Dance Through Life
Recently a friend of mine (who is also my dance instructor), decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge. She is opening up a dance studio here in Calgary.
It reminds me of the time nine years and a bit ago that we started up Sunwapta Solutions. A dream, a commitment and the excitement and fear in jumping into a new world. So much to learn and do.
Dance Through Life (web site coming) will be focusing on adult dance and fitness classes. Most of the dance studios in town cater to children and teens and while some offer adult classes, there is […]
Does Your Business Work For You?
Be honest. You don't have to share the answer with anyone but yourself and you are doing yourself a huge disservice if you deceive yourself.
Do you work for your business or does you business work for you?
You can work in your business (employee), you can manage your business (manager) and you can work on your business (entrepreneur).
You can have a business plan, cash flow, working capital, investors, products and services, customers and an exit strategy. You can be providing a critical service to society.
But that does not answer the fundamental question. Why are you in business in the first place?
To answer this […]
Exit Planning – Be Prepared
When you buy a ticket on a plane you have a destination in mind. When you arrive you get off the plane and it is the end of the flight. You have arrived and there is no ambiguity.
When you are taking off, the flight attendants tell you where all the exits are in the event of an emergency. If you’ve flown a number of times you have them memorized by now. Hopefully you won’t have to use them.
If your plane has to divert to another destination due to bad weather, you will have to make alternative arrangements to continue your […]
Raising a Business
These days there are a lot of blended families. I recently got to observe one such family closely. Children, parents, step-parents, joint custody, two sets of grandparents, day care workers, teachers, coaches…. It reminds me of that saying, "it takes an entire village to raise a child". Sometimes the village works and sometimes it doesn't; to the detriment of the children.
Starting and running a full-fledged business is a lot easier when there is a village behind it. Sure it helps to have a strong leader too, but succeeding in business is hard enough without having to go it alone. When you […]
Sharing Code Between Silverlight and WPF
I recently saw an advertisement for a webinar on the subject of this post in a newsletter. The seminar looks at the feasibility and some of the limitations.
For us this is a been there done that subject. We worked with one of our clients (partners) to develop a framework of tools, etc. for them to quickly build out applications that would work in both WPF desktop and web via Silverlight.
That is not to say there were no limitations or gotchas involved. The XAML is not 100% compatible between the environments and similarly the with the .NET framework… essentially Silverlight is a subset of […]
Sunwapta Solutions Turns 9
Our company just turned 9 years old. I spent that day with family and the evening on a plane returning to Calgary after visiting family.
While on the plane I spent a few moments reflecting on where we have been and where we are going as a company.
It has been an incredible personal journey to this point… highs and lows abound in business. We've built some incredible software and technology has changed faster than most would like.
The people have been amazing. My business partners, our staff, our customers and our partners/vendors have all contributed to our success over the years.
Behind the scenes we […]
Back at Sunwapta
I was away for a few weeks and out of the blogosphere. It is good to take a break from the constant connectivity once in a while. I actually managed a whole vacation without any contact with the office.
I have a feeling things are going to get busy… and I already have several ideas for some posts.
An Entrepreneur’s Fable – Part 2
I was reviewing some of my posts over the last year and thought it would be a good idea to add to this story (the original is included below for ease of reference).
The Fable – Part 2
The CEO reflects on the past year….
The journey to master entrepreneur has no fixed destination. It is a quest for personal growth and development and there are many paths and many places you can end up. There is still a lot to learn and as you learn more, you realize there is even more to learn. Only you can decide when you've arrived.
Matters got […]
An Entrepreneur’s Fable (Part 1)
Note: This is a repost of previous story. Part 2 is coming out later this week.
Once upon a time three inspired information technology technicians working for a large consulting company decided to start a business. One was an architect, one was a project manager and one was a developer. One became the CEO, one became the salesman and one became the lead technician.
This was a time of plenty. Everyone was starting a technology business and overnight success was coming to companies that had nothing to show… no products, no customers and no revenue… the gold rush of the Internet. […]
The Pain in Joint Ventures
As Seth Godin points out in his post today, the success of a joint venture is greatly reduced due to both:
-
The Venture Part: Is by definition risky.
-
The Joint Part: The more independant parts in something that can fail, the more likely the overall thing will fail. This applies to just about anything and gets even more challenging to predict when dealing with the complexity of people.
Open Source Software Projects
Open source software projects are often done by a team of dispersed and somewhat independent developers, etc. The common goal keeps everyone aligned.
If someone volunteering their time drops out, someone else in […]