I am not sure if I owe any follow ups from prior posts, if I do, I apologize.

In my dealings with suppliers etc, I run into so many things major corporations do that are so dumb, I decided to start calling it “stupid company tricks,” when I write about it.  Two examples of how poorly gigantic companies are run:

1. UPS is a joke.  We have become a rather large client for UPS.  I pay them more than twice as much as I pay any of our employees including myself!  Despite this, I have trouble getting a return call from our account rep.  Essentially, UPS had been incorrectly billing us for months, we found the error and they acknowledged it.  The total was about $1,000 (less then we spend in a week with them).  This was over a year ago.  I still do not have that money.  What makes it worse is that my rep is terrible at communicating with me.  On multiple occasions he has said the credit will be take care of “today.”  What a Joke.  FedEx, feel free to give me a call.
2. For my second rant of the day I would like to point out the stupidity of US Bank.  We work with several different Banks, but US bank is our day to day bank.  A few days ago I went in to the same branch I always go into to deposit a corporate check.  Done, no problem.  I also happened to have a personal check for $5.00 I wanted to cash.  I do not have my personal account at US Bank, but asked if they could cash my check for me.  The teller’s know me, I am the only signer on the business accounts, and I had all kinds of ID’s with me.  I was denied.  They wouldn’t cash a $5.00 check for me.  I almost closed all my accounts and took them somewhere else.  What a Joke.

It continually amazes me how companies that have issues like these grow to be multi-billion dollar enterprises.  Aside from that, we are still trying to hire an office manager, launching several new websites, and all kinds of other stuff to continue to grow the business.

Entrepreneurship and building a company has not gotten any easier.  Some days it beats you down and you wonder why the hell you put yourself through the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship.  I mention this because of a quote  that really spoke to me from Steve Jobs that was in the most recent Fast Company that I will leave you with.

“Building a company is a marathon…There are times when you run a marathon and you wonder, Why am I doing this?  Butt you take a drink of water, and around the next bend, you get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going….”

 
Quick Links:

Urbane Scrubs : Wholesale Scrubs : Maternity Scrubs : Designer Scrubs : Medical Uniforms

We have recently begun a search for our 3rd permanent employee.  First I tried to send a job description out to friends and colleagues locally.  We did not have much luck so, three days ago (on Friday) I posted it on Craigslist.

Needless to say, hiring a complete stranger is incredibly nerve-racking.  Bringing someone new into the company is like bringing someone into my family.  They will quickly learn everything there is to know about our company.

Over the weekend we have already received at least 30 applications. We are going to do some phone screening and have any applicant we decide to interview in person fill out a few forms so we can collect more information and really do our diligence on this hire. Unfortunately, we do not have an HR department nor do we have these boiler plate forms.

I started Googling in the hopes of finding something usable (and free) and I came across an unexpected site with some great resources.  It turns out that Office Depot provides a slew of corporate forms that are all free.

What a great resource for a start-up.

Oh, I am sure I will let you know how the hiring goes!

I was recently asked if I would recommend that college or MBA students try and launch a venture while they are in school or just graduating.

First let me say that the school itself will tend to provide a ton of FREE resources.  It could be anything from professors to office space.  Aside from these, here are four more reasons the earlier you do it the easier it is:

1. While you probably don’t have a lot of money you also typically have no real financial obligations, no mortgages, you can probably go back home and live if you need to. You may have student loans but if you are “self employed” or make under a certain amount most banks will allow you to claim hardship and postpone payments for a long time (I actually did this for the first year after Darden).
2. When you start a company there is a good chance you will fail. As you age you tend to take on more responsibility, wife, kids, etc. When you are young if you/your company fails you can bounce back and the only person you really effect is yourself.
3. The longer you are at a corporate job the less likely you are to start your own thing. You get comfortable with a paycheck and typically as you age you become more risk averse.
4. Entrepreneurship is a great story & learning experience. If you do fail, having an entrepreneurial endeavor on your resume is amazing. You will have learned more than most of your peers would at the entry level position. I truly believe it will make you a much more attractive candidate for any position.

I have recently had some people ask what they can do to provide better customer service on the cheap.  Aside from “people cost” providing unmatched customer service can be surprisingly easy.  It is actually kind of sad, but it doesn’t take much to stand out from the pack.  If you do what is basically “expected” of you you are already ahead of the game.

Here are a few of my tips:

#1. It needs to start at the top and flow through the entire organization. When people ask me what kind of a company we run the first thing I say is a “customer service company.”  We could really be selling anything. In my emails out to clients my title is always “Scrubadoo Customer Service.”

#2. Use common sense. If there is an issue with a client, put yourself in their shoes and then make your decision based on what you would want to happen if you were the customer.

#3. Communicate. This is probably the easiest and most impressive thing you can do for a client. Anticipate questions they may have and answer them before the ask. In our situation we preemptively send out emails to all our clients with a REAL customer service person’s contact email and phone number, tell them when their order will ship, follow up with a second email telling them their order has shipped, and finally we ask them to reach out to us if they have any questions at all.

#4. Follow up. If someone calls or emails, respond to them ASAP. We try to respond within an hour. At the very least you should always be able to respond within 24 hours. Follow up is really so important.

You would be shocked at how just executing on #3 and #4 will bring you to the top of your industry in the customer service department. Great customer service does not have to be incredibly difficult.

#5. Wow factor. It never hurts to have a “wow factor” to put really rank your customer service amongst the elite in your industry. This can be your shipping and return policies, a unexpected gift, etc. At Scrubadoo we hand write thank you notes to all of our clients (and we service thousands of clients a year). We also have a free return policy that is head and shoulders above what our competitors offer.

These are just a few simple steps that I believe can be executed on by any small company. In fact, we are proof that anyone can do it!

I have mentioned before that one of the scariest things I have had to do in the last three years of running scrubadoo is hire our first employee.

Our first employee, Frank, is our web developer and he has worked out better than I could have imagined.

We have now started the search for our second employee.  This person will take over a lot of the daily work that I do and hopefully free up my time to focus on sales & growth.

This go round is just as scary as the first.  Much like with Frank, I am not worried about the performance of any future employees, I am more worried about the added pressure.   The more people we bring on, the more people I am responsible for.

As an entrepreneur, and especially a solopreneur, if your company fails only you are directly effected. I am ultimately comfortable in my ability to bounce back from any failure, but it is an entirely different story when you become responsible for the livelihoods of others.

There is no real way to describe this feeling.  On the flip side, only by bringing new people into the fold can you grow a company.  Through growth you can build stability and provide more jobs.

All you can do up front is make sure the people you bring on understand the inherent risk of working for a start up.  That and work your ass off to make sure you don’t fail.

There was another first for scrubadoo.com this past week.  We had our first ever “annual”  strategy meeting.  On Jan 2nd we held our 2012 strategy planning session.

I wanted to put all of our stakeholders in a room for several hours, tell them how we have done since our live launch waaaayyy back in Feb 2010 and then pick their brains to see how we can improve and continue to grow.  Here was the basic format of our meeting:

• Performance Overview: To this point I have maintained the policy that everyone that works for scrubadoo has full access to both myself and our books.  They can see exactly how we are doing and can ask questions about why we are doing it.  In the meeting we showed a bunch of fun graphs demonstrating growth etc over the last 23 months.
• Projections & Expectations:  I put together my personal projections and expectations for the company for 2012.  I then laid out several key areas that we will need to improve upon and work towards in order to hit these projections.
• How the Hell Do We Do It?:  The final segment in our meeting was opened up to a brain storming session.  I had a bit of a frame work to keep us going in the right direction but the goal was to figure out how we can hit our projections and meet my expectations in 2012.

Overall I think it went pretty well.  We basically want to double the size of the company in 2012 and I think we can do it.  While maintaining consistent growth on the retail side, we are going to continue to aggressively pursue wholesale scrub selling opportunities and will depend on these opportunities to really lead the way in our growth.

On  quick side bar: we hired our first full time employee in 2011 and I expect to have a second by the middle of 2012.  Talk about scary.  I think hiring full time staff members is the scariest thing I have done to this point in my entrepreneurial endeavors.  I will talk more about this later. 

Back to the strategy session.  Overall I think meetings like this can really help any company, even if you don’t come up with any ground breaking ideas. Here is why:  When you can provide an opportunity for all stakeholders to voice opinions, be heard, and come up with ideas it really increases buy in.  To this point almost everyone that has worked at scrubadoo has truly enjoyed their time here, and I think the level of involvement and knowledge that they have about the entire company helps build a strong attachment to it.  Everyone from interns to friends that have helped us with side projects become vested in scrubadoo’s success.

This vested interest is amazing and one of the reasons I still love entrepreneurship and doing what I do.  Seeing all of these other people that are excited about the potential opportunities for scrubadoo, continues to push me to make sure we make it happen.

So on we go to 2012 and I am confident we will continue to grow and will take more steps towards our goal of being the premier retailer and wholesale distributor of medical scrubs in the country.

It has to happen, we can’t let everyone down…

No matter if you sell scrubs or if you are an entrepreneur in some other random  industry, you will likely encounter similar issues, and anytime there are standard issues there are probably some general rules to live by.

On that note, I recently read a great article by James Altucher where he laid out his 100 Rules for Entrepreneurship. It is a quick read and is certainly worth it. Heck, it inspired me to tell you all about it.

Believe it or not I actually agree with almost everything he has written.  There are a few rules that I think can be very industry specific and don’t apply to scrubadoo as much as they may another company.  However, of everything he writes what really sticks out?

Rule #1 – ‘It’s (entrepreneurship) not fun.”

This is obviously a bold, blanket statement that is meant to inspire conversation and people like me writing posts like this.  I have gone back and forth on whether or not I agree with him on this, in the end I am pretty confident I disagree.   Altucher doesn’t feel the need to justify or prove it, but I figured I would give my two cents.

My argument against him is pretty simple.  If entrepreneurship isn’t fun, why would anyone ever really do it? It can’t be money, there are a lot easier ways to make money.  In a traditional job people will be miserable yet continue to go to work day after day and year after year because they work to provide for the rest of their lives. They don’t “live to work”  they “work to live”  if you will.

Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury to do this.  Working is living and living is working.  If you can’t have fun with it then you probably won’t last in the start up game very long.  Am I passionate about the medical uniform industry?  No.  Do I love taking customer service calls every day of the week at all hours?  Not always.  But I am extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and building something that can be around for a long time.  To me that challenge  is fun.  To find the fun in entrepreneurship you can not concentrate on the day to day.  You have to look at the experience as a whole.  That is where you find the fun.

On the flip side, the supporting argument for Altucher is also pretty simple.  There are a TON of annoying day to day things that plain suck.  A lot of my days are not fun at all.  In fact the majority of the days are probably not very fun for me.  Why isn’t every day fun?  Lots of reasons; I have talked in the past about how lonely entrepreneurship is, which is probably one of the worst parts of it.  In addition to this, it is tough, you have a ton of weight on your shoulders, you never have enough money, every day is a struggle to be successful, and you deal with an immense amount of the unknown to just name a few. There are an uncountable number of things that can make you want to crumble into a pile and give up.  What makes it worse?  They happen on a daily basis.  It is a roller coaster ride.
All that being said I think the “fun factor” of entrepreneurship  really probably can be compared to  a roller coaster ride.

1.  It is certainly not fun for everyone.

2.  Even if you like roller coasters there are probably parts of the ride that suck (spending the money to get into the park, waiting in line, going up that first hill, getting knocked around, etc).

3.  But if the over-all experience wasn’t fun no one would ever ride a coaster a second time.

3b.  If  anyone tells you they love everything about it they are a liar or crazy.

Basically, all the parts of entrepreneurship may not be fun, but the total experience has to be.  Or else, you should probably get a normal job.

I realize this is the second post off of the topic of scrubs, but we probably needed a break anyway.  Don’t worry, scrubadoo is still the primary focus of my entrepreneurial endeavors we are just branching out a little.  I promise we will get back to the posts about scrubadoo shortly (there is plenty to talk about)!

My second new venture is far more defined than the consulting that I am starting to do.  Brett, the previously mentioned entrepreneur with whom went to AZ with me to try and build our wholesale scrubs business, and I spent a lot of time together over that weekend.  During a variety of talks we came to the conclusion that there had to be an easier way to make money than the ventures we are both working on. We decided to start brainstorming new ideas we could work on together.

We first laid out a few ground rules for ourselves:

1. It had to be something we could keep simple and launch withing a month.
2. We weren’t looking to hit a home run that we could sell for millions of dollars, a single would be fine.
3. It had to have low financial start up costs.

Essentially we wanted something that we could make a little money on each month that would be easy to get into, manage, and wouldn’t have huge up-front costs.

Brett and I proceeded to take a plane flight to Charlottesville for a wedding.  By the end of the flight we had literally come up with an idea, a quick business plan, and an outline of what our website would look like.

We combined my experience with web development & SEO and his experience with college lacrosse recruiting (see empowertheathlete.com (ETA)) and came up with collegelacrossecoaches.com.

Basically, it is a pain in the butt for high school students to conduct their own collegiate recruiting process.  You can hire a company like ETA to help you, they do a great job, and spend a decent amount of money or you can try and do it on your own.  When families try and do it on their own a major pain point is finding the contact info of the college coaches they need to contact to start the recruiting process.  You can do it on your own but finding this info that is buried in crappy .edu websites can take days.  Especially if you are targeting a wide range of schools.

We are solving this pain point.  Essentially we put together a list together of every collegiate lacrosse coach int he country for both men and women.  We are now selling this list to anyone who can use it.  Basically, we are selling to people who are willing to spend a little money to save a lot of time.

The week immediately following the plane flight where the idea was born we started working on our new project.  It took a little over a month for us to launch (largely due to my recent wedding and vacations).  We were very close to sticking to our budget and timeline.

The concept is yet to be proven but it is very low maintenance.  We certainly do not expect to become millionaires from the idea but if it works we will rinse and repeat the concept for every other sport.

CAUTION!  THIS POST IS KIND OF SELF ADVERTISING AT POINTS!

One cool aspect of founding, launching, and operating a new venture is it attracts calls and questions from other people with ideas and visions of starting their own companies. I really enjoy speaking with people about ideas they have, helping them brainstorm, and hopefully adding a little value to whatever it is they are looking to do. These conversations also tend to open up new opportunities for me and as I alluded to in my last post I am currently working on two new ventures that sprung up from conversations just like these.

The first is less of company and more of me taking advantage of everything I have learned in the last 2 years to help other companies improve their sales, web presence, finance or general operations. Every time I speak with another entrepreneur we uncover all kinds of low hanging fruit for their company. Essentially I have started consulting other business in anything from web site development and SEO to Sales execution to any of the other items above. I know how scarce resources are at companies right now, however, I truly believe I can add value for other companies.

I can really help companies uncover opportunities and then execute on the ideas that we come up with. I have actually started my first engagement and hope it will lead to more opportunities. The only thing that is going to prevent me from really exploring this new venture is my time.

This idea definitely has some legs. I love learning about new companies (large and small) and I really think I can add value in ideation and execution. It will certainly provide me the opportunity to learn a lot more about business and I also hope it may add a little cash flow to help support new ideas, ventures, and just life in general. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about what I can bring to the table or if you know of anyone that may be interested in speaking with me!  It is amazing how much selling scrubs can teach you.

The last month has been a whirlwind; wedding, honeymoon, Lobster mini-season, scrubadoo.com and a new venture (or two). Needless to say lots of fun, some stress, and a lot of work. Here are a few random thoughts from the last month. I will hopefully get to a post about the new ventures in the near future.

• Vacations: I know I talk about this a lot, just a little more insight….I worked a little every day of our honeymoon and lobster mini-season. This was the first time I felt that scrubadoo really interfered with a vacation. We are growing pretty quickly which is keeping me extremely busy. No matter where I go, I can’t leave scrubadoo behind. These were the first vacations where I really felt the company was taking away from the ability to truly relaxing and fully enjoy myself. What is worse is that I am confident my scrubadoo requirements also affected the ability my wife (on the honeymoon) and friends at mini-season to fully enjoy their trips to the fullest. Needless to say I have an incredibly supportive and understanding wife. She backs scrubadoo and what I am doing 100%. I honestly felt terrible that scrubadoo had to come along with us., but this is the road we choose.

• Google Voice: Awesome. We have a local Minneapolis phone number set up through Google voice. While in Grand Cayman for the honeymoon when I needed to make phone calls to other places in the U.S. I was able to free of charge. It just called from my local Minneapolis number. It didn’t matter that I was out of the country.

• Support Group: I think I have written about my bi-monthly phone conversations with Brett, one of the founders of Forgetful Gentleman and Empower the Athlete, in previous posts. He has decided to start applying for jobs. He was a great sounding board and it was great to speak with someone else going through the same things as us on a regular basis. I will miss these conversations. Entrepreneurship is not easy. In the early stages it is a grind that works you ridiculous hours and in most cases leaves you very little to show for it.

• Sales Push (hitting the pavement part 2): We have not had much success from our trip to AZ for the convention with Synergy Home Care franchises. I am still confident it will lead to some wholesale scrub sales but at this point we have yet to break even on the trip. We are going to start approaching local private practices, nursing homes, and community colleges in the next two weeks. We will see if we can make a few sales happen.

• SEO companies: I have yet to find one that is worth even close to what they charge. We have officially brought 100% of all SEO efforts in house. Stay tuned for more on this. After speaking with and dealing with dozens of companies I have decided that it is an incredibly sleazy industry.

In general the last 2 months have been very slow for scrubadoo. We are still far larger than we were this time last year, but we have certainly hit the summer doldrums. Hopefully August will bring with it an uptick in medical scrub sales. Stay tuned, I should be back soon now that I have a little more time!