While at the day-job today, I took a moment to open Google Reader and browse through my favorite blogs.  One of the microISV blogs I enjoy reading is the Startup Lowdown, a link which you’ll notice is also listed in the sidebar of this blog.  Boy was I shocked to that Starr had mentioned our iKollect blog, and said that people should “go check it out”!

That was totally unexpected and very kind.  Starr, you rock!  It’s nice knowing that someone is reading my somewhat-irregular entries because it helps me make sure I stay focused on getting things done in my business.  Thanks Starr!

I received an email the other day from a guy named Adam, criticizing my method of “running this project”. I think it was meant to be constructive criticism, but I totally disagree with everything Adam said. Adam’s email was fairly long, but the following quotes from the email pretty much sums up the entire message:

“Your approach to running this project is haphazard at best. Based on your inability to plan out your project, it is highly unlikely that you and your wife will ever succeed with your business venture. Although your application idea sounds like a good one, from what I’ve read so far, I believe your only success will be in creating a disaster application that nobody wants, and it will likely take you years to release your first version.”

Adam also mentions his thoughts on what I should do to fix my “disaster”:

“I recommend you read up on project management (there are lots of great resources on the web) and return to what should have been your project initiation stage. Start documenting what it is you are trying to create, and do not begin engineering the product until you have finalized your design documents. I work for a Fortune 500 company for many years that uses these project methods on a regular basis and our projects are extremely successful.”

I know Adam was just trying to help in suggesting that I use some of those well defined project management methods. What he doesn’t realize though is that I also work for a Fortune 500 company at my day-job, and I am very familiar with project management. Oh my God, am I familiar with it.

Why does Adam think a project of this scope should have to create a project plan? And at what point is a project small enough that it doesn’t require that type of discipline? Maybe he’s missed some of my posts on this web site where I explain that my team consists of 2 people, my wife and myself. Should Kate create a project plan and watch over me like a hawk to make sure I stay on schedule? Do we need to formalize a budget and have a follow up meeting to agree that we have no money in our budget?

Part of what makes doing this whole “project” business for me so therapeutic is the fact that I don’t have to follow any of those standards that I don’t wish to. We are our own bosses. If we want to bend or break our own rules, we can. I don’t need to go before a steering committee to explain why I am missing a scope definition document.

I suppose someone could argue that if we intended to sell the company once it was profitable, having all this documentation in place would be great. But we are not building this thing with the intent to sell. And I don’t have that kind of time to waste on documentation that may never be seen.

As far as the likelihood of releasing an application within the next couple of years, I totally disagree on that prediction also. I want to have a working product available to the public in just a few months (and by mentioning that here, I think I’ve just committed to that goal).

Adam, if you had sent me an email that said “hey, you’re doing a great job”, I would have just been polite, replied “thanks!” and moved on. But this email of yours has instead energized me to prove you wrong. I am going to kick butt in the next couple of months and succeed. I will have an application available to the public in less than three months, I will be making a profit before the end of the year, and I will not create a project plan.

And Adam, I hope you read this post and recognize that I am not just ignoring you and being polite when I email you the following message…”Thanks!”

A friend of mine sent me a link to the this entry at startupspark.com, listing the Top 10 Ways to Know You’re an Entrepreneur.  Although I liked the list, and I must admit that pretty much everything on that list could be used to accurately describe my personality, I do disagree with the posting a bit.

The list seems to imply that you are an entrepreneur if you meet all the criteria on the list.  I believe that the entry should be titled “Personality Traits of People Desiring Financial Freedom”.  Because as my father taught me, in order to be an entrepreneur, you must put your neck on the line for what you believe in, (even if it is only a small piece of your neck). 

Today’s technology makes it easy (for the most part) to start up and not risk a lot when creating your MicroISV.  But by putting yourself out there, you are still assuming some accountability for the inherent risk that goes into starting a business.

In creating our business (even as trimmed down as our budget has become lately), we are still accepting a financial risk, and we hope to make a profit at some point.  And if I just continued to just “work for the man” for the rest of my life, that list of tens personality traits would still be accurate, but I would have a tough time introducing myself at a party as an entrepreneur.  I would merely continue to be an employee.

I read a lot of blogs and forums which deal with the topic of starting and running a MicroISV.  My favorite ones are written by folks who are out there doing it.  They’ve written a piece of software and created a journal along the way.  These folks are trying to make a profit from their software that they’ve put their hearts into, not on the blog they’ve created along the way.  They tend to write articles that talk about their actual experiences and lessons learned in running a business.  They don’t write articles like that are titled “how to tell if you are an entrepreneur, they talk about why they are an entrepreneur.  They write about their successes and their mistakes.  Everything is quite personal, and I feel like I know these people.

(My wife says I should mention who my actual favorites are…)

Some of my favorites include Ian Landsman’s Weblog, where he speaks about his lessons learned in creating his HelpSpot  software and running his company UserScape, and Patrick McKenzie with his excellent software named Bingo Card Creator.  Also in the list in my Google Reader are Starr Horne’s The Startup Lowdown and of course, my favorite blog, but also the one that totally kills my productivity, Gavin Bowman’s The Obligatory Blog.

If you read their blogs in chronological order, you can learn quite a bit, much more than reading a list that tells you if you are who you already know you are.  I certainly have learned a lot from those real world blogs, and I truly hope that some day I will have learned enough that I am able to offer some valuable information to my readers too.

Because I’ve been so busy lately,  I’ve been looking for ways to be more efficient.  One of my problems (the list is huge!) is that I don’t update this blog often enough.  So I had this great idea while I was driving home from the day job.  What if I created a service that allowed regular folk like me to dial up a number from their cell-phones, speak their blog entry, and it would be transcribed and waiting for them to approve on their blog.  I was super pumped about this idea, so as soon as I got home I went and did my research.

Of course I was immediately disappointed to find out that there are actually already a couple of companies doing most of this already for you.  They were really more geared at transcribing and emailing the message for you, but with a little tweaking, wordpress can easily be set up to accept emails for blog entries.  So it’s all there.  Ahh man, it turns out that I wasn’t the first person to think of this after all…

After I got over myself, I realized that this could indeed be useful for my busy life.  I set up several different accounts with different compaines, but the one I liked the best was called Jott.com.  I actually found it by reading someone else’s blog entry, and since I like to give credit where credit is due, here is that blog:
http://www.idea-xchange.com/post/66

Anyway, I’ve been using the Jott.com service for a little while now, and although there are some things I don’t love about it (like the way it breaks up my messages too prematurely, especially when I am driving and I stop talking to keep from crashing my car), I have to say that overall, I really like this service.  It works well for me.

But as an entrepreneur, I have to wonder: where is the money in it?  My transcribed emails automatically end up in my inbox, so I don’t really need to go to their web site (to view advertisements etc.), and I really don’t think the service is valuable enough to pay for.  Honestly, if it gets *that* popular, then Google will just add the feature to GMail, right?

Well, I recommend this service to help out overly busy people everywhere. It’s free and it’s at Jott.com … enjoy!

Lately, it seems the precious few free minutes I’ve had have been spent trying to figure out how to be more efficient. I’ve read different blogs and articles telling me how to prioritize things so that the important business stuff gets done. I’ve listened to podcasts about how I should eliminate the things that don’t directly generate income for me.  But even after all that, the things that keep showing up at the top of my list are the things that don’t generate income, and are not top priority in my business.  Those things are my children.

Kate and I were having a discussion lately about how I am utilizing my time.  She said that since this is so important to me, it would be okay if I took some time away from her and the kids and focused on the iKollect.com business, in the hopes of creating a valuable asset that would allow me to spend more time with her and my children…in the future.  But how can I miss out on their childhoods, even just a little, so I can work on something else.

I need to be a bit realistic. How long will it be until this little business venture is profitable?  How long until it is making enough money to support us?  How long until it is bringing in enough money for me to hire a helper to take some tasks off of my plate, and finally make it possible for me to spend more time with my kids?  Will my children be all grown up my then?  Will they be teenagers, ad not care about their dear old dad by then?

I am totally stuck on this whole dilemma.  Any good advice?