Chapter 5: Defining My Business

Wednesday, September 27, 2028...

God, the morning was really dragging. It was only nine, and I wasn’t due at Steve’s for lunch until twelve. Three hours and nothing to do will be boring. I decided to head to the CVS Pharmacy, so I could buy a spiral notebook and a pen. It didn’t take long to make my purchases.

My next stop would be the Pacific Beach Library, which opened at nine-thirty on Fridays. The library would be a good place for me to start planning what I will do in the next few months, and I would transfer whatever I wrote to my laptop tomorrow. Damn, I wish I had thought to take it and some fresh clothes with me when I left for dinner last night. Of course at that time, I planned to return home when I left The Cook’s Place.

I made it to the library a little before nine-thirty, so I waited in my rental car and mentally recapped everything that I had done and experienced since I found out I owned the winning lottery ticket. Believe me there was a lot that happened, but it didn’t take me very long to mentally itemize things. What took me a bit more time was making a list of those activities in my new notebook. I don’t recall why I made a list, but at the time it seemed important.

Throughout my life I had put up with a lot of attitude; or whatever you want to call it when people treat you as less than acceptable. I was tired of that attitude before I won the Lottery. Now the media was trying to use me, to entertain its readers and boost its ratings. The media was treating me like I was just something they could use for their convenience with no concern for my feelings. I no longer had to worry about a job and earning a living. Other peoples’ opinions of me were no longer important; perhaps less important to me than before, would be more accurate. I was through with everything that had happened in the past and with what the media was going to do.

It was time for this worm to turn!

I was tired of sitting in my car, so I walked toward the library’s front door and waited with the rest of the people who were standing around waiting for the doors to open. I noticed a small group of young mothers with their kids, a group of what appeared to be very elderly retired couples, and the rest of us; which was a mix of about twenty men and women, ranging from thirty to sixty years of age.

The situation seemed very odd to me. The clique of young women was talking about the problems they had with their kids. The clique of retired couples was loudly chatting about their health problems and surgeries; something I really didn’t care to listen to. The rest of us just stood around and looked at each other. We were strangers and not part of a clique. No one wanted to breach that wall, which we use to isolate ourselves from strangers; me included. I guess I will have to start breaking down my wall in order to be successful in my new business, but not today. Finally, the doors opened.

Once inside, I headed for a remote table and sat down. Placing my notebook and pen on the table in front of me, I flipped the notebook’s cover open, and then just looked at the list of things that happened to me during the past two weeks. Turning to a blank page, I sat wondering what I should write down. My mind was a blank.

I have an appointment with Bill on Wednesday of next week and I would need to discuss creating a company with him. I figured now was a good time to write down everything I thought he might need to know about the company I wanted to create. My problem was I didn’t know how I wanted to structure the company. After a long drawn out sigh, I picked up the pen, and wrote The CA Rattler across the top of the blank page.

Next, I wrote the heading Purpose below my business’s name. When I went to write out the reason for my creating an on-line newspaper, I drew another blank. I wanted revenge, but that seems a poor reason to start a business. I also felt that I wanted to do this for some additional reasons, but the reasons and words just wouldn’t come. I left the rest of the page blank. Once I figured out why I wanted to do this, I would add something to fill the almost blank page.

On the next page, I wrote the heading Mission Statement. What I had said to Steve and Karen last night seemed right. So beneath the heading, I wrote:

Yeah, it was a good bit more than what I said to Steve and Karen, and it was a very rough draft of what I wanted to say. I would need to condense and polish it before putting it in my paper.

Sitting there looking at what I wrote, I thought, Yes, I do want to hit back! This is my justification for doing it in a way that will be effective and beneficial to the Public. Maybe this should be my defined purpose for creating the Rattler, but I would definitely have to rephrase my thoughts before I put such a statement on paper.

Turning the page to reveal a fresh page, I wrote the heading Company Structure. Below that I wrote Owner followed by my name and a question mark. If others had stock in the company, was I actually the owner? I would have to ask Bill about ownership issues before setting up the business.

Then beneath that, I listed the titles of all the positions and main departments that I could think of that might apply to an on-line newspaper. I would have to check with Steve this afternoon to see what I missed. Beside each of those titles, I wrote the name of the person who would fill that slot. I had three names and a lot of TBDs. Steve would have to add names to the To-Be-Determined positions. I still had a good bit of space, but flipped to a fresh page in case Steve had more departments than I expected.

On the next page, I wrote the heading Targets. Under that heading, I listed every media outlet that I could think of that targeted the personal life of people who wanted to keep their personal lives private. I don’t read the tabloids and rarely read a newspaper; so it was a short list. The list did contain a number of well-known tabloids, but none of the main media outlets. It was a short list until I thought of using the library’s reference section. I would have to talk with Steve about my expanded list of media outlets.

On the next fresh page, I wrote the heading Celebrities. I listed every celebrity that I could think of who had a problem with a media outlet or the paparazzi. The library’s resources helped me come up with a large list. Did I want to include the paparazzi as targets on the Target page? If so, how would I go about targeting them? Another topic to discuss with Steve. I added Paparazzi with a question mark on the Target page as a reminder.

After turning the notebook over and opening the rear cover, I wrote the heading Topics to Discuss with Steve. Then I reviewed what I had written earlier and listed all the topics I wanted to discuss with Steve. After just sitting there thinking of things in general, I added several additional topics we needed to discuss. I also made a list of topics to discuss with Bill Nobel.

Going back to the front of the notebook, I turned to another fresh page and wrote the heading Support Groups. That seemed fairly simple. I listed Legal, Administrative, Accounting, Payroll, IT, Maintenance, and that was when I hit a wall. I couldn’t think of any other support functions that my on-line newspaper would need. We would be so small that the Accounting and Payroll functions could be merged. I had listed IT and Maintenance support, but I doubted I would really need full-time direct employees for those functions; I could contract those needs to subcontractors. Now that I think of it, I could also contract the Accounting and Payroll functions to an outside contractor. All of this led me to think about office space. I had absolutely no idea of how to estimate the necessary square footage that would be needed. Another topic to discuss with Steve. Bill might be a good resource, also. Would location be important, and if so, why? What about parking space for my employees and visitors? There was so much bouncing around in my head that it was difficult to concentrate on any one item.

Office Equipment was the heading I wrote on the next blank page. I started listing what the office and each employee would need. I started with the employees’ needs using the assumption it would be easy to do since they would need a common core of equipment. Granted specific functions would need specialty equipment. A computer, phone, desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet were the extent of my common list and I didn’t have any idea of what specialty equipment might be needed.

I knew the listing of office equipment would be far more extensive. So I made a general reference to what would be needed. Some of the things I listed were furniture and other equipment for a conference room, dividers for segmenting the open space into individual offices, filing cabinets for records, a telephone system, an internal computer network for employees, a separate server network for our web pages, a high-capacity, color laser printer, and a copier, which could be black and white.

The printer made me recall that in a few cases at my job, a multifunction desktop color printer was useful for a few of the people I worked with. That would be especially true for my future employees who had frequent, but small print and copy jobs. The time saved in them not having to run to and from the office printer and copier would more than pay for their desktop printer. If they had large print or copy jobs or needed a higher quality output, they could use the office’s printer or copier. I added desktop printer to the specialty equipment section of my employee equipment list.

Without thinking about why, I divided my computer network into two sections. One section would support the on-line newspaper and the second would support development of the articles to be printed in the paper. Network security would be important, so did I want to totally isolate the two networks from each other? Did I want my employees working on stories using the same computer they use for accessing the Internet? Should I set up a private network for story development that is totally isolated from the Internet network my people used to contact the outside world for research? My employees could use some type of portable hard drive to move information between networks. That would a small inconvenience for them, but it would give us a very high degree of security. Another question for me to ask Steve.

I started to expand my list of office equipment, but I had set my watch to notify me of when I had to leave for Steve’s place and my watch started beeping at me. Grabbing my notebook and pen, I headed for my car. When I got to the parking lot, I couldn’t see my car in the lot. Someone had stolen my car. Then I remembered, I had a rental car and where I had parked it. A bit embarrassing, but my mind was on other things. At least I remembered before I called the police!

When I got to Steve and Karen’s home, I was impressed. It was a very nice ranch-style house. From the front, I estimated it at close to three thousand square feet on what appeared to be a very large lot. The front yard was landscaped; no grass, but there was a lot of shrubbery and color spots scattered around ornamental rocks. They even had a birdbath nicely worked into the landscaping.

Their neighbors’ places were about the same size and also very nice. But, like most of us in San Diego who still had grass, the neighbors’ grass was suffering from the drought and the City’s water rationing policy. The policy exempted drip irrigation, so Steve and Karen’s landscape was in good condition. That made their home stand out compared to the rest of the homes on the street.

Steve answered the door and immediately guided me to the dining room table. Lunch was ready and all three of us were hungry. Karen must have been busy this morning for in addition to rolls, assorted cold cuts, sliced cheddar and jack cheese, and condiments, there was a large tureen of what looked and smelled like homemade chicken and Vegetable soup. As Karen joined us at the table, she said, “Let’s dig-in while the soup’s hot.”

Looking over the rim of the tureen, I said, “That looks like homemade chicken and vegetable soup to me, Karen. The aroma reminds me of what my wife Ruth used to make; she was killed in a car accident about eighteen months ago. I’m not that much of a cook, and I just can’t seem to fix the dishes she used to make; even when I follow her recipes, it just doesn’t taste the same.”

Karen said, “I’m sorry to hear of your loss, Carl. You must have really loved her a lot. I can still hear the love in your voice.”

I felt the tears start to well up in my eyes, so I quickly changed the subject.

“I was admiring your landscaping out front, Steve. Did you and Karen do it yourself or get a gardener to do it for you?”

“I was the laborer, Carl. Karen told me what to do, and then made sure I did it the way she wanted it done. Her planting layout looks really nice, now that the plants are established.”

“Well, congratulations to the both of you. It really looks nice.

“Would you just hand me one of those Kaiser rolls, Steve; no need to pass the bread basket ... thanks.”

Karen had ladled soup into bowls and passed them to Steve and me while we talked. By the time she filled her bowl, Steve and I had finished building our sandwiches.

Switching topics, I said, “I’ve been thinking about whether I should proceed with the idea of an on-line newspaper and I decided to go ahead with the project. I will give it at least a year from the time we post our first issue to see how things work out. Then, I will decide whether to continue the paper or close it. Right now, I can see no reason for shutting it down; but that is always a possibility. I just wanted to let you know, so you can make or revise any personal plans you may have for the coming year or two. Are the two of you interested in working for me?”

Steve and Karen looked at each other and smiled. Turning to me, Steve said, “Okay, boss, what do you want us to do first?”

After a brief chuckle, I said, “I have been so focused on whether I should proceed or just drop the idea that I haven’t given the first step much consideration. Before we go much further, I want to make one thing clear. I don’t know what I’m going to do in setting up the paper or running it, or how I want to do it. I have a lot of ideas; I think some are good and others not so good. So for the next few days, I want to explore the possibilities. With that in mind, let’s consider everything we discuss to be possibilities that may not be used, and if they are used, they may be highly modified.

“I decided to call the paper The CA Rattler, so the first thing I need to do, Steve, is get the Rattler incorporated and find some lawyers to represent us for when someone sues us. For you and Karen, the first thing is to line up some reporters, editors, and research people, but be sure they know it will be at least two months before we can put them on the payroll. If you really need someone right away, we can talk about it. Remember, right now my funds are limited. I won’t get the prize money for another six to eight weeks. Once that happens, it will be full speed ahead.

“I don’t know anything about setting up a website. I rather suspect, we will need a full-time web designer, and since this will probably be a big task, we may need to hire a small company that specializes in setting up and maintaining websites. Do either of you know someone who specializes in website design?”

Karen was shaking her head No, when Steve said, “I don’t, but one of the guys I’m thinking about having join us has a sister who works for a website design company. I can talk with him this week and see who his sister works for and then we can check them out.”

“Sounds good to me, Steve. I have a new taxman who uses his corporate law degree to do some business consulting. I am going to ask for his input also, so I can give him the name of whoever your friend’s sister recommends. He would probably be in a better position than us to learn about their business history.

“Karen, I don’t know that much about how the articles get merged into a webpage, but I suspect you will be involved with that process. You need to be with Steve and me when we interview someone for creating and maintaining the website.”

Karen had a puzzled look on her face when she asked, “Carl, are you going to set up a marketing group and sell ad space?”

“I don’t know, Karen. Part of me says ‘Yes’, but there is also a side of me that says ‘No’. When I go out to a website, the site comes up fine. But from what I see, they freeze the page while they upload all of the ads and display them to me. I just sit there frustrated because I want to page down to see what I want to read. I didn’t go to the page to read the ads, and I find that really frustrating. There may be technical reasons for what they do, but I’m not aware of why I can’t navigate the page while the ads load. I don’t want to force our reader to have to wait for the Rattler to upload advertisements and then display them before they can navigate the page. I’m willing to pay the extra cost of a good web server and network setup that will support numerous readers simultaneously without slowing down. Of course there are practical limits to that, so I will have to wait until we can find someone who knows enough to cost out a quality setup. Now since I’m willing to do that, I don’t want ads to be a roadblock to our readers.

“Did you have a specific reason for the question, Karen?”

“Yes, I was thinking of how to merge the advertisements and articles we publish. In most big newspapers, the advertisements usually appear in a separate section. On the websites I’ve visited, they are scattered all around the part of the page I really want to see. I was thinking about whether there was a better way to do that in an on-line newspaper, and how a Marketing Department might sell advertising space.

“We could intersperse teasers for our articles and a few ads on the Home page. You could set ad space prices high for the newspaper’s Home page. Clicking a teaser article’s link on the Home page would take the reader to a page that displays the full text of the article. The article’s page could have its advertisements, and the Marketing people could sell that ad space at a lower price.”

“Umm, this soup is really good, Karen.”

“Thanks, Carl. My mom gave me the recipe.”

With a smile, I said, “Oh, that’s what Ruth used to tell me. Did the two of you happen to have the same mother?”

My little joke drew a chuckle from Steve and a small smile from Karen. I wasn’t expecting much of a reaction for it really wasn’t that good of a joke; but, it was really good soup. For the moment, we settled in to eat, mostly. There was a bit of small talk about what we might want to print in addition to exposés on the media’s people. It wasn’t until we were settled in the living room with coffee that we returned to a serious discussion of what we were going to do over the next month or two. The conversation was mostly between Steve and me, so Karen took notes; I thanked her profusely for that.

“Steve, I’ve never been in the driver’s seat of a business. I talked with many people about how a business should be set up and run. Most of the people I spoke with had never been in the driver’s seat either. They were just telling me what they thought, based on having worked for employers they believed did a poor job of setting up and running a company. I found it interesting that almost no one told me how the good businesses they worked for were set up and run.”

Steve said, “That is probably because they were happy at those jobs, Carl, and never stopped to think about why they were happy there. Almost everyone I know who grouses about a job has figured out what they don’t like about the company and there was very little good mentioned. If they liked the company, they didn’t grouse about it being a bad company to work for.”

Karen added, “I’ve noticed that most people only comment on the negative and rarely on the positive of whatever they are talking about.”

“Yes, that’s true, Karen, I’ve noticed that also. Steve, there is one thing that the people I listened to who seemed to know how to run a business said about those poorly run businesses, and that was the companies had very poor business plans. I’ve thought about that over the years. It seems to me that a business plan defines the company’s goals and it also defines how the owner plans to reach those goals.

“Karen, would you create a ToDo list and add Prepare Business Plan to the list. Assign that task a priority of ‘H’ for high priority. For now, I think we should limit our priority assignments to high, medium, and low. Once we have a better understanding of what we need to do, we can reevaluate each priority group and differentiate between the item’s criticality by adding a suffix to the H, M, and L. I’m thinking the suffix should be a number between, one and five that in general signifies the order of performance. A ‘one’ would signify this item needs to be done immediately, rather than the first thing to do, and a ‘five’ would mean, once the more important items are being addressed, do this item. We could end up with multiple H1 priorities.”

Karen interrupted, “Okay, Carl. From the sound of this discussion, I am going to be taking a lot of notes and adding a lot of action items to your ToDo list. You two go ahead and talk, while I get Steve’s laptop. That way, I’ll just type them out and won’t have to transcribe written notes and action items.”

While Karen was getting ready to do some serious note taking, Steve and I refilled our coffee mugs. Steve also hunted up some homemade cookies for the three of us to munch on. Those were good cookies; of course oatmeal Raisin is a favorite of mine.

By the time we returned to the living room, Karen was back and in the process of adding the notes she had jotted down on paper to a file on her computer. I later learned that she and Steve used LibreOffice and that program was very similar to MS Office. I didn’t like what I saw on the horizon with Microsoft, so I decided that if their program was any good, I’d eventually switch to LibreOffice. If it was really good, I would make it the Rattler’s text processing standard for all of our reporters and editors.

A short while later, Karen said, “Okay, guys. I’m caught up and I’m ready for more discussion.”

“Alright, Karen, I previously mentioned hiring a law firm, accounting firm, and a firm to design our web pages, so add them to our ToDo list with an H priority.”

Steve said, “In case I forget it, Karen, add find reporters, web designers, and an office location to our list. They probably all need an H priority, also.

“Carl, it is beginning to sound as if we need to do everything right now.”

“Yeah, I have that feeling also, Steve. Right now, I think we are coming up with the really critical items that need an H priority. Once we finish identifying those items, the less critical things will start surfacing. Things like standardizing software programs, writing office policies, and all the other mundane things that need to be done to have an efficiently run business.”

“True. I was involved in a lot of that type of thing, Carl, while working for my last employer. In fact, I doubt any business can survive without all their rules and policies. I dread the thought of the Rattler getting that big, and us being buried in all that bureaucratic bullshit. I’d want to quit and go start with another newspaper if things ever got that bad for me again.”

“I don’t think you will have to worry about that happening, Steve. I was thinking about several possible futures for the Rattler, and in none of those possibilities did I see the Rattler as a big media outlet.”

Karen asked, “Why is that, Carl?”

“Well ... my main reason is I’m thinking about the Rattler being only one of several newspapers striking out at the existing media outlets. I’m contemplating the effect that several small newspapers, operating as a group of apparently independently owned papers, would have on the big boys. However, for now, I’m going to focus on getting the Rattler off the ground and into operation.

“One aspect of that reason, Karen, is the image of a small independent taking on the media big boys. Most of us want the little guy to win, regardless of whether he is right or wrong. Now think of one small guy starting something with a media big boy and other independent small guys joining him. That will create an apparent consensus of opinion that will add to the image of the big guy being wrong. One other thing to consider is if our target is a small fry, we don’t want the perception we are a big guy picking on him. Two newspapers of equal size duking it out is okay. So, we will keep the papers small.

“Steve, if a Rattler’s writer writes articles for inclusion in one of our other papers, make sure they use a different penname and photo, and vice versa. We want people to think the articles in each paper were written by the employees of that paper. I want to avoid the perception of us being essentially one paper.”

Karen said. “You mentioned that the big boys would probably take legal action against the Rattler. How will that affect your vision of where you will take the Rattler?”

“It will have a major impact, Karen. However, the quality of legal assistance we obtain will determine if they can shut us down. I don’t think they can do that through a court if we have a good lawyer, but they may be able to temporarily silence us.

“I think we need to decide what constitutes a win in the battles we will have with our targets. I sort of feel like any damage we do to them will be a win, however there will be big and small wins. The ideal win is to put them out of business, but I am willing to settle for less if we can’t achieve that goal.

“Currently, the media has built a shield to protect themselves from lawsuits and public opinion. That shield is basically supported by the Constitution and our legal system. We will use their shield for the Rattler. They will quickly realize that they will have to destroy their shield in order to shut us down. If they shut us down by doing that, they will also be damaging their use of that shield to protect themselves in the future. Either way, we win; even if the court battle does shut us down.

“One way of looking at our goal is that we want to make the media outlets responsible for their actions and what they choose to print. Without that shield, they will be held accountable for all of their actions, to include their invasion of peoples’ private lives. That shield also allows them to hide behind their confidential informants. If the shield is damaged, they will be more accountable for what they put out to the public. That means they will have to produce proof of what they print, if they are sued. The only way to do that in a trial is to put their confidential informants on the stand. That situation means we win, even if we are shutdown; at least, shutdown in regard to that one newspaper. That is why I am toying with the idea of us being independently owned newspapers. That way, we will still have the other on-line papers and we can start a new newspaper, if we need to do so.”

“Does that mean if they are successful in shutting down the Rattler that Karen and I are out of jobs?”

“No! That is not what it means. If the court totally shuts down the Rattler, we will start over and set up another on-line newspaper. Our editorial policy will be the same and we will keep the same staff. The only thing of any significant difference will be the paper’s name.