Finally!!!  Bulkbag #1 is out!

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We’re a FEATURED ARTICLE on the NPR planet money blog!   Awesome.

Welcome to Benjamin-Mann Railroad… All aboard!

That’s one of the greatest parts of the Back 2 Work podcast… it’s not just Productivity porn, it’s about figuring out productivity then going and being productive.

Also… watch out for trains.

(via Wondermark » #295; In which Something Happens)

Great episode of back to work this week.  After much talk of apple products and computer stuff, they get on to the topic of preserving your company’s culture.

Back to work Episode 59: Brains all the way down

As the head of a small but growing company I fight with the issue of keeping the culture of invention, enthusiasm, customer service and quality as we add employees, increase our administrative burden and start dealing with bigger projects and customers.  

For example we are half way through our first large scale costume making project for a big budget feature film - it’s awesome, terrifying and rewarding… but has also resulted in the sudden need to colaborate with another company, outside designers, outside suppliers, and have all staff on deck while simultaneously trying to meet our regular customers’ expectations.  Not easy.

But the rewards will be felt by more than just us.   The business will be more secure with a bit more money in the bank so we should be less prone to going out of business (bonus if you like our stuff!).  Our customers will also get access to all the amazing technological innovations that we’ve been forced to put together to make this project fly.   Finally, we’ll come out the back end of this project with a better system in place to absorb this sort of sudden workload without disrupting our normal work flow - so there will be less chance of orders being delayed down the road.

So the timing of the podcast could not be better, since we’re definitely adding people to our community and culture, and I’ve been given a good framework to think about that from the episode.

It’s an exciting time, and anyone who is at all involved in running a project or business should be listening to the back to work podcast.   It certainly makes for a LOT of learning and thought provoking while I keep my hands busy making the latex stuffs.

Also… it was great that Merlin could not help but put a little cameo by Razzledazzle in at 1:12:45 - I jingled my keys a little (in my head) for him.

Our new stress managment jar for less than perfect customers and would-be-customers.   Every time a customer causes an issue with Archean (who spends about half her day in administraion and the other half building products) the company donates $1 towards our eventual purchase of 10,000 ball pit balls for our spare room. (That’s ~15 ball pit balls per annoying customer)

Most of our customers are AMAZING.  They know what they want, pay for it, and respect our time-lines and our commitment to quality work.  

Unfortunately, some people don’t. Even after a bit of coaching about how our online store works, how we are a small, busy company, and how our time is better spent working on orders instead of quoting for off-webstore orders or crazy rush shipping,  (helpful tip… if you ask for rush shipping we might need to know what you want to purchase, and where you want it sent to) some don’t get it.  

Then they get “fired”.

Yes.  We fire customers sometimes.  If we can’t do business with you without a thousand emails back and forth, waffling, complaints about prices, changing  and re-changing orders and otherwise being a drain on our time… we’ll just refund your money and allow you the opportunity to deal with another company that does not respect their own time, attention and effort.

This may seem harsh, but we do it for our own sanity, profitability, and for the benefit of those customers (99% of them are wonderful) who do take the time to know what they want, and when they do need more from us, they ask thoughtful questions in a timely way.   If we spend less time with the 1% of customers who suck our time away, we can spend a lot more time with the 99% who give us what we need to get to work.

A lot of this mentality was reinforced by the latest Back to Work podcast (Episode 52 - Walk the coastline, bitches) in which Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss the value of your time, and some of the pitfalls of starting your own business or independent thing.  As I’ll always say, this podcast is invaluable for anyone who wants to get better at anything.

We look forward to your orders - don’t be creepy.