EntreLeadership is focused on small business entrepreneurs who are seeking to grow and lead with intentional leadership. Dave brings 20 years of practical business wisdom from the trenches, having built his business from a card table in his living room to a national brand. He’s a personal money-management expert, national radio personality, speaker, author and overall an amazing man. His mission to help people is intoxicating.

We all ended the week thinking the same thing – this is going to change our business forever.

Every day we soaked in about 6 hours of teachings focused on topics like goal setting, communication, personality styles, team unity, delegation, sales & marketing. We then had the remaining afternoon at the Swan & Dolphin resort to regurgitate what we had just learned. All three team members (myself, Ethan & Joel) also had the occasional one-on-one interaction with not only the leadership team, but Dave himself.

Here’s a peak into what we experienced at EntreLeadership here in Orlando:

Ethan, myself and the new guy Joel represented Caxiam Group

200 small business owners from various industries at EntreLeadership

Our first lesson on dreams, visions & goal setting

Graduation gifts from Dave’s team

Closing dinner at Epcot, Dave pulled out the “Never Give In” speech from Churchill

Sunset over the Swan & Dolphin resort – what a beautiful week here in Orlando

View more pictures over at our Flickr stream!

By nature of being a small business, we tend to think in ROI early & often. Working “on the business” for over a week and the small things we’re already implementing within our talented team (company mission statement & personality tests) has created momentum & energy. That alone can be considered a profitable decision and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.

Thank you Dave Ramsey and team for inspiring, motivating & sharing your unmatched wisdom!

Established in 1960, Brevard Community College has 4 campuses spread across the heart of Florida’s space coast and is home to nearly 28,000 students. The last full revamp the institution had was over 12 years ago! Yes, that’s ONE-TWO, 12.

With over 30,000 pages and 100+ contributors to its content, BCC was in dire need of not only re-building their website, but rethinking their online marketing approach and restructuring their technology for maintaining & growing this new website.

We’re ecstatic to be working with an organization with great vision & a tireless pursuit of quality. Our team has enjoyed their professionalism and dedication to launching a brand new website. They’ve also been a blast to collaborate with thus far! That’s been a big plus for our strategy & planning team as they’ve invested over 50 hours with BCC in the same conference room since January.

In a nutshell, Caxiam Group has been tasked with helping their Marketing & Media Relations department with the following:

1. Develop a survey for existing students, faculty/staff for current website evaluation
2. Analyze traffic metrics to determine user patterns
3. Competitive analysis on other college & university websites
4. Recommend an enterprise level Content Management System (Hannon Hill & OmniUpdate are the current front-runners)
5. Rebuild architecture of existing website (30,000 pages mind you) into a structure understood by students/faculty/parents/alumni for browsing & searching content
6. Redesign the site adhering to BCC’s branding guidelines to embody the college’s vision & offerings
7. Help guide overall content strategy and develop engaging features to recruit potential students & retain current students
8. Develop multiple design templates for CMS integration & oversee implementation

Caxiam Group and the BCC team are looking to roll this brand new website out in late September, early October. Until then, our sleeves are rolled up and we’re dedicated to bringing success to such a great organization!

Tyson Willey joins us as an experienced software developer with front-end development skills. For the past several months Tyson has been learning our B2B E-Commerce website framework and developing a custom solution for a client in Washington D.C. As this project nears launch he will begin working on two other custom B2B E-Commerce web solutions for large wholesale distributors in the Orlando / Tampa area. All projects had undergone design and front-end development phases prior to his arrival. He was delivered a client approved, front-end prototype and was thrilled to begin the software development process with such a clean starting point. Tyson is deliberate, detail oriented and extremely focused. Welcome aboard Tyson!

Luis Camilo joins us as an experienced software developer with additional skills in Linux server administration. Luis has been tasked with supporting some of our largest clients’ production applications by way of routine maintenance and large scale enhancements. In just two months with Caxiam Group Luis has already performed several major enhancements on large B2B E-Commerce websites for wholesale distributors. He is slowly working his way into our custom application development side and learning the ins and outs of several high-traffic sites. Luis is reliable and bright – able to work backwards through e-commerce sites and custom applications that he did not originally develop and make sense of all the pieces. Welcome aboard Luis!

Zach Stevenson joins us as a rookie software developer right out of Full Sail’s web development program and brings a wide array of skills perfect for supporting everyone on the team. Zach has worked on websites, custom applications, and several of our many B2B E-Commerce websites. He has performed website maintenance, assisted on large enhancements to custom applications and even built a smaller custom web application from scratch all by himself. Zach brings energy, a positive attitude, and a strong work ethic to the team. He is growing as a developer with each passing week. Welcome aboard Zach!

As far as new work goes, we are happy to announce recent contract signings from clients in Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Flemington New Jersey and Palm Bay. We have signed multiple custom website projects, B2B E-Commerce projects and custom application development projects which touches on three of our four core offerings. Awesome!

We’ve officially been operating out of our new Altamonte Springs location for six months now and couldn’t be happier. We’re still putting the finishing touches on our new space but it definitely feels like home. Believe it or not we are already considering office expansion as our team is now comprised of 11 full time employees and 2 part time contractors. While we are hoping to avoid expansion in the late months of 2010 we are excited about the possibilities 2011 will bring!

Stay tuned for more news on additional hires, new projects and site releases!

So what were the factors that played into our decision for a new office?

Cost and Lease Terms

At the end of the day the cost and lease terms were the number one factor. We have so many good things happening with our company right now and several opportunities that could take us in any number of directions. The last thing we wanted to do was sign a lease that locked us in for a long period of time and strapped us for cash. Our plans for 2010 and 2011 involve a 40% expansion in staff and cash on hand is an important factor in growing our team.  The typical lease for a group like ours runs from three to five years. With the commercial real estate market being what it is, we were able to get a two year lease, several months of free rent, a custom build out and a monthly rate that’s less than half of our current rate. This puts us in a prime position to route these savings towards the expansion of our team and thus the expansion of our service offerings.

Location

Location might have been the toughest factor to evaluate. Should the focus be on the employees and their drives to work or on existing clients who visit most often? What about proximity to the airport for our many out of town clients? How about proximity to where I think future clients will be located? Should I consider a location that is near our bank? Nice hotels? Fun restaurants? The reality is that I have to focus on all those things and some how come up with the “best” answer.

Let’s look closer at employees and clients for a moment.

Employees

For whatever reason, it turns out that the majority of our team members live in Seminole County. This means Longwood, Oviedo, Maitland, and Altamonte. And after closer review it turns out that my partner Eric and I are the only ones who live in Winter Park. Many of our employees put in long hours and love to visit the office on the weekends. If the drive time of 6 individuals could be cut by 50% over a span of roughly 250 working days per year, what could this do to the bottom line? It either gets them more time with their families and thus makes them feel better about their employment with us or it gives them more time to spend at the office helping our clients. Any way you shake it down, this was a vote to head towards a Seminole County destination.

Existing Clients

After taking a sampling of client visits during the past five years we realized the majority of these visits are from out of town clients. We have great clients in places like Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New York, California, Washington D.C., Virginia, The Bahamas, Puerto Rico and The Cayman Islands who love traveling to Florida to visit us for several days at a time. This means hotels and restaurants are a factor. This means that proximity to the airport is a factor, as is the accessibility of our office, as is parking. While our Park Avenue location is certainly closer to the airport than our Altamonte Springs location, the variety of hotels available near Park Avenue is almost non-existent. And as great as the Park Ave restaurants are, Altamonte Springs has plenty to offer in this category. Our parking situation will be drastically improved with dedicated parking spaces versus our current “first come, first serve, probably gonna get a ticket if the meeting runs long, you don’t have a chance during the two art festivals per year” parking situation.  Although it’s not a landslide, Altamonte Springs seems to edge out our current Winter Park location. Our out of town clients can finally get a good night’s sleep without waking to the Winter Park train every 45 minutes and find a place to park their rental cars.

Floor Plan and Layout

The floor plan and layout was probably the most enjoyable factor to evaluate. Many of the places we looked at allowed us to modify the floor plan to our exact needs but the Altamonte Springs location we selected was the closest to matching our needs out of the gate. This means less time and money will be spent knocking down walls and re-wiring electrical outlets and more time can be spent on customizing the interior. Our current space is about 3,200 sf but we never felt like the layout used this space efficiently. The single largest room in our current office is 16 x 12 and it was very difficult to have more than 6 people in a room collaborating at any given time. This was a big limitation in the collaborative world of web design and development. The first thing we set out to do was enlarge our meeting space to 22 x 19. This will allow two 16′ whiteboards, a 52″ LCD mounted on one wall and a high-resolution projector screen on another. We also have room for a U shaped table to comfortably seat 10.

The one thing we did really like about our Park Ave location was that it allowed for every employee to have a private office. I know there are endless debates about open work areas vs. private work areas and there are some really bright people on different sides of the fence. To me, it boils down to personal preference. Employees will be most productive where they are happiest. I spent roughly five years working in a very open environment when I was a software developer for Fidelity Information Systems and did not enjoy it. I’ve always been more of a “tune the world out and get to work” sort of person. Complete immersion. Finding and embracing “the zone”. A private office has always been a better setting for me to work this way and it seems that our employees are all wired the same way. Each private office is large enough to have three people comfortably collaborate. Each private office is equiped with ample white board space, seating space, and telephone equipment. And when more than three people are required for a meeting, we have a great conference room to handle that.

Here is a snapshot of our new floor plan:

Intangible Perks

Once we found places that met our specs for cost and lease term, location, and floor plan and layout we started to look around at the intangible perks. Because we had already decided on a Seminole County destination the choice here seemed obvious. Uptown Altamonte is the only area we felt could begin to compete with the intagibles offered by Park Ave in Winter Park. The water, the bridge, the surrounding beauty, the restaurants within walking distance, the community events, the mall, the movie theater, the nearby grocery store and even a daycare within walking distance for one of our employees.  It’s the intangible perks that make our employees love coming to work and encourages our clients to stop by more often then they otherwise might.

Without further ado, here is an aerial shot of our new office location:

Although I doubt this will catch on, it did get me thinking… with all of the text communication we partake in daily, is the standard keyboard in all of its 101-key glory really enough?

The problem with communicating via text is it’s impossible to convey a mood or voice — how many times have you read an email and wondered, “Is this person mad at me? Is he serious? Joking? Being sarcastic?” On the flip side, how often has an email you’ve written gotten you into trouble because it was misread (or misunderstood) by its recipient?

I know, our communications tools have evolved the ability to add little symbols like smiley faces and such. Is that enough? Especially for professional communication? Maybe it’s high time we expanded upon our standard keyboard — add some “mood” keys to help prevent our little misunderstandings.

Note: The author was attempting to be somewhat sarcastic when writing this post.

Photo by alcomm.