Online – Work vs. Personal

Last week I posted about one main difference for me, here is the rest of it.

Writing about my actual work gehts nicht. That phrase keeps being in my head. Literally: it doesn’t go. Meaning: it’s not going to happen. Hard to exactly put in in a phrase and have the sentence flow around it correctly, but that exactly captures the situation.

As I’m re-activating these various blogs and accounts and so on, thought I’d share a bit more about why that is.

My work life does not conform to the patterns I see in social media content.

For one thing, multiple aspects that folks normally write about are absent for me.

After taking away all that, what remains is the very core. Some of this content is analogous to other consulting, some is similar to IT process. Some is universal with any work process.

In those ways, I can see within my experiences that which others write about, even though they’re writing within a whole different work setting. And perhaps sometimes I’ll write things meant to be universal, distilled from multiple bits of various experiences I’ve had.

The whole rest of the time though, my online presence is about the goals of my work, which is to support entrepreneurs, creativity, adaptation, communities, and best possible futures.

And the occasional personal-self bit that might be adjacently related to work. Otherwise, my personal content is available nearby as well- but separate from this. Because it really works well for me to keep those two identities distinct, including online. For me they are different selves, with different goals, different challenges, different support systems, different rewards, different cycles, different everything.

And that’s actually the main difference that prompted both these posts – my interest in keeping two of everything – two Google + pages, two twitter accounts: in order to maintain that distinction. It fascinates me that so many merge the two.

The other part for me is about the fourth wall, like of the theater. More on that in another post… Much of work is theater (heck, much of life is), and in my personal online presence, I take away that fourth wall.

So, was thinking that since I’m the exception, thought I’d go ahead and clarify that so people can interact accordingly. I’m looking forward to sorting myself into the kaleidescope of social media more effectively going forward. See you there!

Thanks for visiting, comments always welcome.

Film Note: The Company Men

Speaking of the Recession (as I have been in these last few posts, among other things) I just saw The Company Men and feel compelled to write about it.

I wonder sometimes how this recessionary period will look, historically, once more time has passed. Will it be seen as a period of massive change, best and worst of times but a necessary portal into the future – like the beginnings of the Industrial Age? Or will it be seen as a temporarily bad period, like the US Depression, that caused pain and damage, all of which was more than offset by events of the following decade(s)? Or like the early years of AIDS – in which much lasting damage was done because of the ideologies in place at the time? Or (worst case) a period that seemed bad at the time, but was actually mild in comparison to what came after. Like the Weimar Republic in Germany – creating conditions necessary for unspeakable horrors?

In any case, whether constructive change process that bore some cost, or inherently destructive period which could have been avoided/minimized, or something else entirely, the personal impacts felt momentous at the time, and this film does a great job of capturing them.

All the acting is excellent: Ben Affleck (just loved him in Argo recently also), Rosemarie DeWitt (whose work I didn’t know, but who is really great in this), Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner and others.

And I felt like it captured well the changes so many had to go through, the change in the US that happened to many in the middle class/upper middle class. And which didn’t effect (negatively, anyway) the main CEO guy. Ways in which folks helped each other. The kids, responding to the best of their ability. I agree it does hit men harder, because they have their identities more inextricably linked with their work, among other things.

I liked that it didn’t feel as overwrought as Margin Call, another film related to these events. That one had an uneven tone that was distracting, a lack of emotional focus, and an idealogy of some kind overlaid towards the end (just was ready for it to be done by then). Instead, The Company Men is more simply about the emotional impacts and the choices confronting people.

I’m glad it had the ending it did. Those last few scenes – thought I heard Ben’s (I think real-life) Southie (South Boston) speech back in place, also fun.. was his parent’s home around there or something possibly? Or maybe just was something they didn’t sound-edit out. (I’m an expert in all that, having seen Postcards from the Edge, you know). Or maybe I imagined it.

Anyway, good entry into times-of-our-lives film category, IMHO. Hopefully times are getting/will get better, and the pain of this period will become temporary – in which case films like this can be informative as well as entertaining.

Workings – Accounting

Returning Online Message to the World. Hello World!

I do accounting, and I don’t talk about it. Almost ever anyway. The one time I do talk about it.. well, it’s this blog post! This is my sole episode of self-exposition, hopefully a foundation for the rest of my social media life going forward. There are links to this, so that other main posts can be as pithy as self-awareness suggests they be. I hope this is illuminating to those interested, while still not getting me in any trouble. (Maintaining that delicate balance is strenuous, hence the singularity of this event).

Accounting is a dynamic, variable, and intrinsically-confidential process that most people in the best of times are unaware of. In the current moment, the accounting process has been rendered even more invisible, because of the paradigms that have sprung up around it.

Talking about it in an interesting way that is relevant to others yet also maintains all necessary confidentiality is generally impossible. Despite that, I’m going to share some information about it this one time, in re-joining the social media world after a long absence.

In my work, I create and maintain accounting structures and practices that enable efficient, correct financial transactions; and that also result in those transactions generating a data trail. I do additional steps with sets of transactions at periodic or project-specific intervals, to put that transaction data into specific patterns. And then I turn that data into information, both to meet external requirements and to provide useful organizational and programmatic information to internal managers and staff.

All of that is done within the framework of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), as well as federal and state laws (regarding payroll, sales tax, and all sorts of other things), particular structures established within specific grants, and the body of established practice within each entity.

A significant part of the work is also engaging productively with the organization itself, participating in relevant decision-making, sharing information, and implementing change proactively; also helping with the organizational work itself sometimes.

All of that happened a certain way when I started out, in the mid- to late- 1980’s. That established ‘normal’ for me. I thought things would always be that way. I imagine now that, if they had, it’s possible I would have ended up in a certain comfort zone, a set of habits and practices within which I would have been content in a static way, and work would have existed within 9-5 and the rest would be my personal life.

Instead, things turned out differently.

These accounting practices in general have since been subject to a series of pressures that I did not at all foresee when I started out – as is the case with many work practices. I may write more about them at some point, but here’s a brief description.

Quickbooks – which I can honestly say I identified as a very mixed change agent right from the very beginning – operates on the basic premise that accounting as a theoretical framework or structured practice really doesn’t exist. Anyone can do it. There are qualifiers inherent in that statement over time, but that’s the basic gist. Anyone can do it, and any negative outcomes from that process are manageable. If outcomes are to be better managed, you can get help after the fact to fix it. (Stop rant now/)

And while I support all small businesses and entrepreneurs, and I know it’s been an effective tool for many to some extent, I am critical of the messaging and the implementation and the reaction to it by the other entities. (And that last part is something I’ll probably never talk about, which leaves a gap, but so be it).

Outsourcing of financial work has been another huge sea change. I only ever briefly worked for ‘Corporate America’ – but the shift from there of people looking for work has been substantive in the arena I do work within. It’s been just as impactful of the shift from the bottom up caused by the Quickbooks mindset. I was angry at India – you know, that one big entity that is India-of-Outsourcing-Fame – for a time; and then ended up in a discovery process with India, and became very fascinated and enthralled. More about that some time too perhaps. Not angry now (not directed there, anyway!).

And the last huge change has been the recession of course, which has had pervasive effects in the number of employment options for everyone everywhere in accounting, and the related pay scales. I know it didn’t affect me nearly as much as so many, but it’s still been quite a change agent in my life.

My mother has worked in organizational consulting in the practice of nursing for several decades; familiarity with her practice and implementation of it has fueled my belief that I could adapt sustainably to this all, and keep going. And I have done that. Some aspects involved have been SWOT, Social Media, continual learning and the serenity prayer.

I’ve considered other options, and explored some, discarding them due to the long lead-in time required, market aspects, investment requirements, my own interests/skills/strengths and so on.

The main other area I was interested in early on, and partway through my college career – computer technology – has also been very over-populated; in addition it’s been dominated by monopolistic entities and the barriers to entry at this point are as high as my interest level today is low. It still works well for me to simply focus on accounting software, and to some extent the relationships with related other software packages, web technologies and operating systems, although I haven’t done as much with that lately.

Writing and everything about the written word – always a primary interest core to my being – remains as an internally-rejuvenating interest only, for the time being at least.

So as a result of those pressures, and those explorations, and every experience to date, I’m still in accounting but it’s quite different from how it was in the 80′s. Not only no more ledger paper (sigh), but organizational paradigms are very different, cost pressures are huge, and regulations/adherence monitoring is much more significant. It’s a 24/7 continually changing social-media-enriched client-focused experience, very different from how I thought my career would be way back when.

I’m continually grateful that I have been able to continue in the practice of accounting, in a sector of it that I’m happy to be in (nonprofits, and entrepreneurial entities), in physical locations that are often Downtown and always transit-friendly, with organizations that are doing great work and people that are truly wonderful.

The social media result is that I’m here, but talking about myself as others do gehts nicht – it’s not going to happen.

I’m thinking now, after being away for a while and within my current complex work situation, that I may write something once a quarter or so, about distillations and non-specific accumulations that might have relevance.

The whole rest of the time though, my online presence is about the goals of my work, which is to support entrepreneurs, creativity, adaptation, communities, and best possible futures. Sometimes that support lends itself to writing, such as new technologies or new impactful situations etc.. but I like to support the writing of others who have invested much time and energy in doing that well also – I respect their commitment to that process.

There, hopefully we’re all still standing and no lasting damage has been done.I know I feel Better.

So you see, my lack of original writing: it’s just the way my work is.

Although I know it’s true – the one constant in life is change!

Comments/feedback always welcome! Thanks for visiting.

Clarified content issues – Part I of II

Hello World!

I’ve been away for a while – actually since right before I took on a huge new work project! It as honestly correct as far as timing goes, when exactly my last post was. So there’s that.

And now I’m starting up again, which makes me very happy. Paved roads, where before was less structure, make more activity possible. And all that.

I’m starting off with myself, then will branch out from there.

This is the first of two posts about why my online professional content is different from most on Google +. Because yes, Google + exists and is all that it is and will be, and as I’m activating over there as well, it’s impossible to ignore the disconnects. So I’m writing them down, to process them and then move on to whatever will co-exist with them.

In this post, I’ll share one of the main ones, and then in a longer post will be the other main one. That’s a longer post, already written, now having time pass, unattended processing, cold dawn of a new day (which we have lots of here in Minneapolis, so that’s good), and all that.

The main difference between me and other online work content providers (all still bloggers? or is that too specific I’m thinking?) is that I’m not doing this to gain more business, or to gain business at all. I’m currently booked/ overbooked, and my current client-work-set relationships of variable, part-time projects are all potentially long-term, certainly open-ended, right-of-first-refusal etc… So I may be available for some new situation in the 2014-2017 range, or not then yet even. Or before, but hopefully all current will remain long term. If I didn’t just jinx it, that is.

In fact, that’s why I’ve been off line for almost a year! So this post kind of goes without saying.. but since there’s always a continuing concern about self-promotion vs. being a bot or a real person vs. correct ways to promote others etc.. I just thought I’d explicitly state this once at least.

Instead, my online content is to further the same goals I have in my work: support of those entrepreneurial and nonprofit entities whose work I support, who are part of that collective community with an eye to a positive tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, and for your patience. Comments welcome.

“Salt Creek Anthology” Virtual Book Tour!

CCLaP’s Book Tour for Jason Fisk’s “Salt Creek Anthology” is in process, and I’m honored to be included!

In case you are new to this exciting new work, here is an introduction:

A couple meet in a mental institution, have six kids, and devolve into violent alcoholism. An elderly Polish woman with Alzheimer’s goes insane in front of our eyes. A frazzled empty-nester has her bruiser son move back in, along with a scheming girlfriend planning a surprise pregnancy to get them both back out. And an abusive, overweight, racist monster of a man psychologically lords over them all, a total of twenty-odd characters all living on the same cul-de-sac in the far rural suburbs of Chicago. Welcome to the dark, poetic world of author Jason Fisk, a “micro-story” collection that breaks these families’ adventures down into a series of 75 linguistic nuggets; these are then experimentally hooked together in a non-linear fashion through literal hyperlinks within each story, letting you read them in whichever order you wish. With “Salt Creek Anthology,” tumble down that brooding, enticing rabbithole that Fisk has created on this unassuming street for yourself, and see just how far the nightmare will take you.

What follows is a conversation with Jason Fisk, the author, about his work in general, this book in particular, and various other topics of interest.

ClaritySol: You are a husband and father, you teach, you write. You have a blog and other social media outlets to feed. How do you manage to be enthusiastic about all of it? Do you have any words of advice for those to seek to gain traction on a path similar to yours?

Jason Fisk: Well, with the exception of the upkeep of the blog, and other media outlets, I honestly feel like my enthusiasm is directly connected to the fact that I’m truly passionate about my family, my teaching, and my writing, which makes the balancing of it all a lot of fun for me. That’s not to say that I don’t have bad teaching days, days that I feel like a failure as a parent, and days that it would be so much easier not to write, but I’m always back at it the next day, even when I don’t feel like it. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration; there have been weeklong stretches where I have quit writing all together, due to various reasons, but it usually weasels its way back into my life and routine.

The whole social media thing is relatively new to me too, and by relatively new, I mean less than two years on facebook. Initially, I was resistant to it, but have found it to be a wonderful and necessary resource for the promotion of my writing, which, in the world of the small presses, is sometimes exhausting in and of itsel

ClaritySol: It looks like your paths have been intertwining with CCLaP, Jason Pettus and the other writers there: Ben Tanzer, Mark Brand, Sally Wiegert and the others. How important is that to your process, to share your work with writers and to hear what they’re doing and to work with your publisher in the way that you and Jason do?

Jason Fisk: That’s a tough one to answer. My involvement with other authors has changed over the years. Writing started out as a very solitary thing for me. I’d sit at my desk, write, and send my stuff out into cyberspace and wait for a response. I would not necessarily consider myself much of an extrovert, and there is part of me that struggles with the act of social networking, especially when it feels disingenuous. I have to give credit to Ben Tanzer for opening a lot of doors to the local literary world. He actually put me in touch with Jason Pettus and CCLaP, and introduced me to different authors in the area, Mark and Sally being two of them. The actual act of writing and sharing my writing with other authors is something I’ve just started doing recently.

ClaritySol: I know one of Jason Pettus’ goals is to be responsive to the CCLaP audience – to provide what they want to read, and/or provide what they want to be challenged with.

How do you and your work fit in to those goals? What is your approach to the audience – are they part of your writing, or is your writing more a personal process?

Jason Fisk: When I write, I don’t think about audience. Personally, I believe thinking about an audience while writing sucks the integrity from what I’m writing. It begins to feel watered down. I would always be second guessing myself and wondering how a certain group would react to this or that.

I let Jason Pettus worry about the audience. If you send him something, writing or an idea, that he’s not so into, he’ll let you know, and he’ll gently push you in the direction he’d like to see you go, which is probably where catering to his audience comes into play. I also think he does a nice job of creating, or attracting, an audience that has similar tastes as him. Publishers like Jason not only have to sell their product, they also have to create and generate an interest where there may not initially have been one. Having said all of that, Jason Pettus also has this great philosophy of being hands off while the author writes their first draft. I think this is very respectful of the creative process and of the writer.

ClaritySol: You have an impressive publication history already, which I found here:

http://jasonfisk.com/publicationpage.html

It is clear that poetry also has a big place in your writing. Which do you prefer? Do you find certain content is best explored in one format or the other? Are the struggles inherent in each very different, or mostly similar?

Jason Fisk: I started writing poetry in an elective in graduate school, and I absolutely loved finding that little piece of truth (or at least what I thought was truth) and writing about it. Most of my poems have a narrative quality to them, which probably has something to do with my early love of the short story. My relationship with poetry is somewhat contentious though; I really like accessible poetry, and hate pretentious, dense poetry. My real love is the short story, which I find more challenging to write, especially after working so hard to pare a story to its bare essentials for a poem. It’s hard to get into the short story mind set.

ClaritySol: From your blog, here is a description of a book meeting from one of the attendees:

‘What began as a discussion about fictional others quickly turned to ourselves and our own little bits of crazy. We praised Fisk for his ability to hand-pick what is absolutely essential about a story, entertain us with it, and then make us look twice for a glimpse we thought we caught of ourselves – all in two to four paragraphs.’

It sounds to me like you are one of those writers who applies to discipline and the strength of poetry to any other form you engage in as well, would you agree? That you are always a poet, and sometimes you write poetry and sometimes you write in other forms?

Jason Fisk: To me, it’s all about the transaction between the writer and the reader, and I believe the transaction part is very important. My goal is to create an outline of place, time, and movement, and have the reader fill the rest in with their imagination. The reader has then invested part of himself or herself in the story by painting the walls the colors they see, or imagining that particular space is similar to one in his or her house. I believe poetry has been a wonderful tool to roughly sketch out those bits and pieces of a story, and allow the readers to fill in the blanks, which, hopefully, creates a unique reading experience. I think you’re right; I will always be a poet, or at least retain those elements of poetry.

ClaritySol: From your blog, I borrowed this passage of yours:

William Carlos Williams wrote, “No ideas but in things.” While I know that my poetry is nowhere near Williams’ level, it is something I strive to emulate. I love the thought of “No ideas but in things,” and only want to paint what I see (whether it is in my imagination, or in real life). What the reader takes from it is their business.

Is that an accurate capture of your attitude towards this piece as well?

Jason Fisk: Oh, absolutely!

ClaritySol: What’s next? Do you have many additional things that you’re working on right now? Do you have additional pieces percolating that are not even in the writing stage yet? What can we look forward to?

Jason Fisk: I just finished up a small collection of more flash fiction, and am currently in the process of polishing that up. Jason Pettus has also suggested that I take the next year and try my hand at writing a novel, which is what I’m planning on doing, so that’s what’s currently fermenting in my head. We’ll see…

ClaritySol: Anything else you’d like us to know about your work, your plans, your art?

Jason Fisk: No, I feel like we’ve covered quite a bit here. I do want to thank you for taking the time to research and craft such insightful and thoughtful questions. Your time and involvement is very much appreciated.

Pinterest: Exciting new outlet.. but be careful!

Pinterest – located at pinterest.com – is a social photo-sharing website. Users can establish accounts, and then set up collections of images that reflect their interest.

Other users can browse their collections, ‘like’ various items, collect images from each other, and establish mutual interest relationships and so on.

Launching as a closed beta in March 2010, the site has in stages opened up to the public, and has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the process.

On August 16, 2011, Time magazine published Pinterest in its “50 Best Websites of 2011″ column.(Wikipedia)

Just in the last few months – December, January – the site has been skyrocketing with users. It crossed the 10 million user mark last month, being one of the fastest sites to do so.

Users love it’s visuality, ease of use, and it’s ability to facilitate relationships with others of similar interests. It links in with Facebook, Twitter, has an RSS feed feature, comes with WordPress widgets and there’s an iPhone app for it too!

But recently, awareness has been growing of downsides for users of the site. In particular related to the very use of images that is such a big part of its appeal.

I literally only heard of this site about a week ago.

A few days ago, I retweeted this tweet about it:

56 Ways to Market Your Business on #Pinterestj.mp/yt2cO8 via @copyblogger RT @brasonja #in

And that tweet of mine was RT’d about 4 times, more than almost any other of my tweets. Clearly it is a topic of interest right now! So as I began to read today more concerns about the site, I thought I’d pull together this blog post about it all.

Here is a clearer link to that article on CopyBlogger: .

It talks about a wide spectrum of ways to use Pinterest for marketing your business, everything from social media immersion techniques to branding to traffic analysis techniques to webinar support. Seems all very exciting and wonderful, but read on, please!

Another Pinterest-excitement tweet I saw recently:

How the medical industry is using (and could use): Pinterest bit.ly/zaonKE RT @MelissaOnline

This MedCityNews article showcaseshow the medical industry already uses and could even more use Pinterest to boost patient morale, improve patient education and, of course, engage in cutting-edge marketing activities.

This page also mentions the revenue stream aspect of Pinterest, which involves affiliate marketing via Skimlinks and changing the codes linked to images to replace the original marketer with Pinterest . That practice, described further in this MarketingLand article: is generating interest and concern as more people become aware of it.

But copyright theft is a much more serious concern, since it involves legal ramifications that are completely beyond what users have in mind when they sign up to use Pinterest. This BusinessInsider article describes those concerns.

In a question and answer format, the piece explores the idea that Pinterest may be more illegal than Napster was, due to its use of images not owned by the user, thereby violating the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Pinterest actually ‘requires’ that each user ‘own’ rights to the images they post, but they in no way reinforce that requirement.

This article explores the fair use argument and how it applies to Pinterest (and Tumblr, for that matter), and also mentions that Pinterest grabs whole sites when people ‘pin’ an image from that site, making it all even more serious.

Pinterest makes users even more uncomfortable in its statement that it reserves the right to sell any image posted by a user. This article by RWW mentions that several businesses, after initially signing up to use Pinterest, almost immediately closed their accounts as they more fully explored the implications. What it boils down to is that, if a user posts a photo which they don’t own the license to (a license given them free, world-wide, very broad and open rights to), they could be sued for posting it (and thereby granting Pinterest the right to sell it).

Update: Starting up activity again!

Hello again!

Have been away for a while, just due to normal busy-ness and so forth. But things are starting to begin to commence simmering a little more easily soon, so I thought I’d hurry up and take advantage early accordingly.

I have an exciting post coming up soon, a literary interview in conjunction with CCLaP of Chicago.

In advance of that, thought I’d better stop back in, open the windows, let the place air out a bit.

And thought I’d start doing something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but haven’t yet: actually write a little bit about what I’m doing.

I’m currently working with 5-7 entities, providing accounting services. Some of the relationships are employment, some contract, some a combination (providing contract services as an employee of a service provider).

Needless to say, it all adds up to a strenuous work week. But I thought I’d note (for the record) that I really believe it’s important to keep striving for excellence, despite all the challenges.

I started out being employed as an accountant, in a company that consulted on the process of work. And the values of that company have stayed with me ever since. They include focusing on the overarching goal at all times, even when the task is a piddly one. Mutual respect, functional trust, eschewing pettiness, going that extra mile to get the job done.

These are challenging days for anyone in the accounting field. There is a sort of mania out there to pay the least amount, which often translates to doing the least possible chunk of work, which then often has effects that accumulate and multiply.

Instead I believe in gaining an understanding of what the optimal amount of work is – balancing outcomes with effort required – to meet the best needs of the organization, and doing that to the best of my ability within the existing constraints. The strenuousness of that is why I have not written very often lately.

I believe many in the work world today are facing similar challenges in different guises. I hope we’re all able to keep carrying on, and that better days will soon be on the horizon!

Google Plus for Business is open! (for.. business!)

Google + has opened business pages to the wider community – I set up one for Clarity Solutions! I’m so excited!

I’ve been holding my breath ever since Google Plus first launched, waiting for this moment. I really want my primary presence online to be that of this business entity, Clarity Solutions. And then I also will have a business-owner Claire Stokes twitter, and Google Plus account (the original one). But those personal accounts will provide content that is specific to me, and is not intended to be “useful” necessarily, etc… Useful and constructive and sustaining and all those intentionalities belong to my business content, which will now finally be able to begin on Google Plus.

So, as when Google Plus first launched, I’ll post interesting tidbits here and will be interested in hearing about the experiences of others as well! Cheers!

Here are some resources for those of us just starting out with a business Google Plus page:

Here is the Google Blog Post about the roll out, and an intro (videos) in to some of the new features!

CNet article on the new features, including an interesting point – the Google Plus business page cannot follow a customer first – the customer must first follow, then the business can follow back. Also lots about ways to connect in to your Google Plus business page from your other sites, and so on.

Technorati enthusiastically jumps on the Bandwagon.

Eliminating the Pain with a Lean Business Model (via Applied Entrepreneurship)

Great article! Hope the Big-Box model is eliminated going forward, way too many costs all the way around!

I've long been a student, as well as an occasional mentor, on the subject of innovative business models. As part of my continuing self-education efforts on the subject, I recently picked up a copy of Business Model Generation, written by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. As the promo for the book says, it is "a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers. If you're interested in business models, I strongly suggest picking up a c … Read More

via Applied Entrepreneurship

Site-Member Profile: 3232 Design!

Year Established: I’ve been doing freelance web design on the side since 1996, and in 2007 I created 3232 Design and started treating it like a business. In January 2010 I quit my day job of nine years as a Creative Director to concentrate on my business full-time, and it’s been nothing but awesome.

Business/Organization Name: 3232 Design. ’3232′ is my address, possibly the least imaginative business name but I currently dominate the market for people searching Google on ’3232′. Take that, RFC 3232!

Owner/Executive Director Name: That’s me, Richard Mueller. No full-time employees yet, and I’ll always keep it small because that’s how I can deliver the highest quality design with the most minimal costs.

Product/Service: Graphic Design, specializing in web design but including brand identity, print, and advertising for small and medium-sized businesses. I love working with creative types.

Unique Features/Competitive Advantage: I’ve won design awards, yet at the same time I’m a great web coder. Finding both in one person is highly unusual, and it allows me to look ahead to take advantage of coding tricks in my designs that save tons of time and money for my clients while delivering agency-quality design.

Contact Information

Notes/Misc other: Though my design is often envelope-pushing, my business is very conservative. It was getting obvious that I wasn’t going to get laid off and if I wanted to do 3232 full time I’d just have to quit. I’d spent two years saving everything I made on the side into a capital cushion so I wouldn’t have to take out a start-up loan. Still, it was one of the scariest decisions I’ve made. Would I lose the house? How would I feed my family? The net result is, I’ve been profitable from my first day, and the freedom is very rewarding.