How I like to work

This is a great sign. I see if every time I go to Brother’s BBQ in Denver and it never fails to make me smile.

I snapped a quick picture last week, and in case you can’t see it because of the sun, the sign says:

OPEN EVERYDAY

FROM AROUND 10AM

TO AT LEAST 10PM

Those are great hours, especially for restaurant. A little flexibility is good, especially if business is good. Why knock off if things are going well, but why commit to longer hours if there’s no business.

These could be great hours for your business as well. Give employees a little flexibility. Let them think they are deciding when them come into work. I know some businesses that have “core hours” that are something like 10-2 and allow employees to flex around those hours.

Just don’t say your core hours are 9-5. That’s not fun, or fair. In essence you’re not allowing any flexibility and expecting employees to work more.

It’s also fun, and fun should be a little more part of our lives.

The Negotiation Worked

When my partner called to say that our landlord had agreed to the reduced rent, I was amazed. I was sure that he might hold out for more money, or even counter, but apparently our argument worked. A soft real estate market didn't hurt as well.

So now we have a few more months to try and turn things around, see if we can kick start something. I'm not terribly confident since it's hard to work on your own, and my partner is on his own to a large degree. That with a soft market where companies don't necessarily want to spend much on training means that this is an uphill battle.

However we'll give it a try, and schedule out some classes to see if we can get this thing going.

Negotiating Rent

We were coming up on the end of our lease for a business I own recently and were debating what to do. The business hasn’t done well, but the fourth quarter is typically the worst time for us, and have been debating about giving it through Q1 or so next year.

However rent was an issue. We have a space that costs a couple thousand a month, and over six months, that’s not an insignificant amount of money. It’s not make or break money, but it is funding that we could do something else with. It’s also potentially money that could fund another month of salary for my partner.

Our primary need is space for people to meet and learn, and we have alternatives. If we only schedule a few classes, we could rent hotel space for a few days at a reasonable rate and conduct things there. A little more setup, but not unreasonable.

One thing we’ve noticed over the last two years is that there are spaces in our building that have been vacant the whole time. It appears the economics of commercial real estate are such that a landlord can survive on 50% or less occupancy, so we decided to approach him and ask for a short term lease and reduction in rent.

Our goal was $500 a month to hold the space for six months and then we’d take a new lease, or leave the space. Our landlord came back with a $1000/month “bottom line” figure.

On the surface, it seems silly to us. He could get $0 for 6 months, and not necessarily a better deal. He’s not going to renovate our space until he has a tenant, and the electric/water/utility stuff is negligible. We pay a little rent and try to see if we can revive a failing business.

From his side, I can see he’s negotiating, looking to get more $$, and also possibly not looking to get trapped in a long term cycle of “6 month extensions” at a low rate. Likely lots of tenants would do that, but we wouldn’t, and I guess this is a case where our reputations aren’t strong enough.

We’ll see if he comes down, or we close things down sooner.

Startup Articles

I wrote about now being the time to start a business recently, and included a blog link to a post. Here is the main place where I found the link, with a number of technology related startup posts. Some are worth reading, some not, but I’ll comment on some over the coming weeks.

Now is the time

I was reading a very interesting post called You’re a developer, so why do you work for someone else? and it got me thinking. Now is one of the easiest times for someone to start a business because there are so many tools, cheap tools, to help you get started. And these aren’t just tools for technical people.

We have a ton of books at the library, free hosting accounts, free email accounts, any number of things that can help you build a business outside of technology. Want to build a horse training business like my wife? Get outside with horses, and then spend a few minutes blogging about it. She gets a lot of interesting traffic on her blog, and when she’s ready, I bet her blog will be one of the best marketing items she’ll have.

There’s good advice in that post. Spend a few minutes, and hour here and there, and work on your own idea. Now is a great time to get started, and follow his advice of trying to get on base. Don’t go for the home run, but instead build something small.

It’s the Journey

I saw this on the 37 Signals blog as “I’ve already got the prize" and found it to be both true, and a little annoying. It refers to the Nobel Peace Prize, who Richard Feynman is apparently in consideration for.

The speaker comes across a little arrogant, and a bit of an ass, but what he's saying makes sense. He’s not necessarily a fun guy to be around, but I think many brilliant people, especially teachers and researchers, aren’t.
However he’s saying that the journey, the fact that you are learning and figuring things out, is what’s important. It’s not the award, it’s not being a part of some group that recognizes your efforts that’s important.
I agree with that. It is nice to be recognized, to get kudos, maybe some reward for your effort, but if you shoot for that reward and it’s the best part of your work, then I think you are going to be constantly disappointed.
Enjoy the journey, smell the roses, take pride in your effort and what you do. If there is some recognition or reward later, that should be a small part of you enjoying what you do.

Do You Have To Grow?

I was on vacation recently with a friend that works at a large (5000+ person) company. This person was talking about the issues with growing the large company because they didn’t have a large impact on how things might change or the business might decide to enter into a contract with someone. They pined for a smaller company where they could have an impact and achieve that year after year growth.

But is that necessary?

Do you really need to grow your business year after year? It seems that in modern American business we’ve gotten caught up in this constant growth cycle and not ever looking at business to see if it’s viable and sustainable. Sustaining zero growth, or low growth, but having regular, repeat customers, seems to be a failure.

After all, if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

I see that quote often, but I’m not sure it’s true. I think it is valuable to reassess where you are, how your business is doing, but I don’t think that this is a race. It’s a journey, and I think you can continue on that journey in business and be fine. There are plenty of people that want to run a business, not just make an investment that they’ll sell in 5 years.