Taxman, You’re Just Too Much (Why I’m Moving)

It’s been awhile since my last update, and there’s good reason for this. There’s a ton of great stuff happening.But before I get to that, lets get to the real topic at hand.

I’ve told my close friends and colleagues that I’m moving, so now its time to tell everyone else. To where you ask? Back to the Valley of the Sun, the heat trap, the blistering hot desert and what I had called home for over 10 years of my life. The next question is usually …

Why?

There are many factors in my decision to move and while the cold weather is  definitely one of them, but its not a deciding factor. The main reason is simple. It’s too damn expensive to operate an effective start up in Minneapolis in the profit margin area that I’d like to remain within. After doing some research on a great tax site, it became very clear to me that I could easily hire another developer and maintain the same overall operating expenses that my custom software business has as well as my barcode based start up has in another state with lower taxes. This is huge for someone who is bootstrapping their start-ups without funding. Having the ability to hire a FTE to work on your business while you tackle other problems of the business can make (and usually will) you much more likely to be successful. Who wouldn’t want to succeed at their business?

So, thats the short of it. I’m moving because it’s cheaper on the tax front (corporate and personal). While Arizona is not the cheapest, its one of the lower on the totem pole. I would have really liked to move the family and business to Austin where taxes would have been even less (0 percent in some instances). However, the family also has to agree with where we’re going, so as a compromise we’re returning to where we have friends/family close – the Phoenix metro area.

Speaking and etc

This move will impact some speaking engagements and I’ve notified the interested parties. If you were looking forward to a talk I was giving and I’m not going to be there (St. Cloud), I apologize. I’ll also be handing over the Twin Cities Developers Group over to Paul C (current co-chair on TCDG anyway). However I’ll still be speaking at some regional conferences such as Heartland Developers Conference, AndDevCon II and many other in the region (hopefully SXSW next year). You can catch me speaking at the SEVDNUG, Mobile groups in town. I’ll also be starting a Mobile Conference in the SW when I get there. More about that later.

If you’re in the AZ area and want to connect when I get there (mid May) I plan on working out of the Gangplank HQ co-working facility, so swing by and say hi. As always you can reach me on the blog, twitter or on various other social networks.

Qonqr & Agile Medicine

I’m involved in a few start-up’s here in town. Namely Qonqr and Agile Medicine. I will continue to be an integral part of these teams, I’ll just be operating in a remote capacity through email, IM, skype, you name it. These companies will still be headquartered here, however I am taking my other bootstrap project (barcodes.io) to AZ with me for further development to disrupt the barcode space. More info on this as soon as an alpha product is available.

CrossFit

As some people have seen, I’m quite the CrossFit advocate. Why? I’ve been working out for 11 years at the gym and had mediocre results. 3 months at CrossFit and I’m doing things I never thought I could do. Long story short, I love it. I recently passed my Level 1 CrossFit Trainer Certification and in the next 12 to 24 months I plan to open a CrossFit affiliate in the Phoenix area. Not sure where yet, but thats another goal of mine.

See ya soon…

Its’s been real Twin Cities (and real damn cold too), unfortunately the local government costs my business a little too much money so I need to go somewhere a little more start-up friendly at this point if I want to survive the long haul in this business. Good luck to everyone thats out here!