Blue Bootstrap

Exhaustion

I'm so fucking tired right now. I spent 29 of the last 35 hours trying to jam out a demo for a customer and failed; it wasn't my fault though – they gave me a 27 page spec exactly one week before it was due. I just got back from the dentist's office to get crowns (I've spent ~$5K in dental work in the last month). My body feels like flavorless jell-o.

So maybe I'm whining a bit; it happens. Days like today make me question why I decided to go off on my own. Enough whining though; everybody has days like today and running a small business doesn't make it any better or worse, just different.

Take advantage of me in my whiny-ass state: I have 4 invites for Xobni, a great outlook plugin if anybody's interested. Send me an amil – josh.watts at blue-violin.com

 

Oh me oh EMI

Another long day yesterday.... I'm going to try something new. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, I'm going to step away from the keyboard and start having dinner with my wife and kids. Starting a company is stressful even under the best conditions and with 2 small children it's even tougher. My wife has been great about supporting my endeavor but she can't run the house by herself. I'm thinking that taking 3 hours a day, when I'm not distracted by work, to cook dinner and hang with the family will help everybody.

On page A3 of yesterday's Wall Street Journal, an article on the woeful state of EMI; they're laying off as much as one-third of their 6,000 employees, focused on the recorded-music operations. I was peripherally involved in the music industry in the late 90's and that's what brought me to Atlanta. When I lived in Seattle, I was the main developer for Amplified.com (an Atlanta-based company) and created a site to sell custom music CDs and secure digital downloads. They later hired me and I lived in a hotel for 2 weeks while my stuff was in transit.

All music companies at the time were faced with one problem: getting music that people would actually buy. We had a lot of indie labels and such but not much that sold. At the time, the major record labels were making big money but saw the disruption caused by Napster and quite honestly, were shitting bricks because they didn't know what to do. In true fashion, there was much gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments but nobody did anything because.... well, they didn't want to create another MTV and were determined to own the digital download market. As you can see, their strategy worked so well that suing their customers has become a legitimate business strategy.

For what it's worth, here's the business model for recorded music: take a chunk of plastic that costs about $0.50 to make and sell it for $15-18 to hipster teenagers. The artists themselves made very little, if any, money when you bought their CD; mechanical and publishing royalties and concerts are where the real money is at for artists.

Monday monday

Life is busy these days. I have multiple contract gigs and a new strategy for Blue Violin. 16+ hour days aren't uncommon. iTunes runs almost all day. Work-life balance lays in shards on the floor.

I'm not complaining. This is what I want to do - in fact, it's almost all that I want to do, much to the dismay of my wife at moments. Starting a software company may not be the noblest of pursuits but I find that I'm happier than I've been in a long time. For me, working and running a business is an exhilarating experience. It's not all sunshine and lollipops and I've had plenty of moments of self-doubt, especially when I'm trying to support a family at the same time. The peaks are fantastic and the troughs are abysmal. I"m trying to be even-keeled regardless of either.

Remember folks, it's only work if you would rather be doing something else. I'm right where I need to be.