Building a Business by Building Businesses

I had no idea when I decided to be a web developer that what people really need when they buy my product, isn’t really my product.

Most of our clients come to us knowing that they either need a website, or need their current website to do more. That’s exactly what we advertise, “Websites that Do More”. What most of our clients really need, however, is a business partner that knows how to sell more of their goods and services. If they had that part figured out, they wouldn’t be asking us to build or tune up their site in the first place. Ultimately what prompted their call was that they’re not selling as much as they want or need to.

That revelation hit me sometime around 4:00am today when I woke up with my brain on fire on how we could help one of our clients really blow the roof off of their sales. I spent three hours scribbling down all the ways their site could be improved and eventually the notes went from just a website plan, to a more comprehensive business plan. That’s when I clearly understood why we are so much more than a web development company.

We certainly have a core team of some of the best technical people in the world. The thing that didn’t hit me until this morning was that we have fantastic sales, marketing, and business folks too. We’ve just never focused on that being the key product we sell. We’re a web company – I used to think. Well dummy, the only real point of a website is to make it easier and faster to learn about, and ultimately to do business with your company. In fact, what most of our clients tell us on that first call is “the phone doesn’t ring enough” (lead generation) or “not enough people find us online” (advertising) or “we get lots of clicks but people don’t buy our product” (sales). Seems pretty obvious in hindsight that websites, at their core, are sales and marketing engines.

I think what’s made our past clients refer us so often is that we’ve unconsciously been building more than websites. We’ve taken an honest and enthusiastic interest in helping our clients build their businesses.

I guess it’s no wonder since when I look at our team closer, we have a HUGE sales background. We’ve got ex-real estate agents, ex-electronic salesmen, and even a guy that sold arts and crafts supplies in college. We also love business. Most of our team has either started other businesses, or currently own stakes in them.

We’re one of those eclectic groups that not only think it’s a good idea, but also think it’s fun, to start a brand new company, in a highly competitive market, where a ton of work is outsourced to India, in one of the worst economies in decades. I guess we like business, sales, and marketing more than I thought.

Now that I clearly see our core strength is helping other businesses grow, the real question is how do we update our own business plan? Maybe we start by changing our tagline from “Websites that Do More” to “Websites that Mean Business”.

“Business is good and business is fun
and what you always rely on
is the work’s never done”

- a business poem, by Eric Scott

Making Money in a Bad Economy

Here is the state of things. The economy looks peaked with unemployment at 8.1% and climbing. You need a microscope to see interest rate yields with money markets earning under 2% and long term CD’s even lower. Nationally, average home prices have dropped around 20% in the last few years. And how about that wonderfull stock market? It’s down a whopping 50% in just over a year.

The fundamentals still seem sound:

• Live Below Your Means – Don’t spend your entire paycheck on living expenses. Tighten up the budget and save at least 10% of income every month. Always remember there are a lot of people in the world that make do with a lot less than us and 10% is hardly noticeable once you do it.
• Keep At Least Six Months In Cash – With layoffs looming and unemployment rising, keep at least six months to a year’s worth of living expenses on hand in cash. Don’t touch it unless you’re unemployed and need it to live off until you find more work.
• Pay Off High Interest Debt – with rates as low as they are, any loans with rates over 7% should be targeted for payoff. Start with credit card and car loans and then hit the mortgage. If you have a lot of credit card debt in the 10%+ category, that might even take priority over a large cash buffer. Of the 10% in savings every month, maybe stick half in the bank and half on debt reduction.
• Invest – this part seems to get tricky. Once you hit the above, you’ll have around 10% or more of your monthly salary piling up.

Where to Invest the Money?
But what is a young, dumb, investor to do? There seems to be no safe haven for our investment capital except cash. Even that will probably get gobbled up by inflation once all our drunken government spending and bargain basement interest rate loans finally catch up to us.

I feel now, as I have always felt, that there are only three places to reliably make money with money over long periods of time: stocks, real estate, and business ownership. The horrible returns we’ve seen with the stock market collapse, property values tobogganing, and businesses failing, is an inevitable correction due to decades of rising markets and bad decisions made assuming it would continue forever.

The plus side to this mess is that real estate values have come down significantly and are now much more reasonable. Purchasing ownership in companies via stock is also more affordable than ever.

The Solutions
If your time horizon for your investment is short, like you’re ready to retire, it’s just a bad time to be you. You’ve probably lost a ton of money and probably won’t get it back anytime soon. There are also no good short term solutions to make money without a lot of risk. You’ll either be living on less, or you’ll be working longer than you hoped.

If, however, you have a longer time horizon for your investment, now seems to be a decent time to invest. You still might lose some, (or a lot) of money in the short term, but if you reliably invest every month in real estate, stocks, or a business of your own, you’ll be ideally positioned to ride up the eventual turn around.

The Argument for Real Estate
Real estate seems to be a good candidate for purchase. Mortgage rates are laughable. Locking in fixed rate mortgages in the low fives is a great idea if you’re a first time buyer or have an existing ARM or higher rate financing. Non-owner occupied loans in the high fives to low sixes are also an amazing deal. Combining current low interest rates with the greatly reduced property values found today seems to make a sound, long term investment strategy.

The Argument for Stocks
Businesses are having a hard time staying profitable and even staying in business. There are, however, solid, profitable businesses to be found that are scooping up market share as their weaker competitors struggle to stay alive. It also interesting that the price to purchase a portion of those businesses has dropped a lot faster than the actual income they generate. Dividend yields on an S&P Index Fund (SPY) for instance are up from 1.2% in 2000 to over 3.2% today. Even though it’s certainly possible that the markets have a lot further to fall, building a well diversified portfolio now will get you good stocks at a discount as well as build good habits of monthly investing that will benefit you for the rest of your life.

Overall, the level of risk in purchasing real estate and stocks has gone down dramatically over the last few years. Saving money and investing monthly has always been a sound strategy and is even more important today. As long as we have the discipline not to touch the money, keep our spending in check, and develop a well diversified portfolio, now seems to be a great time to invest.

Pictures up at Flickr

I finally took some time this weekend and updated my home page picture gallery. After a lot of looking, Flickr seemed to be the coolest system around so I tried it. Once I got started, it was hard to stop.

www.EricsHomePage.com has been upgraded with galleries that link to the most recent Flickr pictures. Flickr is fantastic and makes photo sharing a breeze. Check back often since I’ll be adding a lot of pics now that it’s so easy.

Heading to Africa

It seems official – I’m heading to Africa to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro as well as check out the lions, tigers, and…giraffes, oh my.

The Call

Chris, our world traveling, mountain climbing friend, was off to Tanzania and figured he’d invite Katie and me. We’ve been eyeing England, India, Africa, and Brazil as candidates for this years trip but hadn’t made firm plans when we got the call. Africa has definitely been on the top of my list and I was in.

The Question

Katie is another story with her new job and large workload but I suspect she’ll find a way to make at least part of the trip. Keeping her away from fun, especially travel fun, is like overcoming Earth’s gravity. It can be done, but only through great expense, and a risk that your attempt will end in a fiery explosion that comes crashing down, killing everyone around. I wouldn’t want to be the boss standing between her and a particularly fun trip to Africa!

The Trip

The trip is shaping up to be three weeks and should occur later this year. We’ll spend about a week conquering (or being spanked and sent back crying like little babies) the tallest mountain in Africa. Then it’s off for another week of playing with cuddly little animals. Finally, we’ll probably end up relaxing in a hotel on a beach and maybe chartering a boat for an couple of days worth of cruising off the coast.

The End

Check back here to keep track of trip planning, pics, and notes from the field.

My Blog is Upgraded!

I seem to have a lot to say and my old blog just wasn’t being updated because it was a pain in the butt. I finally had a chance to catch my breath at work and decided to hook up some technology to help. This blog is now being served through Word Press as a test and so far I like it. We’ll see if I actually take the time to write anything now.

Global Game Jam 2009

After an exhausting weekend of building a video game from scratch, our team – “Team Boom” – pulled out a win at the New York – Columbia site.

The event was fantastic and I’m not sure I’ve ever had so much fun working 20 hours straight, two days in a row with total strangers. For a full account of what went on, check out the news post on www.DolphinMicro.com.

New York!

We finally made it to New York and have now been here for almost three months. We love our new appartment and are both busy working hard. I updated the client list to the right and it’s getting pretty big! I’m busy and happy to be productive again.

I’ve got a ton more pictures but this website is soo old school and is a real pain to update so they aren’t up yet. I’m a story book example of the busy shoemaker that runs around barefoot. Someday soon, I’ll spend a day or two and convert it to a Rails site so it’s easier to update.

Early Retirement

I remember walking home from elementary school one afternoon contemplating retirement. Earlier my father mentioned a CD he had yielding an 11% return. It was the 1980′s and interest rates were out of control. Though I didn’t know rates were at historic highs (I wasn’t exactly keeping up with world events back in grade school), I did think about the 11% return. Even when I was young, I was interested in the power of money and I wondered why with yields that high, all of America didn’t retire early. All you need to do, I calculated, was put half a million in the bank earning 11% and your interest payment would be greater than your salary (a decent salary in the 80’s was around $40k). In grade school, I had the policy of putting half of my earnings (weekly allowance) in a savings account and assumed everyone could do the same. Assuming a $40k salary and saving half, you’d have $400,000 in 20 years. I guessed that including interest, your net worth would break the half million mark and send you to easy street by the time you were forty ( I was close, you’d actually have over one and a quarter million if you invested $20k per year at 11% for 20 years – compound interest never ceases to amaze me.)

The Trouble with Grade School Math

Now that I’m older, I understand that life isn’t as easy, or as cheap, as when you’re a kid and your most difficult challenge is what to do at recess. Saving half of your salary is cumbersome and earning 11% on your money is tough with the stock market at the same level it was nine years ago, real estate prices in the gutter, and interest rates at historic lows. All in all, however, I’ve still managed to save and invest and depending on market forces and my ability to pull off a new business, I will still be on track for a modest retirement by the time I’m in my early 40’s.

A Taste of the Good Life

As a prelude to retirement, I recently had a chance to explore, first hand, life without work. My wife Katie was transitioning to a new job, and there was an eight month period where I left my real estate business and traveled. Katie and I went on a fantastic two month, cross county road trip stretching from the tip of Maine, down the East Coast, then West through the southern U.S. ending up in San Francisco. Afterwards, she went off to six months of training while I continued to screw off spending time in San Diego sailing, making friends, and camping on the beach. After five months of no boss and no work I started getting a bit antsy in the pantsy. To keep from going stir-crazy, I got in touch with a friend I’d worked with in the past to see if he had anything else I could do. I landed my first software contract, ended up starting a company, and the rest is history in the making. It made me wonder if I can’t stay retired for a few months, what am I going to do if I really try to retire at 40?

Sometimes the Greener Grass is Boring

Ever since that fateful day in grade school, I’ve been working towards the goal of retiring early. I’ve never really been a big fan of work and I like having a boss even less. I figured the easiest way to avoid both bosses and work, was to have enough money so I didn’t need to subject myself to either. Turns out what I dislike even more than being told what to do, is sitting around with nothing to do You learn a lot about yourself living alone in a tent on the beach for a few months. I’m currently working seven days a week, average 60 hours a week, have four bosses and couldn’t be happier. I like having a purpose and I like feeling productive. I like getting up in the morning and wondering how I’ll possibly fit everything I want to do into my day. I love being creative, working with people, coming up with ideas, developing a plan, and implementing a project. In the end, the goal I’ve been striving towards hasn’t been freedom from work. It has been freedom from the monotony of a boring job with a mediocre boss in an industry that just doesn’t excite me.

My Real Estate business gave me a taste of that freedom but real estate just wasn’t the right work for me. No job will be pure bliss, free from the unpleasant and mind numbing tasks. There is work, though, that is more interesting, challenging, and fun. Finding that work takes trying different things and that takes having the freedom to explore the universe of work. Now that I’m on my third career and have had a six month trial run at retirement, I have a better idea of what really makes me happy. My goal of amassing a small fortune to add freedom and flexibility to my life is still very much at the top of the list. What I do with that freedom is still on the drawing board and I’m more inclined to think I’ll be working, albeit on something fun, as long as I live.

If there is a moral to this story it would be: The feeling of self worth you gain from a job well done cannot be overstated. Adding cash to the treasury, however, increases one’s ability to be more specific about what one does and who one works for, and in the end makes life more fun and interesting.

Copyright 2008 by Eric Scott

Around the Country and Back Again – Part II

After San Fran, it was back across the country to spend some time with the family in lovely, arctic, snow covered Wisconsin. It was a lot more fun than I expected but after a few weeks it was time for something warmer again. I decided to head back to Colorado, pick up a friend, and drag him out to San Diego with me. Katie enjoyed her time in the arctic North and played with her mom and sister almost non-stop until she finally got the call for training in mid-January.

I, on the other hand, went camping. Boy did I camp. I camped and camped and camped some more. I also stumbled into some work with the guy I took with me and learned to write software WHILE camping. To mix it up a bit, I also sailed my little brains out.

I went sailing to some islands,
and sailing to a bay,
I sailed my way along the coast,
watching dolphins on the way,
I sailed and sailed and sailed some more,
and when the day was done,
I pulled the line and hauled the yards,
and sailed some more for fun!

Between camping, sailing, and writing code, when I finally looked up, it was almost March and I finally decided it was time to stop camping.

I found a great roommate that lived in a strange oasis in the sky. There were pools, hot tubs, a massive gym, and palm trees everywhere. I spent all of March and the first part of April sailing, working out at the gym, getting back up to speed on new technology, and constantly harassing my new roomie to play with me. Luckily, she was a lot of fun and was also very social and had lots of friends to keep me entertained. By mid April, it was time to start thinking about rejoining the real world and I had to say goodby to all the new friends I’d met. It was harder than I thought to say goodbye to San Diego and I hope to get back there with Katie someday soon.

I’m now back in Colorado, hanging out with old friends and working on my next big adventure – a software development and contracting business. If you know anyone that’s been down this road, or that might need some code built (website, business system, scientific computing tools, fluffy animal screen saver…) I’m all ears If you made it this far, you’re now up to date with my entire life. I commend you for a strong ability to ignore boredom and push through the pain to find out how a story ends. With all my sailing, the end of a story doesn’t seem complete without a little sea shanty so here goes:

Off we go hi ho hi ho,
On a trip across the world,

Where it stops,
Don’t no one know,
Until the tale unfurls,

All I can say when things are through,
And I chance to look around,

Back at the life that I have lived,
Lots of good mates there were found.

Around the Country and Back Again – Part I

One of the goals on my “Things to do before I’m dead” list was to spend 6 months being a non-socially productive bum. One more life goal down!

Katie and I packed up all of our worldly belongings (they filled a whopping half of a one car garage) and headed for the East coast at the end of September 2007. The plan, if you can call it a plan, was to drive around the U.S. in search of fun until she found out when training for her new job would start.

We figured since winter was fast approaching, the East coast was our first stop. Judster (our hell…um…I mean loving kitty) came too for his first cross country road trip. We dropped him off at his new home in Wisconsin with surprisingly little shredded flesh and then stopped at Niagara Falls before heading to our first sailing stop in Rhode Island.

Sailing turned out to be more asphyxiating than we’d imagined since our instructor, Bud, didn’t seem to notice his boat smelled exactly like a porto-potty, only stronger, slightly more salty, and with a gentle hint of wet dog. We bagged sailing with Bud after Katie determined sleeping on deck (ie – on top of the boat, right before winter) was more comfortable than curling up with hubby in the fascinatingly scented cabin down below.

We had a lot of fun eating lobster in Maine (in the future, I recommend asking for instructions if you’ve never tried a whole boiled lobster – there’s some green stuff that shoots out like a squirt gun if you do it wrong), living large with our posh New York friends, playing tons of Catan with our Ohio friends, and catching up with another set of friends while exploring Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Small East coast towns are wonderfully charming, and we’re looking forward to our move once Katie finally get’s her job.

From there, it was across the country stopping at disc golf courses, the Grand Canyon (the biggest, coolest hole I’ve ever seen), the Hoover Dam (the biggest, coolest concrete thing put in a hole I’ve ever seen), and finally pulling in to San Francisco for some more sailing.

We found an adorable apartment blocks away from the bay and Fisherman’s Warf and hung out in San Francisco for all of November. Hauling our bikes on the roof rack finally paid off since driving is something you just don’t do in San Francisco. We road across town four times a week to a great rock gym and had a lot of fun dodging cars, busses, pedestrians, strange smelling man holes, and old ladies. We found you need to pay special attention to the old ladies and make sure you’re moving faster than they can, otherwise they’ll get hold of you and make you carry their groceries all the way back to their place and up a few flights of stairs. At least they’ll give you a random vegetable for your trouble! With tons of friends flying out to visit, we kept very busy and probably explored every tourist spot from the Coit tower, to Alcatraz, to the Golden Gate Bridge and everything in between.