Lot’s of action, little time to post :)

You may or may not be asking yourself, what is Satellite up too since launching in July of 2011? If you were, Satellite is in full swing and doing pretty good. In fact better than I originally had hoped. On this post Thanksgiving weekend I have much to be thankful for.

So to be clear, by no means am I bragging and by no means has it been a cake walk. As you know the economy is pretty shitty (Pardon my French), but through sheer determination and by being blessed with a good network, Satellite has had steady work from a few key companies. My connections John Kestner, Reiko Morrisson, Mitchell Suckle, Jake Diner and the Belkin team have blessed me with a good spring-board. I will forever hold a special place in my heart for these key people. I am probably forgetting a few people, my apologies if I did.

Prior to leaving my post at previous companies I have made attempts to pick up freelance work here and there, but never picked anything up. Really, nothing. By sheer luck I received a call from an old classmate, John Kestner of SuperMechanical (http://supermechanical.com), who was consulting for a hi-tech startup in Cambridge, MA called iCache. My buddy asked me to work on a small task on a super tight timeline. At this point I was already planning to start my firm, Satellite. The project came at a time when I had already committed to working evenings on planning my strategy, my vision, how to run a business… all of these tasks seemed overwhelming, but I was hooked. So when I got the opportunity to work on the project I put everything aside and got to work.

Little did I know that this little evening project was soon to turn into a big evening project. In fact bigger than I had even been desiring since I had a pretty heavy-duty day job. My day job at Belkin was still a dream post. I still had much to learn, but this project for iCache was exciting. I cannot divulge the details of the project, but man was I EXCITED about it. Since leaving university I had been trying to claw my way into developing top-notch gadgets. I had many missed opportunities in my career and it was literally right in front of me. The project had me going for at least two months working pretty much 20 hours a week minimum on top of my 50-60 hour work week at Belkin.

By this point my dreams of starting Satellite were taking place, but I had little time to put together all of the pieces, marketing materials, vision statements, my portfolio. My dear wife Marie saw me very little, but was super supportive of me. She in fact was the one who kept asking me why I didn’t just quit and start. My mind said yes, but my past experience of not being able to find freelance work kept me grounded. Plus, I still liked my day job.

Once I decided to take the leap, I JUMPED. All of a sudden I was setting up a DBA, CPA, Tax ID, .COM, you name it I was setting it up. At this point I had buzzwords being hurled at me and I was hooked. I foolishly thought that I would have all the time in the world to finally get my marketing together, I even hired a graphic designer, Mark Caneso of pprwrkstudio.com. There was nothing stopping me now. HA!!! All of a sudden an old colleague of mine from Belkin, Jake Diner, contacted me as he knew of someone who needed ID. Man was I excited. All of a sudden I was putting together proposals, working up contracts, schedules, conducting meetings… you name it I was doing it. This possible project all of a sudden put a fire in me that I had never seen before. Even my wife was surprised. In fact we had set aside some time to take a vacation together as soon as I started sending out proposals for work. For a few weeks I was again working crazy hours for my one client in Cambridge while trying to land a new client.

All of a sudden my possible new client vanished… Poof! No emails, no phone calls, nada. What did I do? Overnight my excitement, my enthusiasm my momentum seemed to vanish. Reality set in. Looking for clients was actually a TON of work. My past was haunting me at night. I still had my one client though and I was over delivering. There was no way I was going to let this stop me now. My wife assured me that all of the work that I put into trying to land this new client was not a waste. Little did I know at the time that she already must have seen the future.

I know had a little extra time to start the process of finalizing my marketing materials and sending them out to my network and to desired clients. My wife at this point had also decided to take the plunge. She had enough of her current post and was looking for something new. Also, we had a little miracle growing inside of her. For nearly seven years my wife and I had been wanting to have a child. We were finally blessed. I was all of a sudden in a position were I had a hard-core business person helping me land clients. Every day for two weeks we would wake up and send out our new brochure. Every day we would have creative strategy sessions on how we were going to land clients. All of this work was AWESOME!

Our work had paid off. We had started our campaign of sending out to soft leads, emailing cold leads, setting up our FaceBook, Twitter, Behance and Design Directory pages. All of a sudden we had amassed an impressive (to me anyways) set of marketing collateral. Ready to launch at any given moment. Every day we were going through our list of people to contact. Little did I know that the people who had not yet been blessed with being in the right alphabetical order were about to start contacting us. A former colleague, Reiko Morrisson, of Blink-ID (http://www.blink-id.com) had noticed that I had gone off on my own via my Satellite FaceBook page and recommended me to a potential client. I still remember the email coming in late at night as I was lying on the couch wondering if any of my leads were going to pan out or not. I stood upright and yelled out to Marie in excitement. I’m sure I yelled out some form of expletive.

The next day Reiko’s contact called me to discuss my interest and availability. I immediately sent out our new digital brochure (I was so proud of it) and a follow-up thank you email. Within a couple of days I was already in discussions with my new client about timelines, cost, deliverables, vision… Somehow my past was starting to seem distant and all of a sudden it seemed like I could really make this happen.

All of a sudden the energetic strategy sessions my wife and I were having had to be put aside since I know had a big four-week project along with a steady stream of work from my other client. My extra time all of a sudden was gone. Luckily for my wife though she welcomed it as she too had just quit a stressful post and was now looking forward to the rest and relaxation. The magical vacation we had been thinking of taking all of a sudden was a dream.

Satellite now had two clients, impressive clients. TWO of them I kept thinking, how did I get here. I didn’t know how to control my excitement. In the back of my mind I thought maybe I should start looking for contractors to help me out as needed. Nah, I told myself, I can handle this. Plus I wanted all of the work in my first year to have my fingerprints. I wanted to test myself.

By this point I’m starting to be more disciplined about reading email, browsing FaceBook and generally goofing off and am hard at work. I’m a machine I tell myself. Building Satellite is now my focus so that I can provide for my growing family. An email alert pops-up from my old colleague Mitchell Suckle of Belkin. I tell myself don’t get distracted, keep working, so I do. A couple of hours go by so I remind myself to take a break. I scan my email and notice Mitchell’s and am shocked… he is inquiring about my/Satellites availability. Again, I’m pretty sure I yell out an expletive in excitement to Marie. I call her over to discuss. I’m certain that we were both like holy sheesh. How did this happen, again by this point we are mailing people alphabetically and we are literally still on the early letters.

Without going into too much detail about the Belkin project, let’s just say that I was excited about the opportunity to work for my old job. Prior to leaving I did wonder if my old company would be interested in hiring me, but wasn’t counting on it. Plus I just left, why would they hire someone who just left? Needless to say I was flattered. All of a sudden I found myself in a position where I had to hire contractors for small tasks to help me out. Never in my career was I lucky enough to have designers working per my direction. I felt privileged. Thankful.

Much has happened since July, in fact all of the above probably only leads into October. Satellite is in full swing. We are thankful for these few shorts months and are looking forward to building off of our experience in such a short time.

We are preparing for CES 2012 and are looking forward to seeing some of our work being launched there. Stay tuned as there is still lots of exciting developments to report on in the coming months.

Best,
Rocket Man