Jeff's Blahg

Travis and I have spent the last 3 days here in beautiful, rainy, Orlando Florida. The occasion was the ADT Sales & Marketing Convention. There were many ADT Dealers here – including many of our customers. It was a great opportunity for us to do some networking… and it is already paying dividends. We have been ribbed extensively about our apparent lack of interest in marketing our product, SecuityTrax, so we gained some points for actually reaching out for once .

Last night ADT bought out the House of Blues. We had all the food we could eat and the local Blues Brothers performed, followed by 38 Special. I knew a couple of 38 Special’s songs, and they did a good job. My favorite part was the drummers solo. I mean this guy went NUTS for like 10 minutes straight!!! I have never seen anyone go so fast on the drums, and with such sweet rhythm. It was awesome.

Good trip, but ready to be home. Speaking of which, my flight is about to leave. Out.

Ah… how does it feel? No job, nobody telling me WHAT to do, WHY to do it or WHEN. Wow, if you haven’t had this opportunity you should give it some serious consideration… not that it can be achieved overnight by any means.

I started my first business in January 2001. Kristie and I were just married and I had started doing some web development things for fun. I had created BYUTrack.com as my first site. Now, I say that loosely, because what you see there now was probably about the third makeover it went through. The last go round I actually hired a designer to come up w/ the the look and feel of it – because I then, and still do – consider myself to be weak in that area. I wanted to make it look very polished. Anyway, not too long after I did that site the BYU Gymnastics coach approached me because he had heard about this cool site I had done for the track team. You see, the official site, BYUCougars.com was very weak on media. And, even more frustrating to the coaches, they had almost NO control over what was there. So, they wanted what I had created, a very powerful, flexible site that they could update and manage without having to ask permission every time they needed something. So, another site was created, BYUGymnastics.com. It amazes me that these sites have not been messed w/ at all since I did them. I would have guessed that they would have had major work needed by now. So, lesson 1 is take the time to do things right the first time, and don’t expect the world for it – or anything for that matter.

So, back to the business. I had this bright idea (so I thought). I had been paid for the above two sites, although it was insignificant amounts… but I could see where the value was being created and respected. I wanted to basically take over the BYUCougars.com site and redo the whole thing – add a ton of media and other cool things and provide what was being so loved by the track and gymnastics teams to all sports. Long story short is that we got all the key players in a meeting and presented the idea. It was shot down. So, I lost on that deal, but I gained some good experience from it – like 2) don’t expect people to even respect your ideas. Some people don’t, so either get thick skin or get out of the game.

Well, I still thought the *idea* behind the scenes was a good idea. Hence I began working on a new project. It was called SportTrax (notice the ‘trax’ portion, it will become a popular theme). The idea was this – create a site that allows a school to create / manage all their sports teams and their activities through it. Create rosters, schedules, add pictures, results and more – all easily on their own. When I started doing this schools around here didn’t have sites at all – requesting a schedule from the local high school required them mailing me (USPS) a photo copy. So, I did all the work on this, and oh ya, here was the real kicker: I was going to have the site easily MAKE money for them. I provided forms that would be taken to their existing (or new) sponsors that would allow them to choose a level of sponsorship, and their logo would show up on the top banner at appropriate interval based on sponsorship. Oh, wow, what a brilliant plan!!! I took it to the local high school and asked if we could test it out on them, at no charge. Of course they were all for that. We got them all setup and trained them how to use it, etc. I walked out of the place and nothing else ever happened to it. Anything besides the minimum is too much to ask it appears… so, outside the job description and outside the possibility of getting done. I met with a few other schools and came to the same conclusion… and left with a bitter taste in my mouth for athletic directors that claimed to care, but in the end were more concerned about doing as little as possible than anything else. Lesson 3, no matter how great you think your ideas are, don’t put all your eggs in one basket… ever! Always be thinking about what will be next. Oh, and 4, take some time to do some market research .

So, all those attempts pretty much went down the drain. But, I learned some valuable lessons along the way. In one of my next posts I will continue the story and eventually get caught up to where I am today… hope you can stay away that long.

Been a bit – there has been a lot going on in our neck of the woods.

I just got back from a trip back east. I flew into Philadelphia and met up with SafeTrax partner Sandie. We met the following day with United States Cold Storage at their corporate offices in Cherry Hill, NJ. It was decided that it would be beneficial for us to visit one of their facilities up in Bethlehem, PA the following morning.

Anyway, we had most of a day to burn, so we headed up to New York City. Now, this was my first visit to the Big Apple you see. I had this picture in my mind (I think we all do) of what it is supposed to be like. Surprisingly, my mental picture was pretty close…. until it came to the World Trade Center site. It is hard to comprehend the size and magnitude of the destruction without understanding the surroundings. So, I got off the subway and walked down the street… TALL buildings consuming every inch of every block – I am talking huge buildings (bigger than the barn back home). Claustrophobic. Then there is this huge… hole. The size of the hole and empty space contrasted with the enormous buildings surrounding the area was stunning to me. There were all these people just running around – meaning like going in and out of the subway station there, and just going about their daily lives… as though nothing ever happened there – just so used to it at this point. For me everything went quiet, zoned out and had a moment of pretty deep reflection. It was quite the experience… The picture was taken behind a bunch of netting, so that is why it blurred.

Then went on to see Madison Square Garden, ESPN Zone , Times Square, Statue of Liberty, etc. Overall, it was a pretty interesting place to visit. I wouldn’t have cared to stay any longer, nor do I care to return there, but am glad I can check it off the list…. whatever sense that makes.

Anyway, from there we went to Bethlehem for our meetings. After that I headed back to Philadelphia to drop Sandie off at the airport before continuing down to Baltimore. I got to spend Friday through Sunday with my brother Jared and his family. It was a great time, we got to: ride the light rail, attend an Orioles game, eat some tater-tot casserole, play with the computers, almost beat Zelda (almost pulled and all-nighter), went to church, etc.

So… that was the trip back east in a nutshell.

The other bit of exciting news is that we are in the process of buying some land. The land can be viewed here. It is 5.25 acres in Payson, UT. Currently it is an alfalfa field. Actually it is about 15 minutes south of where we currently live. It has been our dream to get out of the city and back to our roots a bit. While the deal is not complete, it is looking good. So, I’ll keep everyone informed. Either way, we will have to build on it, etc… so we won’t be going anywhere for a while…

Just a side note – SecurityTrax is doing great. We are adding adding adding.

Till next time…

The geeks will appreciate the formation of the subject to this post. If you don’t get it, don’t worry about it, it just means that you aren’t ask geeky as some of the rest of us.

English translation: SecurityTrax is growing, we added another new customer today.

Travis has been working hard and it is really beginning to pay off. He has been developing an API that allows partner companies the ability to query information that is pertinent to them. It is getting a lot of people very excited about the possibilities. The traction we are gaining is very substantial. There are great things on the horizon.

The AlarmTrax product has *officially* been rebranded to SecurityTrax. SecurityTrax is an online application used by ADT and Monitronics (and others) Dealers to track all their customers, etc. The change has already taken place… including URL changes.

For those of you that perhaps own a business with product names, trademarks and the like you know how brutal it can be to change something like this. It really stinks because we were getting some really good name recognition going… however, we needed to make the change now rather than risk future problems with the AlarmTrax name.

Also, we just added another company to …SecurityTrax… (just doesn’t sound right yet!).

Alot has been going on… that is an understatement. Its been hard to find time to do much of anything outside the required regiment. Anyway, some cool things that have happened:

• HiValley is now an LLC. No more sole-proprietorships for me!
• Added 2 new AlarmTrax customers.
• Travis is taking over day-to-day operations of AlarmTrax.
• Kristie and I did our estate planning. I suggest you do this if you haven’t already.
• Been coaching the vault at BYU.
• Still can’t find a decent house to buy.

I am in Albuquerque right now with the track team. The vault is tomorrow at 11 AM. We should do very well… but hey, we always say that. After the meet tomorrow I fly to Oklahoma City (via Denver) to spend the next week at the WFLO Institute:

Established in 1965, the WFLO Institute offers a three-year program, with three and a half days of instruction each year devoted to helping warehouse and food distribution professionals better understand the many facets of the PRW industry. Nearly forty classes are offered at the Institute, divided among seven tracks—Facilities Management, Finance and Productivity, Food Science/Food Safety, Human Resources, Logistics Management, Risk Management, and Warehouse Technology. Whether you’re in operations, administration, engineering, human resources, or some other area in the industry, experience how the Institute can broaden your understanding of all aspects of the PRW business.

This is for SafeTrax. There will be some great networking possibilities for us while there… since everyone there (minus existing customers who will be there) can really use our services. Sandie and I are going as well as my Dad. I try to post some exiting highlights from the week.

out

My Cadillac CTS is real-wheel drive. What is up with that? It really doesn’t help when there is a foot of snow on the ground… glad I have a Chevy Silverado as a backup.

I benched 360 this week… thanks to some SuperPump 250 (wife cringes).

I have still been coaching the vault at BYU. It has been going rather well. Believe it or not I actually vaulted for the first time in 4 1/2 years a week or so ago. I jumped on small poles from a short run… but I think I surprised some people, including myself.

Looks like I’ll be traveling to the BYU track meets to coach.

My brother Jared and his family flew in from Baltimore last week. They were supposed to leave 3 days ago for Denver. Thanks to the weather there they won’t be getting there until the day AFTER Christmas now.

SafeTrax signed 2 companies up this month.

AlarmTrax added a customer as well.

Battlefield 2 is a great game… especially when you are playing it when you don’t really have time to get all your real work done. Here are my stats.

I spoke in church last Sunday. Topic: Faith, Hope, Charity. Went well, glad its done.

The MacBook Pro is treating me awesome.

The family and I are up in Idaho for the weekend, to visit some of Kristie’s family. Everytime I come back “home” I feel a desire to live here again… but it doesn’t seem to last very long. Maybe its just the complexities of relocating the family that cause the feeling to evaporate. Either way, once again I am ready to get back to my home, and my bed.

I have been busy preparing for the SafeTrax trip to the IARW conference. We got the brochure all wrapped up and I have a sample of it hot off the press. It looks very professional and I am pleased with our (Sandie, Juli, Me) work. Lets just hope it pays off… it should. Our SafeTrax homepage just got a major overhaul as well. It is better, but still needs more love when I have time.

There is also a ton work going on with AlarmTrax. AlarmTrax is some software I developed a few years ago for home security compaines. It basically just tracks a ton of information for them, like sales, payroll, tech schedules etc. There has been quite an interest in it, from multiple companies as of late. I haven’t advertised the product at all, but word of mouth is paying me well. In the mean time, I have been working a new and improved version that is already being beta tested by one company and getting great reviews… now I just need time to finish it up.