The Shane & Peter Inc. Entrepreneurial Interview
One website I read on a regular basis is the Shane and Peter blog. These gentlemen are entrepreneurs and when preparing a series of questions to interview other entrepreneurs, they asked their readers to comment on their own blogs as well. This was a post I started some time ago but busy-ness got the better of me. Here are the questions they asked and my answers.
What’s your personal mission statement?
I need to answer this question in two parts. There is a personal side and a business side that plays into the personal.
I believe that my personal mission statement is to “Love God and Love Others”. It’s biblical and comes from Luke 10:27. Most of the time I think I fail at this at least by my own expectations. I have those moments where I think “wow, did I treat that guy like a jerk.” I know this isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, but a continuum on which I am always pressing forward. Still I hold myself to a high standard.
The question is: can this also be reflected in a business setting? I believe that yes, it can. I think it is possible to provide services that solve business problems while still maintaining a level of integrity that shows my Christian world view. I can be upright in my business dealings while still making an income. That philosophy allows me to do both.
What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?
As a software developer code is the biggest mess I deal with. Many times it is code written by others, but the biggest mess I cleaned up this year was my own. A client asked me to build a custom query to search their customer and vehicle records. By the time I finished it was 23 printed pages. It was a monster but it was fast. Unfortunately, I misinterpreted the spec while developing using a ClientId instead of a CustomerId. They weren’t interchangeable, it seemed. My mistake wasn’t noticed until testing and fixing the reported bug turned out to be a big headache. For whatever reason when I was making the change cut-and-paste didn’t catch all the references and I had to do add some joins to get it to work correctly. I spent an inordinate amount of time debugging and fixing the query. In the end it worked, but the actual cost for that component was about 4 times their original budget.
What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?
Getting my billables up for current clients have been the extent of my entrepreneurial efforts lately. I’ve gotten set up in my new office and I am just trying to get back up to speed for the new year.
As far as efforts upcoming, I’m looking into building my network here in the Indianapolis area. I got Book Yourself Solid
As I’ve been surfing the internet recently I’ve found quite a few different resources all related to small business in Indianapolis. It’s pretty friendly here in terms of small business, which is great news for me. The opportunities are here, I simply need to take advantage of them.
Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?
I fell in love with computers during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. It’s been a love affair with computers pretty much since. Late in high school and early in college, though, I started taking an interest in journalism and writing. Once in college I lost interest in that field and returned to computers. In late 1994, I discovered the Internet and a niche that covered both a writing / publishing medium and computers. A match made in heaven! Seeing the cool things other people come up with as a solution to a problem gets me excited. I love seeing the results of a solution to a problem.
Boxers or Briefs?
That’s a rather personal question but I’ll take the middle of the road and say “boxer briefs”.
What do you do when you’re not programming?
I don’t do nearly enough when I’m not programming. I’m a Dad, so most of my non-work time is focused around being a parent. That means dinner, errands, soccer practice. I used to like watching movies but always feel like there’s a better use of my time. I like to read but in the last few years I’ve lost interest in reading fiction. I just need to find some new authors to read, or convince William Gibson to write faster.
What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?
Again a two part answer.
First, The Wife. Had she not seen how miserable I was at the 9-to-5 and encouraged me to go independent, I probably never would have. Knowing I had the full support of my wife made the transition so much easier.
Second, being marketable. I started my own shop in August 2006 but that was after having interviewed with several other consulting companies in town. After those conversations, I realized my skills were marketable but I wasn’t compelled to make a switch in jobs for essentially the same thing I was already doing. I was comfortable where I was. Why switch? Knowing I could get some consulting gigs with my skill set set my mind at ease. Once I made the actual jump, the contacts I had made provided my first contracts.
What’s your exit strategy?
Since I’m independent, my exit strategy is to stop doing this when I’m tired of doing it. That’s the freedom of not having any assets on which I need a return of investment. I’ll just wrap up my work for my last client and shut off the lights, as it were.
What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?
Talking to my either of my sisters always cracks me up… we genuinely love each other and all have the same dorky sense of humor passed down to us from our grandfather.
Have you ever been in business before?
My sisters and I sold pet rocks at the end of our driveway when we were kids. Our dad still has the one that looks like him. In sixth grade I started a company with my best friend to sell hand-drawn pictures of semi trucks and computer programs (so much for niches). We had 0 sales before shutting down operations but it was fun dreaming anyway.
At what point do you consider yourself successful?
Success is a moving target for a business. As soon as a company is successful it needs to redefine what success is or it will die. For me, success would be having great customers that love my work and hunt me down to do work for them. I want the long wow, the place where I have impressed my customers over and over again leaving no question about who will help them solve their business problems.
What was your first experience with a computer?
My mom was a very wise woman. She signed her kids up for various different things to give us a chance to try out things we were interested in. I took a puppet-making class, had guitar lessons and a computer programming class. I remember thinking it was a dumb idea but she insisted that computers were the way of the future. Turns out she was right and I loved the class so much I took a second class that same summer. The classes were programming BASIC on Apple ][s. As a sixth grader we were introduced to writing programs in BASIC. While most of the class spend computer lab time typing in a program, I provided the source code and goofed off writing other programs during that time instead.
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?
Bill Gates. While Steve is still considering the aesthetics of the Jell-O color, Bill will knock off his block like Windows has knocked off the the Mac UI.
Where do you do your best thinking?
I wish I could say it was something clever, but really my best thinking is done in front of the computer first thing in the morning. It’s usually then that I have let go of the things that worry me and can clearly look for the solution I seek. Back in the day I used to get my good ideas in the shower and anywhere else. But that also meant I couldn’t sleep at night. I had to change my habits to get some shuteye. Now I only think when I have to. Its pretty anti-entrepreneurial, don’t you think?
What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?
Lately, my schedule has primarily been based around our family. We recently moved to a new city and I’ve occupied most of my time with the details of making that happen. It means I haven’t worked nearly as much as before (a benefit of freelancing, I suppose). Before, I was working about 38 hours a week and then spending time running our boys to their events. I don’t play nearly as much as I should. Mostly I spend my evenings stressing about my “todo” list and how very little of it I accomplished that day. I need to lighten up. I sleep about 7 hours a night. Sometimes I powernap during the day.
If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?
I used to be a huge fan of the band Megadeth, but that changed while waiting in line by the tour bus to talk to Dave Mustaine. He was kind of rude to his fans, making demands like telling people they couldn’t smoke while waiting in the cold. I didn’t smoke, but that seemed like a pretty snobby request. After that I realized that everyone in the world is pretty much an equal: We’re all born, we live a bit, then we die. Where we go after that depends greatly on the choice we’ve made. So meeting anyone in particular doesn’t impress me much anymore. There are several bloggers out there that I respect very much. Someday, I’d like to run into them to chat. If I don’t, that’s fine with me too.
What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?
A good night’s sleep. Once I hit a point of frustration, the best thing I can do is take a few hours to recuperate. Things don’t seem nearly as grim in the morning, and I have that fresh perspective I need to get things done.
If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?
No, I would vote for Ron Paul.