Back in September of 2007 I wrote a post on the Origins of Postgreen and never followed it up with a final post on the subject. Well, now that Nic has gotten me back into blogging here at Postgreen, I guess I should finish this up.

Last time I left off with me finishing college and searching for my first job in the real world (not the TV show). I looked at two basic types of companies while searching for a job:

1. Large companies with good salaries, benefits, training and perks where I would most likely sit in a tiny cubicle and do the same thing day in and day out while attending school at night to obtain my MBA which the company would pay for.
2. Small to mid-sized companies that were growing but seemed to have no idea what they were doing. These companies came with less impressive salaries and benefits, but I would get a lot more responsibility and opportunity to try my hand at different positions.

It should come as no surprise that I chose the second path since most of my major decisions take the opposite route of what the average and probably smarter person would do in my same situation. My first job was as a Manufacturing Engineer at a $100M barcode scanner manufacturer in South Jersey.

While I was at this job, I was faced with to opportunity to pursue an MBA at night. I went back and forth with this decision for a while and ultimately decided that if I was going to start my own business, real world experience would be much more valuable than an MBA. MBA’s seemed to be better suited for those seeking a career in corporate America that need to be well versed in the latest jargon and buzz words.

So, after this decision was made I decided to take part in an experimental job rotation program at the company that would allow me to gain experience in a variety of departments to make me a well-rounded and more valuable employee. I was the first and last person to try this program. It took me to such departments as purchasing, scheduling, project management and eventually product marketing. While I was in this job rotation program, the company still did not spend squat on training so I had my boss buy me as many books as possible and always went to at least one major training of my own choosing each year. While they didn’t have a specific budget for this, they seemed excited that I wanted to learn on my own and found a way to pay for this training. I made sure that every book I bought and every training I went to could also benefit me when I ultimately decided to start my own company.

I worked at this company for about seven years up until I quit to start Postgreen in the fall of 2007. More on that next time…

I attended the 6th Annual Social Venture Institute yesterday at the Wharton School of PA. The event was organized by the Philadelphia chapter of the Sustainable Business Network and was dedicated to the Triple Bottom Line principles of doing business. It is a two day event but my schedule only permitted me to attend for one day.

The event was better than expected and was perfect for someone like myself who has in their mission that they are a TBL company. It reminded me that, like everything else in my business, I need to continually improve my actions towards people and planet as well as profits. There were a lot of inspirational examples of businesses that have succeeded by paying their workers living wages, using organic materials/foods and greening their businesses.

I think the one issue that was brought up that could most apply to postgreen was the importance of utilizing other local businesses as much as possible. The economist, Michael Shuman, spoke about some interesting statistics regarding local businesses and their impact on the local economy. Here were a couple stats that really hit home:

• For every dollar that is spent at a national chain store, roughly 18 cents remains in the local economy while 45 cents remains in the local economy if the same dollar is spent at a locally owned store. Example – Borders or B&N vs. local book store.
• If 10% of the retail $$ spent in a community shifted towards locally owned businesses then over 1,000 new jobs would be created in the area. If the same 10% shift was made towards chain stores then over 1,000 jobs would be lost in the area.

Most have heard figures like these before but it is always helpful to have a refresher. This got me thinking about the LEED requirement in the homes program to source materials from businesses within 500 miles, in part to reduce transportation effects on the environment. These stats made me realize how important this aspect of the LEED criteria is and that I need to strive to source as many materials and services from companies well within the 500 mile perimeter to really impact postgreen’s immediate communities. Currently I buy business cards, software and hardware online. I have my websites hosted from who knows where. When we start our first project I can look into using local craftsman like welders and glass shops to make materials that I might otherwise buy from businesses outside of Philadelphia’s borders.

I could go on an on about possible ways to improve postgreen’s TBL impact. This was a common theme at the event but it was refreshing to here that others are succeeding with these approaches. It was also important to hear the most successful companies (in terms of TBL) said that achieving a good TBL is a process that takes time. It can be overwhelming at first because there are so many things that could be improved upon but you just have to keep chugging away at it and make a few good changes to your business each year. There are also times when businesses really wanted to implement more but couldn’t for financial reasons. Rather than sacrificing their economic bottom line they realize that there are just some things that might not be able to be implemented, at least not right away.

I also wanted to note that Terry Gillen from Michael Nutter’s administration spoke briefly on some of the changes we can expect in the near future that may positively effect TBL businesses in the area. Some of the highlights of their intended plans are below:

• A process to expedite permitting for development projects that conform to a set of environmental guidelines similar to what Chicago has put in place.
• Focus on making Philly a better place to do business financially by focusing on how businesses are taxed.
• Encourage infill development on Philly’s many vacant lots.
• Green vacant lots and plant a whole bunch of trees.
• Green the city’s municipal buildings and require LEED ratings on any new buildings.
• Improve recycling immediately.
• Create a sustainability cabinet that will be working with all departments of the city.

Check out some of Nutter’s policies in more detail at his website – www.nutter2007.com. He has a detailed plan for the environment on the site which is worth a peruse.

It’s been about a month since my last post but I’m finally back and still alive. It’s been a busy month. Below is a list of what has been keeping me busy and off of blogging in the past month (in chronological order):

1. 1. quit my job
2. 2. finished moving from our house into our new loft apartment down the street
3. 3. went on my last business trip to Barcelona for a week for a tradeshow
4. 4. sold my house (while in Barcelona)
5. 5. finished up my last week at work and turned in my laptop and Blackberry
6. 6. switched to all Mac products with the iMac and iPhone
7. 7. started working as a Realtor with my wife’s team in center city Philly (www.stokesgroup.com)
8. 8. revamped the entire postgreen website which is now running entirely through wordpress
9. 9. sold my first house as a Realtor (technically a condo)
10. 10. setup a new website (www.100khouse.com) to record everything to do with postgreen’s first project
11. 11. kicked off a complete redesign of my wife’s website for her RE team (see above for link)
12. 12. painted my entire loft with 14′ ceilings and a total of five colors using Olympic no-VOC paint from Lowes
13. 13. put my first vacant lots under contract for postgreen’s first project
14. 14. wrote this blog post

That’s all for now. More later…

Big things happened for postgreen this past week! I just quit my 9-5 job and said goodbye to corporate America forever! After one last business trip to Barcelona for my old company I’ll be focusing on postgreen projects full time (I wasn’t exactly going to pass up a free trip to Barcelona).

Secondly, we are finalizing our first postgreen stock home and hope to have the plans and renderings available on the website in the next few weeks. I have also begun a total redesign of the site to clean it up and feature the stock homes once we start finalizing the different models. Look for a lot of changes soon!

Have a great week everyone!

Like many small business startups it has been a long journey to the start of postgreen. I suppose it all started back in high school while trying to decide what I wanted to study in college. While I never felt a strong pull to any one major I realized that it was my ultimate goal to have my own business. I had no idea what that business might be but knew that I wanted the freedom and control that could accompany having your own business if run properly.

I think this early desire came from observing others who had built their own business as well as those toiling away in corporate America. I noticed a difference from these two types of people. While I can’t say that I fully understood the misery that can accompany a career in the corporate world until I began working after college, I could definitely see early on that there was something different about the individuals that had successfully created their own businesses. These were the people that seemed to be at every one of their children’s sporting, music, acting or other events. They also seemed to be more involved in local school, church and community activities. Some even contributed financially in addition to their time. These were also the families that seemed to come back from summer breaks with stories of their month long vacations near some large body of water.

It was at this stage that I knew I wanted to someday build a business of my own. I knew it would be hard work and had no idea what the business would be but I wanted to experience the lifestyle I saw other small business owners around me had built for themselves.

So the time came for me to go to college and I decided on Electrical Engineering mainly because I was good at math and science and every test and teacher told me that was the major for me. I liked audio equipment so I picked electrical over mechanical. I soon found that electrical engineering was not for me and switched to mechanical. After a year or so of that I realized I was attracted to business, management and marketing so I changed my major a final time to Industrial Management which was half business, half engineering and a couple of Industrial Engineering specific courses thrown in.

Late in my junior year of college I started thinking about what my first job might be while I worked on ideas for my own business. This is the time that I started reading books on business, investing and real estate. I think the first book I read that convinced me I wanted real estate investing to be part of my primary business and investing strategy was Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen. This was the first time I read about the benefits of real estate including passive income (or making money while you sleep as Robert put it) and using leverage and OPM (other people’s money) to purchase large investments. I decided that real estate was the best investment one could make on earth and vowed to learn more about all aspects of it.

It was also around this time that I considered continuing schooling after college to become an architect. I loved the creating and drafting part of engineering and always had somewhat of a suppressed artistic side that I thought would merge well into a career in architecture. It also dealt with real estate and had the potential to grow into my own business if I was successful. Alas, by the time I was nearing graduation I knew I had had enough of schooling for the time being and wanted to get out into that real world and start gaining real life experience. This would not be the last time I considered architecture again though…

to be continued…