Quintified

In the past, kids would help feed feed the pigs, harvest the corn, gather the eggs, and do whatever else was needed to help on the family farm. Through this they met practical needs but also learned the value of hard work, the satisfaction of a job well done, and “how the world works.”

My family has no farm, but I do have a software development company, and I’m excited at how our kids are becoming more and more involved in the family business.

Hannah, 14, is using Camtasia and Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection to create software overview and tutorial videos, and also do some graphic art work. Her Camtasia work is excellent, with her incorporating logo effects using Adobe After Effects, music, still shots, video captures, and a fine attention to detail when editing.

She’s done paid work for three of Quintify’s clients, and now alas I’m standing in line for her to do a major update and extension of Quintify’s own online tutorials as well as a sales-focused overview screencast.

Danny, 13, does testing for the web databases we create, making sure all is well as part of the development process. He’s also spending a lot of time learning Adobe Flex, which will enable us to offer iphone and Android apps for our database systems in the not-too-far-off future. (This has me excited!) He’s also learning PHP and MySQL, major technologies in Quintify’s arsenal.

Haneen, 10, fills out deposit slips and writes checks that I then sign. I’m also showing her how to enter the payments into Quintify’s database system, and hope to soon have her doing our invoicing. She’s also going to be learning Adobe Premier Pro once we figure out to how to transfer videos from our camcorder to the “Quintify laptop”.

And all three do data entry on behalf of clients’ system from time to time, and we plan for them to soon be doing writing projects that will help with Quintify’s SEO as well as give them something “real” to write about.

Micaiah, just turned 6, is about to be given perhaps Quintify’s most important job — making sure Daddy’s laptop is clean enough to be presentable at meetings with clients.

What enables us to run with this is the fact that we homeschool, so we can block out an hour or two from each kids’ day for “Quintify time”, which, I would argue, is some of the best education they’re getting. The other day Hannah met with a client to do a round of editing on a software overview video. During that time — at which neither Liz nor I were there — she not only used her Camtasia skills (information technology) but also got valuable experience interacting with a client (interpersonal communications), thinking through how to best present information to an audience (marketing), and made some money while at it (business 101). I’ll take that kind of education for my kids any day. (And they love doing this work.)

Like on the farm, there’s always much work to do, and I actually joked to Liz the other day asking if she knows any other smart teenage kids we can adopt into our family and put to work. Since that isn’t really an option, I’m now talking to another homeschooling family about getting their 14-year-old involved in some of the things we’re doing.

Side note: Two things we have found particularly helpful in these endeavors is Lynda.com’s training videos and the fact that Adobe offers it’s Creative Suite Master Collection on a subscription basis. We’re able to cover the subscription fees for both of these products through revenue brought in from Hannah’s work with outside clients, with Hannah still getting paid too.

Hi,

Sorry for the slow response. I’ve been meaning to write you a longer email but at least wanted to reply back to let you know that I received your resume.

In today’s economy, with stiff competition for jobs, I’d like to recommend a couple of articles to read and digest that I think could help give you a mindset that will help with your career success. They are over 10 years old but they are classics. (Tom Peters now has books on the topics if you want to pursue his ideas in more depth.)

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/24/wowproj.html

As the principles in these articles become engrained in your life, they should flow through too to your resume as well.

Let me know if you have any questions about this. I’d be happy to discuss it further with you.

Reid

CNN Money has an article today about how CEOs earn 343 times what the average American worker does. They mention paywatch.org, a website by the AFL-CIO that rants against this ratio. Neither website offered a place for comments so I thought I’d make mine here.

Sorry, but I’m sure I add 343 times more value in the work I do than some American workers do in the work they do. But I’m just as quick to say I’m sure there are others who add 343 times more value in their work than I do in mine.

Pay based on value added is only natural. If you don’t want to pay it, someone else will, as long as I can demonstrate and provide that value-added consistently over time.

You want more income? Figure out how to add more value, how to serve more people. (And that especially applies to myself!)

Business Coach Reggie Shropshire first introduced me to this video by Tony Robbins, in which he discusses how to keep your New Year’s resolutions.

Good stuff — worth listening to at least annually, if not daily!

The total running time is about 35 minutes.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part Four:

Happy New Year! Here’s to an awesome 2011.

(an email to my wife while she and the kids are spending a month of summer vacation with her parents in Texas)

One of the books I want to use my “reading coupons” for is “Thou Shall Prosper”. It’s by a Jewish Rabbi who discusses why, based on their world view, the Jewish people have historically done well financially.

A main idea in the book is that money made is a natural result of service to others given, in the idea of “I’ll give you my money if you do something for me that makes me better off.” Consequently, someone who isn’t making much money typically isn’t serving others well, in the sense of “value added”.

A metaphor the author uses is, “A dollar in your pocket is a certificate of appreciation that someone has given you for what you have done for them.”

Of course, there are major exceptions, such as missionaries in other parts of the world who are serving God through trying to serve the people there, and there are non-profits here that try to serve poor local populations, and kids’ allowances are given for other reasons, and governmental assistance, but 90% of the time in a free market economy, people make their money through serving others, either directly (e.g. Quintify and other small businesses) or indirectly (e..g. serving your boss while working for a large company that in turn serves a whole lot of people).

So in a sense, saying “I don’t want to make a lot of money” can mean “I don’t want to work harder or smarter and in so doing serve a lot more people.”

For me, for Quintify, this is a very direct thing. Quintify now is serving x people, and it is bringing in y revenue. But if we can get our systems into the hands of 1000x people, who are happily using it and are being blessed by it in a tangible way, Quintify will make 1000y revenue.  There’s no “corporate greed” in that at all — we have a great product, or rather have the potential to soon have a really great product, and we can offer that product at an extremely reasonable price and still make a good profit. If we can do that, money will flow, money which can then be put into use in generous ways or in creating ways to serve even more people.

And Quintify’s product is unique in that it allows its customers to much better serve their own customers, so there’s a multiplying effect.

There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses in this country which are struggling mightily, frustrated men and women who are trying to provide for their families, who are good at some skill or trade, but due to lack of experience and perspective don’t have a good business sense, and their lack of business sense and a business software system is greatly hampering their business, i.e., their ability to serve more people well. A Quintify database can do wonders in such situations, particularly as we develop our library of “how” and “why” to go along with the software and align ourselves with business coaches.

Of course, service to others in the fullest extent needs to have a spiritual component as well, and I need more spiritual ministry as well as increasing Quintify’s “material ministry”.

One small point in all of this: I’m not asking for your help directly with Quintify, but whenever you do work on stuff with me, such as testing Quintify::Business Coach, you are helping me with one of my major ministries, helping me to serve others better, and indirectly helping others serve their clients better.

Another small point in all of this: I have no desire for our kids to “do well in school and get a good job and make a lot of money.” I do though have a strong interest in them being able to serve a lot of people both spiritually and materially, and in them being able to provide for their families well (better than I’ve done for my own so far), and in them having options, e.g. the ability to live wherever they think God wants them to live and to do whatever God wants them to do. Again, it is God who provides as He guides, but He’s put us in a world where by default our financial means is directly correlated to our service to others.

So one of my pressing questions is, how can Quintify serve many more people? How can we get what is now significantly helping a relative few into the hands of the masses?

Quintify currently has a job posting for a marketing intern. I think this is an awesome opportunity — if my kids were a bit older I’d encourage them to pursue it. (I wish I had the time to pursue it myself!)

The first two resumes / cover letters we got reminded me of what I often see with such things — the cover letters and resumes are form letters, and mention nothing about the specific opportunity we’re offering, or in this case about Port City Deals (a major subject of our job posting.)

Wouldn’t it be so easy for them to say, “I checked out Port City Deals and love it! I can picture a site like this in every metropolitan area across the country, and I’m excited about having a role in bringing that about! While I haven’t done much with marketing a real product at this (young) point in my life, I’m eager to learn as I go and jump in with both feet.” (Better yet to suggest some first steps toward marketing the business opportunity.)

But instead: Here I am. Here’s my background. I can help you, and I’ll benefit too. I’m going to call you next week to make sure you got my stuff.

But did you read my stuff?!?!?!

Agghhh!!

(Couldn’t get this one to fit in Twitter…)

A nice aspect of my focused programming times is that I can listen to podcasts while working. It’s like listening to the radio in the background, so I don’t get every word, but 20 hours of Dan Miller gets you his gist…

(Yes, over the past couple weeks I’ve listened to over over 20 hours of Dan Miller’s “48 Days to the Work You Love” podcast. And I’m still in 2006. (Just in case you’re wondering, I love my work, but have always been a glutton for both receiving and giving career advice.))

My favorite podcast is the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. I highly recomend this to all computer programmers. Unfortunately they only do one hour a week.

The Duct Tape Marketing podcast is great too, as is Dave Ramsey’s.

However, I can’t listen while I’m writing or reading English, so I need to rewind my current podcast just a bit after I post this.

I recently heard Dave Ramsey tell a distressed caller something like, “You need to do ten years’ worth of work in the next three months.” That motivated me to contemplate my situation and to wonder, “What would it look like to get ten years worth of work done in three months — what does that mean?”

Fortunately for me, my situation isn’t bleak like Dave’s caller’s, but this “10/3″ challenge motivates me because I see so very much opportunity at the moment with my Vienna — now is the time to march!

But as I sit here, eleven hours into my workday, I find myself wondering if New Hanover High School is playing soccer tonight, and I remember that my son wants me to play a rented Wii game with him before it goes back to Blockbuster in the morning.

I’m not sure I know exactly what 10/3 would look like, but I know what it wouldn’t look like. I need to eliminate everything that’s not important, and work hard when I work, and work a lot, and see where that leads. (And sometimes soccer and Wii with son IS important, and blogging!

As an aside, Paul Graham, another member of Quintify’s virtual board of directors, has an excellent essay on compressing work and the reward that can ensure from that. Most highly recommended.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna.” My friend Matt MacDowell of 360Skate and Pacific Medical and I have talked about that quote for a number of years, but the problem for me has been settling on a “Vienna” to take, as there are just too many great (fun!) opportunities out there. As a result I’ve lacked a singular focus.

Today I was at a GrowthCLUB 90-day planning session with ActionCoach Reggie Shropshire (highly recommended!) which wrapped up thinking I’ve been doing the past several weeks.

I now have my Vienna.

I left GrowthCLUB with 6 goals for the quarter but they all feed one main goal — the one thing I am going to focus on regarding business this quarter, this year, and on into the future. Everything I do professionally will be in light of that one thing and will be evaluated by its effect on and contribution to the realization of that one thing.

After years of entrepreneurial thinking and endeavor among a myriad of pursuits, I’m pumped to have just one thing!

I read somewhere once a recommendation to have a “virtual board of directors”– a hypothetical one, not just a literal one like I found references to online while trying to find the source of this idea. This virtual board of directors is composed of business/thought leaders whom you know and respect well enough that they can both ask you good, hard questions about your company and answer questions you have for them, with you holding all the conversations in your head.

For example, Tom Peters in on my imaginative board of directors. I’m quite familiar with his many books and thinking, and I have a good feel for the “hard” questions he’d ask me if he were at a real Quintify BOD meeting. And if I stopped and asked myself “What would Tom Peters say to me if I had a one-on-one with him and he knew my situation?”, if I sat and thought about it for a bit I’d be able to answer that fairly accurately.

I want to “flesh out” this vBOD more, but here’s my preliminary list, with a key theme or two for each (of many themes most provide).

• Tom Peters — WOW work done by WOW teams (PSFs) comprised of WOW people. (”And why is your vBOD made up entirely of non-young white men???”)
• Seth Godin — Forget “mass” anything regarding advertising or probably even product development
• Paul Graham — work hard and add incredible value quickly, taking the harder path whenever two options present themselves
• David Thomas — author of The Pragmatic Programmer — his discussion of code generators in that book lead to much of what drives Quintify
• Dave Ramsey — pay it out of cash flow after your emergency fund is built!!!

About time for a board meeting!

Two questions for you:

Anyone else you’d recommend me to add to my virtual board of directors?

Who would be on yours?

Reid