thederekjohnson.com

I got an email this weekend asking me if I would share the tools I use on a daily basis to help keep things running smoothly at both Tatango and Derek Media. You asked, I share. What is a lifesaver for you? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Google Apps - Both Tatango & Derek Medai live on Google Apps. Google has made it so easy for any company to manage their email accounts, files, tasks and even calendars, it’s scary to think what I would do without Google.

Freshbooks - If you are looking for online invoicing, I couldn’t recommend a better place than Freshbooks. We use Freshbooks for invoicing clients at Derek Media and tracking part time employee hours at Tatango. The service is extremely simple and flexible enough for any type of company to use.

GeeTasks - If you use “tasks” within Google mail, you have to get this app for your iPhone. It allows you to sync all of your to-do lists, which is a must for someone on the go all the time.

TweetDeck - I use this app both on my computer and iPhone religiously to follow the many conversations happening on Twitter. I would die without this app.

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Running a startup isn’t that complicated when you look at the big picture. It’s all about positive cash-flow. This means having enough money coming in (revenues), to cover all the money going out (expenses). When starting out, money coming in is an enormous challenge, but limiting the money going out should be pretty simple if you’re a “tightwad” like myself. How do you become a “tightwad” for your own company? Follow these simple five steps.

1. Do your own bookkeeping. It’s amazing how much you tighten the belt if you are entering each expense into your accounting software yourself.
2. Every month look at every expense and ask yourself how you can eliminate or decrease it. Think about sharing resources, sub-letting, outsourcing, etc. (See our first business card below, two names, one card, half the cost)
3. Give your monthly cash flow statement to your employees and see if they have any ideas on how to decrease or eliminate expenses. Getting everyone on the “tightwad” bandwagon can significantly cut expenses at any company.
4. Every quarter, call all of your suppliers and ask for a better rate. If they don’t give it to you, go somewhere else. It’s amazing, every time I do this with AT&T they are able to magically find a few savings that they missed last quarter.
5. Don’t spend money on stupid shit.

I often feel ashamed that I spend every waking moment of my life building a business when there are so many people, organizations and causes that desperately could use my time. I also feel ashamed that I spend every extra penny that I make and put it back into my business, while thousands of charities lack crucial funding to really make a difference in the world.

This used to really bother me, until I was able to develop a plan for myself. The plan is the following. I will spend 3/4 of my time on this earth trying to be the best entrepreneur I can, while building up as much wealth as possible. Then I will spend the last 1/4 of my life, working to give away that wealth in the most efficient ways possible. Both challenging and rewarding ventures.

Why did I write this blog post? I heard somewhere that you are much more likely to achieve your goals if other people around you know what you have set for yourself. So there it is.

You heard me right… the business plan is dead. From this point forward, I will never write a business plan, review a business plan or even think about a business plan, I’m sick of them. In college we were instructed to create mock businesses, by generate a business plan. These business plans were graded on a highly sophisticated scaled, based on how many pages the plan included, 10-20 pages C, 21-50 pages B, 51+ pages, A. So guess how many pages my business plan was? Just barely 51 pages, no more, no less. That business plan was the biggest piece of crap that I created in my college career, littered with over-explained concepts, pointless graphs, and ridiculously big words that served no point expect to take up additional space. What a joke!

So what in my opinion is replacing the business plan, the “slide deck”. The slide deck is a 10-16 slide powerpoint presentation. A good example of how to structure a “deck” (this is what most people call it) can be found by downloading the Seattle Alliance of Angels Pitch Clinic here. One of the most important benefits of a slide deck is that it forces an entrepreneur to describe their business, market, operations, team, execution, etc. all in a very small amount of words, hence cutting out all the bullshit usually found in a typical business plan. Secondly, who the hell has time anymore to review a 50+ page business plan, besides teachers. In my short career as an entrepreneur I have not once had someone ask for my business plan, it’s always slide deck, slide deck, slide deck. I’m baffled at why colleges even make their students create business plans, doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s another blog post.

Word of caution: Some people may think this just made their life easier. It hasn’t. Don’t think that your job is done after those 10-16 slides, you better make sure that you have additional documents that back up almost every assumption, projection and statistic used in those slides. Seasoned investors will question the hell out of your slides, be prepared.

I’ve found that working in an internet startup, sometimes can be like working in a bubble. In this bubble I think that everyone is on Twitter, they can easily set up a video conference via Skype and can easily rattle off the benefits of IMAP over POP. My bubble was burst the other week when one of my friends stopped by the office and asked why everyone had two computers on their desks. (someone in the office chuckled, but in hindsight, it was a fair question) I explained that one was the computer and the other wasn’t another computer, just an additional screen attached to the first computer. She thought this was pretty cool, and asked the golden question… Why do you need two screens? I knew the answer was increased productivity, but I felt bad not giving her solid evidence. So here it is, directly from Microsoft Research.

By adding a second or even third monitor, you can increase your productivity by 9 to 50 percent. Read more…

Even Bill Gates has bought into the more monitors, more productivity mantra. See this article in Fortune Magazine about how he uses different digital tools to get through his day.

Now there is no excuse for you not to ask your boss for an additional monitor.

I took this video of LiquidPlanner CEO, Charles Seybold, speaking to the Bellingham Angel Group regarding raising Angel capital from the entrepreneurs perspective. Enjoy!

I was listening to fellow startup CEO, Charles Seybold of LiquidPlanner yesterday and he said something that resonated with some of the new initiatives I am working on at Tatango. He said his company is currently spending money on conversions, not demand. Wow, what a simple phrase, but so powerful for any entrepreneur starting an SaaS (software as a service) company… Spend money on conversions, not demand.

But Derek, your traffic is crashing… this can’t be good for your company. To be honest, right now I could care less about my Compete traffic. This is definitely a far cry from when I would wait for this information like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. You can see evidence of this from a 2009 Tatango blog post where we touted that we had made the top 100 Seattle Startup Index.

Let me give you an example of what a conversation with my team would be like during that time….

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Being an entrepreneur means you are a leader, and being a leader means you will have to make tough decisions. Colin Powell said it best, “Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It’s inevitable.”

My responsibility as a CEO is to take actions that benefit the welfare of the company as a whole. Most of the time this means doing fun stuff like implementing new products, hiring key employees, developing strategy for the future, but unfortunately it also requires doing the not so fun stuff, like terminating employees. I’ve had to terminate my fair share of employees in my entrepreneurial life, and it’s never easy. Not very many employees are very happy when they get terminated, neither are their families, friends and if you live in a small town like I do, anyone else that is within earshot of the news.

So what do you do to deal with the heat? Follow these four steps…

1) Take the high road - Just because you Twitter, blog and Facebook every moment of your life, doesn’t mean you have to talk about what just happened. If the employee decides not to take the high road, still keep your mouth shut, even though it will be hard (trust me). What you have to realize is some people may sympathize with them, but most business professionals know that being a CEO means you have to make decisions that aren’t always fun, but are done in the best interest of the company.

2) Talk to employees - Employees are the most crucial part of any company, you will need all of their help to reach the goals you have set for the future. Make sure they are aware of the reasons for termination and be sure to let them ask you questions.

3) Talk to investors - Investors only hear what the street tells them, until you tell them. Be sure to explain the reasons behind an employee termination and re-assure them of your long term vision for their investment.

4) Get back to work - You have a company to run. By spending any additional time on someone that doesn’t work for you and isn’t sharing the same goals any longer, means you’re wasting your time.

As I wrote before, I am in the process of re-thinking a lot of the things we currently do here at Tatango. To help other entrepreneurs, I’ve been writing about these changes. Below is another post about some of the things I’ve learned along the way and things that are changing at our company.

One of the things we spent an enormous amount of time on at Tatango was generating press. For being a small startup from an even smaller town, we have received more than our fair share of press coverage. We have been covered in TechCrunch, Mashable, Wall Street Journal and a host of other very notable blogs, newspapers and even radio shows. Was this done to satisfy my ego, boost employee moral, generate links, impress investors or have something cool to hang on my wall, most likely. What I’ve realized though is that during the first couple of years, press is only good if it generates revenue. For some websites that may mean traffic (ad-supported), but for Tatango it means generating subscriptions. What’s interesting is that in regards to subscriptions created on Tatango, all the big articles combined, don’t even compare to what a small (17k uniques a month) Christian Youth Ministry blog has generated.

The lesson learned, while resources are scarce and revenue is your main goal during the startup phase, focus only on generating press that generates revenue, leave the rest for the future.