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Mothers day

To my mama – thanks for all the science experiments like dissecting rats to see how they work, for making us sing show tunes while we cleaned, for teaching us how to adventure and find forts, for enforcing manners on us, helping us make hockey pads out of magazines, for the food fights, and spaghetti dinners, for packing 7 kids into a Chevy Sprint to go for the impromptu road trips, movie nights on the lawn, dinner with strangers from the street, weeks of work that were given as service – cause it’s not about money, gleaning tomato fields in the fall and canning sessions that ended in wonderful tomato fights.  From the waterfights in the house, to the waterfights in Busters hills, for the mountain climbs while your back was broken, to the great long hikes that made up our days, for the dressing up like people we didn’t know for floats in parades, for the stories you’d read us that taught us to love to read, and the years of enforced volunteering at the library to teach us how rare it is to have that appreciation.  For the hidden snacks on long trips, and the long talks when things ain’t going so hot.  For being the ultimate defender of our rights, the pointer-outer of opportunity and our loudest encourager to take advantage of every opportunity we came across.  For the frugality of going without, the understanding of true wealth, and the joy that comes with an eternal perspective – I owe it to you!

Love you ma, happy mothers day.

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.

Blood shot eyes and cheesy grins

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.

The shop a year ago

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

MSQC 1 year later

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)

where’ve I been?

So I’ve had some exciting things going on recently!!  Finally got the office done back in Missouri so I can setup a bookshelf and unpack some of the boxes I’ve been hauling around for 8+ years through college and life, as well as setup the server’s and various other computer hoo-hah that’s been waiting for a more permanent home than my BBP Laptop Bag (if I haven’t plugged bbpbags.com before, shame on me.  They’ve been great, and after about 6 months after my original purchase, a plastic snap broke, and their customer service was beside themselves and insisted on shipping me out a whole new bag…. awesome) so that’s exciting.  Here’s a pic of the office after it’s first painting -

office walls

and now I’m in Canada for a week, then a week in PA and a week in NH then home again.  Fun things are underway work wise, so that’s good, dating life is lose, so that’s lame.  But all in all, plenty to smile about.  Tomorrow is Dave’s little brothers wedding, so I’ll throw up a few pics from that.

Enjoy

lifes a dance, you learn as you go

So life has been pretty crazy as of late, and I figured I’d take this 3:30am moment to update you all. If you’re a regular reader of this blog most of this should be no surprise, and if it is, I apologize for not keeping in better contact.

But yeah, so about a month ago Symantec Corp, whom I had worked for since college moved me from my sunny home in Orange County to the place I would soon call home in Boston. That lasted 4 days before I got a call from the bosses who informed me that I was a casualty of the latest 5% RIF (Reduction In Force) and that today was my last day. Needless to say I was a bit blindsided by it as we were a very strategic group that was heavily involved in the success of the company vision, particularly with the consulting partners, if not consulting delivery as a whole. But alas, corporate life is prone to such frustrations. So in a matter of 15 minutes life went from peachy to turmoil.

I spent the next several hours in a personal strategy session, as being so new to the partner and consulting realms I don’t feel like this was my given career and I needed to find a new senior partner manager position. I decided this was going to be the perfect storm for me. I have enough in the bank to last me a few months, and have determined I am going to try and make a go of being an entrepreneur. I flew home from Toronto and got back to my home office, ordered a personal laptop and have gone to work.

I am now working on 3-4 projects looking to expand to 5-6 projects and hoping to have revenue to pay the bills within the next 3 months. My overhead is 700 bones, (I love being a single schmuck in these situations) and if I can cover that I’m in great shape and will keep doing this till I die. I love the work, I love working on startup ideas, I love the creativity process, and I love boot strapping. So my 12-14 hour days that were so long with Symantec have turned into 18 hour days of pure joy. It’s a nice change, and will be nicer still when I make some of these stick.

So I will be moving from Boston in January to Toronto to live in my buddies basement while we grow two of the projects and plan to be back in Missouri sometime towards the fall with some new projects for the states as well.

So if any of you guys have great business ideas you’ve been meaning to start, give me a call. Lets rock and roll.

Lessons learned though, there have been many.

First, it can’t happen to me is a stupid mentality and needs to be done away with immediately. A company is in the mix to make money, and despite what logic would dictate, you have no idea what they’re thinking. Prepare yourself, pay down debts, keep some savings. It goes without saying, but had I known a month ago how things were going to go, I would have saved a bit more aggressively, and now I just wish I would have been smarter.

Second, the how could this have happened to me is a stupid mentality and should be done away with immediately. My initial response was to be incredulous but that was very quickly replaced with ‘strategize and adapt’. The latter served me much more. You have to ask yourself what doors of opportunity are open, and they may not be what you are thinking. For me, I don’t plan on finding a job that is going to pay me as much as I was making in this recession, so I had to think, if not a job then what. Arrive at a position that allows you to keep progressing.

Third, loyalty is lost in today’s world, don’t bemoan that, use it. A company will never think ‘don’t fire bill, we promised him a job for a few years’ so why do we think ‘I should stay here for x years, that’s the good thing to do, they’ve invested in me’? A company does what makes it money, for employees, they should treat their career like a chess match, with each move being strategic, but the key there is they are moving. You have no business riding down a sinking ship cause it’s the ‘right thing to do’. Don’t get me wrong, you be ethical, if you commit to a time frame, keep it, but commit cautiously, and move where opportunities open to you.

Anyway, good luck to all of you who are meeting similar fates, but on the bright side, adventures are back and I’m waking up smiling again.

mo star quilt co

So I’ve been putting in a bit of energy into the quilt shop over the past few weeks working to get it on its feet. Though honestly my contributions pale in comparison to those of the two pros running the shop. Mom has really become a pro at running the gammill and Sarah has created a retail niche in a community where there wasn’t one before. It’s a lot of fun working a project like this with them. But as it sits, there has been a lot of progress, and Sarah has started blogging about it on Missouri Star Quilt Company . blogspot.com so you can keep tabs on it. Here’s a few pics of the shop though so you can get a good feel for what I be talking about,

if I may…

So I have had a great adventure recently as my sister and I have started the Missouri Star Quilt Co, it’s been a surprisingly fun experience working with family and I would be remiss if I did not give a quick bit o’ love to one of my best friends who happens to be a business partner of mine.

You gotta love this girl and I am constantly amazed at what she is able to accomplish. Let me give you a brief run down of what it’s taken to get here, and keep in mind, this is all done with 5 crazy kids and a champion of a husband, who all have karate, some have soccer, football, music and other commitments. A house of their own that needs attention from time to time, church commitments, and various other time sapping factors in play. So with all that going on, she has managed to find and negotiate a price on a building, close on the building, handle taxes and lawyers, work out loan needs with the bank, incorporate her company, remodel almost entirely a good chunk of the purchased building, get the multiple insurances necessary, come up with alternative financing for the quilt machine, get all the permits and tax id’s necessary to run a business, and the list goes on.

We talk every morning before I start work and we reset what needs to be done that day, and almost without fail, we do a call at the end of the day where she confirms that everything is taken care of. An absolute joy to see everything come together, and I just love working with miss Sarah. My family spoils me, what can I say?

labor day, w00t

so for labor day weekend I hopped on a plane and cruised home to Missouri to do a bit of work. Mom is starting a quilt shop back there called “Missouri Star Quilt Co.” and is very excited. Well we’ve purchased a 5000 sqft old brick building that has a block of windowed store front and just some great character. So we needed to convert the old car dealership (brick building) / antique shop into something usable. Saturday I got in and went over plans with dad and the the family and we settled on what we were going to do. Then I went into the old totes in my room and dug out a pair of jeans (there were so many adventurous clothes in there, to limit myself to jeans was tough, and then Monday we went to work. We were up before 7 to hit the sales at the lumber yard, going in initially in seth’s truck, we hauled back lumber to build the walls, sheetrock, and insulation to rock the casbah. We got back and got working, draining old oil drums and knocking out industrial furnaces from the land before time days. Then we measured for the boardwalk out front, and me and dad ran back to the lumber yard to grab deck supplies. Thinking it would be a small purchase, we just took the minivan. As I ran the math it turned out our order for lumber with the van was almost more than when we had the truck. But this is why I love Missouri. We bought 30 planks of 12 foot treated wood, stuck it in the van leaving a good 6 feet sticking out the back, strapped it down with baling twine and a half working motorcycle strap, then drove 30 mph down the highway home, and no one batted an eye. That is why I love this place. So yeah, we cranked out some serious work on Monday, I was very pleased, then did birthdays the last few days for Seth and miss Ella Jane who is now 4. w00t!

Sarah Beth blogged some pics of the day -

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Life is good though, I was reminded of why I chose the desk job as I went to bed Monday night aching, but it is a feeling I love. It really is so good to be home, love my family, though today I’m jumping on a plane back to Provo, back to Logan tomorrow, back to LA on Tuesday, I’ll touch base with you guys again in a few days. Life is crazy, work is good. On the work note, I’ve found my dream company to work for…. the X Prize foundation. If anyone knows anyone associated with them, drop me a line, I am dead serious, I want to work with those guys. I’ll be looking to change jobs in about 2 years, so we got time, but you know.

graduation lovin

a few of you have asked me about graduation gifts, well I appreciate the thought, because it’s very kind of you to think of gifts for me. But I’m really doing pretty good, there’s not a whole lot that I need, however, those of you who know me would know what I like, so if you find cool stuff… great! Also, the one other thing I’d really like right now are books and the like that i’ve been meaning to pick up over the years but haven’t had a chance to yet, so if you are interested in hooking a brotha up, I decided I’d start an amazon wishlist (button to the left here) and you could see the kind of stuff I’ve been dreaming about with far off gazes and longing eyes. Seriously though, a note catching me up on life would be a great present in itself.

Mahalo