Sometimes in business we realize that we are heading in the wrong direction and we either need to (A) jump ship. OR (B) Change the way we’re doing things.

This realization came to David Lano & myself while we were working on our Control Yours business last month. We realized that our current pricing structure was not designed for long term growth or future employee involvement (even though we were providing a hell of a deal to small businesses). Something needed to change.

Changing price is a tricky thing because of what it does to your brand (it can help it by making it look more exclusive, or it can hurt it by making you look like you are a money whore), and because of what it does with your current customers (if something isn’t added to your products/services and your price increases dramatically, it can really hurt your business because of how greedy it makes you look). $$ is a very emotional topic with individuals, and unfortunately for us, individuals run businesses, and businesses are our clients.

David and I took an approach that you may have seen many times over and we believe that it was the best thing for our business. We raised our rates from 75% (on our smallest package) to almost 300% (on our largest package). We have created different subscription packages that people can choose from (4 main packages), as well as offer different services within the different packages (to help differentiate between them). Before we were just including everything to everyone at one really cheap price, on our way to business suicide.

Did we gouge the current customers that were with us from the beginning and hit them with the 300% price increase right away? No, not even close…we “Grandfathered” them into our new pricing structure while keeping their current monthly pricing (and they will pay that same price until they either quit our services or upgrade to a new package). It’s a good deal for them since they were with us since the beginning, and because we didn’t burn them, they can and will remain fans of Control Yours.

If you’d like to take a look at our current site with changes in place, please copy and paste the following link into your browser [ https://www.controlyours.com ], click on the ‘details’ tab and choose ‘price’. If you have any constructive criticism for us (or just bitching & moaning), we are open and willing to receive it!

Thanks again & have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I think that it is so important now days for businesses to listen to their customers. If they don’t, they will eventually die.
If one employee is intentionally blocking the customers voice from making its way to the man or woman in charge (Which happens daily) that can be detrimental to a business!

Let’s (as leaders of a department or a business, owners of a company, or managers of what ever we manage) allow our customers to have a direct connection with us. It’s the only way to truly become a better organization! I truly believe this and that is why I am working with all of the different businesses that I own or am involved with to use “User Voice“.

User Voice gives that direct customer connection to someone that is actually paying attention. It is free and it is easily put in place on your company or personal website. How about you try ACTUALLY listening to your customers and ACT on their recommendations. Majority rules in the business world, and that’s how User Voice works, on the majority votes of your customers ideas or suggestions. Check it out and give your business an advantage, even though it’s scary to talk to the customer.

Have an awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I started this blog with the mindset that I would tell everyone about the good, the bad, & the dirty of business (starting a business specifically). This blog slowly developed to much more than that. It started containing stories about our life and our connections with businesses and people. The tough part about sharing situations from OUR life is what people in our life think of when they read a story that may have to do with them (or at least a situation that involved them). And let’s face it…There is irony in honesty! Most people can’t handle the truth.

If I choose to be completely honest about any situation or real life example, some part of me chooses not to care about how others (the people that are in the stories) are affected or what they’re feeling. If I’m not completely honest with myself or you, why even have a blog in the first place? I’m not the national media that filters what they do or don’t say (sugarcoating or distorting the truth). In fact, I despise national media just for that reason. I am sharing my true situations with you, no matter what the comfort level.

So…for any or all of you out there that would prefer not to read a story that references you or a situation that involves you, it may be best if you stop reading from here on out. This blog is about my wife and I, and how we go through OUR lives, personally and professionally.

For Everyone Else…
…Have an Awesome Day & we’ll talk soon!
~Chais Meyer

I don’t think this image could be more perfect. I feel like sometimes I should be changing and growing personally and professionally at a natural rate (like that of the human body), but it doesn’t always work that way (Sometimes, I have to force myself to grow).

Unlike our physiological makeup, our professions, hobbies, muscles, and sometimes even relationships will not grow to the best they can be without a little extra push from ourselves. I think this is how it should be! If we didn’t have to push ourselves to be the best we can be in all areas of life, everyone would be absolutely amazing at everything. At that point, their would be no competition in life, no reasons to try harder, and life would be equal for the lazy and non lazy alike. I think the ‘Pushing yourself to grow’ mindset works like a filter between the people that want ‘it’ (whatever the word “it” is) but think ‘it’s unattainable (so the don’t try) and the people that will do anything to get their ‘it’.

I feel like this mindset is an invisible field that doesn’t even need to be talked about, we can just tell when someone is either more motivated or less motivated than we are. It says a lot about a person if you know they have succeeded in areas of their life that may not come to them easily. I strive for this mindset everyday (be the best I can, even in extremely difficult situations)! The following example may help explain this idea:

I HATE public speaking…and I am forcing myself to do it, to improve myself, for myself. There are a lot of ‘myself’s in that last sentence, and that’s because no one else is going to make me better, it’s up to me. I have an opportunity right now to contract out with a business that I used to manage the sales team for, Computer Hardware Inc. I am assisting them with their educational sales across the state of Nebraska. The main role that I have for Computer Hardware, is providing group demonstrations (public speaking) about a product called ‘mimio interactive‘ (an interactive whiteboard of sorts for schools and businesses).

Every time I do a demonstration with an organization, school, or business, Computer Hardware gets exclusive rights to sell the mimio products to this customer for life. This is a big deal! It means that the more places I do demonstrations, the more sales Computer Hardware will have forever without doing a lot of additional foot work.

Now this sounds like an awesome deal for Computer Hardware (It is, and I only bill them an hourly rate of $15 an hour), so why am I involved with a company that I am technically ‘working’ for, at an inexpensive hourly rate, doing something that I hate? The main reason is because I HATE public speaking! [The other reasons, they're like family to me and it puts cash in my pocket]
How do people get better at things in life that they aren’t good at…They practice. That is exactly what I’m doing, forcing myself to practice to become a better public speaker.

I don’t have to do this job. There are plenty of people in the state of Nebraska that would like to be hired as a sales rep for Computer Hardware. And I could very easily avoid public speaking for the rest of my life (just making up excuses about “having something to go to” every time it came up).  But, I know that I am going to be someone, someday, that will need to have great communication skills in personal and public settings, and this a chance for me to get a head start on the practice I need.

How long will I do the public speaking demonstrations for Computer Hardware? I’ve asked myself that question many times and I decided that it depends on my public speaking comfort level (if I’m super comfortable, I’ll stop), if the demos stop coming to me (and I’m not getting enough practice, I will need to find another avenue to get the time in), or if I’m ready to find other opportunities that are a bigger challenge for me than public speaking, then I will stop.

To sum it up, I will always push myself to grow and if I sense something stagnate or underdeveloped in my life, I will make the much needed change (no matter how painful it may be). I must be the best I can be, for my businesses, my wife, and myself! I’ll let you know how it’s going in a couple months or so…Until then, push the fears my way (except for the shark attacks, you can keep them…Yikes !

Remember if you do not keep yourself moving, you will become stagnate and rotten.
I Challenge you to have an awesome day & to push yourself to be better in an area that you know you struggle in.
~Chais Meyer

Being that I am just coming out of a rut, I felt like writing a blog post again! So…here it is! My process of getting into a rut and my way of getting out of them (until I find a better way…any ideas would be great).

I have been living my life these past few weeks with a mixture of being overwhelmed, nervous, and uncharacteristically dreadful of the next thing (what ever that might be). I am excited about the next stages of my life (the good ones and the ones that will help spice up of the ordinary items), but I’m not so excited about the monotonous shit.

I believe that I am (or was) in some what of a rut, and this happens to me about every 3-6 months. I get bogged down with my businesses (there are too many, and that might be the problem), family situations, friends that just seem to spin their wheels and never go anywhere, and…did I say businesses? I think my doctor would say I have caught ‘doingwaytomuchandtryingtobeamazingatallofthemosis‘! It is really hard for me to pick just one thing and work with that to its fullest. I want to make every idea I think of be the best it can.

What do I do to fix this problem when it pops up about every 3-6 months? Usually…I do nothing. Literally, I avoid all responsibilities possible in life for about a week (besides the mandatory things my wife says I must do – showering, lifting the lid to the toilet, etc.). It usually gives me a nice taste of bordem, self pitty, self loathing, and a surprisingly renewed energy that I didn’t have before. It somehow also allows me to see what things are really important in my life and what things I can put on the back burner or just get rid of.

This system may not be the most healthy, but until I figure out the root reason all of this happens, I will use my week of nothingness meditation.

As far as right now goes…Well, I’m writing this blog post aren’t I?
Maybe (not maybe, for sure) tomorrow I will get 3 things done on my to-do list.
Until next time, Have an Awesome day and try to avoid the rut.
~Chais Meyer

P.S. I find Hockey amazingly boring and at the same time intriguing and exciting (maybe that’s because of the beer?).

…There is no mail service better than Google’s gmail (I just wanted to say something SHOCKING to get you here, hehe…Keep reading)!

What I want to talk about is an add-on to Gmail and how you can add an email client that will allow you to maximize it as well as other email services. The best way to take advantage of your email on an Apple computer (or mac as they call them now), is with the Apple Mail program (in my opinion)!
This is a weird statement for me to say, I normally run away from the Apple consumer products when it comes to using them with my businesses, but Mail is definitely an exception.

Why use mail and how?
The main reason that I recommend using Mail is because of how easy it is to run several email addresses/accounts at one time. I am currently running 7 email accounts with my one Mail program. All of my email messages come into one (1) Inbox together (or separate Inboxes if I wish). When I reply to a message, it replies back to the sender from the account they sent the message to (I can also choose to reply from any of the other accounts I have in mail).

Okay…can’t I do all of that with Google’s mail services (Gmail for individuals and Google Apps for businesses)? Why yes you can!
Then why use a client at all? Well…Because you can sync with your address book that is built into your computer, save events in your calendar directly from your email (when you get a message that has a place, date and time Mail identifies that as an event automatically), and most importantly send HTML emails (Mail already comes with quite a few free templates), you can even modify these templates for your own business and/or own personal use (Here is a link that shows you how -You need to be a little Geeky or hire a geek to get this done).

Using all of the FREE programs that come with the Apple systems (Mail, iCal, Address Book), you can do the basic things you want with business (at least things that have to do with communication) with ease.  And it will even sync with an iPhone using the Apple Mobile Me service.

I am excited that I finally found a mail solution that actually works how I want to use it. Even on the go with my phone. Now all I’m looking for is a great to-do list program that works on my iPhone and with my apple contact list and calendar. If I find something that works, I’ll let you know!

Here is another link that shows you more you can do with Mail.
If you have a windows computer…Sorry, I can’t help you, I don’t own a windows machine! You’ll have to let me know what works for you.

If you have any questions or would like additional info about anything in this post, let me know and I am glad to help.
Until then, Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

We finally sold our home…well, sort of. (This picture is of our ‘home purchasers’ and myself, my wife couldn’t attend the key hand off).

About 3 Months ago, we wrote a post about our home and how we couldn’t afford to own it anymore. We had the choice of finding some way to sell it or have our mortgage company foreclose on us. My wife and I didn’t want to go down without a fight, so we took the drastic measure of moving in with my ‘rents (that’s the cool term for parents), staying in their basement and out of our home that we loved so much.

We had to call our mortgagor and tell them that we were unable to make our mortgage payments and we needed some help. The gave us a 3 month break from payments so we had some time to try to solve our problem (come up with our unpaid mortgage amount or sell our home…or else). During that time, Shawna and I have been racking our brains to try and figure out a solution that would not only get us out of this mess, but hopefully put some money into our pocket as well (we did put tons of hours into our home, fixing it up from when we originally purchased it 3.5 years ago).

What we did (with the help of God) was have a lawyer draw up a ‘Lease to Own Contract’ (that we are giving to you for free at the bottom of the page) and found a married couple that was interested in having their monthly rent payments go towards the purchase of a home. Along the way I believe we found a short term market niche for real estate investments.

The Details (let’s call the person paying us the TENANT):

• the TENANT will pay a monthly payment to us, (which will include $ that will go towards the principal for them to purchase the house from us, the interest for us taking the risk and acting as their bank, homeowners insurance in case the house catches on fire and the property tax)
• When we receive that monthly payment, we will then pay the bank that we have our mortgage through, which will cover our principal, interest, homeowners insurance and property tax
• The official home ownership (the paperwork that says Shawna and I own the home) won’t change until the TENANT decides to pay us outright for the home or goes through the 20 years of payments as we’ve set up.
• Why would the TENANT want to do something like this? Well, first off there is no need for them to get a mortgage from a bank (which is nice if you currently don’t fit the criteria to get a mortgage). They don’t have to do anything different from paying rent like they normally would (it’s easy). It is their home unless they decide to move or not make their monthly payments (all the money that they’ve payed every month does not go back to them if they decide to terminate our contract).
• Why is this good for us? We make positive cash flow every month $60 a month extra we can apply towards our home principal. We can pay our bills. If the TENANT carries the payments to the full 20 years without paying the home off in advance, we will make $40,000 extra in interest (that’s a nice little investment). We don’t have to do any of the landlord responsibilities because it is their home and they are responsible for everything that breaks down, etc.
• We also had them pay a $3,000 (non refundable) down payment to start this process. This payment goes directly towards the principal of their home and we get enough up front money to pay off our past mortgage payments (the bank won’t foreclose)!

How is this a market niche? When our nation is going through home sale hardships (because it’s hard to get a mortgage), why not purchase 10-20 forclosed homes and duplicate this process? be a landlord without the responsibilities of fixing up and maintaining the property. And if you really wanted to protect yourself, you could create something about a pre-payment penalty in the contract. It could say, if the TENANT pays off the total home value before 50% of the contract term has been complete, there is a penalty of “BLANK” %. Something like that.

We just wanted to let you in on how we got ourselves out of a sticky situation. If you would like to download this contract in an editable (Microsoft Word) format, Please Click Here. Also, if you would like to use an Amortization Chart (like what we used to help create this contract) Please Click Here.

Please note, this document was designed and created specifically for our situation, so not everything will apply to you. We still recommend having a property lawyer look at this contract after you have edited it. It will still be considerably less expensive having them proof it than creating a new contract.

If you can benefit from our experiences, please take advantage of them.
We are thanking God and Enjoying the day! Have an Awesome day yourself.
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

PS. If you don’t have Microsoft Office which is needed to edit these document types, go to Open Office’s website and download their Open Source program for your computer. It’s free and does the same things Microsoft does.

[First off, can you believe this is an actual sign? Awesome!]

I’m sitting here with my business partner David Lano, and before I even know it I am caught in the spiraling, spinning, razor sharp Efficiency Death Wheel! (no business people were harmed in the making of this blog post)

The Efficiency Death Wheel is an interesting topic, but…What is it? (answering a question with a question) Have you ever been trying to organize your life with the latest organizational computer program, or moving computer files into sub-folders that are in sub-folders because it’s “easier to find that way”? Well, that is what we confused types call ‘efficiency’.

Ironically, we spend more time organizing our lives than we do actually completing the real things we need to do. Okay, maybe that statement isn’t entirely accurate (person per person is different I’m sure). For me, I easily spend 20% of my ‘work time’ on trying to make myself more efficient.
STOP IT CHAIS!
Just do it all ready!
Use the tools that are already available to you!

“Well, if I don’t organize my folders to the extreme, how will I ever find anything?” I ask myself. Some of the truly efficient tools that I don’t utilize already exist in the computer I have without adding new programs or becoming super anal. Spotlight is a search tool for the apple computer systems (the icon looks like a magnifying glass in the top right corner of the screen) and it’s an amazing search tool! Think of it like a Google search engine for your computer, except more efficient (no offense Google, Spotlight finds only my stuff and no one else’s).

Why is a tool like Spotlight going to make me more efficient? Because Spotlight records every letter & word in every file in my computer system. If I typed a 10,000 character paper and I had one word in the paper, like “horse”, Spotlight would pull up that paper if I searched for the term “horse” (even if the paper wasn’t titled horse).  I could have ALL of my computer documents in one giant folder (screw sub-folders in sub-folders) and as long as I’m searching for the right word(s), I would be able to find the document I want in less than 5 seconds! This is true efficiency!

Again, I’m not saying that it is always this simple in ever case, but look at your situations for a little bit before you start to go into an extreme organization mode. Maybe there is way that already exists that is better than the “NEW” options. If I spend all my time learning the new iPhone productivity applications (which I spend a lot of time on) and not just going with ONE that looks good to master, I may be wasting time and energy.

If you notice the ‘Efficiency Death Wheel’ start to spin, back away and go another route. Sometimes, business and organizing business, doesn’t need to be as difficult as we make it.

Have an awesome, SAFE, & super productive day!
~Chais Meyer

Okay, this is going to be a little bit of a rant along with some praise (just a little fore warning).

I installed Quickbooks 2009 for windows on my mac today (that right there is ironic). The install went great and the video demonstrations were pretty cool. They taught me how to do all the basic crap, customize Quickbooks for myself, blah, blah, blah… The part that I had a really hard time with (meaning I was super annoyed) was registering my product.

I know, I know…registering my product? I’m really growing up in the world aren’t I…no more pirated software. I now have software that I can actually register (without any sort of crack). “Since I have this legal software, the registration process will be a breeze” I thought.

As it turns out, the registration process was harder than setting up my entire company file in Quickbooks and 5 times more time consuming. Here were the steps:

1. You must register to use quickbooks past 30 days, otherwise it won’t function anymore
2. To register you have to call into quickbooks, no more online simple registration (it requires an authorization code or something).
3. I make a call into quckbooks to their “Product Registration line” (a special number for ONLY product registrations…if that’s true why did I wait 20 minutes on hold?)
4. Wait 20 minutes on hold while listening to pleasant Intuit advertisements
5. Finally get through to their AMAZING India Phone support and the man greets me, “Our Ju Habbing A Goojd jDay!?!
6. He and the conversation are very pleasant (despite me having to ask him about 15 times, “can you repeat that please?”).
7. Until…He tries to sell me some additional support options…
8. …He continues to try to sell me additional support options…
9. …He keeps trying to sell me additional support options (I am not even screwing with you).
10. Literally, 5 minutes later (Chais, calm down and take a breath…the phone call is over), he gives me my Authorization #.
11. YAY!!! I Cheer because I can finally hang up!

Wow, I just spent 30 minutes on a phone call trying to register my $199.95 retail legal product (no wonder people steal software, it’s cheaper and they don’t mess with phone crap. By the way, I don’t agree with software piracy!). What has happened to customer service? Oh, I forgot…Customer service is always a phone call away with Intuit, for $69.95 a phone call (or just $39.95 a month)!

Now that I’m registered, I am going to use quickbooks for my sole proprietership business as well as my other businesses. Well it is a pain in the ass the figure out the sole proprieter part of things if you use only one checking account for your business and your personal bills and expenses. I did a little research and found 2 good links that helped me out, hopefully it will do the same for you. Here it is! (the 8th one down)! And here is a link to explain how to set up an owners draw.

I love the product, not the customer service. I love having my finances being organized in such a friendly way, I hate that I rely so much on my computer system. I will do my best with what I have and share what I learn along the way!

Have an awesome day and a great night, and don’t let the Intuit bugs bite. (wow, that was an awesome ryme!)
~ Chais Meyer

This mistake is unfortunately a big one. I’ve learned my lesson and I am moving on to bigger and better things because of it (as long as they don’t sue us). This is the last type of thing I thought I would blog about. Stealing (or Plagiarism) is a big no no in business. Even if someone doesn’t do it with a malicious attitude or mindset, it is still very dangerous.

For the company that my business partner and I created (Control Yours ), we kind of copied a look and feel to someone elses website. It was another businesses website. The worst thing was that we didn’t ask there permission for us to use the look and feel. [We weren't trying to represent ourselves as them, we weren't trying to steal their product line, we just loved the way their website felt and we wanted that feeling for our own site.]

We’d heard of this little computer program called Blue Crab that allows us to copy parts or all of someone’s website to use for your own uses. This idea works really well in an open source world, but not the copyright, copy protected day of today (we won’t do this again).

We copied their site and used part of it, loved the rest and ended up modifying a lot of it for our own use (big mistake).

Panic.com/coda
ControlYours.com

I received an email (10 to be exact) from this company and people of this company (or friends or something). They were all a little perturbed that our site looked very similar to theirs. I now have a choice to make, lie to them about some crazy shit answer or tell them the butt honest truth. I tell them the truth, here is how my email went:

Hello,

Well, where do we start? Yes, we did copy the coda.com website. We didn’t do it as a malicious attack, or an intent to steal panic.com’s business or program sales, just the opposite in fact. We’ve actually purchased multiple products from Panic (Coda and CandyBar). Not that it makes it any less plagiaristic because we are fans of your products. (No, we don’t deserve a pat on the back!)

We are extremely sorry for “ripping off” your beautiful work! Sincerely! At first it started with us falling in love with your JavaScript ‘flow design’ on the main content area. After searching the web for hours to find where and how to accomplish this on a site of our own, we decided to ‘Blue Crab’ the code from your site. “What’s the harm in ‘burrowing’ some code?”, we thought. One thing led to another and we ended up falling more in love with your design, and using more than planned (basically the entire design, minus the content).

We are not proud of not asking for permission. We are not proud of having you find out this way without us coming to you first. We would like to see if there can be some sort of arangement we can make to keep this design or something similar.

Our services we sell, don’t use custom designed website (it is not what we do…obviously!). We are strictly in the market of helping small businesses have low cost CMS websites they can manage themselves. We have a total of two partners in our business with 15 current business clients (not that being a small business makes it any better to be dishonest). Again, we really apologize for using your design to our advantage without your up front permission.

Please let us know what you would like us to do and we will work with you to get that accomplished.
Thank you very much for letting us answer your email questions honestly,

The Control Yours Team.
(p) (866) 574-8820
(e) contact@controlyours.com

Half of me expects a full out retaliation on their behalf and the other half of me expects them to say, we’ll let it slide ‘this time’! What ever the outcome, we have done something that you can learn from. This is the only reason I would blog about this, I almost hid it under the carpet!

Learn from my lesson and grow your business the 100% honest way, with full out integrety and respect.
Bad Chais! Bad!

Have an Awesome Day
~Chais Meyer

Update:
First email response I received back-

Hi-

I do not work for panic. I am a fan of their software and of the people who make. I noticed that one of the founders linked to your page, pinging it as a rip off. I am including the two most vocal Panic-ers (Steven F. and Cabel) on this email so you can clear things with them. Have a good christmas, regardless – at least you have immaculate taste on who to copy!

-Justin

Second email responce I received back:

Howdy,

Thanks much for writing, I appreciate your honesty.

The answer is probably not one you want to hear but you probably already have realized: there’s real no logical way to keep your site, or even anything similar, without it remaining, to be blunt, a rip-off.

There are a million original websites out there waiting to be designed, and a million people on the web ready to help you. It’ll be way more fulfilling for you, personally and professionally, to contribute something new to the web, rather than retread something that already exists. I have confidence you can create a site as good as, or better than, the one we already made.

Best,
Cabel
Panic

Third email response I received back:

Hi Control Yours Team,

Sixty days sounds fine to me. Thanks.

Best,
Cabel