The Waiting Game

About 2 weeks ago, the last of a very long and tough procurement process ended.  We have been pursuing a huge government contract.  Confidence in our ability to deliver is not an issue.  Waiting for an answer IS an issue.  We started this process back in August when the RFI came out, then October with the draft RFP came out and then in December 08 when the RFP was finally issued.  After iterations and iterations the last draft was due early APril. 

The contract brings a pile of jobs to the area, all waiting to go from a successful blind recruitment.  All my staff is chomping at the bit to get started but…..we wait,

…and wait…. 

There is ony one outcome I want out of all this incredible investment and effort – to bring the work home to our community.  No matter what else comes up, this is just hanging out …and we wait.

Future Google

Everyone laughed at me when I said that I wanted to be the next google when it came to how we treated employees.  I want Fahlgreen to be noted as the best small town google.  I value hard work, reward hard work and feel that if we are going to spend that much time together we might as well make the best of it.  So I have a lot of plans as we gear up to move to a new facility and expand our business.  But more on that later.

Here is one of the employee perks that folks will giggle, not google, about.  We play cards on occasion.  A canasta-type game called “Hand & Foot”.  My parents taught me.  We play a version called cut throat where everyone plays against each other instead of teams and the object is to rack up the most points in 4 rounds of play.  Talk about aggressive personalities that come out of my employees.  We started playing cards as a distraction from a terrible defeat we faced as a company last year.  It was a Friday, everyone was sour and we decided we needed a distraction.  By the end of the game were were laughing and had forgotten the bad news for the day.  So we make this a ritual if we have a great win or great defeat.    Sounds like a waste of man hours but I found I get ten-fold back of what we spent on a round.

If you really want to know what your employees are like – play a round of cards with them.

We are Linked In

Fahlgreen set up a company profile and links to employees in LinkedIn.  It appears to be a great networking tool for contacts.  We posted a few job openings and received instant responses from others that found our site.  Old contacts as well as new have been made through my profile.  Not sure why we waited so long to attempt this but guess we had a few spare minutes today to do some networking.

If your a woman entrepreneur looking to start up your own company, I strongly encourage you to contact the Make Mine a Million $ Business organization.  They were instrumental in inspiring our growth and helped us through a few tough hurdles.  We now have sponsored a woman in our local area to promote growth in her business.  We will feature more on our awardee in upcoming blogs. 

Blessed day to everyone.

Hello world!

Greetings!  This is the start of my attempt to blog about being a woman entrepreneur, the market we are in and all the events that seem worth blogging.

Be patient with the layout while I learn my way through this site.