Archives for June 2005

Well, this weekend is the 4th of July, and keeping in accordance with tradition, my family is going up to the family cabin near Iron Mountain Michigan. We’ve been going there for the 4th of July for as long as I can remember. It’s my Uncle David’s cabin, it used to be my grandparents, but my Uncle bought it when my Grandpa died. My Mom’s side of the family gets together for a family reunion of sorts every 4th of July. I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend at the cabin, and getting to spend some time playing with the boat on the lake.

Leading up to this weekend, however, I’m quite busy. I’m in the process of launching 2 online stores, along with fininshing a website for another client, and continuing to work on another site for another client. The online stores I’m launching are Gnu Blu, a clothing brand I’m developing, and ARCO Coffee, a local coffee company that wants to sell their coffee online. Both stores are coming along and nearing completing, and I’m shooting for a Friday July 1st launch.

It’s my goal that these 2 stores take off and start generating some good monthly income. If they do well, it will add to my list of accomplishments in web development, but more importantly will help me build a good revenue base upon which my business can grow.

So if I look a little tired this week, or you don’t hear from me for a while, have no fear, I’m just up to my elbows with work so that I can afford to play a little this weekend.

Well, as most of you know, I currently own and operate my own business doing website development and hosting. This past month, I have really learned the importance of managing my business vs. working for my business. Up until these last few months, I’ve always done everything in my business. Finally its grown to a point where I’ve becomed swamped, almost overwhelmed with the amount of work coming in that I’ve had to hire. Thankfully, I’ve found some talented people who I feel have similar vision to myself, and am in the process of training them.

When someone starts their own business, it becomes their baby. When it succeeds, it becomes their pride and joy, and it is often hard to let go of parts. Similar to raising a child (which I hope to experience some day), you need to let go of things to let it grow. I’m confident that once my employees are trained, business will grow more than ever. I’ll be turning over responsibilities and trust to my employees, that they will do better jobs than I at their tasks.

I’m very thankful for my Human Resource class that I took back in May, I learned a great deal of information about managing employees, as well as hiring practices, and the legal ramifications of being an employer. Someone once told me that their biggest event with their own business, was moving from a 1-2 man operation to having 3-5 employees, and business just took off. I’m praying and hoping that I will have a similar experience.

Well, this has been a fairly good summer so far. Besides the fact that it has yet to get warmer than 70 degrees and go for more than 3 days without raining. I finished my Human Resources class that I took in May, and got an A-. I liked taking it as a May class for 3 weeks rather than a regular term class, I learned it better with the accelerated pace.

With my business, it seems like I constantly have 2-3 projects on my plate. I’m currently hiring, and recently met a lady who is going to start working for me, and helping me with web development. I’m excited, as this means that I can focus my time on things that need to get done, besides spending all my time actually making the websites themselves. Now I just need to hire someone to do system administration to help with the long list of projects I have going on with my servers.

Right now, I’m setting a goal for myself. I want my business to acheive $100,000 in the next year. And to start off this goal, I have a short term goal of getting $3000 in sales by the end of June. So I really need to get my butt in gear and start marketing. Thankfully my good friend Mike Frankosky recently finished my new logo for Utaria, and I LOVE IT! I’ve passed the logo on to my good friend Bryce Howitson who is going to do his magic and create a fantastic new web-layout using my new logo for me.

It’s funny how I develop websites for other businesses, and I feel that I do a pretty darn good job at it. Yet I don’t have time to develop my own website! I guess it is a cost-benefit thing, where my time is better spent making sites for clients to bring in money to pay the bills. This is exactly why I need to hire.

This is all for now. I really need to try to blog more, I find that blogging helps me organize my thoughts so I am aware of where I am currently, and I think its cool to read the comments of those who I’ve never met commenting on my life. So, until another day, cheers!