Friday's suggested reading and some ramblings

If you are a small biz owner and do not subscribe to Inc. Magazine you are missing a lot of valuable insight and potential opportunities. It has great stories and articles from every part of the startup and small business spectrum. Some of the stories are about success and some are about failures - and some in between. I would also suggest FastCompany.

I find it somewhat comforting to to read the trials and tribulations of other small companies like those in Inc. as sometimes it can feel a bit lonely in the small biz world - your friends and family don't understand the hours that you put in, why you would take such risks and why you miss birthday parties for kids (well, other people's children - I draw the line at my own!).

My wife is thinking about reaching out to other wives of entrepreneurs to share thoughts and experiences of the life style. At first, I was like why does she want to do that? Then I realized is its unique to rest of the social norm - its seems the industrial revolution seemed to put more than steel cogs into manufacturing machines - it put every day people (cogs) into the social machine that is home, 8-5 job, do your job and hope that some middle manager gives you a raise or recognizes your potential...

Blogging, Twittering, Networking... Time?

I pose this question to readers of the blog and other entrepreneurs - "When does everyone find time to blog, tweet, network with others and then... pay attention to family and yourself?"

I am so busy building the business and keeping clients happy by just emailing and calling that the other communication conduits seem almost like noise. My focus is about my clients's needs and not mine. I would like to think that I am on my "game" but this piece of the puzzle is escaping me - I would love to hear feedback from others!

Weeeew - Its been an interesting year!

So where do I start?

First, 2009 had a terrible start for Venturality and the country. I was considering my options and I wasn't sure if "janitor" was something that I wanted to add to the resume. So we kept at it.

With a not-so-sane determination, projects and opportunities started coming back in the May/June timeframe. While there are still economic and employment issues, Venturality is positioned to realize a rebounding economy in its early stages. (I say "positioned" because I hate to use the word "lucky" - luck is winning the lottery)

Many of our new projects are web development focused - less "managed services" needs. "Managed Services" has a very strong undertone of IT infrustructure - and less web development. I have stretched the definition to "a company that provides managed/outsourced end-to-end web technology solutions". (thats a mouthful) Venturality does great web development - scalable, performance enabled web sites. However, Venturality also knows how to host the development, testing and production environments very well.

So I pose this question - is it confusing to clients to be really good two different technology focuses? Development and hosting may seem disparate, but we provide the best client experience when control all aspects of the project.

I would love some feedback :)

With that said - I wish for 2010 to be a great year for everyone!

The 3SmallPixels.com Fable

3SmallPixels.com was to be our upcoming foray into web design and marketing. After, some hard convincing from the rest of the team I have decided that we need to stay the current course of strictly being an IT managed services provider (MSP). So our fledgling idea is now DOA... before its prime...

Its easy to get caught up in your own head with new ideas and offerings - that is - "drinking your own kool-aide". So I started on the web design effort without much feedback. It was going to be grand - I tell you "GRAND". What is that ahead? looks like? Reality?!

One of my team members approached me during one of our planning meetings and suggested we reconsider the effort. I listened to my team and felt that the input was dead-on. It was outside of our core value offering and we have partners that can do it much better than any team that I might cobble together at this point in our timeline. Creating another DBA (doing-business-as) group would require additional marketing, business plan and resources. All of these items require time and money - both of which seem to be a very very scarce lately!

So the moral of the story? It is fun to chase ideas, but you may look silly if you are the only one running after them.

BTW - another reason I like to say "We" instead of "I" :)

Watch for it....

3SmallPixels.com is coming.

February 2009

Its the little things...

Today, the new air conditioning unit for the new "cloud space" (ok, ok, its the new server facility). Why did this make me happy? I was like a kid with a new toy.

I guess its because I LOVE to build things. The new server facility has been something that I have built from the ground up - by mostly me - my two hands and a couple spare brain cells (I have to gaurd them closely). The air conditioner is one of the final pieces to make this real and complete.

Also its a nice digression from the day-to-day management stuff. If the perks weren't available - I might have taken a different path ;)

Nothing like a power drill, some screws and some vision to make it interesting.

Surprises?

Keep an eye out this week - we have a couple of announcements! (well, at least we think its exciting)