Do you know what you will be doing in your job in 2 week's time? In 2 month's time? I did. I knew my HR routine for the day - around 10 email requests, 2-3 interviews, 1-2 disciplinary cases to type up, perhaps one meeting with a manager who either wishes to hire or fire someone. I'd…
Two friends mine are taking the leap. One is a longtime banker. She is practical and very OC. She is married with one son, who is in his teens. She has been planning meticulously for a long while to take the leap and go into pre-school teaching, and ultimately, to owning a school. The past few years…
Here is how you make money in this world: You create something of value to people. Once value is recognized, money is exchanged. That's it. This is my problem with the endless get-rich-quick schemes of the world: they make you focus your eyes on the money first. Think Rich. Millionaire's club. Financial freedom. ALL focused on the cash.…
From 1:00pm to 6:00 pm every Friday afternoon, all Storm employees are required to work on a pet project of their choice. We call this “Innovation Friday.” The endeavor isn’t exactly original. I know Google employees need to devote 20% of their time on a personal project of their own. The difference here is the forced schedule.…
If the young Filipino version of Jobs or Zuckerberg is studying in your institution right now, are you doing everything that you can to ensure that your environment is allowing him to pursue his passions?
This is part 3 of a 3 part series. You can find part 1 here, and part 2 here. 7) Bigger is better Last year we were up to around 15-16 people. This year, while we've lessened our headcount to around 10-11 people, we're set to double last year's revenue level. Guess which situation I'm happier with?…
(The following post is the second of a 3 part series. You can find part one over here) 4) Business Plans Are Important What 4 years of college business teaching hammered in me was that I needed to create a business plan for my startup. I needed to put everything in writing and project my financials -…
For the next three days, I'll be talking about 3 assumptions I discovered were completely wrong as I went through the startup process: 1) You need a ton of money to start Back in 2005, we were rejected by 2-3 investors before we said, "The heck with it, let's just pool our own money and start." My…
Early this year at STORM, we began building a competency framework for use in the company. This is one of the tools large firms use to align everything towards their vision. The logic was, as we got bigger, we would need these structures to guide us. Building a framework like this is massive work, and our HR…
Start-bucks Coffee. My first startup, STORM Consulting, started as an idea in 2005, I talked about it with around 10 people - all potential co-owners I targeted - mostly in Starbucks. I then narrowed the field down from ten to two people and began building the foundation of the firm with my two new partners. A recent…