Musings of a West Texas Business Venture

Unobtrusive Side Notes

This was sent to me today, and is a very simple and effective way to add sidenotes to your web pages.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:11 PM |   

Forget What Business You Are In?

Do you know of businesses that do forget what business they are in?

Today I went and picked up some magnetic signs that we had printed at a local (Lubbock) FastSigns franchise. I've had some other work done with them in the past, and have been pleased with what they produced. This time, I had them do two different versions of a single car magnet and we brought them some proofs about a week ago.

After I paid for both of the signs (2 pairs), I noticed that one of the imported graphics on the sign had a dark square overlayed on it. It is probably not noticeable from more than fifteen or more feet away. However, when I noticed it, the clerk said, "Well, that's what the file had - we just printed what was on the file" or something to that effect. I think that put the onus on me (the client) as the problem.

This began a lot of deliberation between myself, the clerk, the graphic artist (theirs), and someone else from FastSigns. Apparently, the best solution that they could come up with was that, although it's not on the proof, that the background of one of the imported graphic is off by a slight amount. For instance, the graphic might be #88AAFF and the background might be more like #88AAFD. As such, the box got printed -- and the whole graphic was, in my opinion, ruined. Everyone treated it as a minimal issue at best.

During this exchange, another gentleman came in and picked up a sign. He and the clerk had a slight back-and-forth exchange about how clients would "nit pick" over "just a sign", and that they were working with a client and were on their "fourth revision". I got the feeling that they thought that this was a bad thing.

I wonder how they would react if their own sign had the same problem? What if at&t or Dell or Amazon.com's signs were messed up?

I think they forgot - they are not in the sign printing business.
They are in the image business.

[I was able to resolve my problem with them, and they'll be redoing the problematic sign, and eight more for me. Which is great customer service -- and I highly recommend their company.]

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:58 PM |   

NRA Show Wrap Up

I've given it a few days since the National Restaurant Show trade show in Chicago, about the good and the bad. We mostly focused on the technology side of it, since that is what we do. Here's what I can say about the show:

1. There seems to be a greater focus on getting materials / information to restaurant patrons.
2. Most of the POS system vendors are selling the same stuff they always have.
3. Almost none of the technology vendors had much in the way of unique, new technologies.

Our meeting with Beth Dugan went well, and she confirmed a lot of the assumptions that we have about the industry.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 10:25 AM |   

Day Two at the NRA Show

Day Two of the NRA show went without a hitch today. After staying up very late talking strategy with Erik, we both woke up a little groggy and were slow getting out the door. I think we showed up around noon.

I actually convinced Erik to try out a McDonald's Asian salad (he stays away from McD's, usually), and once our bellies were full, we hit the show floor running.

We focused on the second half of the 3rd floor, which houses most of the technology exhibits, and found that most of the players this year were the same as last year, and the year before. And most had the same technology and products as always.

We noticed a large number of exhibitors doing the email marketing type of thing (users give the company their name, address, special dates, etc... and then the company can market to them on a constant basis). Some of the players at the show doing this were FlyPaper Marketing, FishBowl Marketing, PatronPath, and Go Loyal. The biggest player (that I know of) in this space is Constant Contact.

Interesting to note about these companies: Alexa ranks FlyPaper in the 5 million range. FishBowl marketing is around 38,000. PatronPath is not ranked. Go Loyal is around 1.1 million. And Constant Contact is around 700. Which may mean something about how Alexa ranks their web sites more than anything else.

Tomorrow, we'll be running into the show to meet with Beth Dugan about industry currents, and seeing how we might be able to collaborate over a few different projects.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:13 PM |   

Summer Reorganization

We've been postulating what to do with our four summer workers, two interns, and two who have been with the company longer (one 6 months, one 12 months). Currently we have two projects that we are working on, www.SpoonFedBib.com - a site for maing bibliographies automatically, and another project which is related to labor management.

We've decided, for now, that we will stop all forward progress on our bibliography software, and focus on our labor management tool. This will involve placing two developers on the GUI / front-end (for which we are using OpenLaszlo), and placing two developers on the Operational Research side of the project, utilizing dynamic, linear, integer, and constraint programming tactics. They will likely start with AMPL to get familiar with some of the concepts.

They have a LOT to learn this summer.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:38 AM |   

Day One of the NRA Show

I didn't take my laptop today to the National Restaurant Association annual trade show in Chicago, even though there is free WiFi. Last year the place was packed, and there was nowhere to sit (floor or chair) within range. So, instead I took my trusty camera and some notes, and made our way through the first of the exhibit halls.

Erik and I made a run at the show this morning, starting with the Technology Pavilion at the far corner of the main exhibit floor. They had a forum, called Optimize Restaurant Operations with a Broadband Network, and we made it just in time, after getting semi-lost using our Hertz NeverLost GPS system. Overall, I thought the forum went very well, and there was a lot of interesting statistics shared. Most of the forum members are using broadband for exactly what you would expect them to (Email, Credit Card transactions, remote control of POS systems, VPN connections, reservations) -- I didn't hear anything "crazy" going on. Of course, the hospitality industry has a tendency to move very slowly, and most "Fortune 500" companies have been doing these things for years.

Some of the interesting statistics:

1. Cracker Barrel serves more than 600,000 meals per day. Assuming the US has a population of around 250,000,000 .... that means that 6 out of every 2500 people eat at a Cracker Barrel DAILY! They serve almost .25% of the population daily.
   
2. Cracker Barrel used more than 70,000 POUNDS of pancake and biscuit mix EVERY day last year.
3. Cracker Barrel served more than 18,000,000 (yes, million) servings of chicken and dumplins last year.
4. Cedar Enterprises (a Wendy's franchisee) built an entirely new inventory management system / labor system. This isn't anything special by itself. However, the DRIVING force behind their decision to build their own was that they MIGHT be able to save 4/10th's of a percent on their theoretical food cost. That's likely around $4,500 per restaurant (or more than $800,000 per year for all locations). Who knows what the ROI is, but probably within 1-2 years.
   

Overall, I felt that the forum was a venue for New Edge Networks to sell their services. I think they mentioned themselves about thirty times a second, and at the end of the forum, about ten of their staff manned the exit so they could talk to everyone. Yikes.

Several of the booths on the first floor were very well done. EcoLab, which usually has a good booth (last year they had Captain EcoLab), was completely revamped, and doing good things. Very engaging of the average passerby, and everyone there is probably an ex-cheerleader.

I was not expecting, but happy to see, SpotRunner. They are revolutionizing media buying for individual and smaller companies, and are doing an excellent job. I love their product, and use it with clients in more than one sector. Their booth was great, shaped like an eye (oblong and obtuse), and forced you to walk by their sales people and their demo product. They had screens and laptops all over the place with a live Internet connection to try it out while their sales people assisted you. Too busy to stop? Grab a DVD with a demo product inside (it has about 30 restaurant related commercials on it), and follow the insert instructions on getting started. It has instructions, background, and more. A great presentation of their product.

I don't remember who had the sharks -- but it obviously wasn't a great booth (or I would remember). However, the motorcycles were very neat, and extremely well done. This was taken near (but not at) a booth where I overheard an exhibitor complaining that he hated the NRA show. Apparently, they've been coming for years, but sell almost nothing at it. We asked around, and found out that it's really not a selling show. It's a show to talk with the clients, buy dinners, and say hello to people so they do not forget you. More client services kind of things. More marketing.

Another interesting product was this particular item, called a FIFO Squeeze Bottle. This is technology done right, but sold wrong. The theory is that if you put product in, even if you flip it around a little bit, what you pour out will be the first stuff you put into the bottle. This way, you don't have year-old ranch salad dressing in the middle of your bottles. However, it's a horrible name -- as FIFO is a technical term that the average consumer probably doesn't use on a daily basis (except those from Europe, who kept asking me if I was standing in a queue).

At 2pm, we ran back over to the Technology Pavilion, where the place was packed, and took a look at another forum called New Restaurant Technology: Lessons Learned which was headed by someone from JTech (also known as Micros these days). We learned some interesting things there, but mostly just confirmed what we already knew -- that Darden is light years ahead of the pack, that websites and online reservations are becoming more important, that marketing is very important, and that this forum would be very popular (for a few minutes it was standing room only).

Tomorrow, we're going to try and make it to the technology side, as well as the International Pavilion (downstairs). I also need to stop by and talk with a few equipment manufactures about reselling their equipment (for use with our software). The forums do not look to be very interesting tomorrow .... with the exception of the self service (I imagine it is mostly a repeat of last year).

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:29 PM |   

National Restaurant Association Trade Show

This Friday - Monday, we'll be attending the National Restaurant Association Trade Show, the annual restaurant exhibition held in Chicago. Last year, we had a good time walking the floor and talking with all of the exhibitors. However, we have found out that having "Systems" or "Software" printed on our badges can make some of the technology vendors jumpy. They do not want to give away the many secrets of their technology.

This will be the third year that we'll be attending (and hopefully the last as an attendee), and we're going to try and make it to several of the break-out sessions (for some reason we are always busy doing something at that time). I'll post some information here about the actual show as it is going on. In the meantime, these are the exhibitors.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 8:16 PM |   

Resolution.com Relaunch

We redesigned www.Resolution.com today, and relaunched it. It's there for your viewing pleasure, and is a much better reflection of the company we've become over the past ten or so years.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 8:12 PM |   

Yahoo / Overture Programs

I spent about two hours on the phone last week with various members of the Yahoo (previously Overture) team. We had a lot to discuss, about a clients' advertising budgets, and the programs that Yahoo could offer. Thus far, for this client, we've only been doing basic search advertising -- and some of that went over to MSN's adCenter, when MSN dropped Yahoo search results two weeks ago.

We've managed to get our client into a few different programs which should spice up their advertising, including some of their SEO programs and pay-per-call. This is a national advertising campaign, so we're quite excited about some of the possibilities. I'll keep this blog updated with how the progress goes for this client.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:04 PM |   

Auction Item -- Not Auctioned

On Tuesday, I emailed a service package to the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, worth about $2,000 in services from my company.

The winner would receive a detailed, written analysis of their company, with particular emphasis on technology and marketing functionality of their company. Once the analysis was done, we would donate ten (10) hours of our time towards whatever we found in the analysis. That could, in theory be custom software development, branding, new marketing campaigns, an infrastructure move, or any combination of those (or others).

Lastly, on top of everything else, if they wanted to purchase any kind of an advertising package with us, the first $100 of the advertising campaign is free.

All-in-all, we thought it was a great package to offer up for the usage of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce. And that's what we were told by the Chamber, so they decided to put our item up for the live auction. We showed up at the live auction (5:00 - 7:00 pm), and waited to see who might buy our package.

The first item that went up for auction was a gift basket, which sold for $10. Only one person bid on it. This appeared to annoy the auctioneer. So, he auctioned off a two night stay at a local hotel, which went for $100. Again, only one person bid on it. The auctioneer took a 20 minute break. When he got back, he decided to play a few small games with the audience, and gave away a few a few door prizes (like an iPod, and a few others).

However, no one was listening, and this upset him quite a bit, so they decided to not auction off anything else except their Continental Airline Tickets. And after that, the party was over. Nothing else was auctioned off after the tickets (we didn't stick around to see what they sold for).

posted by Anthony Presley @ 8:53 PM |   

Lubbock Business Expo 2006

We spent a few hours on Thursday at the Lubbock Business Expo, which was held at the Civic Center, downtown. I took a few of our employees with me, and we walked around all of the booths there -- taking a look at the various Lubbock businesses. Overall, I wasn't very impressed.

There were a lot of exhibitors there, probably around 400 or so. I walked the floor of the entire trade show, and in many places, I walked it twice. Out of all 400 booths, and thousands of exhibitors, not a single one stepped out of their booth to talk to me. I do not know who employs these trade show employees, but if they worked for me, I think we'd have to have some serious discussions about what they do at a trade show.

They should have been stepping out of the booths, saying "Hello, my name is XYZ, and I'm with ABC company, can I interest you in what we are offering?" And when I said "No thanks", they should have had a response for that as well. Instead, the best I got was one exhibitor attempting to hand me a flyer.

However, out of all of the booths, the one I remember the most is a potential competitor in the area, CirriTech. CirriTech sells computer systems (networking equipment and networks in general) to the Lubbock market. And the way that they promote their services is by hiring about six Texas Tech (or Lubbock area, anyway) girls to wear Hooters attire, and show off their womanly goods. Their tank-tops had some coy saying on the back, like "No one touches me or my network except CirriTech."

Now, their marketing, in one sense, was pure genius. They are targeting business owners, and those are typically males. Middle aged males. The best way to get their heads to turn is to outfit some college-aged girls with push-up bras and little else. As an aside, back in the hay-days of Comdex, it was very popular to hire local strippers to man the booth, in a similar fashion. So, the CirriTech employees were having the girls sit on bar stools and take pictures with passerbys, as long as they dropped off a business card. The marketing message was clear. Drop off a business card. Get a picture with five or six college hotties.

My issue with this tactic is that, in two weeks, when the CirriTech sales guy gets around to calling each of those business cards, and says "I'm with CirriTech, you took a picture with our girls at the Lubbock Business Expo", how many of those professionals will remember what a CirriTech does? I hypothesize that the number will be extremely low.

Also of interest during the show was a significant lack of medium sized companies. Most of what I saw was small companies (less than 50-60 employees). There's nothing wrong with this, but I did find it interesting that most of the top employers (Texas Tech, Covenant, UMC, United, Plains Capital Bank, Subway, etc....) of Lubbock were absent.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 8:19 PM |   

Lubbock Chamber Of Commerce

It's official, we're now members (they probably will wait until the check clears before they tell anyone) of the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:21 PM |   

Lubbock Business Expo

Teresa, from the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, will be coming by today to talk with me about joining the LCC. Although I reside in Lubbock, and have built my company around the area (we're up to about 4 full-time employees, and will have 4 summer interns), none of our clients are in this area. In the past, all of our clients have been on either coast -- which is a benefit of what I do. However, it does make it harder to find clients, as most companies in the Lubbock area do very little on the Internet. I'm thinking, though I may be wrong, that joining the LCC may actual bring some exposure to potential local clients.

In addition to becoming a member of the LCC, we are thinking about placing some services up for auction at the 2006 Business Expo's silent auction. A current list of items up for auction can be found here. Our current thoughts are to auction up a combination of consulting and marketing services. Perhaps a blend of TV, Internet, and computer consulting, with a $100 credit towards either Adwords or SpotRunner. We haven't fully decided yet.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:27 PM |   

Laptops

After a few weeks of checking around, and polling other laptop users, I ended up choosing some laptops for the interns (soon to be headed to college). We purchased two Sony Vaio's, specifically model PCG-GRT100's. Although we could have purchased newer laptops, we would run the risk of the laptops only being 80% supported by our favorite linux distro, Fedora Core. I ran into this problem several months ago when I walked into Sams Club and purchased an HP laptop.

These particular laptops have 1600x1200 screens, Mobile Pentium 4 processors, and we will be adding as much RAM to them as they can take. Additionally, they've already depreciated most of their "inflated" value, so if we sell them again in an year, we will be able to get most of our money back out of them.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:26 PM |   

Lubbock Graphic Artist Internship Filled

On Friday, we offered a graphic artist position to an aspiring architecture student at Texas Tech University. He will be starting with us on Tuesday, at 9am.

We're looking forward to having his fresh perspective at our firm. He will be helping us expand our business locally and nationally, as well as branding for our clients. Hopefully, while he's with us, I can convince him to work with client Graphical User Interfaces on the web.

I need to pick up a nice monitor (or two) for him and his 17" laptop that he'll be using at our offices. I'll also be putting together a small render farm for him and our more "senior" graphic artist to use.

On May 15th, we'll have another intern (CS-related) starting for us here also, working on a GUI within OpenLazlo.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:15 PM |   

New Lubbock Location

Our landlord, George Parsley, owns several buildings in town. In fact, our old location, off of Indiana, was owned by Mr. Parsley. However, we rapidly outgrew the small 800 square foot space, and went looking for a larger place with an area that we could work out in. He happened to own another building off of 29th Drive, and we moved into a larger space (almost 2000 square feet).

I was told on Friday that our new landlords, the D'Cruz's have purchased the building from George, and are going to be moving their sleep therapy clinic to the building we are in. It was also pointed out that they needed our space, and would not be renewing our 1-year lease which is up in November.

Mrs. D'Cruz also stopped by to let me know that while there are some stiff fines for breaking our lease, she'd like to see us leave earlier. They are apparently moving their clinic in next-door by the end of the month. I've started looking for new office space around town, and it looks like there are quite a few spaces in our price range.

Perhaps this next week I'll start talking with the D'Cruz's about the potential for buying out the rest of our lease.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:49 PM |   

More Lubbock Computer Companies

In our search to catalog all of the local (Lubbock) based computer companies, we ran across a few more today. These few were listed by the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, which we are considering joining.

• Sine Networks - This company appears to provide a lot of things, from the networks in their name, to the Internet and e-commerce.
  
• Cirritech Corporation - Despite what their web site may show off, they claim to sell computer-related services. However, their pictures appear to show that they do female augmentations.
• Smooth Fusion - This particular company is probably one of the most successful in the area, specifically because they do very little with the local economy. Most of their clients are on the coasts (at least they used to be).
  

Using WordTracker and my Google Toolbar, I spent a few hours looking at these companies, their web sites, and why most of them are either seriously outdated, or poorly maintained.

The answer, it seems, is marketing. Almost no one searches for Lubbock computers in any search engine. Digging around Wordtracker shows that the majority of users in the Lubbock area search for real estate, news, and strip clubs. Which means that Lubbock still works very much on referrals, word of mouth, and grass-roots marketing.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 8:04 PM |   

Lubbock Computer Consulting Companies

I decided this afternoon to take a good hard look at the "competitors" in town. Some of them I knew about, and had seen or worked with in the past. Others, I've never seen or heard of.

• Neek - This company appears to be based out of CA, with a satellite office in Lubbock, on Broadway. However, their site hasn't been updated since 2003, and all of their customer profiles look like Dreamweaver Templates.
• Mandry Technology Solutions - I spoke with them at a local trade fair last year, and they appear to be a franchise or chain of some variety. They appear to work on various networks, virus scanning, and minor web site development.
  
• Systemic Computer Services -This company appears to be more of a big-iron development company, selling the IBM AS/400 series machines.
  
• MVC Technology Services - MVC seems to offer primarily hardware (networks and systems) as well as a complete set of management consulting to go along with their hardware.
  
• Ki Corp -Although I've never personally heard of them, Ki Corp appears to be a government contractor for the Lubbock area, providing hardware and software systems to local government.
  
• Database Designs LLC - This company appears to design custom web solutions as well as their own software. They appear to cater to the trucking industry, with a product called Truck Broker.
  
• IntelliSolv - Another consulting company that claims to be a "computer and network service provider".
  
• JC Computers - Spyware, Adware, Malware removal, 24 hours a day, with a per-call cost, not a per-hour cost. I've actually run across the JC Computer vehicles two or three times a week.
  

Of course, I'm a fan of Resolution. The only thing we don't do, from the above list of capabilities, is sell and service the AS/400. In the meantime, we also work on SEO, advertising, workflow, and system integration. Look for our new website and advertising to be going up in the next two weeks.

So, has anyone worked with any of these companies? I'm working on a list of advertising / marketing companies for the area as well.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:18 PM |   

Great Programmers Or Great People?

Tom Evslin has some great points to make about great programmers vs. good programmers, and in my experience, he is spot on. However, he restricts his discussion to programmers, and the reality is that his description of "good" vs. "great" applies to every employee in your company.

Hire a merely good secretary (personal / executive assistant), and they'll do a good job of answering the phone. Hire a great one, and everyone who walks near your office will have a cup of coffee (or water), your meetings will be arranged in order of significance, your kids will be picked up and dropped off when you get over run with meetings, and the list goes on.

Hire a merely good marketer and you're probably in trouble. A lot of trouble. They'll do some quick ad-copy, get your approval, post it on a few sites, and blow through your money. If you had hired great marketer instead, you'd have in-depth ad-copy, you'll have a quick study group (ideally with some existing customers), you'll have a measurable advertising / marketing campaign, and within hours the marketer will be back at work optimizing the advertisements.

There are a lot of companies / individuals out there who claim they only hire the top 5%, or the 99th percentile. I can't claim to have done that. I probably can't claim to have always hired the top 5% of the people who applied for the job. However, I can say, that if you aren't a top performer, and I find out that you're not a top performer or not great at your job, you won't be working for me, or any of my clients, very long.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 9:39 AM |