I received an awesome present – my first ever business cards. What made them awesome was the fact that the company’s name was MY company’s name – Innovadix.

I could care less when people utilize their middle finger to express some sort of emotions. But, I do find it inappropriate when amongst professional peers. Despite the fact that the environment is a party, people do notice what others at the event do and say. They do talk amongst themselves and after the party, as well as almost always there is someone recording audio or video or images. Then they get posted and someone writes something about what You did, even those who do not share opinions via writing, still form an opinion about You based on your actions. All of these do affect your reputation and your company’s reputation, because when amongst professionals you do represent your company, and there is an even higher stake when you are the founder!

Reputation + business = money The better the first the more of the last!

The finger + a camera = douchebaggery

Please, do share the reason for your answer in the comments after this post.

You can find more information about the TechCrunch party even here.

I blame it on the Portillo’s food we had for dinner the night before. Amanda thinks that it’s either the food or the flu. Although, thinking about it, it could be also something from Alexandar’s daycare. He had similar symptoms on Saturday. He was fine on Friday, but he started Saturday not feeling well, occasional  diarrhea and being sensitive to the touch. The culmination was at 1:30 AM when his dinner came out the same way it went in. The rest of the Sunday he was fine again.

Same here, we feel fine today.

What topped everything was when he was done with his calculations he asked me if I would like to guess how much it would be. So, knowing about how much things cost, what others have paid, and how much we wanted to spend, I said:

$15,000

A little bit more. - He retorted!

$16,500 – I said.

A little bit more. - He retorted, again.

$18,000 - I replied.

A little bit more. – Was his answer once again.

At that point I became annoyed and I said – “We are past the “A little bit more” point. We past it $1,500 ago!“. So he gave us his figure – $36,000 and few hundred more!!! What the heck? That number does NOT even qualify for a “much more” response. It’s double what I said, plus another $6,000.

That number is unacceptable, even if the windows are guaranteed for the life of the house, and to be replaced for free if an object ever happens to go through one.

To cream that, he spend the following 15 or so minutes somewhat refusing to leave and trying to get us to place an order. At least for some of the windows, which he estimated at just above $4,000 – for 3 small windows.

The cherry was when he told us that if we don’t place an order that evening and he has to come again, so we can place an order, we will not be eligible for the 20% first time discount. Huuu?!! Everyone else I have ever done business with, worked with, worked for, as well as it being a standard in doing business, gives discount on the first order, NOT on meeting for a first time.

Unbelievable!!

Pressure sales do not work on me. I come from a family with generations of entrepreneurs and business owners of various types. As well as, I married into one of the same type. Needless to say, both my wife and I are on the same path. Same applies for my sibling.

I have the options, skills and knowledge to do things myself. Just like I have been doing for many years. But, in the last few years, available time has become a factor.

Anyways, as my Mom always tells me – “Be cheap on the expensive thing.”. In my opinion $36,000 is at a premium for hand full of windows and two sliding doors.

A Dad Moment

Ricky held his one-year-old daughter Emily in his lap. She was jabbering in baby talk as she flipped the pages of a picture book. Nearby, Ricky’s five-year-old son Tim said, “Dad, make her read it in English instead of Spanish.”.

I extremely enjoy listening to my son talking in his own language. It is fun, entertaining and animated – full of facial expressions and gestures. Moments like these are priceless, which only parents can appreciate for their true value and not just their comical relief.

BTW, what exactly is the point of having private domaining forums? Some of the biggest and most successful domaining forums have succeeded not by being private, but by charging for services and features.

Anyways, after couple of weeks I did not receive a response to my message. So, I simply registered on the forums, while doing so I was asked to provide 3 domains to verify my identity. I listed TitanFusion.net, Innovadix.com and DomainVentory.com. All three have my name on the domain record info. The following day my registration was rejected – “did not meet our membership requirements”?!?! As domainer with few hundred domain names to my name I’m pretty sure that I do meet the “requirements”, but, whatever. The point of this post is to illustrate poor customer service and public relations. Why? Because after I received the registration decline email, I emailed back to ask Donna what gives, because she was already following me on Twitter as domainventory. I did not receive a response from her, nor did I receive one after I tweeted about it.

Not responding to a potential customers or partners after multiple attempts via different channels is a poor way to do business. Do not write off the small ones, because someday the stands might be reversed and you might be in their place. Be prepared to be treated the same way you treated them!

The reason why I am saying that I underestimated the time it will take me to develop the site is because of all the things that pop up in my head that needs to be included in the web site as I work on it. Unlike other website project I have worked on, this is the first time I am developing a business and a websites with a variety of features and needs from the ground up. Granted I contemplated for a very long time if I should use a CMS or build my own interface, I decided to go with using one of the more popular CMS simply to get he project off the ground. Once the website and it is functional and servicing clients it can always be upgraded. It won’t be anything new. Over the years I have seen many websites which have switched from one CMS to another, or simply gone with developing a proprietary interface and vice versa. Every time I sit down to work on the site, as I am working on something at least half a dozen other things come to my mind that need to be included and once I place them on my to do list, half a dozen more pop up for each of them. For example tonight I am working on documenting  how customer’s will be referenced across multiple sites, especially ones that are not mine. As I figured out how I am going to do that and started to document it, the fact that I also need to collect and maintain customers’ personal billing information also came to my mind, and as I typed the previous I realized that that data needs to be encrypted.

It is definitely a learning experience. Even though my grand parents, my father and my Amanda’s father all owned or still operate their own businesses, being an entrepreneur was not something that interested me until 3 years ago. Thus I do not have much knowledge or experience with it. The who start up and get going process can be difficult especially when building everything solo with limited resources and the most valuable of them being time to work on business development.

So far the planing stage seems to be taking long time, but not as long as documenting how everything is going to work. The most important thing is to make progress. Some times it is a lot, other times it is as little as few words, or paragraphs.

Last time I saw my dad was at the Sofia airport in Bulgaria in August of 1998. Since that time I have talk to him on the phone, but I have seen only 1 picture of him and that was probably 4 or so years ago. I was very excited to see him and I really wanted for him to see me! Thankfully I had Amanda’s web cam.

Skype is just a technology. There are many other methods making video conferencing possible. Skype is simply one of the more popular ones.

No matter the methods, the moment we were able to see each other was overwhelming with joy. I can’t wait to do it again.

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So, I ended up searching for possible WhoIs scripts and how one could query the domain record information and ended up coming across the whois.php script, which is currently utilized on Domain Record Info. Also accessed via WhoIsMesh.com and DomaIndex.Info.

There are few other options/functions I would like to add to the page – ping, dns report, and various help and tutorials information. Eventually I would like to do something similar to DNS Stuff, but for the moment it will have to wait. Right now I have many other projects.

I wonder how the owners will feel when the SPAM flow is reversed?!

Since the beginning of the week I have been working no the billing system. When I first started working on it everything was so overwhelming, but after referring to the manual few times things now seem some much simpler and easier to understand. Thank God for technical writers. I should have the system fully configured and implemented with the web site within a week (amongst everything else I have to do). Following will be some dry testing. Configuring an automation and order processing system is new to me, so I want to make sure that everything is hooked the way it is supposed to be and will not brake in the middle of some ongoing process.

Hive Minds Hosting’s opening is scheduled in the first week of April

Do not worry! I am not hosting it from my home computer. It is in conjunction with a data center. So, features and up time are guaranteed, support is guaranteed and low prices are guaranteed. Yes, I will be offering affordable, feature rich plans for everyone. From those with personal sites, who do not want to spend a whole lot for a host, to those in need of affordable and flexible host for their business/large web site.

If you are looking for a host, visit HiveMindsHosting.com in a week or two, and look through the plans. At the moment I am going to offer only Linux based hosting. I might offer Windows based hosting in the future. It depends on the demand for it, but it will cost more.

Success is all around