Soliciting Fame

My sincere apologies for the radio silence this last week. It has been a hectic and stressful last few days but everything seems to be coming together now!

So here’s the scoop. I took possession of my new internet cafe on June 30th. I went over everything with the owners and he showed me the ropes. It was going pretty smoothly until we realized that a miscommunication between us ended up with him disconnecting the phone and internet. He was under the impression that I was arranging that all myself. Fortunately my old girlfriend is dating a guy who works for Telus. So he phones me up and essentially puts through a work order on the Saturday instead of me having to wait until Tuesday because Monday was a holiday.

A tech rep shows up on Wednesday to fix the phone line, apparently something went wrong when they tried to reconnect it. Unfortunately I had to wait until this afternoon for the ADSL to be hooked up.

In hind-sight it was a good thing that I wasn’t able to open until now. It gave me a chance to clean out the entire place and rework some of the software bloat that was installed on the machines. The bad part is that a ton of money never came in which I could have used.

Since the seller of the business wasn’t using a lawyer it created more work and made things more difficult for my lawyer. Also, June 30 is the busiest day of the year for real estate lawyers since it’s summer, middle of the year, and end of the month. Lots of possessions take place on that day. Apparently I was 1 of 32 possessions he had to deal with!

So part of my stress was from some missing money! Since my lawyer was swamped, when I wrote the cheque for the purchase out to him (he holds it in trust for the seller) we forgot to subtract my previous deposit of several thousand dollars. Needless to say when I looked at my bank account later I was pulling hairs out wondering what I could have overlooked because I needed that money for some first month expenses! I ended up pulling it from my credit card which is very very very bad, never do this! In the end I figured it out and gave him a ring, I’m picking up the money tomorrow morning and hopefully I can convince Visa to waive the cash advance fee.

Apparently debit machine accounts aren’t transferable. I have a useless machine sitting in my storage room that is still assigned to the old owners. Good thing my bank is hooking me up with a decent rate and any deposits don’t count as transactions in my bank account.

It’s really poor that Telus has taken so long to reinstate my internet connection. I’ve basically missed a week of all things Nexopia and work does need to be done! Now I’ll be able to spread my time across both the cafe and working for Nexopia. Obviously I won’t be full time, more like 1/3 time, but it’s still a connection I want to keep. I’m just going to have to put my trust in everyone else there which in the past was hard to do when I wasn’t involved in a decision. Oh well, I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

Tomorrow I’m going to install Firefox and some other goodies on the computers. The last owners knew how to set up a network but I don’t think they had much knowledge of tweaking and making good software perform.

Some people have been asking me what I have decided to call my internet cafe so I’ve decided to write a post about it. The cafe will be named Third On Whyte. I’ve registered both the .ca and .com domain names and I will be developing website/landing page for the cafe.

The name “Third” comes from a great article I read about an internet cafe in San Francisco. It brings up the concept that everyone has a third place in their lives.

Essentially you, me, and everyone we know have a third place that you use as a sort of refuge from daily life. Of course you are’t limited to one “third place” but it’s the concept that matters. For example a youth might have school, home, and the mall; the mall being their third place. A professional might have home, work, and the golf course where they go to sort out their thoughts and relax. Many travelers, students, and young adults use cafes and lounges with internet access as a place to go and work on projects or just relax and surf the web.

This is my goal, to create a trendy, relaxed environment where people can come and relax and surf the internet.

Anyway, I’m off to Banff for the weekend… and I’m not taking my laptop!

I sat down and attempted to total how much personal money I have spent on acquiring this business.

Other than the purchase price these are some of the expenditures I’ve had to eat so far:

• $23.21 - Dinner with accountant
• $32.92 - Dinner with lease expert
• $331.7 - Corporation registration
• $49.5 - Trade name registration
• $100 - Lunch with industrial designer friends
• $147 - Building sign permits
• $162 - Business license
• $117 - Corporate cheques

So far that’s a total of $963.33. Pretty soon I will need to spend some more money on things like:

• $50 - Corporate seal for documents like the lease
• $700-1000 - Conveyancing and legal work with lawyer
• $100-200 - Rebranding including a laser cut sign and sandwich boards

There are probably going to be more expenses that I can’t foresee right now but I should be fine. Other than paying for employees and all their deductions and other operating costs like rent and supplies I’m basically ready to take possession of this place.

On Wednesday I’m meeting with two young ladies that are interested in working for me part time. I’m taking them to lunch so I can throw that up on the expenses list then

Speaking of dinners, I highly recommend offering to take family friends who are accountants or lawyers out for dinner or drinks if you need advice. It is much cheaper than having to hire them professionally and if you’re doing something interesting they will most likely be happy to get a free meal in exchange for a chat. That reminds me, I need to send some emails and let people know how I’m doing.

On Friday I removed my final condition on the offer for the Internet Cafe. After dropping an additional cheque I am basically guaranteed this business.

Today I signed my final loan document at the bank, they managed to lower my interest rate from 12% to 11%. Realistically I could care less about that difference since I plan to pay it back quickly.

I also incorporated today. Now I have some margin of security to operate under.

I visited the cafe on the way back from the bank this afternoon. Apparently they have decided to close for the remainder of the month for “renovations” and will be “opening” in July when I take over. While this could potentially hurt business for July I am going to try to benefit from their chosen downtime and see if I can get things running smoothly before I take possession.

I’m trying to create some original content for this blog but it’s proving difficult. I knew that blogging was a challenge when I started but after reading the Happy Second Birthday, TechCrunch post on TechCrunch today it’s given me reason to continue. Here are some ideas I’ve been thinking of writing about:

• Compare and contrast video sites
• Metro News and how it’s taking over the world
• How to start a business in Edmonton
• Small business financing
• Where Google Adwords have their place

Much of it has been written about so I hope to create something original.

I have also been flipping through the June 2nd-8th issue of The Economist. I subscribed to it with one of those “6 months free issues” cards. Many influential people I know have recommended keeping up to date with it and it’s something I hope I can tackle because it is literally like reading a textbook.

The complications of this world are most likely beyond an individuals grasp, but I hope to harness some of it.

Yesterday I met with the current owners of my soon to be Internet cafe. Over coffee we discussed their financial situation and chatted about their history as a company.

I am still crunching numbers but so far I am very confident that everything is legitimate and will work out.

Coming Monday I need to do several registration activities in order to actually operate a business legally. As well I need to negotiate the current lease and I hope to enlist some help from another family friend who is an expert on commercial leases. Also on Monday, Nexopia is moving headquarters a few blocks away so we will be doing a ton of moving.

So does anyone want a job yet?