Ash Friday

While at work today I looked out my window and thought, "Funny, it looks like its snowing." The Zaca Fire just north of Santa Barbara is causing ash to rain down all over the city. Check out the video from our front yard!

Don't Go It Alone

Over the past few years I’ve watched colleagues take the plunge to become consultants, and I’m always surprised how many of them want to go it alone. Two of the biggest challenges when starting a new business (specifically consulting) are...

• All your success stories have an asterisk that you did it under the company you used to work for.


• You don’t have the best kind of marketing, which is a direct reference from a personal contact that has experienced your company.

In Tim Sanders’ book Love Is the Killer App he says, “Your network is your networth.” Your ability to generate revenue is directly correlated to the amount of people that are willing to recommend you, assuming they even know what you do. Using your network to create business is something that too few people do. My dad (a long time entrepenuer) always told me, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

I’ve spent almost every evening of the past week sending out introduction letters to prospective clients, and I’m pretty confident that some business will be generated from that work. But I know that a direct reference from a personal contact will generate more opportunities than I ever can. I say personal versus professional because a professional reference is from someone that doesn’t know you. They know what you do and so they reference you, but they don’t encourage someone to hire you. Personal references enjoy referencing you and passionately encourage someone to hire you.

I sent out the first ping to my personal network-of-success. I’ll keep you updated on what generates more business: the letter to my network or introduction letters to prospective clients. I'm betting on my network.
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Letter to my personal network of success.

Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

It seems almost a dozen times in the past three years my professional life has been at a fork in the road and each time I’ve taken the “safe road”. Three weeks ago I reached another fork in the road.

Just over a month ago InfoGenesis was purchased by Agilysys Inc., the largest hospitality technology company in the world. As many of you know, about four months ago I accepted the role of Director of Professional Services for InfoGenesis, helping recover a department that had gotten somewhat off course. Three weeks ago the new company ownership asked me to move to Las Vegas to manage the professional services group, as that is the new primary services office. Chrystal and I love Santa Barbara and are not yet ready to leave, so I declined the offer. Upon declining the request to relocate the joint decision was made that they would be hiring someone for my position in Las Vegas. Though this sounds like an unfortunate incident I am viewing it as an opportunity.

The new ownership had expressed the sincere desire to keep me on board at the company, and requested I think about what job I would like. It was wonderful to have the blessing of being able to choose what job I really wanted, and even create one if I could justify the value. After much reflection, discussions with Chrystal, wise counsel from my dad and prayer I have made the decision that this time the job I really want is Owner and Principal Consultant for Kevin Sturm Consulting.

At what will be one month short of nine years, my last day with InfoGenesis will be Friday, October 5. I have spent many evenings over the past few weeks working on starting Kevin Sturm Consulting, and will spend many more in the coming weeks. Most of that time has been spent networking with contacts and getting a foundation to start a client base. At this point I would say I have the ground work in place, but I still need to finish my website and a few administrative tasks associated with starting a business. The next step is to land a customer and my first of what I hope will be many consulting jobs.

My biggest challenge in this role will be establishing my own reputation in the industry. For nine years I have been backed by a big well established company. As a private consultant I now have to make a name for myself, but the recommendation from a trusted contact will always be a vital part of my business. All of you know me personally, professionally or both and I hope can be part of my extended network-of-success. I will be providing a few different services, but will specialize in system evaluation and selection for hospitality venues and use case and requirements gathering for hospitality vendors. If you know of any hotels, restaurants, resorts, golf courses, stadiums, corporate cafeterias, or any hospitality related venue that is opening or planning on replacing their technology system(s) and feel confident in referencing my services please do.

As I embark on this new journey I covet your prayers, words of wisdom, criticism and help. Thank you all for your friendship and support. I am hoping that this will be first installment of a regular newsletter, and that with each new installment I will have stories of success and learning experiences to report. If you’re a blog reader you can catch regular updates of how things are going on my blog.

Cheers!

Kevin

Random Knowledge #1

Quote: "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Meaning: Don't throw the good stuff out with the bad stuff (more or less)

I always love to know where weird sayings like this come from. Well this one I've known for a while but I figured it would be random knowledge thing #1.

Back in the early settlement days of living without the convenience of running water and grand sewage systems, bathing was a planned event. Upon fetching the water from the local crick or well it was then heated by kettle or bucket and dumped into a big tub. Think Bonanza or Little House on the Prairie style.
Once the bath was ready to go, the ordering of bathing was pa, ma, and then kids oldest to youngest. Pa was covered with dirt from working the land all day, and ma was often not much cleaner. Kids are always covered in dirt, so by the time that the baby got a bath the water was already so cloudy you couldn't see into the dirty water. So when the water was thrown out there could have been a baby in it...which is weirder than the phrase.

But, that's where the phrase Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." came from.

New Banner!

We'll, like I said Jeremy Wold was able to do a quicky fix for me to get my banner updated. It's not perfect but he got it to work better than me.

Oh the insanity

I'm insane!


Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (It may also have been Ben Franklin, Google said both.)











For the past three days I've been trying to update the banner on my blog. Although the green- square-pixelation-thingy is cool, it's not so much what I'm going for. I've successfully been able to update everything in the template that I really want to change, but that darn banner is a real bugger (to be pronounced with an English accent).

I have always loved blogger's easy to use interface, but I'm disappointed in this one.

I want the banner be this...so let's all just pretend it is for now.


I've always said I never really wanted to learn to code, but now I'm kinda rethinking that statement because html is stumping me. Not being able to figure this out is really humbling, as I generally consider myself pretty technical.

I guess I'll have to go back to my good 'ol buddy Jeremy from Wold Creative Group.

Support Your Network-of-Success

The excitement and anticipation of starting my own company has completely overtaken my thoughts since quitting my job 3 days ago. I gave a 60 day notice to help transition everything, so I won't officially be on my own till October 6th. But all I can think about is planning I need to do and getting my website up. I'm having a tough time not spending bunches of money on a really great website and marketing material, but know that I'll get way more customers through word of mouth marketing than my website. A do want a really solid website still.

On Friday I ordered my new business cards, so they should be here this week. I'm so excited! I am super stoked on the design that Wold Creative Group did. Jeremy Wold is a long time friend and recently started his own marketing and design company, so supporting another entrepreneur feels good, too. I already consider Jeremy part of my network-of-success because I know he helped me create a logo that people will remember. I really like Jeremy's style because he believes in simplicity and pure elements of design. If you need design or marketing assistance, you should check out his website and shoot him an email.

The picture below is what Wold Creative Design put together for me. Below that is what I sent him as an idea...and now the world understands why I desperately needed his help.

Front of card by Wold Creative Group

Back of card by Wold Creative Group









Front of Card that I designed...it's not horrible, but it ain't no Wold creation!








Back of card that I designed. I did come up with the shortened version of "hospitality technology made simple"...which I felt pretty good about.

A Realistic World View

I recently finished a book that changed my "world view" perspective more than any other book. By world view I mean viewing the world as the world, versus from our completely isolated view in the Western world. In Santa Barbara I am surrounded by some of the most obscene wealth in the world and it's easy to get caught up in it.

The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs is a must read for everyone in the Western world, especially Santa Barbara. Jeffrey Sachs is a altruistic economist that has advised just about every major political figure on the third world economics, and is currently a special advisor to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General. The big thought of the book is our generation is the first in history that has the financial capability to end "extreme poverty". The book highlights the UN Millennium Project, which is a plan to end "extreme poverty" by the year 2025.

The book defines extreme poverty as the 2.5 billion people in the world that live on less than $2.00 per day, and that we have the ability to provide the necessary money and supplies to end that. Read the book and get involved.

You don't have to agree with everything that Jeffrey proposes in the book, but it's hard not to be affected by reality of information that he provides.

Five Years of Wonderful

Five years ago yesterday I married my best friend!

For our five year anniversary I surprised Chrystal with a trip to Santa Ynez. We stayed in a quaint B&B called Meadowlark Inn and went wine tasting for the first time. Both of us thought it crazy that we have lived in Santa Barbara so long and never gone wine tasting.

When we arrived I was a bit disappointed because the B&B was not what I expected. I was expecting something a bit nicer, but the old adage “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” definitely applied. Upon arriving, the inn keeper welcomed us by name and was so friendly we immediately felt at home. We stayed in the Cabernet suite, which has a funny hot tub on the patio (check out the video). There was a mix up with our wine tour schedule where I thought it was Saturday, but it was Friday. The tour started at 11:00 but we were not able to get there till about 1:30. The staff was super accommodating, and adjusted our wine tour to start at 2:00 by picking us up half way through the tour and then took just the two of us for another two hours to complete the tour.

The best part about the tour is that the inn owner does the tour personally. We were told that she was a former restaurant owner, so she new all of the places to go that had great wine versus just popular wineries. To our delight, our tour guide was Brigitte (pronounced bri-gee-ta) of Brigitte’s restaurant fame in Santa Barbara (now Opal). We heard wonderful stories of her move to the United States from Germany and how she has been involved in starting multiple restaurants in Santa Barbara (Brigitte's, Downey’s, and Norbert's).

My favorite tasting room was Artiste, which is a tasting room and art gallery. The featured artist’s medium was wine! Chrystal and I both thought it was so interesting. All the wine labels are featured artists, and the name of that wine is the name of the painting.

At the last winery which was my favorite, Rusack, we just sipped wine and talked with Brigitte about the restaurant industry. The winery manager finally had to come and kick us out because they were closing.

What really made our stay, other than it being with my best friend, was that we were treated like family. It is not the nicest B&B I have stayed at, but it is definitely my favorite experience at any B&B. Brigitte and her staff staged a great experience that we will forever correlate with wonderful memories. As a business owner Brigitte really understands that hospitality is about staging a memorable experience for the guest.

We definitely plan on doing future wine tours with Brigitte, and hopefully she will be a future client of kevin sturm Consulting as she is going to open a restaurant at her other B&B Story Book Inn.

If you would like to contact Brigitte directly to inquire about a customized wine tour you can reach her at info@meadowlarkinnsolvang.com.

Step in a new direction

Yogi Berra once said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Tim Sanders is one of my favorite authors, and has a business philosophy of surrounding yourself with "ed" people, not "ing" people. Recently, I felt like I had become an "ing" person. I was always thinking about starting my own company, planning on it, or waiting until I had enough money to start one. I was working on business plans or bidding my time for the right moment.

We'll I got tired of being an "ing" person and became an "ed" person today. After almost nine years at the same company, I submitted my resignation today. I gave a 60 day notice, and starting on October 5th will be privately employed as a hospitality technology consultant.

What a rush to enter the world of the entrepreneur. Work had been such a burden lately, and it was like having a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Now all I need to do is get some customers!

Creating Simple Software

Blogger just release their new templates wizard and it's super sweet. It's really easy to use with a very intuitive UI. As a product manager I love easy to use software. They added a new drag and drop feature, and that really is cool.

Someday I'll create my own blog background and what not, but until then thanks Blogger!