Another great video from our friends at the Oregon Small Business Development Center Network.

The Vocal Booth is a five year old company that started up in Calvin Mann’s apartment.  After Calvin created the first booth to keep his neighbors and landlord happy, he realized there was a need in the industry for the product and went after it. He’s grown the company from 1 to 13 employees and his products are offered worldwide.

Watch the video on YouTube

VocalBooth.com™, Inc. manufactures state-of-the-art portable vocal booths and sound isolation enclosures for the professional and home recording studio, as well as for the audiology, scientific testing and industrial sound dampening industries worldwide.

As always, we’d like to thank Mark Gregory and the new State Director,  Mike Lainoff,  for the opportunity to share these Oregon success stories with you.

Did you miss a video?  OSBDCN Success Story Videos

‘Chelle Parmele
Palo Alto Software

Tags: oregon, OSBDCN, Success
Posted on May 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

The New York Times had an article last week about how laid-off workers are taking matters into their own hands. The article talks about when, in a recession, do people start thinking about starting a company vs. just sending out resumes and trying to get a job:

Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen — when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money.

I know there are a lot of people in this boat right now – laid off for a few months, no prospects in sight, and money is starting to run out. If you find yourself in this situation, why not think about starting a new company? What do you have to lose? Think about what skills you bring to the table, what you are REALLY good at, and figure out what services or potential products you can offer to people. It’s better than sitting around waiting for something to happen to you. Funny how people say that the harder they work, the luckier they get!

Food for thought!

Sabrina Parsons aka Mommy CEO

Tags: business planning, start up, starting your business, Success, unemployment
Posted on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

I’m sure almost everyone is familiar with the story that Thomas Edison discovered 99 ways to NOT make a light bulb. That’s 99 no to reach 1 yes. The point here is that a negative result, proving something didn’t work or was not so, is just as valuable as a positive result. Sadly, scientific research has become so expensive, and so heavily subsidized/sponsored by corporations, that it has become the expected norm that every result must be a commercially marketable yes result.

That “always yes” attitude has come to shade the development and use of business plans as well. It’s gotten to where people think that every business plan has to show exorbitant profits and wild success. And to reach that end, all that they need to do is overestimate the financial tables a bit, or a lot, until the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet show the desired results. This is a bad and dangerous tack, in my opinion.

For instance, we saw one plan for a tennis club with indoor court rentals. The financial tables looked good until we divided the rate per hour into the sales forecast. Seems those courts were rented continually, 28 hours a day, every day, 365 days a year. Not possible I’m afraid.

Or the mobile auto oil change business in a large mid-western city. Again, closer inspection of the sales forecast showed that the one worker was changing the oil in a car every 45 minutes, with no travel time between jobs, in all weather, every month of the year. Now, I’ve tried to change my oil in Illinois in January, outdoors, lying on my back in the snow and below-freezing temperatures. Let me tell you from experience that 45 minutes is painfully unrealistic.

Final example: there was the apartment rental company with five vice-presidents but no employees in the personnel forecast, and they never showed how or when they paid for the buildings they said they purchased.

These business plans all said YES in the financials — if you didn’t look too closely.

Now, I say that NO is an acceptable result from a business plan. A business plan for a start-up company that shows huge losses, or negative cash flow is an OK result. It tells you that the business as planned will fail. It tells you that some of your basic assumptions are wrong. It tells you that you are missing something immensely important.

And this is better than OK! Rather than starting up with unrealistic expectations and then hitting bottom in an excruciating crash, you can stop right now and reassess, before you make a financial commitment. Don’t ‘embellish’ the financials by boosting the sales forecast. Look at your market, your competition, your expenses, and everything about your plan and be realistic.

Honest reflection may tell you that this isn’t the business to start right now. Or, you might revise the plan and discover if you put some of those vice-presidents out on the production line, it reduces your costs of goods to a point where you really can make a modest profit on steady sales, without hockey-stick growth. After your revisions, you still might not make a profit until year three. But in going through this process, you may become convinced that the business is viable with adequate start-up funding and second-round investment.

NO is an acceptable result for a business plan if the plan exposed the flaws and showed the way to a realistic YES.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

Tags: backtofundamentals, business plan, business planning, failure, fundamental, Success
Posted on November 20th, 2008 | No Comments »

Yesterday Cale Bruckner had his 13th anniversary with Palo Alto Software. Vie Radek had hers on April 15, Connie Muller this Thursday, and Jake Weatherly and Teri Epperly next year.

So I know that 13 years is nothing compared to Microsoft or IBM or General Motors, but what’s cool about these anniversaries is that there were only 10 or so employees back in 1995, and most of them are still with us.

That, in small business, is an achievement. Their achievement, putting up with the ups and downs of a small software company; and ours, in keeping the good people.

There are 45 of us now. When Vie and Cale and Connie started, Business Plan Pro was in its first version, and was just barely making it in retail. Today it’s in its eleventh version.

The picture here was taken just two months shy of 12 years ago, in November of 1996, at a roller skating rink. The people shown here were more than half of Palo Alto Software’s employees at that time. The key people missing who are still with us are my wife Vange, who (I think) took the picture; and Jake Weatherly, who had just joined.

From the left, you have me, Luke Walsh (now with Right Media, a Yahoo subsidiary), Cale Bruckner, Connie Muller, Cristin Berry, Vie Radek, and Teri Epperly.

If you add Vange and Jake back into the picture, who were very much a part of it but not pictured, then the only people from back then that we’ve lost were Luke, now at Right Media; and three others, also not pictured, one who retired in his late 50s, one who moved to the East Coast when she married, and one who, well, didn’t fit. And he’s doing well on his own, in sales. Cristin, also pictured, was 13 when that picture was taken, but she’s also been a full-time employee since she graduated from Whitman College four years ago.

And I might add that it’s been more than 18 months now since the new management team took over, and Vie, Cale, Connie, Teri, and Jake are still with us. That speaks a lot for continuity, and what’s good about them, and us. That makes me proud.

Tim Berry
Founder and President
Palo Alto Software

Tags: employees, family business, longevity, Small Business, startup, Success
Posted on September 25th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

…can be so confusing.

I was bemused, once again, over the various ways we measure success in our society.

We were watching a movie, Martian Child, with John Cusack and Bobby Coleman. John’s character was trying to teach his adopted son to hit a baseball. As he explained “If you hit 3 out of 10 you’re a star. If you do just a little better, you’re a superstar!” That theme recurs in the film.

It was heartening in the film’s context. If we apply it to our daily lives, the little bit of wisdom can be freeing and encouraging. It gives us lots of room to try, to experiment, (and yes, to fail and try again), to learn, and to grow. We don’t have to be perfect the first time, every time. 3 out of 10 and you can be a star. Heady stuff.

But that idea contrasts with so much else we hear.

“Nobody wants to be a 0, but everybody wants to be a 1, and there’s so little room in between.”
– Laurie Anderson, songwriter/singer.

In school if you were to get only 3 of 10, you’d not only get an F, but never get into college. Today you need to get all those advanced placement credits to get a 5.0 on a 4.0 grading scale. (And what kind of math does that teach, eh?)

And of course, if you’re a figure skating or ice dancing Olympian, you strive to be a 10. (And who can remember that very forgettable movie by the same number?)

We spend our lives searching for and nurturing love….unless you play tennis, in which case “love” is the dreaded lowest score.

And this relates to business how? By being realistic in your measure for success. Write your business plan, set your goals, establish your timelines and milestones.

Then review how you’ve done, run a plan vs. actual analysis. And adjust your plan as necessary, making decisions using real data.

If you converted 100% of your marketing leads into sales you’d be doing fantastically well. If you set your goal and measure of success as converting 100% of your leads you’ll be both deluding yourself, and very very disappointed.

Be honest and set realistic goals for yourself. If you converted 3 out of 10 marketing leads you would be a star, and quite likely have a very successful business.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software

Tags: , , 10, 3 of 10, business plan, business planning, marketing leads, measure of success, sales, Success
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »