Changing to Fall...

Again, sorry for not writing much. Too much going on to have much time or energy left for keeping up blog.

I have been working almost full time on this big needle deal with an international company. It has been going on for over 5 months now and is finally coming down to reality. During this process I have learned a lot of things, such as:

I have always used a person's word as truth and that was a pretty stupid thing to do in this case. The company is based in Japan and I guess they have different rules there. I have been run around and basically lied to a number of time during this process and have extended the friendships of a number of my business associates when trying to meet the requirements of this deal. I am very sorry that has happened and will have to make it up to them over time.

I have also learned that a couple of my previous business 'friends' don't deserve that title as I have found out they also work by a different set of values and rules than I do. I am a relative nuibe to the 'old boys network' in the fishing products business and when one of them get pissed off about something, it can spread to others that have no stake in the issue.

I now realize that it is almost impossible to distribute a product that you don't make. There is never enough margin available to pay for the distribution channel discounts and make any money off if them. Most of the time, the margins won't even come close to paying for the distribution channel discount costs.

And, my most important realization, which I have learned a few times before in my life, but seem to not remember the past as they come up in the future, is that a deal that sounds too good to be true - usually is...

We are a small company and are growing quickly. This deal, if it would have happened as it was first proposed, would have taken us to that next level in one giant step instead of spending the next year or so getting there. The requirements were going to be very taxing on our capabilities and would greatly expand our volume in a number of areas - more volume, getting into new products, mandating that there be more than just me working on it, and a lot of growth issues that usually come slower and better planned that this opportunity would have mandated.

Not being entirely stupid, I didn't jump into this without keeping track of reality and did not start up things that would have cost us too much to be able to deal with if it all didn't go right. But, I personally have been through way too much in planning and mentally dealing with all of the new challenges that would happen.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the deal has been reduced to 1/4 of what is started out to be. So, it is still our biggest deal to date and we will get a lot of the exposure that I was hoping for, but it just won't be near as much as was originally proposed. But, the really irritating part of it all is that this 'customer' basically ramped up the size of the opportunity to basically get a better price from me. All of the stuff that they and I put me through were not real.

So, I have learned that there are different value structures in different parts of the world. From their side, I guess they won as I was sucked along with it and I was played like a hooked fish. I was awed by their size and the opportunity and they used it to get special treatment out of me. I have once again learned to draw that line in the sand and never go over it, no matter how appealing the situation might appear.

I also learned that in a small business, you must watch about growing too fast. We could have done the original deal, but we might have had some problems in a number of places that could have screwed it up and we wouldn't have been able to fulfill our responsibilities. The opportunity to fail was too high and has taken its toll on me being worried about each of those potential problems.

Well, enough of that. It is because of this morass that I have not been writing much lately and I am sorry for that. I will try and do better in the future.

Tommy, the newest member of the household is growing up and has a wonderful personality we all love him except for Cali, our oldest cat, but even she is getting to the point of tolerating him most of the time. He and our other cat, Felix are BFFs and are always playing and getting into trouble one way or the other. Now they both are going outside for controlled periods of time and having fun exploring the estate. Tommy loves to run on the grass. It is amazing how quick he is and how fast he can turn. He is like a 4 legged slot car, for those that remember slot cars. With his long hair, you really cannot see his legs move and it really looks like amazing. He turns so quickly, sometimes his legs wills slip out from under him and he will slide until he regains his footing.

When he is on any type of hard floor, especially a highly polished floor, he can run for quite a long time and hardly move but his legs are moving amazingly fast.

I have been playing in the weekly pool tournaments pretty regularly but not doing very well. I haven't had time to practice and just go as its my only time I get out much. I have won a few of them but lost many more than I should have, or would have before. The pool table here has been covered for weeks, but that will change soon.

I haven't been fishing all year. I haven't had anybody to go with and I am still concerned about going alone as my stamina is very low from all of the medical fun at the start of the year.

Pam is till working at Dell and all is better there I think. She is doing very well and is starting to get into helping with the business. Hopefully, it will grow enough soon, that she will have to work here or we will have to hire an employee, which is not something I look forward to at all.

We went to the county fair last weekend. It was almost the same as usual but it was very hot. After an afternoon of doing all the normal fair stuff, we went to the big rodeo and that was exciting. I think we both ended up with colds or sore throats from being there until late and wearing very light clothing.

Well, I have orders to fill and packages to mail. I will write again soon but right now that is all that is happening here in DaHo...