more great economic news. thanks cnn.

1. 90% of us think the economy stinks. #duh
2. Double dip recession imminent. (or it could be renamed “take away the stimulus dollars and we’re still in the recession.”)

being on track with your life

(This is a cross post. Please comment on “being on track with your life” on the chron blog here.)

From a post on CNN about an unemployed iReporter:

“I’m still fortunate to have a roof over my head and make do with what I can but I miss having a decent job and being on track with my life.” – sbeasia

I don’t mean to sound jaded, but does “being on track with my life” qualify as expectation or entitlement? I hear that from many people, frequently they are employed but have some other expectation. They can’t articulate WHERE they are “supposed” to be. But they can complain they aren’t “there” and look at you solve it. Solve what?

Here’s the thing. Lament the loss of a job and work hard to find or create a new one. The CNN ireporter sbeasia is clearly doing that. But “being on track with my life” is an illusion. You might as well say “keeping up with the Joneses.” YOU CAN’T.

Reality is all of us with very rare exception are bumbling along and making due with circumstances. None of us are “on track with our life” as far as I can tell. And the few I have seen accomplish all of their “goals” are generally dissatisfied and hungry still. And someone somewhere is still richer, has a better job, has a beautiful house, has 2.5 kids, drives a Ferrari. Someone somewhere is more “on track with their life” because as humans our perception of what we want is always more than what we have.

I am not “on track with my life” and I’m OK with that. I’m in Texas because the Army stationed my Dad in San Antonio years ago. They left and I stayed. I went to a school mostly to play an obscure sport. I’m in Houston because I met a girl at school who was from Houston and we moved down here after college. That is all just bouncing around based on circumstance.

I didn’t even intend to start a company. That was sort of an accident as well. Yes really. Oh, and the reality of running a company is NOTHING like the perception. Inspector Clouseau is one of my heroes because he embraces this reality. From wikipedia:

“Regardless of his rather limited ability, he successfully solves his cases and finds the correct culprits, even if this success is achieved entirely by accident. As such, he is even promoted to Chief Inspector over the course of the series, and is regarded by many other characters who presumably have not met him as France’s greatest detective; those characters he actually encounters, nevertheless, are quick to realise his incompetence and limitations. He is immensely egocentric and pompous; despite his many failings, he is seemingly convinced that he is a brilliant police officer destined to succeed and rise through the ranks of the Sûreté.”

That is completely me. If I solve a case half the time it’s just by luck. Or as the Inspector would say, “I knew that” after the house fell down around him. “That is not my dog” indeed!

None of us are entitled to a particular station in life any more than Clouseau was entitled to be a Chief Inspector. If you achieve some perceived “station”, or get lucky and win lotto, then good for you. But you aren’t entitled to it. And EVERYONE feels like they “aren’t far enough along.” Particularly during the Great Recession. You are not alone, although that doesn’t help much. Changing the toxic internal dialog however just might help.

The problem isn’t that things are tight and you need to cut back on cable and get a roommate. Or that you aren’t “on track with your life” and can’t afford $60 a month for cigarettes or a $500 car payment. The problem is entitlement. And it’s worse than that because it is entitlement that will forever be unrequited. It is entitlement to a carrot on a stick that will ALWAYS be held out in front of us.

I am definitely not “on track with my life” but at least I realize that is society creating false expectations. But I still work Saturday’s. Clouseau might not have the right theory, but he is present and solves the case anyway. So be present.

If you are thinking “I’m not on track with my  life” then go create something. And quit letting Mother Culture tell you how you should act and where you should “be”.

“(Mother Culture) is not a real entity, just as Mother Nature isn’t. I believe that’s why he chose the name. Mother culture refers to the voice in your head that tells you how to think and act ‘normal’ in your society. It is TV ads and movies and fairy tales and laws and school lessions that all are based on the same underlying values. It is reinforced by everybody around you buying into the program without ever really knowing there is a program.

Mother culture is a subtle influence and much of it is not explicitly said. It is a bias on how you observe the world, the tint in your ski goggles when the world looks slightly yellow.

You aren’t a puppet. You are a free man. And freedom doesn’t look like the beautiful people on TV. You aren’t at your “proper” “station in life” because it is an illusion. Be present.

(This is a cross post. Please comment on “being on track with your life” on the chron blog here.)

14 years and a big year at that

This is a cross post. Please comment on the original post on the official Schipul Web Design Company Blog here.

September 1, 2011 is the 14th anniversary of starting the company. 14 years. Considering I was unable to hold a single job for more than 2 years before this (if you exclude teaching on and off at a gym in college) this is impressive for me to stay focused for 14 years. But my job has changed. Years ago I realized that the company had grown to the point that I, me personally, was no longer the one building web sites. Rather my job transformed into growing people. And I enjoy and try very hard to surround myself with brilliant, hard working people with positive attitudes. Turns out they make great employees and they challenge me to grow at the same time.

14 is kind of an awkward age. I think if you are married there isn’t even a recommended gift from de beers given it isn’t a multiple of 5. (Wait. Sheesh, I just looked it up. 14 years is traditionally ivory? What the heck? Do NOT send me any ivory people. Really. Elephants look better with their tusks IMHO.)

And this is my second blog post on blog.schipul.com. I have submitted other posts, but as I was reminded when I mentioned to Katie that I was writing this post, apparently “snark” isn’t appropriate on blog.schipul.com.  I must reserve that for my own blog or the Chron. Thus my previous posts were rejected by Katie for official publication. Hopefully this one makes the cut!

Back to the 14 year thing. Obviously I am incredibly grateful to my family and friends who helped me start the business. There truly is no such thing as a self-made-man, woman, entrepreneur, whatever. We ALL get a TON of help in both sweat equity, money, advice, support and every other type of help imaginable. Nobody can do it alone. The media likes to tell the story of a modern day Galt charging forward solo against the odds. It doesn’t work that way. It takes a network of support to start a business. And I had that network 14 years ago and I still have it now. And as I have said many times, the biggest supporter I have ever had is my wife Rachel. If Rachel had not gone back to work in 1997 when I quit my job the company wouldn’t exist at all.

In the early days, huge thanks to Paul Bieniawski, Scott Pederson and Javier Avellan as well. Starting a company is like moving apartments when you are young; everyone says they are your friend, but suddenly they are busy and can’t help on that particular Saturday. Rachel, Paul, Scott and Javier freed up the time to help me and were truly paid in pizza and beer (yes really). Our first server was built on the floor of Scott’s kitchen using left over alpha hardware and a case, motherboard and CPU purchased on Harwin. (Tip for future entrepreneurs – NEVER use “alpha” hardware. Uuuugh, that server was rough. But it got the job done.)

Employees – the team – the heart of the company. I appreciate Jennifer, Rodney, Aaron, Jenny, Katie, Eloy, Kerry, Lyndia and the entire team. We definitely would NOT be celebrating 14 years without all of them. And that’s not even listing some of our former employees who made huge contributions, helped the company move forward and then went on to follow their own path. Their impact was felt and moved the ship forward. And a special shout out to Ellen M, my very first employee, who is awesome despite having gone to t.u.

Clients - we are here to serve our clients and without clients we wouldn’t exist. Saying thank you to our clients, letting them know we understand we work for them, and that we appreciate them, can’t be repeated often enough. So if you are a client reading this - THANK YOU!

I have a lot of history of the company to write. Forgive me if I am missing something and I’ll try to get it all organized by the time we hit 15 years.

So if I didn’t write a blog post at year 10, if I didn’t write one at year 11, 12 or 13, why now? Because 2011 is different for us. We have not had a year this transformative in the company’s history since 2001 when we shut down network consulting services and started programming codebase (now called Tendenci.) In fact our theme this year is “Go Big or Go Home” which I borrowed from Aaron’s team goals. That Aaron is a wise man.

“Go Big or Go Home” is definitely not a typical theme for a conservative businessman running a company during a recession. But in 2011 we effectively “doubled down” as they say. Instead of running from a recession, we charged into it and reinvested while cutting costs and reinventing our products. Go big or go home in 2011 means this year we:

1. Tendenci - Finished the rewrite of Tendenci version 5 on the Amazon server cloud. The rewrite started in January of 2009 and we had a few clients moved onto the new version in 2010. But only in 2011 has our dedicated team of programmers started to really build the recurring revenue and functionality to rival Tendenci 4. I can’t speak highly enough of the team. Writing software ALWAYS takes longer than you want and costs more. That has been the case for us with the rewrite of Tendenci. But it IS done and live on client sites like Discovery Green in and ThinkLA. We look forward to converting our other 400 clients to the latest version over the next few years.
2.  SchipulCon 2011! - We had our first Tendenci user conference in 2007. We tried to do it again in 2008 but Hurricane Ike had other ideas and instead we cancelled and had a giant party. I know, a dot-com kind of thing to do, but if you remember the time after Ike we all needed a bit of healing and beer heals.  In 2009 we renamed it SchipulCon and had a great event at our long time client the Houston Zoo. Well, you guessed it, we are DOING IT AGAIN! Please check out our speakers and register for SchipulCon October 6,7, 2011 at client Norris Conference Center at CityCentre in Houston.
3. Silicon Valley - we opened an office in Silicon Valley in March of this year led by April Kyle. We are learning to speak Californian and finding they aren’t so different from us! West coaster? Give us at call in the valley at 408-430-3137!
4. Business Processes - kind of boring to talk about, but we have completely reengineered our internal processes from accounting procedures to better utilization of SugarCRM and switching time tracking and moving our email to the cloud. It hasn’t been completely smooth, but it is building a foundation for us to continue our growth unimpeded. Thank you to the team for moving with the cheese in 2011 as we grow! And it helps our clients by improving our efficiency which allows us to reinvest in YOU!
5. Tendenci self-signup - by the end of 2011 smaller organizations will be able to self signup for a much lower cost Tendenci site for their organization. We have lowered our costs by moving into the cloud and we are passing those savings on to our clients to enable more and more small associations to take advantage of our technology at an affordable price. (Special shout-out to former employee Glenbot who has moved on to a VC backed firm. Without Glen’s contributions to Tendenci 5 over the last few years we wouldn’t be this close. Thanks Glen. I appreciate the beautiful code dude.)

And to our competitors who told our clients we had “stagnated” and had “stopped updating Tendenci,” … um…. ooops, meet T5 baby! Rockin the cloud for a bigger and better future. Two and a half years of serious double-down and rebuilding was hard to endure, but we are near the finish line to the ultimate benefit of our clients.

And the team has done all of that in the fourth year of a recession. Call us crazy, but we figured there would never be a good time to do any of these changes, so why not do them all at once? Why not Go Big or Go Home in 2011?! And we are doing it. And I couldn’t be more proud of our employees or more grateful to our clients and everyone who has helped us not only this year, but every year for the last 14 years.

Please join us for SchipulCon and get some brain candy. We are here to serve you. We are reinvesting to serve you better. And as always, we are appreciative of Houston and the community and friends that have supported us for so long. Thank you!

Ed

This is a cross post. Please comment on the original post on the official Schipul Web Design Company Blog here.

those who remain determined “mouse-avores” starve

“IV. At the same time, living systems adapt themselves to changes in their environment they learn, grow, develop, evolve. When the mouse population in a region suddenly declines because of an epidemic, the predators who adapt to a new prey survive; those who remain determined “mouse-avores” starve. Life events affect us and change us, and we can see these changes reflected in the nevertheless familiar faces of our friends. The ability of living systems to adapt and self-organize allows them to defy the second law of thermodynamics, which insists that everything runs down and returns to a state of disorganization and homogeneity. Not so for living systems! They continuously reorganize themselves into ever more complex patterns and interrelationships.”

- Molly Young Brown, Patterns, Flows and Interrelationships

tantrum

“We don’t need to tell the rest of the world that anytime people in Congress start throwing a tantrum that we’re not going to pay our bills.” – Warren Buffett

The Rule of Consistency and Why You Are Being Played

You are being played to keep you on the corporate teet and make sure you don’t rise up. You have been convinced to do what you are told at a level that you no longer even realize it. Yes. You.

There is no one “the man” that is keeping us down. It’s the entire empire. The one that tells the black man he has to argue with another black man about “whose parents were worse and whose childhood was worse.” (see original and “you ain’t never been on probation“)  The “man” that tells the country kids about the working man blues. The one that sings Narcocorrido to our youth on both sides of the border.

Humans are persuaded by a variety of means. This author gives us the six laws of persuasion. Reciprocation, Commitment, Social Proof, Liking, Authority and Scarcity.

Example: Most people are aware of the power of reciprocity, which is why they are so eager to give you a cookie when you go into a furniture store or buy you a free coke at the car dealership. Once we say yes, we owe them. The fact that we don’t OWE them enough to buy a 30k car is besides the point, there is nothing else we can give them to repay the favor when we are in their offices. So a free coke and a free cookie really do increase sales.

You, we, us – we are being played. NoLogo indeed.