Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Accept Mobile Payments with Square

    Square RegisterOne of my client’s wanted me to introduce the team to a new credit card processing option from Square that will allow the office to:

    • Accept AMEX payments (previously too expensive under their existing merchant account)
    • Lower their credit card fees (with a flat 2.75% rate)
    • Allow’s their patient to be in control of their card the whole time
    • Allow patients to pay while seated, increasing sales
    • One more opportunity to capture a patient’s email address

    This new payment option works the same way it does at Nordstrom’s by allowing a patient to swipe and sign on an iPad. Nordstom has already seen an increase in sales from using Square’s mobile payment system. But they are not alone, Square has also partnered with Starbucks as part of their Square Wallet program, which lets other Square users pay with their phone.

    How does Square work?

    I encourage you to check out their awesome-looking website, but in general, you’ll get the total from Dentrix, type it into the app, have them swipe and sign, then enter either their email address or cell phone number to get emailed or texted a receipt. This information gets stored online under your Square account and a transactional email will be sent with each charge.

    What types of cards does Square accept?

    Visa, Master Card, Discover, and American Express. It works with credit and debit cards, but HSA cards can be accepted by healthcare providers like dentists as long as you apply here.

    What if someone doesn’t want to use the mobile payment system to swipe their card?

    Tell them that it is used by Nordstrom and Starbucks, but if they still object, this new system will operate side-by-side with the existing credit card terminal. If someone is uncomfortable using Square on the iPad mini, that will still be an option.

    Will we have to have the ability to balance when we go on-line? Will we be able to print an end-of-day report?

    You can print an end of day report from any computer via the internet.

    1. Simply login to Square using your username and password
    2. Click on the Payments page in the top navigation bar.
    3. Use the date selector or the pre-defined date ranges on the left-hand side of the page to choose the dates you wish to view.
    4. Click the Spreadsheets button at the top right of the page.
    5. Select either Transactions, Items Details, Items Summary or Mobile Staff Summary to download each spreadsheet.

    A .CSV file will download to your computer, which you can open using Microsoft Excel or any other common spreadsheet program or financial software. The file will include a separate column for tender type, total sales, discounts, taxes, fees, tips and payment URLs.  All of these instructions can be found here.

    You can also import transactions into Quickbooks.  This page will detail that process.

    Will everyone in the office be able to see everything on the account?

    Not if you don’t want them to. Another feature of Square is that you can create “mobile users” that can accept payments without logging into the master account and viewing sensitive information.  You can see the instructions to create individual logins here.

    Please let me know if you have any  more questions. Looking for a company like Square to accept online payments? Try Stripe. I listed Mobile Payment Processing as one of the 13 Trends Changing the World, but what do you think? Please leave a comment below.

  • Be the Benefit, not the Butler

    How can I move away from ‘being the butler’ to ‘being the benefit’ to my client?

    When you’re a business consultant who works on retainer without any long-term project goals, there is a tendency for the relationship to become more responsive and less proactive. Instead of always ‘seeking to add value’, it can trend towards ‘waiting to add value’. The latter is like a butler who stands beside your client, dutifully waiting for their client to request a website update or to fix their computer systems.

    Contrast this with a business consultant who is more agile, who works in sprints, who has clear objectives laid out on a project plan. The progress they are making is track-able, and like a lean waterfall, is continually making iterations on an ever-improving product. Which do you think adds more value to the client? The always available butler or the constantly improving business consultant?

    Which of these is more like an employee and which of these is more like a business owner? While a business owner would love for their employee to always be improving the reality is that they may be perversely incentivized to do as little as possible in order to maintain the status quo and ‘not rock the boat’ or ‘work themselves out of a job’ whereas a business consultant should always be striving to add value or reduce cost for the client.

    You Are Who You Think You Are

    How are you spending your time as a business consultant? A large part of that is dictated by how you view yourself, your role in the organizations you serve, and what value you provide. The negotiator who is most willing to walk away will most often win the negotiation. The employee or business consultant most worried about losing their job or contract is always the one who gets let go first. This isn’t playing ‘hard to get’, per se, but is more like playing ‘hard to lose’.

    The primary difference is the mindset.

    As a business consultant, it’s easy to think of yourself as being better than others, but doing the work is hard. Business owners expect to pay you a bigger check for a less-risky or less-timely result that they would get from hiring, training, or using an employee to do the same set of work for the same outcome. They are paying for results, not for your time and as a business consultant, you should price accordingly.

    Business consultants are people – people who are known to either undervalue their services or mistakenly charge for time instead of value. This is generally a result of the people we hang around and the type of upbringing we’ve had. Most educational systems are setup to create employees who will show up to work each day and do what they are told. Business consultants who do this are more akin to a butler or an employee than to a trusted advisor.

    Permission to Speak

    Who am I and what right do I have to say these things? What proof do I have? I can only write of my own experiences and what I am learning. I have been blessed to have been raised in a safe environment, been educated in a standard way, and surrounded by people who encourage me. I have only relatively recently entered into a new world of business owners and other ‘doers’ of the world and this has made all of the difference.

    James Altucher recently released a new book called Choose Yourself which is premised around the idea that you shouldn’t wait for other people to give you permission or to choose you for their team. You should instead choose yourself first. To use dating as an analogy, let’s say you’re asking someone out. Instead of saying, “Will you go out with me to the park?” you say, “I’m going to the park. Why don’t you come with me?”

    Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

    “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” is a quote often attributed to Gandhi, but what he actually said was, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…We need not wait to see what others do.” This reminds me of another quote, a poem by an unknown monk around 1100 A.D., which one of my clients keeps up on his desk, right in front of his keyboard. Here it is in full below. I’ve hyperlinked how it’s affected me:

    When I was a young man,
    I wanted to change the world.
    I found it was difficult to change the world,
    so I tried to change my nation.

    When I found I couldn’t change the nation,
    I began to focus on my town.

    I couldn’t change the town and as an older man,
    I tried to change my family.

    Now, as an old man,
    I realize the only thing I can change is myself,
    and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself,
    I could have made an impact on my family.

    My family and I could have made an impact on our town.
    Their impact could have changed the nation and
    I could indeed have changed the world.

  • Business Cards vs Email Marketing

    I recently sent a “soapbox” email to a couple of friends about how I’ve felt recently about business cards in relation to networking and building up your business through local interactions. I’m currently in the process of building up my business consulting business again and I’ve been thinking a lot about networking I did in 2012 and how I want to market myself in 2014.

    Is it just me or is the act of asking for someone’s business card the equivalent of “I just want to end this conversation and never talk to you again”?

    I get asked for my business card [a lot?] and it’s almost always from someone who does not want to do business with me, but wants to either spy on me remotely later or end the conversation.

    What are some positive interactions from potential customers?

    They seek me out. They call me. They email me. If I don’t write back, they email me again or they call me. No business cards are involved. They’ve heard about me from someone else. It’s a referral thing.

    So how do you get referrals?

    Mostly by doing great work that’s shareworthy. Add a ton of value, show ROI, or other thrilling things that makes someone want to share your work with other people. Other than that, it’s a matter of showing up.

    Email Marketing vs. Network Marketing

    I brought this up while reading about networking meetings in the book, Double Your Freelancing Rate, which I did a lot of last year and had very, very limited success. The greatest success was from simply staying in contact (via email) with existing clients, meeting their needs, and being referred to others by those existing clients. I’m looking to do more of that, but not sure exactly how. That’s why I’m reading the book and looking to other experts in my field for help/feedback.

    In reply to this email, my friend wrote this about his graphic design business:

    I can see that I’m getting local referrals on the basis of the work that I’ve done…For a designer, it is important to have a business card because that is likely the first chance (and maybe the last chance if you don’t have one) that they will have to see your work. They may not get a chance to sit in front of a screen before they make a decision about whether or not to work with you. I’ve always had positive interactions around my cards because they are premium paper and thickness, they are slightly larger than your standard US business card, and they prominently feature my branding (pixel perfect at 300ppi) on the front and a playful, full-bleed image on the back. I think if I had a vanilla business card, it wouldn’t be much of a boon and it would probably hurt me (especially if it were a Vistaprint template card). I also get asked for my card from friends/acquaintances that aren’t looking for design services, but want to share with someone they know or a business owner (to help me or them out).

    Good points. And I like how he was pitching his design services right into his reply. Nicely done.

    Email marketing is one goal I’ve had to start doing more of in 2013 and it will continue into 2014. KissMetrics recently posted 7 Overlooked but Critically Important Details of Profitable Email Marketing in which they mention how Nathan Barry, a web designer, launched an eBook that made $12,000 in sales in 24hrs and went on to make over $85,000 in its first year (what they don’t mention is the 10,000 hours of work he had in his life leading up to that point). But seriously, I’m not even talking about product launches or information products here, I’m talking about communicating with your customers – decent human-like things you could be doing to let them know you’re not dead. Your competitors are talking to them so you should be too. Hopefully this blog post helped someone take some action. Stop reading and start writing!

  • Dental Office Management Case Study

    How I helped an Indianapolis dental office through 100% turnover and go from their worst month ever to their best month ever in 2012.

    When I worked as a business analyst at First Merchants I would often be doing staffing models during the day and working on web sites and IT work at night. After I was went full-time as a business consultant I offered staffing model services to one of my web clients. They trusted me because I had already got them to be #1 on Google for the term “Indianapolis Dentist” and their site was listed as one of the best dental websites.

    Systems in Place

    Systems in Place

    The business owner wasn’t as interested in tracking what each individual staff member was doing as much as finding out what each staff member does, ensuring it’s documented, and making sure there were “systems in place”. At that point he had recently converted his practice management software from Practiceworks to Dentrix and two staff members had already quit. There was real fear of losing all “tribal knowledge” of how his business was ran.

    Observations

    One of the first things I do when I start a staffing model is to simply observe what is going on in the office. For the first two weeks I would ask questions, watch processes, and document as much as I could. If there was a name for a process I would use that – otherwise I would create a new name for it. I started identifying positions and roles (they can be different) and then placing the newly quantified tasks into ‘piles’ under each type.

    Documentation

    To document the process I setup the office with Google Apps and used the Google Sites portion of it to create an Intranet for the company. Each staff member was given their own company email address which they could use to login to the site as well as share calendars, documents, and email each other. Distribution groups were setup for different team members including the front office, clinical team, and the “everyone” group.

    Employee Turnover

    After a short while, a clear picture began to emerge. There weren’t just issues with cr0ss-training, there were issues with the staff themselves. It wasn’t long before there was more staff turnover. It was like they were “jumping ship”. The decision was made to get some new leadership into the organization so the long-time manager was fired in June. I became the interim manager and began to re-build the new staff.

    Changes in Hiring Practices

    One of the first things I focused on was “getting the right people on the bus”. We sought after and hired people who cared about people first and had a great personality. We had learned that those are two things that can’t be taught so those were the most important things we sought after. We didn’t settle for a person just because they filled the position and at some times were working with a crew of as small as 3 people while we continued to look.

    Changes in Processes

    Once we had the right people in place we began working on the proper processes. We started using checklists to ensure the critical morning and nightly procedures were completed. There were many times when they were not and the staff did not like using the checklists at first, but over time they learned to first appreciate them and then not need them as it became second-nature. This helped a brand new staff have consistency and learn faster.

    Changes in Technology

    While the old staff did not understand technology innately, the new staff embraced it. They began using email to communicate, began referencing the Intranet for critical information (the previous staff kept an old Rolodex on the front desk that contained all of the information they’d ever reference – this was typed up into one page on the Intranet affectionately titled, “Rolodex”). And a new wireless camera system was setup to take patient photos.

    Changes in Marketing

    We signed up for Demandforce and Angies List. We began using Google Adwords and revamped the website. We added more social proof, more testimonials, more web pages, and more blog posts. We added more social networks, posted more often, and were more engaged with our patients online. As a result, referrals from the Internet went up along with web site visitors. We used Google Analytics to track the progress.

    The Result

    By first focusing on the staff, then the process, then the technology, and finally the marketing – we had the right people who were given the right instructions for the best technology, which was supported by the best marketing techniques. The result was an initial boost of 116% the first month, followed by an average increase of 72% for the next five months compared to the five months prior. How can I help you get similar results?

  • The Future of RSS

    On July 2, 2013, Google killed Google Reader.
    Google Reader

    Thank you for stopping by.

    Google Reader has been discontinued. We want to thank all our loyal fans. We understand you may not agree with this decision, but we hope you’ll come to love these alternatives as much as you loved Reader.

    Sincerely,

    The Google Reader team

    While I have used Google Reader on and off for years, I don’t use it now. However, I still know and care about the value of RSS as a publishing syndication platform and feel that Google has hurt that by creating a monopoly of sorts by buying up RSS apps then killing them.

    ZDNet wrote a piece on this entitled, Embrace, extend, extinguish: How Google crushed and abandoned the RSS industry in which Ed Bott writes, “The entire RSS industry is being rolled back to about 2006 and asked to start over.”

    Hacker News (HN) chimed in when bambax said, “The killing of Reader looks like a desperate move to help Google+: since Google can’t kill Facebook, they’re willing to hurt themselves instead — to cut their left arm so that their right arm can grow stronger. If this is indeed the case, it’s very shortsighted.”

    In another HN thread about the economics of “Evil Google“, RockyMcNuts said:

    It’s not the RSS reader. It’s the open publishing ecosystem. Most clients point to Reader as the central feed aggregator. Most publishers point to Feedburner as the central publisher. Google seized the commanding heights with Feedburner and Google Reader and captured all the publishers and the clients, and now they’re killing the ecosystem. I don’t see why they couldn’t have integrated Reader into Plus without killing the ecosystem. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn are moving into news aggregation, and Google is killing a successful news aggregation system. I don’t understand their strategy, but it’s seems sort of like, we want everyone on G+ and we don’t care how heavy-handed we look or how early adopters feel, and we don’t want an open ecosystem that people can use to pipe content into Twitter and Facebook.

    What other platform has such ease of opt-in as RSS? There are email newsletters and Twitter. Both require that the publisher does some sort of action. With RSS it was/is automatic. That is/was the beauty of it. I keep talking about it like it’s dead. It’s not dead. Google Reader is dead. I asked a friend if he still used Google Reader and this is what he said:

    I definitely still use it. I probably will wait until the last week of June to commit to a new solution. I’ll probably go with Feedly, but I’m not sure if they let you pick any website, etc. Also, I don’t know how they accommodate custom searches [like Google Alerts]. I’m going to wait until there is an opportunity for a mature alternative. I also have questions about how the web will attempt to syndicate in the absence of Google reader. I know people are saying that the shuttering of reader is a pronouncement of Twitter winning vs. RSS. But, Twitter isn’t an adequate replacement for RSS and leaning on newsletters is a step in the wrong direction. I’m all questions and all ears.

    RSS Reader Alternatives

    And if that list isn’t good enough for you, NPR suggested Digg. Microsoft Outlook also has a RSS reader and some Internet browsers have RSS readers built-in. Did you know Internet Explorer 9 had an RSS reader? Firefox requires an add-in like Simple RSS Reader, Feedly, or Sage. Same for Chrome. AOL also has a RSS reader aptly named AOL Reader.

    RSS: Curation VS. Aggregation

    I remember the first time I saw Google Reader. A coworker had invited me over to his house and while there he told me he wanted to show me something cool. When I walked over to his computer he proudly showed me how he had collected all of his favorite information into one place. He was able to sort through article after article with the spin of his mouse wheel. It was glorious. I signed up for my own account and quickly began adding RSS feeds from sites I wanted to follow. I quickly became inundated with more articles than I could read in a day. I started to get discouraged and eventually I quit.

    Marco Arment wrote in The Power of the RSS Reader, “The most common complaint I hear about inbox-style RSS readers such as Google Reader, NetNewsWire, and Reeder: that people gave up on them because they were constantly filled with more unread items than they could handle. If you’ve had that problem, you weren’t using inbox-style RSS readers properly…If a site posts many items each day and you barely read any of them, delete that feed. If you find yourself hitting ‘Mark all as read’ more than a couple of times for any feed, delete that feed…The true power of the RSS inbox is keeping you informed of new posts that you probably won’t see linked elsewhere.”

    RSS is not a curator of content, it’s an aggregator of content, but sites like Reddit and Hacker News are kind of both. Articles are collected there and self-curated by the community. Compare this to Fark, which is a news aggregator curated by Drew Curtis. What RSS doesn’t do is filter out all of the mediocre or non-relevant articles that inevitably appear over time no matter how targeted the blog. Far better to find a community around a subject you like and have articles aggregate and share there. This is the difference between Twitter proper and Twitter lists. The former is mostly noise and the latter is much more concentrated. Apps like Hootsuite can also help curate with search lists for keywords.

    RIP Google Reader. Long live RSS.

  • Amazon Webstore Review

    I signed up to test Amazon’s eCommerce Software, Amazon Webstore, mostly because of these two factors:

    • List Amazon.com items on your own Webstore to augment your product selection
    • Take advantage of additional services such as Selling on Amazon, Fulfillment by Amazon, and Amazon Prime on Your Site to grow your business and improve customer satisfaction while reducing your Webstore fees

    I liked the idea of being able to just pull in Amazon products to your store and having Amazon fulfill them for you. It all sounded so easy. It wasn’t.

    amazon-webstore

    Contrary to other parts of Amazon, I found the site incredibly hard to use and very slow. It takes up to 15 minutes for an item you’ve posted to appear on your site. When I went to figure out how to cancel, I couldn’t figure that out either so I did a Google search and ran across this Amazon Seller forum post, which cracked me up.

    redknight781 wrote: It’s built for techies by techies and not for those that are more interested in sourcing and selling. It’s the worst sitebuilder on the internet. mpowell624 wrote: I will go farther and say that it is the very worst experience I have ever had with anything technological. I have basic knowledge of coding and I would rather try to make a website out of twigs and berries.

    You used to have to call Amazon to cancel, but now to cancel your Amazon Webstore, simply make your way to your Amazon Webstore Subscription page and click, “Cancel Webstore”. You can do this as long as you don’t have any outstanding orders.

  • Leverage

    Mindvalley Insights recently emailed me an article entitled, How to Avoid Entrepreneurial ADD and Pick the Most Viable Ideas to Pursue, which I thoroughly enjoyed and prompted me to write this post. Below is that 7-minute talk where Vishen, CEO of Mindvalley Insights, shares how he uses the principal of leverage to pick business opportunities.

    This video is about how to choose opportunities that you either come up with or are presented to you. Vishen does it by quantifying leverage of existing and possible future opportunities. He uses his own businesses as examples, so I’ll some of my own companies and their subsequent opportunities: Telablue > Watershawl > Costpub/Tenet Marketing > Webories > Content Motors > A/B Insights > Coconut Oil > Apps/Database/Tracking. Vishen says to draw relationship lines between the different businesses/opportunities to see if there are any ways that one leverages the other. The more leverage, the more likely you should do it.

    This is similar to the advice Cal Newport gives, which I highlighted in How to Work a Life of Purpose: build up a body of work that you can leverage for future work. Become so good at what you do that you can do it anywhere any way you want. Whatever you have invested all of your adult working life and school on would be silly for you to not leverage going forward. Whatever you’ve been working on the most is unique. It’s rare and therefore valuable. You know what problems your industry has and are also able to create solutions for those problems. Maybe you’re not interested in solving them, but if not you, then who? There is no one with your perspective other than you.

    If you truly possess a competitive advantage, let me recommend that you do not diversify but instead leverage that skill-set to the maximum. Whatever you do, do it better than anybody else (and if you are one of these unicorns, I applaud you – send me your business plan and let me invest in your venture). – Ching Ho, Restauranteur | Designer | Adventurer

  • How to Improve Your Stations in Life

    While your “station in life” is a British phrase referencing your status in your community, I feel that it’s a negative term used to keep people in their place and so I’ve decided to commandeer it for a more positive use. The context of this article is about the different stations in your life. You do not have one station in life – you have many – and that’s a good thing. (Note: if you’re looking for how to improve your work life, try this article about how to work a life of purpose.)

    I recently wrote about how the number of stations in your community (places you go regularly throughout your day) is directly linked to happiness. But what I didn’t mention was how to increase the number of stations in your life or how to improve the ones you already have. In this blog post I’ll share my ideas on how to get the most out of your community. The first step is to identify the community you already have. To do this I’ll give you three different examples.

    My Brother’s Stations in Life

    My brother lives in Bargersville and drives to Terre Haute most weekdays. It’s an hour and a half commute by car. In the morning he stops in the kitchen for breakfast with coffee (Station 1). There he’s greeted by one to three kids, depending on their sleeping schedule. When low on gas he stops by the local gas station (Station 2) where he recognizes the clerk, makes small talk, but feels uncomfortable calling them by name (even though he knows it). When he gets to work (Station 3) he’s greeted by his coworkers – some happy to see him. For lunch he goes out to the same restaurant where he talks to the same host and the same waiter. Again he knows their name, but doesn’t move beyond small talk. After he gets home he goes to his garage (Station 4) to get his mower and heads off to his first lawn client (Station 5). Occasionally he might go to our parents house (Station 6) for dinner or to drop off his kids so he can go to a nice restaurant (Station 7) with his wife.

    My Friend’s Stations in Life

    Erich on the Monon TrailMy friend lives in Nora. He lives five minutes by car from his work in a walkable neighborhood right next to the Monon Trail. In the morning he stops in the kitchen (Station 1) for coffee before sitting at his desk in the living room (Station 2) to read his email before heading off to work (to check his other email). He rarely stops at the gas station (Station 3) anymore and while he lives near two Starbucks (Station 4), doesn’t go there as often anymore. At work (Station 5) he’s greeted by several coworkers, but most days he goes home for lunch. When he does go out it’s usually with coworkers and he doesn’t take the time to learn more about the staff at the counter. He doesn’t know their names and they don’t know him. When he comes home at night he’s greeted by his neighbors as he drives by or when he goes for a walk with his family. On the weekends he might go to his local hardware store (Station 6) and on Sunday his local church (Station 7).

    My Stations in Life

    I live in Tipton, but work mostly in Carmel, but travel all around the Indianapolis area. It takes me about 45 minutes by car to get to my first job each day. My wife wakes me up, makes me coffee and breakfast with a side of water. I sit down at the kitchen table (Station 1) to eat. While I’m eating my wife makes my lunch. By the time I’m done eating she has packed my lunch in my car with coffee to go. My kids are now awake, wait by the door, and demand kisses before I leave. When I arrive at my first job (Station 2) I get a few nods. Afterwards I may go to my second job (Station 3), to Starbucks (Station 4), or to my friend’s house in Nora (Station 5). If my gas tank is at a quarter or below I’ll stop at the gas station in Tipton (Station 6) on my way home. When I walk in the door I sit down to dinner, then get up to go check on the garden (Station 7). On Sundays I go to church in Noblesville (Station 8). Some weekends I go to parent’s homes (Station 9).

    How to Improve Your Station in Life

    Appreciating what you have and be thankful first. If you’re not first happy where you are now, you won’t be happy ‘there’. The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence, it’s greener where you water it. Your community is made up of your stations in life and it’s up to you to be thankful, appreciative, engaging, and involved in order to get the most out of it. By helping others and continually adding value to your relationships, you will build a stronger community and improve your stations in life. If you don’t live in a walkable neighborhood, walk around. It will become walkable. If you hate where you live, don’t move (yet), first find what you like about it and practice focusing on that. Be the change you want to see in your community. Start with yourself – the only thing you can change. Don’t try to change too much at a time – the longest journey begins with the smallest step. So get walking!

  • Building Time

    My son is 4 years old. He was born the same day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. He collects things to build with in hopes that one day I’ll take the time to do that with him. Right now he’s asleep, right outside my door, on the floor, next to his red bucket of things to build with me.

    One day I took him out to a junkyard I used to drive by when my wife and I each ran a paper route. We were trying to keep from losing the house and were behind on our mortgage. The bank made us a deal. They said we could stop paying for a while, and then make a big balloon payment at the end. I didn’t see how that was much better, but I signed the papers anyway.

    Kevin wanted to build a rocket. (That is my son’s name.) But what he really wanted was to fly in a rocket. We’d go in the closet and I’d simulate a launch sequence. He never bought into it. I kept saying, “You just want to fly up in the air, but how are you going to get down?” (Safely, I meant.) He wasn’t concerned with that. He just wanted to fly. And I was going to help him build a rocket.

    Kevin Spotted a TrainWhen we got to the junkyard, there was no longer any rocket parts laying around. We saw a train. I stopped. We raced to get out of the car. He pointed at the train. It was exciting. When we got home I found some parts in my shop and we built a small rocket model, about three feet high. It wasn’t much and he didn’t care for it. He wanted something he could climb in, something he could fly.

    One day I came home and he had built an airplane out of scraps of wood he had found and some tape. I thought it was pretty cool so I gave him some more wood to see what he could do. We even made a video of it. He seemed to be more creative with less. There isn’t much in his bucket – just some wood, a marble, a miniature cardboard cutout of Superman, and some string. He wants to fly, but most of all he wants time with his dad.

    We were able to make that balloon payment and keep the house. Shortly thereafter I went full-time in my own IT/web consulting business. I helped a lot of people, but somewhere along the line I forgot what I was doing, and who I was doing it for. I stopped asking how I could help other people and was only focused on myself and what I could do. I had to get back to my core values, but i didn’t know what they were. I seemed lost. My son doesn’t know what he’s going to build, but he knows that if he collects enough of the parts he wants to see in the finished product, the end result will be something he can be proud of. That’s what I started to do, too.

    My first value was more of a mantra: help people. If I wasn’t helping someone, I didn’t want to do it. While this seems simple at first, there are a lot of things you can do that are not helpful to people. Some are annoying, some are exploitative, and others are just downright harmful. I wanted to help make the world a better place by helping people. My second value was: add value. In every transaction, interaction, and blog post I wanted to be adding value. I don’t want to be noise, I want to be a part of a community where my clients and I look forward to seeing each other.

    Kevin Building a RocketOne of my favorite scenes in any movie is in Apollo 13 when the engineer at NASA dumps all the parts on a table and says they have to make ‘this air filter fit in this air system’. That is like a dream come true for me. I would love to have that challenge. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have made two different air filter systems for the same ship, but there’s something about the puzzle element that fascinates me. I wonder if that’s what my son feels when he’s building. I hope I’ll soon find out when he wakes up and I make time to build.