I doubt I am the first to think about this. In fact, I assume this is common practice and something I just didn't know or think about until last night.

The concept of pre-screening references. Most businesses need to give their prospects a list of clients they can call as a reference. Typically, business owners will give the names and numbers of clients who are in love with you. But how do you really know those clients love you? They may be very nice to you in person and over the phone - but when you send them the bill - they may dislike you for it. :)

Do companies pre-screen their references by having friends call to find out what the client might say? This also works with resume references when you are looking for a job. Why not have a friend call your references on your resume to validate that they have good things to say about you? Did any of my former employees do the pre-screening on me? I certainly have not pre-screened any of my client references. But should I?

The process would be simple. In the client references case, just have a friend call and say he is interested in RustyBrick and that I listed you (the client) as a reference. Then have the friend go through a check list of questions and report the answers back to you.

Is that unethical? Is it done in business? Is it smart business practices?

FYI, this might be something that is a no-brainer to some people. I honestly never thought or heard about this concept ever. I was in the shower last night (too much information), thinking about a prospect who recently called my references. I wondered if they had good things to say about me. Then it stuck me, what is to stop me from having a friend find out what they have to say about me.

So what do you think?

Posted at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I get these calls once in a while...This time is went like this...

Caller: Hi, may I speak with your safety inspector or head of safety.
Me: We don't have a safety inspector.
Caller: Don't you lay bricks? Aren't you a bricklayer company?
Me: We sit behind computers all day.
Caller: Oh, I am sorry.

A bricklayer according to the current Wikipedia page says:

A bricklayer or mason is a tradesman who lays bricks to construct brickwork. The term also refers to personnel who use blocks to construct blockwork walls and other forms of masonry. In British and Australian English, a bricklayer is colloquially known as a "brickie".

On a deeper, more philosophical level, we are a type of bricklayer. We lay the building blocks of your web site and web business. ;-)

Posted at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Category: Just Funny , RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I am very proud to announce that RustyBrick, my company, launched the core back end infrastructure and front-end technology of Storybids.

Storybids is a very unique idea. It basically is a way for video creators to feature product placement ads in their videos and get paid for it. So let's say I do a weekly video cast (which I do weekly) and I wanted to earn some extra cash by inserting products from advertisers in them. Storybids provides an auction house for video producers to hook up with advertisers looking to put their products and/or brands in user-generated videos, serial mini-dramas, videoblogs and webisodes. Awesome idea!

In fact, the co-founders are Joseph Morin and Juan Prado. Yea, you know Joe. He has been on the SEM scene forever, involved with WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch and so much more. He is the guy at the conferences being matchmaker. Awesome guy.

He picked us to build out the core technology. And boy was it a fun job.

Confused on how it all works, check out http://www.storybids.com/howitworks.html and it will become crystal clear.

Want to watch Rand's testimonial, check it out at Storybids and see how he praises the new marketplace. In fact, Rand's team wasn't doing any more web development at the time Storybids was looking for a web development team, so Rand recommended us. The rest is history.

Posted at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

About a year ago, I wrote about being Slapped With Electric Bill For Past Four Years.

Well, this past month was the month I paid it all off, after paying it out over the past 12 months.

In short, the office building never sent me a bill for electric - ever. I had no idea it was part of my lease, so I had no idea I had to pay it. One day, I received a letter that I owed the office building 48 months of back charges on my electric bill. My high estimates was that I owed over $20,000. It turned out, the deal we worked out, was just about $10,000 was owed, to be paid over 12 months.

This month marks the month of when I was all paid up. The whole story was very weird and shocking, but things typically work out.

The bright side of this story, is that now I feel like I have a few extra bucks in the bank every month now, going forward. :)

Posted at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought Verizon FiOS would be here by now, in fact, I was convinced Verizon was laying Fiber at my office. But almost a year later, I am still without FiOS as an option for my office.

I really thought I would have FiOS as an option now but I still do not and Verizon's local business office has no ETA on it for my office. My T1 contract expired about a year ago, I didn't renew and stuck paying $65 more per month, so I could drop them without penalty where FiOS comes. But I was wrong, FiOS did not come and I pay almost $800 extra over the course of the year because of it.

Today, I decided to renew my T1 contract, so I can save about $65 per month. So I am now renewed for a new year. It costs $600 to terminate within the year, so if FiOS comes in a couple months, which I doubt it will), I will keep the T1, the Cable and add FiOS. I would likely unplug T1 and replace it with FiOS and let the T1 expire.

FiOS is just so much faster then cable, I have it at home and besides for one outage, it has been super fast and rock solid. Plus, I am sure it will be much cheaper than T1, which is, in turn, slower than Cable.

If renewing the contract would guarantee FiOS availability in my area, I would have done it. So maybe, it will be here soon. I am itching to get it in my office.

Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, my accountant gave me my final tax papers. I didn't even review them, I just stuck a check in the envelopes, signed them and mailed them.

I will review them later, cause I know there are a few amendments I need to have done anyway.

I don't mind the April 15th deadline too much. Why? Cause I pay someone to do them. But also cause I dislike the estimated taxes more. Not only do you have to pay your taxes by April 15th for the prior year (if you owe), but you also have to pay your estimated taxes (if you own a company or self-employed).

But paying the money doesn't bother me that much. My accountant told me, the more taxes you pay, the more money you are making. Now, it doesn't mean you should not take advantage of every tax law that you are entitled to. So, there are a few things I need to go back on and see if I qualify for.

We did file an extension for the business returns, but we did pay the taxes anyway. Government doesn't like it when you pay those things late.

Posted at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been contemplating the idea of actually charging for ideas, and not just charging for implementing the ideas. Yes, they are two different things.

For as long as I can remember, my company has been creating business models with our clients from day one. It doesn't matter the type of business, the sector or if it is an old business or a new one. Many, not all, but many, of our clients use us as a think tank for ideas on how to improve their business or develop new products or messages or brands or backend processes for their business.

Our practice for billing for those ideas has been... Okay, we came up with an idea - you like it, now we will charge you for implementing that idea on a software level. But we never really charged for producing the idea, itself, as an idea that goes to market. Tons of companies do it, they are called Marketing Companies, Branding Companies, and so on. Some charge hundreds of thousands for coming up with a brand concept, logo and so on. We, we just charge for the actual dirty work, in terms of putting it together but not for helping conceive the brand or idea.

Why am I blogging this now? Well, yesterday, I brought in four of my RBers into a kick off meeting with a new client. We came out of the meeting designing a whole new marketing pitch, concept and a brand new domain with tons of awesome ideas on how to promote the site and business. Maybe, in a few months, when we launch the new brand, Ill let you know what it was - and reference back to this post. But for now, I can't talk about the specifics of the business.

As we came out of the meeting, we thought to ourselves - once again... Hmm, we just helped them put together an awesome branding strategy. Yes, we are going to implement the whole strategy in a technical sense - by coding it up for them. But, in terms of payment for creating the new brand - we get nothing. This happens all the time and I never feel upset or cheated. I feel happy for them and for us - we just built a long term relationship in one sit down meeting with this client. But, on the other hand, maybe we should charge for it.

In the next few months - it might be something we actually stick a price tag on. But, one thing is for sure, our current message on our rustybrick.com site, really doesn't show that we can and do provide ideas as a service. So maybe we will launch our new site with some content focused on that as a service as well - if we ever launch it.

Posted at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember I told you I got a name plate for my birthday?

So we hung them up yesterday and our developers saw them. In any event, they thought it would be funny to make their own name plate. So they printed out "Client Specialists" on a piece of paper and stuck it to their door. Of course, they hung it up slanted.

Cute guys. ;-)

Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a kick out of Jeremy's The "No Laptop" Meeting Rule.

He said he has seen some Yahoo meetings where they have a "no laptop" rule set in place. Like Jeremy, I am torn.

Why No Laptops:

• You stop listening to the meeting to work on something else, I have done this myself.
• It may give the appearance that you are not listening, when you are
• You just sometimes need a break

Why Yes Laptops:

• They can be helpful when using it as a tool to add to the meeting
• I hate paper, I prefer to note take on laptop
• We are all grown up, trust us to do our work
• Sometimes emergencies come up

It really depends on the nature of the meeting. When I interview people, I try not to bring in my phone or laptop at the interview. When I am at a prospect, I obviously need my laptop to demo stuff. When I am at a meeting, I honestly don't need to hear everything that is going on at all times, so its good to have the laptop to multi-task. I guess it just depends on your job, responsibilities, what the meeting is about and so on.

But to implement it as a rule across a company, I am not too sure about that.

Posted at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It has been a while since I really cleaned my office. I tend to be a very clean and organized individual. I can blame my mother for that. In any event, I threw away so much stuff just 30 minutes ago. I organized some of my books, files, documents, CDs, etc.

Here is a video of my new clean office:

Trust me, before it was very clean also. But now this is extremely clean. I even used disinfecting wipes!

Posted at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are a blogger and have yet to try RustyBudget out yet, you are missing out. I honestly can't describe how much time I save every day by using it. Of course, it was my idea and RustyBrick built it, so I am biased, but at the same time, I built it around my specific needs. FYI - Danny Sullivan lives and dies by it every day as well, maybe one day he will blog about it.

In any event, I am often on the road and want to be able to add items from Google Reader directly to my various budgets. Based on watching the using delicious on your iphone, I had one of those "Doh!" moments. Just add the bookmarklets I need to my Safari browser, and then sync my iPhone. Presto - I can add items from Google Reader directly to the budget I want.

Here is me showing that off:

Step back!!! What is RustyBudget? Well, I wrote about it over here and over here. I am honestly shocked more people have not gotten on the bandwagon. Only 337 authors? Only 12,500+ topics added. Maybe it is too confusing?

Anyway, give it a shot at RustyBudget.

Posted at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Near our fridge in the office, is a line of soda boxes that constantly gets replenished, for our staff. Here is a picture:

Yes, the coders love that caffeine and we love to provide it. Sorry, no red bull - I am not sure if it is kosher. :) We got, from left to right, seltzer, arizona ice tea, mountain dew, pepsi, more mountain dew, pepsi zero, diet pepsi, diet pepsi without caffeine. Yes, I guess pepsi was on sale when we picked these boxes up.

I actually got the three boxes on the left myself, when I went to Costsco this past week.

I have an older post related to this, that has more food items, named Stocking The RustyBrick Junk Food Room.

Posted at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote this post named I Am A Horrible Sales Man like one and a half years ago and now Andrew Goodman takes issue with it in his It's All About Sales series. A year and a half later?!

Andrew Goodman is a person I respect, so it caught my attention right away. OKAY, everything catches my attention right away, so no need to mention I respect Andrew- but I do... Back on topic............... (period key got stuck there for a bit)

Andrew said that my post shows to him that I am a clever salesman. He said:

I increasingly realized that this was proof that Barry is, on several levels, actually quite a clever salesman.

But honestly, I really really think I am not a good salesman. But it doesn't stop Andrew from thinking otherwise. He goes through several of my bullet points on why I I Am A Horrible Sales Man and turns them around. Pretty clever yourself.

The dress and "well groomed" comments are fun also. As you can see, Andrew is a well-groomed guy - that is his picture in this post. He admitted to this, "I thought my last haircut just didn't "take," so I went in for another one a good two weeks ahead of my usual schedule." Wow, I go into the haircut place and they ask me how I like it, I say - "quick please." I don't even bother looking to make sure they cut my hair evenly.

Can't wait for Part II. :)

Posted at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Not sure about you, but December, every year, is when I spend the most amount of money at my company. Why? Well, RustyBrick's books close on 12/31 and we like to get all our expenses paid so that we max out our possible deductions.

This turns out to be pretty big sums of money. They include:

• Charity, lots of charity
• Estimated taxes (not sure if it even helps if I pay 15 days early but it cleans things up for me)
• Year end bonuses for full time employees
• American Express bill
• Insurance bills
• Hosting bills
• Rent
• Client gifts
• New computers and hardware
• Recruiter Fees
• Any misc bills due up to 1/31

Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Holidays everyone! Hope you enjoy the upcoming days and weeks with your family and friends.

Personally, I should be blogging and working over these days. The search industry slows but does not stop. Plus this is a great time for me to do the year end stuff for RustyBrick.

RustyBrick did send out our holiday e-cards this Friday. Do you want to see them? If so, go to http://www.rustybrick.com/holiday07/ to load the Flash card. Note, there is a typo in the card...

The fridge? More on that over here...

Posted at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I so hate RFPs, request for proposals. Typically, if I get one, I won't respond or politely deny it. We are privileged to be able to pick our clients.

There is something about RFPs that just seem wrong. Write up a large document, send it out to 15 potential vendors to fight over and pick the last one standing. It reminds me of throwing a piece of steak to a hungry pack of dogs.

I just got a call about an RFP, I decided to ask - how did you hear of us. The person who called did not know. She said, "my boss gave me your number." So she sent me the details via email and I replied politely asked for how her boss got our number. If it comes from a client, I may respond - if not then I will tell them I am not interested.

Do you feel the same way about RFPs?

Posted at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I just got off the phone with a prospect calling to find out how much it would cost for a web site. I asked him to describe his business and then offered options for his web site. We ended up with a simple static site with content and pictures, plus a contact form for his site. Typically, we won't do those types of sites because they are too basic.

In any event, I gave him a ballpark price. He then told me, "You are crazy!" I paused and said, "excuse me, did you call me crazy?" I added, "I assume you didn't mean that?" He said, "you are crazy."

He then went into how he found prices listed on web sites for $200 for a site. I said, sure - a template site. Or contract the work out to a freelance person in India. You can get those prices. But these are our prices and I know many companies that charge a lot more than us.

He said again, you are crazy. I said, I am not crazy, I have been in the industry for a long time and I know. He replied, "I am in the industry also and you are crazy." I thought to myself, if he is in the industry, why not just build it yourself? But I did not say that, it wouldn't be nice. He then started yelling at me. At that point, I just hung up the phone - I don't need that.

Posted at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

This year at RustyBrick, we will be giving some of our clients mini fridges. They hold about 6 cans of soda and can be plugged into a wall outlet or your car power adapter. Here are pictures:

I guess this may be the first time I can say our gifts totally rock Google's holiday gift.

Posted at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Question: How can one make their phone bill cheaper without actually switching to a VOIP solution?
Answer: Threaten to switch to a VOIP solution!

We use a PBX box from Fonality at RustyBrick. It allows us to use a hybrid of VOIP and analog lines for our phone calls. By default, almost all calls go out over the VOIP lines to save costs while incoming calls go over the analog lines.

My VOIP bills are dollars per month (we pay maybe pennies per minute). My analog bills are over a hundred per month.

I was thinking of swapping out the remaining lines to VOIP lines from a new provider. So I decided to call my phone carrier and tell them the story. I did and then I was convinced I should switch. The next day, I get a call from a manager at the phone carrier telling me they will match the prices of the new VOIP lines I would get.

So I was planning on getting four lines at $25 per month, each line. They matched it. I got my first bill and I am now paying a lot less!

Good deal!!!

Posted at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a few hours ago, I made the final decision for our company to switch from GHI to Oxford for our health insurance benefits. Why did we switch, well - this time Oxford had better prices and since Oxford has a larger network than GHI in this area, it was a no brainer.

But this time, we decided to offer our employees two options for health benefits. It gives more flexibility, and can save them money. We no longer cover 100% for our employees, effective December 1.

What was very interesting to me was that all the single males selected the cheapest possible insurance product available to them. Their rational? "I never see doctors" and different flavors of that. While all families selected the most expensive plan available.

If I wasn't married, I also would likely choose the cheapest plan. But now, I clearly don't make all the decisions. But when you start having to worry about others and not just yourself, clearly you want to have the best available coverage for those who depend on you - no matter cost. So that is what most selected.

Every year I go through this process and every year I learn a thing or two.

Posted at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If last night wasn't late enough due to the event and the fried phone lines, we were adding in a new database server last night, into our cluster.

The addition was scheduled for midnight. I was supposed to be sleeping while it happened. Instead, I was up between 12:15 and 1:30 or later testing to make sure all our sites and applications worked.

There were some small glitches here and there, but now most of our sites and applications are now running off a new database server in our cluster. Failovers should work well also, but who knows.

I honestly hate dealing with hosting, hate it.

Posted at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, I had a few meetings. Let me describe two of them.

(1) The Interview:

We interviewed a new PHP candidate to work at our company. He was extremely prepared. I was very impressed when I asked, "Do you have any questions for us?" And he responded, "I prepared a list of them." That is impressive.

(2) The Prospect:

I had a prospect that wanted to run some ideas by me. Not only did he come 30 minutes late to the meeting... He came in, asked me how do I protect myself from you or someone else stealing my ideas. I said, have me sign an NDA. He then told me his ideas without giving me an NDA to sign. At the end of the meeting, I did a quick Google search for his main idea and found dozens of other companies doing the same thing. Dozens of people stole his idea. ;-)

Hmmm.....

Posted at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night at 7:49 PM (EST), we logged our 15,000th task in our task management system.

Our first task, ever logged in our custom built, RustyBrick® Task Manager, was on June 23, 2002 at about the same time of the day. Back then, Ronnie and I created all the tasks. Actually for a year or so after, we created all the tasks. Let me step back a bit. A task in our Task Manager, is a piece of a project that must get done for a whole project to get done. So if a client wants us to build out a web application, we will break down the web application into specific tasks, could be a handful or could be hundreds. Then programmers work on these tasks until they complete all of them.

So in the early days, Ronnie and I created each of these tasks. But we ultimately wanted our clients to take control and create their own tasks. In addition, we wanted our developers to do that as well. Over the course of the years, clients and our developers began creating tasks on their own. In fact, today, I personally rarely ever create a task. These days, we create tasks by the dozen each day. We probably create several hundred tasks per month. So if I had to chart the number of tasks we create month by month, you would probably see a huge steep line going up.

What is special about task number 15,000 is not only that it is number 15,000, but that a client created the task. We love when clients take the steering wheel and make their own detailed tasks.

We live and die by our RustyBrick Task Manager. It not only keeps our clients apprised of where we are with their projects, it also runs our daily business actives. We bill from it, we project manage front it, we project into the future with it, we interact with clients through it, we give bonuses from it, we power ambient orbs from it and much much more. It is our life line.

Congrats to the RustyBrick team and clients for reaching this awesome milestone!

Posted at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Every now and then an office supplies guy stops by the office trying to solicit business from my company.

Since we are a very digitized company, we don't have the need for much office supplies. I stock up maybe once or twice a year and that is more than enough.

One came in the office today and one of my guys sent him away. I said, hmm. Next time one comes in, I want you to tell him that we want to buy a "No Soliciting" sign for the front door.

All office supplies stores sell them, so they must be able to be able to sell us one. Why rub it in the face of the sales guy? Because there is a no soliciting sign right by the elevators.

Posted at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tell me this... Why, why, why do all sales prospects come in the same week? I must of had 10 plus serious sales calls in the past week. Four new clients have signed up this week and I suspect another two will also, by weeks end.

Honestly, I can go weeks without signing up a new client, sometimes even months. But then, when we sign up a new client, bam! A slew of new clients also end up signing up.

This is very common, probably also very common for you guys. Business is sometimes not expected. Some business is seasonal, not mine - so we never know when it is going to hit.

Don't get me wrong, we have the resources, maybe we should add two more coders. Anyone interested? But it provides a happy stress.

I know I am not the reason we get new clients. Why? Because I Am A Horrible Sales Man. And when the client signs up, I am like, "sounds good, let's get started." I don't smile, I don't jump for joy, I don't get all excited.

Anyway, back on topic. Anyone know why new business typically comes in this avenue? All at one time...

Posted at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The Editor in Chief of Wired threatened to block PR pitches from PR people if they blindly email him press releases without tailoring them to him.

Wow!!!

Chris Anderson, got guts. Chris Anderson is widely respected, and has written some awesome books... So for him to say this, people watch, and they have been!

Chris said:

So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that's why my email address is public).

Everything else gets banned on first abuse.

He has already banned, what appears to be about a hundred email addresses. Bold!

Chris said he gets about 300 emails per day, mostly PR pitches. He doesn't have the time for it. Duh! How could he. He has a staff that deals with it, so send it to the proper email address at Wired and not his personal email at Wired.

I get my share of press releases, not nearly 300 per day, but a fair share. I can't stand most press releases, in fact, I delete 95% of them. When I was just writing at the Search Engine Roundtable, I simply deleted all press releases no matter what. Why? Well, on the submission page at the site, I said we have certain criteria. That criteria includes:

We only accept news and article ideas, if they come from a search marketing forum thread. If the community finds your service / news / product to be important, a discussion should and will most likely be started in one of the top search marketing forums. It is our job at the Search Engine Roundtable to discover these most talked about discussions and summarize them for you in a format that is both useful and timely.

If you have content, news, products or services you want to submit to the Search Engine Roundtable, please first find a forum thread from one of the many Search Engine Marketing Forums. Then submit an email to us and we will evaluate the thread and discussion for inclusion into our story board.

If you have a press release, then great! But don't share it with me if no one else cares about it. AKA, no forum discussion, no press release.

With Search Engine Land, I need to be more open minded. I still prefer to find the news through my channels and not be fed the news, with certain exceptions.

Is Chris worried about missing out on some stories? I doubt it. I commend him!

The bottom line is that we are all human. Throw press releases in our faces, as if we are machines, doesn't do it anymore. Tailor them, make sure we care. With Search Engine Land, there are some writers who prefer local articles while some love to cover new features and others love hard core SEO stuff. Tailor your message and be direct! Save yourself and us time, please.

Posted at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I just got my new statement for how much my new rates will be for health insurance for our employees at RustyBrick.

It just amazes me how much these prices go up so much every year. I do not mind paying more in quantities (i.e. add employees), but the rates have gone up tremendously in the past few years.

Health-Care Premiums Expected To Jump 8.7% in 2008, Study Says from the Wall Street Journal is a recent article on the crazy prices of health insurance. Here is a quote:

Health-care premiums of employers and their workers rose by more than twice the rate of inflation in 2007, and cost increases are expected to accelerate next year, with employees picking up a larger slice of the bill, according to a study released Monday by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources company.

It has been like this for the past several years. Insurance prices just keep going up.

Thing is, RustyBrick currently covers 100% of our employee's health insurance. We also provide a pretty good plan, PPO with a provider that is widely accepted here.

Besides for co-pays increasing, with deductibles, to try to lower the premiums, the WSJ says:

Employees are also likely to shoulder slightly more of the financial burden for their health-care next year. Hewitt predicts that employees on average will contribute $1,859, or 21.4%, toward premiums, compared with $1,690, or a contribution of 21.2%, this year. In 2003, employees paid 17% of the premium.

I have looked into "High Deductible Plans" but they aren't attractive. Yet, insurance is just for that, in case of emergencies. So maybe it is a good option. I still don't like it. This is what the WSJ said:

Hewitt's research also found that more than 20% of employers offer, or plan to offer, a high-deductible health plan with a tax-advantaged health savings account, or HSA, by the end of this year, and almost half are considering offering one at a future date. While just 3% of employees elected these plans last year, most companies anticipate that enrollment will grow to 20% in five years, according to Hewitt.

That just amazes me.

In any event, it is just going to get worse next year. I doubt prices will ever go down.

Who is to blame? I am told people abuse their plans and that is why premiums are so high.

Posted at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Just got an invite to ShoppingAds, so I thought I give it a try. If you click on the ads, I get paid. So I thought I test it out. I may use them with Google AdSense on this blog and see how it goes.

Above is an example of a type of ad, it is not targeted to be contextually relevant.

The above ad should have "attitude." No sure what that means just yet. Seems like "attitude" ads the "Hot" icon to the ads.

Posted at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of you remember that we have upgraded some of our servers to Fedora last week.

Since then, I have not been sleeping much. The server we upgraded is having these weird kernel panics, even though we tested it. The server reboots fine, and comes back up after five minutes, but it continues to happen every other day or so. So this weekend, the server folks and us did tons of tests over the middle of the night. We think we found the issue, and we are hoping this server holds up, so that we can upgrade the others using the same method.

But I have not been sleeping. Besides for being up with the server upgrades, I have this sick feeling all the time. The feeling of worry that the server may be down from a kernel panic. It is horrible, especially when you have to go offline for a 24 hour period.

Last night I was up since about 2am. I just hope all goes well with the server today, so maybe I can sleep well tonight, for the conference tomorrow.

All in all, horrible to move servers and homes in the same week.

Posted at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Several years ago my Dad got a great offer for a Personal Post Postage Meter by Pitney Bowes, a company he worked at for 30+ years.

My dad was about to cancel his years ago, when I said, hey, Ill take it over. Back then I used to mail a lot of stuff, like checks and more. But now, I rarely mail anything anymore. Taxes, payroll, bills, proposals, marketing, etc are all now done online. So I decided to cancel my meter.

I call Pitney Bowes, I get transfered from three different people to the cancel department. This guy gets on the phone, he is all chipper. He says, hey you have been a customer for several years now. I said, yes I have been. I then tell him the bad news, I want to cancel. He said, are you sure? He then lists all the reasons I shouldn't cancel. I wish I wrote them all down, but here are a few I remember:

• Holiday season is coming up and mailing will increase
• Online identity theft is huge, you are risking your life by paying bills online
• It costs in gas to drive to the post office to mail things
• Your a busy guy, you don't have time to waste for buying stamps

Those are just some. I actually started to enjoy listening to why I shouldn't cancel. Then when I kept saying no and he ran out of reasons I shouldn't cancel (I am sure he has a 10 point list of reasons sitting in front of him), he lowered the price.

He said, you have been a good customer, Ill charge you $6.95. I then thought to myself, why did you charge me $15.95 for all these years? I said, no thank you. He then gave me two more reasons to stay. I said no. He said, $5.95. I said no thank you.

He then said, maybe you want to give it to a friend to use? I said, nah.

He said, if you cancel you won't get the $5.95 rate again. I said, then I deserve to pay more if I sign up after canceling.

He said OK and finally gave me a cancellation request number.

I then commended him on his efforts and said have a wonderful day.

Wow, what an experience.

Posted at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This blog might be a tad slow this week, who knows...

Why? Not only are we moving servers this week (a huge pain when moving hundreds of domains), but I am also physically moving my home address this week.

Just pure madness between those two and an everyday schedule.

Posted at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Category: Homey , RustyBrick | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a quick test post to make sure this blog software works on our new server OS.

Remember, Picking a new server OS from months ago?

Well, last night starting at midnight, was that night.

More on that at a normal time in the day....

Posted at 4:24 AM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I am now in the process of shopping around for new insurance for my business. I need to renew a Technology Professional Liability (E&O) plan. I was hoping to get some advice from other web development/design and SEO companies out there.

Here are some question:
(1) So which policy do you have?
(2) Why did you choose them?
(3) Are there specific exclusions a company like mine should pay attention to?
(4) How much liability and deductible do you recommend?
(5) Who would you recommend?

Thanks!

Posted at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rand asked me if I would answer some that should tell him and the world is RustyBrick is a great company or not. So why not...

Does RustyBrick Have Level 5 Leadership?
Level 5 leadership is a leader(s) that has "humility + will, ambition for the company (rather than themselves as individuals), compelling modesty, strong resolve to confront tough problems and make hard decisions, and, finally, a consistency in praising others for the company's successes and blaming themselves for its failures."

I guess I am one of the leaders of RustyBrick, the other is my brother, Ronnie who is the technology leader. I think I am somewhat humble, and I have an ambition for the company rather for myself (I think), I feel I am modest (you tell me), I don't like making hard decisions but I have to solve some problems and I never blame someone else (outside of the leaders) for company failures.

Do We Have the Right People in the Right Seats?
Tough one. Everyone has so many seats, its hard to say. We do not take the approach of hiring people without having something for them to do. So we probably do not get the grade "Great" for this one.

Do We Confront the Brutal Facts?
Same here, I guess we are too small to consider certain facts to be "brutal." Nothing great for us here, simply good.

What is Our Hedgehog Concept?
It can't just be standard consulting and coding. We need to add more, as we have. But we have way more to go. I think software applications is RB's hedgehog concept.

Have We Created a Culture of Discipline?
RB is so handoff, that I am not sure we have. I do my best to give the employees freedom. They know what they have to get done, they get it done and everyone is happy. Culture, I am not sure we have a strong culture at RB. Is it a bad thing? I don't think it's bad, I just don't think its great either.

Are We Turning the Flywheel?
We are constantly churning things out, but much of it the public won't see. We keep churning, more work leads to more work. So I guess, we kind of have a flywheel, if I understand it.

What does all this mean? See Rand's post.

Grade my company... I just can't.

Posted at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Category: RustyBrick | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)