Shifting Your Focus to Improvement, Not Innovation, to Start Your Business

How an Entrepreneur Concentrated on Elevating Customer Experience to Enter a Market

Carlos opening his brick-and-mortar store

Hello, friends! 👋👋🏽👋🏿 Knowing whether or not you have a winning idea on your hands doesn’t have to be so complicated. In many cases, if you think you can put a new twist on an existing idea, that may be your calling card.

Today, we put the spotlight on Carlos Tamajon. He’s the owner and founder of The Crafty Gamer, a shop that takes game night to a whole new level.

In today’s Generation Si! newsletter (Part One), you’ll learn the following:

🌴How to go about finding which business to go into

🌴How marketing should fit into your plans, timeline-wise

🌴 Why there’s no shame in starting really small and building from there

🌴Here’s Carlos Tamajon and what he’s learned as owner and founder of The Crafty Gamer…

Carlos Tamajon, CEO and founder of The Crafty Gamer

“I was supposed to be making Pixar movies. And now I’m selling board games and making candles.”

After getting a degree in Computer Animation, it may seem like Carlos Tamajon really strayed from his plan.

But through The Crafty Gamer, a niche business he founded that merges the world of tabletop gaming with scented candles, Tamajon still found a way to focus on imagination.

The view inside The Crafty Gamer

THE TIP JAR (Tips provided courtesy of Carlos Tamajon)

STARTING OUT: “So, [the] top thing is to find a niche that you’re passionate about… And try to find all the different kinds of products or services… forms of revenue that you can generate within that space.”

PRO TIP: “Don’t try to over-innovate. Try to perfect… We make candles at the end of the day… We’ve got a niche and, you know, we just change the branding, and we modify something that’s already established…”

In the end, he says it boils down to creating value in a product or service. “You just have to improve. You just have to do something different and better than somebody else who came before.”

STEEPED IN SKILLS (mid-career): “You wear so many different hats, organization is the #1 key thing. Without that, you’re pretty much just going to do procrastination work - setting up social media and all those other things.”

Tamajon says that work shouldn’t take a full day to do.

Instead, he says, “You’ve gotta formulate a business plan. You have to organize. You have to set up, you know, your key operating stuff.”

STARTING OVER: “If nobody knows that you’ve built a stage in an open field, no one’s going to know to drive there. You have to be able to market yourself. And I feel like marketing yourself is the most difficult thing. And it’s a lot more than just sharing on your personal Facebook. It’s finding trends and really understanding, you know, how to use advertising and… Adwords and Google Maps, or whatever it might be for your particular kind of business. It’s the driving force. It’s how you get your leads. It’s how you generate clientele. It’s how you generate… your fan base. And I feel like a lot of people let it fall by the wayside. And they make it a ‘year three’ plan. It should be a ‘day one’ plan.”

I’LL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN: “Horizontal growth in business structure… We started off with candles. We made 6 variations of those candles. Then, we started getting into laser engraving. Then, we started getting into apparel. Then, we started getting into all these different lifestyle things.”

What Tamajon learned is that, instead of branching out too much, it’s better to “perfect your product. Go vertical. Make a candle. Perfect the candle. Advertise the candle. Get known for the candle. Or get known for that particular product. Be more Apple and less… Microsoft. Microsoft has the money to spread around and make video games and computers and everything else. You don’t have to do everything. Do vertical scaling.”

BEST ADVICE FROM “LA CASA”/BEST “HOUSE” ADVICE: “I think one of the things that my parents taught me is that you can’t build something alone. You have to build it with other people. And you have to put yourself out there. And your success should never be reliant on another person’s passions. So while you may be able to depend on somebody, you have to be the driving force in your own success. And you can bring other people along for that ride, but you have to be that catalyst.”

IF POSSIBLE, TRY TO BRING IN ELEMENTS THAT INVOLVE THE SHARED HUMAN EXPERIENCE

“Scent is very closely tied to memory. If I tell you to remember your grandparents’ house, you may even remember the smell of the living room or the kitchen…”

Tamajon wanted to bring that sensory experience to the tabletop gaming world to create an immersive experience.

“It’s all about theater of the mind. We’re all playing [with] our imagination. Everything about tabletop gaming is all about the imagination. So I think that what we’re offering is vastly different from, you know, what a regular candle has to offer. Because we’re trying to build a world around it and the world that’s in your mind.”

Capturing a story and mood with scent

IT’S OKAY TO START SMALL UNTIL YOU BUILD A BASE

It started with a love of gaming. Tamajon even met his wife at his first gaming table.

The idea to turn it into a full-fledged business came about organically.

“At first, it just kind of started off as, ‘Hey, let’s just make it for fun for ourselves.’”

Then, with a $75 investment for their first candle kit, the business started in their kitchen.

“But it was just a blank candle. No label. No logo. I was just passing it around to friends and saying, ‘Look how good this smells!’”

The first batch of candles Carlos created for his business

For the longest time, the Tamajons kept a dedicated space in their living room for their business.

The business grew and they rented out a 300 square foot space.

Once the business grew even more, they went to their current retail location in Winter Park.

INSPIRATION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION CAN COME FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

It was a process. But Tamajon learned not just from mentors and books like John C. Maxwell’s “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader.”

He learned by analyzing real businesses critically.

“I’m an avid nerd. So I go to a lot of conventions. I see a lot of different kinds of business models. I see a lot of different kind of people making a whole slew of products. And I try to find gaps into what they are not offering, and why are they not offering it. And how can I offer it in a meaningful way that’s going to make people look at this product and say, ‘I want that in my life?’”

First appearance at Megacon Orlando (2019)

Now, the world of scented candles and tabletop gaming is Tamajon’s life and livelihood.

“It was a great way for us to connect, once again, at the table with our friends and our family. And, you know, I was just trying to find ways to enhance that experience in some shape or form. That’s kind of how we got into the whole candle thing. Just from one nerd thing to another.”

INDUSTRY: Scented Candles and Tabletop Gaming

STARTED BUSINESS: Jan. 1, 2019

LATINO CONNECTION:

Dad is Cuban

Mom is Honduran

EDUCATION: The Art Institute of Miami (now known as the Miami International University of Art & Design) - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Animation

DREAM JOB AS A KID: “I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes DVD of one of my favorite games when I was 13 years old. And I saw voice acting. And I was, like, I would love to be able to have my voice on a microphone one day and just really act it without ever having to be on stage. I love that… and I thought I was going to make video games and be in video games as a voice. That’s what I wanted to do almost my whole life.”

BIGGEST GOAL YET: “So, right now, I’m working with a lot of fantastic companies to grow this company. I have my convention… that I host every year (Note: It’s called Quest Con Orlando). I would love to be able to build a community-driven location, like a board game café here in Orlando, where families… can take all their kids and just have a nice bite to eat and some coffee. And then, after that, I would love to just spend my 40s as a venture capitalist and help other people build small businesses.”

Carlos with his family

NO NEED TO GO IT ALONE

HELP ON THE OUTSIDE...because we can all use a helping hand:

Starting Your Florida-Based Business: Legal and Tax Info

Doing business in Florida is different than in other states. What do you need to know and do, legally and tax-wise?

Find out in this FREE webinar everything from which type of entity may decrease your personal liability to info on minimum wage to the best way to protect your assets. Here’s more info:

U.S. SBA (Small Business Administration)

“Legal & Tax Implications of Starting a Business in Florida”

Monday, Feb. 6, 2023

6:00 p.m. EST – 7:30 p.m. EST

Online Webinar

FREE

https://www.sba.gov/event/9158

WORKING ON THE INSIDE...because we know our culture has a hard time asking for help:

Communicate Like a Pro & Make Money

Anything you can learn about effective communications is a big plus, professionally and personally. In this Coffee with a Leader online session, find out about the power of storytelling and messaging that resonates.

You’ll learn to identify your communication style and how to maximize it for money-making opportunities. Here are the details:

SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives)

Coffee with a Leader: Communicate Like a Journalist – Turn Opportunities Into Money-Making Opportunities

Thurs., Feb. 2, 2023

8:00 a.m. EST – 9:30 a.m. EST

Online Webinar

FREE

https://nationalec.org/event/score-coffee-with-a-leader-communicate-like-a-journalist-turn-opportunities-into-moneymaking-opportunities/

INSPIRATION FOR THIS ISSUE:

Do you believe that there are no new ideas out there in the world?

I had a boss who believed that.

I was working at one of my first corporate jobs. And this boss had been the owner of an ad agency in New York at one time.

He believed all the original ideas had been taken. He thought everything was pretty much a rehash.

I don’t know.

Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I still believe there are original ideas out there.

I bring this up because I found it interesting that Carlos Tamajon wanted to encourage aspiring entrepreneurs by letting them know that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel to start a business.

I found it even more interesting because part of the reason why his story spoke to me is because of how fresh I found his concept of merging the worlds of tabletop gaming with scented candles.

Sure, I’d heard of gaming and, of course, I’m familiar with scented candles. But putting those together as a business concept struck me as something different and uncommon.

I’m always looking for Latinos doing things differently.

The bigger lesson Carlos was trying to convey is that you shouldn’t limit yourself.

You shouldn’t think that, somehow, just because you have an idea that’s been done before, you shouldn’t turn it into a business, if you’ve found a new twist or new spin on it that people will desire and are willing to pay for.

That’s such a good reminder.

If you’ve come up with a way to improve an existing product or service, or to merge two things or services that make it better, more useful or more convenient, you might want to seriously consider it as a business.

For some of us (and that includes me), we, sometimes, make things harder than they have to be. Many times, it doesn’t have to be.

A simple idea that you can effectively communicate may be the winning idea.

And, I don’t know about you, but I find that refreshing in such a complex world we live in these days. #theskyisNOTthelimit

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🌴Make it a productive and happy day! Thank you for your continued support. 😺