Will Bridges

Every CEO and/or Business Owner must have these things to be a success.

• Great Organizational Tools - Nothing makes a person more efficient than the proper tools & software. Anything that helps you remember, cuts back on time spent on mundane tasks, or keeps you in touch with the rest of the world is a great thing. Always be on the lookout for better tools and software because these things give you the ability to adapt to changing circumstances quicker. I don't even mean get the latest gadgets. You could end up spending a lot of money getting the next best gadget. My favorite organizational tools are the cork boards and dry erase board as well as my dry erase calendar. When I'm in my office I'm always a head glance away from my company's status. Don't get stuck in using a tool either… be open to investigating new tools, always.
• Excellent Social Skills - Social skills are very important. You are the face of your business and you must present a face that is inviting and happy to be around others. Business is not about money, talent or hard work. It's about people. You may say… "In my business I don't have to deal with people because we produce Widgets and sell them online"… really? Okay, if you have no vendors which you deal with, no contact with customers and no employees then you can have terrible social skills. In just about all businesses you are one conversation from a better deal with a vendor, an undiscovered talent and a group of new customers. If you don't have people skills and you want to be in business then get out now, develop your people skills or find someone willing to partner with you that has these skills. You must not only have the ability but the desire to deal with people. Every person is a branch to your network and thus a path for possible growth, professionally and personally.
• An Attitude That Exudes Assurance & Positivity -  I am almost certain this is what has kept me in business this long. I'm sure like I'm sure that everything is positive and headed in the right direction. Even when I'm not, very few people know. I'm not saying be ignorant to reality. I'm saying don't sulk, don't worry, don't show weakness or disgust. You almost have to be a zealot about your business to succeed. Speak nothing negative and show nothing negative. If you have a problem approach it in a way to look for a practical path away from your undesired result but do your best to not get emotional about problems. It tends to make them worse. You must have zen like dedication and be as flexible as the water around the rocks. Keep moving. Don't let anything get you down. When you lose your ability to adapt you are lost.
• Wise Advisors - Surround yourself with people who have knowledge, like you and are interested in your well being. Wise advisors cost time, energy and at times money. Be willing to sacrifice for these people. Approach it as a friendship and also a business deal. Friendships are mutually benefitial arrangements to share time, knowledge and resources between people which make each individual in the friendship stronger than they would be on their own. I know it sounds cold when put like that but it's the truth. I'm probably the best friend you'll ever know. Do not ever put a friend out of your life completely if you can help it. Do your best to stay in contact, send cards if you can, send emails… do something. Friends are your best natural resources and will many times be more useful than paid advisors. Plus, your next lead, your next thing that makes your business even better could be from a friend of a friend.
• Knowing The Thinnest Line - I'm a very honest and blunt person. However, there are times in business where giving every bit of information to a customer, an employee or a vendor can be a thing that will get you in to more trouble than it's worth. Lying is a terrible thing… avoid it like the plague. However, choose your words carefully. I tend to not speak in absolutes and always remember the instances in which I do speak in absolutes in order to not tell lies. If you are unsure about something be careful about telling people you are sure. Learn to exude confidence without using certainties. There is a very thin line between a lie and the truth. In the end it's really about what you are comfortable saying and doing but lying will get you in more trouble than it's worth and remember that telling someone you are certain about something and having it not be correct due to unforseen circumstances is as bad as lying in most cases. Good politicians know the line pretty well and understand how thin it is. Keep records and notes about all full or semi-business related conversations if at all possible. Deliver the facts you are sure of, show off the positives and don't declare all of what can be percieved as negative, unless asked. One caveat, sometiems drop a small negative without being asked as it may deter getting in to worse negatives, if they exist. Be genuine, be real, be honest but understand politics even if you don't like politics. You can't avoid it completely.

Comments(0)

I've been thinking about my experience with hosting and I thought I would write about it. We just bought a dedicated server through hostingrails.com. What a beautiful experience it has been. They held my hand through everything and setup every peice of software I needed. Really, I only paid a $99 setup fee and $290 for the first month and I got a full server (specs here, but I got an additional gig of ram). It's an additional $40 a month for the extra gig of ram so that's why my price is $290 a month. Yes, it is a bit steep of a price given I could lease a server for cheaper but you really get what you pay for. They are specialists in Ruby on Rails and have spent way more time helping me get the server just the way I want it than the $99 setup fee I paid. All this and it's a month to month contract! This means I have no obligation to stay. It's been a while since I have been dealt with in such a fashion. I guess I should expect no less from now on.

Now, let's get to the reason I had to get a new dedicated server. I had a VPS (Virtual Private Server) through eapps.com. They are still running an old version of Apache which doesn't work will with Ruby on Rails and they are using FastCGI for rails sites. Ick. So, I decided, being a decent server admin, that I would install the proper version of Apache and all the things I needed to run Rails properly. Great, that worked okay for about 3 months. Then! All of a sudden my site and all my customer sites are down! Oh no! Come to find out, some of their automated tasks wiped my VPS clean off of their machine. They had no idea how to restore my custom config and they didn't tell me.  So, after a day passed and my customers were yelling at the top of their lungs I said "Okay, give me a new VPS and let me re-install everything". I was able to get a day old database backup from my VPS, which helped a lot. But it took me another day and a half to get the server back to where it was and all of my clients restored. The total cost was almost 5k between my customers loss of business and the time I had to spend restoring everything. Now, let me be clear, eapps is a great host if you are not doing anything Rails oriented. Their support is pretty good and you can reach them by phone most of the time with no wait and their prices are excellent. You can get a VPS for as low as $10 a month! Also, I had a chat with the president of eapps and he has told me about their plan to offer real rails support for hosting in the coming months. I told him the things he will need to do to get it right and offered to help them test anything they come up with. If they listen to my advice I think they will really be an awesome rails hosting company. But, as of now, do not use rails on eapps! Do not do any type of custom config if you are using eapps!

Comments(0)

Just in the past 8 months BluePaw Software has went from a company that brings in 3-4k a month to a company that brings in 15-20k a month. I think by the end of the year we will be to 25-30k a month. This is a lot of growth. I remember I was posting articles before about our foreign worker strategy. We adjusted that strategy because we couldn't find any really good, viable and cheap workers. While we aren't abandoning that strategy completely we are postponing it till we have some more resources to spare. We have decided instead to find local candidates that are good programmers and have an interest in Ruby on Rails. From there we believe we can mold them to the type of programmers we want.

Yes, the market is a flood with Ruby on Rails programmers. But, we have difficulty finding good ones. We've went through a lot of programmers that we though were weak or didn't like their additude. I ended up hiring a friend in Virginia that used to be an ASP programmer. I'm currently training him on Rails. I'm doing it because he helped me when I was in need in the past and seems to have a strong desire to learn. I told him I would be watching him though and want to make sure he is learning at a good pace. We are paying him to learn so in that situation you want to make sure the guy is really learning. He's been learning for about 6 weeks now. I'm about to really put him through a test of what he's learned so that should prove interesting.

I find it funny that everybody thinks rails is so easy and that anybody could do it. Yes, any descent script kitty may be able to learn rails, however to actually produce clean code that is reusable is a different story. You really have to keep up to date, watch the plugins list, watch the blogs and keep informed by discussing rails to be a great rails programmer. We believe that, our style of business and our charisma is our edge and what keeps us moving in an upward direction with profits.

I was pretty concerned at first because I had never managed a business to this degree. Yes, I've been a contractor for about 8 years doing independent work as a programmer and even managed a few people from time to time. But, being a CEO made me nervous and growing so quickly proved to be a serious challenge. At some times, I haven't been sure what my role is or if my role is everything. So, I've started to break apart my roles and look for experts that could satisfy those roles better than me. I still do the things I'm unconfortable with to a certain degree but I take guidance in order to do them from people I'm sure are experts. Things like accounting I've completely given to an accounting firm. It's cheaper for them to use their time to do it then it is for me to use my time to do it. Being a good CEO is about good delegation and focusing on the important details by wading through the confustion.

Comments(0)

Many people are chasing what they consider to be the American Dream. They work long hours and put up with lots of shit from their bosses and co-workers only to be told that the road is getting shorter to their dreams. In most cases they are paving the road to the biggest let down. I just can't see being an employee of a company and working massive overtime and putting all your energy and thought in to a company that you have no stock in. If you have no stock then you are dispensable. You not only can be replaced but most likely will be replaced in today's market. I've heard a lot of people say "Do your job well, give it all and you won't get laid off." But that actually doesn't hold up to reality in most cases. If you have a lot of domain knowledge specific to the company that nobody else has then the company may have a difficult time replacing you and thus you may hold more leverage. But, being employed at a company where you have no stock and no leverage is only a pay check and a job. You take a major risk by staying in a position like that. To give a job like that your overtime hours and stress over every detail may pay off eventually in due course but it probably won't.

As a CEO, I'm big on profit sharing, stock options and making the company feel owned by it's employees. To me it seems that a company only exists to benefit each individual in the company and should be treated like a family of sorts. Many companies are run on what seems like finanical slavery. This is where only the top most of the company makes the majority of the wealth and reaps the majority of the benefits. The middle and bottom get the scraps that are left over from the top. This is generally a recipe for failure in my opinion. The reason I say this is the top eventually becomes more and more disconnected with the people doing the real work and with the actual customers. This means at some point the company topples because the top is heavy and low on knowledge and the middle and bottom are weak, under tremendous stress and feeling unappriciated. 

As a company you can either move together as one strong unit, in which all are greatly motivated and benefited or you can whip the believers in to submission and get them to turn out more widgets while the top becomes strong and the middle and bottom become weak. See which one works better.

Comments(0)

I gotta say our company value is finally going up in the right direction. We aren’t that fluid this month and we have some outstanding bills with a couple vendors but things are still positive. Business was fine for just me at 4k a month. That’s all we were doing about 2 months ago. However, we are going to hit 12k this month and pay off all of our old bills, finally plus get ahead. I hired a programmer in India full time to augment our team as Derek has been getting overloaded and I am as well. We had some decent money come in last month but it was just barely enough for both of us to breath. Another thing is we didn’t get to pay off all our vendors which really upset me but sometimes that happens. As long as you give vendors some interest in appreciation for their patience you can usually not piss anybody off substantially.

Here’s the thing though. It’s against my personal values to wait to pay off an individual vendor in order to make sure everyone internal to the company is paid and the lights are on. However, I could not pay anyone if my lights and internet were not on and we didn’t have the resources to complete our work. So, I justify it in that way. But, I’m aware it’s justification and that is a temporary thing.

These things are passing though and the rough spot in absorbing 2 major contracts as well as 2 new employees of the corporation is finally balancing out to a level. I feel this month is going to be very balanced as Derek has refined his work process and I have stabilized our overdue projects. This month will be about raising our prices in accordance with our experience, finishing some work and paying off any company debts to vendors, finally. I’m sitting atop a company that was at first having some serious growing pains but is now beginning to flourish and by next month will have some savings to invest back in to the company.

Comments(0)

Here’s the thing with any given project. You must have a chain of command. Especially in large projects but even in projects with 3 or more people. Programmers have a tendency to keep talking about something till everyone is blue in the face. Discussion is good and a natural part of software development but someone has to be there to draw the line and say ‘no more, we need to build the software now’. It’s quite a difficult thing to do when you are a programmer yourself and you are attempting to find the best way to accomplish a goal. If you aren’t careful you can get caught up in it all. Nobody should ever take a project without first establishing roles and deciding what the chain of command is. Though it is important to listen to everyone involved and not marginalize anyone who may have an important view on the project it is equally important to actually do the work. Using Ruby on Rails as a platform means you can easily change any aspect that does not fit later in the project at little cost. Personally, I still like a good plan of attack but I’m not so concerned about the small details until I come upon them. This is agile development in my opinion. Every once and a while you will find an issue is larger than you first though. But, that is the cost of development sometimes and as long as you built with extensibility in mind changing something shouldn’t be that serious.

The main point here is if you are a contractor or run a contracting company always make sure your contract says who’s in charge, who’s responsibilities are what, and give your project a clear way to resolve arguments quickly if need be. Development should be democratic in planning but more of a monarchy with advisors during programming and it should never be a theocracy!

Comments(0)

The web can host applications that are platform independent and ultimately scalable. That’s what we are working on at Bluepaw. We are working on a set of applications that we can deliver to manage businesses and manage their interaction with the internet. We call this the ‘Paw’ line of centralized software. All software uses Web 2.0 concepts and each piece of software in the line will be built for a type of business.

Each client that has an instance of the software will have the same code that will be a core engine driving the software. There may be modifications for that particular client. Those modifications will enhance the quality of the overall application and will be merged to the core software when they have been tested and we believe there is a possibility other clients will use the modifications. Each client will pay a subscription and hosting fee for the software as well as for the installation and any custom programming for their business. The subscription fee will allow us to bring in future upgrades as the software package improves. We will also take 25% of all income from the software and put it back in to the development of that particular software package.

We will follow a modular style of adding features to the software. Anything that changes the functionality of a the core code would not be merged to the core software as it could break other sites. That is, unless it was a fix to the core code. In that case it would be merged to the core in a very delicate manner.

The first part of doing something like this is a very flexible data model for each business and researching the business in question. In many cases before you start programming you should know the business better than the people or as well as the people in that particular business. Luckily I know a couple industries where I actually know people in the business to launch test sites with and create a buzz. My first intention is to go really cheap or free with a client in the industry we are working with to build the software and in return we get insight in to the business and build a base software package. From that we create a client base and a buzz around the software. Many times people want to know who uses a software package before they buy in to it. So, it’s good to have a client list that use software even if you have to give cutthroat rates. As more people use the software you can raise the value of the software and thus raise the price. Eventually you reach a point where you are making several times the cost of development for the software.

Another strategy we are using to get our development costs low for this ‘Paw’ line of software is to hire outsourced resources as trainees who are good programmers but aren’t familiar with Ruby on Rails or want more experience. We pay them very cheap as they learn and review their work as they go. This way we are training future resources and getting something of great value out of it while we are doing it.

I know you business minded folks are out there reading this. Don’t get any bright ideas! Just kidding. There’s enough room for us all to make money.

Comments(0)

I’ve been so extremely busy lately I haven’t talked to my good friend, the blog. Sorry to all the people who are interested in my life and ramblings. I just have been very busy.

Anyways, what’s been happening? Derek, the new CTO for Bluepaw Enterprises has been working hard. He is having some difficulty balancing managing and programming. But, since he is new to the position I figured it would take him some adjustment. However, he is doing an excellent job of understanding the business of web development contracting.

My son, Juhlyun is almost 7 months old. He has to be sat up but he can stay sitting once you put him on his butt. So, he’s getting to the point where he can sit on his own, soon. We started him on stage 2 foods, which I thought was pretty cool. I went crazy yesterday and bought like $100 worth of food and such. He’s eating meats, vegetables, and fruits. Some of the food sounds pretty tasty but I haven’t ventured to tasting any of his food yet.

We got a large new contract with a medical transcription software development firm here in Nashville, Base Systems Inc. We will be helping them finish the development of their product over the next 3-6 months. We are pretty excited about it.

I’m going to Atlanta this weekend to celebrate a long time friend’s birthday. That should be very interesting. She rented out a club and Yendis and I got a hotel room right across the street from the club. I’m supposed to be really busy working this weekend but I couldn’t pass up going to her 25th birthday party. She’s actually Yendis’s cousin as well so Yendis really wanted to go too. I haven’t been to Atlanta in a couple years but I always had a pretty good time in Atlanta.

Oh yeah, after months of being in business I think we are finally going to get health insurance at the end of the month. With Derek coming on board we have been able to near completion on several contracts, accepted some new contracts and have a good influx of money coming in. We will be getting the best available because I consider health insurance pretty important.

On another note of finances this month I will finally finish building my computer. This is no average computer. It’s a beast of a computer. I will detail the specs in another post at the end of the month. But, I tell you it’s beautiful. Brings a tear to my eye.

My best friend moved his wedding back to the fall so looks like I won’t be putting together a bachelor party till the end of the year. I was so looking forward to it but it looks like that will give me some more time to save money for it. I want it to be an enormous bash. The kind I want to have when it comes to my bachelor party.

That’s all I have now. I’ll post again next week. I swear. No, for real this time…

Comments(0)

Oh yes. It’s that time of year again. The sound of birds and the smell of freshly blooming flowers. Also, the time where we clean all the crap up we’ve been huddled inside with all winter. I’m finally going to move in to a new house that I’ve been waiting for my land lord to get done with. Further, I just hired on Derek, our new Chief of Technical Operations. Boy, do we have a lot of projects to finish over the next 6 weeks and I still have to fit in time for sleep, eating, and … oh yeah, breathing. But, once we come clear of all these projects that need to be finished yesterday we should be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light is the reputation in these projects and the clients we can attract based off that reputation. By myself (before the incorporation) I was in business for 8 years. I earned a great reputation helping people make lots of money and come up with incredible ideas and I also earned a reputation as being late on delivering almost every time.But, I feel with a person to help manage that shortcoming we will be a very successful corporation.

I have to pay some people off for work they have done in the past this month as well so I can go in to spring with a ‘clean house’. But, I have a nice amount of money coming in near the end of the month that should pay those people off and sustain Derek and I as well with some profit left over. So, everyone will get paid. I cleaned up my books and visited an accountant to make sure everything I wanted to do tax-wise was a good idea. She said I knew a lot about it and decided I didn’t need much in the way of her services at this time because I kept so good care of my books.

Let’s see, anything else I need to clean out for spring? Oh yes, now that I have time to focus on the business end of my company I have come up with an incredible plan to quadruple our income by the end of the year. So far the plan has been working pretty well.

Then there is my health. I got back to the gym, finally. This time, my girlfriend comes with me just about every other day. Golds Gym has a daycare in it so we just drop off our son and get to working out together. Now, if only our neighbor would stop bringing over cake and bullshit like that.

Finally, I know this is kiddish but I’m getting a Playstation 2. Yeah, I know I’m a bit late but I play computer games when I get a chance to play any games. So, I never really saw a need. But, it is fun to have around and sometimes you just want to sit in front of the TV and play. I have a 52 inch high def widescreen tv so it’s a waste to not have a game system. I figured it’s only like $100. Then, in about 5 months or so if I use it a lot I will get a Playstation 3. I’ve heard the games are mostly backwards compatible. I just like the fact there are a lot of the games I like already out on PS2 and I don’t feel like spending the $600, yet.

Comments(0)

I finally brought on a person full time to help me with work today. I hired a friend and former co-worker as my Chief Technical Officer (CTO). At this point in my business it was absolutely mandatory that I do this. I have far too much on my plate and haven’t been able to dedicate myself to the things I do best, such as bringing on new clients, managing client relationships, and business planning. We have enough work to sustain someone right now but from the point of view of that person it would still take some faith because we can’t promise much and don’t look incredible on paper. This person had the right amount of faith to come on board. But now I can go balls to the wall with client development which brings me out of my ‘catch twenty-two’ of needing someone to help me program so I can get more work on board.

I was lucky enough to catch this person on the way out of a terrible job to bring them in to the fold. Now, it’s in my hands to lay out the work and adjust. I’m not at all worried about hiring my first official employee besides myself. I have been using contractors thus far and have had certain limitations because of that. Plus, I had to manage those contractors, which is a job within itself sometimes. But, now with someone else in the fold who has a permanent interest in the company I think we will move much faster to our ultimate goals.

Comments(0)