Why no posts lately (a.k.a. managing cash flow)

Posted by Robert Merrill on November 18, 2008 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

(I wrote this back before the big switch on 11/22/2008. The tacky blog is gone, except maybe in Google’s cache.)

My blog uses WordPress and the rest of my site is essentially static. OK, I use PHP to include the header and footer, but that hardly counts. That explains why the blog looks different from the rest of the site. I decided I’d rather have a tacky-looking blog than no blog. I hope that hasn’t caused would-be clients visiting my site to conclude, “what an amateur!” (false) or “what a cheapskate!”

Guilty as charged. I’m setting priorities, which is what you end up doing, one way or another, in a constrained environment. I’m being careful with cash flow. I have spent cash, but only on things that a) I believe must happen, and b) I can’t do effectively myself (More on the second statement later. It’s contrary to what you’ve probably been told about outsourcing).

I know professional networking must happen if my business is to prosper. I’m not very good at professional networking, so I spend cash to attend events where I know I will learn something and I will meet people I ought to be meeting, in settings that don’t require making a great first impression (because I don’t think I do, and just thinking that probably causes me not to. Oh, well). That’s why I attended WTN’s and Accelerate Madison’s recent Innovation Master Class with Tom Koulopolous, and why I jumped onto the waiting list the day WTN’s CEO-CIO Fusion 2009 was announced. I was recently admitted, and happily parted with around $1000 for those two events.

But the tacky-looking blog still bothers me, so I’m in the process of converting the whole site to WordPress. I could have hired someone and it would be done already. But I’m able to program in PHP and I’m good at learning new technologies, so I’m able to do the work myself. It’s slower, because client work comes first. The web site is my highest non-client priority, but because it’s not my top priority, I don’t (can’t—it’s mathematics) know when I’ll be done with the web site.

Meanwhile, I’m making a mistake by not posting, occasionally, even though my blog looks tacky. Chances are a tacky-looking blog with no recent posts looks even worse to a prospect. What’s more, making a post now and then (instead of working on the web site) isn’t going to slow down the web site project significantly. At least no more than playing Word Challenge on Facebook does.

uFunctional LLC is a software-intensive business. I just realized, I’m my own case study.

Oh, well. Perfection is never on our list of options, at least not in this world. But you can always improve, and that begins with a little bit of soul-searching. And that often begins with the realization that the web site’s just not getting done the way you dreamed it would.