Career, Reinvented

Back in November 2008 I reluctantly had to leave my pregnant wife and travel to Boston to settle some unfortunate business. It was a matter that had been hanging over my head for nearly nine years from the time I was first summoned by a federal government agency for a ‘chat’ just before Thanksgiving in 1999. The whole story is much too long to even attempt to detail here, but I was called as a government witness in a trial against a former employer. If you’ve ever picked up my extreme disdain for corporate America, then you now understand the source.

While visiting Boston I had a lot of time to kill in between my scheduled time on the witness stand and thought about different people I used to work with there. After I was excused from service by the judge I made a prank call to a former colleague, a call that would unknowingly provide an opportunity to change the course of my career.

During the call we caught up on what has been going on with each others lives in the five or so years since we had last spoken. Together we had started a small technology equipment leasing firm and between my inexperience and the tech bubble bursting, we didn’t get very far. Ultimately, he moved his family back to his hometown and I packed my bags and headed south.

Our home phone rang in early December, which is rare because we don’t give that number out to anyone. Generally it is a telemarketer that gets hung up on before they say much of anything, if they are unfortunate to get me anyways. However, my wife got to the phone first and she told me it was for me and said who it was. At first I didn’t recognize him because of the way she pronounced his last name and was a bit floored that he had sought me out when I realized who it was. While we had a good conversation when I was in Boston, I had no real sense of how we’d keep in contact.

In any event, my friend was calling because he wanted to know if I was interested in writing a business plan and building a financial forecast model. At the time I was preparing for a seasonal tax job and figured with a baby on the way we could use any cash I could get my hands on. Plus, my inner spreadsheet geek was excited to do something with Excel beyond reconciling our bank accounts.

To make a long story less long, I started writing the business plan and very quickly I knew this was something I really wanted to be a part of should it get off the ground. The parties involved were receptive to adding me as a co-founder after I completed the forecast and valuation model and set out to find some capital to really get going. Then, right in the middle of it all, a global economic meltdown decided to rear its ugly head. With investors unwilling to commit, all we could do was stare at our half completed website trying to figure out if there was anything we could salvage.

Ultimately we identified a need for a solution that could be developed around part of the site we had already begun building. Realizing that this solution would be substantially less capital intensive we forged ahead and I am pleased to announce that we are about a week away from receiving the final product from our developers. We have created a web based printer business solution for the direct to garment printer market and are branding it as Tee Design Studio.

If you are familiar with Cafepress or Spreadshirt, then our solution will enable small to mid market direct to garment printers to offer similar functionality to their customers. For instance, if I wanted to create my own line of RMDM apparel for my legion of loyal fans, I could create my own store using Tee Design Studio and the printer that has licensed the solution from us would fulfill the order on my behalf.

It has been a long road to get to this point and I am very excited to get started.  This is the first time I have been involved in the development of a product, as I’ve been in financial services my entire career.  The challenges have been both exhilarating and frustrating, but in the end it will be nice to be able to offer a product with tangible benefits rather than providing what has essentially become a commoditized service.

What this means for me is that I will be making the transition from stay at home to work at home dad as soon as we are through our beta test with the developed product. I realize there is a daunting task ahead of me, but my priorities still lie with my family. I haven’t been excited about anything career related in a long time, still I made a promise that no matter what I will be a husband and a father first.