Every business needs cashflow (and profit) to survive like the body needs oxygen, food, and air.  Just because a business has cashflow, doesn’t mean it’s a success, much like we aren’t a success in life just because we sat around and survived.

If you have to mislead to make a dollar, it’s like tricking a girl into liking you.  You might make some money/trick her for a while, but it won’t last.

The better the mutual fit, the better the relationship.  As is often the case it’s best to see if you can work well together.  The client, or the vendor, alone, can’t make the relationship work.  Both have to be present.

As for finding the right work..

Know your product.  Know the value you deliver.  Know the clients it will benefit.  Only sell to them and you’ll have a lasting business.

Always generate more value than which you are paid. Otherwise your client turnover rate after they feel “had” will be much higher than it needs to be.

It’s easy to try and be someone else in business.  The problem is it always comes back full circle.  If you like honesty, and integrity, and when people eat their own cooking before giving it to you as advice, do it yourself.

Not every customer values it, but not every customer is for you.  There’s a big difference between a good dollar and a bad dollar.  It’s tough in the start but it’s worth it.

Be a defender of keeping goodness and kindness fashionable.    Your startup is your declaration of your moral and professional independence.

Check out the slide show here, my thoughts below.

No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

I have often wondered how a relationship between specialist (Web, designer, programmer, etc.,) can sometimes turn into the customer believing they understand everything better than the specialist, and how to do it.

This is when phrases like:

“Couldn’t you just..”

“All you have to do..”

“It should be pretty simple..”

“Can’t we make it really simple on the screen?  Why would that be more work to do it all behind the scenes?”

become more, and more common.

Problem? I don’t know. If you ignored everything clients say in this case, and only look at what they were doing, the client is basically saying they know better than you.  One could argue there’s something missing in the requirements phase.  Even when clients are the ones  that hired you to help them meet that impossible deadline that they didn’t know was a ton more work than they ever imagined?

Still, I’m not sure if it’s entirely the client’s fault for being this way.  I think it might be a mix of both client and specialist.  Clients tend to oversimplify and over-trivialize anything to make it something they can feel confident about so they don’t get taken advantage of.

What is true is this.

It is hard to make the complex simple, and easy to make the simple into something more complex.

Would we second guess or suggest doctors do something differently, or that engineers build a bridge differently (and without a plan) because we feel it shouldn’t be complicated?  I don’t know.

This leads back to the oft-referred issue of what color to paint the bike shed.

Why? Well, the less you involve and empower your clients, the more they will feel your craft is a magical dark science.  Of course, I’m the first guy to say I want to build systems and tools for people, not BE the system and tool through which they maintain their systems.  So, I’m forever doomed to try and involve clients as much as they would like to be and educate them.  It is already a luxury to feel understood by anyone, and it’s nice when you clients are able to join you if they so wish.

With that being said, I have a responsibility to first learn, and then demonstrate that I understand the needs of my client and how to best solve them in the way that best serves the client.  Maintaining or enhancing the clients competitive advantage is critical. It’s not about making my life easier, it’s about making life easier for my clients, and their clients.  This rings very true even when working on a startup.

I get it.  I’m pretty good at what I do and can reasonably be thrown down a well and come out okay.  Do I make it look easy?  I don’t know.  I have 15 years of experience and 4 vacations to show for it.  I read 2-3 hours a day on technologies and problem solving approaches.  I keep the saw sharp and keep busy sawing.  All to keep my value high to myself and the projects I work on, and to ensure my clients receive the best possible outcome.

Still, I hear, “well, can’t you just do this”.  I have accepted that this on some levels will always be the case.  I think helping clients understand that what I can do in 1 hour is only possible after 15 years of experience doing what I do, and that 1 hour of their time, while likely very valuable in the needs requirement of it, likely would not compare, must like I would be lost in their business.

I think I am going to explore the idea of “highest and best use” and incorporating that in to my working philosophy on all projects.  When we focus on everyone’s highest and best use and simply keep our nose out (or in) no more or less than it’s needed, it’s where 1 + 1 = 11 in terms of gains in productivity.

I put a lot of time on my 15″ Macbook Pro.  An average of 8-10 hours a day.  Every day.  The last 3 years since I switched back to Mac (since we all started on Apples in elementary school) have been incredible.  No longer have I been tied up dealing with Windows to do the smallest things like connect a new camera to get a photo to fight with drivers.  For the most part Mac just works, gets out of the way and let’s you focus on the task at hand.

Then, there was the day the music died.  November 16th, 2009, for me, to be exact.  I remember it, like it was yesterday.  I am working at the office, no problems.  Arrive at a clients, and the screen won’t turn on.  Try to reboot, no luck.  Everything seems to be turning on, except the screen.  Strange.

The HP/Compaq technician in me from the late 90’s speaks up and tells me this might be that nasty Nvidia chip failure affecting the Santa Rosa Macbook Pros, which I own.  But was it?  I’ve seen a video card or twenty fail in my life and its usually a graceful fit of annoying colors, lines, pixels not showing correctly that leads to an eventual death.

A screen just to go black with that?  I didn’t even get to say goodbye, or try to copy off my latest working files. What would I do if I didn’t have a recent backup?

Enter AppleCare.  You see, for years I was happy that Compaq (and then HP when they acquired Compaq) had nearly the world’s best extended warranty. They did, and likely still are very high.    AppleCare, I had heard was another beast.

I get on the phone and get booked into my local Apple store with an appointment 60 minutes later.  Total fluke, as they’re always booked up.  It was a cool feeling walking in and seeing my name as the next customer in line.  It was even cooler as the Apple concierge wondered how I hacked myself to the top of the list without having been in the store.  Nothing an AppleCare rep can’t put you on hold and get done, I guess.

After speaking with the knowledgeable rep, they ordered me a new system board.  Problem, I’m leaving town 2 days later.  They manage to pull it off and I make it rain chocolates at the store.  Everything is back and running.

Until it died again.  I got the dreaded spinning wheel on grey screen.  I felt like throwing my laptop into the water, pulling it out, and then throwing it in again.  But I didn’t.  Called AppleCare and they tried to help.  No luck.

On my way back to Edmonton, I was in Vancouver for the day.  I stopped by the AppleCare store and they had the part I needed.  And they would change it for me before my flight left!  Two flukes?  I doubt it.  There’s no way this kind of service is to be expected or reasonable, but I’m so glad they stepped up.

I’m tired, and fly back home. The repaired laptop awaits it’s glorious return to productivity. I turn it on in the next morning.  Same problem.  Did someone forget to turn on the computer fully?

My heart sank, to the bottom of my feet.  I could have just bought another Macbook Pro, smashed this one up, made a video for Youtube and mailed it to Apple stating I couldn’t handle 2 bad system board replacements in addition to my original failure.

I called AppleCare like someone might call an counseling hotline.  I spoke of the great help I received, but the poor results.  Brian, my original contact, quickly escalated me to a senior adviser.  He took a few minutes to read everything I had endured and at this point likely noticed I should have been screaming and foaming from the mouth, but wasn’t.  He got how frustrated and let down, and paralyzed I was.  Running a backup of your mac on a mac mini isn’t the same.  Yes, I didn’t lose anything, but I wasn’t gaining either.

The senior advisor said I had gone through enough.  He wanted to heal my shattered heart with the warmth of a replacement machine. I was skeptical.  I told him I had been hurt before.  What if this replacement had issues because it was the new macbook?  I might be crazy to turn down new equipment, but I like what I have and it works well.  He assured me he felt comfortable reccomending it so I decided to take the plunge to a new Macbook Pro, at a reasonable cost.

Now I wait.  Hurry up China.

Why your IT Sucks.

This was a follow up to the previous article of The unspoken truth about managing geeks and I must say it clearly presents some great points.

1. GIGO GIGO GIGO.

Can’t say it enough.  It’s so true.

Garbage

Back in the fifth grade, I was in a school musical, The GIGO Effect, in which the evil Glitches attempted to corrupt a computer named Mabel with “dirty power.” The point of the show was that technology is unable to produce intelligent results without intelligent direction, a truism encapsulated in the formerly popular computer acronym GIGO, “garbage in, garbage out.”

So, if you don’t begin with the end in mind, you will fail.

Doesn’t make sense?  Let’s start with this passage from the article.

Information technology is the art of managing an organization’s processes by establishing and maintaining computing frameworks.

If we can agree on that definition of “IT”, that means IT touches and deals with the entire business.  It is the electricity, the power, the force, the connector, and the enabler of achieving your business goals much, quicker, better, and more profitably.

For an IT strategy to succeed, everyone needs to see the use of Information and Technology in Business, what I call Business Technology as a critical enabler and vehicle for delivering the results of the business.  Gone are the days of “my mouse isn’t working.”  The more integrated the view of IT with the rest of your business, the further IT will help you succeed.  IT alone is not a magic bullet.  Technology needs business.  Business needs Technology.

Getting all parties, executives, IT, staff, managers to see one strategy that IT is meant to help everyone succeed at getting more done with less effort, and not offset workload from one person or group or another is the foundation of a great IT presence.

Check out the article, I’m sure you’ll find it to be great.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Building them is what actually creates success.

In real partnerships, if one of the partners is working as an employee, his time gets paid for at a fair wage. This is because the other partners are earning money elsewhere in that time that you would be earning nothing. Is months of your time is equal to a $x-dollar investment?

Success doesn’t come without hard work and if someone isn’t contributing equally in their own way as much as you are, an imbalance will always happen.

You don’t get something for nothing and there is no get quick rich scheme. Partnerships are about adding value and leverage ultimately. Also, most friendships aren’t setup for business, much like you couldn’t be roommates with just anyone. Partnerships can be harder than marriage or any relationship.

Marketing, Copy writing, building buzz about your app on blogs, and learning how the app store world works to get and stay noticed is something these guys should be experts in.. as much as you are in coding.

I would be weary of such an arrangement based on what you’ve shared so far. You may end up feeling worn out and put in way more than them. $x dollars isn’t much for a computer and you could probably make do with a used mac mini and build it yourself.. If vegas took bets, I would place a sizeable wager on this.

Check out the forums of Business of Software..

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz

Other great startup sites are (not limited to)

www.onstartups.com www.softwarebyrob.com

—

The first time entering the world of barcodes can be a bit of an aggravating experience.  There are so many standards, technologies, equipment, formats, printers, readers that knowing where to start, or what to look for can be a little dis-orienting.

I have done a fair amount of barcode work in the past 10 years.  Recently I was asked to give a quick background on it so I decided to do it here.

There’s two sides of the barcoding world that you have to become familiar with.

Generating/Printing the Barcodes

This will involve using a specific type of barcode format (code). Code 128 is usually the most common, easiest to read for most formats, and prints the smallest barcodes. To print Code 128 format barcodes, you requires either a font, library that you can buy (idautomation, etc), and so on that you will integrate into your software to print the barcode. Code 39 is also common (and typically free). It prints really wide barcodes though as your data to be barcoded becomes bigger.

If you are going to print labels with barcodes, you may want to look into Zebra Printers. They have an excellent programming language built in (ZPL) which lets you generate all types of barcodes natively — no need to buy fonts or libraries.

The important thing to consider here is barcode readability. You will find barcodes scale size wise like a font. ensuring your barcodes can print on your media, and are scannable (wont wrinkle, fold, or peel off, etc) will be very important.

Reading / Using the Barcodes

Reading barcodes will begin with a scanner of some kind. You can get ones that will read any type of barcode and transmit the decoded barcode as input. So, if you had a field selected on your screen, scanned in something, the content of the barcode would be typed into that field for you.

Another thing you could do is buy a mobile scanner running palm OS or windows ce/mobile such as ones made by symbol, psion teklogix, etc. These can be set up to run a piece of integrated software for receiving, shipping systems that will drive your work flow.

I have found life to be a lot easier by not re-inventing the wheel. I have used all of the products I have mentioned above and found they integrate well. There are some superb java barcode libraries as well that are free, I’m sure you will find something for .NET too.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Anyone suggesting a language (including me) will only be giving their preference.

Pick the language that will best grow with your current and future needs. It will avoid major rebuilds.

Try to pick a language that you can easily “think” programming in. Each language will have it’s pro’s and cons, you’ll have to pick what is best short and long term for your situation (time available, money available, are other people involved, deadlines, etc.)

One language may offer more than the other and it’s something to certainly consider. The more you investigate now will save you more in the long term.

You might want to get a quote on a freelancing site for the major languages/platforms:

The five I’d recommend looking at are

• Rails
• PHP
• ASP
• Python (Django, etc)
• Coldfusion

Depending on what your needs are now, and the future, you should see how many of those functions are built into the language, and how much you’d have to purchase and spend time/money integrating into the site.

Rails will likely get you up and running quickest. However make sure any custom work you want to do will be easy to do though.  be aware of any scaling issues.  I loved Ruby on Rails and thought it was for me.  Until I decided to “go off the rails” and it became as much work as PHP.

PHP has a wealth of pre-made packages (concrete5, joomla, drupal, etc) that may or may not work for you.  Great frameworks like Fusebox, CakePHP, etc exist.

Python has had some great libraries come out for it (Django and a few other) that make building quickly very nice. Again, it’s a learning curve you might have to factor in.

Coldfusion has is probably one of the most capable out of the box. It may be well suited for what you need as it has a large feature set built in that you would have to find or buy third party libraries.. To get past the commercial license costs of this option, you can look to very capable free/open source editions (Railo, etc).

I am a ColdFusion guy but its after being exposed to all of the above.  I like it and it works fantastic for me.  Coldfusion allows me to complete the work of much larger teams, allowing one to find the sweet spot between large projects and small teams and high quality software.

I would pick what saved me the most time, because I don’t have much free time. Python/Django has been looking intriguing, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it enough.

My Beliefs on startups, either gleaned or painfully learnt that I use to assess most anything:

• ACTIVITY VS. RESULTS: In startups, do not confuse activity with results. Do not confuse progress with results either.
• PROFIT IS BLOOD: Profitability and regular cashflow is the blood flow of your startup. Being able to survive is an accomplishment but a small one. Growth is the true goal.
• STARTUPS ARE ABOUT VALUE Every thought, action, person, feature, should be thought of in terms of value. Seems obvious, but we see the gap between user wants and what software delivers.
• EVERYONE SHOULD GIVE VALUE Everyone must contribute value that measurably and consistently brings results in a direction everyone wants to go. If someone isn’t working as hard as you in their area they are not helping.
• 1+1 SHOULD ALWAYS EQUAL 11.: When involved with others, synergies must magnify greater than the sum of people. If you do not have a great advantage by coming together chances are things may fall under their own weight if things really take off.
• GET AND STAY ON THE SAME PAGE: People’s priorities change. Ensure everyone can be committed to the same game plan (including R&D if that’s where you’re at) for the same amount of time and effort everyone is. Talk early, Talk often.
• HEALTH OF A BUSINESS IS THE # OF NEW CUSTOMERS: The health of a business can be quickly determined by the number, frequency and size of new customers + regular orders.