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Sorry, no photos available for this element of time.
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Notes:
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Went into town to help Russell with some of his projects. We ended up spending the whole day talking about options, counseling together, and exploring different options. The counseling session was very good for me. We talked a lot about goals and direction. Where do we want to go, as a company? How big do we want to be? Big, small, in between? What is the time it will take to get to market? And what are our goals with minimum targets, mid range targets, and max or optimal targets? So here is the concept of the targets within your goals. Instead of yes, I hit my goal vs. no, I didn't get my goal - What if your goal had a scale inside each goal. You figure out what is the minimum target for the goal. This is always attainable and allows for you to virtually check off that box, even if you didn't hit a huge home run. This minimum target also helps to keep the habit in tact and keep going (consistency). The max or optimal target is a goal within the goal but doesn't have any negative consequences if you fall short and hit some where between the min and the max. Basically you allow enough room that you could hit the mark and allow for some flexibility in order to find the sweet spot. Russell was showing me how goals should have a couple of elements tied to them. He kept using the term smart goals. The word smart is for a small acronym. S.M.A.R.T. Goals - Specific Measureable Attainable Realistic Time Bound He then added a couple of other ones that he thought were important. They were: Flexibility - expand and contract similar to the data assembly line concepts Research - what else do we know and what cause and effects will this provide Adjusting - be willing and able to change as needed based on the situation We talked about priorities and how to best prioritize. We talked about the jar analogy and pretending that a glass jar is all you are able to fit in a single time period. There are two different kinds of things that can go in the jar. One is eggs or rocks (bigger objects) and the other is sand or rice (smaller objects). And how if you put the rice in first (extra stuff) you may not be able to get the eggs or rocks (main priorities or must do's) into the jar. We did some light drawings and used the whiteboard for different concepts. Another valuable exercise was putting some goals up on the board and then putting realist timelines to them. One that we did, that was kinda scary, was taking about 1 million dollars worth of projects and really asking how long that would take. We got the 1 million dollar value from a list of community funded projects for adilas. Here is what we came up with. $1,000,000 total / $100 per hour = about 10,000 man hours To get 10,000 man hours that would be 5 years at almost full time (2,000 hours per year). To get 10,000 man hour that would be 10 years at almost half time (1,000 hours per year). To get 10,000 man hour that would be 20 years at almost one quarter (1/4) time (500 hours per year). We then talked about a well trained team and what that would take to get the same 10,000 man hours. Say you had a small elite team that could do a solid 100 hours a week. If you take that times 50 weeks (almost a full year of 52 weeks) you would get 5,000 man hours. If you did that for 2 years, you could get to the 10,000 man hours of your goal. Long story made short, you could cut your 5 to 10 years into 2 years or less with an elite team. That is pretty cool. Another concept that I really enjoyed was talking about adjusting and re-aligning to meet your goal. Russell gave the analogy of a car's speedometer and how you constantly adjust and/or re-align with the correct reading. Say the goal was 60 miles per hour. If you are at 50 or 55, you increase things slightly. If you are at 70 or 80, you decrease things slightly. No harm done, you just try to align with the desired outcome and let the speedometer help you monitor your goal. I enjoyed that analogy. One of the other subjects of the day was options for helping adilas and the adilas shop go forward. Here is a brief outline of some of the options that we went over. Option 1. - Stay as is and just keep going - currently this is not working too well. A change is needed. Option 2. - Close down all extras including the shop and only be as big as we can support right now. There is some cost savings here but we lose a ton of momentum. Option 3. - Setup a budget and get the pieces funded that are needed both internally with adilas and with the adilas shop. This would be awesome but requires another $5,000 to $10,000 a month. Most likely, this increase of internal expenses would need to be funded from some form of short to medium range debt such as a loan or an advance on a line of credit. Option 4. - New idea while talking with Russell. We could fund the increased expenses by raising prices or charging for features and/or system usage. Russell and I ran some numbers on things as simple as sub inventory (say add $20 to $30 per company per month). At a 100 clients, that would be $2,000 or $3,000 per month that could help offset expenses. We also talked about doing a price increase of 25% and 50%. Those are big numbers but still keeps us lower than much of our competition. With a price increase, you could generate $5,000 - $25,000 more a month without adding on any new accounts. Lots of potential here. Option 5. - New idea from Brandon on 7/23/16 (next day). This option deals with supply and demand and marketing skills of those who are in high demand. This is not as straight forwards as a price increase but has great potential. What if Brandon, Steve, and others, entered the adilas marketplace or adilas world and offered their time and skills at a rate set by each person. Basically, if someone needs someone else's time, they need to pay for it. What if we (Brandon, Steve, and others), went down to part time working for adilas (doing things that can't be billed for and/or that are hard to bill for - internal things). We could then use our other time and allow the market to dictate costs, prices, and availability. We could market our skills in multiple areas such as setup, consulting, training, custom code, graphics, etc. We could setup a way to get a base pay rate from adilas and then rely upon the use of the market to get the remainder of what we need. The goal there is that the market could be a tool to drive revenue without incurring additional debt and/or liability. Anyways, some fun options. Option 6. - What if you mixed and blended some of the ideas above or came up with new ones. That would be cool as well. Just trying to keep things open. |