Flying Dogs

Since we got Roz a month or so after moving to San Francisco, we’ve never had to do the crate and ship scenario. Much to my surprise, flying a dog from July-September isn’t easy, recommended or even allowed by most carriers. If you need details about your shipping your pet…just search “pets” on the airlines website. After checking with several it looks like Alaska/Horizon is the only carrier that allows dogs during the summer and then only if the temperature in all touch-down spots is below 84 degrees. And another thing…Boxer’s and other short muzzled dogs are held to an even stricter guideline since they overheat so easily.

Rent in Brooklyn

We’re really catching a break on this front. At the moment, the rental market in NYC and Brooklyn is noticeably cheaper than San Francisco. New York housing costs are typically high but until we started looking a couple weeks ago, I didn’t really have much of a point of reference. For what we’re paying in SF we can get more space in Brooklyn. I suppose if we were living in the East Bay the same might be true but the BIG HUGE GINORMOUS difference in NY…public transportation is a lot faster. What takes 30-45minutes in the Bay Area appears to take 10-20 minutes in New York. Rina’s pretty stoked about this since she has to deal with SF public transportation on a daily basis…NYC seems to offer a much easier commute.

Well folks, there you have it. I’ll keep you posted as things fall into place. And by all means, if you happen to know of a centrally located 2-3 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn by all means let us know!

Times are a changing…Brooklyn or Bust!

Although I planted the seed back in November I was just monkeying around because Empire State of Mind was so popular and honestly, I’ve never had a strong attraction to New York. Rina on the other hand has had an open love affair…similar to that of food. Next stop New York…Brooklyn to be exact, it’s just a matter of logistics.

10 Years, 6 Cities, 3 Continents

You might say we’re rather adept at relocating. In fact, over the years we’ve kept a rather minimalist approach to living which revolves around “the ability to pack up and leave within 2 weeks”. A great many of our friends and family have come to expect nothing less and yet their twisted smiles speak volumes.

Being rather adventurous, our D.C.-Chicago relocation was via our ’06 Harley Davidson Road King Classic. Yah, we really like shiny objects, leather and bugs! Sadly, the other jumps consisted of 747′s, DHL, U-Haul trucks and a Door-to-Door moving pod but for Brooklyn, I have a brand new idea….something characteristically uncharacteristic.

Gutters, Neglect and Beer

After a few too many drinks and feverishly jockeying for Gowalla check-ins at the venues we were trolling, I awoke the next morning with a wicked…umm…idea. Later that day, over more drinks and Gowalla check-ins, I mentioned to partners in crime that based on the previous days discussion and late night escapades, I had a fun idea for an iPhone app. I’m not much of a ‘creative’ person in a traditional brushes and paints sorta way but I love creative brainstorms when it comes to cooking up applications and business ideas. But coming up with a good idea isn’t as difficult as figuring out which ones to invest time and energy into, so after a few minutes of batting it around with my crew it fell into the gutter, more a victim of neglect and beer than anything else.

In the days that followed, I busied myself with jump starting the new year but one morning last week over coffee the same app idea bobbed to the surface. “What if…?” On any given day asking myself this question typically leads to mental gymnastics in order to figure out whether the idea has merit.  This idea was no different. I slid in front of my computer, disconnected the internet connection and started piecing together this iPhone app. After 35 minutes (I’m big into time boxing) I realized I had hit on something that was inherently simple to a user yet had potential to generate multiple revenue streams. Understandably, there were an infinite number of influential real world variables that could topple my pretty little model but conceptually it had some teeth to it which meant it was time to phone a friend.

Shout Outs & Phone a Friend

The more I thought about the app, the more I realized that while I thought it was a good idea, I didn’t really feel like learning iPhone development just to develop it, so instead I tweeted. At that point, I would have gladly collaborated on it with someone or given them the whole thing to run with…it was and is a solid idea but I wasn’t exactly passionate about building it from scratch. Unsurprisingly, my random tweet didn’t gain much traction, then again, I didn’t really expect it would but @BonitaSmokeShop did pass it along (check out their cigars here).

Nonetheless, after my shout out fell on deaf ears, I decided to phone a friend. First, I sense checked the idea with a couple friends that have varying non-technical-business and iPhone experiences. Their responses were similar to mine, “sounds like it would be fun”. They also took pop shots at the cobbled together revenue streams but generally liked the idea enough to strongly point out that if I were to build it, I most certainly should not give it away away for free. My second move, was to reach out to a friend that’s building an app that uses some of the same technical elements and would be able to run with it or pass it along. He was intrigued and agreed to bait a few people to get a feel for it’s potential. A day later, I had an answer…

There are two types of motorcyclists, those who have been down and those who are going down.

I heard this saying repeatedly after buying my third bike, a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Classic and I count myself fortunate for never having felt the unforgiving impact of pavement (close only counts with hand grenades and boccie ball).  Today, I wondered aloud to my partner in crime whether being a motorcyclist is similar to being an entrepreneur. It was pretty easy to come up with all sorts of similarities; freedom, responsibility, risk, protection, speed, strategy, navigation, balance, vision, execution. Off we went to do a little research…

Stop the presses…statistically motorcyclists are NOTHING like entrepreneurs! Mainly because in 2007 over 5,000 people died in motorcycle accidents and I can’t recall the last time I heard of an entrepreneur dieing as a result of being an entrepreneur. Perhaps we had conjured up a poor comparison to begin with but after a bit of research the similarities were down right disturbing.

Statistics Leaving Bugs in My Teeth

1. Only 21 states have universal helmet laws requiring all riders to done lids
2. 31% of motorcycle fatalities are related to alcohol impairment, 27% of which were over the .08 blood alcohol content legal limit
3. $230.6 billion a year – impact on US health care system

Thinking that perhaps I was being a little too literal, I decided to see how many small businesses “go down” each year since my search for “entrepreneur+fatalities” wasn’t giving me much info. Sadly, those numbers aren’t much better;

1. Two-thirds of SMB’s survive at least two years – Translation: 33% go down
2. 44 percent survive at least four years – Translation: 56% go down
3. 31 percent survive at least seven years – Translation: 69% go down

On second thought, maybe our idea of comparing motorcyclists and entrepreneurs wasn’t as far off track as I originally thought. Granted, I couldn’t find an entrepreneur that died as a result of being an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs typically have a significant personal investment in a business, so for argument sake we could say that an entrepreneur ‘is the business’ and vice versa. The track record for motorcyclists and entrepreneurs may not align as nicely as we might have liked but we managed to draw a couple comparisons worth mentioning.

Motorcyclists & Entrepreneurs Take Heed

1. Enjoy the freedom of the ride and take responsibility for your actions
2. Accept the risk while getting as much protection as possible without limiting your ability to operate
3. Speed is crucial but fast is not always better, you have to have a strategy
4. Sharpen your navigation skills and learn to balance distractions
5. Have a vision of where you want to go and execute on it

Lingering questions: How can we reduce the increasing fatality rate of motorcyclists? Likewise, can the number of businesses/entrepreneurs going down be remedied?

Click the image, watch the video and decide for yourself