Smarter solutions for business, and for life

“Darling, could you please bring me some money in Vienna?” The pleading in my voice must have told my girlfriend Julia how embarrassing the situation was for me. And it was! I had attended a Microsoft event and was now standing at the pay machine of a car park on a Saturday afternoon.

I had no cash. The company’s debit card, my company’s card, that of Smarter Business Solutions GmbH, held too little, and my private one looked just as bleak. The company credit card had long been overdrawn. I was so broke that I did not even have the amount needed to get my car out.

I was angry and desperate when I had to call my girlfriend about it. Me, the managing director, the engineering graduate, the breadwinner…

Even looking back, I cannot laugh about it. Looking back, I only see how much can go wrong in a new start-up. I founded Smarter Business Solutions in 2004 because, as a 23-year-old, I not only believed I knew and could do everything better, but also because I did not want to be squeezed into the mental and personal corset of a large company. So a certain arrogance was involved when I became my own boss and founded an IT company with business partners.

But partners are always a tricky thing. They do not always pursue the same goals and may even have different visions. That was the case for me. One of the shareholders wanted to build a large corporation, the second wanted to develop real-estate projects in Croatia, and I wanted to take care of SharePoint and our customers.

We grew quite quickly and, among others, had three large SharePoint customers who each employed more than 10,000 people; we could afford an office in Vienna for which we paid 4,000 euros a month in rent. Many self-employed people and small business owners know the situation where the company looks well positioned from the outside while the owner is barely scraping by. The three managing-director parking spaces and the one customer space in the underground car park alone cost more than I earned. I kept postponing family planning, saying the company had to flourish first, at a time when Julia, a radiographer at a hospital, paid for most of our life together.

Think big: a 300 m² office above the Tangente in Vienna

So from the outside, the first years of Smarter Business Solutions were very successful, but for me personally they were deeply disappointing and marked by a great deal of hardship.

“Darling, could you please…”

While I waited for Julia, who was coming from Wiener Neustadt, dozens if not hundreds of thoughts went through my head. It cannot go on like this, I told myself, too many things are not right. So I created new conditions, which in turn was a process that lasted years. Co-shareholders had to be paid out, 220,000 euros of research funding had to be repaid. And the company had to be shrunk back to health, from 20 employees to four at most. But how was I supposed to manage all that? I was a good SharePoint consultant, and through a lot of persistence I had the technical side of the company well under control. But deep down I knew I was still miles away from being a real, good managing director.

All this happened in 2010, just before the “seven-year itch” (or does that only exist in marriages?), and just at that time I, a former sports-school pupil, started running. It was meant to bring variety, a clear head and clearer decisions.

On almost every run I kept our mission clearly in mind: Smarter Business Solutions makes sure that SharePoint is used successfully and sustainably. I needed committed employees and convinced customers.

I had a second recurring thought on my runs too: that I never again wanted to call my wife or anyone else to beg for 15 euros in an underground car park.

In 2010 something had to change, first in me and then in the company. What start-up 2.0 looked like is in the next post: Smarter Business: Start Running! Why I write about life, work and running together at all is explained in #lifeworktrailbalance – why this blog?!