Tim Symchych

Deep under cover

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:16:00 +0000

Image by sachman75 via Flickr Normally I post once a week or so. I'm going to go silent for about three weeks. I have stumbled into an incredible projected and I'm super excited about. This project will require full submersion with no distractions. I get butterflies just thinking about it.

Stay tuned....

Tim Symchych

Short Term vs Long Term

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:25:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaI am perplexed. Quite commonly people put off long term investments for short term ones. These investments can be in health, relationships, money, or whatever. Why? I am of the opinion that our society places the highest importance on urgent matters. In fact, very important, long term activities typically get the lowest priority. Everyone knows the importance of eating healthy and exercise but when inundated with urgent matters eat fast food and forgo their workout.

Case in point. I have a friend that eats, drinks, and smokes too much by just about any measure. A few months ago he had a health scare which caused him to change his eating, drinking, smoking, and exercise habits. Why? Because it was urgent and he was concerned about his longevity. Once he got comfortably out of the woods he fell back into his old ways because his health concerns were no longer urgent, no longer important. Short term one, long term zero.

When I was in my early 20's I knew many people who had decided to not go to college. I would ask them why and the most common answer I would hear was it is too difficult and time consuming. I use to think to myself working long hours at a low paying job for fifty years sounds more difficult and time consuming to me. Short term two, long term zero.

We have all heard that making a $10,000 investment today can turn into $1 million in 30 years. I know someone who came into some cash. They live paycheck to paycheck and have little to no savings. Nor are they putting money away for retirement. So did they make an investment with their windfall? No, they went on an expensive vacation that left them empty handed in less than a month. Check mate long term.

Why do we tend to be so near sided?

Tim Symchych

One simple step to being Great

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:42:00 +0000

I have filled many roles in my professional life from software developer to business owner. I have been a jack of all trades and master of none. Sometimes I have felt like a guy sitting on a beach and running with what ever washes up on shore. Think "Wilson" from Cast Away.

For almost a year now I have been trying to be intentional about my direction. It has taken me quite a bit of introspection before I could draw any definitive conclusions. I suspect this is true for most people as few people are fortunate enough to identify desire and aptitude early in life.

I have come up with several things that are intertwined and represent different aspects of my life such as husband, father, community member, business leader,etc. During this process I tried to distill down to the absolute essence of how I could be great for these different roles. Over an evening glass of wine last week it hit me. Complete dedication to a single endeavor is Greatness.

I wanted to see how my epiphany measured up. After weeding through various quotes from "great" people about greatness I came across Fortune:Secrets of Greatness by Geoffrey Colvin. It seems that I may be on to something-- the relentless pursuit seems to be the defining factor. So why doesn't everybody become great? Because it is difficult. Have you ever spent several hours every day over a ten year period trying to be the best at something? Few people have and that is precisly why greatness is in limited supply.

Perhaps the hardest question each of us faces is not whether or not we pursue greatness but what endeavor will we dedicate ourselves to.

Anyone can be great so choose your greatness and choose to be great everyday. What's stopping you?

Tim Symchych

I'm going to catch a whale

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:49:00 +0000

Should you make small incremental improvements to your business or should you always be on the hunt for Moby Dick? A lot of people might say both, and I agree, but if you had to choose one which should you pursue? Does pursuing one distract you from seeing the other?Image via Wikipedia

I have been working on some projects lately that have really got me thinking about this. Where do I stand? Throw out Captain Ahab. He's only looking for glory and is willing to destroy the ship and lose a limb to boost and protect his ego.

If I chase a million dollar deal, whether it is cost savings, operational improvement, or whatever, but I waste $50k here, $125k there on small projects because I can't be bothered, "I'm going to catch a whale." I may destroy the ship and lose my leg and never catch the whale.

Think on it this way. A house is built brick by brick considering all costs because there is an anticipated sale price. If I'm looking to build and sell a house for $250,000 with a worthwhile margin I can't spend $300,000 on materials and $200,000 on labor. This is exceedingly true if comparable properties in the neighborhood go for $250,000 where a $500,000 home would be unheard of. You have to manage the build and probably install a toilet yourself.

Know any Ahab's?

Tim Symchych

Who do you trust?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaIf possible I choose a small businesses over a large chain. I have spent some time trying to identify my attraction. On the surface I just feel good about giving my business to the little guy-- why? Maybe I feel like I'm getting something special that I can't get in Anytown, USA. Maybe I think the service will be better because they are hungry for my patronage. Maybe it is more straight forward.

My wife and I received a cow as a wedding gift (it's a Texas thing) and we needed a place to process it so that it would fit nicely into our deep freeze. The place we settled on is unique and is hidden in a tiny town just outside of San Antonio. We chose this place because we have heard more than once that they are honest. If you have a healthy grass fed cow you want to be certain the steak you are eating is just that.

Now that my wife and I are past the expense of our wedding we have gone full force into updating our 30 year old house. Our first big project is our landscaping, specifically our curb appeal. Part of the project is a new sidewalk. Our neighbor who is head of grounds at a local university recommended a contractor that the university uses because they are overwhelmingly honest.

While all of this is going on the transmission on one of our vehicles started to go out. I have no desire to learn the ins and outs of auto mechanics-- I have to find someone we can trust. Turns out that the mom and pop by the house go out of their way to insure you understand the problem they are going to fix for you, they are building trust.

So do I feel like I can't trust a business because it is large? No. But I do recognize that many large businesses make it easy for the individual to absolve themselves of personal responsibility-- in essence, their integrity. "I'm just following orders/policy/procedure, I'm not hear to rock the boat."

So how do you empower the individual to have integrity and build meaningful relationships with your customers regardless of the size of your business?

What do you think?

Tim Symchych

Human Connection

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:42:00 +0000

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeI watched a few minutes of CNBC's Big Idea last night. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks was the guest. He was asked what he attributes their great success with. He essentially said it was the human connection that is felt in their stores. "We are in the service business that happens to sell coffee." He stated in today's society of Internet and instant communication we have lost some of that "human connection" that people crave. This reminded me of my "Automation is killing my business" post in May.

There is no slowing down the Internet. In droves we are seeing services go digital on the web. Companies that are able to translate the "human connection" on the web are going thrive. Why? Because human connection is one of our basic needs, right up there with food and shelter. This explains the wildly popular social networking sites-- for many people this puts a face on the otherwise faceless super highway.

There are many ways to add the "human connection" to your on-line presence:

Blog
Forum
Actual pictures of you/your staff/customers
Address and phone number on your site
Testimonials
Email newsletter to your customers

These are all easy to set up and do. Can't write-- hire a freelance writer to write your blog for you. Engage with your customers and audience and they will engage with you.

Comments Welcomed,
Tim Symchych

I want my site to be #1 on the search engines part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:32:00 +0000

Image by ocean.flynn via FlickrLast week I wrote about site ranking and search engine optimization which reminded me of an article I read on nytimes.com back in March. The article titled "Are you taking advantage of Web 2.0" does a good job of defining the essence of Web 2.0 which is interaction. I have noticed many sites put up a "blog" on blog.theirdomain.com but in reality they fill the content with what use to be news.theirdomain.com which was essentially used for press releases. I'm all for press releases and I'm all for blogging but they are not the same thing. One of the main reasons blogging has become so popular is it provides a platform for real people to interact. In fact that *is* the sign of a successful blogger-- interaction from the readers with relevant comments that matter.

Faceless unidirectional press releases are a dying mechanism of getting the word out about your mission. Real human to human interaction is what the Internet is all about and people that provide transparency are going to win. Esse quam videri, which translates "to be rather than to seem" captures the essence of what I'm saying. Press releases are mainly about "seeming" where real interaction is "being."

Question: How does a small to medium sized business have true transparency in today's marketplace?

Tim Symchych

I want my site to be #1 on the search engines

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:10:00 +0000

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeI'm regularly asked how to get to the top of a Google search. Let me back up. Often when you meet people one of the first questions they have is what you do [for a living]. Once they find out I'm in the hosting business one of the first questions asked is if I host with you will I get to the top of a Google search. Not only would that make me rich, Google would counter just as quickly sending your placement to the basement and killing my margins. This is essentially the arms race between search engines and the SEO business.

Back in April I posted common misconceptions about putting up a website. I find that search engine placement is also a mystery to many small business owners. Most of them have never heard of SEO and don't even know how Google and others make money.

The most direct way to get to the top of most search engines is to pay them. The other way for your site to come up is a bit more complicated and in many cases more costly as well. That is why Google makes a TON of money. So what is this other way? It is call natural or organic and the SEO business exists because of it.

In the beginning websites were ranked and positioned based on key words matching the content and volume of content mattered. So people looking to get to the top of a search would cram a ton of identical content in their site even doing white text on white background to drive up their rank. Search engines caught on pretty quick and changed the rules. Next, cross links became a popular metric. It was thought that if people are linking to your site your content must be relevant. Again, the search engines caught on to people setting up multiple sites and cross linking themselves. The long short of it is there is an ever changing way to get to the top and how getting to the top is defined.

Don't worry it is not as dreadful as it sounds. I read a blog entry by Seth Godin recently and his point, although not specifically about SEO, is spot on. If you are a legitimate company, your domain name matches, you have relevant site, you update your content, share links with partners that benefit your customers, and publish a blog or even micro-blog on twitter you are likely to fair well. Longevity counts too. If you just recently put up a site you will be pretty low compared to the competitor who has been at it for a while. If you are not leveraging the power of the Internet you are not staying afloat, you are sinking.

Comments Welcomed,
Tim Symchych

Growing Complicated

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein

Often in a small company people wear many hats and perform multiple functions. As business increases we specialize and take off some of those hats. We hire people for very specific, defined roles to increase efficiency and accuracy in serving the needs of our customers. Then we create monitoring and compensation systems to manage our growing workforce of specialists.

We wake up one day and realize we can't turn the big ship without a ton of effort. The entrepreneur spirit begins to wither because roles are so specific people refer to their job descriptions before tackling new projects. People assume many aspects of the business are someone else's job. Ironically, at the same time people begin to feel like they are losing their voice and agree that they have far more talent than their current job requires.

I'm a huge Steven Covey fan and in his 8th Habit book he talks about the shift from the industrial age to the information age and empowering the knowledge worker.

Should you grow toward complexity or grow toward simplicity?

Comments welcomed,
Tim Symchych

Virtual Assistant, life is good.

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:12:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I'm a bit of a Web 2.0 connoisseur when the app is free. I came across 2 different ones that are really helpful tools by themselves. Put them together and they are amazingly helpful. The first app is Jott which is a voice to text transcription service that will convert your voice to text and send it to SMS or email addresses. Jott also has a Blackberry plugin that will allow you to respond to email/SMS via voice. Very helpful if you don't want to type and drive. The other app Sandy is a virtual email/reminder assistant. You can change her to him with a male name if you don't want your wife getting upset about this "Sandy" you communicate with all the time. ;) Basically you can send Sandy emails and ask her to remind you of tasks, events, notes/data, etc. She will send you iCal or ics depending on your preference and she will also send you a daily digest that can help you plan out your day. You can tag items such as @blog_entry and later query her with @blog_entry and she will tell you everything you asked her to remember with that tag. You can CC her on email and in the body put something like "Sandy, remind me to send out the proposal for Acme, Inc. this Friday 10 AM." and she will remind you via SMS, email, or both depending on your preference.

By connecting Sandy and Jott you can now call her (via Jott) and get all the above features. I have been using both services for a few months and have found them to be very helpful. The other day I was driving home and remembered I needed to get a note out in the morning for a project I'm working on so I called Sandy (via Jott) and asker her to remind me. To totally forgot until Sandy SMSed me a reminder--pretty cool. Tip: if you want to tag an item via Jott to Sandy say, "tag with projectX." You can multi-tag items too with @projectX @todo @critical. If you were tagging via Jott say, "tag with projectX and todo and critical."

Initially there is a little back an forth with Sandy until you get the lingo down but it is really simple once you get the hang of it and there are many short-cuts/dictation to speed thumb typing along. Don't fret, she lets you know if she didn't understand what you wanted her to do. I'm still exploring all of her capabilities and I'm finding new and exciting features or a way to use them in a relevant way every day.

Questions and comments welcomed.
Tim Symchych

Free email service = no service and lost revenue

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:12:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

All too often small business use free email accounts which seem like a cost savings strategy. In the last analysis this is very short term thinking. Several of my customers, even though they host with me and get three business class email accounts with their account, still use yahoo, gmail, or their ISP (think road runner) email for their business. I'm amazed by this. When the service goes down you don't have anyone to call or they aren't specialists so their help is mediocre at best. Plus you are building brand recognition for someone else. Business owners are threatened with litigation from both internal and external sources. When asked to produce email communications they are unable to with these free services.

The trifecta of business email:

Support
Branding
Reliable

When things go wrong, and they will on a long enough time line, losing email can mean losing business. The provider may not even know there is a problem while your business is at a stand still.

We provide email service to several independent real estate companies who's agents use personal free email addresses. The unfortunate issue here is that if that agent no longer works for you all the contacts he built while working out of your office go with him in his personal email. If he was using yourdomain.com then you would be reinforcing your brand and encourage the repeat customers to contact your office instead of joerealtor@yahoo.com. Additionally, since you control the email you could forward it to someone on your team if the agent does leave.

Many email providers, including your ISP, do not focus on email. Email is not their flagship product so innovation and robust system implementation is minimal or just enough. Great features like shared calendaring, blackberry support, etc are not even on their road map.

Get a service that has great support, reinforce your brand, and get the features you need to get ahead.

Comments welcomed,
Tim Symchych

Automation is killing my business

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaI remember in the late 90's during the up swing of Internet bubble how many companies and individual speculators put up "e-commerce" sites that were incredibly sterile. It was like doing business with Robby the robot. A lot of this was driven by the "if you build it they will come" notion. The frenzy of getting rich quick is usually coupled with a desire to stay anonymous because it is just speculation and not building value. Unfortunately the desire to hide from customers lives strong and is still quit ubiquitous. Virtually all websites you visit have a "contact us" page which should really read, "do not contact us." It should be easy (one click from any page on your site) to find your business phone number and address on your website. If someone sitting at a their computer on your site resorts to using the phone book to find your information you're in trouble.

Many people I speak with ask how do they get to the top of a Google search. Really it depends on how much you are willing to spend and whether that spend is worth it to your business. For most small businesses it is sufficient to put up a catalog style website, have domain email, and a contact us page with their phone number and address conspicuously placed. This will cover you for city searches where Internet users use Google, Ask, etc like the yellow pages. If your small business competitor does this and you don't who do you think is going to get more business?

Comment and Questions welcomed.
Tim Symchych

Small Businesses going Green

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:12:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaWhen the team and I decided to "go green" when we launched the new brand and service level we weren't exactly sure where to start. Should we green the office, our product line, everything? After some analysis we decided to attack the problem incrementally starting with our product offering since it would have the largest positive impact, or in the green vernacular zero impact.

The US Department of Energy has a list of certified carbon off-set programs from various providers here. The great thing about some of these companies is that they have tools to help you calculate your usage. When we got down in the details of determining our use we had a number of challenges because in our business we use various providers where the majority of our usage is on their cloud infrastructure. We reached out to some of them and they were very helpful. As it turns out, most of these businesses know intimately how much usage each node/device can handle because they must determine the profit per device, an essential component in their business model. Once we had the totals we converted our usage to "server equivalents" and used a nifty tool I found on Dell's website that provides a holistic view of energy consumption in a data center. We also compared our results with the calculator found on Terrapass. We took our findings to NativeEnergy and will buy our carbon off-sets monthly. We could do annually but we hope to grow month over month and want to make 12 bite sized purchases of off-sets than 1 huge one at the end of the year. Besides, we want to make a difference today not in a year.

So why did we choose NativeEnergy? To be honest several people on the team love Cliff and Stoneyfield products. Both use NateiveEnergy and one of their programs was with Stoneyfield. Here are some other sites/blogs we looked at in our quest to be carbon neutral:

In our next phase of going green we are going to tackle our office space and homes.

Comments, Questions, Ideas-- Bring it.
Tim Symchych

Website launch - spirefly.com

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:11:00 +0000

After running Nautilus Broadband for 5 years I came to a crossroad. One path was to sell the business and the other was to make a significant investment in it. After some serious consideration the team and I decided to invest. The investment meant money and a lot of extra hours to upgrade the systems across the business, write a new business plan, develop a marketing plan, streamline our processes, and add some key players to the team. We have been working our butts off and the first signs of real change are making it to the surface. Tomorrow we will have a soft launch of our new website spirefly.com. In the next week when our invoices go out we will invite our customers to see the new site. Next month our customer will get invoiced out of our new accounting system.

There has been so much behind the scenes work that has included customers websites and email transitioning to upgraded super-structures without them noticing any downtime. Even though the hours have been long and it seems like we have been eating, drinking, and sleeping all things Spirefly we have had a ton of fun doing it.

We still have a bunch of work to do but this is a notable milestone and I'm proud of the work we have done.

Comments and questions are welcomed.
Tim Symchych

Why putting up a website will not grow your business

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:25:00 +0000

I have been running a web hosting company since 2003 and have spent my entire career in the hosting industry. One common theme I see regularly from small business owners is misconceptions and wrong expectations about building a website:

A great web site can improve my business by:

Increasing sales
Creating efficiencies
Reducing operational cost

Building a website is:

Easy and anyone can do it
Almost free
Should be done because everyone else has one

Case in point; I had a customer who wanted a web store front with all the bells and whistles including merchant services for payment processing, real-time inventory tracking, etc. This was a large project for the small business which happened to be a single unit liquor store in a small town. After the project was complete the owner became increasingly disappointed because she had gone to all this trouble and the only visitors to the site were friends and family who bought nothing. Her regular patrons still went to the brick-n-mortar because they wanted instant satisfaction which is often the case with liquor sales.

After about three months the owner began to complain to me because her investment was not living up to her expectation. Keep in mind that I only hosted her site and the web developers who built the site had long since moved on. She began to demand refunds on her hosting fees because no one was buying from her online store. I explained that I was just hosting the site and was not responsible generating traffic and sales, her content, etc. I provided the analogy that I am the online version of the leasing company that provides her brick-n-mortar and that the digital world of business is no different than the analog business world. Both require analysis, planning, execution, and validation. She eventually took her website down.

Putting up a website does not equal success. A website is a tool and when used correctly can do wonders for your bottom line. When used incorrectly does nothing or worse hurts your brand and market appeal and costs you serious money. Look for my coming post on a surefire plan that will get any small business owner on the web without costly mistakes and inappropriate expectations.

Comments and questions are welcomed.

Tim Symchych

Where to Start?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Symchych) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:39:00 +0000

The first thing that comes to mind is purpose. I ask myself if I'm on purpose often. Especially before I take specific action like writing a blog or or choosing a book on Amazon. Since I have some expectation that you will return or subscribe to my feed you should know my purpose for wring this blog. Simply put I want to help small businesses and entrepreneurs leverage Internet technology.

There are millions of tools with many features and benefits you can use but only a select few will be meaningful to your business. However, there are some that are absolutely essential if you want sustain your business long term. There are also tools that will absolutely help you grow your business.

Over the next few entries I'm going to cover some common misconceptions small business owners having about taking their business on-line and some key components that every business should have in detail. I will also provide some industry insights and trends that will affect your business whether you have a simple brochure style website or an interactive site that automates some of your business processes.

Tim Symchych