Today was an exciting day for the company. We officially launched our geeky friend to the world with an article on the front page of the very prestigious and very cool TechCrunch Weblog.

Founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington, www.techcrunch.com has rapidly become an authority in the internet blogsphere. The company is dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.

The article was written by Jason Kincaid, who covered in detail the functionality of the site. I believe he objectively and elegantly captured the essence of what Simon offers to users.

My wife, my partners, my sr. editor, the PR agency, and I were waiting all day in front of our computer monitors, our fingers numb from constantly refreshing the screen to see if  the article had popped out. Finally, after one brief telephone interview with Jason and 10 hours of waiting, the article suddenly appeared. It was so exciting to see our website name and logo in the middle of the screen with a big title that said: LetSimonDecide Takes On Life's Tough Choices. I was so happy that I screamed. It was our big moment, the 1 minute Super Bowl commercial.

Immediately after the article was released, I started receiving Skypes and e-mails from the team and friends. Our inbox was showing all these notifications from the server of hundreds of new users from all over the world signing into the page. This is very exciting to witness, the magic of the internet and the power of the social media.

I believe our servers started to slow down because of the traffic. Tomorrow the tech guys may have to increase our server capacity (one more bill to pay!), but this is one I will be happy to cover. We also received several Twitter followers on our @LetSimonDecide account, and other sites requested links to our page which is always nice.

Like i any other public announcement, the article has received positive and negative reviews from Tech Crunch users. We are closely following each of them, since they represent opportunities to learn and improve our product.
Our press release to other media outlets was distributed minutes after the launch and tomorrow a biz wire will be uplodaded for other media sources to pick up.

Couldn't be happier and more charged to continue with this adventure.
Well, tomorrow night I may not have as much energy, since my dear dentist will extract two wisdom teeth. Probably not the best decision to schedule this operation now...next time I will consult with Simon! 

Take a look at the article at www.techcrunch.com, if you can't find it, do a search for LetSimonDecide (all together).

Let me know your thoughts!

I'm excited to finally show you the mysterious website. This is an early beta version of the site and we are still working on it.

It's incredible how many things and how many people are involved in the development of a web 2.0 site. Investors, programmers, writers, psychologists, lawyers, PR experts, mathematicians, decision making experts, video producers, designers, quality assurance experts......aaaah!   

The premise is simple: We live in a world with too many options and too much information. Simon helps you analyze your decisions from a fact based and personal perspective and recommends you the best course of action.

We want to provide a real solution for a real need, the need to make better, smarter decisions in our lives. Our goal is to deliver the best free, easy to use, online tool for decision-making. How we will make money? Believe me, this is what keeps me awake at night. We are following Google's strategy of 
"if we build it, they will come," but we are also exploring business opportunities by providing customized decision-making solutions and research to educational institutions, CPG companies, and small businesses. 

We still have a long way to go, but we have an extraordinary team and, with your help, we are confident that we will get where we need to be.

So far, we have received very encouraging comments and I would love it if you could sign in, test the site, and give me your thoughts, good or bad, so we can improve. Please send your comments to contact@ricardosolar.com or you can leave your comments here at this blog.

Thank you very much, and happy decision making!

Please visit: www.letsimondecide.com

7:20 AM
My wife and I prepared breakfast and lunch for the little monkeys, then walked them to school with Dorito.
8:20 AM
Cleared my agenda. When I used to hear people say, "I cleared my agenda and went to my daughter's soccer practice," I was always very envious. My wife, a successful entrepreneur, would get to do the same. For me, it was impossible. My meetings would always pop up like hideous guac-a-mole heads and even if I was able to smack them, where would I go?? To my office to answer e-mails, but only until another meeting from my boss would pop up. I finally had the joy of clearing my calendar for the following day, just like that, to go on my daughter's field trip.
9:30 AM
When I can, that's the time I go to the gym, a big change for me. I noticed how different the mix of people was at that time of the day vs. at night when I used to go. At 7:00 PM you have all the people that come from their 9 to 6 jobs. They are goal-oriented, trying to burn as many calories as possible, tackling their workout like they might tackle a corporate project. 9:00 am, on the other hand, is another world. The parking lot is empty, the 7:00 am rush is over, and the vibe is much less frantic. I like to group the gym-goers at that time into 5 categories and, for fun, try to guess who is in which bucket: the successful business owner, the layoff-still-with-package guy, the model, the stay at home wife, the banker and the limbo lunatic that you don't have a clue what they do (like me).
11:00 AM
I have confirmed that sometimes my wife needs a break from me. I started noticing that she would take her laptop and run to her friend’s house every other day, normally during the time I was working at my home office. Finally, after a Guantanamo-type interrogation, she admitted that even though she loves to have me around, I was invading her “alone” time and she had to look for it somewhere else. I felt like one of those old couples where the husband retires too early and drives the wife crazy. So in a demonstration of love, I called my only .com startup wizard and friend John, and asked for asylum at his house. We had a great morning of entrepreneurial chat and work and we went for lunch at a Peruvian restaurant at 10 dollars a pop. My friend doesn’t know this but I’m planning on doing this every Monday.
2:00 PM
I had a conference call with Mexico, Colombia and San Francisco, simultaneously--very exciting. We were discussing a major changed in the algorithm of the website. In the middle of this critical call, my home phone started ringing nonstop. My mom was calling to see if I wanted her to bring some of her home made Puerto Rican soup, my wife was calling my cell phone because she thought her credit card was lost, her friend was looking for her because she wanted to help find the credit card, my daughters were dancing with signs outside of the office asking me to pick up the phone. At some point I lost it and screamed at everybody. Needless to say, next time I will schedule these calls in the morning.  
8:30 PM
Read Harry Potter to the girls and, after remembering that I had cleared my agenda for that field trip the next day, I went back to the computer to continue working until 1:00 AM. In a company where you are the boss / owner / employee there are no excuses. Work has to be done and there are no meeting rooms to hide in.

I received a very nice note from a Mattel friend who left a couple years before me in a situation similar to mine--chasing the dream. He updated me on his life and, fortunately, he is doing great. He described how long it took him after leaving Mattel to slow down and start enjoying his family, living in the present and not glued to his Blackberry screen.

Right now, I'm very busy building the new business and I don't foresee any slowdown coming soon. On the contrary, I see more speed and craziness heading my way, as we get closer to launching the site and the company. To be honest, I love it. I love almost every minute I spend building this dream. It doesn't feel like a job at all. But my friend does have a point. I need to start thinking about how much quality time I spend with my kids and the things I may be missing. I'm definitely spending more time with them than before, but I know that I have room for improvement. 

After re-reading his e-mail, a rush of guilt prompted me to take my kids, one of their friends, and our dog Dorito to the beach strand to skateboard at 10:00 PM. On the way, I bought a jug of milk and cookies, grabbed some plastic cups, and sat on a bench on the pier to indulge. We shared a fantastic and magical mini night picnic. At some point towards the end, I couldn't resist and connected to my CrackBerry while we were dipping cookies. There was nothing critical that required my attention on that evil little screen, but unfortunately that instant was enough to interrupt the magic of that unique moment. My kids noticed my absence immediately and continued to have fun without me. The present became past, faster than the screen went to black. It was too late when I realized that a precious time had gone by, before I hit reply.

I'm discovering that having this much flexibility and freedom can be both fun and dangerous. I'm used to having a very defined routine, a rat-race type of daily schedule for 15 years: wake up at 6:30 am, eat breakfast, kiss my wife, daughters and, now, Dorito. Drive to the office just in time for that first meeting at 8:30am, then have lunch at 12:00 (Tuesdays - quesadilla, Wednesday - Greek food, Fridays - pizza), followed by more meetings, answer 150 e-mails and drive back home at 6:30 PM for dinner. Now I find myself with this blank piece of paper that is my daily schedule where Mondays are not very different from Wednesdays (except that it's the day they sweep the street) and, like a kid in a candy store, I'm facing all these options and I don't know what to pick first.
Should I eat breakfast then exercise and then e-mail, or exercise first? Should I schedule my meetings from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm and not in the afternoon? Should I go to yoga, Pilates, spinning, or all of the above? Should I just work in my pajamas for 15 hours straight or go to bed early. I felt like a kid who has gone nuts in a candy store the other day, when I found myself at the movies with my neighbor (who else?) at 11:30 am watching a very bad movie "Push" (rent it in the best of cases). I felt this was a little unnecessary; maybe it was just a little bit of guilt, I don't know, maybe it was that I'm just learning how to manage this new freedom, to eat the candy and not have too much of it because it can make you sick. I think I need to create my own new routine to avoid freedom indigestion. 

For all of you, savvy freelancers or ex-freelancers, any recommendations on a daily routine?

After my on-"boarding" process for my new job yesterday, today was my first day at my new office, which is located at the intersection of my dining room and my kitchen. I showed up at 7:15 am, after a 30 second commute from my bedroom. I encountered some traffic in the stairway due to my daughters' getting ready for school, and our dog Dorito's desperate running to the front yard to take his morning pee. I turned on my computer and quickly scanned my emails from the day before. I noticed from the headers that I had received some hate mail since my previous blog post (loved it!). 

My wife and I made breakfast for the girls like every morning, but this time I didn't feel the need to rush. I walked the girls to school, something I hadn't done in ages, and for the first time ever I was able to volunteer with the valet parking--helping kids safely exit their cars. Then, my wife and I walked back from school while enjoying the simple pleasure of a leisurely conversation. I returned just in time for two conference calls, through this beautiful technology called Skype, with my partner and the web development team in Colombia and Mexico. By 11:30 am, I was done with my calls, so I took some time to chat with friends in Mexico and the US and to look at the traffic statistics of my blog, using another free tool from heaven called Google Analytics. I was satisfied to see a big jump for yesterday's page views and unique visitors. The report says that to date the site has received 350 visitors, miniscule numbers for the web universe but huge for me.  

I went outside to shoot some baskets in the driveway (I need a lot of practice) and was amazed to see how bright the sun is before noon. I went over to visit my neighbor, who is also a stay-at-home entrepreneur and soon-to-be my partner in everything fun (he scouted the location for yesterday's snowy photo shoot). After that, I drove to Mattel to return some papers. The commute to my former workplace, "The Tower as we call it, was definitely more relaxed than ever before. I was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and blue sunglasses (I'm still sensitive to daylight after 12 years inside drywall partitions). I bumped into some friends who I kissed and hugged the Latin way, delivered my papers in the lobby, and left without any strong emotions. 

In the afternoon, I jumped back and forth from my office to the yard to play with my daughter or to chat with my wife. We grilled burgers for dinner, discussed politics with my mom, and put the girls to bed after reading four pages of Harry Potter, which is taking us forever to finish.  Here I am, again, in front of the computer at 10:30 pm. So far, 15 hours of blended activities between work, family, errands, and fun have passed and I think I like this new job...a lot!

                                                    Thinking of you!

At 3:00 PM, I grabbed my last items from the office, surrender to HR my office key, badge and painfully my blackberry (see exhibit A) and walk into the parking lot, got into my car and looked for the perfect song to exit the building (couldn’t find it!) went to the gym on daylight ! and around 6:00 PM I arrived home, where a surprise party organized by my wife and daughters with many of my best friends was waiting for me to celebrate my first day of my new life.

 

Fifty-something votes were cast, and I think we have some clear winners. To be honest, I was surprised. I assumed that the daughters/family options were going to be safe, wholesome choices that appealed to many, but only 25% picked those options (we live in a cynical world!). The "8 Hour Matrix Movie Marathon with Neighbor" received only 4 votes, one from my neighbor (of course), who has this awesome TV--but that's for another blog entry. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the purely self-indulgent activities were the winners: 26% went to "Go to the beach and do nothing" while 32% went to "Go snowboard and send you all a photo." making this the absolute winner.

I know this wasn't an easy task--many of you had your fingers on the "I hate you" option for a while before voting for any of the others. Only 5 people gave in to their bitter emotions and expressed their true feelings, an action which I applaud and promise to justify by sending a nice photo on February 3rd around 11:30 am to all of you, either from the top of the mountain or from my beach chair...just a few miles from your cozy gray cubicles.

Thank you all for taking the time!

I called in sick today to my job at Mattel. The corporate air-conditioned flu viruses finally got me...

I figured this would be a good opportunity to sneak a glimpse at what my life may look like in the coming months--or years--and it is not that bad. I'm in bed, wearing pajamas, making phone calls, chatting on Skype, updating my blog, and e-mailing on both of my blackberries (yes, I have 2!). I even treated myself to a nice quesadilla with guacamole for breakfast. I couldn't help but think, "This is the life!"