Interval 24-41.2 October 11, 2024

Topic One: The power of small steps

Despite literally decades of pressure from bosses and peers, I have been unable to shake my belief that it makes more sense for me to spend more time on a task with the goal of doing it once, versus getting it done and fixing it later (if it needs it).

Let me be clear, that makes me LESS desirable as an employee because I have lower throughput in a short time interval. (And let's face it, for nearly all managers, there are only two time intervals, "by Friday" and "now". Or as I joked once, "this needs to be done NOW or Yesterday; your choice."). But now that I answer only to myself, I can, and must, do things in the manner and timeframe that I choose as optimal value. And there is almost no task that I enjoy doing twice. The result is that I spend what seems like long, or v-e-r-y long periods of time trying to get a few things done, but when they are done, they are DONE.

I once had the pleasure and hugely beneficial education of working for David Hartman and I remember being in his office an hour or so after a long and frustating day had come to an end. I was trying to update him on something and he said something to the effect of "I just want to take one problem and choke it to death." Doesn't seem like too much to ask does it?

Anyways, my work on SOPbox is focused on clean-up these days. I had another person sign up from I-don't-know-where and I have no doubt that they had a crappy experience. There is no onboarding to speak of, no tutorials, etc so I doubt that they will stick around and they sure as hell won't upgrade to a paid account. But I can't work on that when the home page of the web site is riddled with errors, the Stripe integration is throwing errors and sign-up process is missing helpful error messages. So that was my focus, go through that stuff, make clear notes, make sure that I was seeing the entire iceberg of the problem and not just the top, and then figuring out how to get them done.

The result? Almost no progress that would warm the heart of any of my past partners or managers. BUT, I know that I have this part properly sorted. I wouldn't have to go back in until we do a rebuild/update to the site, and on Monday I can start to put the fixes in place.

Numbers

Stripe is still saying about 85 "customers" and $50 MRR (you read that right, halfway to being a 4 digit ARR company!). But I have a plan I like that should get me to profit early next year. I just want to be able to focus on THAT plan on not have to worry about homepage irregularities and server errors. We'll fix those now and then we can run.

The Past (accomplishments since last update)

Outside of the stuff mentioned above, the other thing that I did was replace my broken webcam with an iContact Camera. I want to look good on camera and I was forever propping up my laptop on shoe boxes when I was doing important presentations so that I could look horizontally into the camera and appear natural. (You can see the guys doing the same thing on Welcome to Wrexham in early episodes.) A couple of years ago, I spent $30 on Alibaba and got a small 1/2" x1/2" spy-webcam. I mounted it on a base with a wire I cut from a coat hanger and positioned it squarely in front of my monitor. It worked and I loved it. But somewhere in my 10 month absence from my desk, it failed and I needed a replacement. I have only done a few meetings with the iContact, but so far it seems great.

The Future (goals for the coming week)

I want to make at least one improvement/fix this week. Maybe I can find someone to help, maybe I figure it out by myself. But I want to take a step forward.

TMI: (you didn’t ask but I am over-sharing anyways)

Two stories related to my belief in the power of small steps (kind of a theme this week isn't it):

Family at the Beach: Lots of you know that I come from a big family. Until my dad passed last year, we were the Pinkowski-9. Mom, Dad, me (<--the "original family!") and 6 sisters. (and as I ALWAYS say, each and every one of them is a far better person than I am.)

We weren't poor growing up, but we weren't rich. Anything times 9 was a bunch of money. Meals, movie tickets, etc. I don't recall us ever flying anywhere together it would have been crazy expensive. But a tank of gas in a 9 passenger Chevy stationwagon was the same no matter what. So I do have memories of driving the hour or so from Portland to the Oregon Coast. We could pack our own sandwiches and chips and have a wonderful and affordable family outing. We played on the beach, built sandcastles, tried to dig our way through the sand to China, or just sat on the beach and watched the waves.

When we were done, we would gather up our stuff, but Mom and Dad always called out: "Everybody pick up 10 things." And we would all scatter across the beach looking for someone else's Coke can, candy wrapper, discarded frisbee, etc. It only took a couple of minutes, but it cleared out almost 100 pieces of trash and litter from the beach. That lesson stuck with me and I follow variations of it to this day.

Meeting Ed Pham : Ed taught me two things. The first happened when we were at a restaurant in Dallas and were interviewing him for a manager's role. I've never felt like I was a good interviewer and I sure don't have many tips on how to do it. But we gave it a go at this place in Dallas. When we were done, we paid the check at the table, talked a few more minutes and then we got up to leave. In truth, I was probably ready to hire Ed, but not because of any great insights that I got from a. cleverly constructed interview question. He seemed fine and we needed to hire someone. But as we stood up to walk out, Ed said, "I'll be right with you." and walked over to one of the server stands and talked to the person that had been helping us. I watched this and when Ed walked back over, I asked "Is everything OK?". I mean, I paid for dinner, there were no issues, then we were done and ready to go. Ed said "I always try to thank the person that served us. It's a tough job and I wanted them to know that I appreciate them." That blew me away. He saw real people in front him all the time. And he wanted to be sure that they knew they were seen. That they had tangible evidence (through words and a handshake) that they were appreciated. I do this all the time now and while it is a little thing, I think it makes a difference.

The second happened months later. Ed was telling me about going to interview for a manager's position with a flooring company that had hundreds of locations. The local regional manager said something like: "Meet me at such-and-such store. I should be there at 1pm." The stores weren't huge and had parking spaces for maybe 15-20 cars. Ed arrived a few minutes before 1pm, parked, gathered up his stuff and started walking over to the store entrance. Just a couple of steps in front of the door was an empty soda can. Ed told me that he knew he wouldn't be happy working for this guy, because that RM must have seen the same soda can and walked right past it a few minutes before. "If he overlooks that can, he probably overlooks other small stuff that is bound to grow into bigger problems." This was one of the smartest stories I had ever heard. Anyways, Ed rocks. If you ever get a chance to work with him or for him, you should take it.

Peace + Love. ->> [email protected], Telegram: @michaelpinkowski