Phone call with Cory about the deli style barcodes and tightening it up a bit. Making a few small changes to help out with the actual client and what they are doing and how they are using it. Pushed up code. Recording notes from yesterday and today (9/16-9/17). Fixing some internal shopping cart messages. trying to make the style match for the new mini scan cart.

Phone call with Steve. We covered a lot of topics. We talked about people, ideas, plans, and where we are heading. We talked about payables, who we owe, who owes us, funding, revenue, etc. We were throwing ideas back and forth. I pitched a few ideas to Steve that Shannon and I were talking about earlier this morning (see EOT # 11405).

We may end up trying some things including investing in peoples (strategic personalities and skills) and also allowing our developers to do some side work or subcontract work (to keep them going). We tried bringing them fully under the adilas umbrella but that is a huge financial burden. They all used to be independent contractors. We are thinking of going back (in some ways) to that type of model. It's that or we have to let some of them go.

We talked about sales, projects, features, education, marketing, communications, etc. We may look at trying to get some more on the SBA loan and use it all (ish) to fund people filling specific roles. The list of projects is unending... we may have to leave that as is right now. That ball will keep rolling. In the mean time, we need to let the developers pick up the paid client work and setup some rules to help us all play along.

Working with Shannon. Showing her the new deli style barcode stuff. Small demo. Talking about debt and plans. That lead to a discussion on a number of topics. Here are some random notes... (not all tied together but what we were talking about):

- What if we set limits on how much we do for a new client. We can still invest in them but there are limits. Finding a good middle ground. We get in trouble with "it should" (expectations). We can't really fully stop this - meaning investing in our clients.

- Coding actually takes a lot of both time and money. Awareness is a great place to start.

- It might be hard for the builders to be the sellers (all we see is what needs to be done - meaning the developers). Possible disconnects.

- Still do what we do but put some boundaries on it. Say, spend $10K and show them what we are doing for that vs just an open ticket.

- Setting up checkpoints... to help us and the clients to move along. Healthier steps vs just plunging in.

- We have done a great job with what we have to work with.

- We were talking about different personalities and roles.

- Some transitions are coming. Along those lines, transitions take time.

- Our guys have been very willing to try to play into different roles (code vs sales).

- Sometimes there are painful talks and meetings.

- Some of our solutions come from our experiences... that is both good and bad.

- Our greatest weaknesses are overused strengths. There is more overlap in our strengths and weaknesses than we know. Sometimes we get so good at things we don't mix and blend, we just push on what we are good at. Flipsides - gains and losses. Patterns and phases.

- We totally switched gears and talked about plugging money into people vs code or sales. We've tried those other things before. Just a thought, maybe focus on people and key positions (stable pieces or needed pieces of the puzzle).

- Back to limits and checkpoints - communication and expectations and requirements.

- Talking about the working genius and how each of us plays into that mix.

- Hiring to our needs vs forcing in people who are already on the team.

- In some ways, okay, a lot of ways, we like the random... Random vs super strict order and organization. We need someone or something that will allow for some randomness and still provide structure. Setting up light boundaries. We have created some awesome things from the chaos... We can also see that full chaos will drive people insane.

- This is a question - Are we helpable? - Are we doing things a different way (like a welfare situation - helping people and they just go back to what they were doing). We don't want someone to come in and put us in a straitjacket... What can we do to help ourselves to create new mixed processes. We might need to find good matches (personalities and traits and skills and costs).

- If we invested in people, we would have to help them define their roles and help them in their pieces and processes. It could help us develop our underlying structure. That would be awesome!