I started in Accounting Software with Arthur Young (then Ernst & Young) in 1988 and starting in 2023 I'm moving out of it.
I went from Solomon to MYOB to Real World, to MAS90, to Sage 100 to SAP Business One to Navision/Business Central to Epicor to Infor over all those years with plenty of overlap and some smaller names in between.
But one can only do the same thing so long and you kinda lose the fire in your belly. The industry IMHO has gotten a lot harder in the last decade and feels much more like a trading customer and support game than a true automation game. Long gone is the thrill of taking people from typewriters and paper and having them realize how much better the software and services we offered could make their business and their lives.
Also, the stress of never knowing if next year will be as good or better than last year due to the project nature of the business. Sure there is a lot of recurring services, but the ability to build wealth through a client base because of maintenance and other recurring income has been slowly sucked out of the channel by greedier public company publishers. I bet, in after inflation dollars, many of us had better standards of living in the past.
It's been a while in the works, but I'm leaving the Clients First Business Solutions partnership on 12/31. I'm going to be embarking on two new ventures:
The first is a startup app idea with my 23 year old son and a friend of his around mobile ordering. I truly think it's a good idea that's just been missing real execution and that he and a friend of his could make work with some experienced guidance from me. This is more of my 'moonshot' venture but we are taking a test pilot approach to see if its viable before investing the farm.
The second is I bought a 'smallish' Chocolate retail, wholesale, corporate, and manufacturing company based in Morristown NJ. You may find it funny, but I bought it 50/50 with my ex-wife Rose who many of you might remember from my On-Track Consulting days as my partner who helped build that to 'State of The Art Partner of the Year' in the 1990's.
Now I get to see how to automate a business from the inside, instead of from the outside. It's going to be a challenge because how much software is designed for wholesale, retail, e-commerce, corporate gift sales and manufacturing all in one without a million 'glued' syncs and expensive subscriptions/licensing? That's a lot of moving parts for a relatively small biz.
Thanks again for all the years of great conversations, technical support, some politics thrown in for interest :) , and friendship!
But just because I'm not going to be implementing ERP doesn't mean we can't continue to help each other.
Now my plug.
Enjou Chocalat
Facebook
Now I know the e-commerce site we have is god awful and that's one of the first things I need to rebuild (and get all new photography). The business is celebrating it's 40th birthday in February so it's reputation for quality, taste and packaging is impeccable in the region. We are stocked in a number of regional supermarkets like Kings Supermarkets or Gary's Wine. Now its my turn to bring it into the 2020's from a marketing, sales and business operations perspective.
If you are looking for gifts for clients for things like go-lives, the holidays, for tradeshows, for sales or billing recognition, we can be a go-to supplier as we ship anywhere (but shipping can get expensive in hot seasons due to cold packing needed for chocolate). We have over 50,000 molds (not many chocolate producers do mold work these days). Plus for long term commitments, we can do custom molds of anything (think logos, 3d objects, chocolate business 'cards' (bars) etc. Nothing gets a person's happy receptors going like chocolate (well almost nothing lol)
Once I get the automation up, we are also going to develop a referral system so if you refer us to friends/business associates, you can get either commissions or discounts on your own in-house orders.
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Mark Chinsky
Clients First Business Solutions
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