Be a Visionary: Dream Big, Think Long-Term

In the earliest days of starting up a business (an earlier company, long before IAC-EZ) my focus was on “today”. Each day – “today” – was a new challenge and I would sit down at my desk and work hard that day to make “today” count. It sounds like a good plan. And, if you add up the successes of each “today”, you end up with something significant at the end of the year.

In retrospect, though, I didn’t give enough attention to “tomorrow” in my earliest business ventures. I was too focused on now to think of later. It’s an easy habit to get into as a business owner because you’re just starting up and just trying to make sales and all you can do is make right now count for something.

But there does a come a point (and it’s different for every entrepreneur, I’ve found), when you realize you’re on a bit of a treadmill. Yes, you might be building a strong foundation of good “todays” but every day starts at zero and you try to do something significant and never quite finish everything you’d like to do. And, by focusing on “today”, it’s harder to make investment decisions for your business for the long term.

Everyone might start by thinking about “today” but eventually smart business owners make the switch to thinking about “tomorrow”. They go from building the foundation of the business to building the future of the business. They make decisions that might slightly increase short-term expenses but ultimately improve long-term profitability.

I just read an interesting (but perhaps controversial) article called “What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn from Mark Zuckerberg“. Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has received a lot of bad press from the privacy-related missteps he’s made in recent months, but you do have to credit him with building such a game-changing site. The article talks about Zuckerberg’s vision for his company and the web, which the article’s author says is measured in decades, not weeks or months.

I think this is a great step to work towards, although I also recognize that it’s not going to be easy for entrepreneurs who are busy focusing on “today”. So, start with this: Why not take a few minutes to write down your vision for the rest of this year. Let it percolate for a couple of days then take a few minutes to write down your vision for next year. Let that percolate for a couple of days. Then take a few minutes to write down your vision for the next 2-3 years. Then the next 5 years. Then the next decade. Give some time between each exercise so you can think it and live with it for a while. And don’t be afraid to be bold. We live in a world that changes fast and we may be using resources in 5 years that we can’t even conceive of today.

This isn’t a technique that will change how you think overnight, but it can change how you think (and how your business grows) over the long-term.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Independent Contractors: A money saver? Or an audit trigger?

Independent contractors are great to have: You can bring them in when you need them and they’re highly proficient. When you don’t need them, they’re not taking up office space and getting paid for checking Facebook. For that reason, independent contractors are ideal to help you save money (spend only when you need to) while getting great quality service (because they usually know what they are doing). There are fewer hassles when it comes to insurance, healthcare, and other employee-related expenses.

But independent contractors might now trigger an audit. Over the next few years, as the US government looks for ways to find people who are avoiding paying taxes, they will be looking closely at independent contractor status workers and identifying times when businesses have an independent contractor who really should be classified as an employee.

The article that brought it to our attention was this short one at BusinessInsider.com and they reference this page at the IRS site which outlines the difference between an independent contractor and an employee.

If you’re legitimately hiring independent contractors to do the work, you’re probably in the clear. If you’re trying to avoid paying taxes and have employees that you’re calling independent contractors, you might have some explaining to do.

Take a moment to review the status of the people working for you. If they are independent contractors, check them against the criteria listed on the IRS site and see if you can clarify and document the reason that they are independent contractors instead of employees.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Your time has a price tag

A freelancing friend recently told me that he had stopped reading a blog. I usually hear about people starting to read blogs but rarely do they intentionally stop reading one. If you stop, it’s usually just because you forget or have other things to do. However, he told me his reasoning and it makes perfect sense: The blog was too engaging but it didn’t contribute to the growth of his business.

He was quick to point out that a highly engaging blog is a good thing, and it’s okay to read outside of your specific industry, but this blog was basically keeping him from working. “My time,” he said, “has a price tag on it. If a blog doesn’t educate or inform me or help me to grow my business, I’m not going to do it during work time.”

There is a fine balance and self employed people have a hard time finding and maintaining that balance. A few minutes of Farmville on Facebook isn’t a big deal. Even hours of it isn’t that big of a deal… if you still have time to do your work. But the real problem is when a few minutes turns into a few hours during work time!

People who sell products don’t always see the same challenge as people who sell services. That’s because a product is a self-contained thing and it can take just as much effort to sell one product as it does to sell ten products. However, people who sell services have a greater challenge because there is a time factor involved. If they “invest” their time in working, it delivers a return. If they “spend” their time frivolously on non-essentials, the time is lost.

This year, how will you spend your time? Will you be frugal, wisely investing with an awareness of the financial ramifications?

- Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Glue Conference 2009

I’m not a web developer or programmer. I’m the social media guru for IAC-EZ. I use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, but my knowledge of how and why these sites work internally is limited.

I’m also a part of a company that integrates with others, like Freshbooks, but again my knowledge of exactly how the integration process works on the backend is limited.

But at IAC-EZ we insist that everyone on our team should know at least a little bit about everything, which is why I was fortunate enough to be sent to the first annual Glue Conference held in Denver, Colorado this past week.

Devoted to solving the web-application problem set, Glue attendees included architects, developers, administrators and integrators who are trying to ’solve the internet’.

Glue was a wonderful experience for me. I met some really great people, including software evangelist Ben Kepes of Cloud Ave- who I ‘knew’ prior to the conference in the online world only. Non-developer/programmer Ben and I offered each other moral support when some of the really technical things went a little over our heads, (we’re still trying to figure out exactly what SAML is) but all in all I learned a ton!

I also got to spend some time with Sunir Shah of Freshbooks, whom I had met previously at SXSW earlier this year, and I made some great new friends including Fernando Padilla, lead architect at Citizen Sports Network, Jeremy Powers, software development engineer at Amazon (no, he does not work in the Cloud), Scott Galvin, founder of X13, and Krishnan Subramanian of Cloud Ave, just to name a few.

Glue gave attendees a really good look at where we’ve been and where we are going, in terms of IT.

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Group, took us all the way back to vertical integration in the mainframe era, and to the 64 kb PC- which was a really disruptive piece of technology because no one expected it, and it was widely dismissed as irrelevant to computing in the 1970s. Mitch of course has seen every technological disruption since then- from the PC to the Cloud. But one point that he made was that the web was not inevitable- it could have gotten so screwed up that everyone just gave up on it. (Lucky for us it didn’t!)

Open identity and the idea of increased sharing was one of the topics frequently discussed at Glue. Josh Elman from Facebook talked about Facebook Connect and their goal to help people share more and be more open. Drummond Reed also did a presentation on information cards, which are like open id, but they are a little deeper in terms of security, and hold credit card and other information.

IaaS, SaaS and PaaS was also a heavily discussed topic at Glue, especially among the panels. Lew Moorman of Rackspace did a great presentation in which he talked about the Cloud as a movement and a technology. He also stressed that the Cloud should be for everyone, but not everything. It gives IT new tools to use, but there are some old tools that will always remain.

To wrap up Glue, Bob Frankston, co-creator of VisiCalc, gave us a glimpse into what he feels is the future of IT. According to him there will be no twisty passages. There will not be pirates creating billable events. It will not be pristine, and there will be great opportunity to discover possibilities. Then, he said, we can begin to talk.

Eric Norlin and his wife Kim, along with their staff of volunteers did a tremendous job of hosting the event. The Hyatt Regency provided a great location in beautiful downtown Denver, and the sponsors kept us well fed, with pastries and coffee each morning, lunch both days and a reception with free drinks and snacks the first night.

Like I said, Glue was a great experience for me, and I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking of attending next year!

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ