My name is Jeff Vandrimmelen, I'm one of the
three partners at OskyBlue. The other two partners
are over there, Jon Kendall on the left, and
Troy Braithwaite on the right. We were asked
by Collin County just to kind of do a little
bit of workshop on Entrepreneurship. So I'm
kind of planning on, you know talking a little
bit about the businesses that we've worked
on in the past. All three of us started businesses.
Some have been successful and some have not,
but I don't know if you'll ever meet a real
entrepreneur that hasn't failed at least at
one or two businesses. Let me just briefly
talk about each of us so Troy as I mentioned
before is over there on the right, and inside
of Osky Blue, one of the three partners at
Osky Blue, we are a local SCO and web company.
We do custom software development, we do a
lot of different stuff, you know at the end
of the day anyone who has a small business
does a lot of different stuff. And anyone
who is an entrepreneur probably done a lot
of different things. Inside of our company
we have three different roles. Troy does marketing and
money. Jon gets us clients. Jon's the reason we eat
every single day. Without Jon, we wouldn't
eat. And I'm the guy that makes sure that
the things that Jon sells, we actually can
make get delivered. I manage day to day production,
make sure that the things do actually- and
those are kind of the different roles inside
of there. As I mentioned before we've all
started different businesses, we've all been
successful and been unsuccessful and here's
kind of just an outline of the night. Whats
an Entrepreneur? I'm just going to take a
couple minutes to talk about that before we
jump in and then Troy going to- he's got seven
lessons from Troy which I think are really
fantastic. I'll talk about system, technology,
what are some things that you need to think
about getting started. Jon's going to talk
about sales. Learning how to set up and market
your business and then get going and then
we'll have at the end a general Q&A where
you guys can ask us any other questions.
All throughout though ask us questions as
we're kind of going along OK? There is so
much that goes into business, and so much
you have to think about when you are starting
up a business. And I think it kind of- it
gets a good line out there because there are
a lot of businesses that fail, including some
that I started in the past because I am admittedly
not an Entrepreneur, ironically enough, even
though I've built business and sold them.
Troy is an Entrepreneur in the deepest sense
of the word. Out of all of us, Troy is the
Entrepreneur out of all of us. I'm a manager. I'm great at
systems, I'm great at putting systems together,
but what makes Oksy Blue great is that we
have partners that we are able to work together
with, so we have people with vision that see
opportunities that makes things happen and
we have people that can makes those happen.
And we of course have someone who can actually
sell anything to anyone, anywhere which always
helps out a partnership. So with that in mind
let me go ahead and just turn some time over
to troy now and let him jump into his seven
lessons. This is my favorite thing like with
business, at the end of the day I always see
it's a wild ride. There's no part about it if
your going to get into entrepreneurship, there's
nothing not wild about it. This is what I
always say because its adrenaline and more
likely that guys going to stay on for a second
but he's probably going to fall of, he's going
to get hurt and bruised up a little bit. And
I know for me, I defiantly have taken a few
rides and gotten bucked off a couple times
but, getting back up is really the key. So
the biggest thing is for me, like just do it.
I find a lot of people that want to get into
business or they have this idea, and they
never get off the boat to do it. They have
these things and they are always very hesitant,
and it's really- I really like this. It says
quit making excuses, and putting it off, complaining
about it, dreaming about it, whining about
it, crying about it, believing that you can't.
Worrying if you can, waiting until you're
older, skinnier, richer, braver, or all around
better. Suck it up, hold on tight say a prayer,
make a plan and just do it. With a lot of
entrepreneurs, the ones that I've seen that
have taken off successfully, they just get
out there and they do it. You have that plan
ahead of time and you just do it. And this
next slide is- part of businesses that one of them
that I kind of run right now this last little
bit is Gists For Men Outlet. So an opportunity
came up as we were with Osky Blue. It started
off kind of like a way we could move some
product for somebody, and then in turned out
into a business, and you can see this is about
twelve months into it, this is this last Christmas,
this is my house. Right up here this is this
is my entryway. These are shipments getting
out. So we did about 200,000 dollars of revenue
in December out of my front door. Its one
of those things where I was talking with my
brother in law and we were talking about this
business and I told him I had 30 pallets of
product coming, and he was like where is it
going to? Well I haven't figured that out
yet. So I have 30 pallets of product that
I just bought, it's on a semi and I have no
place for it to go. I'm trying to put people
off, oh yeah let me get that address for
you, I'll email you tomorrow with it. It
was one of those things where most people
would be scared out of there mind because
they would never even get close to that. Me,
hey I'll buy the product, get it here, and
by time you get it here I'll have an address
for you to drop it off at. You know and its
one of those things that hey, just do it.
If you're going to do it, get into it, handle
it. It really comes down to this, like hey,
be committed. You know a lot of times you
are on that edge people can't come off. This
is the best example I could see of committed. Once you
take that leap, I mean you're fully committed
and I think with small business Entrepreneurs
that want to do it, they have to throw themselves
all the way in. By doing that they can be
successful. So for me, out of college I have
a degree in accounting. I always knew that
I would probably own a business and I figured,
hey I need to understand numbers, because
numbers is the language of business. So after
I graduated, I was going to start a mortgage
company and the laws were changing so it didn't
make it possible, and so I was just trying
to find different things to make money and
my wife, she decided she was going to go out
and start looking for a job so she went and
applied at this accounting firm. My wife's
really smart and they didn't hire her and
I said that's kind of garbage but I'll hire
you. So we found a course, hey, this is how
you're going to start your own accounting
practice. We went to- it was a couple thousand
dollars, we bought a computer on a credit
card, we bought a Quickbooks, and when the
new year started, we hit it up. One of the
interesting things in November I ran into
a guy that I knew from a few years before
and him and his wife were at a school and
they needed an internship. Hey I'll give you
an internship, so I gave him an internship-
a business I hadn't even started I already
had some interns coming down, so they came
down at a three bedroom place and they live
in one of them. We had our office in another,
and then us my wife and my baby in the other.
We pretty much- I was in a new location where
I didn't know a soul in city and we got a
list of all the businesses and we just put
this aggressive plan out. We pounded them
with direct mail, he'd go out and set appointments
and I'd go sell it. So we started from there
and within six months we had an office full
of people which is always fun, and then running
into all of those problems that small businesses
have. Probably one of the funniest ones I
think a lot of times going into small business,
for us I was young, out of school so I'd tried
to overcompensate maybe I try to, I brought
on this guy who had 30 years of experience
and the best part about being an Entrepreneur
is you get really fun lessons. So this guy,
he was with me for two months, and I payed
him about nine to twelve thousand dollars
and he lost me a seventeen thousand dollar
client. Those are one of the fun things about
business, if you hire the wrong people, I
get to pay this guy and he looses me my big
clients. So that's one of the things with
some of the Entrepreneurship stuff that happens
is you learn really fast from mistakes, you
learn they cost you a lot of money but that's
part of the program is learning. One of the
things with- kind of the business that I started
off with being and accounting, bookkeeping
type firm I saw tons and tons of businesses,
their financials. Case studies, living, live
case studies that I got to see businesses
that succeed, whats making them succeed and
whats making them fail. So that knowledge that
I was able to gain off of other peoples mistakes
and the ones that I was making really helped
speed up my learning curve quite a bit. I've
got three different companies, a chiropractor
companies. Three different ones that I did
their books, and I also did their taxes. Pretty
much I can see these companies from the inside
out I know everything about them and they
started about the same time and its really
interesting to see the three. There's one
person, he was just kind of trying to do it
on the side, and his life was like this, he
never really made that jump and he never really
made any money, and he was looking to move
and look for this other opportunity because
he never put in one hundred percent. And this
other one, there was two of them and they
partnered together and one thing that they
did really good is they found their nitch
so they were going to go into chiropracting
but they were going to specialize, specialize
in people that golf. I guess with their swing,
with their back. So they specialize in that
little community, they specialize in it, they
took reasonable salaries. You are starting
of a business, oh yeah a chiropractor should
make a hundred thousand. If you don't have
any sales, you shouldn't be trying to pay
yourself a hundred thousand dollars. They
paid them selves and as the business grew,
they raised their wages and they had a very
profitable business. Over probably about eighteen
months they were getting to the point where
they were able to pay themselves about ten
thousand dollars a piece. Then there was another
one that started at about the same time there about
a year before, and there was three of them
and they were bringing in another guy. And
they were like, oh we are chiropractors, we
should have big wages, so they lived off debt.
They were able to get big loans, they had
a big office they even had a little satellite
office, and they advertised very heavily but
they were never making money. The whole
time that I was watching them, we had to prep
their books again for another loan because
they were never making any money. They were
full staffed, they had the appearance of success,
but at the end of the day, their bottom line
was that, and they brought in another guy
that graduated, Oh he should make eight thousand
dollars because that's what chiropractors
make. No it doesn't work that way, if starting
a business you have to have that realistic
expectations. What do the numbers tell me
and whats a reasonable thing. If you need
ten thousand dollars to live and you go start
a certain business that's going to take a
long time to get there how are you going to
compensate you wages until that benchmark
of ten months out when you are going to get
that. That's the biggest thing is making sure
you have that plan because at the end of the
day, the dramatics and how much those people
make was critical on doing that and that really
come down to that Lean. Learning, running
a real lean business. This part is another
thing, like learn from rich people and listen
to them, and that can come from books and
other things like one of the things with me
like just starting out of college is I was
very hungry for knowledge. So for me and
my company we were really small. I spent probably
the second most money in advertising in the
area for an accounting firm. The other one
had like eighty accountants and then there
was me, and another thing was I spent a ton
of money on different people. I went out John
Jannes, Sun-Tech marketing, I found him he
had like, licence marketing coaching. So about
a year and I went out and got licensed with
him. I payed him and learned from him and
his systems. Instead of reinventing the wheel,
I went out there and got that and then plugged
it into my business. So for me, our business
took after a year was going really well, I
could grow it pretty much as fast as I want.
And then about a year in, I was like holy
cow we need to systematize our business and
that going to come back to the emyth where
we put system in. So I, my wife, we brought
in a manager to systematize it and that's
when I got in the market of coaching, consulting,
and about eight months later, we were getting
ready to role the business, this was in 08.
We went to a training in Florida from a guy
that- this thing came in the mail, hey learn
how to take your bookkeeping company virtual,
paperless. We went down there and we learned
how to take this paperless. Of all the things
that guy taught me probably the most, it was
worth every penny, is he talked about billing
weekly. So most accountant and, we were no
different, we billed hourly and we'd rack
up months of things and then we'd send them
a bill. So I learned from this guy hey, Bill
weekely and bill often, pretty much you're
going to pull from their bank account, and
that little piece really got me, that little
piece of advise really changed my life and
saved my business. Because we went back, we
went back ready to blow up our business, and
that was right at the end of 08 and we marked
really heavy and staffed really heavy right
to a free fall. We lost forty percent of our
clients to bankruptcy in a three month period.
Where we were at was a very heavy construction
base and it was wild. People that had hundred
thousand dollar credit cards all the sudden
they wouldn't have any access to them. The
banks just took it away. The whole thing just
free fell and it was wild. It was like that
bull, pretty much it was bucking and it's one
of those things to adapt. You have to adapt.
And with that I saw that- I'm seeing it for
myself, but I'm seeing it in twenty, thirty
other companies, businesses whats going on,
and its that trend and its not until I looked
back to it that it made sense for us. And
one thing that I learned from the rich people
is what understanding cash flow, that one
piece of knowledge that I got there, so we
were extremely hard. I lost my office and
lost my house. We moved into a basement, and
so times are tough and I think to myself I
went to this thing I said you know what I'm
going to do, I'm going to raise my prices
by four hundred percent. And so that's what
we do, we decided to like raise- instead of
saying, oh times are tough lets cut our prices,
no we raised our prices four times as much
where people were paying me three hundred a month, they started
paying me three hundred a week. We went paperless,
we went virtual. I was able to double the
business back up that next year, lean it off,
and we sold in in the middle of 2010. But
it's understanding that cash flow, and during
that year where businesses were falling off
the map, going back an watching those different
things made the difference, and one of our
clients was an auto body shop and that industry
was hit really hard because if people got
in a wreck, with times tough, they would just
keep that money and they just wouldn't do
that. So the whole industry was dropping a
lot and one of the things that I learned about
that from a numbers standpoint, because he
was doing two, he did about two and a half
million that year, and he had been doing about
three and a half the year before. Well what
we were able to do was we had weekly numbers
with him and we would sit down, and we got
so he knew, he got to the point where he was
like every month I need this much revenue
every single week, and he started watching
his expenses extremely sharp. When things
were off on our numbers, he would go out and
crack the whip. He was able to improve his
margins by ten percent by looking at weekly
numbers and that pretty much saved his business.
Another thing with cash pull so one of the
later clients that I had in the last year
in our accounting firm was, we hit up a company,
they had a pool table company. And they also
sold a lot online, they sold dart boards and
they sold darts. So we came in, they needed
their taxes done, so we're getting them in
like march and they hadn't done any books
for the previous year, and we went back, we
did it, and it's always fun to sit down with
financial to somebody like that. So dealing
with companies that have inventory, knowing
your numbers is even more critical because
they had lived a year at this point, sixteen
months, and they had lost over a hundred thousand
dollars that year. They are loosing ten thousand
dollars a month but, from a cash flow standpoint
they're fine, because they had inventory.
So they're selling it, they were selling things
for a loss but they didn't know they were
loosing. So if money is OK, if you're getting
enough in the bank, you're thinking everything
is OK, it's going to come to a crashing hault.
Oh, you start hiring a couple friends, why?
because there's money in the bank. I'm feeling
good about life because there's money in the
bank. All the sudden once I start getting
in with them, I start sitting down with them
monthly, oh you lost ten thousand dollars
this month. You know all the sudden you start
looking, OK well things need to change or
next month you know you might need to start
looking at letting somebody go. And there's
very few people that I've ever sat down with
a few months in a row and showed them ten
thousand dollar losses that they don't make
changes. But if you don't know you're numbers
you can go a long time, not understanding
that cash flow so that's a really critical
thing. Even for like Gifts For Men, so Gifts
For Men made some money last year, but in
a product inventory business, that profit
is all in product. It's reinvested in that,
so you run into cash flow problems with a
great amount of profitable business, it's
hard to even pay your taxes, why? because
money that I need to pay taxes is in product.
The other thing when it comes to business
setup and starting a business that I really
enjoyed doing numbers of the same business
in the same area and watching it. It would
be like to look of poor, or do you like to
make money. There's different things that
people tell you that you need to be. This
is how it should be done and then there is
real life and adjustment so we did auto repair
shops. We have three different ones. One of
them, their rent was about fifteen hundred
dollars. A smaller plot kind of off the road,
off the part of town, and a smaller shop he
kind of did it by himself, he had one other
person help him. Then another one that was
a little bit bigger there about thirty dive
hundred a month in rent, little bit more overhead,
different expenses, and then there was another
one about eight thousand a month. It was actually
a franchise, it was a Tun-x, and it's location
was prime, it was right off the freeway, they
had the big sign up there so he paid eight
thousand but he also had to pay royalties.
So where this one, it might look prestigious,
they looked fancy, they had a great location,
the guy made no money. He was trying to sell
it to this other shop that did thirty five
hundred dollars. Hey come buy this, why? sure
it looked great from the outside, but the
numbers never worked out. The guy down the
road that ran that little shop, he was more
independent but he was a lot more profitable.
He was bringing home a lot more money. And
I see that all the time, I see hey, do you
want to look important, or do you want to
make money and be able to pay the bills. There's
a big difference there, and with that it was
so, just right in front of me. Holy cow, like
same business, few different angles how to
run that business, and it really impacted
the bottom line. Being able to adapt so for
us, when we, in the one business, pretty much
learn and be able to adapt as you go. For
us it was going paperless. Hey we can charge
more money, we can go paperless and we can,
we can come up with a new system, but we've
got to go after higher clientele. That's 
going to be able to save us, those different
type of things. So sometimes it's asking the
right type of questions, and one thing as
you are starting off businesses a lot of times
if you are running with little overhead, one
thing that I always make sure, is that I didn't
discount my rate because of it. So we were
doing bookkeeping taxes out of our house when
we ended the business, but when we went to
do taxes I didn't discount it. Just I'm not
paying for a huge building in overhead, I
didn't discount my work, that's not my problem.
So a lot of time s it's knowing your value.
For a service that you are providing, just
because you are starting off and that, you
don't need to discount your rate. Don't be
scared to charge market value. Because other
people have overheads and other things like
that, you shouldn't go out and change your
business model because of it, and a lot of
people do that, and that can be a very bad
thing to get into because when you go to scale,
you are not charging enough to pay for all
those other expenses that are going to be
coming down the road. If you start off charging
right as you grow you're in position to get
that building, to get that other thing. For
us, this is my first month in a warehouse
with Gifts For Men Outlet, so we've been in
business for sixteen months and we're finally
getting it. You know for our Osky Blue, two
and a half years we ran it virtually, and
then we got offices, so you can do a lot of
things virtual and keep the overhead down,
and run those businesses. Analyze and Focus
on your Profit Centers. So this right here is a
really important thing because as you get
out there, your starting a business and you
don't exactly know what's going on, as I have in lots of businesses, it's looking
at your profit centers. So we've come down,
How I find my profit centers in my businesses
is a would create a little bar, and these
are the people down here. Pretty much if I
don't like them, I make a little mark. These
are people that I like, who I like. Up here
would be nonprofitable, and these would be
profitable clients. So I come through here
and I go through my client list, so I did
this a couple times, it's a really good idea
to do once a year, and I go through and say
OK, here's this person, well this person yep they're profitable,
this person right here, they're profitable
and I like them, and I'd see where people
end up, and what you want to do is you want
to find these people right here, pretty much the people
that you like, the people that are profitable
and then go through and start finding the characteristics
of those people. What are their income, what
do they do on the weekends, your best marketing
material here is analyzing these people. Then what
you want ot do is look for the things here,
and you want to get rid of these people, because
that's the biggest point. One of the things
that helped me springboard is as we started
our thing, you do anything. If anybody wants
you to do something, hey do you do payroll?
you bet we do payroll. We'll figure out payroll
After doing this thing, after doing this workshop,
after learning from this model from John Janes
which he'd been payed a lot to be a consultant,
I was able to go to training, I came back
and did this to my business and I figured this person
right here was a payroll client. I didn't
charge them much money. They didn't make much
money, and I'd have to go hand over this quarterly
thing, hey here's this thing you need to sign,
by the way you have to pay the government
forty six dollars. She'd have a heart attack
on me, forty six! It was this mail place and
I was just like, and then she had to pay me
fifty dollars for three months of this and
I was just like that was painful that was
miserable. So you know we end up and going
through and we ended up selling off our payroll which
helped get us a cash injection, and helped us
so we could really target market these people
right here and that's what really helped take my
business that next year was getting
rid of, either firing and that, and then going
to sales appointments and listening to people
like you know what, no if you can't do that
then you are not an ideal client for me. Being
able to say no to business is really what
gets you up here, and can take the business to the next level. On a service business, it can be that way
there's going to be a certain type of clients
that you are going to make all of your money.
They're going to- twenty percent of your clients
is going to make you eighty percent of your
profit, and your profit centers can be if
you are looking at a service business... So
we had a client who owned a gas station, there's
pretty much only two gas stations up there.
If you have a gas station, you can only buy
product from the guy that brings it to you,
you know and they have a certain price, but
to him that didn't make sense. If he went
down to the city and bought from Costco, his
margins were a lot better. He thought outside
the box. Allot of times people tell you it's
a certain way looking at the other side of
the box, but for him doing that, that became
a profit center. The other thing that was
a profit center which a lot of people don't
think of, so he has this gas station and he
has this tire center, all of his profit was
in an ice machine. He bagged his own ice.
So this guy would take off two months a year
and go and stay in his house in Hawaii and
just close down the gas station because he
could. Pretty much all this year this little
ice machine he said he'd walk by all the time
and he'd just lean against is and he'd just
give it a little rub. It can be random things
like that can be your profit centers, and
if you are aware of it, that can make a big
difference in your business and in your bottom
line. And that's really they key to figure
that out, that's where this really comes into
play. Where are those profit centers? Who are my profitable people? and sticking with
those because that at the end of the day,
re-adapting is going to make those happen.
So those are some lessons from me. Alright
let me talk about systems and technology,
just a little bit about, kind of going along
here. And how's everybody doing? Are you still
alive? Do you have any ice cream? No I don't
have any ice cream, does anybody else have
ice cream? I'm going to send a runner out
to get some ice cream, lame. I am grateful
to work with Troy because he is truly one
of those visionary people, and I will talk
about that in a little bit. So, a little bit
about my background. I am one of those people
who was on both sides. I worked for the University
of North Carolina for a really long time as
a tech guy, a we developer. I worked for them
for about eight or nine years, and during
that entire time I was working for them, I
was also building up Van's websites, Jeff
Vans, yes I know very unique, we'll talk a
lot about the branding on that one. On the
side, I basically found out that I could build
websites and people would pay me money for
it. I was like this is great, I can actually
make money doing this? And it was so exciting
for me because I was doing something that
I love and building websites and people were
paying me, and I kind of started building
up this side business over the years as I've
worked at UNC, and it eventually got the point
where I had too many clients, I had too many
people that needed my time, and I couldn't
handle it anymore. It's just one of those
things where I just cant do this all day,
every single day. It was really quite a lot.
It was basically, I was working eighty hours
a week, because I had my forty hour a week
job plus I had forty hours a week that I needed
to spend working on Van's websites, and keeping
my clients happy and I couldn't handle that
anymore so I approached a friend of mine and
said hey, can I sell my business to you? What
I had done over the years in order to make
sure I could manage this eighty hour a week
job, is I had built systems. I had technical
skills that allowed me to optimize and automate
so much of the business. Billing I didn't
have to deal with because I built it into
the system. All sorts of support was built
into the system. Every single one of my clients
were automatically billed and automatically
got a certain number of hours of support each
month, and you know I didn't even know half
the time what I was doing. I'll be honest,
I was just like well it would be nice if I
did this so I built it. Alright I code it
out and I make it do something. Well when I approach
my friend and I said hey, do you want to buy
my business from me, he was open to the idea
but then I showed him my back end and he was
like, wow, this is amazing! Does this system
come with it? and I'm like well yeah, you
can have my system. I also had people in place.
I had found good partners, good technical partners
that could help that went with the business. Everything
that they needed to take over my business
and then make their business better came with
it. So kind of one lesson, and I'm kind of
couching my area here I just want to give
you some nuggets that I think are really useful,
thing that will help in your business. When
you are starting a business you need to figure
out ways to automate it so that you can
become a competitive advantage, and in the
business world that's a really important thing.
You got to have some sort of niche, you got
to have a way to be able to be better than
your competition because there's always competition
out there. My Tech Trainers, this is one of
the businesses that I started that I learned
the most from because it was a total failure.
It was one of those businesses that I invested
a lot of money in, what I did with this business
is I wanted to move back to Texas. My family
is here I was out in North Carolina, and I
started up this business, I'm investing the
money that I have in the bank, my saving and
all that sort of stuff into this business.
Things are going OK. I build up what I think
is a great business and it really was a good
business. I had all the planning. I had all
the model. I had built this entire business
up only to realized that I can't get clients
because I don't have John. I don't have this
guy that can sell anything to anybody because
I'm not a salesman. I'm a technician, I'm
a manager, I'm the guy that can build these
things and put these things together, but
I don't have really good system for marketing.
So I tried to learn marketing. I tried to
figure out my way the best that I can but
in the end it's just not a good fit for me.
On the idea of finding good partners, and
I should really let troy tell this story,
but he reaches out to me one day on LinkedIn,
right, he reaches out to me I live here in
the area, and he's like hey, we should talk.
I came across him online and he, to me he
was a perfect person. I knew that he could
handle what we need to, up to this point me
and John had had the business two, two and
a half years, the web SCO company and neither
of us knew how to program anything. It was
kind of one of those things, figure out a
business and then get the right people in
place. So I found him, and this guy can pretty
much do anything that I ever need and want
and we're going to be... What was neat about
this sort of experience for me was that you
know, like I love business, I love starting
a business but I would never have the courage
to do it again after the experiences with
My Tech Trainers, experiences and those things,
and I have a family. I have four kids to support,
I have a wife.  Partners allowed me to
be able to go and work on business much better.
It allowed me too, to also not eat it. When
you are working by yourself, My Tech Trainers
and other things about that one that I think,
another reason, there's probably a bazillion
reasons why that business failed, but one
big one was that I was doing it alone. There
was no partners, there was only my mind and
as proud as I might be about the things that
I can do, when I'm able to bounce things off
of Troy and John, it's better. When you have
someone else that you can work with, that
you can collaborate with, that you can talk
through, it's going to be better and usually
it's worth the investment as long as you find
the right people to work with, so that's kind
of an interesting idea. Another principle
that I think is really important is that you
can innovate anywhere. I've always been an
innovator. I worked for the University of
North Carolina as I talked about and one of
the initiatives on campus at UNC, note the
web infrastructure was crazy. There was web
systems across the entire University. This
is a huge research one University. We have
hundreds of departments and each department
had their own web system. Well I decided that
we needed to have WordPress on campus so I
went to my boss, 
and my boss though I was crazy, and I said
hey, I want to start this WordPress initiative.
I want to build a WordPress multi site here
on campus and he looked at me and said alright
well if you can find people to do it with
you, then go ahead. So I just, like any young
person, I said alright I'm just going to do
it, and I went and I found people on campus
and I just sent them all these notes. People
I had never met before but I knew they
had the skills that I needed and I said we're
going to have lunch. Come to lunch and we're
going to make this happen, and I basically
said to them, hey we're going to build this
thing on campus and your going to be apart
of it. You're going to provide the server,
you're going to do the coding, you're going
to do this and I'll run this sort of thing.
I built this system up and what happened with
it was within six months we had about a hundred
sites on there and maybe about two hundred
users. The next year, we had about two thousand
sites, and about five thousand users, and
what they ended up doing at UNC is they replaced
all campus web systems with this content management
system. Everything on campus was consolidated
into on e single web system where they didn't
have all this dispersed stuff anymore, which
saved the University millions of dollars,
I'm not even joking millions of dollars. I mean millions
and millions of dollars because they didn't
have all these web systems anymore. All because
some guy, who and at the time I was an instructional
technologist. I wasn't a leader, I wasn't
a manager, I wasn't anything but some guy
that worked inside, I wasn't even in the main
IT group, I was in the Arts and Sciences IT
as an instructional technologist who created
this system which replaced the campus system.
They of course created jobs for me, I led
up the initiative. They, you know, I helped
the migration, everything that happened for
moving UNC over to this system. Now if you
go to UNC and any other site at UNC.edu they
are all run off of this multi site network
that I started and built up just because I
had the courage to say something. Now I think
you can innovate anywhere, it doesn't matter
if your being an entrepreneur, it is more
about innovation than anything else and having
the courage to try something. You know, speak
out and say something, it doesn't mean you
have to leave your job. I'm all about taking
risks. Googleize, this is a book that I wrote
back in 2008 or so Google was pretty big and they were making a
big push at becoming a competitor to Microsoft
with Google Apps, and I just have this internal
optimism that it doesn't matter what people
say, I can just call anybody and try to make
anything happen so I called Google. I figured
out a way to try to get in contact with Google
and back then that was pretty hard to figure
that out, but I did and I ended up getting
in contact with people there and I worked
with Google to write a book which was pretty
dang awesome. That's another one of those
things where you just reach out, talk to people
try anything that you can because at the end
of the day the people that are rewarded are
those that take risks. You know there are
so many people that when I talk with them
later on they are like what? You got in contact
with Google? You actually worked with Google?
They talk to people? They exist? There are
people there? It was just one of those things
that I just decided that I was just going
to try to do it. Why not? Why not reach out?
So that's just kind of another idea out there
to try. A couple other little topics here.
I'm a big fan of obviously using technology.
Because I'm a tech guy, I always have ideas
about using technology because I'm a coder
I can build things online right. You know
it's one of those things where if you can
dream it I can build it. So Affiliate Marketing.
Basically the way Affiliate Marketing works
is you join a program like Google Ad Sense.
You put Ad Sense on a blog, and you get paid
every single time someone comes to your site.
It could be five cents, it could be twenty
cents, it could be whatever else. Well if
you take all of these different systems and
put them together, all of the sudden you can
build, one of the ones that I built was a
garage sale network which automatically pulled
posts from Craig's List, and parts it out
into cities and so then I had thousands of
sites that were just automatically pulling
data onto this garage sale network and it
just had ad sense on it and every single day
I'd watch money go into my bank account. It's
sort of this idea where you take technology
and you're creative with it. Yo're like how
can I use different pieces and put those together
in a way that can make me money. That was
one of my more successful technology endeavors.
You need a plan. I'm a big proponent of having
plans. You need to jump in, but it's good
to have people that can plan. Like Troy, he's
a thinker. I'm a planner. Troy will come to
me all of the time and we'll just sit down
and we'll have these ideas, and I'll sit down
and take them and consolidate them all and
create them into some sort of plan about what
it is that we're going to do. If you can plan
then you are going to be a lot more successful
than if you just jump into something. That's
not to say you can't be successful because
there are many many examples of people that
just jump right in and make it all work, but
if you can make plans, come up with business
plan, protect yourself with contracts. Those
are things that are going to be useful down
the line. It is very tempting to go into any
business arrangement with a client without
putting a contract together, especially when
you are first starting. It's not very difficult
to get a simple contract together. You can
use something like Eco Sign or some of these
other online system. Just write out a simple
contract, that will help- it's not only just
a legal thing. Even if you just write it up
yourself, it can help to manage expectations
with your clients, so if there is any problem
down the line, which it's going to happen,
you are going to have these ones over here.
If that happens, you can always go back and
say, I'm sorry this isn't working, this is
what we agreed to do, let's see if we can
work on getting this together and that way
there's no misunderstanding. If you set that
up in advanced too, it's going to be a whole
lot better. One other thing kind of along
these lines, having a process in place is
really helped a lot in things like Osky Blue
and building websites. I have at Osky Blue
a pretty defined process that we go through
when we build sites for our clients, and I
give that to our clients right when we start,
right from the beginning, this is what you
can expect from Osky Blue. I have a document
that says communication is important from
Osky Blue. We try to help you out twenty four
hours a day, but we have families. We are
here from eight to five, that's when you can
expect to get a hold of us. After hours, we
will make our best effort to help you out,
and we send that to our clients right when
they sign up, right from the very beginning
so that they understand here is the expectation.
This is what we are trying to do for you,
and if you set that up right in the very beginning,
sort of the expectations, you're going to
do a whole lot better on the process. Keeping
customers happy. Now this is a, you could
have multiple week workshops on keeping customers
happy. I'm sure each of you in here have your
own stories about successful experiences with
business as well as unsuccessful experiences.
I have a couple of principles that I really
try to live by. One of them I actually got
at UNC. We had what we called the hero model
at UNC where I, in the department of Arts
and Sciences. We called it the hero model.
Basically what it was, if you can do something
for a client within reasonable expectations,
you do it. Whether it's your job or not, whether
it's underneath the contract or not, you do
whatever you can to keep someone happy. If
you can keep a client happy, even if it's
going to cost you an extra fifty bucks, and
they are paying you five grand, then an extra
fifty bucks of your time to do something that
you may not be contracted for but you know
how to do like help them with their email,
help them to do this or that, can really go
a long way for keeping clients happy. For
making client so that not only they love you,
but you love being with them because they
are so grateful for your help and your service.
Now there's always going to be people you
go the extra mile for and they're going to
demand more and demand more. They're defiantly
in that twenty percent, or in that eighty
percent that you want to get rid of. You know,
the twenty percent that takes eighty percent
of your time for down here. But going the
extra mile with your clients can make such
a huge difference and it can also be the thing
that differentiates you from so many others.
When there are so many options out there for
web site companies or for IT service professionals
or whatever it is your doing, if you're starting
a business, then you need to be able to differentiate
yourself from them. That's kind of a big one.
Let me finish off because I want to make sure
I give John some time, here are some of my
favorite things right now. Web Apps that I
use on a regular basis, OK, these are, this includes
like everyday I use this stuff. Asana is a
project management system. It's free. We use
that for managing all of Osky Blue and for
all of the projects that we do. Fantastic
program, highly, highly recommend it.  I think
it's free for up to fifteen people in your
group. So if you are just getting started
and you need a way to manage stuff, look at
Asana. Harvest is a time tracking tool. You
need to know the data about your business.
Harvest, basically you can set it up to 
where every single project is tracked down
to every single client. You can even set it
up automated billing to your clients so that
if you work a certain number of hours, if you are an hourly type of business, Harvest
is a great app. We don't typically bill hourly,
but I want to know how much I spend on a project.
This all goes back to the data. If we're selling
websites for two grand, and it's costing us
two grand, that's not a great website to be
building for people. You're just working down
here and you're not making any money at all.
You need to be able to know that hey, on that
website that we built, it ended up costing
us eight hundred dollars, and we charged them
three grand so that's great. We made extra
money from that so its important to know that.
Help Scout is a shared task system. There's
a lot of support systems out there, that happens
to be the one we use. It's fantastic for basically,
if you're doing communication with clients,
the second that it gets beyond you, if you're
doing all of your communication in email,
it can become lost. You won't know what's
going on, someone else needs to step in and
take over a project, and you don't know where
it's at. You don't know what was said, what
was promised. This is a sharred system that
basically lets you have a shared ticket or
whatever communication you do. WordPress,
I'm a huge WordPress fan. If you're building
a website, you need to use WordPress. John
will talk more about this. DaVinci is a, this
is sort of getting more into the virtual stuff.
It's a service that allows you to have
an answering service that makes you look professional,
and you have an office. If you're working
remotely, or if you have a home office it's
a great way to be more professional. Bidstetch
allows you to create proposals very, very fast.
If you are working on proposals and you need
that to be done. Eco Sign is that last one
I mentioned where you can set up contracts
and people can sign them online, but they're
all about fifteen dollars a month. They're
all affordable, they're all between ten and
twenty dollars. OK, that's kind of the end
of my stuff. Any questions for me? the tech
guy, the production guy. A little history
of Osky Blue. We've been around for about
four and a half years. We we weren't always
called Osky Blue. Our company was originally
called East Texas Bids. We started out in
Tyler, Texas and what it originally was, was
Troy showed me this company where it was just
a website that just sold advertising on it.
Just imagine like an online directory, and
within the first six months, we were going and it was it was a smaller
area, and we found that as I was going to
sell advertising, I'd go up to them and be
like hey, do you want to advertise on my website,
hey do you know how to edit my facebook page?
I was like, I didn't, but I did know how to
use Google so you just go to Google and was
like setup a business facebook page. So I'd
sit there for five minutes and I'd set them
up a page, and I found out that while I'm
trying to sell to people, they're like can
you set up a facebook page. Well I was like
alright, yeah, we charge two hundred and fifty
dollars for that. So I called Troy and was
like. oh, we sell facebook setup pages now.
I get those calls all the time. So what we
did is we were directors in East Texas Bids,
it was a directory, so after about six months
when we started getting clients outside, you
know we weren't just a directory anymore,
and we started getting clients outside of
east Texas. So when we were trying to get
clients in Dallas, they were like oh, your
an east Texas company. So I was like alright,
we got to change you name Troy. So alright
we, cover all of Texas so lets change our
name to Texas Bids Solutions. All problems
fixed right? because we cover the whole state
of Texas, so now we are offering, you know
where we can set up social media. Then someone
comes up to me and goes thanks for setting
that up, do you guys build websites? One thing that I learned was that you just always say yes to everything
Oh yeah, we build websites.
And to this day I don't
know how to build a website, Troy doesn't
know how to build a website, so it's adapting
to the market when we saw a need. So I mean
we knew that we had resources, so I was like
yeah we can build you a website. So sure enough
I leave the apartment, and I'm like hey Troy,
we need to find somebody that can build a
website, and this is what we need to charge
for it, or charge you know so we can make
money. So we still provided a great service.
Three weeks later they had a website and we
just found that need. Well so everything is
going great right? We moved to Frisco Texas
Bid Solutions and we actually had a few clients
from North Carolina and we start asking for
some refferals, and what we found out was
we love your company, but when they heard
we use a Texas company, that's a huge turn
off. We're proud of our Texas roots but guess
what, people from outside Texas don't love
Texas. What? Yeah believe it or not, true
story. So what we decided, alright, we've
only been around two years, we've changed
our name twice already so I go to Troy, and
I'm not a marketing guy and you can just name
the company whatever you like. I was just
like my favorite color is blue, I want to
wear blue clothes, so just name it whatever
you want. Osky is Troy's real dog, he does exitst,  that's
his dog named Osky so the company became Osky
Blue. So that's a little history of the company
and also to educate you to adapting to a market
because a lot of people are going I don't
know where to start. Troy and I didn't know
where to start, we just knew that we were
going to go out there and find what people
need and you'll slowly kind of adapt. We started
off having an online directory. Then we're
offering building social media pages, to building
websites, to now we do search engine optimization,
SCO. Now we even do software development.
We had to adapt to the market of what people
do. What you have to do now is you have to
get out there. My wife and I, we go on kicks
of what show we've been watching and we've
been watching How I Met Your Mother. Does anybody watch that show? OK only one person will get this.
OK, there's,
and I can't even think of his name the architect,
Ted Mosbey. So he's this architect and he's
starting this business and he's just spending
all of his time on designing his logo, designing
his website, deciding what pen he should use.
Designing how the contract should look. All
of those marketing materials, but he never
actually gets out. Really, more than anything,
you just need to go out there. It's like I
need to make sure I have the perfect pitch.
I got to have my ideal client. No, just go
out and market yourself, I mean the best you
can do is go knock on a door. That's what
I did. My goal, I mean I would report back
to Troy, I was like here's seventy business
cards that I collected, I knocked on seventy
doors today, and that's what I would do. I
would go and know on every door. A good resource
locally, has anyone used meet up? Meet up,
I highly, highly recommend. Troy introduced
me to meet up. I didn't realize how powerful
tool- it's free. Meet up- MEETUP.com. It's
a website. So what meetup is, is initially
when Troy told me I was like well I'm married
I'm not looking for anyone, but what it is
is it's a resource where you find people that
are interested in biking, interested in hiking.
More importantly, you find network groups
that say, we are the north Collin County network
group. We are the morning network group. We
are the BMI group. We are the toastmasters
group, and you can find groups that are very
quick opportunities to meet people, because
you just need to go out and meet people. And
ninety percent of the time they are all free.
They all go and meet at an Ihop in the morning
and thirty get together and that's better.
Before nine AM I get to interact with thirty
other business people that I can sell my services
and vise versa. Meet up is great, LinkedIn,
is anyone not on LinkedIn? You need to be
on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably one of your
best assets as an individual. I tell people
that, and I know this crowd might be a little
older, but when my daughter turn eighteen,
I'm going to get her a LinkedIn profile and
just start building it up because if Troy
and Jeff fire me tomorrow, I feel that I have
an asset that my LinkedIn, my thousand connections,
my endorsements, my recommendations, I can
take that with me. That's not something that
Osky Blue gets to keep, that's something you
individually get to keep. It's a very, very
powerful tool, and it's alot of- I call LinkedIn
social media for grownups. It's just extremely
powerful. So those are some of the best resourses.
Knocking on doors, use meetup, LinkedIn, and
another great one is Chamber of Commerce.
People don't know we're a member of four chambers,
Little Elm, Plano, McKinney, Frisco. The one
I'm most active in is Frisco. If you guys
don't know, we are in a hotbed of business.
Yeah Frisco, so Frisco Chamber just to give
you an example, plug for them, you can join
the camber for like thirty five bucks a month.
To me that's very inexpensive marketing. What
comes with that is you can go to ribbon cuttings,
different events. The thing I love is every
Thursday morning at seven thirty to nine,
a hundred plus people go to the chamber, and
they all get a thirty second commercial. It
was today, I was there this morning. There
was a hundred and five people. So image, before
nine o'clock, interacting with another hundred
business owners from carpet cleaners, to attorneys,
to insurance, to auto repair shops, AC, website
companies, you're all in there and you know
you stand up and give a thirty second commercial
and you network, and it's a great resource
to create business, get your name out in the
community, get contacts with people, so joining
your local chamber is a great resource. I
would highly, highly recommend it. So here's
something to understand, build up your business
and your personal identity. Alright so lets
go into personal and then go into your business.
Your personal identity, branding is extremely,
extremely important. I can't emphasize this,
we were at a job fair, and I got seventeen
applications of people that I planned to interview,
so here they are. I go home, took them to
Jeff like dang, I got seventeen applications
of people I want us to interview and look
good. After I went to facebook, I only wanted
to interview three of them. So people look
at this, and I had this gentleman, he was
actually at this school and he came up to
me and said, that's not right. You shouldn't
be judging people by their their facebook
or by their online profile, and this is how
I look at it is OK, well I want you to spend
five thousand dollars on an employe, and I
don't want you to question anything about
him. I'll just pick the person out of whoever
because when it's coming out of your pocket,
I can't take the risk of going alright, I'm going
to pay someone five thousand a month and I
find out that it looks like this is their
fifth sitting in the last eight months. A
lot of different things, or I see that they
are always up until three AM. I have clients
that expect us to be in the office at eight
AM and take calls and if you're not coming
in, that's great, you've lost your job, but
we've lost a client that's paying us two thousand
a month. So no, you better believe we're not
going to take that risk, and expect it at
every level. From a small company to a large.
It is really important what you do, I just
highly caution it, because you just don't
realize, I wouldn't say if someone is, just
plan on it. They're going to look you up,
and before I go to a sales meeting, I can
honestly say I've done this for probably three
straight years, every sales appointment I
go to, I google their name. I look them up
on LinkedIn, I look them up on facebook, why?
Because I wan't to go into that appointment
before I meet mark, I want to know that he's
a TCU fan so that I know I'm going to bring
up the Horn Frogs. I know that he used to
play lacrosse, so I know that I'm going to
bring up lacrosse, and I'm going to control
that conversation and he doesn't even know
it. And so, I use it as a sales technique.
Yeah, the last thing he wants to hear is oh,
man did you see Baylor win the other night.
He's like what? He hates Baylor. You know
so you can use it in two different ways, so
make sure your online presence is a good representation
of what you want to be putting out there.
So jump into business identity. This is where
I think it is really important. If you are
going to start up a business, and you hate
facebook, you hate twitter, that's totally
OK, but what you do need to do is you need
to claim your assets. So let me give you an
example, lets say we start Osky Blue up, and
we built a website, and we're just like we
hate twitter, and we're running along good,
and six months later we're like maybe you
know what, we want to do twitter. So we go
on twitter and we want to get the domain name
Osky Blue. Well someone took it, and who took
it? because we are the only people in the entire-
not cmompetitors, it's someone in
the Philippines. And someone in the phillipies
has the twitter page Osky Blue, and so I'll
reach out to him, and it's dormat, they're
not doing anything with it, and twitter pages
are free, and so we send him a message, hey
we noticed you're not doing anything, can
we use this Osky Blue, or pay you five bucks.
Yes, for seven hundred and fifty bucks you
can have this twitter account. So people are
squatting on twitter names? On everything,
on twitter, on facebook, yes! There are software
out there that they can look at what domains
they bought and after they see that, so there's
people in the Philippines that are just waiting,
it's not going to happen overnight but they
are just going to go and buy your digital
assets, so that if you want them, you have
to buy them back. And if you don't have deep
pockets, you're not a MasterCard, or American
Express, and you can fight the legal system,
you just lost it. So all the sudden, now we
have Osky Blue website, and our twitter page
is Osky Blue1, and our Facebook page is Osky
Blue-Frisco because all the other ones were
taken. You want to go and claim all of your
assets, but these are free and you need to
claim them. You Facebook business page, your
twitter, your YouTube, your Google Plus, is
free, not imperative but then you might want
to go into pintrist, but usually those four,
if no other reason those are important. LinkedIn?
Yes, but those are authoritative links also,
so what they do by setting them up and linking
them back to your website, it's also for SCO
purposes, it helps you rank higher. Because
that's whats going to pull up, like if you
search Osky Blue, here's another reason why
you do it. If I type in Osky Blue, Google
starts to read that it's a website company,
and lets say we didn't claim our social media
assets, here's ours, and right below it, it
would pull up our competitors, even though
you typed in Osky Blue. But because we claimed
them, when you type in Osky Blue, our website
pulls up, our Facebook page, our LinkedIn,
our YouTube, our Google Plus, then our links
to like the Frisco Chamber. Those pop up rather
than your competitors. Because I know competitors
that haven't claimed it. Their website pops
up and then it's all their other competitors
because they have no other digital assets.
We appreciate y'all having us, hopefully it
was helpful.
