Customizing Success

Best Places to Work Nomination

Dan Graham — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:15:12 +0000

We are always working to make sure our company is a place where people look forward to coming to work everyday and everyone enjoys what they do.

The Austin Business Journal holds a yearly contest where you nominate your company as one of the best places to work in the greater Austin area. We strive to attain this award every year because in doing so, it helps us to see that we are continuing to exceed our employees’ expectations and continue to examine ways to improve as a company.

The process starts by sending out a survey to our employees that asks them to evaluate our company based off of categories such as team effectiveness, goal alignment, trust, feeling valued and work environment. All the finalists are invited to an awards ceremony where the ABJ announces the rankings and crown the number 1 place to work in Austin.

We are a finalist this year which makes it our 5th year running as a “Best Place to Work” in Austin. Apparently there was some tough competition this year and nominations were at an all-time high. We have yet to win THE best place to work in Austin but maybe this year 5th time is a charm! It’s a great honor and I’m excited that BuildASign.com has made the list yet again!

Office Warming Party

Dan Graham — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:00:24 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post, we moved into a new office space and had yet to decorate. As of today, we are about 90% done with our décor and it’s really added a ton of personality to the workplace. We had Joel Mozersky with One Eleven Design come and help us with design, furniture arrangement and décor. He has done work at other local popular places such as Uchi, Uchiko, Gibson and La Condesa. We liked his work at these places and thought he would be a great fit for the design of our office décor.

We have custom wall paper, walls decked in BuildaSign memorabilia, phone booths for private calls and a bar for in-office Friday happy hours. We have large couches for meetings with whiteboards that cover the entire wall, lunch tables covered in tshirt designs signs and bumper stickers covering our cabinets. There are also flat screens located throughout the office that display our website, pictures of our employees and a dashboard that shows the locations and images of our current order placements on a 3D globe.

Last Thursday, we had an awesome office warming party to break in the new office space that lasted all day. It had been in the works for almost 2 months now and the results were apparent. The festivities started at 7am with breakfast over at manufacturing. Later in the afternoon the festivities continued with a happy hour party complete with a live band, a local food truck, cupcakes, swimming balloon fish and lots to drink. It seemed as though everyone really enjoyed themselves and it was a huge success!

Charity for Adrenaline Junkies

Dan Graham — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:10:11 +0000

Once again, I’d like brag on my dashing business partner (the one in the black tux pictured below), JR Kraft. This past Saturday he scaled down the side of the 400 ft tall One American Center located here in downtown Austin to represent our company for a Make-A-Wish charity event called Over the Edge.

The event started about a month ago when JR invited people to donate to the Make-a-Wish foundation. If his supporters donated more than $1,500 then he would be “thrown over” the side of the building and rappel down the side. Not only that, but he had to be one of the first to raise this amount out of a group of 300 supporters also involved in the event in order to be able to be thrown over. Luckily, JR was one of the first to reach this goal and ended up raising almost $2,300 in less than a week.

Naturally, JR decided this occasion was tux appropriate so he suited up in a full black tux as he scaled down the side of the building in the 95-degree Austin heat. What a champ. We were able to watch it outside as well as on a big screen set up in the lobby where we could watch the event stream live while eating GoodPops. It was a great way to spend the weekend and I’m glad we were given the opportunity to contribute to the Make-a-Wish foundation!

Lemonade Day

Dan Graham — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 03:16:43 +0000

Last weekend it was time again for the annual Austin Lemonade Day Tasting. This was the second year Lisa and I have been judges and it is a blast tasting the different types of lemonade. This event is held downtown at the Austin Children’s museum and kids from all over town create their own version or twist on lemonade and we (the judges) go to each “lemonade stand” and taste test their concoction. There are a range of participants and it’s great to see kids come out to this and put their creativity and business management to the test. Lemonade Day is national non-profit that teaches kids the joys of entrepreneurship and the importance of fiscal responsibility and philanthropy - http://www.lemonadeday.org

As you move from table to table you don’t know what’s going to come next. There were so many different types and flavors, ingredients and methods of preparing. They were all so adorable as a majority of them were a little bashful and would move their eyes down towards the ground as they handed us a cup to test their lemonade that they’d worked so hard to prepare. There were a variety of winning categories that the kids could win prizes for. Some of these categories included most innovative, best sales team and most creative name. My favorite overall was probably the contestant who carbonated their lemonade with dry ice.

This year they had a twist on the contest which made it even more fun. GoodPop was sponsoring the event and offered to make a popsicle flavor out of the winning lemonade for the Best Natural Flavor category. Not only that, but all profits from the sale of that flavor will be given Lemonade Day. I just found out about the company and am excited to try a few of their flavors. For those of you who don’t know what GoodPop is, it’s a popsicle company here in Austin that creates these frozen treats of goodness from all natural ingredients with a variety of really awesome flavors such as Soy Coconut, Mango Chile and Hibiscus Mint. The company has been growing rapidly and if you want to try them out you can find them at a number of natural food retailers here in Austin such as Whole Foods and Central Market.

Lemonade Day at the Children's Museum

Formula 1 in Austin

Dan Graham — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:17:47 +0000

Business is my sport of interest. I can’t say I have a favorite team or religiously watch a sport, but lately there’s a lot of hype in the Austin area about F1 racing and I feel as though I need to start ramping up my knowledge base about the sport. Unfortunately, F1 races aren’t as easily accessible as other sports like as football and baseball. Even with basic cable, you can turn the TV on and watch one of these sports almost everyday of the year. When it comes to F1, the races are on the other side of the world and I’m usually sleeping when the race takes place. Fortunately, a track is in the process of construction here in Austin with a completion date set for this November. I guess I should start looking for tickets!

Recent aerial shot of the course

Grandstands going up

Yoga

Dan Graham — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:38:05 +0000

I decided I wanted to get some form of exercise other than “running” from meeting to meeting. I didn’t want to do the cliché gym workout so I did a little bit of research and have been giving yoga a try. More specifically, I’ve been doing a form of yoga called Baptiste. What differentiates it from most forms is that it’s done in a heated studio (around 95 degrees F) and concentrates on the flow of the body.

I am headed into my third week and thus far it’s been great! I went into it not knowing what to expect because when I think of yoga I think of a room full of mostly women doing stretches on a mat. Nonetheless I’ve heard it’s great for building and toning muscle, increasing cardiovascular strength and detoxification, and, on top of that it’s supposed to mentally stabilize and instill a level of stress relief.

At this point, I’m in the adjustment phase and getting up to speed with all the poses and jargon. With that, I’m experiencing a lot of sore muscles and frustration in not being able to do some of the poses (or pronounce them) such as the Setu Bandha Sarvanganasa (aka the bridge pose) but I’m sure I’ll catch on with time. I’ll keep you updated with my progress as the weeks go on.

Danny from The Karate Kid performing the Vrikshashana (Tree Pose).

Build A Intrapreneur

Dan Graham — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:01:56 +0000

Here’s a buzz word for you: intrapreneurship. A popular term used back in the 80s and early 90s that is starting to gain increasing popularity in today’s businesses. Intrapreneurship has a large place at BuildASign.com and has been crucial to our rapid growth and ongoing success. When most people think of an entrepreneur, they think of a business owner, but really an entrepreneur is someone with insanely strong drive, motivation and a competitive spirit (who also happens to own a business) and someone who isn’t afraid to take risks and to lead full-steam ahead with great initiative and dedication. So what if you don’t happen to have that parenthetical “business ownership” factor? Enter the intrapreneur! These are the talented individuals that we love at BuildASign.com: the job creators, the risk takers, the individuals who take strong ownership over their own area of the company. There is, however, a trade off that businesses have to make for intrapreneurship to work – autonomy, trust, leeway, budget, fortitude to endure failure and the willingness to let go of part of your company so that it can be run by someone else.

I’d love every employee at BuildASign.com to be an intrapraneur and we hire for it! We want to be a place of innovation, a place for incubation and a place for rapid growth – both in our bottom line and in the future entrepreneurs we team up with to make our culture and our company a success.

Network Premiere

Dan Graham — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:32:08 +0000

If you happened to be watching the early afternoon news last week (which you most likely weren’t) you may have caught my interview on KVUE! It was a really great experience — my first live tv interview — and a fantastic opportunity to spread the word about our giving program and philanthropic initiatives. It’s always a blast to tell people what BuildASign.com is all about and how we are involved with both the Austin community as well as with communities nationwide!

Officially moved in!

Dan Graham — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:40:03 +0000

About a year ago, we outgrew our facilities and began searching for a place that could contain our rapidly expanding company and also leave plenty of room for growth. Well, I’m happy to report that as of last week we are officially moved in to our new office! The location is not far from our previous office, but in terms of size, we have nearly tripled our space. We no longer have to share bunk desks and be elbow to elbow when working. The area within the facility is open and there are no individual offices (another major change that I’m excited about), only conference rooms. This creates a work environment that is conducive to easy communication among teams and keeps the work flow smooth. We now have 2 locations across the street from each other: 22,000 square feet of office space and 60,000 square feet of manufacturing space!

At this point the walls and common areas are a little bare but décor is in the works. We have an office warming party planned in the next couple of weeks to welcome friends and family to check out the new work place and get it broken in, complete with booze and bands. There will be a follow up with another post to let you know how that goes!

FESPA Americas – Chairman

Dan Graham — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:59:20 +0000

I mostly want to take a few lines to brag about my business partner, JR Kraft. The handsome gentleman depicted below is chairing this years debut FESPA Americas steering committee and will also chair the Global Business Forum at the February show in Florida. FESPA is a really big deal and it’s very exciting to see them move to America and for BuildASign.com and JR to be so heavily involved in helping bring better resources to the American printing industry.

See you at the show!