John's Music Blog

I once visited a very successful technology integrator just outside of Boston.  Every Wednesday, the mother of the founder, who was Italian, would cook for the entire company.  At the time, they had more than one hundred employees.  What a feast!

If you want to launch a startup, and you want to recruit and retain high-quality, highly-motivated members for your team, it’s imperative that you take care of them.  Cash conservation is important, but food, really good food, can go a long way to keeping a team motivated.  After all, it can’t all be about the distant and potentially huge payoff.  Employees can’t eat options.  There’s got to be something it in for them today.  Which brings me to today’s post.  A friend directed me to their son’s blog: One Food Guy.  There are enough restaurant and recipe suggestions to keep an entire team of entrepreneurs motivated.   Check out the Andalusian crepes.  Hmm.  Is that my stomache growling?

When my partner and I founded our company, we wanted to ensure that our interests were aligned with that of our clients.  That drove several decisions in terms of our business model and fee structure.  On the one hand, we needed enough revenue to keep the lights on.  That’s in our clients’ interest and in ours. But, we intentionally kept our costs extremely low, taking the minimum office space that is necessary to operate the business and only spending money on those things absolutely  required to operate the business.   There’s no “flash” when you come to visit.  The chairs, the desks, the filing cabinets, and the computers have all been around the block more than once.   That allows us to keep our retainer fees comparitively low.  Again, that’s in our clients’ interest and in ours.  

On the other hand, we expect to be compensated fairly and proportionally, if we help our clients grow their revenue and increase the value of their businesses.  If we drive a million dollars in sales, we’ve increased revenue, but we’ve also increased the value of the business, and we expect to participate in that increased value.  That notion is difficult for some, who are used to a commission-only, a fee-for-service, or an hourly-rate model. 

In keeping with our aligned-interest model, if we work with one company, we don’t work with their direct competitors.  That might seem patently obvious to some, but probe a bit on the companies offering to make introductions or help promote your company, and you may be surprised at how many of those offering to work with you also work with your direct competitors.  (more…)

The last two weeks have been a bit overwhelming.  As some of you know, I recently made the decision to leave IDC, after 11 very good years.  I gave my notice about six weeks ago, but kept it quiet for two weeks, so that the really-senior management team could work on transition and communication plans.  The announcement went out on Valentine’s Day, and since then, things have been rather frenetic. 

Since I haven’t had a chance to speak with everyone individually, I thought I should take the time in this first blog entry to answer the frequently asked questions.  This will be like the time I tripped over my cat and broke my toe, and the doctor decided that in order to preserve my avocation in hiking, he should cast my foot up to my knee.  Who knew? After repeating the broken-toe story 10 times, I thought it would be easier and I would get more work done, if I just typed up and passed out the answers to the frequently asked questions.  So that’s what I did.

(more…)