In the deep dark winter of 2004, I decided to try my hand at something new.... working for myself.  I devised a little marketing gimmick for Bed and Breakfasts, the B&B eCard, which was pretty simple; a nice label on a diskette.  The diskette housed a link to the B&B website and the concept was simple; not many people will throw out a diskette like they do business cards.  So, if a B&B owner gave the eCard to guests, I proposed that the diskette would fare far stronger and could end up in many hands.

As I contacted a few B&Bs in the area, I bumped into June who invited me over for tea and biscuits.  June's B&B, Mumford Bed and Breakfast, was really nice and we quickly got on famously; I liked her English wit so we kept on talking about various business ventures and concepts for working together.  I was introduced to Rob Place, a programmer who recently immigrated to Canada from Southhampton, and I learned that Rob had devised a web-based storefront application for June's brother still in England.  I was mesmerized as I watched Rob login and make a couple of subtle changes.  Mesmerized and hooked and as Steven King says, "Ka POW", I had an idea.

I soon established there was a market for CMS, and started looking for 'resellers' the first year.  I knew I had a good idea and wanted to protect it, so I drafted up my first Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and starting booking appointments to talk to local web designers about offering the storefront CMS.  We had given the CMS a name, CMS Inventory Live (try the demo) and I started to meet local designers, web developers and graphic designers.  I put the NDA down in front of them and told them if they wanted to talk to me about my ideas, I needed something in writing to protect them.

Not many people were willing to sign the NDA.  And I made a lot of appointments.  Sometimes I would open up talks anyhow and reveal the nature of my business.  A few people walked out of those meetings and set themselves up as competitors (extremely weak competitors offering sub-par solutions on sub-par technology) so I started to book less appointments with local hosters and consultants.

Of all the people to whom I served NDAs, few of them really understood what I was trying to accomplish; simply put,  partner up and offer a larger range of services to a larger audience.