Monday, December 31, 2018

2018 Goals Review: Focus


My 2018 theme was "focus". It was inspired by the book called "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller. The book suggests you regularly ask: "What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it
everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

So that's what I did, and as a result, I had two goals:

  1. Launch Majordomo Nationwide
  2. Learn Bass Guitar

That also meant there were a bunch of activities I decided not to do: no new properties, no big home improvement projects, no sports, no new commitments (and quite a few I dropped).

Don't worry, it wasn't all boring work. Jessi and I celebrated 10 years of marriage by running a marathon on the Great Wall, I read a bunch of great books, I beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I wore a tie every day in October, and we took the kids camping. In all, it was a good year.

OK. Let's talk about each goal.

#1 Launch Majordomo Nationwide

Majordomo Homepage
What a year! We launched our website at the Lane County Home & Garden Show in March. We also brought on two technical owners. We received feedback from homeowners, home service professionals, investors, and other successful business owners. We built out the scoring engine, plus a contacts directory tool for connecting with home service pros, and we revamped our wizard to make it more engaging. Plus we have more in the works.

We continue to shift and change as we get feedback. This year we focused a lot on customers and the product itself. It definitely felt like a scrappy startup where all of us put in odd hours and just made it work. In 2019, in addition to improving the customer experience, I feel the need to shift our focus to creating better business systems. My priories will likely change as we learn, but the current needs are more consistent development cycles and consistent user growth. I just finished "This Is Marketing" by Seth Godin (I'll write about it later), and it gave some great ideas on how to attract customers.

There are a couple product features, based on customer feedback, that we need to provide a truly valuable product, but we're close.

Overall, I'd say it was a good year for Majordomo. We learned a lot and have a product people can use. I'm really excited about next year.

#2 Learn Bass Guitar

I found a solid online class at www.talkingbass.net. The instructor, Mark, does an excellent job of breaking down each step in his videos and provides good exercises. I finished the "Beginner Bass Guitar Course" and am working on the "Bassic Fundamentals Course". How could you not like someone who has fun with his course titles?

Success was defined as playing with the worship team at my church this year.

Well... I didn't play with the band, but I'm really close. Instead of writing about it, I put together a video that shows my progress.


So, I'm not as far as I'd like to be, but I'm happy with my progress. I'm going to continue playing and will check the box of playing with the worship team next year.

Next Year

I'm looking forward to 2019. In a lot of ways, It'll be a continuation of this year.

Monday, December 10, 2018

How To Get Started with Remote Work ("Remote" Book Review)


In case you missed the memo, remote work (or "working from home") is VERY quickly becoming the norm. I used to be an outlier, but that's less true each day.

It hit home for me recently with Majordomo where everything we do is remote. We don't have an office, so even the people in Corvallis work from home. At first, it started that way because everyone works part-time and frankly, we can't afford office space.  But now, even if we could, I don't think we'd change the current set up much. Perhaps we'd create a shared space, but we'd primarily stay remote.

Also, I hired an assistant for Furlo Family Homes who lives in Sacramento. We've never met in person, with no current plans to do so. More on this another time.

Given this reality, I read a book called "Remote" by Jason Fried and David Hansson of Basecamp. To learn how to manage a team more effectively.

The benefits of remote work are many, but these are my favorite two:

  • Smart people, who get work done live everywhere. Corvallis is a great place, but the talent pool for web development isn't that deep. Using Upwork, we found a guy in Provo who is doing great work, and he introduced us to two other great guys. Being remote will allow us to stay in Corvallis for as long as we want.
  • It provides everyone a lot of flexibility to work anytime and anywhere. I'm a morning guy, others are night owls, and it works. I can do some work, then join my family for breakfast and lunch... maybe take an afternoon nap, then finish working in the later afternoon.


The book spends a lot of ink to convince you remote work is fantastic, which it is, but it was too much for someone like me who's already convinced and trying to optimize the effectiveness of a remote team. Still, they gave lots of practical tips. Here were my favorite pieces of advice:

1) You "need a good four hours of overlap to avoid collaboration delays and feel like a team. (p. 91)"  I totally agree. The folks I've worked with in India and Singapore are fantastic people, but the minimal time overlap is difficult. The good news is that means the entire US is fair game. We use Slack and Zoom video to communicate with each other.

2) "When someone wants to demonstrate a new feature they’re working on... often the easiest way is to record a screencast and narrate the experience. (p. 96)" I hadn't thought of this before and am now putting it into practice, and it's great! We don't have to coordinate schedules, and they can watch (and re-watch!) when they're ready to do the work. I use Zoom to record my screen (and myself), so it feels more like I'm talking to them.

3) "Put all the important stuff out in the open, and no one will have to chase that wild goose to get their work done. (p. 99)" We use Github for code and Dropbox for everything else at Majordomo. Furlo Family Homes uses OneDrive. Both work great. Why not everything in Dropbox or OneDrive? There's no great reason. Someday I'll consolidate.

4) "To instill a sense of company cohesion and to share forward motion, everyone needs to feel that they’re in the loop. ...[We create] a weekly discussion thread with the subject “What have you been working on?” Everyone chimes in with a few lines about what they’ve done over the past week and what’s intended for the next week. (p. 103)" This is part of a daily scrum 15 min we do which asks three questions: What did you work on yesterday? What are you going to work on today? Do you have anything stopping you? We also use Trello to track what everyone is doing.

5) "Instead of thinking I can pay people from Kansas less than people from New York, you should think I can get amazing people from Kansas and make them feel valued and well-compensated if I pay them New York salaries. (p. 161)" Brilliant! It's what HP did and one reason why some many employees in Corvallis stay for many years. Obviously, this requires margins and volumes that support this cost structure.

Isn't it amazing how technology has made some of the barriers to remote work disappear? With Upwork, Zoom, Slack, Dropbox, and Trello you can be up and running within an hour. By the way, each offers free plans, which is pretty cool.

There are many more tips for hiring, managing, and being a remote worker. The book is very straightforward with many little sections, so you feel like you're reading the book fast. I chose to read it instead of listening so that I could highlight and take notes.

If you're on a remote team or thinking about trying it, I highly recommend reading the book.