How much to charge – Good examples of how much to charge if you’re an independant web designer, but completely accurate and applicable to other trades.
(0)Archive for the 'small business' Category
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How to Ship Anything – How a small business owner built a smart shipping process to reduce labor costs… very cool.
(0)If you own a retail store, and are looking for a smart local online advertising alternative, you might look at StepUp. It’s like ShopLocal, but as I user, I personally find it more useable… too bad they only have one store in Austin listed in the system, as I’d really like to find a way ot find what I want locally instead of driving to two or three different places to find what I’m looking for (I’m really tired of doing that).
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I’m wondering when there will be a Web 2.0 application to replace PowerPoint.
Currently there is:
Writely, the ever capable browser based Word stand-in (I won’t call it a replacement yet, but it’s damn close) that lets you create documents that need a word-processor, share them, edit them, and publish them on the web. Cool. update: Writeboard is a Safari compatible (Writely isn’t) web app for word processing.
Num Sum, a web-based spreadsheet application that honestly does most of what I do with Excel, but doesn’t come close to having the full power of Excel yet… I’m sure it could with age though.
Where’s the PowerPoint replacement? I’m sure it’s either done and I don’t know about it, or it’s in the works… Is SoapBX it? Not yet, but someday, maybe?
These new online AJAX based web apps are pretty cool, in that they even work, but also if you’re a small or new business owner, they can provide a different way to get things done than the standard M$ route… your mileage may vary though, of course. I still wouldn’t trust a mission critical application to these largely unproved web app companies.
Is there anything else anyone needs from Web 2.0?
I ask because I’d love to be the guy that builds it and cashes out to Yahoo or Google – bwahahaha!
Small Business 101: Part Two – Cash flow – a good quick guide to cash flow, with an example excel file to help you plan better.
(0)Simple means launching something – launching a new product? or a new company? pay attention to this advice: “If you find yourself talking more than walking, shut up, cut the vision in half, and launch it. You can always fill in the gaps later. In fact, you’ll know more about what gaps need to be filled after you’ve launched “half a feature” than if you tried to fill them in before launching anything.”
(0)WSJ: Peter Drucker on The Five Deadly Business Sins “(This article originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 21, 1993)” … and couldn’t be more true to this day. Peter Drucker was so dead on all the time…
The world will always be a little less right without him:
Everything I have been saying in this article has been known for generations. Everything has been amply proved by decades of experience. There is thus no excuse for managements to indulge in the five deadly sins. They are temptations that must be resisted.
Signal vs. Noise: Is starting a company the right thing for you? – Part One of their take on Business 101.
(0)Compensation for Board Members – great article for smaller startups to read now, before they need these answers.
(0)8 Mistakes To Avoid When Naming Your Business – “Mistake #6: Making your business name so obscure, customers will never know what it means.” Translation: “Inluminent is a shitty name”. Yep, I learned that one.
(2)Nick Denton: Startup kit – a good list of stuff that you might need/want if you’re building a start up, but keep in mind that Denton has contacts that got him some of what he got for below list prices… so you might have to shop around for some of the more commercial solutions he recommends…
(0)Full-time freelancing: 10 things learned in 180 days – Great read.
(0)A list of 19 ways to Raise Money for Your Business from Entrepreneur.com… great list!
(0)Delta and Northwest file for bankruptcy. Two in one day? This won’t be good for the markets tomorrow…
Jay Small writes about how hard it can be to exceed customer expectations when you’re trying to reset them.
(0)I can’t say this enough. Dreamhost Rocks!
If you’re looking for a new shared hosting plan, you really ought to check out Dreamhost.
They just started a new sale this month:
From: [email protected]
Subject: [Announcement] New! All Shared Hosting Disk Space Doubled!
Date: September 1, 2005 4:26:34 AM CDT
To: John EnglerHey Happy DreamHost Disk Hogs!
Starting Monday we began a new sale.. double (the starting) disk space on
all shared hosting accounts. As we’ve been known to do, we’ve also
applied this to all existing shared hosting customers as well!Keep in mind your overall disk quota total may not quite double, because
of any additional weekly growth your plan may have undergone since you’ve
signed on. BUT, we’ve also doubled the weekly growth rate on all active
shared hosting plans to the following:Level 1: 40MB/week
Level 2: 80MB/week
Level 3: 120MB/week
Level 4: 160MB/weekThere is no action for you to take to get this increase… everything’s
already happened.
I’m not going to detail all of the stuff they offer with each plan, but I’d highly encourage you to check their sale our. Their “one-click installs” of some super useful software alone make it a really great hosting package. I mean where else can you buy a hosting plan for $8 a month, and get up and running within about 15 minutes of starting your hosting plan?
Their super easy to understand and use account control panel is also pretty damned spiffy.
They also pay referral fees for anyone that says you referred them when they sign up (yes, if you follow these links you’ll credit me with the referral). But that’s not the only reason I’m singing their praises… my diskspace with them is going up by 200MBs/week (I have two plans with them). That’s reason enough to sing their praises. Thank you Dreamhost.
Check ‘em out and tell them I sent you 
.
I just got an email from a potential client I’m in Chicago to visit this morning:
John,
I hate to do this to you last minute, but [my boss], who is the person that really wanted to see you, has been pulled into an all day sales meeting, so can we reschedule?
Thanks,
xxxxx
Our meeting is schedule to start an hour from when that email was sent.
Realize that I just flew all the way to see this client, spent 3 hours on a plane (and will spend another 3 hours getting home), a night away from my family… and they want to reschedule the morning of?
That’s crap.
If you’re in the position to meet with sales people that have to fly to come see you. Don’t cancel on them the morning of the appointment unless you have a sick child or family member, and even then, try to find some way to honor the meeting time, or move it to the same day.
And if something does comes up, welcome them into the office, shake their hand, apologize, maybe buy them a cup of coffee and reschedule in person. You’ll get a much different reaction from them, and you’ll get a much better follow on appointment.
I just read this great article over on Entrepreneur.com:
From those 70,000 catalogs sent to people who had never dealt with us before, we’d earn about $70,000 in sales or just about $1 per catalog. Considering that it cost about a $1 just to produce, print and mail each catalog, you’d be right to bet this wasn’t the best way of becoming independently wealthy! But you know that business after business out there–all up and down Main Street, in home offices and on the internet–are doing the exact same thing. They keep using up their marketing budgets trying to attract new prospects–while forgetting all about their old customers.
Now let me tell you what happened to the catalogs sent to the customers who’d ordered from us before. Those 30,000 catalogs would generate, on average, $450,000 in sales. If you’re paying attention–and you should be now–that’s $15 in sales for every catalog we sent out. I bet you could stand a cool $15 return for every dollar you spent on marketing, couldn’t you? The fact is, catalogs are one of the few marketing vehicles I know that, when unleashed on a list of your past customers, can return a bushel basket full of money. The question now becomes, why are catalogs so effective?
The rest of the article just makes sense. I think if I ever had my own business, I’d definitely print my own catalog and send it to past/current customers, so they could see what else my company has to offer them, in a non-confrontational manner.
I know my wife still looks at just about every catalog that comes through the mail slot on the door every day.
Olivier Travers asks a good question here: Are broken contact forms acceptable?
I say no. What do you say?
And, to point out, I finally met Olivier two weeks ago when he came to visit me in Austin. I wish I could have spent more time with he and his wife.
I spent some time with my uncle Raymond last week. Raymond owns his own business – Framecrafters, and it’s quite a successful little venture. They make custom frames and framed art for retailers to sell, and do some direct to client work as well. They’re good at it, and do decently well.
I was telling him that someday I want to own my own business, because, in my opinion, that’s really the only way people become independently wealthy these days… and that owning my own business would help me get there, or at least enjoy working a whole lot more (that’s the romantic in my thinking).
Raymond told me to think about the idea of starting my own business, and to remember that most small business owners pay themselves 10 percent of gross revenues as a salary. So, if that’s true, and your business grosses $400,000 a year, you’ll earn $40,000. $500,000 = $50,000. $1,000,000 in gross profits = $100,000 in salary. That’s not true in all businesses, but it’s a great little goal to keep in mind, when I do get around to starting my own business.
Wow.
Paul Graham, one of the original founders of the company that Yahoo bought to create their online stores for small-medium sized business, posted this article on how to start a start-up. Great read.
Pretty inspirational.
Jeremy Zawodny moved jobs inside Yahoo recently, and his post about it hit me like a hammer (emphasis mine):
“And on that note, I love the fact that I can move around within Yahoo. Many companies talk about how employees are free to look at internal opportunities, but not all of them make it easy to pursue those opportunities. They throw up lots of barriers, seemingly encouraging their employees to look elsewhere rather than stick around. My experience at Yahoo has shown that mobility is a fact of life. I know of many other coworkers who’ve tried out various roles over the last few years.”
My last job had a “we encourage people to move around inside the company” policy, but I never felt it was really encouraged or practiced well at all, but that may just be my perception. That being said, my perception of that policy did make me look outside rather than inside when it came time to move on.
Congrats Jeremy.
At the office, I’m having to define “Yield Management” as a business model.
I found a few good resources on the web by searching Google, and this Google Answer was a big help.
I found a lot of different definintions, and this is the simplest one I could find:
Yield Management is extracting the maximum amount of revenue from a fixed quantity of perishable goods and/or services.
These other definitions weren’t bad, and I want to remember them as well:
Yield Management – A pricing model that aims to maximize the yield to the seller by charging buyers different prices according to the value they place on the purchase. Also known as Value Pricing. This is common in airline ticket pricing as business travelers have less elastic demand for tickets than leisure travelers and hence will pay higher prices for the same ticket.
Yield Management – Based on real-time demand forecasting by market micro-segment and an optimization model, Yield Management (also known as “Revenue Management” or “Real-time pricing”) is an economic technique to calculate the best pricing policy for optimizing profits generated by the sale of a product or service, based on real-time modeling and forecasting of demand behavior per market micro-segment.
Academic Definition:
“systems & procedures to maximize results from the sale of a product or service in more or less fixed supply whose revenue producing ability diminishes with time.” Dr. Warren Lieberman of Veritech Solutions Inc.Conceptual Definition:
“Revenue Management is the art and science of predicting real-time customer demand at the micromarket level and optmizing the price and availability of products.” — Robert G. Cross, Author of “Revenue Management – Hard-Core Tactics for Market Domination”Simple Definition:
Revenue Management means selling the right advertising space to the right advertiser at the right time for the right price and the right length of time.
In my mind, yield management is an important concept in sales of a limited inventory of products, and should be practiced if you sell anything that’s limited in availability. Others, such as American Airlines, have proved that yield management can greatly contribute to the bottom line of an organization. (Yield management earned them $1.4 Billion between 1989 and 1991) when they pioneered the technology.
Yield management techniques in pricing online advertising space can greatly increase the profits of online publishers by creativing demand, sustaining value, and growing profit, if applied correctly.
In Lessons Learned the Hardest Way, by Going Belly-Up, Laura Randall profiles the experiences of 4 small businesses that have closed recently and offers this snippet of information:
New small businesses start every day, and fail just as frequently. About 34 percent of businesses with 500 or fewer employees close within two years of opening, and 50 percent fold after four years, according to the Small Business Administration.
Yep, my first personal business venture closed after only 6 months of start-up time… luckily, none of the founders lost too much money on the deal. I’d agree with the idea that it’s tough to start your own business, and it’s even tougher to make money at it, if you’re not truly focused on every aspect of it.
Niche publishing really isn’t just for Nick Denton anymore… Peter Rojas, the original blogger behind Gizmodo has broken out of that gig to start Engadget… a competitor to Gizmodo.
Denton still has a leg up (first mover advantage we used to call it) on individuals launching one or two focused sites on their own, as he can aggregate his entire Gawker media property audiences if he wants to for an advertiser, or he can sell the advertising piecemeal… but, folks like Rojas can probably make enough money off their sites short-term to support themselves, and long term to build a living that they enjoy.
Best of luck Peter…
A few links from the month:
- ADHD Observations – interesting comments from a parent of children with ADHD.
- CSS Dropshadows – from ALA #172.
- The Lowering of Loyalty from FastCompany (great first comment).
- How Not to Win Customer Loyalty from Business2.0.
- Top 25 Cities in the US for Doing Business from Inc.
- The Three C’s of Personal Branding from brandchannel.com.
- MacRumors Buyer’s Guide — know when to buy that new Mac.
- The Perfect 404 from ALA #168.
- 15″ Powerbook Battery Life Tests.
- Agenda Detection — great read for people that end up attending a lot of meetings at work.
- RSSTop55 – a list of RSS submission sites and blog directories.
- The Best Bosses from Fortune.com
- Speeding up MovableType.
- No Salesperson is an Island from BusinessWeek
- Mail.app Plugins and Suggestions.
- Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
- A Standard for Site Organization from stating the obvious (read more from the archives).
- Movable Type, Static Pages, Flexibility and Scalability.
- Web site user modeling with PHP
- 5 reasons you need an IRA from Fool.com
- Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs!
- Technological Fanaticism
- Crafting a Powerful Executive Summary from the Harvard Business School.
- The Logbook of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy – Austin, TX restaurant guide.
If you own or run a company that sells a service to people, then beware of your customer. If they feel like they’re going to get shitty service from you, they’ll probably find someone else to find the service you’re providing for them now. I say this because, if Earthlink is really shipping all of its call-centers over-seas, I’ll be calling to cancel my subscription soon.
Good service was one of the reasons I used to recommend Earthlink.
The public posting by Noel from a few days ago about Nick Denton ‘stealing’ his work has taught me some great lessons, and might teach the rest of us a few too. I’ll try to list a few of them here:
1. Free never means free.
It’s become apparent that Noel did some work for free and in good faith, for Nick and his company. He showed that work (and all the raw work behind it) to Nick without promise of payment. Nick used the work that Noel did, without restitution for said work, and now Noel’s mad about it. Nick’s gotten a little bad publicity out of the whole deal, and thus the ‘free’ work that Noel did has ended up costing Nick something, thought how much that bad PR hurts Nick in the long term is anyones guess.
2. Understandings aren’t always understood.
It’s pretty clear that Nick and Noel each had their own ‘understanding’ of what the fair use parameters for Noel’s work was. Both understandings weren’t clear to the other party though. Communication broke down between these two parties, and that’s really sad. Noel has pretty much lost the opportunity for further work with Nick (not that Nick had guaranteed Noel any paying work in the future) and Nick’s lost the faith and readership of a few people that also don’t understand the reality of the miscommunication, but have nonetheless made up their minds about who cheated whom.
3. Blogs opened this conversation up
Not that this will astound anyone, but without weblogs, a few things wouldn’t have happened here: a) Noel wouldn’t have been able to comment this publicly about the deeds involved, b) Nick wouldn’t have been able to comment on his attackers own website for all the world to see, c) I wouldn’t have been able to join the conversation, and d) We all might not have seen this little event transpire.
I used to work for a person that was pretty ruthless in business. He wasn’t all that honest with the people that worked for and with him all the time… he was sort of slimy to say the least. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have the best of intentions, he just wasn’t all that ethical. At the beginning of all of this, I jumped to conclusions and thought for sure Nick Denton was just like my old boss… but…
After reading all of the comments from Nick, Rick, and others, all I’ve decided at this point is that Noel and Nick had a misunderstanding that should likely have been resolved privately. Nick probably handled the situation badly at first, and Noel grew frustrated enough to post a public comment about what had transpired up to that point. The result is a likely impassable situation that no-one wins from.
Any number of more positive outcomes could have presented themselves if both parties had worked a little harder with the other toward a more tenable solution, but it’s almost too late for that.
Big Lesson: If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
I could have followed that lesson when I originally posted about the situation between Noel and Gawker. Some of the other people commenting on this situation probably could have too. Noel could have followed that lesson when he first brought the situation into the open. I’m sure things could have worked out better had the communication lines been more open.
Some Good News: Noel has posted an update saying that “Negotiations are in the works.” Good to hear they’re communicating again.
First, let me say, I don’t know Nick Denton at all. I also only know Noel Jackson through email (though we’ve emailed a bit for two complete strangers) and I’ve only read some of Joe Clark’s stuff online, here and there.
But, when I read this post by Noel, and then more here on the same topic by Joe, I couldn’t help but feel like Noel and Joe obviously got the royal Denton for Christmas this year. The big question for me is “what can Nick and/or Joe do about what’s happened?”
The best answer I can come up with is “pretty much, nothing.”
Sure, they could likely sue Nick and/or Gawker Media, but that would most likely cost more than it was worth, and they did submit an unsolicited idea to a company… those unsolicited ideas are generally not something an individual can claim much of a pay-off for after giving them to a company, unless those ideas really pay off in the long term for the company that ‘steals’ those ideas.
So, is there a lesson here for the rest of us? I think so:
Don’t give away unsolicited (or solicited) ideas to companies that you may want to work for in the future… It doesn’t pay you enough and not all companies follow “honourable business practices”.
Another lesson (this one for Denton) is that if you are a company that “can’t afford” to compensate someone for their ideas and work properly, don’t use those ideas and/or work… bad PR is worse than no PR.
Here’s a few links to stuff I’ve read over the past month or so:
- Deciding On The Advertising Media – good pros and cons list of different advertising mediums, but leaves out online advertising
- The On-line Marketer’s Secret Weapon: A Site that Works
- Salted Wound : Perfect Weblog Ads
- Seth’s Blog: Why Web Ads Don’t Work
- Fresh Inc: Creating Buzz
- MacMinute: RIAA may have sued the wrong (Mac) person
- “Dude, I could buy mad weed for $129.” – hah! too funny comment
- Letter from Cupertino – reflections from the first month of being employed at Apple
- Smart Playlists.com
- 15-inch Aluminum PowerBook G4 – Page 1 – (10/2003)
- The iPodlet
- decaffeinated: AppRocket – AppRocket is a complete copy (for Windows) of LaunchBar, a fantastic utility for MacOS X.
- Why do Bloggers prefer Macs? – question from the Scobleizer
- The Tao of Mac
- PithHelmet – An ad blocker hack for Safari from what I can tell (haven’t installed it, as I like to support tasteful advertising on the internet.)
- Leaves Rustle: Favicon Creation with GraphicConverter
- Safari Bookmark Exporter – what I am now using to build my link-dump posts
- Mac-Mike: Waiting to be opened
- kasia in a nutshell: The lost art of esthetics
- Lick Me, I’m A Macintosh
- online advertising: sbb
- A Shareware Life – shareware marketing and everything else for shareware authors
- Suppose you could really figure out why advertising works.
- marketing/pricing myths
- Sole Proprietorships: "Sole Proprietorships"
- FCNow: What Business Are You In?
- Inc.com | What Kind of Business Should Your Business Be?
- Seth’s Blog: Traffic doesn’t matter
- A Penny For…: Firing Customers
- Sept. 15, 2003: The Seven Heuristics of Brand Aligned Organizations
- CapitalistBrief – Business News
- The Occupational Adventure (sm) Blog
- Inc.com | The 60-Day New Employee Survey
- Control Your Time: Time Management – BusinessTown
- BusinessPundit: The Value of Sales Experience
- Inc.com | Getting to No
- Cvent – Event Planning, Event Management and Online Event Registration Software – might need this someday
- Brain Brew Radio | Creative Business Thinking
- Inc.com | Better Methods
- BusinessPundit: Successful Implementation of a Corporate Culture
- How To: Score Higher in Google Search Engine
- Breadcrumbs PHP Class
- Julie Albertson | Thoughts | The problem with usability testing…
- Testing Slow User Connections
- AdMonsters – support and networking group for online advertising traffickers
- IDblog: an information design weblog
- Salted Wound : Perfect Weblog Ads
- Usable Digital Media ::: Web Application Usability Blog.
- Seth’s Blog: Helping Jack with web design
- Whitespace
- ClearSilver – HTML template system
- Russell Beattie Notebook: Load Acrobat Faster
- Outlook Tips – very useful information for Outlook users
- AppRocket – still in Public Beta, but a very cool idea that is available on the Mac has been stolen and ported to Windows XP.
- P.S. Fudgeworks – ummmm! Looks good…
- BARTON | FUNK – love this design firms entry page, had to note it.
- IDEA HOUSE – I like this advertising firm’s elevator speech
- American Girls — requires sound, so turn on your speakers (too funny)
- How to Write a Thank-You Note
- Kevin Kelly — Recomendo – totally cool idea, and a great read.
- A tidbit for Movable Type users
- eclecticism > Weblog Ethics
- Google News Creator Watches Portal. Quiet Critics With ‘Best News’ Webby
- the typewriter-keyboard conversion
Advertising
Macintosh
Business
Design and Development
Windows stuff
Misc.
A lesson from Joel on Office Design:
Bottom Line it For Me.
The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about $700 per employee. The build-out was done on budget and paid for almost entirely by the landlord. I suspect that $700 per person is on the high side for software developers throughout the world, but if it means we can hire from the 99.9 percentile instead of the 99 percentile, it’ll be worth it.
I completely agree.
My blog was quoted in an article published in the August 2003 issue of International Journal of Entreprenuership and Innovation. The article is called Internet Review: Entrepreneurial blogging. The full article isn’t available online, but it’s a good quick read. The Director of IP Publishing, John Edmundson, was good enough to send me a copy of the Journal and I must say the entire thing is quite readable for an academic journal. The author, Lew Perren, quoted a blog entry of mine in full in his article. He also quotes from Greenlightwrite.com and StarshipTim.com twice.
Mr. Perren writes a column entitled “The Internet Review” for each issue of the Journal, and in this one, his purpose is “to open the eyes of researchers, policy makers, and entrepreneurs who have not considered the value of blogs.” Mr. Perren goes on: “Some readers may view blogs as data resources for a discourse analysis; other as providing helpful pointers for entrepreneurs. Whatever the view taken, they provide fascinating chronicles of entrepreneurial lives and the potential for new insights into entrepreneurial experiences.”
I’d like to take this opportunity to point those of you reading this weblog from a pointer in that article to point you to a few more business or entrepreneurial weblogs that I read:
- Andy Bourland’s Bourland.com about his building MarketingWonk.com
- Bill Brandon’s Home-Based Entrepreneur
- tjacobi.com
- TRH’s Business Weblog
- Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Business Blog
- Business Law Weblog
- A Penny For
- Fast Company’s Blog
- XPlane’s BBlog
- Jupiter Research’s Analyst Weblogs
- The Venture Blog
- Dana VanDen Heuvel’s weblog
- Debbie Weil’s Blogging for Business Category
- BostonWorks HR blog
- BusinessPundit
- Ensight
- businessbites
- The Small Business Blog
- and last, but surely not least, Rick Bruner’s Big List of Business Blogs at MarketingWonk.
Well, Andy finally spilled the beans about Up2Speed becoming MarketingWonk. It’s a really funny story, if you’re interested in what’s happening with the old MarketingFix (why we didn’t go back to the original brand, I have no idea).
Oh, and always listen to marketing professionals because they always know what they’re talking about
John Gruber takes issue with Microsoft, and Outlook, and the virus issues allowed by Microsoft, in his latest article “Good Times“:
We, as a society, have decided that indoor plumbing should be held to high standards of reliability and maintenance. And somehow weve been convinced that indoor computing should not.
And in the follow up “Dynomite!“:
Complexity is not an excuse for low expectations. Weve strapped men into giant rockets loaded with jet fuel, propelled them into space, and landed them on the moon. That was complicated. And our expectation was that wed get them back.
Why we dont expect our email to work is beyond me.
In reading Gruber’s articles, I reflected on the few IT staffs I’ve had experience with in the past:
US Army: At my level (I was a junior officer) we were completely Wintel centric, but relied very, very little on the PC. No one in our 140 man unit had email except the commander (Director level in most large organizations). Everyone else got their orders by memo, face to face meeting, or voice over the radio. Viruses never stopped our organization from running, though they did impede our operations for the first 12 hours or so until someone higher up the chain said “fuck the computers, we’ve got work to do” and we all just got back to work until the one or two IT-trained guys in the 600+ man unit got things working sufficiently again.
MacNN: Small 3-5 man operation. No IT staff (just consultants every now and then). We all used Macs for our desktops and Linux or FreeBSD solutions for our servers. We talked to each other a lot, used email to schedule meetings, and operated pretty virtually (one person in San Fran., one in Iowa or somewhere close to Iowa, one in Texas and one in Washington State, with a few more contractors spread across the internet). We never had virus problems except for when the internet succumbed to a virus epedemic, at which point, we all took the day off anyways (ok, everyone but the owner who never really worked all that much anyways).
Bestfares.com: Small entreprenurial company. Staff: 120 people. IT Staff: 1 Full time guy, sometimes 1.5 guys (depending on the second guys schedule). We survived with an Outlook/Exchange set-up because again, only 30 people or so in the company had email. Everyone else was a real worker. Those of us with email and calendaring got used to not having an internet connection for at least 2 days per quarter because our IT guy was really good at pulling the plug on the company internet connection if he so much as sniffed a virus coming in. That, and the company was too cheap to upgrade to a more full featured version of Exchange than version 4.x or 5.x, so that we really didn’t have all that much whiz-bang features to being with… And when email went down, I usually got to go home early, so I didn’t complain.
Current job: Large media company. We’ve got two IT staffs: one Mac centric and one PC centric. The “CIO” is a Mac guy. Our internal servers are a mish-mash of Sun boxes, Netscape solutions, XServes, and Linux or FreeBSD solutions. Half the staff uses Netscape Mail and Calendaring. Some use Outlook on Wintel-based desktops. Some use Entrouage on Mac OS 9 or X. And a good amount never use computers in their daily work. We have in-house written spam and virus filters, and yet, our total IT staff investment is tiny… maybe 1% of the total staff in the company works in IT. It’s got a decent budget, but it’s all in hardware and software, not staff, and things work well. When Macintosh desktops break down (pretty infrequent) the Mac staff fixes them (if the operator can’t fix it first that is). When the PCs break down (pretty often) the IT staff tells the operator to reboot and see if that fixes the problem, and if that doesn’t work, they pull it off the desk, take it to a room where they ‘operate’ on the machine to diagnose the issues and then fix it, returning it to service after 24 or 48 hours… We don’t have Exchange installed, and instead use IMAP-based Netscape mail for everyone.
That said, I use a PC at work, and hate it most of the time. Especially since I have Outlook, and not Exchange. And since not everyone uses Netscape Mail, we don’t have a common calendaring solution that we can use to invite people to email reliably… But you know what? I also find that I’m not glued to my computer as much as I used to be.
Inc.com: Pricing New Products
The subhead gives it away on this article: “Companies habitually charge less than they could for new offerings. It’s a terrible habit.”
I did that this week, I’m sure. It’s sad, but it’s easy to do. As a Sales Manager and Product Development guy, I build a product, and then want the sales team to be successful, so I almost always under-price it. This article explains a lot about how prices are set, and how to get around the failing of setting prices the wrong way.
Apple is a failure. Or so says Scoble. Chuq’s got a nice anti-Scoble statement:
…if being with the “market share leader” is what’s important, then enjoy McDonalds and Burger King. Me, I had a wonderful piece of salmon last night at this place called Gardinos. It must be an absolute failure, it’s tiny, only about 30 tables, and just like Apple, it’s obviously been right on the edge of failure for the last twelve years because of its tiny market share and higher prices
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been interviewing candidates for an open position in my organization. I’ve learned a lot as this is my first time to really hire someone into an organization. Here are a few thoughts and suggestions for those looking for a job and interviewing right now:
1. Make sure that you ask for an offer.
When you take the time to interview with a company for an open position that you know they are hiring for, ask for an offer. Make sure when you leave the interviewer’s office that that person knows that you want the job. If that person doesn’t know you want the job, then they might offer it to someone else that has stated an interest in receiving an offer.
There should not be a doubt in the interviewers mind about your wanting the job, even if you’re not sure you want the job… if you don’t express an interest in receiving an offer, then you likely won’t get one, and you might decide after the interview that you really do want that job.
Get as many offers as you can, then pick the best offer/job for you, don’t leave an offer on the table because you aren’t sure you want the job during the interview.
Ask for an offer at the end of your interview.
2. Wear a sharp outfit to the interview.
First impressions are a bitch. I don’t care what the corporate attire at the company you’re interviewing at is, wear a sharp outfit to the first interview. It’s always better to be over-dressed and impress the interviewer than to be under-dressed and make the wrong impression on the interviewer.
If you’re a guy, this means wear a suit and tie. The days of wearing shorts and sandals to most offices is over, and if the office you’re interviewing at has a relaxed dress code, it’s better to impress with a sharp suit than to look like a lazy person, or someone who doesn’t think they need to dress nicely.
If you’re a woman, wear sharp business attire. Don’t show up in a skirt that might be perceived as too short, or with your mid-riff showing. It’s just not professional.
If you’re interviewing for a blue collar job, wear the best outfit you have if its not a suit and try to look as impressive as you can. Wear a pair of khakis and a jacket if you think it’s appropriate.
Over-dressed is better than under-dressed. Wear a sharp outfit.
3. Answer questions honestly.
If an interviewer asks a question, take a second to think about your answer, and then answer the question succintly. Don’t blab on and on, and stay on topic. Be honest. If you’re not honest and succint with your answer, you’ll likely not be happy in the job if you’re offered the position. And if you bull-shit an answer and can’t back it up after being on the job, you’ll likely be in the position for a very short amount of time.
4. Take time to write a cover-letter.
And don’t write a bullshit two paragraph form letter. I received over 100 resumes for the position that I’m interviewing for. Know what my first filter was:
No cover letter = trashed resume.
Did I perhaps lose a good candidate? Maybe, but you know what? I still have 10 really good candidates that I’m having to weigh each other against.
Write a good thoughtful cover-letter.
5. If you want the job, apply for it.
Even if you think you’re not 100% qualified, and you want the job, apply for it. It can’t hurt your chances. I have two main qualifications that I wanted in the candidates I was planning on interviewing. Know how many people had those two qualifications? One. One out of 100. So guess what? I called everyone that had at least one of those two big qualifications and have interviewed in-person 10 of those people I called. (after I trashed the ones without cover letters, of course).
6. Research the company a little.
When you apply for a job, assume that you might get a phone call from the hiring manager, or the HR screener. Have a little folder that you keep with you on all of the jobs you want. In that folder, have a quick summary sheet of the research you’ve done on the company (and make sure you’ve done at least a cursory glance at the organization’s website or some other document so you can ask a few questions about the company or the position).
I called one candidate, and they said “You know, I really don’t even remember sending in my resume for that position. What company are you with again?”
That phone interview lasted less than 5 minutes after that statement… Sorry, I wasn’t interested at that point anymore.
7. The interviewer might not know what they’re doing
Most people interviewing to hire someone aren’t trained at it, so keep that in mind. Make sure that the interviewer knows a) why you want the job, b) what sets you apart from all the other candidates they might be looking at c) that you want to receive an offer and d) what sort of impact you can make in the open position. If they aren’t asking you the ‘buy questions’ like “What would it take to get you on board here?” ask them the buy questions. Once you get to those questions, your likely-hood of getting an offer goes up dramatically.
If you’re looking to get a job, follow these steps:
1. Apply for lots of jobs
2. Ask for an in-person interview if you get a phone interview
3. Ask for an offer at the in-person interview
4. Get as many offers as you can, then pick the job you want.
I learned that and many more tips from reading the Knock ‘em Dead series by Martin Yates. I’d recommend that to anyone out there looking for a new job. I’d also recommend 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions as an interview primer, if you need it, but most of what you’ll need is in Knock ‘em Dead.
Hopefully, I’ll be making an offer to a future employee next week.
updated April 2004: I just posted More lessons for the Job Seeker as a follow up to this post.
Last Monday, I fired an employee for the first time in my life.
It was the worst morning of my life, and the weekend before that Monday was horrible as well.
Firing an employee for whatever reason is probably the hardest thing a person can have to do, because when you’re in charge of hiring or firing someone, to some extent you can’t help but feel responsible for that person’s life and well-being.
One of my ‘mentors’ at the office told me “That’s the one thing you never want to be good at.” I agree completely. I’d rather be very good at hiring the right person, coaching them towards success, and promoting them into a new job. I’d rather be good at teaching and training than firing. I suppose that for some reason I feel like firing an employee shows that I am responsible for that person not succeeding.
Anyways, I had an employee that was performing marginally most of the time, and below my (and the company’s) expectations consistently. I tried coaching, teaching, training, warning, and every other technique I could. I gave that person 75 days formal notice that they were on probation, and still didn’t see results. I made the decision to let this person go on a Friday, and set the time/date for the following Monday.
I sweated the event the entire weekend, getting only 3 or 4 hours of sleep on Sunday night. On Monday morning, I had a quick dismissal interview/meeting, and the deed was done.
I’m now looking for a good replacement, but I surely hated myself on Monday morning. I’ve learned a few things about this employee since then that don’t make me feel so bad, but Monday morning was hell, and the rest of the week was full of playing sales person + sales manager… that being said, I actually enjoyed working 12+ hour days this week. It was refreshing. And the support team I’ve got was quite supportive.
If you’re ever in the position to fire someone, I’d recommend some of these links as preparation for the event:
- CIO: How to Fire People
- CIO: How to Fire Your Best Friend
- Learnthat: How to Fire an Employee
- Termination Tutorial
- 10 secrets of letting people go with dignity.
- BusinessTown.com: How to Fire an Employee
- Restaurant.org: How to Terminate Employees
How to Become a Great Boss, as I have done before, as the book will definitely help you learn more about how to be a great boss, and it touches on the subject of “Groom them or Broom them” which basically means that you should make the decision to fire someone quickly if you have to, or commit to training them for bigger and better things… I took too long to make this decision this time I think.
I just read this article: Safeway widens delivery of Web orders and I had to point out how cool I think it is that a grocery store is taking up the charge of offering web based order and grocery fulfillment again. I’m hoping it works out this time around, and that they don’t go down in flames like the others did a few years ago.
On the same subject, I have to point out that I think Papa John’s Pizza has the slickest (and quickest) online order to fulfillment system on the internet (that I’ve ever used). They offer a quick login or registration process to being with, and then offer 5 or so quick order options, plus their entire menu online, so you can easily order something on special quick, or you can order something special and customized, if you wish.
And, they then guarantee a quick and painless delivery.
(And the pizza is damn good too, btw)
The only complaint I have is that they won’t take a credit card order through their website, but then again, that means if they get the order wrong, or forget to deliver your order, you don’t have to deal with the issues of your credit card being charged and the product not being delivered…
Good e-commerce in the service sectors and industries is still hard to find, and it’s nice to find them when you can.
Wow!
I’m amazed at Andy Bourland’s personal weblog. Not because Andy’s writing a weblog about his personal experiences, but because through his posts in his weblog, he’s essentially building his new business, Up2Speed, in the open, or at least as much as any business I’ve seen built in the open lately.
Andy’s not just talking about his projects, or products in the open like some of the other ‘corporate weblogs’ I’ve seen. He’s actually talking about the decisions he’s making and how he’s thinking about his business.
Example 1: On being an ‘introverted’ thinker:
…in buying MarketingFix.com, little did I know that the 5 partners who came along with the deal had pretty strong opinions about damn near everything, and didn’t hesitate to make them known. They had developed their own highly collaborative approach to running their operation, and I needed to blend in with the process if I expected their cooperation. And I can guarantee you, I couldn’t possibly do it on my own. I depend on those guys…
And when the Adventive deal came along, God must have been rolling over in laughter because Mr. Unilateral Decision — me — was acquiring not 5, but 50,000 highly opinionated souls who made it quite clear that while they support me and respect my reputation — they want to play a role in the decision-making process.
Example 2: On building a business with a succession strategy in mind:
In my case, I am deliberately building a core team of 3 people and hoping to give them the resources and support they need so that — should the grim reaper drop by unexpectedly some day — I can have a succession program in place that will ensure that they will be able to continue to build the business whether I’m there or not.
I can’t exactly hand the business over to my girlfriend or my children to manage — though I would want to make sure they benefit from the value of the Up2Speed LLC asset should I die. But I can develop a team of leaders who eat, sleep and breathe this business and have a legal document in place that provides for an orderly transition where everybody wins.
When I was at ClickZ, I never even thought of putting together any sort of succession agreement. I was feeling young, healthy and was going to live forever.
Example 3: On starting a Startup:
Would you believe that I actually FORGOT how much work is involved in a startup?
Truly admirable way you’re bringing the process to the table Andy… keep sharing, I have a feeling it’ll make a huge difference in the way Up2Speed is perceived in the long run. I guess I should also say I’m not amazed that Andy’s doing this, rather that anyone with as high a profile as Andy is blogging about their personal experiences as he is.
[disclaimer: I still own a very small part of Up2Speed]
Here’s an example of why:
On the way home from a fun-filled weekend at a small town cook-off, the wife and I stopped in an un-remarkable corner store/gas station in small town, TX. We were really only interested in stopping for a potty-break, and possibly to pick up some refreshments.
After using the restroom, and grabbing a Dr. Pepper from the cooler, I spotted a display that had “Country Store Old Fashioned Taffy” as the main item for sale. I was intrigued (I’m a taffy nut) so I grabbed a package of the red colored taffy and headed to the counter. I paid for the taffy and headed for the door. On the road, I opened the taffy packaged and enjoyed the salty suggary substance greatly as I drove 90 miles an hour on my way back to Austin.
Upon arriving home, I emptied the car, and looked for a URL on the now torn and ripped apart taffy wrapper.
To my amazement, there was no URL at all anywhere on the package… I thought, “well, maybe they just don’t know that they should have a URL on the package” as I thought about the company that made this candy: McCraw Candies, Farmersville, TX. Having no idea where Farmersville was, I checked mapquest for a location: I now know that Farmersville is north-east of Dallas.
Then I searched Google for McCraw Candies. I found a few websites, of which, one looks to be McCraw’s but there’s nothing on it. I learned from an old UT On Campus report that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison owned McCraw at one time (and just might still own it, who knows).
I then performed a whois for mccrawcandies.com and countrystorecandy.com. The latter is regsitered to McCraw, but as I stated before has noting on their home page, and the former isn’t registered to anyone (odd). So, my attempt at learning more about the maker of this fantastic taffy ends with me spending a lot of time searching, only to learn very little other than where Farmersville, TX is and that McCraw got in some trouble with the FDC a few years back.
I know nothing about what other candies they make that I might be interested in buying. I don’t know where to buy them (except maybe through this web-savvy retailer), nor do I know anything about their history or where they’re going (other than that they aren’t concerned about the internet). I also don’t know if Sen. Hutchison still owns the company (which would be a cool resume builder because her bio doesn’t say anything about McCraw.
So, I registered McCrawCandies.com and emailed the address listed in the whois for countrystorecandy.com: [email protected]
Small businesses need websites, even if they’re just business card place-holder type websites that cost nothing to set up and maintain. They also need to think about developing web strategies that will help them sell their products to more people in the future, if they’re concerned about competing in today’s economy.
(Just an FYI, I was thinking of how cool it would be to buy a case of this taffy over the web to keep around the house for myself and guests… but that won’t happen any time soon, I’m afraid.)
update: After I emailed the company at their AOL address, I got a reply within an hour… truly amazing. The reply was truly helpful, and the guy that wrote me back agreed that they needed a website, and explained that they were a small company. I pitched the idea of creating a small website for them, and we’re now conversing about how I can order a case of taffy… I love small businesses, especially when they actually talk to you. the web is a conversation.
Seth comments about Apple:
Apple is in the fashion business.
Apple is Gucci.
Apple is Calvin Klein.
Very true… read the rest of the post for the context.
