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 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.

Today was not a fun day.

Woke up at about 6:00 AM to a fire alarm.  Turns out a water pipe had burst in the lobby of the building I live in.  Scrubadoo’s office is located in commercial space at the ground level of the same building.

Guess where the pipe bust was?  Needless to say we were basically swimming in water this morning.  It is extremely cold in MN right now (think -10ish) so the hot water that was pouring everywhere was throwing off an amazing amount of steam.  The firefighters that responded to the alarm broke through the glass security door to the building and then proceeded to kick in the two doors to our office.  I am actually ok with this (better than having someone stuck and in trouble).

But everything was a mess.  Damages basically consisted of walls, scrubs, and a day of my life cleaning up.  It got me thinking of the other low points of running scrubadoo.

• We played a part in messing up a large order this past Christmas.  Total cost ~$1,000.  We ate the total cost despite having about 50% of the responsibility.
• My honor being questioned by a supplier when we first started the company.  Essentially we were promised certain terms by our account rep, he left the company and my new rep wouldn’t honor it.  I took it all the way to their CEO when he basically called me a liar.  I didn’t have it in writing – lesson learned.
• Writing a $6,000 dollar check to a company for web development – despite literally zero  of our line items promised were completed.

There have been a lot of tough times for us.  To this point we have pushed through and kept on growing.  I am sure there will be more to come.  Have I ever mentioned starting a company is tough?

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…

About two years ago I wrote a post about major issues I was having with a supplier. I wish I could tell you a fun happy story about our relationship with the same supplier (who happen to specialize in collegiate scrubs) but two years later we are having almost all of the same issues.

TWO YEARS!  that is a long long time.

They have had all kinds of internal inventory, staffing, and basically any other kind of issue you can think of.  Or at least those are a lot of the reasons they have provided me for their two year long ineptitude.

I need to be clear hear and say that our current account rep is actually very responsive and I truly think he is doing his best, but he being provided very little reliable information and support.  There really isn’t too much he can do.  Like me, he is overwhelmed by the issues they are having.

We have literally had orders that until recently have been on back order since December 2010!  We still have orders that are on backorder from APRIL!  We are doing everything we can to keep these clients informed, have provided them with very very deep discounts on their order and are sending gift cards to all of them to help salvage their relationship with us (after some negotiations these gift cards have been subsidized by our supplier (theoretically).  We have also refunded anyone who has asked and sent a gift card to them for future orders.

What makes these delays worse is that on over 15 occasions these clients have been told that their orders are about ready to ship out…..15 times!  How are they still waiting?  I would have demanded my money back a long time ago!

Some of their issues are so ridiculous that I literally went 3 months trying to pay them for orders they had fulfilled for us and I couldn’t get anyone int he finance area to call me back to take a payment!! It eventually had to fall to our already over-worked account rep to handle.

About 5 months ago I sent the CEO of the company (with whom my relationship got off to a rocky start with when he questioned my ethics in one of my very first interactions with his company….never question our my or our companies ethics!) a very long detailed email that was very cordial in the hopes of opening up a little more communication between our companies in the hopes that we could better serve our mutual end clients.  I believe it was a 4 page email with the issues we had have, how I thought we could help them, and a few ideas of ways we could work together to move forward to improve our relationship and the client experience.  I put a lot of time into this email with the intent of making us all stronger.  I received a two sentence response from him that was very curt.  Needless to say none of my ideas were implemented.

Lets fast forward to the current situation. Here are the facts (as far as I know anyway!)

• I am pretty sure we have grown to be the largest web based client they have.
• Sales of their products (collegiate scrubs) represent about 15% of our business.
• There is a substitute for about 10% of that business from another supplier that we already have a relationship with (so if we drop them completely we probably stand to lose about 5% of our business)
• Issues with their products represent 95% of our headaches.
• Our account rep is tired of my emails every day I would be to in his shoes, but I really don’t have any other options other than emailing and calling him).
• There is really no plan in place for these issues to be resolved.

Now I am faced with a choice.  Do I drop their products off of our site completely?  Do I do a partial drop?  We are going to need to do something and I have done my best to manage my relationship with them to proactively improve the situation but this hasn’t seemed to work.  Like I said.  I wrote a post about the same company and many of the same issues two years ago!
One thing is sure.  We will be making changes shortly.

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.

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!

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed since this post. A long care-free vacation still seems like a dream these days.  We haven’t automated enough of our site yet (we are working on it!) and I am still the only one that can do a lot of our daily tasks.

For those of you that are new to scrubadoo, we are well over a year old now (we went beta with the site in Oct of 2009 and live in Feb of 2010) and I still have yet to go on a vacation where I haven’t opened a computer to do work.

I am getting married July 9th of this year and like most couples we wanted to take a honeymoon to help celebrate.  Unlike most couples, I run a young start-up.  The fact that at least 1-2 hours of work would need to get done every day played a significant factor in deciding where to we we should go, what to do, etc. We even considered postponing a honeymoon until this winter, largely because of Scrubadoo (also because it is really cold in Minneapolis in case you hadn’t heard).

I have found that bootstrapping a start-up company engulfs you. No matter where you are or what you are doing, it is very, very difficult to get away from it. I was a commercial banker at with BB&T for a while and when I went home from the office or went away for a weekend, I could easily leave work at work. It was pretty easy to separate yourself. Now, it is tough to take 2 hours in the evening to work out and have a nice dinner, let alone go away for a week. I honestly think it is just a part of it.

Perhaps we are an extreme example as we focuses on customer service and are open 24/7 (this doesn’t leave a ton of downtime). I honestly still feel that if I’m not working we aren’t serving our customers. Until we get to a point where we can bring on more staff, I think this is the reality.

It certainly does take its toll on you.  Research has shown that vacations are a great way to re-vitalize yourself and get “excited” about work again.  When you are an entrepreneur you need to find new avenues.  Rather than vacations I refuel by getting “wins.” A win can be beating last months revenue numbers, signing up a big client, or just receiving appreciative emails from clients.  Loving entrepreneurship or your industry is a must.

I love making decisions that effect the strategy of the company and find that when I am stuck doing the daily work and not am not working on larger initiatives that will move scrubadooo forward I tend to get beaten down even more.  Entrepreneurship is certainly a roller coaster ride, there are ups and downs every day, sometimes every hour. The wins and the greater goal of building a sustainable business from scratch have to fuel the fire at this stage for me.

While in Alabama last weekend, I did a quick in-hospital run.  We are trying a new approach to the direct marketing.  We are dropping off “Scrubs Magazine”  with coupons for our site and a few other advertisements within, at various hospitals (if you work at a hospital and want us to send you a magazine let me know!).  Our attempts at in-hospital promotions in the past have not worked very well.

The goal with the magazines is to provide something aside from just a discount, the magazine itself has had some great reviews/response to this point (it is a new magazine).  It will be interesting to see if any of our discount codes/advertising in the magazine are redeemed.  Not only will it tell us if the effort of distributing these magazines is worth it, but it will also give us a small window into the value of targeted print advertising.  You never know, if it works we may start looking into other similar options.

The tough part is making sure they are distributed at the hospitals.  I have only visited two places so far.  At the first I walked around and left mag’s all around hoping people will pick them up.  At the other hospital I visited the HR department and left them a stack of the magazines for distribution.

We will see what happens. Hopefully it drives some business!