Author: Josh

Today I went to the South Austin Social Media, Marketing, Ecommerce Lunch that’s put on my buddy Robert. I’d missed the first few lunches because of work conflicts and nowadays I need to engage in as many networking opportunities as I possibly can.

There was no agenda or presentation for today’s luncheon; just a get-together for like-minded folks. I found myself sitting with and really enjoying the company of two guys, Ronnie and Kyle. They run a company that sells hookas. Yes, hookahs. Robert, Ronnie and I were the first ones who arrived at Opal Devines for the luncheon. When Ronnie told me what he did for a living, I instinctively made a drug dealer joke. In hindsight, that was probably a stupid joke. He didn’t seem bothered by it though.

I know absolutely nothing about hookahs, so I was very inquisitive. It was really cool to hear how Ronnie and his brother started the business 10 years ago and today he employs 30 people in his south Austin fulfillment center. Ronnie started out by traveling to Palestine to visit family and returning to the states with hookahs for his friends. From there, the rest is history. Without getting ALL the details, it seems like a relatively simple story. He focused on something that he knew and enjoyed and built a successful business around it.

It wasn’t exactly the interaction I was expecting but, then again, I didn’t know what to expect going into the luncheon. And although it wasn’t expected, it was a great conversation and an opportunity for me to learn about a very successful, niche business, and meet a couple really nice guys to boot.

Maly and I went to the grocery store this evening. I showed her the “parts” section in the refrigerated department.

“Look, May, pigs feet!”

“Blech!!”

“Oh, and check this out. This is a cow’s tongue!”

“Ewwwww!!”

“…”

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, Sug?”

“When they cut out the tongue, does the cow die?”

“No, she just talks funny.”

CEO: “How many pieces of unsolicited inbox clutter did we deliver to the NYC segment?”
Jeff: “Ummm, let me look.”
CEO: “…”
Jeff: “It looks like 8,475 were delivered.”
CEO: “WHAT?!? We don’t even have 8,000 unknowing recipients in our database to which to send our pieces of unsolicited inbox clutter, you ****ING MORON!!!” I added that last part, but given the nature of the conversation, it wouldn’t have shocked me in the slightest had he said it.
Jeff: “Oh. Hang on, let me double check.”
CEO: “…”
Jeff: “Ah. I accidentally transposed the NYC and LA numbers. We sent 4,938 pieces of unsolicited inbox clutter to the NYC segment.”
CEO: “That sounds better.”
Jeff: “Sorry about that.”
CEO: “I celebrate your ineptitude.”

The above was an actual conversation. And that was the day where the straw broke the camel’s back. Later that day I had a somewhat unrelated conversation with my boss where we collectively determined that the job I’d originally accepted had become non-existent.

I’d accepted a leadership position with this new company on March 10th, and put in my resignation with my former employer the same day. A week later, my soon-to-be employer was listed on Spamhaus. Without going into great detail, getting listed on Spamhaus is heart attack serious. Ask any reputable ESP and they’ll more than likely just respond with an, “Oh, fudge. Sorry.” And then they’ll hang up. Since I was going to be charged with heading up the email efforts of this company, I inquired about the Spamhaus listing and what needed to be done, even though I hadn’t even officially started working for the company. I was told that “the problem is currently being addressed.” The CEO called my cell phone at 8 a.m. the next morning, assuring me that the company had never been listed on Spamhaus before, and to not worry.

Prior to my start date, the company was removed from the Spamhaus blocklist.

After my second day with the company, they were listed on Spamhaus again.

For the remainder of my first week, there was no email to be sent because of the Spamhaus listing. No leads to generate for clients. Nothing for my staff or me to do other than look for “a band aid” so we could send email. I couldn’t find a “reputable” band aid because they all required our opt-in source(s). I even called in favors from friends in the industry: “The company’s on Spamhaus?! Fudge.”

Since there was no work for the better part of the week, I was charged with reducing headcount. I barely knew the folks that were reporting to me and I had to reduce staff by 44% after my having been employed for only 5 days.

Since then, the company has employed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” email marketing service, and was working on outsourcing its sending servers overseas at the time where I left.

I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t adding value. I wasn’t at fault. I was fired. There wasn’t a fit and the company and I parted on amicable terms.

So, I’m looking for a new job. If you, or anyone you know is looking for a Josh Janicek, let me know.

Happy 4th Birthday, Sugar!

[flv width=”500″ height=”375″]http://www.maly.tv/video/20100409_tireswingspinning.flv[/flv]

This video is from when we gave her the swing in July of 2008:
[flv width=”500″ height=”375″]http://www.maly.tv/video/20080727_swinging.flv[/flv]

And this is the video of her this evening, almost 2 years later:
[flv width=”500″ height=”375″]http://www.maly.tv/video/20100408_MalySwing.flv[/flv]

I just scheduled the final payment on our consolidated student loan. The loan will be paid in full on April 6th. Less than two years ago I took an inventory and hard look at our loan and put a plan of action into place to get rid of it.

My original plan was to pay off the balance in two years. Then I thought I’d pay it off in 18-months. To implement my plan I aggressively threw cash (cashed out a money market account, sold some stocks, applied a referral bonus) at the balance to put a good ding in the loan. I also moved us over to a high APY checking account, focused a little more on affiliate marketing, de-cluttered and sold some stuff around the house for extra money to apply to the loan’s balance. My most effective strategy was to just pay extra each month until it stung, and then pay even more, which helped to remind us to live below our means. At first I doubled the monthly payment. Then I tripled up. Quadrupled up. And finally I quintupled up on our student loan payment. There were a few months/scenarios (Christmas, medical expenses, etc.) during that two year period where I had to dial back, but I remained cognizant and vigilant in my plan.

It wasn’t until the balance got to the $5,000 mark where I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. And what a glorious light that was. Had I kept paying the monthly minimum, we would have been 47-years-old and have paid around $15,000 in interest by the time the loan was paid off.

For some reason it hasn’t set in yet. I don’t feel the liberation that I was expecting. Perhaps tomorrow. Or maybe on Tuesday when the loan will show a $0 balance. I guess I should just sit back in the meantime and calmly think about how I love it when a plan comes together!

At 7 o’clock this morning I found myself standing in the kitchen, waiting for water to boil for coffee before I headed out for my first day at my new job. Maly walked into the kitchen still in her pajamas.

“Hi, Sugar. I’m starting my new job today. Do you think there’s anything that I should say on my first day?”

“Thank you for this job.”

I don’t know exactly what it was that I expected, but I was hoping for something silly and irrelevant. What I got was relevant, profound and exactly what I needed to hear.

Leave it up to the child, just short of her 4th birthday, to put things into perspective and to set me off on the right foot in a new adventure.

Today was my last day of employment with the company that I’ve been with for a little over three years (which seems to be a long time for my generation). I put in my resignation on March 10th after I accepted another position with a great company here in Austin. Since then, I’ve dutifully and happily done my job to the best of my ability and, when it was time to go to, I left. That’s really it. The departure was a little bittersweet on my part, and now it’s time to move on to new and exciting things.

My last job sort of fell into my lap. After losing my job at Wellness Works, I kicked around different career opportunities — I tried to help a really little startup dot com and quit when I quickly realized that I didn’t (nor did the company) have any kind of lucrative future. After professionally and politely, um, quitting, I called John as I was driving home. I called him to ask if he wanted to go get a beer because I’d just quit my job (I don’t think I’d ever just quit a job before without having anything else in the wings). Totally unexpected by me he said, “why don’t you come up to our office and see if you’d want to work here.” I had nothing better to do, so I did. And things just sort of fell into place after that. John ran the company and grew it tenfold. I made sure our clients were happy and were paying us. And there was a great team of folks who helped make it a great working environment. And we had a blast for a couple years. We all made a real run of it.

Time passed. People left. Actually, John left. Then people just started getting fired. I learned a lot during the hay days, and during the not-so-hay days, and I’m better for the entire experience. I’ve built strong, lasting relationships with peers, partners and customers alike. And I’ve reaffirmed some personal tenets:

• Add value – If you’re not constantly adding value, what are you adding? Nothing to help you, your customer, colleague or the company grow and succeed.
• Promote integrity – Be honest and sincere. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
• Be of unbridled service at all times – Let go of your ego and help other people at all times, even if it seems to be of no direct benefit to you at the time. That goes for coworkers and clients. Every single customer that I call on, regardless of title, is my boss when I’m on the phone with him or answering his email.
• Practice acts of humility – Be humble and know that from everyone that you meet, you can learn something.
• Be happy – If you’re not having fun, what’s the point? Who wants to be miserable at work every day? If you’re not happy, your customers aren’t going to be happy. Unhappy customers don’t want to pay for your product or service. We were designed to be happy.
• Live like a dog – Put yesterday behind you and don’t fathom tomorrow. You’re right here, right now. Smile and wag your tail at everyone you meet. Well, you get the point.

I’m stoked about starting my new job. I have the next couple days off, so that’ll make for a nice, long weekend. I’m going to my new office tomorrow afternoon to meet my new team and to learn how to be of service to them.

Late last year I was looking for something creative and constructive to do with my old business cards. I found Ned’s “how to make business card cubes” write-up and made a single business card cube.

Over the next few months, and with the help of some cohorts, I found myself with 318 folded business cards and 53 cubes. So we glued them together and made a business card cube robot.

More photos can be seen here.

Over the years, I’ve “lost” lots of digital files — photos, music files & documents. By lost, I mean that I actually lost them. I don’t know where they went (they’re obviously gone or stashed in the recesses of a hard drive somewhere). I (thankfully) haven’t endured a fatal hard drive crash, even in all my years as a Windows user, prior to making us a Mac-only household 5 years ago. I’m not slapping my forehead right now over those lost files. Granted, there are probably some digital photos that we might miss, but most of the important photos are in print format, and many are in our online photo gallery. As far as music and documents, well, we’re not missing anything that I don’t have backed up. Any important documents are printed and kept in a fire-proof safe. Digital documents are triple backed up (two are off-site should the house burn down). Music files just aren’t really important to me. Those are a luxury and can always be re-acquired by restoring from backups, ripping CDs or downloading from iTunes.

What’s most important to us are photos and videos — especially those taken since Maly was born. If I lost those, well, I don’t even want to think about how upset the family would be. Ever since Maly was born, I’ve been pretty good about backing up digital photos and videos, but I wasn’t totally confident in my backup strategy. Here is how I used to backup our digital photos and videos (keep in mind, this is all done using OS X):

1. I create a “Smart Album” in iPhoto on the first of every month. So on April 1st, I’ll create a Smart Album, name it “March 2010” and specify that I want the album to contain all photos and videos in the date range 3/1/2010 to 3/31/2010.

   

2. Once the Smart Album has been created, I open said Smart Album in iPhoto. Next I do a “Select All” (Edit > Select All or ⌘ + A).
3. Then I export all of the photos and videos from the selected photos in the Smart Album (File > Export or ⌘ + Shift + E) and save the photos on my desktop in their own new folder with the following naming convention: “201003 – March Photos & Videos”
4. Once the photos and videos have finished exporting and are saved in the folder on my desktop, I burn the folder to a DVD. Recently I’ve been having to burn the photos and videos to dual layer DVDs as video files are large in file size.
5. I also copy the newly created folder to an external 1TB hard drive.

A couple years ago I signed up for and installed Mozy Unlimited Backup, which is an application that runs in the background on two of our computers and backs up all of our files off-site (to Mozy’s servers, where our data is double encrypted and, according to their website “We use strict security policies, military-grade encryption, and world-class data centers to protect your information”).

And just recently I finally duplicated the 1TB external hard drive in step #5 above to another 1TB external hard drive. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a block-level disk-to-disk incremental clone, and I’ll keep one of the drives off-site.

So between monthly DVD backups, cloned external hard drive backups and offsite backups using Mozy, I don’t worry any more about losing documents or those precious family photos and videos!

[flv]http://www.maly.tv/video/20100306_diningconversation.flv[/flv]