Waiting for clients

Hopefully I won't end up like didi and gogo.

The life of an entrepreneur is not for the meek.  My emotions pinwheel from manic to depressive daily and I push myself to exhaustion regularly and I spend more time working with software code than people.  I feel like the characters from the Samuel Becket theater production of "Waiting for Godot." Instead of Godot, I am looking for clients.

Landing you first set of clients is always hard but after six months of business, I expected to have landed a few by now.  Fortunately my daytime job is keeping the lights on and my sales person is starting to make some progress.  Who knows, I might have a few contracts by the end of the quarter. 

Just because we are slow to gather clients does not mean we are slowing down.  There is another release of Sully® coming in two weeks.  Members of our board of directors are pitching in finding sales and producing YouTube videos to promote our product. 

I am very fortunate that I get a chance to chase this dream.  The lack of sleep and mood swings are just a down payment on success later on down the road.  I look forward to when the note comes due because I beats waiting for Godot!

Until next time.

Why you need Sully

Meet Sully, the software to help manage you inventory

I spend a great deal of time writing code and blogging about business.  At this stage of my career, I spend my days writing software for someone else and my evening working on my company.  It is a grind but I hope that my efforts now will translate into success later.  One can only hope.

Our main product at E₃ systems is called Sully®. With it you can keep track of your inventory and generate all the necessary documents to help run your business.   If you ship a lot of product we make it possible to create bills of Lading, packing slips, and invoices for your customers.  In addition, we make it possible to review that information anywhere you have a connection to the internet.  This is a big deal because most inventory systems only work when you are connected to your local network.

We make it possible for your sales force to know exactly what is in stock when they go to meet clients.  They can view that information on a smart phone or a tablet computer.  This is the beauty of a cloud based application.  You save time because you can view inventory and product information anywhere at any time.  If a customer has an inquiry you pull up the information on your smart phone.  Now you can concentrate on customer service instead of sorting through paperwork.

There is also a money saving component.  With the Sully® web application, you can track the turnover of product.  Inventory is now a breeze as we generate easily printable reports to help your pickers perform counts quickly.  You never have to scan a document again because any paper document communicates with your smart phone using Microsoft Tag Technology.  Finally, since this system is cloud based you subscribe to it like electricity or cable television.  Instead of having to purchase a server, software and a staff to maintain it, you can now allow us to manage your system for you.  This makes a huge difference and helps you concentrate on running your business instead of worrying about your inventory management software.

E₃ systems offers you a product which will save you both time and money. It can be used anywhere you have a web connections.  It can be used by most types of devices weather a PC, laptop, tablet computer, or smart phone.  Finally, you can have this entire time and money savings for the cost of cable television.

If you think this is a good deal then give drop us a line via e-mail at mail@goeeethree.biz  Myself or one of my sales people will be more than happy to help.

Until next time.

Dot Anything Goes

Things are going to get mighty interesting and not in a good way.

Anytime there is more choice for any good or service, it is considered a good development.  However, neuroscience is starting to prove that too many choices can lead to intellectual paralysis and bad decision making.  The adage about having too much of a good thing keeps getting confirmed. 

This may be why the January 2nd story from Crain's Chicago business intrigued me so much.  ICANN on January 12th is opening up domain registrations for any type of generic top-level domain.  This means that a company can have a web address like this:  www.home.mycompany name instead of the more conventional www.mycompanyname.com.  As they describe it in the article, this will herald the beginning of the "vanity plate" era of web addresses. 

News of this latest innovation was greeted with universal opposition from federal officials, non-for-profits, and plenty of major corporations.  Only one thing could unite so many desperate groups; in the world of .COM, .NET and .ORG additional base domain names become a money losing proposition and an opportunity for thieves and squatters.

Plenty of businesses have to purchase additional domains so they can protect their brand.  The most infamous case was WhiteHouse.com which directed users to a porn site before the domain was purchased by the federal government.  Current GOP candidate Newt Gingrich also has a similar problem as squatters have purchased Newt Gingrich.com and refused to sell it back to the former house speaker.  If this is the kind of mischief which can take place with 22 domain names imagine the chaos of an infinite number of names.

I love choice.  This is not choice it is craziness and that is going to cost large and small businesses lots of money.  Currently, colleges and universities are snapping up .XXX domain names to prevent companies from creating porn sites featuring their co-eds.  This is money which could have been used on students; instead they are fighting pornographers looking to make a buck. 

I hope that people will be responsible with these new types of top level domains but considering the lawless and libertarian nature of the web, I have a very bad feeling about what might happen next. 

Until next time.

Bad Mythology

Don't work your employees to death

Sometimes you stumble on a blog that is so good you can’t help but share it.  This one comes from the Harvard Business Review. 

Tony Schwartz talks about the four myths companies still live by.  Most relevant to me is #4.  I have worked for organizations which have expected developers to work nine or ten hours a day six days a week and they wonder why those developers quit or burn out. 

The key to getting more work done is to use time wisely and to put into place systems which make the most of the people you have.  Anything else is an excuse for employee burn out.  I hope that as business picks up I am not forced to transform my employees into wage slaves.  To do anything else would be to obey an outdated mythology.

Until next time.