Small Business Focus: Six Foot Five Productions

Six Foot Five Productions combines the talents of Taylor Robinson and Jason Wallis. We had coffee recently at Urban Standard and they answered a few of my questions, as well as gave me a lot of laughs. They are really passionate about what they do and you can check out some of their work at http://www.sixfootfiveproductions.com.

Why Six Foot Five?

Taylor: “It took us forever to decide on the name of the company. I had a buddy that said ‘You should call it Six Foot Five Films, because it rolls off the tongue easily and it would be a cool logo.’ I didn’t really want to do it, and then I mentioned it to Jason and he liked it. At least he pretended to like it.”

Jason: “I didn’t really care what we called it. There are lots of successful companies who started off with what might have sounded like stupid names, like ‘Nike,’ but they have great products. I felt like no matter what our name was, what we do is going to make it great or not. I don’t feel like the name will make it great, but we will make it great. Hopefully that’s what we are going to do.”

Small Business Focus: Forrest Walden, Iron Tribe Fitness

Forrest Walden is a long-time friend and somebody I have watched evolve over the years, both as a person, as a business man and as a fitness enthusiast. Play the video below for a brief introduction:

Meet Forrest!

►

He graciously allowed me to ask him a few questions, so read below to learn more about him and about Iron Tribe Fitness.

For those that don’t know about Iron Tribe, what is the biggest distinction between you and your typical chain fitness facility?

“The biggest difference is the type of program we do, which is constantly varied functional movement done at high intensity. Some people know this is as CrossFit. Yet, there are a lot of facilities and gyms in town that offer CrossFit.  What really separates us is our facilities, the fact that we have two full time coaches per class and the unmatched community that is the Tribe.

“CrossFit is our program and our facility is specifically engineered for that type of workout. You can’t do the type of workouts we do in a typical fitness facility (there are too many machines in regular gyms). Our workouts are designed to only work with functional movements, so a lot of work with kettle bells, bar bells, rings, ropes, rowing machines… a lot of things you just won’t find in gyms anymore. You used to back in the 1920s and 1930s before we started getting all of the latest and greatest fitness machines (which are literally useless). In order to do these types of workouts you have to have a facility that is setup to do them.”

Small Business Focus: Jim Pattillo, Norman, Wood, Kendrick & Turner

Jim Pattillo, Partner
Norman, Wood, Kendrick & Turner
Photo by Caleb Chancey

Jim Pattillo is an experienced litigator. In the past eight years, he has tried over 40 cases to verdict in a variety of areas including insurance coverage disputes, transportation liability, commercial litigation and professional liability. Mr. Pattillo is a frequent speaker and writer on a variety of topics regarding litigation and trial practice.  He can be found at twitter.com/jimpattillo and linkedin.com/in/jimpattillo.

You are active in social media.  What value has it added to your practice at this point?

“First of all, it helps me represent my clients in litigation by finding out information about opposing parties in an information over-sharing age.  It’s almost not surprising anymore what things people post that would be relevant in litigation. It also it helps me interact with my corporate and insurance clients.  We are able to relate more on a personal level.”

Do you have any examples of this?

“Any time I am defending a personal injury case, the first thing I do is go to Twitter, Facebook or Myspace and see if they have posted anything relevant to the case.  For example, if somebody claims they were injured in a construction accident falling off a two story roof, and two weeks later they’ve posted something about water skiing out on Lake Martin, that’s certainly something I am going to print off into a PDF in case they decide to change it later.”

Small Business Focus: David Gray, DAXKO

David Gray, CEO of DAXKO
Photo by Caleb Chancey

David Gray graduated from Auburn University with a degree in MIS.  He worked for Drummond Company as a computer programmer for one year before getting a call from a recruiter in Chicago to come work for Grant Thornton.  He did management consulting for them for four years.  He married a fellow Auburn graduate and moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1997 and where he went to work for a Silicon Valley-based start-up.

Despite the fact that the company he was working for was not a dot-com, when the bubble burst in 2001 they were greatly affected and eventually bought by Peoplesoft.  When the acquisition occurred, Dave decided to seek a new opportunity.  He and his family moved back to Alabama and after a short stint at CTS, he decided he wanted to go into business for himself.  He was introduced to Tom Patterson, the founder of DAXKO (DAXKO provides software to YMCAs, JCCs, & Community Centers).  After Dave explained his business idea, Tom instead asked him to come run DAXKO.  After three months of conversations, he accepted and began on January 1, 2003.

Why did you decide to so heavily niche your product?
“Focus is important. I experienced working at another company that was really good at a specific niche.  As we grew, we tried to become too many things to too many people.  When I came on board at DAXKO, I started hammering ‘relentless focus, relentless focus’.  I said that we were going to be good at one thing or die trying.  We interviewed prospects, customers and team members and tried to figure out what made the most sense for us to be.

People… the blog is coming back!

I have a new Small Business Focus forthcoming this week. I know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath on the next blog post and I won’t disappoint you!

How to Make Your Network Work for You

I just read this article a few minutes ago and a lot of it resonated with me because of how closely it resembles the way I like to network.  There are so many opportunities now that social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn have provided me with avenues of connection that I might not have otherwise.

Take a few minutes today to read this article and let me know your thoughts.  If you want to meet me, let me know and we’ll grab coffee.  You are buying, of course!

http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2010/02/how-to-make-your-network-work.html

U.S. Birth Rate Decline Linked to Recession

My initial Small Business Focus was on Garrett Doss, practice manager at OB-GYN, South, P.C.  In the article, he referenced declining birth rates and how that was directly impacted by the recession.  I just saw him tweet this article and thought I would share (follow the practice @obgynsouth).

Introduction

Birth rates in the United States began to decline in 2008 after rising to their highest level in two decades, and the decrease appears to be linked to the recession, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of state fertility and economic data.

Full Story
Source: Pew Research Center

The Contributors

This is us. Thanks again to Caleb Chancey for coming on board bringing quality photography to BhamSmallBusiness.com.  Learn more about Caleb and me.

Small Business Focus: James Lewis, Bettola

James Lewis is the owner of Bettola, an Italian restaurant located in downtown Birmingham on 2nd Avenue South and 29th Street. Originally born in Montreal, Canada, his family is from Birmingham and this is where he lived until he was nine. They moved to California where he resided until he finished business school at the age of twenty one. He has owned Bettola for four years. James sat down with me for a few minutes to share how he got his start and a little about the restaurant.

What is it that drove you to be an entrepreneur versus just being a chef?

“I decided at a very young age (17) that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My father has been an entrepreneur my whole life. The deciding factor for me was being who I want to be, when I want to be it and creating my own universe, if you will, and being able to control what is going on in my life, instead of having other people control it.

BBA hosts ‘people’s choice’ award for local small businesses

The Birmingham Business Alliance is accepting nominations for a new “My Choice” award that is the latest installment in the 2010 Small Business Week Program.

The award is a people’s choice contest that allows patrons in the chamber’s seven-county region to vote for their favorite small businesses in the area, the alliance said in a news release.

Click to read the full story.