Derek Bobo's Blog

Whether it’s technology or people you want to eliminate any single point of failure in your business. Failure to do so could place your company at considerable financial risk. I see companies who do it everyday. It’s scary stuff. A fire in your server room that destroys all of your system data, a car or plain accident, or a disgruntled employee could cripple your business if you’re not taking the necessary measures. Avoiding these risky scenarios is relatively easy if you have the right discipline.

The first thing you really ought to do is assess what types of activities are truly

I once worked for a multi-million dollar company that had roughly 80 clients. Of these 80 clients about 5 clients generated 85% of the revenue. The other clients contributed significantly to the need for additional staffing and infrastructure to support them but generated very little by way of cashflow. I would guess that these clients required the business to maintain 25-40% additional staffing. How can you even begin to justify that? It’s absolutely insane. That particular business would have been far more profitable if it would have fired a large portion of it’s customer base. Or better yet made better decisions when selecting clients on the frontend. Profitability suffered because they didn’t right size their business.

Don’t make this same mistake. Promote smart growth and look for customers who can become loyal partners to your business. It’s always easier and far less expensive to maintain existing relationships than to create new ones. If you find the right customers

Many of the world’s economies are struggling and with that comes cutbacks. Too many times these cutbacks are forced from the top down, often times from a corporate office by executives who are too far from separated from the details. It’s no surprise that these cutbacks often come by way of a reduction in workforce. I find this mentality to often times be unmerited and should be a last resort.

I’m sure my dad can’t take credit for coming up with this quote, but I originally heard it from him:

“We never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it again.”

So so true.

When it comes to starting a business the early stages are usually about getting stuff done. That being said you don’t want to lose that information along the way. You need a way to organize it, store it, and refer back to it if necessary. Historically I think people have used tasks lists, word processors, and spreadsheets. Others may have leveraged the same ideas but went with a paper based approach. These strategies are usually fine when it comes to one or two people working together, but it becomes much harder to work collaboratively as the group or proximity grows.

Web based tools for project management, customer relationship management and wikis attempt to bridge this gap, but do they make sense for the small business or startup? As a technologist I used to think so. The idea has made a lot of sense to me, but I’m starting to wonder if my views are skewed because of my role in IT.

So what do you think? Are these tools useful or just hype when it comes effectively managing your business?

Because I’m a cool guy I’ve decided to build a website for one lucky small business owner… for free! I know the challenges associated with launching a business and I’d like to assist you in building out your biggest marketing tool.

To enter just make a comment and include a few words about your business. I’ll leave this offer available for one week at which point I will announce the winner.

The assumption is that the website will be built for marketing purposes only. It will include the relevant information, etc but not include any special administrative functionality (static HTML). I’m also assuming that you will purchase the domain name (usually about $10.00). I can even assist you in how to do this if necessary. If stock photography is needed this will also be a pass through cost, however any pass through costs that might come up will be discussed with you prior to purchase. You really have no risk involved.

In addition, I’ll host your website for 1 year free of charge. At the end of that period you can either choose to do business with me or export your site as HTML and go your own way.

If you have any specific questions don’t hestitate to ask.

Starting and growing a business takes a tremendeous amount of work. In the early phases this often means you are wearing a lot of hats to make it happen. If you’re not careful it can consume (or even destroy) your life. In order to avoid this I have the following suggestions:

Define yourself. Humans are interesting creatures and ever growing and changing. Before you launch into an endeavor make sure you know who you are and what you stand for. Write it down and revisit it often. This should be what always guides your decision making. Don’t lose yourself when times get tough.

Make sure you have an outlet. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” If you don’t have an outlet it’s easy to get locked into tunnel vision. When this happens you can lose sight of what you’re really after or not notice the terrain changing around you.

Stay true to yourself. Make sure you always remember to give that husband, wife, and/or kids a hug and let them know you love them. Take time to sneak a round of golf or play the guitar. At the end of the day it’s usually these types of things that start the drive. Don’t lose sight of that.

I’ve been spending some time getting back engaged with my business ideas. I have a couple of projects on the docket and it’s really helped to get me motivated to get back after it. I’ve been jotting down my thoughts in todo lists and trying to work on things a little bit each day. Thus far it has been pretty productive and I’m happy with the progress I’ve been making.

With some new ideas under wraps I spent some time identifying a handful of prospects, which I intend to approach within the next week or so. This has gotten me back in the whole marketing/sales mindset that I dread. Doing the work is relatively easy for me… finding the work is just not something I’ve spent a ton of time on in the past. Since I wasn’t driving full force I always just kind of did projects as they found me. Now I want to be proactive.

I’ve been thinking back to my marketing days. Personal selling in particular. With some potential clients in mind, I’ve now switched my focus to thinking about how I want to approach them. What would I want to see if I were in their shoes? Why would I want to buy from Derek? I have some pretty good ideas surrounding this, now I just need to figure out why the “players” are that I need to speak with. They need to be MAD… they need to have the (M)oney to buy what I’m offering, the (A)uthority to make the purchase, and the (D)esire to make the purchase. Getting to these people is going to be key. Now I just need to figure out how to navigate to these folks.

It’s been a while since I had a chance to write. Let me get you caught up:

Snowstorm
We had some nasty weather the week before last. A combination of snow and ice knocked out the power for most of Southeast Ohio. I actually had about 3 days off of work due to the power outages and only being able to operate at a limited capacity.

Probably the more painful experience was that I was without power at home for 7 days. We toughed it out for the week by lighting candles and running a kerosene heater. It was extra tough because we had 3 sick dogs that we constantly had to take care of and try to keep warm. I pulled the grill up to the back door and we were able to boil water for dishes and do some cooking, but we ended up running in town for a meal about everyday.

The time without the normal ameneties did give me some good time to reflect. It puts into perspective the things that are important and how much time you waste. It thwarted efforts on personal projects, but also gave me a chance to evaluate what is important.

Car Problems
My car has been struggling for quite some time. Most of the issue I’ve had have been minor, but annoying. It started out with the dash lights not working and windows not rolling down. I recently smacked a deer with it causing some substantial body damage. A week or so later I started noticing the power steering acting up a bit and the transmission starting to slip (it had done this for a while… but is getting noticeably worse in a hurry). I was still driving it along but it was topped off when I got about half way to work and my seat decided to just randomly break.

My good luck continued when we decided to see a movie a couple weekends ago. Given the recent problems with my car and some poor weather we decided to take my old 4×4 truck. We got a couple miles down the road and it started to wobble a bit. I got it slowed down and checked out the left wheel and everything looked okay… but I decided I’d try to limp back to the house. We got about half way there before the wheel nearly came off the truck. I had hoped it would just be a ball joint or wheel bearing but as luck would have it tore up the whole front end.

I ultimately went and bought a 2002 Dodge Ram which is to serve as my new primary vehicle. It’s a very sharp truck, but doesn’t do so hot on gas. Now I gotta figure out what to do with the old junkers I have.

Solar Power
I have this dream of building a cabin that is off the grid and completely self sustaining. While I like the idea of helping the environment it’s really more about eliminating dependencies on utility companies and unnecessary luxuries (more on all of this at a later date).

My desire to start implementing this became more fueled with the week long power outage. I appreciate all the hard work that went into restoring power, but customer service at utility companies just disgusts me. They don’t treat you like a customer, they treat you like a number. They portray it as though you should feel privileged to be able to work with them and homie dont play like that.

I called in to report my outage and check the status. I told them I wasn’t expecting the power to come on immediately, I simply wanted to know if they were working on my area. Was I even in the queue. All they could do was quote me some generic recording that gave no indiciation on where their efforts were being focused. For all I knew they could have been 3 counties away. This type of response is not acceptable in other industries so what makes them unique? It makes me sick.

I’ve since been researching on how to get off the grid. I think it would be tough to do this at our current residence but it’s definitely possible for the cabin I plan to build. That aside I think it would be nice to get some sort of backup system implemented so I don’t get left in the dark during the next power outage.

My research has lead me to the following:

• Solar panels mounted on the roof that provide charge to a battery bank
• Solar panels feed to a charge controller which helps protect the batteries from over charging
• Charge controller connects to the battery bank
• Multimeter attached to the battery bank used for checking system status
• Battery bank should be comprised of deep cell golf cart batteries
• Battery bank connects to a DC to AC inverter which turns the energy into household electricity

At this point you can either wire this into a breaker box or hook up devices directly to the inverter. I’ve already started putting together some preliminary designs. I’ll probably order some stuff over the next few weeks and start doing some testing to prove out the concepts. When I get to this point I’ll keep some ongoing posts.

Work / Life
For the time being I’m going to try and restrict internet usage from home. I plan to continue to work towards my goal of starting my own business, but the house remodel needs some love right now. I’ve been really trying to get a better balance happening and it’s apparent that doing IT stuff all day (work) and all night (my business) is just too much. I’m going to try and pull the reigns back for now and focus on what’s important. Right now that’s getting our house to a respectable place. This should help make the wife happy and once we get caught up a bit I’ll be able to work on my projects again without feeling guilty.

Parting Shots
There was a ton more than the above that happened in the last couple of weeks, but I think this gives a good sampling of the chaos rattling around in my head right now. I’m going to try and get back into regular posts and will comment on the specifics as they come up.

I heard something I thought was interesting today so I thought I’d share. I was talking with a friend who mentioned a way to quickly assess someone and come up with a pretty accurate opinion and that is to use F-O-R-M.

You basically ask a few simple questions about:

F – Family
O – Their occupation
R – Their recreational activities/interests
M- Money

Obviously how you phrase these questions is important and they can’t be rapid fire, but I certainly found it interesting. I think most of us have probably used this technique at least inadvertently. I think it’s definitely a way to feel a person out.

I’m going to keep an eye out and see if I do this as I encounter new people. On the flip side I’m going to try and be conscious of it when I meet others.