Insight is proud to announce that we recently contracted with a highly successful franchisee in the Pacific Northwest to provide accounting and operational support services. Selected due to our hands-on approach and our affordable, yet highly effective, virtual accounting solution, we are pleased to be taking over the financial operations for this company. Working together with the managing partners for this franchisee, Insight is developing a financial management package that we intend to roll-out to other franchisees across the U.S., allowing franchise operators to focus on their core business while Insight provides back-office infrastructure and support.

A handful of years ago, I went to work for a long-time friend of mine and as we were hashing out the details such as pay, vacation and working situations, he said to me, “This will be new for me, as I am not normally friends with the people that work for me.”  And as our working relationship developed, I made sure that whenever possible we kept the office environment “professional,” even as we enjoyed vacations and spending time together outside the office.

What was odd for me was that I couldn’t think of a time, then or now, when I worked anywhere that I wasn’t friends with my co-workers or the people working directly for me.  And not surprisingly, a recent article/survey points to this as a factor in workplace stress:  http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=309307271&topic=Main

As the article points out, having friends or friendly relationships with the people around you in the office gives you the ability to bounce ideas off of each other in a non-threatening environment and to feel connected to others when things are at their most challenging. I would add to this that I believe that these friendships also enable co-workers to be more candid about their true opinions on work topics, as you can take the “personal attack” potential out of the equation and provide a more fertile ground for true collaboration.

Where it gets tricky is when you are friends with those that report directly to you, and you are responsible for making sure that their job performance is excellent and that you are displaying impartiality when it comes time to providing employee reviews and determining promotion opportunities.

One of my partners, Ash, once told a mutual friend and co-worker of ours who had recently joined the company, “Ron is a great guy and a great friend.  But just know that business is business, and if you screw up, he will call you out on it and you shouldn’t count on your friendship to save you. But, he’ll probably buy you a beer when it is all over.”  A very accurate assessment. Much like I want to see those around me thrive and succeed, and will go out of my way to help make that happen, I also expect that those around me will want to see me succeed and do everything that they can to make me successful. If you have these symbiotic relationships, built on mutual respect and friendship, then you are bound to be more successful than trying to go at it alone.

In the end, I try to surround myself with people that have a similar work ethic and a similar desire to succeed professionally in both my personal and professional lives, so it stands to reason that overlap will exist and I welcome it.

As I read this article from Gladys Edmunds in USA Today, I thought about my own observations about small businesses and how they can become more successful, and to think about well-funded businesses with great ideas and technology that never went anywhere.

In her article, Edmunds points to the need for a written business plan, and I agree. Anyone who has ever ridden a motorcycle will remember that when you were first learning, the biggest lesson taught is that you steer where you look. I learned this valuable lesson courtesy of a sand embankment on a canyon road heading to Mammoth one year, and I thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t the ravine that caught my eye instead. By writing out what your goals are, the direction that you are taking, you are charting a course.  It doesn’t have to be written in stone…in fact it absolutely shouldn’t be. But it should be well thought out and give you some clear goals and milestones on which to evaluate your performance.

A further point made by Edmunds is that businesses are built upon small successes. They should be celebrated, as well as evaluated, to see how those successes can be repeated. Having been a part of venture-backed, well-funded companies, one of the big differences I have noticed between success and failure is the ability to achieve milestones, however small, within a reasonable timeline. It shows progress and an ability to execute, which is what business owners and boards of directors should be looking for.

I think that for some period of time (let’s call it the 90s), entrepreneurs forgot just how businesses have grown for centuries. Organic, sequential growth based upon a proven product, service or delivery mechanism is how small businesses became large businesses. In today’s economy, it may become easier to grow into sales nationally and internationally with Internet sales and distribution channels, but that is still predicated on having a salable product and the support infrastructure to handle that growth. Test it small, work out the kinks, achieve some success and then build on it from there. It is a system that works.

When you put your plan together, it is important to not only include big-picture, long-term goals both personally and professionally (with real timelines attached), but to include more granular series of steps that you believe will be required to achieve those goals. Not only will this provide you with something to measure your success against and a road map on how to get there, it will force you to sit down and think about your business strategically and pull yourself out of the day-to-day operations for a bit. And we could all use more of that.

You never know when or where the creative process will strike. It could be in the middle of the night; it could be at the beach. Much has been written about some of the great entrepreneurs and their use of whatever means necessary to jot down that all-important design or idea. It seems as though my brain is always working overtime on some crazy idea or another.

When I was just a kid, I got it in my head that I could design and build a hovercraft. It seems funny now, particularly every time I see that Orbitz commercial with the guy trying to valet park his Orbitz hovercraft. But where most people get a passing thought and say, “That would be cool,” I’ve always had the need to write things down. I wish I had saved the drawings that I spent hours and hours working on for that hovercraft…I can still picture the schematics, such as they were, and my feeble attempts to try to figure out things like propulsion and directional controls.

These days, with so many things to work on and so many daily responsibilities, it can be hard to let your mind wander a bit and think about new things. We referenced an article a couple of weeks ago about the traits of innovation . What I figured out about myself is that my strongest innovation traits are Networking and Association. In fact, I think that they feed off of each other to some degree, which leads us to the need for cocktail napkins.

I am a networker. I like people and I like talking to them about who they are, what they do and their experiences. It was a partner of mine at Deloitte, John Moulton, who was the first to introduce me to the question, “What keeps you up at night?” and, in turn, I have asked it to colleagues, business leaders and friends hundreds of times since then. In asking such an open-ended question, you gain a lot of insight on what the real problems are that are troubling people, particularly as they relate to business. So, you ask hundreds of people what keeps them up, you are bound to see trends and sometimes there is that lightning bolt moment that you say, “This seems to be a real and pervasive problem. Using what I have learned here, here and there, why don’t we build something to solve this problem.” And that is how it happens…or at least, that is how it has happened for me.  And normally at a restaurant or bar where the conversations like these occur.

I’m not a rocket scientist (or as De Ann likes to joke, I’m not a rocket surgeon). But I have been successful at boiling down problems to their root causes and helping people figure out how to address those causes. You never know when inspiration is going to come. I keep a notepad on the nightstand for when I wake up with some unexpected clarity on a problem that has been bothering me. I often grab that same pad when I step out of the shower, where I think about my day and the challenges I’m faced and come up with some solutions. And after one long night at the tavern, coming home with cocktail napkins and register tape with notes and questions and possibilities (another cocktail napkin manifesto), I started carrying around a small notebook (about the size of a business card) and a pen.

So, the next time that someone asks you for a napkin with a crazed look in his or her eyes muttering something about the size of fan blades or lift needed to carry a family of four, go ahead and give it to them. You never know, they just might come up with the design for the next big thing. And if you can’t find a napkin, just ask me and perhaps I will let you borrow my notepad and pen. I have them right here. Oh, that reminds me, I need to make a note…

I’m not normally one to rant about things, particularly in a public forum, but I think that these people have been wearing me down and caught me on a day when I was just too frustrated to put up with more. Who are these people, the subject of my tirade? They are the team at Salesforce.com. Many of you know Salesforce – they make an on-line CRM (client relationship management) tool that helps companies aggregate all of their contacts, leads, potential clients and clients into a single sharable database. The technology is great and they have done wonders for making it easier and easier to follow-up with people and keep prospects and suspects moving through your process. But sometimes the ease at which you can automate these contacts can lead to the exact opposite reaction, as so perfectly demonstrated by Salesforce.com’s use of their own tools and processes.

I evaluated their solutions in September and I should have known what I was in for then.  A free 30 day trial – just sign up and start using it. If you like it, then sign up on a contract, if not, no problem. Day one of the trial: call and email from my friendly sales representative. Day three: tricks and tips for how to get the most out of Salesforce. Day five: phone call, “Can we get you signed up for an online Webinar on how to use the system better?” Day ten: phone call, “So how is it going?” And so it went. The system worked well, so I bit the bullet and signed up. Minimum contract is just 12 months. Little did I know that that was simply to ensure that they had enough time to beat you into submitting to calls, seminars, sales pitches on all of the other ways that Salesforce can be your new best friend.

Today was my breaking point. I’m running a business here. I have been nice…then less nice, when I’ve received continued sales calls and emails from these people. “No thanks, I’m just interested in the one license for just the one feature.”  And, “As I’ve said before, I’m not interested in anything more from you guys. Please stop calling me.”   So today, a nice note from Kristen M. from Salesforce, letting me know that she is working with my sales rep, Nicholas F., (which is surprising because that is the one person that I have never heard of, nor from) and she wanted to have an exploratory conversation with me. Now, Kristen has emailed me before and I was very direct about my use of the product at that time. We exchanged several emails about this, which by the nature of this product that they also use internally, have to be attached to my file. My first response today was direct and short, “Thanks for the email, but I don’t think that I am interested at this time.”

Unfortunately for her, she emailed me back to let me know that she appreciates my candor, but that she has been speaking to other people at Insight Professional Services that have indicated their desire to implement more of the features of Salesforce. She wants to learn more about our focus as a corporation so that she can share how their services can bring the most out of our business. blah blah blah…

My next response (and more wasted time) inquired as to whom she is talking to in my company, since no one has heard of her, and explained that we are a small but growing company but that we don’t need any of their products. Further, I let her know that the constant bombardment of sales calls and email campaigns is a huge detriment to a relationship with Salesforce and to please put our company onto their “Do Not Contact” list, pronto. As of the writing of this post, I have not heard a response. I was tempted to cc: Jim Steele, President Worldwide Sales and Chief Customer Officer, but De Ann thought that might be a bit much. It’s probably part of their internal sales requirements, anyway.

So the next time you are tempted to automate the message and the timing of your sales emails, make sure that you consider that they might not be as well received as you might think. No one likes to feel like they are shoved into a database and auto-marketed to…it is a turn-off.

Let me know what you think about Salesforce… And I’ll let you know if I hear back from them!

There’s No Service Like, Well, Service

I recently read an article arguing that behaving ethically isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good for business (read it here). While this particular article focuses on truth and transparency in social media, it reminded me of a recent customer service situation that could have turned out much differently.

Over the 2009 holiday season we flew to New York for some quality time with family. After 5 fun-filled days and nights it was time to head home. We persuaded my cousin to rise early and drive us to Westchester County Airport first thing  Sunday morning and we arrived at the tiny airport in plenty of time to check-in, have our bags screened and be escorted to the tiny plane – all by the same person.

Once on the tiny plane (1 seat on one side, two seats on the other, 12 rows total) I soon realized that my seat (12C) doesn’t exist. I approached the Flight Attendant, and as soon as I told her my seat doesn’t exist she said, “12C?” Clearly, I’m not the first passenger with this fake seat assignment… Anyway, she escorted me to the opposite end of the plane, where I was to sit backwards facing the other 30 passengers. I was practically sitting in the pilot’s lap.

We waited for nearly an hour, by this time everyone wondering what is going on and when we are leaving. Soon we learn that the plane is overweight (sorry!) and they need 5 people and their luggage off the plane before cleared for takeoff. As an aside, I silently wonder how such a tiny plane can be more than 1,500 pounds overweight – the plane itself can’t weigh much more than that.

Airline staff approached passengers about their connecting flights – everyone is connecting, this is  a small regional airport after all – but one woman tries to pull rank by announcing that she has to work the following morning because she’s a physician. [Insert 30-person eye-roll here.] Mr. Agent asks where we are headed and quickly assures me there is another flight that will get us to Denver. I fall for it, and send him back to the opposite corner of the tiny plane to inform my travel companion we have been volunteered to exit the plane with our belongings.

So far, so so, right? Minutes later when we approach the check-in desk we learn that a) Mr. Agent fibbed to us to get people off the plane, including the physician and her family, and b) there are no other flights even possible unless we can get ourselves to another airport, at our own expense. Our friendly ticket desk agent is just as angry with the young man who promised an easy solution to our travel dilemma, and he didn’t hide it.

The ticketing agents scrambled to help the five of us who were displaced. They juggled calls to customer service, other airlines and still had a line of people checking in for the next flight. We tried very hard to be patient – after all, it wasn’t either of these two men who tricked us – and it eventually paid off. The ticketing agent found us guaranteed space on flights the next morning (the same schedule we attempted the first time). Fortunately, we have family in the area so were able to stay another night at their house for free. We had no transportation, so we rented a cheap car at our own expense to get us back and forth to the airport the following morning.

The payoff? The next day’s travel was smooth – no delays or interruptions of any kind – and we were upgraded to United’s Business Class on a brand new plane for the Dulles to Denver leg. In short, it was awesome: seats that recline to a flat position, real full-size blankets, huge monitors that we could watch and play games on during any part of the flight, a decent meal, priority boarding and luggage retrieval, and water service as soon as you’re seated. Not bad for a little snafu the day before, and I can assure you that the extra day of vacation and a stress-free, upgraded flight  – plus a free round-trip ticket each – more than makes up for the inconvenience of renting a car and staying an extra night.

This all reminds me of the notion that if you do the right thing in business, as well as in your personal life, you will be rewarded. The United employees who helped ultimately did the right thing by booking us guaranteed seats and giving us some perks, like 2 free round-trip tickets. As travelers, we ultimately did the right thing, too, because we were patient and treated the agents respectfully, which seems simple but I’m sure we’ve all seen customers becoming out of control during travel, particularly when plans change significantly. Granted, we benefited far more than the agents who helped us – they only received the pleasure of one less customer yelling at them. We parted shaking hands and thanking them for getting it done, and they thanked us for being understanding. No strong words were exchanged, no voices were raised, and no nasty-grams were sent. It really is that simple.

We are pleased to announce the signing of our newest client, a Denver-based law firm. This firm recognized the cost and stress associated with running their own network infrastructure and opted for a turn-key technology solution from Insight. We developed a complete package of real-time data replication and availability in our state-of-the-art data center with Microsoft Exchange functionality and Blackberry integration, all for one low monthly cost – without the client’s need to purchase or maintain any servers or network equipment. We look forward to a long and successful partnership with our newest client. Have a safe and happy weekend!

Article: How to Develop a Mobile Application, Jan 04, 2010
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/money/article/how-to-develop-a-mobile-application-shira-levine

One of the big shifts at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas over the last couple years is the surge in mobile devices and software. As the world’s technology improves exponentially every year, technology is quickly becoming much smaller in size as well as more efficient in power consumption and processing power. As AT&T and Verizon are pushing their US based 3G data networks farther, other companies like Sprint are hinting at the development of even larger bandwidth such as 4G. One can only guess where it goes from there.

With wireless bandwidth being ever so available, power and processing improving every day, and size constraints being over come, this all adds up to one thing: our devices are becoming increasingly mobile by the day. The upside is that we’re all in constant communication on the web from anywhere now. The downside is that all of our old ideologies on the standards for website development are becoming quickly outdated. A new set of standards are popping now, standards that are not necessarily a replacement of the old 800 x 600 development procedures, but more secondary to those procedures.

Recently, a Spokane based advertising agency, BHW1, undertook a new project for River Park Square, an Inland Northwest shopping, dining and entertainment destination in Spokane, Washington. The problem at hand was that the current website for the shopping center is built entirely in Flash and therefore not available via mobile devices. In order to fully optimize the website for mobile use, it would need to be completely rebuilt and Flash would not be advisable due to the mobile limitations. In looking at the issue at hand, what made the most sense was to build a separate, smaller application for the shopping center and house it as a stand alone mobile version of the website. A quick and cost effective solution came to light just this past December when RiverParkSquare.mobi went live. Now, a visit to RiverParkSquare.com from a computer looks just as it has, but the same visit via mobile device redirects the visitor to the mobile version for optimal viewing.

Mobile web isn’t the stopping point either. With devices like the iPhone and Android quickly gaining leverage in the mobile race, devices like Windows Mobile and Blackberry have nowhere to go but the same direction when it comes to mobile applications. The difference? Mobile websites are actual website code based and require an Internet connection to run. With mobile applications, however, this isn’t necessarily the case. Many mobile applications run locally, as they are just a simple program loaded on the actual device. In some cases, these applications may pull data from the web to be displayed within the application, but many do not.

So where do you go from here? As River Park Square has proven, you don’t have to change what you already have. You just need to build upon it. There are many companies out there that can build both mobile websites as well as mobile applications. Mobile website development is going to be much less expensive than mobile application development – anywhere from a fourth to a tenth of the cost, depending on the mobile application requirements. Testing is imperative with application development and updating of mobile applications has proven to be problematic at times, so if you are interested in developing an application for the iPhone or Android, make sure the company you choose to develop it fully understands this hurdle. As marketing vehicles are changing, this is forcing your traditional advertising agencies to change as well. Many businesses aren’t aware that their talented advertising agency that produces their TV, newspaper and direct mailing materials are also producing websites as well as mobile versions, much like BHW1.

A few years ago, for most companies, a website was a luxury. Now, it’s a requirement for doing business – not just in the global and domestic markets, but now in the local marketplace as well. With the growth of the mobile marketplace, it won’t be long before having a mobile optimized website as well as applications that run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile are regarded in the same nature.

One of the best things about having started Insight is that I’ve taken a renewed interest in, and made the time for, learning about what is happening in the world around me.  Specifically, the entrepreneurial and small business worlds.  When I was focusing my time at Progressive, it was all about the housing market, home builders and home electronics.  Now, I spend my time reading about marketing, leadership, social media and a handful of other topics and I feel like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from a long nap. There is so much going on around us, so many new and innovative concepts and ideas; I had forgotten how exciting emerging companies and technologies really can be.

But the reality is that you can’t read everything, or else all you would do is read newsletters and news websites and RSS feeds and never get any work done.  So over the last year, I’ve narrowed down my reading to a few magazines, websites and newsletters that I’ve found to be the most helpful, informative and enjoyable for me.

I will mention that in addition to signing up and receiving this information, you actually have to make time to read and digest it. I spent years getting magazines that I “should” read, which were never even looked at, and subscribed to news feeds that I never reviewed. For me, I have found that I need to set aside 2 time slots weekly where I can catch up on email newsletters and articles, some daily time to read the paper, and I read magazines and other publications as time permits on the weekends or evenings. It is simply a matter of making the time (and for traveling often enough that I can “catch up” on the plane or in the airport).

So what do I read, how do I receive it and why is it important to me?

• Denver Post (Daily): Everyone should be aware of what is happening in the world around them. I receive the paper on the Kindle, so it is manageable when I’m on the treadmill or on the road. It eliminates most of the pictures and just gives you the stories.  I focus on the news, local news and the business sections.  I skim the sports section because I’m just not that into sports.
• Denver Business Journal (Weekly):  Good focus on the business happenings in our community.  I also receive the daily journal updates for Denver and Portland.  You can sign up for free, whether or not you subscribe the business journal.
• Magazines (Monthly):  Fortune and Fast Company (Business, Tech, Entrepreneurial news and articles) and 5280 (Denver food and entertainment scene)
• Email newsletters (Daily):  In addition to the business journal newsletters noted above, I am a fan of the Smartbrief series.  Smartbriefs are a series of daily email news summaries in a wide variety of industries.  They are free and they are a great source of information.  I am currently signed up for 9 of these newsletters, focusing on everything from entrepreneurship and small business, to social media and consumer electronics.  They give a great 2 sentence summary of the highlighted articles and they have a good team of editors selecting the ones most intriguing for each category.
• Websites (Weekly):  Two in particular that I’ve found to be very worthwhile. First, Anita Campbell and her team at Small Business Trends do an amazing job of writing and aggregating pertinent content for small business owners and executives. Second, Guy Kawasaki and his team at Alltop have put together a great resource for news and information on, well, just about anything.  Pick a topic and start reading. (I should warn you that I’ve lost a couple of afternoons that way, so be careful!)
• Mobile App (Daily): One final source of technology news that I use is an application on my Blackberry that summarizes the latest articles on ZDNet. It’s easy to review headlines, read the full story and forward a link of the story directly to yourself or to anyone in your contact list.  Smooth, efficient and I am guaranteed to always have reading material with me wherever I go.

For me, it is all about the routine.  If I don’t set aside the time for it, it either doesn’t get read or I feel the need to read it the moment that it comes in, which wreaks havoc on a day’s productivity. And the one thing that I don’t have a lot of these days is time.

Which newsletters, magazines, publications or websites work best for you? Have you found success in balancing out the desire for news and information with the demands of the day?  What works best for you?

“What does it all mean and why in the world should I care?” Isn’t that what you really want to know?

Accounting, financial statements, internal controls, process, documentation, contracts. All tools of the dark forces in the universe that are doing everything they can to make sure that I don’t’ have any time to actually work on my business. Admit it, you had that thought once or twice in your life…or maybe every day. I get it. I’ve been on both sides and I’ve seen how it can happen.

So you fight it. “That stuff doesn’t have any place in my business. I pay my bills and file my taxes on time, so my goal is to simply keep the cost of doing that as low as I can so that I can spend more on marketing and sales.” And to be honest, if all your accountant does for you is pay the bills and make sure taxes are filed on time, then yes, minimize the cost and focus elsewhere. But the reality is that isn’t all that they should be doing for you. They should provide you with guidance, real information about trends and the current state of the business, profitability of product lines, projects and offices in your business. But that happens over time.

In my experience with start-up companies and small businesses, I have found that very often bright, inventive and intuitive business men and women who have been very successful do not have a firm grasp on how to evaluate the actual performance of their businesses. Whether they don’t receive good information or they don’t know what to make of it when they do, they often manage by gut and intuition alone and have one metric by which they evaluate success: “How much money do I have in the bank, and can I take some out to buy something for myself?” If you own your business and you are nodding your head, you are not alone. The very thing that makes entrepreneurs successful often makes them shy away from the “boredom” that is often attributed to financial accounting. Much has been written about that, but if you are running a business, who has time to read all of those books?

I’m a practical guy. Show me, and I’ll understand and embrace it. I think that most entrepreneurs are like me in that regard. But ask me to read a 300 page book on the glory of trend reporting (yawn) and I will surely find something, anything else that I can do that will save me from that particular hell (and I was trained in finance). The sad reality is that most businesses already have the tools available and the information at their finger tips, but have never been shown how to get at it, haven’t made the time to figure it out, just don’t know where to begin and are afraid to ask for help. And that drives me nuts. What I often tell my clients when I meet with them the first time is that the great thing is that they have already figured out how to run their business, tend to their customers and build their product or service offering. That is the hard part! All the business analysis and measuring performance and establishing metrics, that stuff is easy and it doesn’t have to be expensive or hugely time consuming or burdensome on a business. By simply doing things exactly how you have been doing them, but structuring the reporting a little differently and reviewing the results in a different way or more frequently, you can see dramatic indicators of where the business is doing well and where it can use a little adjustment.

As my friend and client Chris put it after I spent some time looking at his business… “It’s just a relief to know what is really going on, instead of wondering, guessing and worrying about it. If I know what is happening, I can figure out how to fix it.” Chris is a smart guy and a good businessman and I’m confident that he will figure it out. And more than anything, I’m glad that he called me and said “I just don’t get it, and I don’t have the time to figure it out. Please help me.”

As for the question “What is Gross Profit?”… it’s just another boring accounting term.  One that will tell you something very critical to you business, if you let it. Give me a call and we’ll work through it together.

What are the issues that you have come across in understanding your business’s financial condition? What do you use to keep your pulse on the business? Who handles all your accounting and reporting needs?