I’ve posted before about the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs and its host Mike Rowe.

I’m a big fan. I watch it while I work out in the mornings. In the course of his quest for Dirty Jobs around the country, Mike has met and worked with hundreds of folks that could teach most of us a thing or two about work ethic.

From Mike on the episode I watched this morning (quoting Thomas Edison):

Opportunity is most often missed because it usually shows up dressed in overalls and looking like work.

Amen.

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A few weeks back, we found out that I was selected as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Utah region.

Last night was the finalist reception and I was able to meet quite a few of the judges, the sponsors, and the other finalists.

To all the other finalists I say good luck and congratulations! I am very proud to be included with the names/companies included in this year’s 25 finalists. It’s a list of incredibly talented and focused entrepreneurs, many of whom I know very well.

I’m honored to be able to represent Doba in this program. All credit goes to my family, Doba’s employees and their families, our vendors and advisory board members, and our thousands of satisfied customers. The award will be announced at a special black-tie gala event on June 27, 2008, at the Salt Palace in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.

Here is the list of the 2008 Utah Region Finalists:

Agel
Glen Jensen
American Name Services
Jill Grammer-Williams
AtTask, Inc.
Scott Johnson
Companion Systems Design & Manufacturing
John Hansen
Al Tiley
Sally Tiley
Dianne Williams
Costume Craze, LLC
Kate Maloney
Discovery Investment Group
Paul Gifford
Doba
Jeremy Hanks
G Code Ventures / Utah Flash
Brandt Andersen
Harmons
Bob Harmon
Randy Harmon
Mindshare Technologies
Richard Hanks
John Sperry
Move Networks, Inc.
John Edwards
Mozy Inc (Berkeley Data Systems)
Josh Coates
Packsize LLC
Hanko Kiessner
ProPay, Inc.
Gary Goodrich
R&O Construction
Orluff Opheikens
Seastone LC
Warren Osborn
SnapLock Industries, Inc.
Jorgen Moller
Skullcandy
Rick Alden
Suh’dutsing Technologies, LLC
Travis Parashonts
Thomas Arts
Dave Thomas
Titanium Solutions, Inc.
Todd Sibley
United First Financial
Jonathan Bonnette
Don Jorgensen
Matthew Lovelady
John Washenko
Skyler Witman
Wescor, Inc.
Wayne Barlow
Xactware Solutions, Inc.
Jim Loveland
Xlear, Inc.
Nathan Jones

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When I was in the Boy Scouts I learned that my motto was to: “Be Prepared.”

About 2 weeks ago, I particpated in a Funding Universe LivePitch event in Sandy. The positioning to aspiring entrepreneurs was:

Come pitch your idea to a panel of local experts, to get feedback on presentation, or recruit /hire, or to build partnerships. If you do not wish to present come and be a part of the audeince and network with others entreprenuers and businesses.

Funding Universe picked 5 companies to pitch to the audience and this panel of judges:

Steve Grizzell: Innoventures Capital
Dan McPhun: Park City Angels
Jeremy Hanks: Founder and Chairman of Doba
Mark Bonham: Ray Quinney and Nebeker
Kent Thomas: CFO Solutions and member of Olympus Angels

One of the dynamics with these events is that you only get 7 minutes to pitch your business.

It was also billed as a great networking event, and my guess is that all told, about 100 people showed up.

I really enjoy helping with events like this. Helping entrepreneurs is one reason I try to do this blogging thing. Having said that, I’m a pretty busy guy. I know the other 4 judges, and I know all of them are busy too.

I have to be honest. The 5 companies that presented didn’t listen when they were scouts. In my opinion, they could have all done more to be better prepared with their presentations (especially to pitch their business in only 7 minutes). I really don’t think any of them practiced before hand with the time limit. If they had been more prepared, the feedback the panel gave them would have been more valuable than: hey, work on your presentation.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to invest A LOT of your time so that when you have the chance to use other people’s valuable time to help you further your efforts you: a. get something valauble in return, and most importantly, b. you don’t waste someone else’s time.

My time there definitely wasn’t a waste. It was fun, it was great to meet some new people, I enjoyed giving feedback to the presenting entrepreneurs, and Funding Universe did a super job in putting it on. Just saying to “Be Prepared.” One of my favorite quotes is:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

My guess is that Boy Scouts are luckier as a group compared to others (at least if they follow their motto).

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So my travel was supposed to be finished until mid-June, but alas, I find myself this week in San Mateo, CA for 4 days of administrator training for Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a very robust customer relationship management Software as a Service platform. We’ve decided at Doba to move our CRM (marketing, sales, and service) operations onto this hosted platform over time. We’ve been testing it in a limited fashion for the last several weeks.

In the past 5.5 years, we’ve built A LOT of software that originated from our “internal tools” roadmap–software to manage sales processes, billing processes, marketing processes, service processes, etc. Over the next many months, we’re going to work towards fulfilling those internal needs via the Salesforce.com system rather than building our own software. In essence, we’re working to stop building software that isn’t our core business, and leverage other platforms and software that are out there.

Let me say this: I’ve told quite a few people that we’re doing this, and a few of them have said, man, that Salesforce.com is expensive. We can build our own tools better/faster/cheaper. To that I say: no you can’t. Not even close. In my class with me is the Salesforce administrator (yes, at larger companies, they separate out that role) for AMD. Yeah, this AMD. And several other large companies from around the country. Salesforce Professional starts at $65 per user per month. They have a Group edition that’s even less. For that much hard money, not even counting the opportunity cost and distraction factors, you can’t build 1% of what this platform does off the self. And even if you need to customize it (a standard objection to not building things yourself. The whole “customizing it will cost us more than just building it ourselves” argument), it’s still so much more efficient to leverage the base of other software.

So my advice? If you’re a software company, build software that you sell. Build your competitive advantage. Anything else your business needs to operate and function? Buy it. And Salesforce.com is a dang good place to start looking for the whole CRM world. What I’ve seen here at Salesforce.com training is extremely impressive. Totally changing my build vs. buy viewpoint going forward. If you need bookkeeping/accounting, you buy Quickbooks. If you need word processing, you buy MS Word. If you need anything related to full lifecycle (leads to accounts to opportunities to service cases to service solutions) CRM, buy Salesforce.

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Read this article for all the details:

‘Unbelievable’ sportsmanship in softball game

That’s the definition of sportsmanship. On a technicality, they could have forced the opposing coach into a decision to sub a player and only make it a single. But she hit the home run. She deserved the home run.

Good stuff. Play hard, but play fair; and sometimes fairness isn’t the letter of the law (rules).

More people in business should play (compete) this way.