2:00am and I'm at the shop...

During my six months of working two full time jobs, a great deal of admin fell behind here at the shop. Tracy and I have decided that I will come to the shop every Monday night to pay our vendors, do equipment maintenance, work on payroll, etc. Tonight is my first night, and I am finding all kinds of things that need to be finished.
First priority is catching up on quarterly reporting. We are behind, and I absolutely need to get finished. I can tell you, it is not much fun trying to figure out tax stuff using Quickbooks reports of our company financials on one computer, and being on the internet researching the forms and instructions on another computer.

It is 2:00am and I have been here doing this since 7:30pm. I also found a workers comp audit that needs to be completed for our insurance company. The Secretary of State for Colorado seems to want us to send him an annual report. The two delinquent notices he sent is my proof. In all, I found 15 things that need to be filled out and sent somewhere. The El Paso County Health Department caters lunch from us occasionally. They want us to fill out an 'approved vendor' W-9 form so we can get paid. This is all stuff that I have to research how to fill out, so it all takes awhile. I found a notification from our bank of a bounced check (from one of our customers). I need to send out a notice to them to pay up before we unleash the goons.

Moral of the story...
Don't let your admin get behind. Even if you are working two full time jobs, even if you are falsely accused and imprisoned in Argentina, even if you did fall down the stairs and you are in a coma... figure out someway to get your paperwork done anyway. I am now playing catch up and it is not much fun. This week, and probably the next couple of weeks will be long nights. Once I get caught up, it should only take a couple of hours. For now, though, I'm getting tired and don't feel like doing paperwork.

It is now 2:07am, and I am still here. I need to wrap up the City of Colorado Springs sales tax returns, and then I'll go home and get three hours of sleep before my new day starts. I'll catch up on the county, state, and federal stuff later...

Gotta run.
JD

Jeff Sato Photo Shoot

I completed my first photo shoot in awhile tonight. It was with Jeff Sato, a judo athlete who has trained at the Olympic Training Center. I can't even begin to tell you how hard Jeff has worked. He has an amazing work ethic, and his Olympic dreams fueled is life. Unfortunately, he did not make the team for China in 2008. He is currently helping some who did with their training, and will decide later if he is going to continue to compete and train at this level until 2012. In the meantime, I did a photo shoot for him. I haven't even looked at all of the shots yet, but here is one... I'll post more later. Click on the image to see a larger version.

OK, here is another...


OK, and just one more for now. I'm going to go home and get some sleep...

Starbucks in the news...

I just noticed a new headline at www.drudgreport.com stating that Starbucks will be closing 600 stores...

Starbucks closing 600 stores in the US
Tuesday July 1, 4:26 pm ET
Starbucks closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States


SEATTLE (AP) -- Starbucks Corp. has announced it's closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States.
The Seattle-based premium coffee company also announced Tuesday it expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the United States in fiscal 2009.

The company says it will try to place workers from closed stores in remaining Starbucks.

I believe this is a result of $4.00+ per gallon gas, and the impact of Nemo's Coffee, and other independent retailers offering higher quality product than Starbucks.

As for us, we have not really seen an impact on sales, other than NOT seeing growth that we planned for. June 2008 sales were at $13,900 which is right around our break even point. Considering that we have no signage and yellow caution tape and orange cones blocking our entrance and all of the parking in front of our store, that is great! I'm anxious to see what will happen after the building facade construction is completed...

Gotta run,
JD