Archive for the ‘Doba’ Category
Health Care
So on August 1, Doba is switching from Blue Cross (who we’ve been with since starting the company in 2002) to IHC. Blue Cross wanted to raise our plan costs up 17%. It’s been about that much each year since we started. By switching to IHC, we get some better covereage in Utah County with hospitals for the majority of our employees, and we only increase our rates from last year 7%.
Do you know of any other part of business where your costs can consistently go up by double-digit rates year over year? It’s actually pretty crazy.
Fresh off of our insurance meeting with IHC and our broker this past Tuesday I came across this article today: U.S.
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
eCommerce Hippie
After this week, I’ll be gone for the next 2 weeks. Being an eCommerce Hippie.
Maybe I should explain. Back in February, I was looking at the schedule of conferences for the next several months, and noticed that Internet Retailer was in Chicago at McCormick Place June 9-11. I attended this conference last year in San Jose and we were in the midst of making plans for Doba to exhibit for the first time since it’s the worlds largest e-retailing show. I then noticed that eBay Live was just over a week later June 19-21, again at McCormick Place in Chicago, and again, we were making plans for Doba to exhibit–for the 5th time at eBay Live.
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year
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,
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
Build vs. Buy
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
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
Doba Kiva Fund
Last November, Doba worked with Connect Magazine and the Utah Technology Council to bring Guy Kawasaki to Utah.
I posted at the time that because we charged attendees $10, we were able to make a donation to Kiva for $4,000.
Shortly after the event in November, we loaned that money to 40 entrepreneurs all over the world. Well, a few weeks back, we had our first loan repaid in full, so we were able to re-loan $100 of the initial contribution. We’re well on our way to support at least 200 small businesses from around the world with micro-loans in the next 5 years.
Check out the Doba Kiva Fund to see the
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
dobalash (dÅ-bä’lăsh’)
dobalash (dÅ-bä’lăsh’)
n.
- An antagonistic reaction to a trend, development, or event involving Doba.
- What happens if Doba doesn’t just stop it with all the awards and recognition: “The dobalash reached a new fervor with its recognition by Utah Business as Best Companies to Work For.â€
- The breakdown that will happen if Doba lets even a tiny bit of this go to our heads.
Doba was one of the companies that Utah Business has recognized as a 2007 Best Company to Work For (me, Blaine Nielsen, and Ashley Schaumburg were in the pic on the cover in front of our Doba Green wall). I have to admit I was impressed with the level of detail
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
Guy Kawasaki: Standing Room Only = Ability to help a good cause
Last Thursday’s event with Guy Kawasaki went very well. We figured we had about 530 people in attendance (in a room that only held 500) so it was literally standing room only. And that was a good thing since it’s going to facilitate something very cool (see below).
Guy presented on innovation. You can download his slides as a PDF document, and they include the customizations that he made just for Utah with his pretty funny jabs at MLM’s in the state.
Now to the very cool stuff: We charged everyone that attended $10. Mostly to make sure people actually showed up. Because of the generous help of Doba, the other sponsors, and Guy, we ended up
Read More
Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.
