Weekends

The concept of the weekend has eluded me recently. I've been rolling up my sleeves for the business every weekend since mid September, trying to build revenue, develop marketing, cover 4 jobs or so.

It's likely short-sighted; I get so close to the work that I don't always see that I need to step back and hire the right person. Well, that's not accurate. I know that, I'm just ignoring it because I'm uncertain about our revenue in the current economy.

But my gut is that in recessionary times there's a flight to value. That's why Nieman Marcus dove last month and WalMart was profitable. And we're a value product company--CircleDog (customer management) and GiftWorks (fundraising management).

We're seeing an uptick in sales to realtors, even though me don't have MLS connections. Turns out they don't need MLS integration, they need what we have: simple contact management with scheduling and decent mail merge.

I find it amazing that in 2008 there's still a gaping whole in the contact management software category, and that mail merge isn't just seamless and simple like it is with CircleDog. Well, we're paying attention. And within 6 months--we hope--we'll be in every relevant store in the country.

And if I can do the right overtime work and hire the right people for the right jobs at the right time, we'll be not just a survivor, we'll be the next great American software company. At 5:45 pm on a Friday before another working weekend, that sounds a bit ridiculous. But that's what I'm working toward.