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Ode to Canada and the good things thereafter

Alright, so let’s get started. June ’08 I took a good job with a great team over @ Symantec corp obtaining one of my favorite titles thus far – “Senior Principle Partner Manager” it was glorious and grand. Really it was a tough job, but I made some great friends while I was there and it was in Orange County, which was interesting as well (I’ve posted some about that). Well they moved me to Boston so I could take over some eastern responsibility and after a big drawn out move on my part, I settled in, spent 4 days total in Boston before I got the axe from them. It was a pretty sudden move, but with 3 prior RIFs I wasn’t completely shocked, just mostly.

I took some time and went a traveling a bit, then came back, packed my car up, and moved up to Toronto with my ole boy Dave Mifsud. An old mission buddy of mine and we decided to start up the businesses we’d been meaning to do for a while.

We did, we started EnviropureSolutions.ca with friends Ken and Robin, which is a great little venture that cleans and deodorizes using ozone. It’s an easy product to get behind because it takes care of mold, mildew, etc, and it’s quick and painless. Simultaneously we did Steadfastwealth.ca around Dave’s end goal of doing finance full time. We also started some database projects that are still in the works, and then lastly we did a quilt shop.

What’s that you ask? A quilt shop? Why of course, and when you look at me the first thought you have is “this man’s a quilter” I mean at 6’7” and an IT extraordinaire what else would I be? Actually, no, I’m no quilter, but this has been a fun project to do and I’ll tell you why real quick.

I started it for a good reason.

Dad works for the newpaper industry and the writing can’t get much bigger on the wall, they’re running scared and his job ain’t safe. So me and my sister went in on a building on the main drag of our small town of Hamilton, MO. Which reminds me of another reason I’m doing what I am; this town is dying slowly, and it’s obvious as you walk the streets, people are leaving in a vintage French flee-the-farm-for-the-city fashion, so that’s the other benefit – our community is excited to see something created…. and have that something working out. It’s encouraging to see that not everything is failing.

That was one year ago we bought the building and opened up this little shop.

So while in Canada, Dave and I decided to help juice up the Missouri Star Quilt Co and built the site Missouri Quilt Co using some work from a Ukrainian (those language skills are so handy sometimes) developer we sourced with, then the rest was me and Dave, 20 hour days, and 24” monitors.

This is my favorite because it’s an industry I knew nothing about, not a clue, and a demographic I was not necessarily in tune with, and in the course of about 7 months we have really been able to close that gap. Our first iteration of the site was a flop, no sales after 1000 page views, so we did a revisiting of the design, and it got better, then again, and again, and again. As we work with my sisters and mom on understanding the culture/demographic/preferences of the industry, we continue to customize, SEO, innovate, and implement, and the best part is the results are instant. We can see what the effect is if we change a header in a matter of hours. Also we’ve found that a lot of the tribal knowledge from other industries has an application in every niche, it’s just a matter of learning to apply it. So now the shop employs about 7 women in our community and our post office ladies, Christy and Betty, are in love with us (more-so when we started printing our own postage)

Tags: catching everyone up on life