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After writing the last article and some serious thought as well as some conversation about Nashville I decided to take on a new goal. While I still feel that Nashville is not my favorite place in the world I do feel that it would be smart of me to stay here and do what I could to make it better. At least for another couple years. I am working on building an organization that I feel will be a driving force behind the change I want to make in Nashville. Any goal I have set my true effort behind and have refused to let myself down on I have been successful at. So, I feel that I can put the energy behind this to make it something that seeds change in Nashville for the better.

My goals for this new organization are to:

• Attract outside investment in the local business and technology community.


• Foster cooperation between technology businesses in Nashville.


• Attract technology talent to Nashville.


• Create a more conducive environment for growth in the technology sector.


• Achieve diversity in the technology market in Nashville.


• Provide local technology entrepreneurs with tools and environment they need to innovate.


• Give local businesses an idea of what is possible through the application of technology.


• Foster the development of user groups, conferences and discussion around technology.

In the end to get more and attract more we have to be more and through cooperation we can make all of us more than what we were yesterday. The name of the organization I’m building is the "Lion Council". I picked the lion because it’s a majestic animal, but also social and protective of their claimed area. Further, Lion Council was easy to remember and the domain was available.

I still may not decide to stay here and raise my son here for other reasons. Nashville is more conservative than I would like and the climate is not my cup of tea. Those are two things I doubt that I can have any serious impact on.

Let me preface by saying that I love Nashville. I read this article about Luke Kanies leaving Nashville for Portland. I have considered moving back to Portland as well. The only reason I haven’t, is that my girlfriend is somewhat hesitant to it. We have a son together and live just outside of Nashville, in Hendersonville. The main reason I’ve wanted to leave is I feel socially estranged in Nashville. It’s been almost impossible to build any good group of friends with common interests. The parties I’ve thrown (with free alcohol, music and plenty of space) have had about a 30-50% rate of people actually showing up. That’s around 15-25 people, which is good but I keep inviting the same people (who seem to be friends) and they keep not showing up. If you are one of those people there are many of you that have valid excuses and that’s cool as I’m probably not mad at you or I would have told you. But a friendship has to go both ways. If I show up when you request my presence and I can never count on you to call me out of the blue and ask me what/how I’m doing or show up when requested then there is a problem. Maybe the problem is I’m not important enough )-: But people in Portland never made me feel like that. I would get calls from people out of the blue on a regular basis and I still have contact with people in Portland even though I haven’t lived there in 7 years. I visited last year and it was like I never left. Friends came together and welcomed me back.

I’m pretty sure it isn’t because people are assholes here in Nashville. Generally people feel (IMHO) self-absorbed, conservative and don’t go out of their way to contact you. But they are very friendly in person and talk up how much they enjoy your company. Then you never hear from them again. I’ve met people I really liked and there are couple people who I consider good acquaintances  who I hope will eventually become friends. It just seems like a lot more work that I even had to put in to the effort in Portland, Oregon.

The tech community here as I said on my comments on the other post is not very great. I have put some considerable effort to help but it has not been returned and I have been mostly ignored when I put in effort which is discouraging to say the least. The NASHDL group is okay… and I have people within there that I don’t want to offend but I have had a lot of people tell me they felt uncomfortable going there and it’s not very inviting. I understand what they mean to some degree.

Marcus Whitney went to great effort to create user groups and encourage the local development community. Others that have encouraged the community in one way or another are Nick Holland (as previously mentioned in another article), Jackson Miller, Ted & John Chapin and Dave Delaney. There are others but I’m not as well connected as some so these are the few I know of. Many others keep to themselves and I feel this is due to some of the resistance I have mentioned. I have invested financially once with meager but reasonable returns and invested with my time/effort twice only to be outright ignored and sidelined. I’m an entrepreneur and don’t have time to be bothered developing things and investing in things that are a waste of my talents and energy. As far as that goes it would be difficult to get me to start anything by myself. I want to but I’ve seen how that goes and the only way I will do anything is if I can help someone who already has "the wind underneath their wings".

My business has not survived or thrived due to Tennessee but generally in spite of location. The only thing good about this location for my business has been the cost of living and the outside perception by our clients in more expensive areas of the world. We have been able to give a perception of cost effective due our location in part. There have been some relationships I have built recently that have been helpful for my business and my knowledge of business but that has been a long time coming. The good news is it doesn’t just apply to the tech community in Nashville. I have dealt with other industries in Nashville for my research on a website we are building. Seems they are all about the same way. They are not very trusting, have a secluded and competitive mentality, conservative and even combative when it comes to business. There’s a strong mentality that there is only just enough to go around and we must fight for the scraps of opportunity. However, if we would all open up a bit, lighten up a bit and relax we would find a world of opportunity at our feet. I operate my business as if there is enough to go around and we can all build more opportunity for ourselves through the sharing of knowledge and general cooperation. I hope that we are a beacon for others who want to operate this way.

Let me be clear. I don’t want to complain and just be part of the problem but I do want to feel free to state my observations from 4 years in this city. I’m willing to be a part of any proposed solution that people may have that has any chance worth of working or adding to the solution. My memories here have been a good part of my life that I love. I really came in to my own here and my son was born here. I would like this to be a place I would be proud to raise him and be proud to operate my business as it grows but so far I’m not convinced. I see some awesome efforts on the part of my colleagues and I hope they snowball in to the community becoming super awesome.

Here in Nashville on the last Thursday of every month the interactive development firm Centresource throws a mixer with good beer and better company. We always see the best and brightest new media professionals and entrepreneurs at these mixers. I’ve been to most of them. They started throwing them at the beginning of this year. During which they give out some schwag (Sivery Beans and Golden Kraut). I, uh… should know what these are because I’ve been so many times but it always escapes me. There’s always some type of interactive contest or drawing to get the much sought after items. Basically, they are two cans of food with some very symbolic meaning but it adds some fun and humor to the event and usually just about the time you have a buzz. Nick (Nicholas Holland) could tell it better than I could. The free beer and wine is definately an awesome touch.

The group of people at Centresource are really good. I consider Nick a friend and have had several conversations with them about their development work. They seem a very qualified group of developers. They primarily develop in PHP but put together awesome designs and other media as well. The best thing about them is they foster the development of interactive media Nashville and bring the community together. They have sponsored many of the tech/new media events in Nashville and we should all be grateful for that. I have mentioned before that sponsoring tech events doesn’t get you a whole lot of new work (IMHO) but does increase your position within the community, beneifts the local community, can attract talent and is very good for the image of a company. So, they should be praised for what I would consider an investment in the development community in Nashville.

Lastly, to anyone considering on coming out to the Centresource mixer I would say it’s a good idea. There are a lot of good contacts to be met out there and consider your presence your own small investment in the Nashville Tech Community. The address is 1313 4th Avenue North in Nashville and it usually starts at about 5pm. If you come out this Thursday, I’ll be there.

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The Challenge

We started our company, Cogwise Software, the same month the market started crashing last year (September, 2008). We lost a huge deal we were working on that month because of the crash. After that all we had was the clients I had from our prior company and a couple clients from my partner’s company. So, things seemed impossible. It seemed like many times we were fighting to swim upstream and many times we would hit some kind of barrier. Every marketing method we tried was expensive and we seemed to keep missing the mark. Our competition was willing to tell customers whatever they wanted to hear and give them whatever price they wanted to get a few bucks in their pocket and we weren’t willing to match bids that were too low or lie to potential clients in order to get work. So, we suffered through barely getting enough work to eat. We also had no loans or capital so we were working off of what we could get in as quickly as we could get it in. Many times we would be late paying contractors or other bills. Starting a business in one of the worst recessions in American history was not easy nor fun but it did make us stronger and smarter because we were willing to bet it all.

 

Dragging Knuckles

Initially, we tried many of the ways we knew to get leads and most of them didn’t work in this economy. Around the same time I had a partnership with another company, who was feeding us leads, dry up. They no longer could feed us leads because they didn’t have any. The comments of many devs at this time were, "if you had clients with active projects you are good but if you don’t then you are in trouble". We had active projects but it was not enough to sustain both my partner and my self. I went in the direction of stopping adwords because it wasn’t working and working on elaborate SEO and content creation. My partner was doing some cross-promotion of niche brands. We were also doing a ton of cold calling to design firms and trying to establish partnerships so we could piggy back their marketing efforts. Lastly we were both working locally to increase our social activities around promoting our brand.

 

What Worked & What Didn’t

Our SEO efforts paid off. It took months for it to work but content creation to link to our brand and social networking was essential to our visibility and brand strength. We now get organic leads in a much higher request rate. Adwords effectiveness was terrible during this time and we were right to cut it off. Seems many of the larger dev firms were spending money hand over fist to knock us off and in the end we couldn’t spend as much for a lead as they could. We did a couple projects that were low profit but they had good ideas so we could get a residual cut of their profits. I don’t recommend that to everyone as many times those kinds of partnerships don’t pay off but they do increase your network and your visibility. Also, working locally to go to networking events and increase our local visibility also seemed to work. Being willing to talk to whoever was willing to listen and not be intimidated by anyone’s success was essential as well. Many people who are successful don’t mind helping you get there if you treat them equally.

 

Evolution

A lot of what we did to survive had to do with being vocal. We put our name out there as much as possible. We spoke as loud as we could about our philosophy to anyone who would hear. We made close friends with our developers and treated them like real people with ambitions and desires and helped stoked the fires that kept them interested in what they did. We always provide as much value to our customers as we can afford to. Many times I didn’t bill for tech or business advisory time. Instead we would make a margin off of our developer’s work. We would always spend a certain amount of time discussing our client’s businesses and how to make them better. We ended up being good business consultants, good marketing consultants and good software developers. Our business turned in to an end to end solution for many of our customers. We evolved to learn the productivity methods like "Getting Things Done" and read books like "Think and Grow Rich". My partner and I compared notes, we talked frequently and we were honest with one another. We didn’t harp on our failures but noted them and strived to be better by advising each other. We were and are grateful for each other. During the hard times we were careful not to blame each other or quit.

 

Now

Work has picked up and I think we are caught in an upswing in the economy along with the fruit of our successful promotional efforts. We have adapted our internal processes and picked the right people to be successful. We have shrugged off negativity and reached high. We set tangible goals for ourselves and our company. There are a ton of qualified people out there who need work and we have sucked up a lot of them recently. Lastly, it sounds corny, but we never gave in and we pressed forward no matter the hardship. We were reflective, honest with ourselves and learned from our failures. This was our roadmap to this point and I feel our future is bright. I hope to write about our company’s awesome progress in the next few months.