Three things I learned so far from a Utah CPA firm

I recently got the pleasure of working with Gary A York & Associates on a new website for their company. The project was fun to work on and the team of CPA's in the height of their tax season, were a delight to work with and a partner I look forward to building a long term relationship with. I learned a few things in my initial contact with them and though I'd mention them here.
One, although the focus was on the website, I learned a lot while working with Gary York and two of his team members-Krista and Laura. Order and a sound approach to website building is wonderful. They let me do what I do best and they interjected where it made sense and in ways that were meaningful to the project.
Two, financial planning is important. There are a lot of new information now running around in my head that will take me farther in business, personal and other realms as a result. I learned a lot just from the literature this Sugarhouse, Utah based firm puts out, our meetings and from doing research in their industry.
Three, awards and trophies matter. My daughter, Susan, has recently taken a liking to the idea of winning a trophy. While working with Gary A York & Associates, LLC, I learned that winning the awards, being a member of many professional organizations and the like is very important if done for the right reason.
Overall, this was just a fun and worthwhile project. If you need your taxes done (in any state and for all entity types), call on Gary A York at 800-645-78101. Look at their new website at www.GaryAYork.com

Just when you think it can't get any better....

It does. So much so, in fact, that it's hard to decide where is an appropriate place to start. On a professional level, I've had a lot of really dynamic experiences-from working in a home for the elderly to starting a WISP, a VoIP business opportunity, and a marketing consultation firm. I've learned how to handle massive responsibility, find resources when needed and have worked with people who were willing to pull me aside and generously point out my flaws. On a personal level, I've had existential experiences, some fascinating guides and a multitude of strangers who I've been able to engage on levels that I won't even try to post on this blog. That said, this past few months has provided me with a clarity and a focus that I haven't ever had... It's taken what was really great and made it phenomenal. Let me explain.
I've had a lot of work experience because I love to work, to learn and am unafraid of getting my hands dirty or of looking silly. While personally, it's very much the same way. I love people, their personal stories and I do what I can to help show people how brilliant and necessary they are. I've jumped off cliffs and been dropped from hundreds of feet. I've laid in a sarcophagi in Cairo and battled the monkeys at Malaysia's Batu caves. Though I always appreciated what was happening, it was moving quickly and I had little time to reflect or assess what could come of it in the future. Although the past three years have been of the most difficult in my life, my pace changed. It slowed. My focus changed, it turned inward. Balance and living consciously became a priority and in this past few months, I am delighted to say it's clear progress has been made.
All of my work is now benefiting from better personal decisions and vice versa. My daughters are incredibly intelligent, which was always clear, but our relationships have opened further, are working better for all of us and I am happy with my choices instead of feeling unsure. It's never easy to be a single parent, less so when you love to start businesses and travel the globe, but it has become clear how to find balance. I couldn't ask for anything more than I have been given. I will, but it wall all be gravy. I have fantastic relationships with even very difficult situations, have worked with some amazing caregivers and energies to add to what was and have so much, I keep thinking of "The Cup Overfloweth" as a symbol for how I feel. Clarity on purpose. Clarity on intent. Submission to the All that has created this incredible world and society.
Yes, life is hard-but I'm capable and resilient. Yup, there is much to be done and more to be learned, but I relish learning, doing. Opportunities are appearing in perfect time, synchronicity is happening with increasing regularity and in all, life is good.
Work hard, play well and benefit that which is good and right in this world. It makes what's great, even better.

Startup Weekend_One week later

It's been one week since the Startup Weekend in Salt Lake and I've had a bit of time to process the event, the outcome and my personal experiences with this phenomenal three day marathon. First, let me say that I heard of this event after complaining that Utah didn't have a lot of entrepreneurial type conferences. I take back some of what I said and have to admit, if a single event were to come to this state in lieu of all others, I'd be okay with Startup Weekend being that event. For those of you not familiar, this is a competition where people pitch ideas, research, plan and execute a group of start up businesses in a three day period. That said, here's more about the event- what I would do differently, some of my favorite aspects and what's happened since last Saturday.
If I had it all to do over again, I'd do almost all of it different. I don't know if I've ever felt that way before, but it's true for Startup Weekend. For example, I would have bought my ticket in December instead of waiting. I would have scheduled less work to avoid the intense stress that my day ended up including. Once there, I would have pitched a totally different idea. I feel a bit dumb about this but, we played an ice breaker game and I keep thinking I would have been better off pitching 'Hot Delicious Sauce' -the idea my team and I had for that game. I know we were all told by Al who put the event on, that ideas pitched should be a brand new ideas, not worked on projects that just need capital- but for some reason it rang no bell. I pitched my school funding business that I had been working on, thinking about and had ideas for, but for which I had hoped one of the audience members would have an idea of how to simplify implementation. That didn't happen, but no matter. I did my pitch-56 of us did-and my pitch went okay, though I forgot a couple of things.
During opening speeches, I had sat next to this really involved and funny guy, who turned out to be one of the highlights for me. I'm not sure he's aware of it, but his pitch was the most ingenious (in my not so humble opinion). It was fun, random, flexible and something about a sexy unicorn. After all the ideas were tossed out there, we used an advanced voting method involving post it's to vote for the best ones, then we formed teams. At first, I was on a team that wanted to track bad tenants for property owners. The team was huge, we took a cool pic that first night, discussed ideas and I worried that I wouldn't be needed (there were something like five or six other business people). I know it's a competition in a lot of ways, but I really wanted to be involved. When I saw someone I recognized in a small group that had only five people, I decided I'd float between the two and do what I could.
When I got home for much needed rest, my little one was sick and I wasn't sounding too hot myself. I thought about all the pitches and decided my witty neighbor's was the best. I had the intention of letting him know, hell I wanted to join his team no matter what it was just because of his speech, but I didn't. I was about thirty minutes late the second morning after getting the kids off to school, but caught up with both groups and decided to commit to the smaller one, Market Health. Rate My Tenants didn't seem to like the idea of me working with two teams and they had a few issues I couldn't wrap my head around. So, it was transparency in medical billing.

Day two was much more intense. There were charts, speeches, a lot of candy and a lot of post it notes. Our group was stuck on revenue models and launch feasibility for our medical procedures pricing comparison chart (yes, on a Saturday afternoon, and yes, I paid people to let me do this for three days). My team got stuck for some time and decided to come back to profits after we did client validation. We split into two groups and divided tasks. Three of us went to the mall to survey people and three of us were supposed to stay and start on the development of our MVP (minimum viable product). When we returned from the mall, only two of the developers were there. Immediately after lunch, a second team mate left, leaving us with four members total and only two developers (most teams were double our size). We worked and thought, discussed revenue sources again. We decided to focus on a niche and became Price My MRI instead of Market Health, and decided to focus on one procedure at a time. We were still stuck and lacking motivation, so the other business individual and I went to a nightclub around the corner to survey an older crowd that had expendable income.
We sat and watched the people, talked about what they were doing and why. We didn't survey any of them and I though on our ay out-this is what you have to do in business-let people have fun. We found drive and some focus for writing a business plan and starting on the setup of other parts of the business that we could tackle without programming. We stayed late, though not as late as some of the other teams. I left at 11 pm with a very sore throat and a somewhat deflated sense of accomplishment, glad to go home to my girls. Recapping the night to my twelve year old, it was interesting to see what she did and did not listen to, what she was doing when I bored her and her overall reaction to the businesses I talked about. If you don't typically engage your kids about these things, I'd say it's one of the best things for young minds and a great source of pure and honest feedback. Not all topics are appropriate, but after talking to my daughter, I got some ideas, looked at research and medical jokes for quite some time and went to sleep happy and excited.
On that third and final day, I should have worked on nothing but the presentation. It didn't occur to our team to put any time into collaborating on the speech or the slides and it showed. We were even told by a mentor to start discussing it, but the developers were in development and questions, comments and discussion went unanswered. We waited too long to move on without the others and by we I mean I. I didn't want to step on the toes of the team leader and instead put together something my kids would be ashamed of. I was wrestling with technical issues while doing this remedial task as well which didn't add to the outcome.
We decided that the team lead would present with me (and I had almost no voice), but we never practiced together and I had anxiety which I am sure showed. I forgot a couple things and said "travel tourism" instead of "medical tourism" when discussing a potential ad source. We did manage to discuss the market, idea, MVP, and potential revenue sources, but lacked the evidence and proper showing of our work. Many mistakes, but still we got some great feedback. We had numerous people follow up and discuss the idea with us-most in the medical field themselves. The judges were easier on us than they should have been, but it was a great experience to be in the hot seat-it's been a while since I was put into such an arena and I truly love it. I love speaking, presenting, researching. I just was off the mark-I didn't really "get" Startup Weekend until I was through it. Then I instantly wanted to do it again.
Once over, my team expressed some interest in continuing until the day after at which point it was decided any of us could develop the business in any way we pleased. Seth, the charismatic gentleman I sat next to opening day who also saved us in the design process and developed his own "Unicorn Sex Appeal" app graciously offered to help get the last bit of coding issues worked out. There is some interest in moving forward, but it's sporadic and disconnected, like seemed to be our experience throughout. If the code gets worked out, I've had a marketing idea that may move it far enough to re-interest my team. It's a great idea in a heavy need market with a lot of emotional factors and high revenue potential. We will see. It's only been a week, but compared to how time moved at the event, it's been a really long time.
All in all, I would say that this was the most worthwhile event I have done outside of hosting my own which I also learn masses from. Highlights were seeing so many incredible and talented people come together and the excessive sense of determined aspiration I have. I learned a lot about business development, had the SCRUM method brought back to my attention and I met some more people that I'd only known online. I saw enough talent and genius in this one weekend to make me believe that if the world is to move forward in leaps and bounds, it will be because of individuals like those I met at Startup Weekend.

Last Minute Christmas Card Idea

Christmas cards have likely gone out to business contacts, faraway friends and others, but for those close to you whom you haven’t purchased a gift, why not include a delicious dinner or dessert? Not the whole thing, just a recipe! At novelty stores, grocery stores, card shops, there are recipe cards. Cute or witty, plain or serious, get a stack and write out some of your favorite recipes. Put the card in your Christmas card and voila! A great gift to last and last. Don’t have a favorite recipe? Here’s one that went our to some special people this year: (Full Article).....

Keeping Social Media in Focus

After helping a close contact set up some social media, I realized that one key to success in marketing online is keeping your efforts on track and in focus. Here is an exerpt from an article I wrote this morning or click to read the whole social media article.

Profile names, passwords, and rankings can get jumbled and your efforts may get watered down if you spread yourself too thin. If you are new to online media, it can be intimidating with the plethora of options available. Here is five ways to stay focused and keep your efforts on the right track.
1. Identify your goals. Do you want to create brand awareness or highlight brick and mortar locations? Maybe you want to build value in a dot com or become a social media guru. Regardless of what your goals are, list them, refine them and research the best ways to turn them into a reality. Write them down and keep them handy. Type them out and use them as a screensaver. Set appointments in your phone and get daily reminders. You get the idea.

2. Research, read, write and research a little more. You have more opportunity than just thirty years ago, ten years ago, two years ago. There is information available on just about every conceivable topic. You can save money by not having to buy books or instruction manuals. You may submit questions in forums and get help with areas you don't yet have experience in and you can contribute your success and failures to help others as well....

(Click for the entire article)