Will Bridges

For a long time I looked for a parter to handle the main programming side of this business while I handled the business side of it. But, really, I don’t think it’s necessary any longer as I have learned how to balance both and I have found a couple team members that can take care of most of the intense labor of programming while I manage the business. So, rather, I’m building a team of developers with different skill sets and roles all across the world. Specifically, I’m working to cover each time zone within 6 hours of each other so it’s possible we could have people working 24 hours a day. 

I don’t think it’s impossible to get a partner but I’m skeptical about trusting one person to help me manage an empire that I’m building. Maybe the people I know are too fickle but I’ve put energy and faith in to people I thought would make good partners and I could have been using that energy to build a team of developers. Not only that but a partner wants half and a team member just wants to make a living and have a sustainable role. 

Also, the references I have gained have put a lot more work in my range. Over the past few months I’ve had a strategy of building good references which could be used to build better references. Relationships are key to maintaining a successful business as I believe I have said in the past. So far, my strategy is working pretty well. Another prong of my strategy has been to build content driven sites that will gain audience. That plan has started in it’s primary stages as I’ve been gaining money to invest in these sites for my business. 

The first site I am launching is The Nashville Review which is a site dedicated to doing video restaurant views. I got the site designed, the cards made and I’ve been training my girlfriend on how to edit video. I bought an extra mac for her to edit video on. We also bought a consumer high definition video camera (the Panasonic SD5) which has proven to be a good camera but I probably should have got something else. It’s missing a hotshoe (for an external light source) and an external mic input which is problematic. So, our first few videos may be a little poorer quality than I would like but it will still be good in my opinion. We have already shot video for two restaurants and will shoot video for two more before we launch. I expect our launch for this site to be in May.

I also launched a poetry website WillBridges.name where I will be writing one poem a day for the next year. That’s been a little challenging to keep content flowing but I’ve gained some readers pretty rapidly and expect the base to keep growing over the next year.

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It was not fun to migrate the Typo blog engine I had before to Wordpress. So, I want to save others some trouble. First of all, this is the site that describes the process:

http://blog.ifbydesign.com/2006/06/26/automatic-migration-from-typo-to-wordpress/

However, it’s ancient and the database no longer looks the same at all. You must dump the sql data from your typo database to your wordpress database from the following tables: articles_tags, tags, categorizations, categories and contents. Your wordpress installation should be fresh… DO NOT DO THIS TO A WORDPRESS BLOG THAT IS IN USE! You will lose your data if you do that. Backup your data regardless. I do not guarantee this to work but it worked great for me and I hope it will save someone a great deal of time trying to migrate from Typo to Wordpress. The below script was done with Wordpress 2.5 and Typo 4.1.1. The only thing I didn’t do was I didn’t migrate comments since I didn’t need to because most of my comments from my Typo blog were spam. I’m much happier with Wordpress, even though it’s in PHP )= So, here’s the sql script I modified to take place of the one that’s in this tutorial.

 
MySQL SQL Script For Migration

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Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been working on moving over to a Wordpress blog. I had Typo before and the amount of spam I got was so tremendous so it made me just want to ignore the blog because I didn’t feel like sifting through the spam to see comments. But, now I’m back and I expect to be writing often.

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It’s time we showed them we aren’t going to take it any more. A couple hundred years ago Americans protested the British over a tax on tea. Our income tax and inflation is way out of control and it’s time we too protested and take back our country to once again make it free of those who would take our liberty. Call me crazy if you like but Give me liberty or give me death still holds true for me. Please watch the short and inspirational video below and go to Tea Party 07

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No longer am I a programmer. Wait, let me back up… I am a programmer but my task list is about 60/40 now. 60% of the time I’m doing non-programming tasks like project management, consulting, client interaction and planning. Oh shit, I woke up one day and became a CEO who actually spends most of his time being a CEO. Now, when my partner left I was doing mostly programming still because my partner couldn’t take on that many projects. But since figuring out the best source of labor and expanding my business network I have been able to delegate most of the programming to the programmers, manage the projects and plan for the budgets. Mostly, I’m a one man show. No employees except my receptionist and myself. All contractors besides that. I’m very satisfied with that arrangement. Contractors are more service minded than salaried employees in my opinion.

I’m actually talking to the owner of another company about helping run their company out of their current slump. It’s a web development firm here in Nashville that’s been around since the late 90’s. It’s just been run poorly for that long. I’m actually surprised they have the quality of the client base they currently have with the amount of problems they have but nonetheless it’s a great opportunity and I’d love to turn things around for them. So, I may be taking on that massive task.

Since I have gotten more busy I’ve learned that keeping weekly list of tasks is not enough. Marking off tasks one a day is too slow and just not motivational enough. So, now I keep a daily list of tasks as well as a weekly list of tasks. I mark off tasks as I get done with them and it helps motivate me to move quickly through the day. Then, if I have time at the end of the task list I may knock a couple off the next day’s list or take the rest of the day off. One of the cool tools I’ve been using for task management is a todo list at http://www.toodledo.com. It allows you to set long, medium and short term goals. It also allows you to organize tasks in a categorized fashion. It’s just a great tool. It integrates with google calendar as well.

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I’ve really got disgusted with a lot of music coming out of the mainstream but I love music with a deep passion. If I weren’t a programmer I would probably be a writer and one of the things I would love to write would be songs and poetry. I write some now of course, but it’s not my profession. Anyways, so I started a web development contract with a company that works a lot with musicians and they mentioned this website CDBaby.com which is where independent artists put out original music for sale.

So, on this site you can preview and browse all the music on the site. And they also allow the musicians to sell their music on itunes and other digital music platforms. So, I can browse music, comment on music, it tells me what each band/artist style is comparable to in the mainstream and then I can buy and download either through their site or through itunes on my iphone. It’s really cool and there’s a lot of good music out there that never sees the light of the music industry’s powerful pen. Totally worth a look.

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When the iPhone came out I really did want it. But I was curious if it was all hype and so I waited and the price dropped. I thought “cool, I’ll buy it next check I get”. Sure enough, a check came and I decided it was time for new tools & equipment. I put aside a certain amount of money for new tools each month and I had enough. New tools increase efficiency and allow me to do more. The iPhone was a great investment for many reasons. More importantly, because I love the iPhone so much my next computer will probably be a Mac Pro Desktop.

So, why was it a good investment? Well, it allows me to sync calendars and contacts through itunes. I can store all kinds of valuable map information. I have enough space to store all kinds of video, audio, and pictures. Come on, who can say “I’ve got the video of my first born son’s birth right here on my phone!”… me. I can buy music right on the phone. It hooks to wi-fi where I can surf the internet and full speed. The touch screen navigation is amazing. I love the keyboard. Texting in the old fashion never caught on well with me so I wasn’t used to it. The iphone is worth the cash. There’s a bunch of other features. Plus, with apple putting out a software developers kit for programmers to start building apps for it in February I can’t wait to see what other apps I can have at my finger tips.

Apple is an awesome company, even if they are closed source at least they listen to their customers and provide quality products. Microsoft needs to take a lesson from Apple’s success.

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There are really two major things to figure out in any business but especially in this business. You need to figure out how to get high quality clients who will pay a fair wage in and then you need to figure out how to best find the cheapest and highest quality labor to satisfy the work you have promised. Then you have to keep your labor force happy and employed. These may seem like easy things to figure out but they are most certainly not easy. I have worked for 8 years and have just now figured out a formula I am pretty sure I can make work in this industry at least for the next 5-10 years.

Being wealthy is about finding windows of opportunity and exploiting them. You cannot expect something to last forever and you have to constantly have to adapt your strategy to stay relevant. Even when you find a window of opportunity and are successfully exploiting it you should save and build for the next window of opportunity you come across. This is a constant effort of prediction, strategy and balance which can only end when you are ready to get out of business.

The great thing is I finally figured out what tools I need to grow, how I can catch up and overtake past difficulty and start really building my empire. Wish me success.

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I really don’t want to do a rant on things but I really feel like doing it. Here’s the thing about buying CDs. I ‘evaluate’ music by going and downloading it. I’m not saying I do this illegally but I do go and download music. Now, sometimes I do this before the release date actually hits and sometimes I do it afterwards. Most of the music I get is garbage and I don’t go buy it from the store. However, if I support the artist and love their album I will go buy the album as soon as it hits stores. I don’t feel that I buy less music because of the digital age. I just have become very picky about the music I buy. If your album sucks and only one song on it is good don’t expect me to go buy your album. I think what the RIAA is really pissed about is that the digital age has made it harder pull the wool over people’s eyes any more and make them buy crappy albums by having one hit single.

Their waving their fist saying “Damn you! Educated consumer! We’ll sue!”. Like it’s going to stop people from downloading music. All people will do is get more clever and technology will get better to make them less able to protect their garbage. You want money? Provide a good product at a reasonable price and the American consumer will buy it. (Or have an overwhelmingly strong marketing department… *wink* *wink* Microsoft).

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