zutroy.net

I finally got a job offer. I start next Monday. It took a couple weeks longer than I was hoping for. Man this is a rough recession.

No really, it is rough. I’ve seen it in my life but I know there are still people out there that haven’t personally felt it. As much as I don’t wish pain and suffering on anyone, I think it’s a good thing to be reminded just how fragile our little economy really is. I think if we don’t all wake up and see it soon, we’ll all regret it later. Darn that golden arrow of consumption.

I also started a new company. This one’s just me. I’ll be running all my freelance design projects through it. Adam gave me a really sweet deal on some office space and I moved in yesterday. I just finished hanging my big whiteboard. Now I need some client projects to put up there. I figure that once I start the new job, I’ll be coming down to the new office 2 or 3 times a week for a few hours in the evening.

It’s a cool thing to be surrounded by like minded entrepreneurial folks.

So I did it. I work for someone else again. We finished shutting down Main10 for the most part a few months ago and this week I started my job as the Director of Technical and Design Services for the Reverse Logistics Association.

It’s a challenging fast paced environment. I like it. They have a lot of the same philosophies that we did at Main10. The biggest difference is that they have enough revenue and reserves to implement them. It’s neat. I also get a company laptop and phone. Yeah, big deal eh? The computer is actually what I would replace my 17in lappy with. It’s a 15 in version of almost the exact same model so I’m happy there. The phone however… Well it’s a Blackberry.

I have always had a dislike for them even though I have never owned/used one. I am not an Apple fan either by any means but I do LOVE the iPhone. So I thought I’d try to take my prejudices out of the picture and do a real comparison of the two phones.

Day 1:
I got the blackberry setup successfully, entered a few contacts, made a few calls to test it out with the Motorolla bluetooth headset. I actually like the “real” keyboard. I have to say as much as I like the dynamic keyboard on the iPhone there’s times when the real keyboard is just really really nice. However, when I got home, the screen went black on the Blackberry. And without a hard reset, it wouldn’t come back to life. Over and over and over again. It was on and it would ring, but I couldn’t answer it without the help of the trusty bluetooth headset.

Day 2:
I was awakened by my iPhone with its ever-trusty alarm clock. Then as I am headed out the door, I get a call on the iPhone, it’s the office. There’s some emergency with some of the Blackberries failing during an important conference call. So I got here and tried to address the BB problems, half T-mobles fault, half BB’s fault. Mine was still having its issues with the B2SOD (that’s the BLACK screen of death BTW) so I traded it in this morning for another exactly like it. No B2SOD yet. We’ll see.

Scoring for day 1 and 2:
Blackberry; 3 points for “real” keyboard, -1 points for the stupid key combinations to type an “@” or a “.”, 1 point for the button that activates voice dialing, -5 points for B2SOD, -1 point for failing on co-workers
iPhone; 1 point for intuitiveness, 1 point for the fantastic alarm clock. 1 point for working when the Blackberries were failing.

Running score: Blackberry -3. iPhone: 3.

No, the house didn’t blow up. That worked out just fine.

5 months ago, I decided that in order for Main10 to grow it needed to put more money into reserve than it had been. And the best way to do that was to stop paying myself. We had a few good contracts that I wasn’t doing much of the fulfillment on and so I was the best candidate to take the paycut.

So off I went to get a regular job. Didn’t take long and I landed at Harris Hearing. Turns out that Harris was in much the same boat but with larger figures. Their only option for funding: investors. It’s been a rough time, most of our paychecks in the last 4 months have come late. And today they announced that things just don’t look like they’ll work out. Probably. But maybe at the last second… We’ll find out this week probably.

So meanwhile, two of the contracts that Main10 was counting on to build the reserve have ended and not been renewed. So Main10 isn’t ready for me to come back full time.

That leaves me without a paycheck.

How many times have I complained (or just commented) about being soooo busy? I don’t even know. Ever since I left SCO and went back to school, I recall thinking quite often “I can’t possibly be any busier than this” but it’s not true. I think there’s some mathematical equation we could come up with that will tell you how much busier you could be without exploding at any given moment.

But that’s not what I’m really worried about. What I’m really concerned with is keeping the bills paid and keeping Main10 growing. A little while ago I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t do both. I’m not willing to just throw in the towel and give up on it just because it needs more money to keep growing.

So I did the next best thing, I removed myself from the payroll so that the company could use that money better. Course that doesn’t exactly help me with the “paying the bills” part of my goals does it?

So, the solution: I started a day job. I get to work early and work through lunch so I can leave and get to Main10 before the close of business. Everyone has done a really good job at picking up some of the slack so that the company can still function correctly.

Bottom line? Yes once again, I am busier than I think I have ever been. And am I sooo busy that I couldn’t fit anything else? Sure seems like it. But I am determined not to let golf suffer (too much anyway) this summer. If I have to get up at 6:00 AM on Saturday so I can go hit a bucket or something then I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do. So what else can I add? I’m almost afraid to ask.

So I have an interesting situation here. We met with a potential client yesterday. Everything sounds Promising. They have employed a friend of mine who is in charge of the marketing. He has recommended using Main10 to do the writing for the Internet marketing efforts. I am assuming that they’ll say yes. And it’ll be a good contract for us.

At the end of our meeting yesterday one of their guys mentioned that they wanted to be able to push some negative comments out of the top 10. I figured “Hey, everyone gets some negative comments” but I decided today to go take a look at the “negative comments”. All I can say is “WOW” either someone is really out to get them or they have really screwed up big time in the past.

Judging by the dates in the posts it looks like they might have had some bad business ideas or bad customer service reps in the past and are now over it. Maybe it was an elaborate revenge scheme concocted by a really really disgruntled employee. I can’t really tell at this point. If they are indeed a scam, I don’t want to be affiliated with them in any way. But I feel that I need to give them the benefit of the doubt until I have something more than a handful of raging comments.

I’ll see if I can actually post an update on this one when I know more.

All my friends will tell you that I hate MLM. Having got my start in the web industry working at an ISP that was MLM I have been exposed to all the reasons to hate MLMs. So I thought. I have since become familiar with the likes of other MLMs: make up, heath products, crazy foreign country juice, crazy foreign country juice II (which tastes much better by the way), “we sell everything” websites, legal services, business services and now telecommunications.

I’ve heard it all. I’ve consulted with corporate, dealt with over zealous distributors (you know the type), mingled with creative directors for some, helped my wife market her own make up sales, and sat in meetings with principles. I have dealt with just about every possible angle of MLM and though I appreciate what some of them are doing, I still hate MLM. So when Perry called me and wanted me to listen to his new opportunity, I agreed to listen but I had already made my decision. There’s nothing anyone could have said that would make me want to sign up for an MLM.

But then they (he brought a friend) showed me that I could get the same services that I am already using without paying some weird inventive premium for the privilege of helping a friend build his downline. AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Qwest local and long distance, Direct TV. I could also get a VoIP phone for home for less than Vonage and it has better quality. I got to demo the video phone. OK, no kidding, that was cool. Then they told me about their strategy for building their network. “Wait, so you don’t want me to just go sign up everyone in my family? This is different. This actually… dare I say it… makes sense. Did I just hear me correctly there? Did I just say it makes sense?!?! Hmmmmm I’ll have to think about this.”

So I did it, I signed up. If you are out of contract on your cell plan, go to my version of the ACN wireless site and sign up for a new plan.