Category: Business

Well, one of the things I recently learned is that JaveLLin Solutions has attempted to be all things to all people.  This seems like a great approach.  However, we are finally understanding that if we want our business to be successful, we must focus on our strengths.

If you’ve been to our website, I’m sure you noticed that we have a lot of products out there.  We have stuff for Service Management, Production Execution, Materials Management/Warehouse Management, and even Variant Configuration.  So, after some talk, Mike and I have agreed that our material master and variant configuration product lines will need to be shelved for a while.  They certainly won’t go away, and at some point we’ll have the time and resources to expand, but for right now, our niche of SM and PP is largely overlooked by our competitors, so we feel that this area is our best chance to find a home in the market.

It is a bit sad, because I have devoted time to these areas, and have a lot of great ideas, but like you’ve noticed in a lot of my posts, we are overwhelmed with things to do…  so the further we spread our focus the harder it will be to keep up with what we need to do.

So, just a word of advice that I’ve been told lately by some marketing professionals…  stay focused.  Don’t try to be everything to everyone.  The key is to find our specialty, and work the hell out of it.  When you get big enough, you can always expand back into those areas 🙂  But have no fear, I’ll still be blogging about VC and all the things I learn.  I just won’t be developing products in that area for a little while.  Good luck and thanks for reading.

Now I know that we are hitting the big time, we are working to bring on board our first intern.  The idea was first presented to us at the regional ASUG in Columbia, SC.  At the time it was only a passing idea, but recently I found out my younger cousin (a programmer) was looking for his for job and having a hard time finding anything, well, things just started to come together.

Obviously, I’m overworked and can’t keep up with all the development I have on my plate, along with business and marketing and sales…  so it seemed like a perfect fit.  Now, the fun part came in when we had to do an “on-boarding” process.  I have a new appreciation for just what it takes to bring in a new employee.  First, there’s the legal paperwork, NDA’s, SOW’s, contracts, compensation, etc.  Then setting him up with an email account, getting everyone linked on Skype, dropbox etc.  Then of course, I needed to get him setup with a SAP logon, a development key…  and a system that he can play in without impacting any of my other development initiatives.

Now to make thing more exciting, he’s never done SAP (hence why he was probably looking for a job.  ha ha).  So, I’ve been setting him up some of my old training material.  Now, I think we finally have it all pulled together.  He has a system to play in, some of our applications to use as a model (needless to say, we’re keeping it simple for the first round), a bunch of training…  and license to break anything he wants to.

I finally realize what a win win it really is to have interns.  You know, I got started in all of this by accident through an internship so very long ago…  and look at me now.  Well, maybe I can impart the same sort of success to our first intern.  Or at the very least, I can trade some cash to get back some of my time.  No matter how you look it, it could be huge for everyone involved.  And with all the self-help, sales programs, motivation programs, they all have a simple fact in common…  if you want to succeed in the long run, you need to focus on win-win deals.  Make sure it works for everyone and it’s sure to work.  Well, let’s hope all the experts are right.

Thanks for reading,

I hope you all enjoy a safe and fun Halloween this year.  It’s funny, I remember not that long ago, I looked forward to drunken parties with all my friends in great costumes.  Now, with 2 kids, I’m looking forward to dressing them up so they can wander the neighborhood…  and maybe not have to dress up as Cubby from Jake and Neverland Pirates (if you have kids, you might know the reference).  Funny how times changes.

A year ago, I still didn’t have my first sale…  Proximity was still mostly a dream in my partner’s mind…  and I was working too many hours developing things.  Now today, we are closing in on that second sale, Proximity is certified…  and my Service Management Web Portal is about to release version 2, I’m still working too many hours, but now it’s split between marketing and development.  I also think I’ve acquired a lot of new readers in the past year.  And for that, I really want to thank you.  It’s humbling to know that people are actually reading my ramblings and I hope getting some value out of it.

So, Happy Halloween, enjoy your kids (or your drinks depending on where you are in life.  ha ha ha).  and as always, Thanks for reading (I really mean it).

About a week ago, I took a Friday afternoon off so that I could make chili for a neighborhood outing.  I literally shut down all my computers, didn’t think about marketing, development or even emails (well, I did check once or twice since we have a big sale in the works.  ha ha ha).  I took off for the local farmers market, grabbed a bunch of my ingredients and spent the rest of the afternoon chopping, stirring, tasting and mentally checking out of all my stress and to-do lists.

Looking back on that afternoon, it was completely freeing.  Rule #32: Enjoy the little things.  Well, Tallahassee certainly had that one right.  If you don’t take time to enjoy life, well, what hell am I working so hard for.  It is amazing what a little perspective can give you.  Just those few hours away were the perfect reminder of why I want to be running my own business rather than just consulting.  See the possibility of being able to one day stop working, and still see my business flourish gives me hope that I can one day truly be my own boss.  It’s not a dream…  just reality that hasn’t come to pass yet.

Anyway, just a simple reminder to follow rule #32.  It can give you the power to jump back into your business with renewed passion.

Thanks for reading.

Well, if you’ve been paying attention, I’m working on adding new functionality to Rapier.  While much of what I’m adding is a “no brainer”, I do start to question, how much is too much?  Right now, I’m working (mostly) full steam ahead on Rapier 2.0.  That means new functionality, new screens and new options based on things I’ve heard from potential customers.  Now, the problem comes when I start to over think things myself.  For example, I was working on enhancing the “My Notifications” portion of Rapier.  My original version just showed the notifications, but there was a request to show all of the follow-on documents as well.

Here’s where the analysis paralysis can quickly set in.  I see this functionality and think, cool…  But…  what new columns should I add, just in case a customer wants them?  Should I allow the functionality to be turned on or off?  Should I allow it be turned off for just end users, or for existing customers?  Do I allow the customer to configure the columns?  the sort order?

See where I’m going?  I could think this thing to death.  It’s one thing if I have a specific customer request, but when I’m thinking of everything a customer might want…  well, where does it end?

So I’m trying to reign myself in.  I’m going to continue providing any functionality I’ve provided for other screens, with the realization that customers may ask for more, and I can always add it later.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…  how do you determine where to stop?  do you purely go with what a customer asks for?  do you put it all in there?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your thoughts.

Well, I have to confess, it’s been a long week, exciting, but very stressful.  I’ll expound on that more in the next couple days, but right now I need your help.  I’m realizing that I’ve been doing this for a while, and every so often I just run out of good things to talk about.  So when I’ve run into this before, I turn to you, my faithful reader.

What would you like to hear about?  do you have specific questions on Service Management?  Variant Configuration?  or even small business questions?  What would you like to hear me write about?

I hope to hear from you and thanks for reading, because I do this for you.

I’m sure, with all great start up companies, the players hit walls from time to time.  I often ask myself, what did they to keep themselves going?  You look at guys like Gates, Jobs, Dell, and they all started with nothing.  And built empires.  Now don’t worry, I have no delusions of grandeur that our company will grow to that size…  but I have to believe they all started with the same obstacles we are encountering right now.  How to get the opening round of sales, how to get that illusive customer feedback to build credibility, how to earn enough money to make this our full time endeavor without going down the venture capital path.

For now, I’ve personally  pushed myself on belief.  Belief in my ideas, belief that others need what I can offer.  I’ve noticed though, this is getting harder to keep up.  With 2 kids, a day job and my wife, pushing myself night after night is starting to take it’s toll.  I keep hitting the proverbial wall more often.  I noticed that today I again lost my motivation.  I looked at my list of activities that I need to do, blogging, marketing, development…  it’s just never ending.  I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  Eventually we can do this full time, and then grow it to the point of getting real people to do all these jobs.  But we aren’t there yet.  We can’t afford to outsource all of these tasks, and we can’t afford to hire people to offload much of the work…  yet.

So the million dollar question for me is:  “How do I keep going?”  How do I continue to push, night after night.  I have my goal of doing this full time, working from home on my projects, no longer consulting.  It’s still about perseverance.  So, here’s my question to all of you.  How do you keep yourself motivated?  And you do have any secrets I could tap into?  ha ha ha.

Thanks for reading,

Well, not that long ago, I got a really exciting text from my partner.  He had a presentation on Monday (he sent the text on Thursday night).  AWESOME.  But (why is there always a caveat?), the prospect is on an old version of SAP (older than any system I’ve built since I started this adventure.)  Yikes!!!

Well, what do you do in this situation?  One, get out front of the customer.  I had Mike make sure to explain that their system is on a version that we haven’t tested WMigo on (or any other app for that matter).  Next, I had Mike check to make sure all the standard SAP functions used in the application existed in their system.  While this isn’t a guarantee, at least it told me if we would be immediately disqualified.  He did a quick check for me, and found out they all existed.  So far so good.  But now is where the fun came in.  On Friday, Mike explained that their business was looking for some things that weren’t originally incorporated into WMigo.  Namely functionality around quality inspections, or good receipts from production orders/purchase orders.  These are all good things to include, but having a demo on Monday, and it was already Friday immediately made me push the panic button.  Luckily for me, I was able to defer some of the stuff that Mike requested until version 1.1, but there were still things that needed to be added before Monday.

So, with a late night on Friday, I was feeling reasonable confident.  Mike was working on the presentation, everything looked good.  Saturday night arrived, my wife went to bed so I walked up to the office to check on Mike’s progress.  That’s when things got ugly.  Unfortunately, the functionality that Mike intended to demo hadn’t been tested.  He assumed it was all there, and didn’t try it.  So we worked till 4AM, bug hunting, adding new functionality, and just generally enhancing WMigo to give Mike what he needed for the demo.

While there’s no better form of motivation than a time schedule, I’m hoping to avoid this in the future.  I learned a valuable lesson.  I need to find out up front exactly what functionality needs to be shown to the prospect ASAP.  That way I can make sure I can run a quick test, or let my partner know that I don’t really know how that part works (in this case, much of the functionality was round PS, a weak point for me), so I could’ve turned it over to him to try it immediately…  not wait an extra 2 days.

The moral of the story, even good news comes with consequences, and like any good boy scout, make sure you’re prepared for anything (even an all nighter).

Thanks for reading.

Well, based on some feedback, and just a general knowledge, I’ve learned I need some help.  So I’m sending out a distress signal for a marketing professional, or a recommendation from any of you.  Here’s some of the stuff I’m looking for…

1. Website Re-design.  We want to give it more of a professional look and feel.2. Website Content.  This is the most important one to me.  I want to take our content, which I think has plenty of substance, and mold it into landing pages that will convert to leads, sales pages that will convert to demo’s, etc.  In short, I need the sort of person that can turn our website into a lead generation website.  Right now, well, I don’t know what it is, aside for a good amateur attempt.
3. Direct Mail.  I’m looking at moving into the direct mail, for a change of pace in marketing.  But that means I need solid design, graphics, content, etc. to make a compelling postcard to send to someone to convince them to opt-in to our site, and request a demo.
4.  Logo design.  This one is more optional, but it would be nice to have a logo for each of our products, even if it’s a simple logo.
5.  Last but not least, help to integrate our marketing.  We want to make the direct mail, website, autoresponders, newsletters, etc. all have the same look and feel, so they can work in conjunction with each other.

I’ve been learning bits and pieces from the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint, and now I’ve stumbled upon Perry Marshall’s Basic Marketing Course (that I just started, so I have a long way to go).  Short story, I at least have some ideas of what I need, but I know I don’t have the expertise to pull it off on my own.

So I’m asking my audience, any of you out there that can help me with some or all of this or recommend someone that can, please get in touch with me.
Thanks in advance,

Hello again to all of my faithful readers ( I always keep hoping there are more than 4 or of 5 of you…  but I’ll take what I can get).  Today I’m back in the realm of marketing again…  and today I’m wondering about an idea that hit me a few days ago.  The concept is “Free Samples” of our products.  I’ll explain more in a minute…  but the idea is that we’ll give you the program for a limited time, and then the program will stop working, unless we provide you a support pack to unlock (which presumably, is when you buy it from us).

Now, I’m curious what you think of the idea.  The concept is very simple (yet tedious for me the developer).  I add in some code that exits the program after XX days.  You sign a legal document pretty much saying that you’ll use our application for it’s intended purpose, this is not for production, and you can’t copy it…  blah blah blah.  Then (in my mind) the customer falls in love, see how great our stuff is, and how excellent our service is, and buys it (along with all our other applications).  =)

Now, onto my questions for you.  First of all, would you ever see your company, or anyone you’ve worked with take this model?  would your organization be willing to apply code in their sandbox before they buy it?  If so, how long would they need to play with it?  (remember if it’s more than 3 shakes…  wait…  never mind, that’s something else).  Is 90 days long enough?  and do you go 90 days from today, or 90 days from installation?

Now the ethical question.  Perhaps I’m too trusting, but I have this belief that potential customers won’t copy my code into their own programs, and then say, “no thanks”.  But is a risk.  Do you think it’s likely that our apps will be pirated?  or do you believe that customers will pay for it if they like it?

Are there other risks I’m overlooking?  I’d love to hear you thoughts.  And thanks in advance.  I really do appreciate you being my sounding board.  Thanks for reading.