Got a story for ya Ags!

A long time ago when I was working at Circuit City as an Operations Manager I had days off during the week because I worked all weekend. Rachel, my wife, worked a normal job and the kids were in school with after school care so I’d get an occasional day off in the middle of the week.

I am not one to sit still so for years I drove around Houston. Hit the museums. Explored the antique stores on lower Westheimer. Wandered around parks. Read books. (ahem, there was no Internet in this fable kids. ‘cause I am old like that.) But I wasn’t just going to sit in an apartment and watch TV. Eventually I ran out of things to do so I decided since I liked Art to see if I could work at an art gallery on my two days off. Or at night after getting off work at my first job. Thus in short order I found a part-time job at an art gallery in the Galleria.

I had some sales experience from working at Structure (now Express for Men) in college and briefly out of college. And I had sold a few things at Circuit City although this wasn’t my primary job in Operations. I’d also worked with some of those travelling art auctions as muscle to load and unload the trucks occasionally while in college (hint – lots of fake bidders in the audience people). And for the record I still love the work of Yaacov Agam.

In my limited time working at the Art Gallery (they went out of business about six months later.) I found that our sales came from:

1. Gallery openings – you have to get the buyers into the gallery. Make them feel special.
2. The house list – “warm” calling past buyers/collectors and telling them about new art on the wall. Asking if we could set up an appointment with them, etc. Depending on the collector you might even load your car up with art and drive out there to show it.
3. Weekend floor traffic. With enough traffic you could move some pieces. We rotated “ups” between the sales team. Mary gets the first one. Don the next. Ed the one after that. Repeat the cycle.

What didn’t work in sales was middle of the day on a Tuesday. This was dead time. You had to be at work, but you were doing your calls, dusting off the art, hanging or unhanging, packing or unpacking new work, etc. We still rotated the “ups” in theory but if it was your up and you were busy you might just say “hey Mary can you get that one.”

So this 12 year old kid walks into our art gallery shortly after I started working there in the middle of the day on a weekday. My coworkers completely ignored him. Glances were exchanged between us, or should I say I gave a quizzical look and was greeted with eye rolls and raised eyebrows. Think of how they portray a snobby gallery employee in the movies and you will know exactly what I was looking at.

Now, as for me, if you are in my place of business you will be treated with respect. I am sure I have made mistakes and done something wrong, but my intent is definitely to treat every client with respect. And if you spend enough time in sales you know not to judge a book by it’s cover. So I asked the young man if I could help. He was a quiet kid, but knew what he wanted. He was looking at a list $500 original film cell from an animated movie.

At the time in this gallery everything was really about double priced. So a $500 piece could be sold for $250 without talking to the gallery owner. More than that and you needed special permission. The kid busts out a small cell phone (This was the early 90s. Few had cell phones and even fewer had those tiny Nokia ones.) So he gets Dad on the phone. Hands it to me. We talk briefly and I sold my first piece of art for the gallery for $250.

He left very happy and I had my first sale. And my coworkers were dumbfounded. Because a 12 year old kid will never buy art from us. But he did. Thank you kid.

CREDITS: Thank you to flickr userpterjan for the Yaacov Agam Creative Commons photo.

“The first step before anyone else in the world believes it. Is you have to believe it.”

It’s not like Microsoft didn’t foresee the changes ahead. With a staff of almost 90,000, the company has many of the tech world’s smartest minds on its payroll, and has incubated projects in a wide range of fields that later took off. Experiments like Courier (tablets), HailStorm/Passport (digital identity), and Windows Media Center (content in the cloud) show the company was ahead of the game in many areas — but then it either failed to bring those products to market, or didn’t execute.

“In this age, the race really is to the swift. You cannot afford to be an hour late or a dollar short,” says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC.

- (source)

I emailed out to the company today’s quote of the day, something we do internally, with the three quotes below. But given how popular advice from 37 Signals is among some of my employees, I wanted to add some commentary (after the jump). And BTW, I definitely agree with these three quotes from Rework.

“You need less than you think…Do you really need six months or can you make something in two?”  (pg. 53)

and

“No time is no excuse.  The most common excuse people give: “There’s not enough time.”  They claim they’d love to start a company, learn an instrument, market an invention, write a book, or whatever, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  Come on.  There’s always enough time if you spend it right.” (pg. 40)

and

“When you put off decisions, they pile up.  And piles end up ignored, dealt with in haste, or thrown out.  As a result, the individual problems in those piles stay unresolved.  Whenever you can, swap ‘Let’s think about it’ with ‘Let’s decide on it.’  Commit to making decisions.  Don’t wait for the perfect solution.  Decide and move forward.  You want to get into the rhythm of making choices.  When you get into that flow of making decision after decision, you build momentum and boost morale…You can’t build on top of ‘We’ll decide later,’ but you can build on top of ‘Done.’  The problem comes when you postpone decisions in the hope that a perfect answer will come to you later.  It won’t.” (pg. 77)

All from Jason Fried and David Hansson in the book Rework

COMMENTS: 37 Signals has been successful creating jobs for people and making a profit. They build tools for themselves and then share their applications with others. There is no question Basecamp is a success. The 37 Signals formula is to build products to the exact specifications of THEIR customers, it just so happens the customer is first and foremost THEM.

Our business model is different. We make products for OTHER people. This is a subtle but important distinction. Picture a male fashion designer who makes women’s clothes. He can appreciate them. He has a creative vision. But the clothes he designs will be worn by his female clientele. The male fashion designer’s success is when women purchase his designs built for the them. The male fashion designer is challenged to make a simple and beautiful product that works with the physical reality of his customers.

While I usually agree with the content of Rework, I find I do not always agree with the 37 Signals viewpoint. Yes, it works for them. Yes I agree with 90% of it. But just as critical is to know what advice is bad advice for a firm like ours. I think it is important that I plan for the company’s future. Thus I do not agree with statements such as this:

“Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control…Why don’t we call plans what they really are: guesses.  Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses and your strategic plans as strategic guesses.  Now you can stop worrying about them as much.”  (pg. 19)

It is catchy. It makes for a good anti-establishment Purple Cow type of quote. But I suspect the employees at Schipul appreciate me applying that advice carefully. Does that advice relate to our particular situation? No. And I think the team at 37 is plenty of smart enough to tell people to apply their advice…well, if it applies!

Sometimes advice is populist, but there is a logical flaw. A company who follows the infamous “work smarter not harder” quickly falls to a company that believes “work smarter AND harder.” Working smarter-not-harder would only work if hard workers were dumb. But we get smarter through experience! So unfortunately, hard workers are typically also smarter than you. Oooops. But we don’t like to admit that. What we want to hear is that the 4 hour work week is a winner.  I certainly wish the global economy worked that way!

I guess I am saying, use common sense and trust experience built upon DOING stuff.

ARCHIVE POST. PLEASE COMMENT ON THE ORIGINAL ON CHRON.

Several friends of mine over the last few years have talked a lot about “seeking happiness” and the goal of “being happy”. Some even have “happiness projects.” I am reminded that America’s liberties include the right to “the pursuit of happiness.”

Yet there is something about the pursuit of happiness as an end goal that bothers me. I find the pursuit of happiness alone to be shallow — I don’t think it makes you happy long term.

Money doesn’t bring happiness. Tiger Woods is worth close to a billion dollars, is married to a Scandinavian swimsuit model, and yet he still felt the need to sleep with an assortment of cocktail waitresses so that he could feel better about himself.

Yes we all need money. We are capitalists as a country. We earn money. Is money the motivator? Not for me beyond a certain point. It’s this internal drive. I don’t think I will ever show up at work without a fire in my belly and a drive to accomplish MORE. You take risks so you sometimes fail. When you fail you are unhappy. You get back up. That’s how it works.

I can’t be described as walking around in “a state of happiness.” I am much more wound up than that. But my life has meaning because I take care of my family, which in turn makes me feel happy. I have surrounded myself with intriguing people who I deeply care about. My relationship with God is conflicted, but that is hardly surprising for a Catholic Army Brat. My relationship with my kids could be better, but in my defense they are called teenagers for a reason. I am approaching my 20th wedding anniversary which we will celebrate in style. I could work out more, but I do work out. I am working on all of those things. They are meaningful and they require hard work. I have a damn good life, but what I am not is running around completely happy all of the time.

My real issue is that I believe “the pursuit of happiness” is misguided and superficial as an goal.

Yes I said it. It’s shallow, people. We should seek meaning. If you seek meaning then happiness may, or may not, follow. There are no guarantees. But to flip it around and seek happiness first simply doesn’t work. Without first forming a clear idea of what you find meaningful and worthwhile, chasing “happiness” is like chasing a figment of your imagination.  You will find the proverbial cart, and then abandon it after a day or two when you realize there is no horse attached and it’s useless.

Seeking happiness as the end goal leads you to wander the desert until you find the NEXT bright shiny object. This again makes you happy. Briefly. But unless you load it up with pirated Plato and talk about it, it won’t bring happiness either, as the it is just a thing.

How many marriages fail because someone says “I am just not happy” as if marriage is supposed to be 100% happy? And are these folks reading interesting books, talking about them, and seeking the meaning in life?

Yes clean out your closet if that makes you happy. But please let us not discuss your closet cleaning as meaningful conversation or life changing. Particularly lets not talk about the closet when our education system has eliminated shop class and our partisan politicians on both sides are putting their political parties over the people they represent. There are meaningful big questions to consider.

It turns out I am not alone that meaning is more important than happiness alone. Sunday’s Chronicle has a post titled Seeking happiness? Think big thoughts by Robert Zaretsky. It begins:

A recent study finds what we all once knew before our hectic lives made us forget: that like good barbecue or prime crude, the making of happiness takes time. Time enough, and world enough with others.

According to Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, individuals who spend more of their time wondering about big questions, and doing so in the company of others, are happierthan those who wonder about the weather or John Edwards’ love child.

Don’t worry, be happy. I have nothing against happy LOLcats and sports talk. They are great conversation starters. Deep meaningful questions can be derived from them. I enjoy these diversions. But they don’t bring happiness in and of themselves. Fewer hours at work to give me more time to read LOLCats will not in fact make me happier. Yet contemplating with friends what deep psychological need is met by Internet memes may in fact make us happier. Meaning may help you avoid the quarter-life-crisis.

Others are free to seek happiness as a goal even if I don’t think that is a worthy goal in and of itself. As for me I will continue to seek meaning with my family and friends. I may not get there, I may not find the meaning of life, but it takes time, and seeking meaning is proven a better path than seeking happiness alone. And I intend to enjoy the thoughts and the journey of life.

I’ll leave you with a video from my friend Aaron who had it posted on his blog after Hurricane Ike. It’s his girls at the beach at his parents old beach house on bolivar. The video has meaning. And it makes you happy too.

  Sunday Breakfast 
  Originally uploaded by darkhairedgirl

One of the points that is articulated well in the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the awareness that:

Any Excuse, No Matter How Valid, Is Still an Excuse

We rotate kolache and donut duty at our office and the email went out this morning with this line in it.

“Not a lot of varieties. The guy in the Kolache store just had a baby last night, so he didn’t get much time to make more.”

Read that again. The man’s wife had a baby THAT NIGHT and still opened the store for business taking care of his customers. While his regulars would surely have understood if he wasn’t there, new customers would have wondered if the store was closed. So he opened it regardless.

This is a guy, who for better or worse, understands the phrase "any excuse, no matter how valid, is still an excuse". This is the competition. This is why I work on Saturdays. Yes be smart. Yes have a work/life balance. But know that the competition opens the kolache store at 4 AM after being up all night with his wife who just had a baby. That is the competition. Be afraid.

Update: before you ask, yes I was there when my kids were born so judge me by my actions. I am not advocating or even agreeing with this man’s actions. I am however impressed with his drive.

I have fierce friends. They can stare down Chuck Norris.
Originally uploaded by eschipul

“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” – unknown

As the reader has probably gathered, I run a small web design business in Houston Texas. 23 employees now that our summer interns have gone back to school. 300+ clients ish.

Well that small business is 10 years old today. I put in my notice at Lyondell Petrochemicals on 8/15/1997, worked my two weeks, and my first day solo was 9/1/1997. 10 years old today, which is September 1, 2007.

Sheeeeesh! 10 Years! Holy crap!

The main emotion I am feeling is thanks. THANKS to all of the people who have made this happen. I like that quote at the top because it highlights the very challenge. In fact *you* can’t do this, but *you* can build a team and that team can do close to anything. So in so many ways, I do not have a 10 year old business, I have just been lucky enough to assemble a team of brilliant people and have HUGE support from family and friends that allowed us this success.

Humble. At an emotional level that has to be the biggest emotion I am feeling.

The biggest thanks has to go to my wife Rachel of 17 years. Rachel has been the rock that held everything together. It is not easy being married to an entrepreneur, a word that also took me years to accept. But there it is. So THANKS RACHEL!

While many more thanks are in order, we have a few “birthday celebrations” coming up over the last two quarters of this year and I hopefully get a chance to thank most of those people in person. However I do have a few lessons learned that I wanted to share after the jump.

Things I have learned over the last 15 years that relate to business.

1. You are standing on the shoulders of giants. Be humble but determined. Those arrogant people you see running “start ups” and talking tough? They act arrogant because they are terrified someone will “find them out”. Pay them no mind.
2. There is no such thing as a “self made man”. If someone says they are please tell them they are full of crap. It just isn’t possible. Parents. Teachers. Friends. Mentors. Family. We get SO much help so be afraid of people who claim they did it themselves as they are liars.
3. Family and friends don’t really understand in the beginning even if they say they do. Forgive them later. Don’t take it personal when they question you. After all, 95% of businesses fail in the first five years so they have a 95% chance of being right! And it is up to you to believe you are in that 5%.
4. Expecting to be in that 5% is a pretty arrogant thought. So accept the fact that you pretty much aren’t like the other people. So be humble but do it!
5. Expect investors to back out. Many investors like the excitement, but, well particularly with new tech they just freak out. I had two investors in the beginning back out. They would have had an incredible return on investment in hind sight. It definitely made the start harder, but actually worked out really well for my family in the long run. (Note I still know one of them and they grimace every time they ask me how the business is doing and I reply. And I tend to understate. So there is that.)
6. What you learned in college was how to read. So start reading. Most of the Michael Porter stuff is crap. SWOT analysis? whatever. Focus on simple.
7. Be afraid of MBAs and CFOs. They are 99.999% clueless. The fancier the name of the school the more terrified of them you should be. Focus on three things in business:
   1. sell at a profit
   2. have a recurring revenue model
   3. love what you do
8. Customer service means one thing; treat your employees very very well. That simple. They will treat customers how you treat them.
9. Beware of sales people who can sell themselves but aren’t willing to bet on themselves. This one is complex, my point is that over and over I have had “high power biz dev” people tell me about how they are going to take us to the next level blah blah. But they won’t risk. And it is the humble programmer who automates things that generates huge ROI. So personally I like to promote from within and be afraid of the slick sales folks from outside of the organization.
10. Even in the beginning everyone will think you are rich while you struggle with cash flow. Perception and reality aren’t even close when it comes to business. We are growing 25%. That means I have lots of worth and little cash. But people don’t get that. So you will always get stuck with the tab. Just deal with it and go sell more.
11. Nobody will ever buy you lunch. See previous point.
12. Invest in training like crazy even if your people don’t want it. In fact if they are not receptive to training either don’t hire them, or if they sneak in find a way to get rid of them.
13. The young ones will lie much more easily than the older generations. It just doesn’t carry the same weight. Again – find a way to forgive. Gen Y is pretty spoiled, but they will come around. We just gotta give them some time to meet reality.
14. The burden of communication is on YOU. So if people don’t understand what you are saying, try and try again to get the message across. This is particularly true with tech.
15. Someone is always younger, cooler, better looking, richer and more popular than you. Just ignore it. All the while you are frustrated someone else is looking at you thinking similar thoughts. It is too confusing – so just ignore that.
16. “Any excuse no matter how valid is still an excuse” – this comes from Covey. The point here is people are “late because of traffic”. Well a determined person would have arrived at 4:00 AM and slept in the parking garage with two alarm clocks in their car. Yes extreme. But the point is you CAN be on time. People choose to be late, they choose so many things. So don’t accept excuses first and foremost from yourself.
17. “Do whatever it is that got you there” but remain flexible. By this I mean don’t get fat and happy. Things continue to change fast. Web design took a big turn towards SEO and many of our competitors ignored it to their own peril. Look at the big ad agencies for example (and the people at the top are responsible for the coming layoffs if you asked me!). On this note, now web design is web design + seo + social media and again a bunch of people are missing the turn in the road. And this blog post won’t be read by them and it won’t matter and innocent people will lose their gigs. So “do whatever it is that got you there” and keep studying and innovating and working hard.
18. Pay your bills in 7 to 14 days. That idiot accountant or CPA who tells you to pay in 45 days for the “float” is just that – an idiot. People learn your patterns. I can’t tell you how many small favors happen for us without me ever knowing because we have a reputation for prompt payment. Work with your banker for your cash flow – not by screwing your vendors.
19. Always run payroll early if you can. And pay yourself last, if at all. And on that note if there is a $2 error on someone’s paycheck stop the presses, drop everything and fix it immediately.
20. Never be that leader who says “I’ll cut you a check on Wednesday when the accountant is in the office.” – I mean really – did you start a business and then forget how to write a check? I have huge disdain for people who hide behind accounting like they can’t hand write a check on the spot. Oh please. Any CEO that says they can’t write a check on the spot is simply demonstrating their skill at lying, so take notes and charge them significantly more to do business with you, if at all.
21. Cash is king. Run your deposits daily. No games at all.
22. Pay your taxes on time and file your reports early. We close out our quarters in 3 to 5 days. Don’t accept any other answer from your accountant. If you get an alternate answer get an alternate accountant.
23. Never trust anyone who tips less than 15% at a restaurant. This is a character flaw.
24. Never trust anyone who counts the lunch check down to the penny. See previous point.
25. Leopards don’t change their spots. Learned that one with my first business! Ouch!
26. Don’t let lawyers bully you. Do the right thing and *most* of the time the law is on your side.
27. When someone asks you to do something questionable – ask them “is that the right thing to do?” – it is amazing how powerful that one simple question is.
28. The government for the most part stays out of your business. Mainly they just make some activities more expensive than others. So work that into your math when bidding. Example: 401ks – you CAN take your money out whenever you want. You just get hit with penalties. That is how I started this business. So don’t confuse “you can’t” with “you will be hit hard with taxes” as those are two very different things. Sometimes you gotta go with the cash flow.
29. Don’t respond to RFPs. It took me years to learn this one. They are generally speaking a non profitable venture for most services businesses. Instead align with companies that have no skills beyond responding to RFPs and work subcontract. Get your money up front.
30. Firing people sucks. Your best bet is to recruit carefully and do extensive interviews. Any terminated employee is *your* failure either in hiring or in training. Either way, accept accountability and refocus on hiring and training your people.
31. Spend a LOT of money on books. Personally our company spends about $500 per month on books and audio books. Winning is the book this year. Great book.
32. Forgive yourself. I have a hard time with this one, but as you stick your neck out more and more you WILL screw up. A lot. So try hard to forgive yourself. I am still working on this one.
33. Pay attention to the accidents. This is hard to explain, but basically if you do A expecting B and Z results, poke that again and see if there isn’t an opportunity there.
34. Don’t believe the investment community. Bankers in particular. They have a goal and it is to separate you from your money. So accept their money but don’t believe that stuff about “relationship banking”. That relationship banker still reports to the underwriter. If you have a software business you feel my pain (software IP isn’t considered as an asset on a balance sheet for software companies if proprietary and privately held. Go figure!)
35. You can’t grow without some debt. I hear these people say “I live debt free!” and think whatever. Yes that would be nice, but our little company is showing you can manage debt and cash flow while growing quite profitably thank you.
36. Be careful hiring friends and family. Or better yet just don’t.
37. You don’t have to be the best at every task, but you have to understand it enough to hold others accountable.
38. Don’t be afraid to use words like “accountable”
39. Ask every job applicant what the goal of business is. If they answer something other than to “make a profit” then do not hire them.
40. Don’t make giant donations to charity from the company. Companies are things, pay your people the extra amounts and let THEM make the decision of how to spend it. Corporations buying million dollar art work is just a CEO trying to schmooze with the rich and famous. Be afraid. Enron comes to mind.
41. All great things occur by moving TOWARDS something. You can’t get to success by avoiding failure. You can’t “not be evil” you can only strive towards goals and be a good person. Let me say that again – all good things occur when you are moving TOWARDS a positive outcome. Success is an optimistic endeavor. the reason this is so challenging is moving away from the yellow line on the side of the road does work. It just doesn’t work to the level of helping you win the Daytona 500 – that my friends requires moving towards a positive goal – to WIN as a team.
42. … i’ll add more to this list if folks comment?

So the current 42 is once again – go back to THANK YOU and a HUGE sense of humility for all of the help. Thank you to our employees. Thank you to those who got us started. Thank you to our clients without which we would not have jobs. And if you are reading this, in some capacity – THANK YOU!

Ed

PS – that picture is from my 40th. A lot of those people are the ones who really DID help along the way. They are truly my “fierce friends!”

It is good to be a Nobel price winner. You get to live longer according to Wired.

So it seems to me that this ‘control of destiny’
phenomenon is in effect even among Nobel Prize finalists – if you win,
you’re the king of the world, in total control. If you don’t, you’ll
always know that there’s always somebody out there better than you,
even if it’s just one punk physicist at MIT…

Just one more reason why WINNING! is good.