Day 25

Today we are doing something new: A VIDEO BLOG!

Day 24

Today was actually a great day in the land of Time Trails.

You see, we've been grinding out on this business plan stuff for over 20 days...and many are telling me that is WAY TOO LONG to spend on a business plan. Well, its not. Not when the quality of the document will determine your financial future. 

I went to the SCORE meeting this morning to review our latest version of the business plan and the financial projections. The advisors told me that our business plan was one of the best documents they had ever read since they started counseling. How big of a confidence booster is that!!

After spending 3 solid hours with the business advisors going line by line through the documents we discussed our next major goal: Turning the plan into money. 

Over the next few weeks rest assured that lots of posts will be dedicated to my experiences (good and bad) at the banks. 

The plan is to approach roughly 5 or 6 banks with the business plan, each bank requiring multiple appointments and meetings. I'm convinced we will get funded - it is up to me to make sure we optimize our funding situation...

After a brief stop at the museum for a tour (While Anna and Dad went to the park for lunch) Dad and I went to the Wichita State University Metroplex Small Business Development Center. There, we attended a 2 hour seminar an small business start ups. Hopefully this center will open some more doors for us.

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Its a big weekend coming up - My brother Clay is driving down from Wisconsin for the wedding reception party we are throwing at Tina's house. 

My Brother Clay and I looking fearsome as we camp in the Colorado Wilderness

Also - hey hey hey the blog is up to 3 followers now!! Awesome! Is this exponential growth or what?!

Day 23

Karl hard at work! As always of course...

Back in the office today. Not getting much done, except for catching up on blogging.

Ben has a meeting in the morning the SCORE office of the SBA. It is his follow up from the meeting a few weeks ago...

Also, he has a small business workshop at the WSU metroplex to hone his business skills.....

Day 22

Monday as a holiday, but not for me.  Did more business plan all day, especially refined the financials while Debby proofed, edited, slashed and burned the text.  

Then we had "My Good Friend" Tony, our first and so far only Every Day Counted Supporter, over for dinner and had a great time talking and eating leftover grill on the porch.  I call Tony "My Good Friend" because he knows so many people, and people who know other people - he has the six degrees of separation down like nobody else I've met.  So when he says something like "I was talking to my good friend...so and so" you know he has a story to tell.  This one was about some expert who approached the Obama administration with a pitch, and landed a job, and then got waylaid by - you guessed it - politics.  The next one was about the president of a major French aviation company telling Tony "I'll give you just enough rope to hang yourself" and then signing a deal with him.  

Tony Likes to Fish. Alot.

So much for the fast lane.  Tony may be the closest we get to it.

Day 21

Sunday off - sort of.  Spent most of the morning mowing and cleaning up the yard.

Had a big crowd for a Memorial Day hamburger and hotdog grill.

Day 20

Dad worked continually on the Business Plan Ad Nauseum.

I was not kidding. Dad literally cut and pasted his notes on the business plan to a 10 foot long mammoth edit. He's kinda crazy.

As for me, I couldn't get much done business wise because Anna's folks came into town. But thats OK I needed a break. I feel the business plan is coming together - Dad has taken our entire rough edit and is spending massive hours on rewriting it - he stayed at the office till about 1:30 last night...

I was able to create a TIMESAIL visual to add to the pitch powerpoint. I think it is looking pretty good. We have done lots of editing on the pitch in the last few days. Here is this visual I created:

This is an element of the Time Trail that provides complex time/space based resources to the users.

Day 19

Worked steadily all morning on the Plan - we cross-checked our resources - about 4 books on writing business plans - and made an exhaustive outline to test whether we had covered everything in our existing draft.  Then we cut and pasted the old text across the new outline.  (Insert picture here)  Took it to the office and transcribed until 12:00 midnight.  I'd say Day 19 made up for 18.

Also, in the middle of all that, I was thinking about software architecture again - solidified ideas about caching tt's in sql, as well as treating area tt's like contours.  Very interesting and exciting stuff, but it must wait.

.......Ben Says:

Spent the early morning working on the Powerpoint Pitch, and covered and edited it with Dad in the afternoon before diving back into the business plan. I couldn't stay all night with dad because Annas family came to town. I am getting very excited about the progress, it seems very slow but everything is worth it!!

Here is a Sneak Peak at the Pitch cover:

Day 18

Woke up and knew it was a bad day for work, could not get into BP, so in frustration stayed home and cut hay.  That's right, hay.  By hand.  With an old-fashioned scythe - the kind "Old Man Time" carries over his shoulders.  It is oddly relaxing to swing that thing through the thigh-high grass and watch it fall over in pages.   I have a patch of hay meadow the size of a big front lawn.  I will try to make a haystack this year.  This is my own weird little historical farming research project slash relaxation exercise.

I wondered at the end of the day if you need to engineer a mini failure to grab onto success.  If the failure is not too dramatic, maybe it can help set you up for a successful run the next chance you get.  Day 18 did not count for much... but maybe it set up the future by cancelling itself out.

Day 17

Ben hung one of his brother Clay's Paintings in the office.

Business plan - arghhh - drove into the office in town. Too many ideas swimming around in both our heads to sit still, so at lunch we walked all around for about 4 miles looking for the ultimate authentic mexican hole in the wall restaurant, which we saw the last time we went to el cheapo taco chop, but passed by because we weren't ready to order in spanish. This time, we were up for it. But we could not find it on foot, and finally made a sore foot landing at this questionable looking South Broadway chinese joint called Lotus Garden. Good surprise, the place had decent buffet, even at 1:30. The rest of the day is a blur.

Day 16

Dad worked from home today.

After my morning tour at the museum, I kinda pitched our project to one of the teachers. She LOVED it. She told me that as soon as we get it up and running to come to her school and do a demonstration for the other teachers. So that was really encouraging...

After that I went to lunch with the Founder and the CEO of the museum, Jon and Mike. We went to one of my favortie little japanese places downtown called Kyoto Gardens. Anna and Lily met us there. I pitched the plan to Mike. He liked it a lot and was very intrigued. He had good knowledge about non-profits and business models. I think Mike could be a good resource down the road when the business things get sticky...I need more Mikes. As for Jon, I think he liked the idea but doesnt quite understand the magnimamigority (I invented that word, it means HUGE SCALE) of the project. 

Day 15

Dad worked on finding proper tech beds for new version,  and built up the finance spreadsheet. 

He is creating the financial analysis as a "living document". It is quite neat. 

I was swamped early morning at the Museum (thats my version of "billable work") but came into the office late and worked on.....what's it called....hmmm....can't seem to remember what it was......um....OH YEAH - the BUSINESS PLAN!!

:|

Day 14

Today, Sunday, Dad stayed at the house to work in his favorite spot - an overrun pig sty and weed bed in the back of the farm. It clears his mind, I think - and its starting to look really nice.

For me, well, I drove home from Garden City...a gruelling 4 hours. Listened to some Eddie Vedder and Into the Wild Soundtrack. It was awesome.

This soundtrack is one of the greatest ever created.

Stopped by Melanie's house on the way home. She lives in Pratt and will likely room with us for a few months this summer.

Day 13

I was in Garden City at the dentist. Got to spend time with Anna's family. 

In my downtime I was able to work more on that dern business plan, basically filling in some written material in a few different sections, mainly operations. 

Not much else. 

Day 12

Well, I wasn't in the office much today, but Dad was. After museum work I stopped in for a quick 30 minute brainstorming session with Dad - I had to leave to Garden City for some dental work in the early afternoon.

When I got back to the house I randomly stumbled on a website that would actually qualify as competition. They are doing virtually everything we are planning to do, except they aren't doing it nearly as good. So, in essence this is good for us because now we have a competing site that we can compare with. 

I'm not surprised other people are doing this, the idea is awesome. So far though we have found nothing to match our total vision. 

Also - Dad's brother (my uncle) Paul Tyson drove up from Dallas and swung by the office. Paul is awesome, he's a lot like dad - very smart. They kind of look alike, too. 

Day 11

Day 11 consisted largely in more slogging into the business plan.  We did come up with two new important strategies, having to do with operations and exit.

On operations, we asked the negative question - if we execute all our plan as we hope to in the web application, and have a site in place that does what we want it to, is there any way that the hit rate will just stagnate - that nobody will be interested?  The answer was no.  If the site performs as promised, this is a sure bet to generate lots of interest.  That means we are in control, not chance, or the vagaries of passing marketplace fads.

We grabbed burgers for lunch at the Beacon, an old newspaperman's haunt on Douglas just east of the Wichita Eagle building.  I delivered the Eagle and Beacon paper when I was a kid.  Now we wonder how long the old gray bird has before she folds.

Day 10

Very boring day today.

Dad stayed home in Whitewater to work on other projects. After I spent the morning at the museum, I made it to the office and did some grunt work.

The one great thing that happened today was:

As I was working on powerpoint presentation, I suddenly came up with another catch phrase, or mantra, or whatever you want to call them. It was much like "Every Day Counted".

Here it is:

"THE FUTURE OF THE PAST"

Now, Im sure its been used before like as an essay or book title, but other than that I found no copyright issues. So, we are going to use that as our viral marketing campaign slogan. Alright!

This is the center piece of the Stables. Like a lounge, but we are always to busy to actually "Lounge". We need to work on that.

Day 9

Today was the day we were fed to the lions. The lions turned out to be kittens, we made some new friends, and now continue our journey through the unknown wilderness that lies before us.

I arrived at the office early and better dressed than I usually am because of the early morning meeting with the Small Business Administration. My wonderful sister Tina happened to be in the area as well so she met me at the office with her 2 kids for half an hour and waited for Anna (wife) to bring me my laptop, which I accidentally left at home. A major wreck on Kellogg detoured her...but she made it on time!

Dad and I drove together to the SBA office. The original plan was for me to go at it alone, since I am heading up the business end of Time Trails. But in the end we decided it would be good for both of us to go together. Just our luck that when we get to the office we actually don't have an appointment and no one knows who we are. Hmm. Well after I do some explaining it turns out whoever booked us for an appointment never wrote it down or told anyone. Poor form. No problem though, we waited an extra 30 minutes for someone to be available and continued on. 

We met with a nice gentleman named Bill, a former engineer and business guru. He was a bit airy, but very in tune with his job, which was making sure small businesses didn’t end up in the tank before they even start, which most actually do. 

After 5 or 10 minutes into my presentation on our new idea he was completely hooked - somewhat to the tune of "Copyright and Patent this Idea NOW because it’s good enough to get stolen". So that was encouraging to us. We explained the business model, demonstrated a working online prototype, roughed our way through a Q & A session, and ultimately wound up with a new friend. Bill was very encouraging, and very helpful. He gave us the most helps in the area of our financial analysis and projections model. Of course we already knew this was our weakest spot... so his advice was much welcome there. 

The other great thing that came out the meeting was this: we now have a network of contacts associated with the local SBA in the fields of accounting and law. This is wonderful news, because we have been brainstorming a way to get our foot in the door with those particular power players, and now we do. 

The bottom line for us is that now we know for sure the money will be available for us to take, almost guaranteed. We have the official stamp of approval from the SBA and now have to finish the rigorous process of perfecting the business plan. 

In high school I was a long distance runner. The races always followed the same format: I would start off like a jack rabbit, sprinting to the lead of the pack, full of energy and excitement. Once there, I had to mentally will my body to stay the course and keep the pace. The middle 2 miles were not about physical exhaustion, but rather mental fatigue. If I could convince myself that I could just keep on chuggin at the steady pace, I would be in good position. And then, suddenly, the last 3/4 miles of the race loom before me. I'm in a good position, but I know that all the other runners are starting to make their move. So, I have to really strap it on and go into my final sprint to finish the race. So many times I would watch runners die in front of me, ones who thought they could maintain, but were fooling themselves. The final part of the race was the part I always owned, and where you show true grit getting to the finish line. This is the same position I am in now with this business plan. 

We started off strong, full of idea and energy. Soon, the enormity of the task began to wither me, so I had to settle into a productive, but steady pace. Now I know the final stretch is within reach, it’s the final 3/4 mile. I have to make myself move now more like a final sprint! Its hard because of the initial exhaustion...but if I don’t take it to the next level then the past 2 weeks will not mean much....and I've got more than a gold medal riding on this one....

So, other than re-working the business plan edits, we now have to focus on several key things: Creating a mind blowing prototype demonstration, building the first TimeSail prototype, and finishing our operating model. These three things really have to get done soon before we can move on in the business. Luckily, I think we are up to it. Today's meeting was a huge confidence booster - we even accepted an invitation to meet with a local venture capitalist next week! Usually you have to ask to meet with them, not be invited to them. So we'll see how it goes, we're not sure that’s the route we want to take...but all in good time we will know for sure. 

After the meeting we went to lunch at Kyoto Gardens under the Garvey Center in downtown wichita. Anna's mom drove down from Garden City to help take care of Lily (my daughter) while Anna re-adjusts to the changes in her medication. So Me, Dad, Lily, Anna, and Becky all had some great oriental food. It wasn't as good as it usually is...but that’s ok. 

In other news (cue music) we got our door sign up today. So when you walk up to the office you can see TRC - TIME TRAILS on the front door. It’s not big - but I feel more important now that that is there. 

So, the day is winding down, Dad already went home to work on billable projects, I finished up some this and that with Google Documents, and am going to finish the book "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki. Quite a good read for the entrepreneur. 

It’s been raining all day so every window in my house is kept open. I love rain. However, the dreary nature of this particular weather will not dampen my spirits. I go home today with almost a breath of new confidence. Because every day I realize how important the last day was, and truly understand there is not time to waste. I am in a world now of doing something that has never even been attempted - and I don't just see it as a 9-5 job. I honestly feel like this Time Trails project has the potential to change the way the world looks at history. I am convinced that this idea will go viral, and am dead set on making sure the right things are in the right place at the right time. 

So indeed, Every Day Counts.

And Every Day Counted.

-ben

Day 8

What an interesting day.

Today, Monday, was very important in terms of business plan preparation. Tomorrow morning I (Ben) have a meeting with a small business councilor (S.C.O.R.E) in order to proof, edit, tear apart, whatever on our business plan. We have been working on this for about a solid week now and hope that the skeleton is starting to take shape - which it is. I think. Neither Dad nor I are the types of personality that thrive doing this particular type of work when fantastic new ideas are constantly crowding our mind. But the bottom line (thats a business plan term, btw. Bottom Line. Mmm Hmm) is that we HAVE to get this thing done and it has to be good, so we are being particular and tedious with it. Today was spent entirely on the financial analysis section. Since we switched business models on day 3, our financial model is drastically different - and the numbers don't have the WOW factor they once had. On paper, that is. But in reality the numbers are far more powerful. Hopefully in the morning I will have enough good material to have a productive meeting.

A few other interesting developments on day 8...my wife Anna has been feeling very sick the past 4 days, mostly from her Cystic Fibrosis, so this morning she went to the clinic thinking there would be a hospitilization. Fortunately, she doesnt have to stay at the hospital after all but it was still stressful thinking about a.) her health b.) Lily and c.) money.

For lunch Dad and I decided to take out customary walk through downtown. We strolled the lull of the wichita river festival...not much there. Just greasy food stands and port-a-potty's.

After a brief stop at the public library, where we picked up a few essential books, we saw a new mexican restauraunt on the way home. Although it wasn't in our original plan, we decided to drop in and check it out - after all, it was only a short walk form the office and could potentially become a nice little eatery for us.

Well, as soon as we walked in I knew it was going to be trouble. We had no napkins, no silverware, and no waitress to start. When she finally came I asked her if they had tacos. She said un momento and checked the menu, but couldn't find the taco's. No worries - I finally found them myself. She brought out salsa in a small jar that wouldn't even pour into the little bowls, so I had to force it out, and on top of that it was completely favorless. The burrito Dad and I split was the most flavorless nasty mexican food I've ever had in my life. You have to TRY HARD to cook food this gross. To be honest, it was such a disappointing experience I don't even want to waste any more time thinking about it.

Don't Ever Go Here. Seriously.

Finally, I want to mention another concept we have come with. It is a very complex direct advertising concept we are calling Time Sails. The inner workings of it are intense, but it will be very simple for the user to get resources completely dedicated to their area of interest. I will be blogging about this concept a lot in the coming days as the idea develops more.

At the end of the day, we got lots of great work done, were feeling very confident, and were surprised by a visit from Anna and Lily. Oh - and we brought in a printer to the office.

I am very excited about this coming week...great things are in the future.

Day 7

Today is Sunday and Mother's Day, both good reasons to be at home with the Mom of your world, if at all possible.  Nevertheless, worked on business stuff collecting financials and reviewing budgets, trying to see a way to survive the startup.  Lights on again since yesterday afternoon, and the full moon changes to the wane.

Day 6

Saturday - yesterday.  Stayed home at the farm.  Electricity out most of the day - no running water, no lights, no power, no email, no web.  Weirdly calm.  Normal problems disappear because non-normal problems are so engaging.  Waded knee deep in manure helping herd cows into trailer for father-in-law Herman (really!).

Day 5

It's the afternoon of day 5 - I'm actually blogging the day on the day - afternoon here, and basically day 5 was pretty good.  We had a huge thunderstorm last night - early morning actually, and Whitewater area is still out of electricity.  But in the office we made real progress on the business plan.  We will certainly be ready to start showing it next week.

So, five days ago, we were looking for an office, and now we are looking for investors.  Not too bad, but I worry about being self-congratulatory when so much is riding on sticking with it and getting the most done.

I should take some time and explain a few basics:  (1)  "we" are Ben and Karl - Ben is my son, and we are starting a business called Time Trails.  (2) The business is an internet startup.  We have a great idea having to do with history and web visualizations, and we are trying to build it up from nothing - literally, since we are both basically broke right now.  (3) The idea actually started in around 1999 or so, when Ben was 13.  We called it "History Lab" and I tried to program it using the tools I had back then.  It was cool (we had the Civil War and a few other things showing up), but we never figured out how to keep going with it.  Now, ten years later, we're back on it.  (4) I have actually been working on the prototype for about three months straight by now (which is one reason I'm broke!).  There's a lot more to it all, but those are some basic preliminaries.

What is "Every Day Counted"?  It's a mantra - Guy Kawasaki says you need a mantra for your startup.  We got the mantra on day 2.  I said "every day counts" meaning I was afraid if we stopped pushing the whole venture would grind to a stop and never recover.  Then Ben said "every day counted."  From trivial to timeless.

What's it mean?  Just what it says.  We're counting every day of our startup, that's true, from the time we had a working prototype (which is another story - but it's B.P. - Before Prototype).  

But what it really means is this: You are related (descended from) a bunch of people who were living on every day in all of human history (just ponder that if you think I'm full of it).  Every day counted for them.  Every day something happened, someone was born, someone died, someone overcame, someone did something extraordinary.  That's what history is.  We may not be descended from kings, but we are descended.  And every day counted, somehow, for someone.

Day 4

OK, day 4 was yesterday. It started out slow - we had to wrestle with internet connections here at the Stables office. We had the wrong wireless WAP code, and the hub and router we tried both failed to split the wall ethernet to our two laptops.

But after driving around in search of the el cheapo taco place, finally finding it, and getting twelve tacos for $6, we actually had a very productive afternoon. The total change in plan I made on day 3 also completely tore up our profit model - selling each time trail we come up with, or selling packages of them. So we were sitting around, re-reading Kawasaki about getting the business model right, and Ben came up with a breakthrough idea, which we are tentatively calling TimeSails (sailing thru history...) - a way to really leverage the focus and get people connected to stuff they want. Good guy ads. Anyway, that idea made the day a success.

We are room 11. It says so on our door.

Also, I should mention that I have a personal goal of a minimum of two hours billable consulting work every day. That's how I make ends meet, and with this business idea taking most of my time, the family finances are in a shambles. So far, I've been able to do that. It's a small goal in the larger picture, but it keeps the idea alive.

Day 3

Well, day 3 at the office wasn't that exciting. Dad had to work from home most of the day so I (Ben) was here on and off throughout the afternoon.

The cool thing was that in the evening Dad, Debby, and Little Sis Abby brought some office furniture from Whitewater. Also, they brought my telescope to add an artsy feel to the room. IF you can imagine: a bookshelf full of history books and maps, a globe, some artifacts from my world travels. In the corner there is Scottish Claymore. A few of my older brother's paintings hang on the wall. He is quite talented so thats a nice touch. We don't really have desks, but rather a few tables. Other than that, the office is brick wall and cememnt floor.

Like I said - Shelf with weird toys on it. Brick Wall. Globes. Super Cool.

The building itself is called "The Stables." 100 years ago it was used as horse stable and ice house. Ironic.

I met some of the other building occupants as well - such a creative mix. There are videographers, free-lance writers, sound engineers, and graphic designers all within this tiny building. Add to that 2 eccentric historians...hmm.

There has been some trouble with the wireless and wired internet. I hope to see these problems go away soon...

Karl adds...

Day 3 I was working from home. I got depressed reading up on the hurdles of getting a business loan (credit history, collatoral, etc.) and was feeling sore so I took a hot bath. While in the bath I completely re-thought the entire plan for the business. There were three major parts to this re-thinking: (1) make it free, (2) just start and stay in the g-earth browser, rather than in a web page, (3) see all the data, including the user query, as a merged directed graph. I was just blown away, and afraid this made all the work so far useless. Major changes at this point become dangerous, but are still doable. But the raw power of these insights about what the product really should be was so strong I decided to move on all of them. Ben agrees. We'll see how they turn out.

Day 2

This is technically day 4.  Day 2 is only two days back in lived history, but it seems longer.  We cleaned and fixed up the office a little.  Then we reviewed our startup bible, Kawasaki's The Art of the Start.  So far we have done just about everything recommended in Chapter 1 - we have built a prototype web app.  The next step is weaving the MAT - Milestones, Assumptions, Tasks.  Ughhh.

Day 1

This is actually day 2, because the idea to blog the first 100 days of our startup came to me on day 2 and I wrote this today. But I made the blog and posted the first entry on day 3 because I was too tired on day 2. Wow. Counting every day is a pain.

This blog will chronicle the startup of a new and fantastic web application named mytimetrails.com. It will tell the world (or whoever is interested) about the ups and downs of going from absolutely nothing and nowhere to the hall of internet fame. If the startup starts...

Day 1 went like this:

We drove around Wichita all morning, looking for office space. They have these temporary leasing warrens now, old converted strip mall stores partitioned out into cubes and offfices, with the standard over-stuffed furniture, mirrors and plaster sculpture, as well as common computers, fax and printers. They cost about $500/month for an enclosed office, $300 for a cube.

Then we went to Mead's Corner, a really nice little downtown coffee house. We set up laptops, talked, drank coffee, and I emailed an old business associate (actually my former boss and himself an accomplished entrepreneur named Mark asking if he knew of office space.

So he met us a half hour later - seems he is personally leasing rooms his old office building, the Stables. We do the deal, on the spot, he waives deposit since I worked for him two years of my life, we get an office for $400 which comes out of my grocery money. Hope the wife doesn't mind.

Day 1 was a success. We got into an office, and that's the most important thing (hmmmm).