My Web Design Business

I just launched my web design business based in Lethbridge. This is something I’ve wanted to do since high school.

There’s two types of people in the world: dreamers and doers. I’ve been (and still am to an extent) a dreamer. Dreamers are people with ideas. They’ll tell you about these ideas until the cows come home (I wonder where that expression comes from. Cows don’t graze on their own, but I heard goats do! Maybe it should be “until the goats come home”). Often these ideas are great and if executed properly could turn out to be BIG. However, that’s just it, they don’t execute and let their ideas rot. I’m moving away from being a dreamer to being a doer. Doers execute in rapid succession. While dreamers talk about the awesome they’re going to make, doers are already doing it (and maybe failing and trying again!).

I’ve dreamt of having a web design business since high school. I’ve even got mockups to prove it! I took forever to pick and name then didn’t like it. Took forever to pick another one, registered a domain name. It went stale and I didn’t like that one too. Rinse and repeat. That’s until now. I pray to God that I start becoming more of a doer as dreaming alone leaves you immobile.

Why Google is the BEST

Google has something called Google Webmaster Tools. As the name suggests, they are meant to help webmasters help google discover their websites. I used it, it worked!

That same google page, kindly enough, mentioned that Bing and Yahoo! also have their version of webmaster tools. I tried both of them with nothing but problems! That’s why google is the best. I didn’t think the Google tools were special because they just worked, as expected. This was until I tried Bing and Yahoo! where the tools failed miserably. Especially Bing’s.

Pleasure to Work With You

Darren, the general manager at BHL, was essentially my first web design client. He’s an amazing guy to work with. No hassle and no pain. I do the work, get feedback, implement it, and he’s happy . Have you heard about the client from hell? Well, Darren, is the exact opposite!

Lethbridge Roofing and Insulation

Today, we just launched the website for his company, BHL. BHL provides a number of services including roofing, insulation, sound proofing, fireproofing, construction for the Lethbridge area.

Highly Recommended

I highly recommend Darren and BHL for Lethbridge roofing and the other services they provide. Truly a great person to work with.

The Struggle

I’ve been struggling to come up with a theme for this blog; to write something that people will want to read. That is one of the reasons why I started using “Software and business” as a slogan. What I was trying to do is copy the success of Joel Spolsky; he talks about software and business, so I should do the same, I thought.

Well, I’m going to digress, just a tad.

The Epiphany

Just now, that’s right, at 4 a.m. in the morning, I had this stroke of insight. As a customer, I feel that I get mistreated by companies, sometimes and this is natural. Depending on the offense, I’ll stop doing business with that particular company. Now, as a self proclaimed, “future entrepreneur”, it’s only wise that I learn from the mistakes of the others and treat my customers right. With that in mind, I’m going to write posts that speak to the future me, so I will not forget these lessons, God Willing. They shall be tagged #notetoself.

Note to Self: Appreciate Your Customers

In every relationship, it’s a natural tendency to want to be appreciated. After all, who wants to be useless? That is especially important in a loyal relationship (including business-to-customer).
First, I think, we should answer the question as to what it means to appreciate your customers. While I might not know what appreciation exactly entails, I do know that it entails more than just claiming to appreciate. Although I’m often told that my business is appreciated, I certainly don’t feel appreciated when I have to wait for extended periods for a business to serve me, be it on the phone or person. As a recent example, I was trying to phone a certain floral company (PinkLotus) to ensure the online order I had placed had gone through and to give some specific delivery instructions. I called at least three times. The first two times the phone must have rung for a good twenty times; no one answered. I seriously wondered if the site was just a scam with no real presence! The third time, after it rang for a good while, someone picked up, finally.

Another bad example of customer appreciation is my experience with Telus. A few years back, I called Telus to cancel my internet connection as I was switching to the competition. I got transferred to the retention centre, and after telling the agent that I was about to go with the competition because it’s cheaper, he offered a discount! Excuse me?! When I was a loyal customer, you never cared, but now that I’m leaving, you care enough to offer me a discount?! It never occurred to you to say, “hey, Gezim has been such an awesome customer, let’s show him we appreciate his business!” Last minute retention doesn’t show customer appreciation.

That was years ago. What reminded me of all this was a similar incident that happened yesterday. I had been a customer of DiscoverULife for almost a year. The price I was paying for the coaching service was not cheap. Yesterday, I told my coach that I want to cancel my subscription with them because 1) I couldn’t afford it, 2) I didn’t find it effective*. Like in the Telus example, he offered a special discount because he appreciated our relationship, in addition, he said he’d offer the same discount to two addition people which I could refer! ARE YOU KIDDING?! Up to now, you milked me for all I was worth, and now you offer a special discount for me and two friends?!

Anyway,

Dear future entrepreneur, show your loyal customers that you appreciate their business. If you know how to show them that you appreciate them, do it. If you don’t, something like this might work:

• Offer a special discount,
• Send a gift, or
• Buy them dinner.

If you don’t think that either of those options are appropriate, simply tell them, “Hey Bob, I appreciate your business, what can we do to make you feel appreciated?” Careful though, you don’t want to ask that question unless you can act upon the answer.

* I certainly benefitted from the coaching, but not as much as I would have liked. This is my own fault.

The Challenge

Last night, I attended the first, introductory, seminar hosted by The Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge.

The Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge is the first business planning competition of its kind in Canada to be held in a non-metropolitan setting.

The challenge is designed and targeted toward individuals, new and existing businesses (agriculture and non-agriculture), and post-secondary students (college and university) who have a sustainable business idea.

Basically, The Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge offers participants eight free seminars to get help on business plan preparation.

The Prize

After the seminars are over, you can enter your business plan for the actual competition. The prizes for the winners are as follows:

1. 1st place = $15,000
2. 2nd place = $ 7,500

Money, money, money. Money!

In addition The Chinook Entrepreneur Challenge can find mentors for participants (not just the winners) to assist them in launching and running the business.

My friend, Dennis Kamitomo, informed me about this competition and I joined right away. I want to write a concrete business plan for GizmoBooks and win $15,000!

Not sure if you can still join, but I would try! You can register here and also checkout their blog.

The Best Part

The best part of yesterday’s seminar was at the end when the seminar was over. How so? Well, talking to Craig Milner, a professor at the U of L — saying “a professor” doesn’t do Craig justice because he’s an amazing professor — and owner of East Side Mario’s who shared his experience and expertise at the seminar, I found out that he had heard about GizmoBooks and had seen my ad on the student newspaper, The Meliorist! Then Daniel Feiguth, the business analyst from Community Futures Lethbridge jumped in and said that he had heard of GizmoBooks and needed to sell some books! I was ecstatic!

Anyway, I’ll post the ‘racy’ ad here soon as well as the press release that got published in the Meliorist.

No, the title makes no reference to labour and I hope you’re not reading this while you’re in labour, if you are though, please leave a comment, fact that even women in labour read my blog will look awfully good on my resume!

Anyway, the title refers to an analogy that I came across in Ready, Fire, Aim.

Getting a business (or new product) started is like moving a stopped train. It takes a lot of energy to break it free from its stationary physics, but once it is put in motion it accelerates with relative ease.

Keep this metaphor in mind when you begin your entrepreneurial venture. Imagine your challenge as an immense train, sitting dead still on a set of shiny new tracks that lead directly–and with a slight downward slope–to a Golden City. That city is waiting to welcome you as its newest citizen and shower you with its golden benefits.

You just have to get it moving.

Shiny train track.

As for my train, GizmoBooks, it’s moving very slowly. One user registration here, one there and pretty soon will be moving full speed, إن شاء الل (God Willing).

Update: I’m getting way too many spam comments from this post for some reason. Therefore, disabling comments just for this post.

I started attending the University of Lethbridge in September 2004. In my first year I took some courses, and I only managed to find one used textbook–by luck–in the bulletin boards.

Can’t find textbooks!

After that first semester, I haven’t really been able to find cheap, or used textbooks. The reason is that the bulletin boards are chaotic at best and ‘searching’ for information in them is, well, madness.

Covered up

Textbook Revolution?!!!

That’s right, textbook revolution . So, after sitting and doing absolutely nothing about this issue (except for complain about book prices), I decided to do something about it.

I was taking a database class and it had a project component. I proposed the idea of a book exchange site to the professor and he seemed to like it. For the next couple of months I went to work creating mockups and then the back end and of course, what’s a site without animation these days–who wants to look amateur!

The deadline came looming and the site, well, wasn’t where I wanted it to be, therefore I only got 13/15 on the project. Not to worry as I wasn’t really doing this for the class…the marks were a bonus! I kept working and working and on January 08, 2009, I release the first ‘version’ of the site which became ulethbooks.ca.

After introducing this idea to the university community and friends, feedback was phenomenal and it got me excited! Then I went working on GizmoBooks.com — The Textbook Revolution! I wanted to have this easy to use site accessable to students across North America and, although not sure about the concept, even outside North America!

Anyway, that’s my little story of how The Textbook Revolution came to be and I would love to hear from you with your ideas, feedback and comments.

Until next post!

Compete with that!

In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

Although it looks like something designed by a high school student in ’99, Startups in 13 sentences has some great advise for new startups. Here are the 13 sentences:

1. Pick good cofounders.

Because this is so hard to do, no matter how good of a friend you have, I’ve avoided doing this at all. I’d rather go at it alone then face something really disastrous to the business. Not to mentioned, I’m not keen on sharing profits and control .

2. Launch fast.
3. Let your idea evolve.
4. Understand your users.

Excellent points, nothing to add.

5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
…Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users….

I think if you do focus on meeting all the needs of a subset of potential users, you will naturally meet a subset of the needs of all potential users, in most cases. I think Apple focuses a lot of their energy and resources on this. The non-expert users of OS X, for example get most of what they want in it, although the expert users wish they had more control.

6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
7. You make what you measure.
8. Spend little.

Excellent advise, emphasized time and time again by people who have been there and done that.

9. Get ramen profitable.

This is what I seek the most. Once your leash is a little long and you no longer need to work to support yourself you can go all out and focus all your energy and resources in making something great.

10. Avoid distractions.
11. Don’t get demoralized.
12. Don’t give up.

I need to pay heed to these, for sure. Having friends and possibly associates that support you and believe in you will help you a great deal in 11 and 12. However, they might become a distraction if not managed well .

13. Deals fall through.

So, deal with it!