Over at Simpli, things are starting to return to “normal” (by whatever metric you would like to define “normal”.) Brandon is leaving on Friday, so we hired Russ, a customer of ours, to replace him. In fact, when Brandon told me he was leaving, I was on the phone not 10 minutes later with Russ, letting him know that the position was available. He decided to move out here from Michigan and take the position, and right now he and Brandon are in some intense training to get him up to speed in 5 business days. It’s definitely going to be an interesting transition. I think it will be successful — otherwise, I wouldn’t have hired Russ — but there will be a couple weeks there where there will be some confusion because of something that only Brandon knew. Fortunately, I will still be able to call Brandon in sometimes if necessary. I’ll send out an email with details about Russ’s hiring to our customers today.

We have more challenges coming up with Simpli, which I will detail in future blogs, but right now things are moving relatively smoothly. Of course, I know I can’t get complacent, but I do more than my fair share of worrying about everything on a regular basis, so I think it’s okay to say “Hey, we’re doing well right now.” And we are. September, 2005 was our best month ever, far surpassing even my best revenue estimates, and we managed to pay down some of our debt and still have a surplus. I’m really grateful that everything went so well in September. This month, we’re actually doing some new promotions and advertising a bit (just so I can try to beat September’s revenue!) That should be fun, too.

On to my personal life. Over the past week, a lot of my thoughts have focused on “What do I really want out of life?” I’m a firm believer in the theory that we shape our own destinies; that anything we can imagine, focus on, and create a path to is within our collective grasp. This belief has changed my perception of myself, first and foremost, and now that I’m doing better with regards to my emotional health, I can start to focus on what I want to do next. That’s not to say that I’m going to run away from Simpli–not at all! I love Simpli and what it’s grown into, and I want to continue running it for the foreseeable future. But I’m starting to have more free time, and I’m interested in exploring and studying things other than computers and web hosting during that free time. Forex is cool and I expect I will continue to do Forex (though I haven’t had much time lately), but I want to understand more about how the world works and (my favorite subject) the fascinating interconnections between religion, spirituality, and scientific pursuits.

I know that writing a book about my spiritual beliefs will be a staggering undertaking. For one thing, my spiritual beliefs are not as well-defined as some people’s are. (But then again, if they were that well-defined, would they truly be mine?) So, if I can imagine anything to be possible, create a detailed path to it, and then achieve it, what is it that I want to achieve with this book of mine?

I wrote a bit about the book in this blog entry from November 2004. Today, almost a year later, I went back and revisited that blog entry. A couple more pieces have come together in the past 11 months. First, although I want to reference Christianity, I don’t want to focus on it. Why? 2 reasons: 1) I want this book to have a wider appeal than Christians. There are already plenty of books out there for Christians. Despite Christianity being the dominant religion in our society, I don’t think it’s necessarily “better” or “worse” than any other religion. 2) I haven’t been a practicing Christian for several years, and I’m concerned that some Christians would discredit any theories about religion that didn’t come directly from a Christian. I still believe that my book should recognize the good things in Christianity, but I also believe I need to write about where other religions got it right.

2004 was all about the study of religions for me. I tried out different churches. I read books about different religions. (I tried to stay in the realm of the analytical books that talked about the religions, but also read several holy books themselves.) I went to different churches, which I think was the most enjoyable part of the whole experience, because I found something at every church to like.

2005 is the study of science and how that interacts with religion and spiritual beliefs. I’m slowly wrapping my head around quantum physics and reading books about it. I’m trying to figure out whether quantum physics and other far-out-there scientific studies can be used to give us a more complete picture of what God looks like. In my studying, I’ve gone all the way from “There is no God” to “I’m not sure” to “There is definitely a God”. I stayed on the “There is definitely a God” track and am now working on expanding that into what God is. Is God simply the collective consciousness of all of us, and we just work together in some mysterious harmonic pattern? Or is there actually a being/presence out there who coordinates it all? Assuming a being/presence, who is this being, and how did it come into existence? Why does it not show itself? Or does it show itself, and we just can’t see it? The questions are endless and have been pondered ever since we realized consciousness. What’s most interesting to me is that quantum physics, which would definitely be on the leading edge of science, is trying to use science to determine the answers to these same questions. This seems to indicate a convergence of science (led by technology) and religion/spirituality. I’d like my book to run squarely in the middle of those two ideas, perhaps fusing them together in a way that could show commonalities between the extreme of “I believe in science, not God” and “I believe in God, not science.”

The other key is that I want to write the book in a way that will appeal to spiritual seekers who are not necessarily well-versed in either spiritual studies or science. In other words, I’d like to explain what other spiritual seekers throughout the ages have thought and how, perhaps, there is something underlying their teachings — a common theme of love and banding together instead of hate and separation.

I know that was a lot for one blog entry, but I have lofty goals. 😉 As I figure out more of what I want to write, I’ll put it here. Perhaps eventually I can stitch my book together by expanding on my blog posts!

So, after 13 months with Simpli, Brandon has officially put in his notice. He’s leaving for an opportunity in the security field, which is where he wanted to be. There are no hard feelings on either side… I know and understand his motivations, and he told me “I truly enjoyed working for Simpli. I actually enjoyed coming to work every day!”

His last day is Friday, October 7, and he will be missed. (By the way, if you’re a hosting customer, you’ll get an email about this separately, but I’m blogging it now to chew on the more personal side of it.)

I guess I saw this coming. The Simpli sysadmin job is an entry-to-mid-level position. At some point, the person in that job will grow out of it. I expect a similar thing will happen with both Mooneer and Ben at some point — they’ll both want to move on, and we’ll begin a new cycle of hiring. Brandon is really a lot of the “glue” that holds Simpli together, and I won’t argue that the transition will be difficult. However, the key will be making sure our processes are documented so that when a customer says “I want a …!” that we know exactly how to provide them with that. The other big challenge will be making the transition so that if there’s a customer problem or something that needs to be taken care of Right Away, we know how to do it and don’t irritate the customer with unnecessary downtime or delays in answering tickets. The good news is that we did pull off the transition really well when C left, and honestly, even when Brandon came on last year, it went smoothly. Brandon’s role is much more ingrained now than anyone else’s ever has been, which is the part that scares me, but something tells me I’m going to pull this off through sheer determination if nothing else.

With this transition, also, there will be new and interesting things that develop. It is really fun to bring on a new person and watch that person adjust to work habits at Simpli. Since the sysadmin job is pretty autonomous, and can vary widely on a daily basis, there will inevitably be changes in how things are done. That is the part I’m most looking forward to — watching the new person automate tasks that weren’t automated before, or bringing ideas to the table that weren’t there before. New ideas and fresh blood almost always improves the customer experience, and this new person will definitely bring a refreshing perspective to how Simpli is run.

It’s interesting how running a company ebbs and flows. Some weeks I will do little more than answer emails and phone calls, and some weeks I’m in it, running the company 24×7, getting my hands dirty, and realizing it’s 1AM and I still have a lot of work to do! I feel like the balance just shifted — I had been taking it (relatively) easy for the past few weeks, and now it’s going to be “getting my hands dirty” mode for the next 2 or 3 weeks. This might be good, as I’m getting ready to promote some new dedicated server specials anyway. 😉

I’ll update SlashChick.com when I hire Brandon’s replacement. Wish me luck!

Em Emalb wrote about going back through old /. journals. I actually did this a few weeks ago. The best one I found was the one where I officially started Simpli and was really excited. (Although I count Simpli’s start date in 2001, and I had several hosting customers dating as far back as 12/2000, I didn’t incorporate until September 2002.) I even go on a rant about Scott McNealy in this journal! 😉 Here it is.

Oh, and I got the hot tub installed. I love it! 😀

At 6:20PM tonight, we posted the payment that pushed us past our goal (in fact, pushed us even past my extended goal) for June’s revenue target.

I spent some time adding up all of our expenses, and when I finally hit the AutoSum button in Excel, I was shocked to see a much lower number than I thought! We achieved our largest profitability margin yet for 2005, even with a ton of one-time expenses added in. We still aren’t quite out of the hole, as we have a lot of debt to pay off, but it looks like we should at least be meeting our monthly expenses from now on!

Whew.

Gotta love the end of the month. 🙂 The end of the month is when we do an all-out rush to meet our revenue targets. We’ll definitely make our target for this month, but to be profitable, we need to make a bit over that. To clear all the hurdles before midnight June 30, we’re going to need a lot of customers to pay. I think we’ll make it, but I’m going to have to make a lot of phone calls between now and then. 😉

Since my personal financial situation was bothering me, and since Simpli should free up some cash in the next month or two due to several cost-cutting measures (none of which will adversely affect our customers), I decided to give myself a raise starting 8/1. This will make Simpli less of a burden and more of a fun job. 🙂 Besides, as someone pointed out at the lunch meeting I went to yesterday, all my debt should be encapsulated at Simpli, so in case the company fails, I don’t have a lot of personal debt that I need to pay off as well. That’s a valid point; although I don’t see Simpli failing, I still shouldn’t strap myself into a lot of credit card debt, and the salary raise will help me pay off my personal credit card debt more quickly. With that and a new roommate, I should have ALL my credit card debt, including the stuff at very low interest rates, paid off before the end of the year. Then I can start accumulating money on the upside. That’d be nice. 😉