Starting a Business

A few years back we bought the ryansbees.com internet domain.  At that time, Ryan wanted to have his own bee hive, harvest and sell all of the honey.  So we bought the domain, setup a little website and bought Ryan a package of honeybees. (At the time I already had beehives, but this was his own hive to make his own money.)  We quickly found that on a small scale, owning a bee hive is expensive, labor intensive and not really a good business for Ryan (or of us.)  While we still have the domain and a few bee hives,  98% of the honey we extract is kept for our family.  Beekeeping is a hobby, not a business for us.

For some time Deni and I had talked about how we could make more lasting memories with our kids.  We want to make memories like we made when we went to London for Ryan's Make a Wish trip.  The whole family enjoyed our travel abroad and we look forward to other future travels.  Ryan has even told us the next place he wants to travel to.  Spain.

Spain is a good goal and one I'd like to help make possible for him. The biggest problem is that Spain, or really all international travel, is fairly expensive especially when there are 4 of us traveling.

Over the years, Deni has talked about getting a side/night job to help pay for some of these 'extra' things, however I have always felt that it is far more important for Deni to be in our home with our kids while they are growing up. In my opinion, the benefits of having Deni in the home far outweigh any amount of money or international travel she would provide through working.

With that being said, we had also been kicking around the idea to start a small side business to help bring in a little extra.  A business that Deni could run while the kids were at school or on weekends when we could all chip in and help. This business would help us fund trips and other 'teenage' things, such as Syd playing on a competitive soccer league or Ryan going to California for a debate trip.  The 'teenage' things that cost hundreds of dollars that weren't really planned.   In Oct 2014 we were in Arizona at a corn maze with Deni's family. At the corn maze was a gentleman selling Kettle Corn.  He had some yummy Kettle corn and had quite the setup to make and sell it.  Deni got his contact information and we began wondering if starting a small Kettle Corn business of our own would be something we should do in Utah.

We thought about the possibility for a few months, then in early 2015, we decided to make the plunge and buy Kettle Corn equipment and start a Kettle Corn business.  We ordered the equipment and began planning for future events.

There were a lot of things we needed to do.  Pick a company name, register with the city and State. Get State and Federal Tax id numbers and the list goes on and on. It's much more than just making and selling Kettle Corn. Since we had 'Ryan's Bees' we thought we'd go with something related to Sydney.  And our new company was born: Syd's Kettle Corn, LLC

Once we had the Kettle Corn equipment ordered, we realized we also needed quite a bit more to actually be successful.  The equipment was delivered and it was massive.  We had seen videos and pictures of the equipment, however when it was sitting our garage, it was massive.  We needed a trailer to house our equipment and a truck to pull the trailer.  We bought a 6 x 12 enclosed trailer as well as a used 2008 FJ Cruiser to pull the trailer.  As we looked into the State/County regulations, we also found we had to have an enclosed tent since we were "cooking" food.  Popup's are relatively inexpensive, however popup's with 3 enclosed walls, in a custom color and our business name printed on all four sides, isn't so cheap.  We needed the tent to be legit, so we ordered it. In the beginning, we had a general idea of the things we needed to do and buy, however there was a lot of learning by discovery and getting started was pretty rough.

In Feb 2015, we signed up to be a food vendor for the week long city festival in July.   The booth fee $375.00.  That's a lot of Kettle Corn to sell to just pay the booth fee back, however we thought the only way we'd know if it was worth it was by trying it.  We learned a lot that week, what worked, what didn't. We made corrections as we went.  The days were long and hard work, but we were doing it as a family.  The kids worked 10 hour days, Deni and I worked longer than that.  We would let the kids sleep in and then ride their bikes down later as the festival was just a few miles away from our house.  All in all it was a long week but good for our brand new business.  We decided we'd come again next year.

Being in the city festival made a name for us as well as opened doors for us. We had people inquire if we would do weddings (which we did once this year.) We were later invited to the local Farmer's Market and another city event in the Fall.  All of these events we did as a family with the exception of one event.  We ended up hiring a young man from our neighborhood to help us for a few hours one day when we had a conflict with one of Syd's soccer games, but other than that we worked together.

We learned a lot in year one. We decided early on we needed professional Tax help and hired a CPA to help us navigate the business and our taxes.  We paid our share of taxes and fees throughout the year, however a few things caught us off guard at the end of the year.  First was a "restaurant tax" at we owed.  The tax was 1% of our gross sales, however it was 1% we didn't know we would have to pay (oh and we're not a restaurant).  The second thing that caught us off guard at the end of 2015 was paying sale tax on the equipment we had purchased to use for our business (as it wasn't collected at the time of sale.)  We'll be ready for those expenses next year.

We started Syd's Kettle Corn to allow our family to be able to do some of the 'extra' things. In time it will provide those things, however one of the added benefits we saw this year was that it taught our kids how to work hard. It helped Ryan fundraise for his Eagle Project and have an amazing successful Eagle Project.   It has also given our kids a way to earn income they would not have been able to earn otherwise as young teenagers.  While the first year was a little rough, as expected, we hope to see Syd's Kettle Corn grow and help fund a trip to Spain by summer 2018.

I've been living a lie

When I got married in 1997, I think I weighed 135 lbs.  Over the years I've slowly gained weight.  Nothing too dramatic, but I've added pound by pound over the years.  My current Drivers License says I weigh 155 lbs. That's a lie. That may have been true in the year 2000 or maybe in 2005, however that is not true in 2015.

During the month of Dec 2015 it became apparent, I needed a change. My clothes, specifically my pants, were tight around the waist and it was uncomfortable.  I didn't want to buy bigger pants (partially because I don't want to own bigger pants and partially because I'd rather spend my money on other things).  The alternative? Diet and Exercise.  I began watching what I eat and exercising in hopes of my pants fitting like they did before.

The Weigh in: 
Dec 28, 2015: 177.7 (12 stone, 9)

On a side note, I'm not sure why we don't use the measurement of 'Stone' in the United States. It sounds way cooler than saying pounds. Plus no one knows how much you actually weigh without looking it up.

Fast forward to today.  It's been one month of counting EVERY calorie that has gone in my mouth.  I've exercised at least 5 days a week for 45 minutes or more. The last few weeks, I've been doing cardio for 45 minutes then lifting weights (alternating upper and lower body every other day) for another 15 minutes.

Today's Weigh in:
Jan 27, 2016:  166.6 (11 stone, 2)

I've lost 11.1 pounds in one month and about 2 inches in my waist. I'm feeling amazed about the results. I didn't do anything extreme.  I simply watched what I ate (portion control through counting calories) and exercised. I would check my phone before eating something to see how it would impact my remaining calories for the day. It's not a new concept to me as I do the same thing when spending money (check my phone app (YNAB) to see how the purchase will impact my future budget and spending.)  But it's working for me.  I've got a bit more to go, but well on my way.

 

Ronald McDonald Dinner

When Ryan started looking for an Eagle project, he thought of the organizations that had helped our family through the years. The organization that came to the top of the list was The Ronald McDonald House (RMH).  We have stayed in the RMH in Los Angeles, CA, Salt Lake City, UT, and most recently in Palo Alto, CA.  These 'homes'  have been a huge blessing to our family. To see what Eagle projects RMH had, we took Ryan to SLC and he inquired what he could do for an Eagle project. The answer was for him to provide a meal for the residents of the house for his Eagle project.

Ryan wasn't too excited with the idea of providing a meal as an Eagle project.  He thought it was too easy of an Eagle project. Matter of fact, he knew he didn't want to do that. He was thinking bigger.  As he thought more about his project, he thought it would be a better idea to provide Chromebooks to the Ronald McDonald House.  Many times when people stay in the Ronald McDonald House, bringing their laptop is the last thing they think about.  Those that have used the RMH for extended stays, it's nice to be able to keep in touch (chat, facebook, even video chat).  Ryan thought providing Chromebooks would help families stay in touch with those other family members which are at home.

Ryan has a Chromebook and uses it for school and keeping in touch with friends. It's almost become a necessity for him. Ryan set his sights on providing 5 Chromebooks (at about $200 per chromebook), with a stretch goal of providing 10.  Ryan got his Eagle project approved and began working to fundraise.   

As he began fundraising, it quickly became apparent that he was going to blow past his stretch goal.  In the end, Ryan raised enough money to buy THIRTY Chromebooks for the RMH.  Ryan sold Kettle Corn at our Farmer's Market, in front of Sam's Club and to those in neighborhood.  He also got some sizeable donations from friends, family, and even a few strangers.

Ryan in August at the Farmer's Market

After the purchase of the Chromebooks on Amazon, the price came down a little and we reached out to Amazon and our Credit Card to recoup some of different in price, while they didn't refund the whole difference, they both provided some money back on the purchases.  The problem with recouping some of that cost, was that 100% of all the donated money needed to be spent before he could finalize and complete his Eagle. 

With about $130 in Amazon credit and about $280 in cash, Ryan looked back to how we could help the Ronald McDonald House.  While we were in Palo Alto last Nov, it was very nice to have meals provided.  After one meal in particular, they played bingo afterwards and 'winners' won games and/or toys.  Ryan decided to do something similar and buy games (Uno, Skipbo, Pass the Pigs, etc) as well as some books, like the Percy Jackson Series and donate them to RMH to use for the residents as they wanted to.   Amazon credit spent.  Next, spending the remaining cash. Ryan decided that it would be fun to also provide a meal. (he just didn't want that to be the ONLY thing he did). 

We signed up to provide a meal on a Friday night, but that ended up conflicting with a debate tournament of Ryan's, so we called and moved it to a Monday night.  Originally they asked us to prepare for 60 people, however about a week before our meal, RMH contacted us and said their room attendance was up and we should plan for 60-70 people for dinner. 

Ryan decided that we would have serve a Pasta Bar with multiple Pastas and Sauces, green salad and end with Sydney's signature cupcakes for dessert.  Pastas were:  Spaghetti, BowTie, and shells.  Sauces:  Red sauce, Red sauce w/ hamburger, Alfredo, and Creamy Pesto.  We went as a family to buy the ingredients at Macey's.  It was fun to see Ryan and Sydney carefully spend the remaining money, trying to 1.) get the right amount of ingredients and 2.) get the best price to maximize the amount of food they could provide.  Some things wouldn't fit in our refrigerator, so Deni had a few things she had to pick up the next day, but we were able to get the majority of the ingredients together.

Ryan invited some of his friends to come help us, however most weren't as committed to the idea when it came down to actually showing up and serving.  We originally planned on taking about 15 people (including our family), however we ended up only taking 10. (Three of Ryan's friends, one of Sydney's and my parents.)  10 in total, so we fit into two cars. 

We left right after school (about 3pm) and headed to Salt Lake City to prepare the meal.   

Familia y Amigos Berger

Ryan did a great job supervising and making sure we all had things to do.

Sydney and her friend got to working making Syd's famous Chocolate and Vanilla cupcakes.

Frosting the cupcakes.  Syd looks like she could be a contestant on Cupcake Wars. 

When Ryan wasn't supervising, he helped the rest of us prepare the meal.

Dinner was to be served at 6pm.  We had just under 2 hours to get the meal ready and we used every minute of it.  We were busy, but it was fun experience.  One I'd like to do again.  Ryan's friends and Grandparents were a tremendous help.  We could not have done it without them.  (Thank you).

The friends that made dinner possible.

We immediately started cleaning up (about 7pm). Two hours later we finished cleaning up.   A few pictures and then an hour drive home.

We pulled into town about 10:30pm.  A late night for some of the kids on a school night, but it's an experience they will not forget.

Dinner (when Deni is away)

I'm pretty spoiled. Deni does 99.8% of the cooking for our family, however when she's gone (like she was tonight to a Debate tournament with Ryan) I have two choices. Make something or go hungry.  I didn't have any ideas for dinner, nor did Sydney.  Actually Sydney did have an idea but it was to go out for dinner.

Since I've been watching/counting calories, I've been amazed at how many calories are in common meal served in fast food restaurants. Counting calories has definitely opened my eyes.   For example, today at work we had our once a month team birthday celebration, complete with ice cream and cupcakes.  Jokingly I asked how many calories were in one cupcake.  The answer to my question was 760 calories. I thought he was joking, so I picked one up and ate it. It wasn't until later when I was trying to log my calories, I searched and found that ONE SINGLE CUPCAKE was 760 calories.

Back to what to have for dinner. When in doubt, use the Blendtec to make dinner. We decided to make homemade Jamba Juices, which technically isn't cooking, but we didn't go hungry.

My Homemade Jamba Juice Recipe: 

• 1 Yoplait Light Yogurt (I chose Strawberry/Banana yogurt) - 90 calories
• 1 small banana - 80 calories
• 1 Orange - 88 calories
• 1/2 cup blueberries - 43 calories
• 1 cup strawberries - 54 calories
• 2 heaping tablespoons of Protein powder - 80 calories

The recipe makes one almost overflowing quart jar (32 ounces) and by my calculations, it's about 435 calories.

Goodbye Novell (sign)

It's official, after a little over 5 years and two different acquisitions, the 'Novell' sign has finally been removed from building H.  For about 14 of my 15 years at 'Novell' I've worked in the East Bay campus.  I've driven north on I-15 and could see the familiar building H, with it's red neon Novell sign on top.  Currently it looks a little bare, however it will be replaced with 'Micro Focus' very soon.

Below: Taken from the 8th floor looking down (North side of Building H).

It's very apparent (now) that when Attachmate bought Novell in 2010, all Attachmate wanted to do was to suck as much cash out of the company.  They were quite successful at this cash sucking procedure. Attachmate sucked the one billion in cash we (Novell) had at the time of acquisition.  Attachmate also began selling anything and everything they could.  They sold a large portion of our patent portfolio, including a patent a co-worker and I submitted to the US Patent office (which is now owned by Oracle).

Attachmate also sold all the buildings in the East Bay campus, including Building H and locked 'Novell' into a 10+ year lease at a crazy rate.  Attachmate didn't care as they weren't in it for the long haul, they were just in it long enough to pull the cash they wanted and run.

When Micro Focus bought Novell (and Attachmate Group from Attachmate) in 2014, it was refreshing. Micro Focus quickly went to work reviewing the company and began investing in people and products.

It will take a little time to get use to the new 'Micro Focus' sign, but it is a welcome change.

Time to buy more guns

This is a picture of Syd from last summer.  I guess it's time to buy more guns. I also need to buy a shirt that says 'Guns don't kill people, Dad's with pretty daughters do.'  I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing that shirt and be cleaning my gun when she turns 16 and goes out on her first date. 

RSL jersey day

For Christmas 2014, our family present was one pair of Real Salt Lake Season tickets.  The kids were shocked we got them and we all really enjoyed going to the games throughout the year.   When it came time to renew our tickets, we really didn't want to buy them again for Christmas (2015).

However, we really enjoyed the one on one time it gave us with the kids and with each other and it didn't hurt we got to do something we really enjoy. So we renewed our season tickets and then held on to them.  I blogged about buying  them about 2 weeks ago.  The kids don't read my blog so I wasn't worried about them finding out.  

This last week, I've been working on cleaning up my blog, adding pictures that got lost when I migrated my blog to it's own domain and back to blogger.  While doing that, I've read some funny stories I had forgotten and have shared them with the kids.  Sydney, in particular, enjoyed hearing the funny things she did 7 or 8 years ago.  Yesterday she asked me the address for my blog.  I didn't respond, as I knew if I gave it to her, she'd find out about the RSL tickets. She asked a few more times, so I told her the address.  

For about 15 minutes she was reading and looking through old blog posts. I was keeping an eye on her as I knew she would see the post about us renewing the RSL tickets.  Sure enough, a few minutes later she giggles to herself and I can tell she read the post.  She sat on the couch trying to figure out what to do. She looked and me and smiled. I asked her why she was smiling and she said that she had read my blog.  

I told her to call Ryan in and read it out loud, so she did.  They were both excited to learn that we have tickets once again. 

Fast forward to today.  I woke up and picked out my White RSL away jersey.  As I was getting breakfast, Ryan came up with his RSL jersey on.  Finally Sydney came up stairs with her RSL jersey on.  Pretty funny we all decided to wear our jerseys today. 

Now we wait until March, which is the first home game. 

You are growing old too fast

This morning while I was laying in bed, Sydney came in and layed next to me.  I said "Sydney, you are growing up too fast."  Sydney replied with "You are growing old too fast."

The day I almost died

A few months ago, I had a co-worker fly in from out of the country. He needed a ride to the SLC airport, so I drove him. As we were driving (my co-worker) Rik mentioned how many gun stores we had passed on I-15.  We began talking about guns and he told me in his country they were not able to own guns AND he had never shot a gun. Ever!  However it was on his bucket list to do. I said we should go shooting the next time he was in town.

Rik was in Provo all this week for some training, so I invited him over for dinner and then to go Shotgun shooting.

Syd had indoor soccer training from 5pm to 6pm.  After soccer, Syd and I headed back to work to pick up Rik.   Dinner was amazing, as usual.  Then we headed off to the Gun Club to do some shooting. It's obviously January in Utah. 7:30pm, dark, snowy, and cold, but we were the only ones shooting, so it was great.

I borrowed two shotguns from my Dad.  One of the two guns is my favorite gun.  It is a break barrel single shot shotgun with  no padding.  Just a simple shotgun which happened to be my Grandpa Berger's.  I've been shooting this gun for years. Because there is no padding, when I shoot it, it always gives me little bruises on my left shoulder from the kick.   Matter of fact, when I was in Jr High school, I removed all the wood from the gun, sanded it down, stained it and added a clear coat and then put it back together.

I took the first shot with my Grandpa's gun.  I didn't even get to shoot at the first clay pigeon that was thrown, as the gun had a hard time pulling the external hammer back. (which was odd, as that had never happened to me).  After a few times of pulling the external hammer back, I pulled it back and it clicked into to place.  I yelled 'pull' and hit the clay pigeon dead center and it exploded into dust.  It felt good to shoot and hit the first thrown clay pigeon.  My next few shots were the same, I was on a roll. We took turns shooting, every other shot.

At about my 5th shot, I yelled 'pull', aimed and pulled the trigger.  I'm not sure I hit that one, because as soon as I pulled the trigger and the gun went off, I felt the barrel of the gun in my right hand fall to the right, while the stock in my left hand go the opposite way.  The gun was now in two different pieces.

I was shocked. This isn't supposed to happen. The metal cast just blew apart.  Even more shocking, was that I wasn't harmed.  I stood there for a few seconds (which felt like a few minutes) looking at the gun and replaying the event in my head.  After I realized the gun was beyond repair.  I went ahead and set the gun down and continued with the 2nd gun the rest of the night.

We each got about 20 shots in.  After a bit, Rik honed in his shooting skills and began hitting the clay pigeons. Impressive for his first time shooting, but then again he had a great teacher. :)

After shooting, I drove Rik back to his Provo hotel.  I forgot how much I really like shooting shotguns. I need to get out more.

4 little kisses

Counting calories isn't the most fun thing I've done, however it has given me awareness of what I consume. Pre-counting calories, I would have consumed most of  a bag of hershey kisses without thinking twice. Now any time I want to eat something, I check the MyFitnessPal app on my phone before eating it. This is especially true towards the end of the day. The MyFitnessPal app is becoming like my Money Management app.  I look at the MyFitnesspal app first to make sure I can 'purchase' those calories before I consume them.

One hershey kiss is 22 calories. Twenty-two yummy calories.

Each night I open the MyFitnessPal app in hopes of seeing at least 88 calories remaining for the day.  Most nights I have 88 calories remaining, so I go to my closet, take down the 330 piece bag of hershey kisses I got for Christmas (take out 4 hershey kisses) and then slowly eat them.

I've been able to stay under my calorie allotment for the last 2 weeks, except for one day, where I was just a few calories over, so for 5 minutes I walked up and down the stairs. Maybe a little extreme, but I wanted to be able to continue to achieve my goal of staying within my calorie allotment. .