerated procedural training (APT) plans for the emergency addition of resources (in-house and outsource) in the unforeseen event of a truncated schedule for an externally-funded project. Emergency resources become even more apt when given a good APT.

DIBS empowers you to establish various company savings accounts, diversify your product lineup and services, and repurpose your resources against the sometimes painful unknowns of the future. Such an unknown could be the very possible loss of external funding for one of your projects – due to outside forces beyond the control of your strongest performances, most efficient deliveries, and smartest decisions.

DIBS empowers you to consider repurposing personnel associated with a suddenly unfunded project. You may have the opportunity to continue paying full salaries with no benefits, paying partial salaries with partial benefits, no salaries with full benefits, or simply partial benefits to those employees. While not every business owner is in a position to avoid non-performance-based layoffs, your willingness to offer creative solutions will gain you tremendous loyalty from employees who may be operating under a variety of challenging personal circumstances.

DIBS empowers you to understand that your personnel resources – to a great degree – are your suppliers . . . and your partners. Your resources may not own a piece of your business, but their efforts, their flexibility, their health have a profound effect on the health of your products and destiny of your business. Depending on your type of business and product line, good talent can be hard to find, harder to keep, and painful to train when completely new to your business.

DIBS empowers you to diversify from exclusively producing one type of software to also producing additional products localized for any number of countries for any number of hardware platforms – such as game-based learning software for multiple age groups, medical visualization applications, manufacturing operations software, productivity software, banking software, and so on and so forth.

DIBS empowers you to perform due diligence to determine how quickly and how well your business can diversify – identifying any necessary alterations to your CTC and personnel skill set.

DIBS empowers you to embrace diversification as the ultimate opportunity to better protect and grow your business – rather than fearing it as a detour from the core products you live to produce.

DIBS empowers you to view diversification as a path towards greater independence and stability for your business and resources – rather than falling prey to boredom and believing you have no choice but to jettison one perfectly viable business in pursuit of an entirely new business venture every few years.

DIBS empowers you to make decisions by the numbers in building, maintaining, and growing your business rather than taking shortcuts – unless due diligence confirms you are making the right decision.

DIBS empowers you to take manageable risks rather than blind leaps of faith.

DIBS empowers you to follow a recovery plan (repurposing personnel), rather than a restructuring plan (releasing personnel).

DIBS empowers you to be confident that you did everything you reasonably could – with your CTC and resources – to establish a new business, prepare for more business, or pursue the reinvention of your business.

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