Author: kellyjoseph

Where is the empiricism?

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My father worked for IBM for a number of years.  Then he built a computer service business in Anchorage and was successful with it, using the management lessons he gained while at IBM.  To sit down and try to talk to him about decentralization, new media, and where things could be headed doesn’t get anywhere.  It’s trying to reconcile all these new theories with the old orthodox thinking of management.  People get older and they stick to their doctrines, and I think that’s fine – what they’ve seen work, worked for them.

I like reading about the new stuff, it sounds exciting and I want to understand it and keep track of the conversation.  Nassim Taleb likes to warn us, though, and tells us to keep on our toes by looking for the empirical evidence.  I don’t know if much can be produced at this point, and I realize Umair Haque just likes to think and theorize and write, but I am beginning to get tired of anecdotes and simplifications like evil and DNA.  Everytime I read DNA now my reaction is the same as if I threw my right heel down on top of my big left toe.

Things are changing, I can dig that.  But a comment on an Umair Haque post that calls him only another weatherman, or a Marc Cuban post reminding us that it’s all been said before are sobering.  The times may change, but I think the feelings stay the same.  Our fathers were just as eager and keen on the emerging trends as we are.  I think we’d do well to keep this in mind.

I’m Tired

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I get tired of the liberal college campus, often, and have this quote by Peter Blake saved:

“I don’t think the students should have any more power over the teachers than they have already.  Just at the moment I don’t really like students as a group of people.  I think they rather overrate themselves.  They seem to talk a lot and protest a lot, and have too many rights.  I think one could get overinvolved in the activity of being a student.  After all, students are not so important-they are really only there to learn how to be adults.  Students shouldn’t feel that they have to complain.”

I found it in Richard Branson’s autobiography, Losing My Virginity.  On the other side of things I have this passage, from Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, on my mind:

“He stood still over me… and with a smile in which I seemed to detect suddenly somtehing insolent.  But then I am twenty years his senior.  Youth is insolent; it is its right – its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all assertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence.”

Comes to mind when I see a kid who looks no older than 17 talking about solving the worlds problems.  Fine, fine, good luck to you dude, but you’re not saying anything new.  People will listen when things are put this way, it terms of money.

Emailing Strangers

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Ryan Holiday did a post recently with some rules for emailing strangers.  One is quite good but another needs to be looked at again.

He mentioned Humanness as being a virtue.  By letting imperfections in speech slide, the other person feels like they are talking with a real human being.  Although i no longer punch out emails without capitalization and proper punctuation, those emails that i receive without it are still warming and somehow less strenuous on the eyes.  but my pride or whatever would never let me get past it in my own emails.

Ryan’s last rule was this: Again, emails, questions, comments, views – all of those incur a cost upon the person you want something from. It’s your job to make those as low as possible.

This is terrible advice for anyone who hesitates about emailing somebody important.  Especially me.  In the States everyone around me seems so incredibly busy that asking anything of anyone seems like such a burden to them that it can cause me to not even bother.  Looking at things like this is not emotionally healthy.

I agree, emails should be clear and straightforward, and not too long.  But fuck, if I worry about how many minutes of this guy’s time I’m going to take before I send this email, I’ll never send it off.  The best assumption is not that your email, question, or comment is going to be a burden, but that it is going to be well-received.

Handicapped Mexicans are Skinny

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I am in Mexico and this phenomenon in the photo below is worth remarking about.  The way things operate in Latin America is just so darn funny.

You see they put in a handicapped ramp for their ridiculously high sidewalk.  They painted it for you so you know, even though it’s rather steep.  But, what the fuck is a person in a wheelchair supposed to do when he arrives at the pole 20 yards down the sidewalk?

 This was taken in La Paz, Mexico, in Southern Baja California.  It is easy to rag on the way things go down here, but I’ll take it any day over the states.  The women are gorgeous and the people are nice.  Always moving but to a slower rythm.  It is only with people from Latin America that you will see six guys leaning against a building, not doing or saying anything for hours.  In the USA we’d feel like we’d have to hustle.

We are cruising the Sea of Cortez on the boat, making our way north.  I’ll post anything else I find interesting.

 Sidewalk in La Paz

“My fingers are the strings through which the universe zings”

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Mania in a blog post:

“Well, now I’m really zinging. My blood is bubbling and I’m churning through tasks like there was no tomorrow. Maybe there is no tomorrow. Maybe all we have is today to do the things we want to do – maybe my fingers are the strings through which the universe zings. The others their covers are strands of wet spaghetti. Come ON get a move on why are you so slow oh no go slow you are strands of wet spaghetti. That explains a lot. Whereas I whereas I am made of something – something or nothing – nothing made at all out of the sky the high why sky is why am I.”
I love this blog: http://scienceofinsanity.blogspot.com/ 

Projects, 2: Entrepreneurship Involves Risk

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[en·tre·pre·neur] – A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture

I always forget about the risk part.  Whether it’s shelling out money for a DBA or bottles for product testing, I never think twice.  Going in I never think about sunk costs.

I posted a while ago about a project I had started based on a key chain idea I had.  It was a good idea and research showed there were no others like it in retail stores in the area.  I wanted to take advantage of the the craze over the University of Texas’s mascot, the Longhorn.  I had Chinese manufacturers lined up and a registered DBA.  The only thing holding me up was licensing.

UT’s mark and mascot are of course, trademarked.  They are managed by the Collegiate Licensing Company along with hundreds of other schools.  Those holograms you see on collegiate products, that’s the CLC.  I can not remember where I read it, but UT is the CLC’s most profitable brand.

The CLC is essentially the gatekeeper.  The trademark department personnel at UT are always busy, and any requests for information are best directed to the CLC – that’s their job.  They issue licenses to companies, and licensed companies can use trademarks based on their license restrictions.  There are three types of licenses, the Restricted License, which is for interdepartment use only and not for resale, the Local License, which is good for up to five nearby universities and products can be resold by retailers, and the Standard License, which I am pretty sure is good nationwide.  Each license is harder and more expensive to obtain than the one listed before.  For Local and Standard licensees, the CLC wants to see companies with proven sales histories, distribution channels, and marketing plans.

A Local License made sense for my project but was looking cost prohibitive.  UT’s royalty rates are high, and it would have cost me $1500+ at the outset, just for my license.  I decided to go for the Restricted License and I had secured a contact in the business school that would buy the key chains, with the business school’s logo on the side, and give them out for free during summer orientation.  Bam!  A customer and an order of 1,000 units!

My application for a Restricted License made it through the gatekeepers at the CLC, but once it ended up on somebody’s desk at the Trademark Department at UT, it was denied.  Their reasons were that I was a young company with no proven sales history and only one product.  They have no time limit on reapplying, and encouraged me to expand my product line.

I’m not too worried about it.  I’ll try next year.

Takeaways: Insurance would have been less than I expected.  Comprehensive $1,000,000 business liability insurance for that operation would have cost $500 per year.

Somethings really are out of my control.

Negativity, Pt. 2

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Remarkable advice can come from the most unlikely places.  Today I found out my calculus professor was a successful entrepreneur for 20 years and jumped from industry to industry, founding and selling many companies.

From him: “I worked in the real world for a long time before coming here.  I had a lot of experience with others, and could see what qualities in people allowed them to be successful or not.  The ones who ultimately became successful were the ones that allowed themselves to be successful.  This is how I did well in the multiple industries I worked in.  I liked to move around a lot, and every time I did I made sure I stuck around long enough to be successful.  Once you do well in one field you are able to bring that expectation into another.  That expectation is 9/10ths of it.”

Allowing negativity to cloud one’s honest expectations of success is death.

On why I hate the business school on most days:

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I wrote up my resume for this (required) Career Planning Strategies class the other week and got it back on Wednesday, graded.
Under activities, instead of the normal shit you see on your average student’s resume like member of ___ organization, or member of XXX fraternity, I put the independent travel experience I had off the tug and the 2+ years living on the boat in the Caribbean
I got the resume back with that section crossed out, deemed not resume worthy.

Projects, 1: We will join hands with you heartedly to find new century splendor!

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This post is one of many more to come that describes an entrepreneurial project I am undertaking and how the process works.

I arrived here in Austin last summer and was surprised at how this whole town is the University of Texas’ biggest fan.  At least half of all cars here have the Longhorn silhouette on the hood of their trunk.  I stepped foot in the University Co-op bookstore by campus and was awed by the amount of UT paraphernalia there – Longhorn confetti, dogsweaters, you name it.  If there was a product out there that could bear the University’s marks or colors, it was in that store.  I knew then that one of my first ventures was going to involve getting into that store.

At that time I had a key chain that I rather liked that I purchased in Alaska.  It is in the shape of a moose and when you squeeze its rubber body, a silicone poo comes out of a hole in its ass.  The idea didn’t come to me until a few months later, but one day I thought “why not a pooping Bevo, our mascot?”  What the hell, make the poop maroon in order to bank on the UT-A&M rivalry.

The idea has since morphed.  There is no way the University would let me produce a product that had their proud mascot, Bevo, shitting at every squeeze.  But I still have a differentiated product from anything else out there, and am chasing down all potential venues for selling my product.  Here is how the process went:

I first wanted to have an idea of who could manufacture it for me and how much it would cost.  I contacted one toy manufacturer in the United States to get an idea by calling their custom project department.  They couldn’t give me any detail because I did not have any drawings done, but the guesstimate they gave me seemed too high.  I decided I should try China, and so posted a project on Alibaba.com.  I only said that I wanted a key chain made out of rubber or plastic and that I was located in the United States.

I wasn’t prepared for the responses I would receive.  I ended up getting over 100 emails a day for a week.  People who say capitalism is dead are fucking morons.  There are thousands of firms over there that are SO eager for your money.  Most of the responses went something like this:

Dear Sir,
We would like to introduce ourselves Wenzhou Crescent  Craft products CO.,LTD mainly produce various cartoon stickers, taboo stickers, Christmas stickers, sponge soaked stickers, decorative stickers, acrylics stickers, shopping bags; various magnetic notebook phonebook, cartoon paper bag, data volume and other stationery; various prints, color gift box, puzzle, calendar and so on; various size promotion gifts, handwork craft and so on .Products mainly sold in places as far away as North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America countries, and Own various international certification system. There is continuous expansion in domestic and international market.
Crescent has special design and scheme group, professional printing experts and trade team, whole full line produce equipment, the advance printing machine-Heidelberg. In company we follow quality control, unify plan, concentrate marketing.Explore, beyond, harmonize, efficiency are Crescent spirit. All for customer demand, pursuit excellence is our company the main goal. Based on integrity, innovate to get deep develop, customers are first are Crescent spirit; satisfaction, trust, support, are Crescent desire; mutually long-term beneficial is Crescent target. We will join hands with you heartedly to find new century splendor.
Wish we can cooperation in the future business.
Looking forward to hearing from you ASAP.
 
Best Regards

Look at that third to last sentence again: We will join hands with you heartedly to find new century splendor.  Come on!  These people want to get rich with you!  Most emails had English as bad or worse than this email had.  Also worthy of note is that 99% of all emails I received from them signed off with Best Regards.

I am a sympathetic guy so I did respond to most of the emails.  I would say I either found another firm or am just not interested in pursuing a project with their firm, but thanks for responding anyway.  I filtered through the emails and narrowed down a list of ten companies that seemed to manufacture products similar to what I was looking for and had coherent, professional sounding English.

The next step towards having a product was to have some graphic art for which the firms could quote me on a mold price as well as per unit cost.  With the type of key chain I want, it is typically made by injection molding.  This is where a reverse of the shape is cast in some type of metal, and the mold material, either a plastic, rubber, or polyurethane foam, is injected into the 3D space.

I created a project on Elance and received six or so bids.  I checked out the bidder’s portfolios and weighed it against their quoted price and ended up going with a guy with lots of experience and a good price, $170.  I ended up with some great drawings of a nice looking product that I can show potential retailers and to manufacturers.

The basic groundwork for this type of project is pretty easy and fairly complete.  I know who I am going to sell to and have narrowed down a few manufacturers.  With Chinese manufacturers the difficulty lies in getting the product over here.  By air freight I can get a 40 pound carton to Austin for $120, through customs and everything.  That is called an EMS service.  For cheaper freight services one has to find a good sourcing agent, which can be easily located by Google search.  When you are receiving quotes from firms they often say something like “FOB Shanghai.”  FOB stands for Free On Board, and my understanding is it means that the product is the manufacturer’s responsibility up to that point, and it is the customer’s responsibility to handle all logistics after that location.

For my project, the mold quotes I have been receiving range from $200 – $2,000.  The per unit costs range from $.30 – $1.00.  Generally a higher mold cost means lower per unit, and vice versa.  These prices are for various materials.

Where my project is slowing down now is where licensing and insurance gets involved.  As my product will reference the university here, it must be licensed through the Collegiate Licensing Company and be approved by the school.  I am in the middle of this process now and so will have to write about it later.

Takeaway so far: This idea was the morphing of two others, which is so common in other products one sees.  Projects like this do take more time as one would like, and often change over time.  The customers I thought I would be selling to at the beginning are radically different from where I am heading to now.  Things to consider when developing a similar product, and when in dialogue with potential manufacturers, are: minimum order quantity, unit price, materials, mold cost, shipping terms, sampling cost, logo placement, and packaging.

Incorporation:  I simply filed a DBA (Doing Business As) for $14 with the county clerk.  This allows me to use another name as if it were a corporation.  For dealing with American firms, and potentially opening a business checking account, I got a Federal Tax ID number, or EIN (Employer Identification Number), which I filed for $30 with Tax9er.

I will post more on the project as it advances further.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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No. XXXIII:

Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,

Asking, “What Lamp had Destiny to guide

   Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?”

And- “A blind understanding!” Heav’n replied.

No. XXXIV:

Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn

My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn:

    And Lip to Lip it murmur’d- “While you live,

Drink! -for once dead you never shall return.”

No. XXXVI:

For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day,

I watch’d the Potter thumping his wet Clay:

     And with its all obliterated Tongue

It murmur’d- “Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”

and so much more….