start me up!

You mean THAT'S all we had to say?

This sign (recreated by artist's rendering) appeared in the most recent issue of my hometown newspaper, The Barberton (OH) Herald.

NEW FRANKLIN

CORPORATION LIMIT

BEHAVE!

Labels: diversions

posted by Ron @ 1:35 PM 0 comments

The wisdom of Eminem: chance meetings

I've never been a big fan of Eminem (pictured), but I have to give him credit for understanding the importance of capturing a moment. He may have this down better than anyone. Consider the chorus of Lose Yourself:

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go (ho!)
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo...

The entrepreneur is always looking for that chance to blow. And I think it's important that we look for it. That we're ready for it. That even if we have sweaty palms and a dry mouth, we reach out and grab it. You just never know when you'll meet an investor with deep pockets on an elevator or an airplane or standing in line. And when you do, then you'll be glad you have a mission statement and that you committed it to memory.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 8:54 AM 0 comments

Applying the rhetorical triangle to your business plan

I have been reviewing Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz' book Everything's an Argument, which is the textbook for my class. In chapters five through seven of this book, the authors address arguments based on the three vertices of the "rhetorical triangle," namely logos, ethos, and pathos.

Chapter five: arguments based on values (pathos)

In order to carry out an argument based on values, you have to have some agreement as to what each value means. Even the word "value" itself, in the context of a small company, could go in more than one direction:

• the principles we hold most dear
• the things we do best
• what we want others to recognize about us

It's not only about having a common definition of your own values, either -- you have to know what your readers value, as regards what you are writing.

To make these definitions common, you can't just use the word without defining it. And you can't use comparative terms like "relatively" or "fairly" unless you have some basis of comparison. Your customers value low prices. Well, low prices compared to what?

What does your audience (for a business plan) value? Start with return on investment.

Chapter six: arguments based on character (ethos)

It's not about whether your audience will buy a used car from you. That isn't what you're selling. Who cares if I won't buy a used car from Condoleeza Rice? I need her to do more important things than to try to sell me one. But YOU are trying to sell a piece of a business of your own to investors. In order to succeed, what must you convince them about your own character?

• that you are the expert on this type of business
• that you are going to be honest about, and effective in, the handling of their investments

Chapter seven: arguments based on facts and reason (logos)

A claim must be accompanied by supporting evidence. You are claiming that "my business is worthy of your investment." What support do you need?

• some reasonable likelihood of timely return on investment

But you can't have that unless your business will survive, and even prosper. In order for this to happen, you need

• a reliable plan
• the right people to carry that plan out
• the right role for each of those people
• enough funding to make the plan possible
• a reasonable expectation of certain milestones

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 1:29 PM 0 comments

Conservative dress part two: the racial minorities' quandary

The Philadelphia Eagles Radio Network was sued by a former salesman, and lost, because the Network hands out copies of John Molloy's book New Dress for Success to its employees, suggesting how they ought to dress. An Associated Press report says the book advises readers not to wear Afros or African-style clothing.

That the book advises readers to dress conservatively is not in doubt. Most reviewers don't even doubt that the book is at times out of date -- there are many reviews at amazon.com mentioning this. But this book is used by many, many human resources people as THE guideline for dress for interviews, sales, and (sometimes) even in the office. And what is interesting about this particular case is that multiple opinions racial minorities hold about this issue are being played off against one another -- and most of us don't know it's happening.

Consider this excerpt from an article Calvin Bruce wrote in the Black Collegian, which was reprinted in the online Wall Street Journal:

Many African-American collegians face a quandary when deciding how ethnocentric their personal wardrobe and image should be. But, a good school of thought is that ambitious, young minorities should emulate the advice of widely read author John Molloy. Mincing no words, his specific advice to minorities is to blend in with their corporate surroundings and forego ethnocentric individuality in favor of adopting the standardized corporate look that has passed the test of time, regardless of industry or profession. In a word, this is the "navy pinstripe and beige overcoat" image that has defined generations of career-minded professionals. In short, you should certainly be yourself, but by all means fit in where you want to launch your career as a budding professional. The rest will take care of itself.

Are guys like Bruce fueling discrimination lawsuits by buying into Molloy's advice? Stay tuned.

Labels: character

posted by Ron @ 11:24 AM 0 comments

Conservative dress for interviews

I have a reason for leaning on this subject other than the obvious one. But here we go anyway: collegegrad.com appears to see interviewing as a choice of two options:

1. Dress conservatively, because you want interviewers to listen to you.
2. Dress as you like, because you are a college student.

Never mind that the real world is not black and white like that. It's multiple shades of gray. I usually dress in "business casual" myself, but my reason is this: I can't afford to buy a new suit right now. Not unless one of the people I interview with is guaranteed to hire me. Then I can consider it an investment. But you and I know that interviewers will make no such guarantee, and I have been excluded from consideration for every flimsy excuse in the book. (Not because I'm that bad; because I have participated in literally hundreds of interviews.) Lack of a black suit that fits well is, to me, just another flimsy excuse. It'll sound like I'm whining, but I just feel I'm too old -- and definitely too experienced -- to play this game of surface impressions.

Having said that, it appears that interviewers dressed worse than I am are excluding me for just that reason. (I'm trying out for teaching jobs right now -- teachers are almost always "business casual.") So I am going to recommit to the dark suit. I still have a gray one, that doesn't fit well. But it's still nearly new.

I'm still perplexed. Can the people doing the hiring really want someone less experienced, and less well-prepared, but who dresses better? It certainly looks that way, because the Web sites even write about shoes. On the same page, collegegrad.com says this about shoes:

Many have said that you can judge a person by their shoes. You will find that many ex-military officers (many of whom have found their way into management positions in corporate America) are especially aware of a person's shoes.

So it's not really about any particular SKILL that military people hold. It's about the attention they pay to their shoes. That explains Kelly Perdew and all his fans.

Labels: character

posted by Ron @ 10:16 AM 0 comments

Rogers on Tavis Smiley w/mutual funds

Kim Pearson has been telling me for some time that John Rogers (pictured) of Ariel Capital Management was the kind of business guy that TCNJ should bring to campus to inspire the students. So I looked at the transcript of the Tavis Smiley show on 04.15, in which Rogers talked about mutual funds. Look at this:

Well, our strategy's always been around patience. We think the best way to make money is to buy stocks while they're out of favor, while they're low priced, and hold them for the long run, and over now the 22 years we've been in business, that's been our focus. We try to find these companies often when they're smaller or mid-sized, and, again, try to find them when maybe others aren't excited about them and they're not on the front pages of all the newspapers and magazines. But there's a real opportunity to find a great business at a bargain price.

If that's not plain language, I don't know what is. This guy Rogers is the real deal. I only hope he discovers Juterphusion someday.

I was originally going to bat for Kwame Jackson instead, thinking his appearance on "The Apprentice" would draw an audience. I maintain that Jackson is still a bigger draw. But now I have to ask whether Rogers wouldn't be better at teaching students something they can use...

Labels: consulting

posted by Ron @ 11:17 PM 1 comments

The inner workings of e-commerce

This week I've asked several people (who actually care about the subject) "what's the most important thing you have to have to do e-commerce?" Here are the answers they give me:

• a privacy policy
• a "cool name"
• a usable, navigable Web site
• something that tells visitors to your site who you are and what you do

These are all interesting answers. And I don't buy into any of them.

My favorite brief description of what you need to do e-commerce is found in Spector's book amazon.com: Get Big Fast. Here's the list:

1. A product or service that can be sold over the Internet.
2. The ability to handle remote transactions.
3. Service provider support.
4. A strategic plan that incorporates, but is not dominated by, e-commerce.

The ability to handle remote transactions includes at least one, and possibly two, characteristics: first, you have to be able to handle online payments -- and you can use a service like PayPal for that, so no excuses; second, you MAY have to be able to access and update a database for each transaction. The CGI you need to know for that is not very difficult, and neither is the JavaScript you might use, but it's likely you can find those both free or cheap from a third party, and possibly even from your own service provider if you have a good one. So again, no excuses. The difficulty is in learning the terminology and discerning the price to pay for these services.

It seems to me that the toughest part of e-commerce is integrating a plan for it into an overall business strategy. Part of the collateral damage of the dot-com collapse of the late 90s was the inability of even successful "brick and mortar" businesses to do just that.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 10:41 PM 0 comments

e-mail salutations?

Brad Templeton suggests that nobody includes salutations in e-mail messages any more. Nobody except strangers and spammers.

Sometimes though, I get form letters from real companies I deal with, and they still like to put my name in it, like they used to on paper. As you probably know, in E-mail today, you don't put in salutations any more unless it's a mail to a stranger.

I dunno about this. Maybe it's that my colleagues at the College of New Jersey are more formal than "normal people." But I've gotten the following salutations TODAY from people I think I know reasonably well:

• Hi -
• Ron, [twice]
• Dear Ron,
• Dear colleagues, [from my wife -- LOL]
• Hello,

So that tells me, Brad, that ONE of the two of us is not living in the same universe as the other. :-) :-) :-)

PS -- I never use salutations in e-mail any more either. But I know a couple people who use them even in instant messages. Go figure.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 10:31 PM 0 comments

Household names: why not BAB-O?

Some products gain acceptance from consumers to the point where their brand-names replace the noun defining them. (Some companies who own the rights to those trade names actually fight this human tendency. And I don't really understand why. Wouldn't you WANT your product to become a household word?) [NOTE: I have since learned that the issue for the lawyers is that they don't want restaurants to serve Pepsi to customers who order a "Coke," just because "Coke" is the household word. THAT is a valid concern.]

Trade names that fit into this category include (of course), Band-Aid, Coke, Kleenex, Scotch Tape, and Xerox. But I don't understand why BAB-O is not included in this list. To me, it's the coolest cleanser name ever. "Comet?" Nah. Even though there is that song we sang in elementary school:

Comet: it makes your teeth turn green
Comet: it tastes like gas-o-line
Comet will make you vomit
So get some Comet and vomit today

(sung to the tune from The Bridge over the River Kwai)

No, I have been referring to my cleanser as "BAB-O" since I was a kid. Now, my wife had never heard of the stuff, and doesn't buy it. I guess I have to shop for cleanser more often. And maybe we need a BAB-O song for elementary school kids. :-)

posted by Ron @ 5:29 PM 0 comments

Proof

I am here today to give you proof that I'm up to the stuff I say I'm up to.

Above is a photo of Lisa Gable, inventor of the Strap-Mate technology, meeting with student Kate Neese and myself at the General's Quarters Restaurant here in Ewing, NJ. I may look somewhat... well, constipated, but I really am happy. :-) Also pictured is the manager of the General's Quarters, Larry Magcos. And below is a screenshot of my stack, which shows my posting "The Example of Veronica Mars" was visible to the world.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 9:55 AM 0 comments

The need of JAC's Everything Gourmet

JAC's Everything Gourmet is a brand-new start-up, which makes specialty foods. THEIR specialty is a salsa, by all accounts so superior that I'm told a major movie star orders it especially for himself. (No, they won't tell me who it is.)

These guys are SO new that you won't find any mention of them on the Internet -- until now. This blog post will probably be the first thing said about them.

So why am I involved? Heck, I just love salsa. LOL But it's also a matter of being in the right place at the right time, as it would be for any entrepreneur. A friend of mine is related to the owner, and is doing work for the company. So by her request, I have offered my own sweat in return for sweat equity.

The justification I give is that even though there's a lot of specialty salsa out there, I feel there's room for more -- if the new offerings are good. I hope to be able to sample this stuff soon and verify what my friend is telling me: that it's the best salsa ever. If it's that good, and if there really is still room in the market, and if the owner does a good job of entering the market (I know. It's a heck of a lot of ifs. What start-up isn't?), then my sweat equity could become very valuable. That's my goal.

That and maybe a free sample of really good salsa. Stay tuned.

Labels: young entrepreneurs

posted by Ron @ 1:18 PM 0 comments

How Dr. Ron grades

I am trying harder these days to leave my students with no doubt about how I grade their work. I have written before about grading blogs, but I have to consider other works, in particular the business plans they are required to write in small groups. The TCNJ Writing Program has a grading rubric that each of us more-or-less works with, but it has two problems from my point of view:

1. It's too long.
2. It doesn't say anything about how much weight is given to what area of writing.

So I have taken the liberty of shortening this thing, and assigning weights. Here's the result:

Aspect	% Weight	Grades
		A	B	C	D
Claim: compelling, specific, debatable	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Logic: developed, organized	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Audience: considered	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Evidence: reliable, persuasive	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Citations: correctly cited and sufficient in number	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Grammar	15	excellent	good	fair	poor
Word Choice	10	excellent	good	fair	poor

Labels: education

posted by Ron @ 12:23 PM 0 comments

The sample ploy

I have convinced our friends at Strap-Mate to attempt to market their products by sending samples to influential women and ask them for comments. This technique has been tried successfully by other small businesses, although it may be a bit of a hassle in the early going. There is already a plan in the works to send samples and press releases to trade magazine editors and writers who we know are interested in similar products, but I have asked them to extend the outreach to other media, and even to other types of targets. Here is the current target list:

• Jessica Alpert-Goldman, CEO, World According to Jess (possible joint venture opportunity here)
• Sara Blakely, CEO, Spanx (possible joint venture opportunity here)
• Mia Butler, co-host of WTBS' "Movie and a Makeover"
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck (pictured), "Survivor: Outback" contestant; host of Style Network's "The Look for Less"; co-host of ABC's "the View"
• Carolyn Kepcher, Donald Trump’s right hand on "the Apprentice"
• Honey Labrador, co-host of Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl"
• Rieva Lesonsky, Editorial Director, Entrepreneur magazine
• Jena McGregor, Associate Editor, Fast Company magazine
• Robin Meade, co-host, CNN's "AccentHealth"
• Kirsten Osolind, consultant and writer of Re:Invention blog
• Sally Ride, first US woman to orbit the Earth
• C. Vivian Stringer, Head Coach, Rutgers women's basketball

Of course, the reasons for my selecting these particular women were questioned -- nothing personal -- so this was the justification I used:

The short answer is: each of these twelve women represents a market we would like to break into, but either we are not sure how or we just haven't gone far enough. I think that if they could be convinced to tell us something in response to your products, what they tell us would really enhance your outreach to the market. I mean, by quite a bit.

There is always the chance that

• they will use your products
• they will tell others about your products
• they will want to talk to Lisa [Gable, the inventor]
• they will order more
• a couple of them may even want to discuss joint ventures (you'll notice at least two such suitable matches on the list)

...and if any of those things happens, even with just one out of 12, I think you will find that the gifts to all 12 have more than paid for themselves.

Of course there is a risk that unsolicited gifts will be ignored. But I find that to be unlikely -- certainly they won't ALL be ignored. My guess is that the worst thing that happens will be that several of the women we send them to will hand them off to associates, who will then write you a kindly letter. BUT... to me that is a small risk, and costs you only a few packaged items and their shipping. The reward-to-risk ratio is, to me, HUGE. That's why I'm encouraging you to go forward with this.

Next step: gather up the addresses and ship. Stay tuned.

Labels: rhetoric

posted by Ron @ 11:45 AM 0 comments