"I want a quarter every time someone says it!"
My son has developed a gift for coming up with new jargon for describing what we observe. First there was
fauxfanity, those uninterpretable phrases we utter when we drop a book on our toe and don't want to curse out loud. But my favorite is
splogging, the phenomenon of spam blogging. Some sploggers are linked from this blog, because I can't seem to find the right keywords to keep them out. Examples include www.keyfranchises.com, homesecurityfocus.blogspot.com, and justbusinessleasing.blogspot.com. I'd like to get
splogging trademarked, like J. Jonah Jameson (pictured, played by
J. K. Simmons in
Spider-Man) tried to do when he coined the name "Green Goblin."
Labels: diversions
Diagramming social networks
I am trying to create a program (currently written in Java, in which case it would be used as an applet) that allows for multi-degree-of-freedom visualization of a social network. The image here shows an output for the program using ten contacts of mine. Here's the way it works right now:
- A color code describes interest type (and you choose how many interests)
- cyan
- pink
- lightGray
- yellow
- orange
- white
- I'm at the center. The radial distance outward from the center indicates the strength of the interest this contact has in this particular interest type.
- The angular distance clockwise from positive horizontal shows how up-to-date I am with the contact. Less clock time after 3 PM means more up-to-date.
- The size of the contact's circle symbol shows how important the contact is in this context.
- The border thickness shows the level of intimacy I have with the contact -- thin borders are closer friends.
- And the contact's initials are to the right of and below the contact's circle symbol.
So what do I do with this? Two things come to mind:
- If an important contact is not up-to-date, I have to work on that. Especially if the contact's interest is strong.
- If there is a lot of interest in a certain area (one color reaching a high level of interest), then it's time for me to soak myself in that area a little bit.
Your mileage may vary.
But I want to make this useful to others, not just myself. To do that I have to make it interactive, and let you decide how many contacts to include. I know how to do this, but it'll take a little longer to put together. Maybe by the end of the week.
Labels: engineering
Ronnie Long after Live 8!
My friend Ronnie Long, a comedian who's working for a living, helped me write about
humor for Rhetoric for Engineers and Other Practical People. And now he's appearing on a big comedy card in Philadelphia after
Live 8. Here's the commercial:
In Philly on July 3? GO!
Labels: young entrepreneurs
EFGP workshop, part four: how do you make strategic relationships?
Ed DuCoin (pictured) of
Freedom Builders Philadelphia was the final speaker in this workshop. HE has clearly had some success with strategic relationships, which he defines as "relationships with people who can give you residual referrals," or in other words can steer business your way.
The thing we have to understand at the very beginning is "no-one cares about you." If you go to a 250-person meeting seeking to form a strategic relationship with someone, but you have no strategy, no plan, nothing to offer, what is the likelihood that such a relationship will happen? If you thought to yourself "extremely small," you're absolutely right. I found this out myself during several years of giving presentations at the
Trenton Computer Festival. I met some nice people; they couldn't help me and I couldn't help them. And the Festival continues to grow, while nobody working on it remembers that I was ever involved. From the context of DuCoin's pitch, I see that the problem is that at the TCF I was one small fish in a big pond; but DuCoin also suggests that you use your creative energies not to make a single sale, but to systematically create relationships that yield more relationships, and sales as a by-product on the way. I was aiming too small and too near-term.
We are all tempted to tell others what we can do (aiming too near-term), and to tell them as soon as we meet them (aiming too small). But DuCoin says it's not about what we can do: it's about who we are, what we know, what we did for someone else. It's about establishing links and seeing where they lead.
Labels: consulting
EFGP workshop, part three: how do you network?
Linda Lane of Mass Mutual (pictured) has a broken or otherwise nonexistent Web site, but there's nothing broken about her presentation -- she was animated, entertaining, and engaging. And she offers a "tip sheet" about networking, which I will have to find a way to locate as her Web site is broken or otherwise nonexistent. But enough of that.
How do you get people to want to do business with you?
- By helping them in a "non-threatening way."
- By introducing them to others whom they need to know.
- By being taken seriously. (Lane was careful to mention that sometimes men don't take women seriously as networkers. I have known men who don't take anyone seriously.)
- By projecting sincerity. "Nobody likes a used-car salesman."
Then Lane offers up a few choice, but miscellaneous, tidbits:
- If you complain, you'd better offer a solution to the problem.
- Wear your name tag on your right side. (I missed why she said this. Sorry.) HAVE a name tag.
- When you do exchange business cards at "networking meetings," make sure only to call one, or two, or three people afterwards. Projecting sincerity will be difficult when you call them all.
- If several people from the same company are networking, make sure they all agree on a common message before they start communicating a message.
Funny, there aren't many tips here, considering how engaged I was in this presentation. I'll have to go after that tip sheet...
Labels: consulting
EFGP workshop, part two: what's guerrilla marketing?
Sandra Holtzman of
Holtzman Communications (pictured) was up for this pitch. (It occurs to me at this point that what we had wasn't really a panel discussion so much as four consecutive brief presentations. I would like for those presentations to have been longer, but they were preceded by a 15-minute commercial for
Temple University's entrepreneurship program. I don't care HOW good Temple is; that presentation got in the audience's way.)
Marketing is getting your message to a large audience via "traditional methods" (e.g. newspapers, magazines, radio and TV);
guerrilla marketing involves a niche audience, allowing the audience to participate in and respond to your marketing strategies, and (to me the most important thing) getting free PR. To Holtzman, unless we work for Fortune 500 companies we are ALL guerrillas. She offers a comparison between the big and the small:
| BIG | SMALL |
| powerful | not so much |
| clunky | agile |
| slow | fast |
| traditional | anything but |
| research | action |
| $$$$$$ | $ |
| can squish you like a bug | can make you an ally |
And she offers this sage advice:
- Know your audience. Ask them what they think. Listen to what they say. Find out how they want to be "told and sold." Remember they are humans before they are customers; you are there for their convenience and not your own.
- Define a niche. Then sell to it only.
- Go for the Internet first. This because the big companies are still spending bazillions of dollars on market research and traditional methods. It's not too late for you to stake out your space on what really is the best (and cheapest) hope for marketing.
- Get a pro to do the marketing for you. Of course, there are Web sites to help us locate such pros.
And for starters, give away info on your subject. Become a public expert.
Labels: consulting
EFGP workshop, part one: what's a brand?
Speaker Jean Wilcox (pictured) of
CattLeLogos Brand Management Systems was prompted by someone she knew in the audience to define a
brand as "a scar on your butt." Of course something like that draws a laugh, but it's also the default truth. She has this quote from Peter Drucker on her Web site:
Branding, by its very nature, is not optional. If you do not position yourself in people's minds, they will do it for you.
Let them do it for you, and it might very well leave a scar on the ass.
On the other hand, a brand represents a company's "personality" in the eyes of its customers -- it's how well we meet their expectations. It's not what we SAY; it's what the customers PERCEIVE. So how do we control this process, and prevent posterior scarring? Wilcox points out the ABCs:
- A is for AUDIENCE -- and you must aim at the audience you seek to reach. A preacher I once new used to say in his sermons "if you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit it." And I'm sure that he didn't write his own material.
- B is for BELIEVABILITY -- once we aim at the audience, we fire something they can trust, and something we can back up with conviction.
- C is for CONSISTENCY -- like Einstein said, "if you always do what you did, you always get what you got." So once we decide what to fire at the audience, we keep firing it, in the same way, until its look and feel is readily identified.
Three more parts to come...
Labels: consulting
Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philly workshop, prelude
I'm not good at schmoozing. I admit it. The worst part is that for years I wore my social reticence as a kind of badge of honor, because as everyone knows, engineers aren't supposed to be good socially.
Scott Adams' Dilbert is always there to remind us.
But you know what? I've decided I'm willing to learn how. This is a skill I've denied myself for far too long -- and who knows what opportunities have been lost on the way? I figured this out when attending a workshop on "guerrilla marketing" hosted by the Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philadelphia last night. (The notes on the workshop itself are forthcoming.) I saw a crowd of 250 entrepreneurs, at various stages of hunger, and if there's one thing we know it's that entrepreneurs love to network. Since I don't really know how -- REALLY know how -- I decided to watch, and to take pictures (like the one above), as the networking session went on before the workshop itself.
I met Michelle Faustin of
MJF Enterprises, and found that one secret to networking is to know what you are about, and know how to communicate this briefly to anyone who asks. Michelle, although lacking a real Web site, has a talent for tossing out her mission during a conversation. And one thing I also know how to do is to
create a mission statement.
But it's not about selling something to everyone you meet, because not everyone (read: almost no-one) is buying. I think the issue with networking is the social connection, which (as in most social settings) is based largely on shared experience. Still, along came a guy named Randy Zeitman, whose
Stone Rose Design does Web and print design and marketing, and he's handing out his three-fold business cards from a little slotted dispenser. His goal seems to be to hand them all out. But when the workshop started he got plaudits from one of the speakers for imagination, so that might indicate his method works.
And even if you only hand out two or three business cards at such an event, you should at least have them with you. Young entrepreneurs need to think about leaving behind an impression, and old micropatrons like me could stand to do likewise. So I went to
VistaPrint and ordered up some (they do up orders of 250 just for shipping costs) for myself. I don't want to be left without them when I need them, ever again. If I use mine up in a hurry, we can talk about something more substantial. Zeitman's lesson, as I see it, is to recognize that your business card is a talking point. The actual talking can happen now or later.
The workshop got under way, and as an icebreaker, the session leader asked for four volunteers to come up and talk about their businesses -- each in one minute. Funny, I would've expected a crowd going for an offer like that, but not very many did. So I said to myself, "now's the time to see whether my new resolve is worth anything," and I stood up. In one minute, I was able to mention
Holcombe Chassis Works,
Juterphusion,
Clutterbutter, and the
IMET Corporation. I told the audience I was there because "my students need me." (Have to write more on that later.) Not a bad day's work. But more notes and observations follow.
Labels: consulting
Why want ads don't work
It's really simple: not many people have the patience to dig through poorly-written want ads to find something they can apply for. Consider this list of headings for jobs listed under "education" in the local paper this past Sunday:
- Education (six times)
- Immediate Openings
- Teacher (ten times, plus ten more for "teachers")
- Position Available
- name of district (maybe 20 times)
I give this discipline credit, though: computer programmers typically have to find interpreters to read an ad like this one:
...reqs three Software Engrs w/a BS/MS or equiv. in Comp Sci, Engr or Math.
&5 yrs exp in Fin'l, Insurance & mfrg. industry having relational d/base exp. w/Win & Unix environmt/data modeling & architecture design tools (e.g. Erwin, TOAD, etc). Must have good understanding & knwldge of d/base processes, utilities & func'ns assoc'd w/Oracle 9i & 10g. Extensive knowl. of Java, SQL, Unix-Shell, XML, SQL*Loader & exp. in devlpng complex PL/SQL req. Permanent position M-F 40 hrs/wk. Competitive salary. Travel or reloca. req'd.
Many people have complained about ads requiring more experience than even the best programmer can get in five years. But this ad should make readers' heads ache.
Labels: consulting
More on temperature in the workplace
The July 2005 issue of
Entrepreneur cites a study of office temperature, and its effects on workplace productivity. Consider this excerpt:
At 68 [F], workers typed 54 percent of the time, with a 25 percent error rate; at 77 degrees, the staff typed 100 percent of the time, with a 10 percent error rate.
I just mentioned a place where I worked, where the temperature was maintained at 60 F. You'd feel like
Bob Cratchit (pictured, played by
Richard E. Grant), even in the summertime, wishing you could add just a single lump of coal to the fire. And your fingers require to be limber if you are to type without errors. So the bottom line is -- if such studies are to be trusted -- you need to regulate workplace temperature, especially for "knowledge workers," to get mileage out of them.
There was a time when I was working at
NASA Glenn Research Center, when I attended a meeting of 50 people, in a room designed to comfortably hold 30, with the doors closed, and with the meeting chair smoking a pipe. I was not the only attendee nearly rendered unconscious. But this was in the days before smoking was outlawed in public buildings. Since we had to attend the meeting, and since we could not ask this manager not to smoke, we ultimately were caught up in a backlash of "no smoking" signs in individual offices -- all up and down the hall. That was a precursor to the anti-smoking-near-totalitarianism we see today. I could easily guess that one day the Department of Labor will step in and say that all public buildings must be kept between 66 F and 75 F -- or else. For entrepreneurs' sake, I hope with all my heart it never comes to that.
Labels: office space
The Worst Office Ever!
I once worked for an outfit called Syred Data Systems. They no longer exist. They were a purveyor of storage networks, such as
Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAIDs) (pictured). Between the time I hired on with them, and the time I left four months later, the number of their competitors nearly doubled, and was up to 50 when I left. That may be a factor in making them the Worst Office Ever.
And yes, I was fired. After seeing the office conditions visibly deteriorate over a four-month period, I was unable to lie and put a good face on my job. I told the proprietor the truth. More than once. Which made him angry, which made me angry, which made him tell me to piss off. He was a rotten, miserable boss, and he must take the blame for the Worst Office Ever, but it wasn't just because of his Induhvidualism. Here are the details.
- The inside temperature of the office was kept at 60 F. I was told that the proprietor had some sort of surgery that had cut off his ability to feel other than extreme temperatures. (Does such a surgery even exist?) So for him to be cool, we had to freeze. Imagine wearing thick sweaters in the office while it's 95 F outside. [Ultimately, Dogbert had something to say about this.]
Dear Dogbert,
It's freezing in the office and the manager won't put on the heaters because he claims he does not feel the cold. What is the best course of action in this sort of situation?
Megan
Dear YouAgain,
Your boss is evidently a zombie with no central nervous system. But since he is also a manager, chances are that he has no spine. That means you can sneak up behind him and bend him into a doughnut shape, inserting his head into his sphincter. This works best if your boss has a chin or a pointy nose for the full Velcro [TM] affect. You won’t notice any impact on his ability to do strategy, but it might make it quieter around the office.
Sincerely,
Dogbert
- There were two bathrooms in the facility: his, and everyone else's. Everyone else's had a pipe leak that caused a puddle of water in the bathroom every time someone flushed the toilet -- this went unfixed for two months. Does he let the rest of us use his? No.
- In order to show off his soccer skills, he would take each of us out into the parking lot one at a time for a game of "soccer chicken." He would kick the ball across the parking lot and knock a can off one of our heads (a distance of over 100 feet). I refused to participate in this nonsense, and I think that was when he started not to like me.
- His wife came in a couple times a week for the bookkeeping, which is OK -- many entrepreneurs borrow support from their families in this way. But when an African-American woman came in to interview for a receptionist job -- a position that was never filled in the four months I was there -- he cut the interview short, telling me later that he didn't trust anyone black.
- He finally ordered three of us to prepare a SPAM to send to all of his previous and potential customers. I warned him that most people thought SPAM was invasive and that it was unlikely a single person out of several hundred on the list would buy a RAID because of it. That the plan was a mistake. He said "have you ever sold anything in your life? Well, I have. So shut up and do it." Later, when the ploy failed, he was surprised to have a couple dozen previous customers ask Syred not to e-mail them again. And he fired me.
- And OH YEAH! After I was gone for over a year, he lied to the State of New Jersey, telling them I'd "walked off the job," and inciting the State to request that I pay back unemployment benefits I'd received. It took me several months to set that record straight, and Syred was long out of business by then.
My first couple of months working for
GreyPilgrim, Inc., the company didn't have a toilet at all, and their environment was better than this. The lessons to young entrepreneurs are as follows:
- If you are going to go to the trouble of hiring someone, make sure you give them an environment they can work in. If you can't make them warm, at least make them empowered and enthusiastic.
- If you aren't good with people, get some people on your team who ARE and let THEM run the day-to-day operations. I mean it: LET them.
I don't need to reveal this vindictive dipstick's identity -- anyone can run a Google search and find him. But he hasn't been active on the Internet in some time. The Net is an unusually pleasant place because of that. :-) Please, young entrepreneurs, run shops that value people. You'll never be sorry.
Labels: diversions
Brain's "How to Make a Million Dollars": cool summer reading
Marshall Brain's
"How to Make a Million Dollars" is worth the time you invest for reading. It strangely makes total sense. It almost even seems possible. :-) :-) :-)
Labels: consulting
re:invention shuts down!
Rotten luck. Kirsten Osolind says
re:invention is shutting down its blog. No word on whether or when it'll be back. Hers was one of the better ones. :-(
Labels: internet
17 MORE Deadly Small Business Mistakes!
Harry Joiner has written a popular blog post entitled
"17 Deadly Small Business Mistakes". I think it's a nice piece of work. But here's something funny: the kids at nearby
Hopewell High, in their business classes, are being given handouts written by one David C. Carter, which includes
another list of frequent causes of business failure. You'll see these two lists are not precisely the same, too, though there's some overlap.
- Moving forward without testing ideas first
- Pricing too low
- Underestimating time to market
- Underestimating competition
- Starting with insufficient funding
- Carelessness with generous funding
- Starting without "book smarts" or "street smarts"
- Borrowing without a repayment plan and budget
- Working with too many/too many large customers
- Working without a contingency plan
- Buying too much on credit
- Giving customers excessive credit
- Growing too fast
- Lacking complete and accurate records
- Spending on extravagances
- Hiring too many relatives and friends
- Working on an irregular/unprofessional schedule
(I've rewritten Carter's list, and shortened most of its entries, for simplicity's sake.) What are the chances that two sources could come up with lists for the same purpose, with different entries, yet exactly 17 entries in each? Is that a sign that there really are exactly 17 things to watch out for?
Labels: consulting
The Corporation IS a corporation!
I was looking at getting a copy of the movie documentary
The Corporation, partly out of personal professional curiosity, and partly out of a desire to give my students something to discuss. I've heard lots of good things about this flick, and its take on business morals.
The problem: if I want to show it in class, I have to buy an
"education version" at US $195. That allows me to show the film to groups of less than 50 students, with no admission charge. The
"home version" allows me no such permission, but only costs about US $25.
Hey! Corporation guys! I am an adjunct professor! I'd like to show yer movie but
I'm not bloody made of money! And it certainly looks to me like you guys are guilty in your own way of the behaviors you lambaste in the film. Unless of course
- you are supplying unlimited copy rights to your study guide
- the study guide is better than something I can develop on my own
- the DVD never, ever wears out
...if none of those are true, I'll shortchange my students and just ignore your existence.
Labels: diversions
Ethnic media: Valuing diversity meets business imperative!
When I wrote
this article on diversity in my
e-book on Rhetoric, some of the information may already have been dated -- though it was one of the most well-researched articles I took on. I was the product of corporate diversity training that was mandatory but that had no identity, no connection to a business imperative.
I have long since believed that the business imperative is there. But
this article in the Washington Post on ethnic media is a strong confirmation. Consider just a few tidbits:
- [There is] an estimate that less than four percent of all advertising dollars are invested in ethnic media. [But] one out of every four adults are reached by ethnic media.
- The U.S. Census Bureau announced that half of America's 41.3 million Hispanics are under age 27, and that [birth rate outpaces immigration rate].
- Twenty percent of purchasers of Mercedes, BMWs and Acuras are Asian.
- [An Indian media story indicated that] McDonald's french fries contain animal flavoring, which led some vegetarian Hindus to file a lawsuit.
This is to say that white [or even white and black!], Republican or Democrat, business or media organizations can now overlook other people groups only at their own peril.
Labels: character
Forbes on sustainable development
OK, this was an advertisement, not an article: but the latest issue of
Forbes contains a... something... about sustainable, or socially-conscious, development. Even though this "article" is the result of a collaboration of several large companies, it clearly features the
World Business Council on Sustainable Development. The nature of this advertisement of course makes me suspicious, but I'm suspicious of everyone's motives, including my own.
There's still a neat list there called "Ten Rules by Which to Operate."
- Business is good for sustainable development, and [vice-versa].
- Business cannot succeed in societies that fail.
- Poverty is a key enemy to stable societies.
- Access to markets for all supports sustainable development.
- Good governance is needed to make business a part of the solution.
- Business has to earn its "license" to operate, innovate and grow.
- Innovation and technology development are crucial to sustainable development.
- Eco-efficiency -- doing more with less -- is at the core of the business case for sustainable development.
- Keeping ecosystems in balance must be a prerequisite for business.
- Cooperation beats confrontation.
You can see that this list is morally and ethically encouraging. The big question is: who's listening?
Labels: consulting
Classifying subjects
adamnation.org classifies its postings, taking a cue from three bloggers (and only 34 postings total) that the writer considers "A-list bloggers." His categories make some sense:
- link to another story, blog post, or item of interest
- product info/how-to
- issue analysis or commentary
- original reporting or scoop
- company plug
- self-promotion or personal
So I looked at this for my own -- with a significantly larger number of posts. I had to adjust my list just a bit, because I don't really do any "original reporting," except about local small businesses or student-run businesses that I have a direct connection to.
My feeling was that this blog is mostly about how-tos in business writing, and a chronicle of several start-ups I have been working with. So my own categories are
- link to another story, blog post, or item of interest
- business writing/how-to
- issue analysis or commentary
- technology analysis or commentary
- company or business practice analysis or commentary
- student-run or local business update
- shameless self-promotion
...and you can see the result. I thought I'd had more to say about tech, but I guess technology is passing me by. Add one to "self" for this post. :-)
Labels: education
Cold Stone Creamery: Singin' for yer tipper!
They just opened up a
Cold Stone Creamery next to the local
Steve's Comic Relief, so that whenever I pop in at Steve's and find my favorite comic book, I can celebrate with a nice Sweet Cream mixed with Heath Bar. Or I can do that if the comic I'm really waiting excessively for (in this case
New Avengers #6 -- what's up with that,
Marvel?) isn't in, I can commisserate with the same thing. :-)
The ice cream is nothing unique -- there was a place in Rocky River, OH, called Mixin's back in the mid-80s when I lived in the Cleveland area, and their stuff was just as good.
This site says the Cold Stone/Mixin's theory is much older than that. But Mixin's was one store, long since closed, and Cold Stone is franchising all over the place. And it's unfortunate that Cold Stone's rapid spread is leading to history revisions, as seen in
this blog, which reprints a fair amount of Cold Stone's self-professed "whole new way" to enjoy ice cream.
I'm not complaining about Cold Stone, though: I love the ice cream. I don't much care for the prices, which to me are a bit steep. But I also love the service. The young people working the "frozen granite stone" behind the counter will sing a jingle for you if you tip them. Something simple that goes kind of like this:
We'll be scooping here at Cold Stone when you tip (2x)
We're a dippin' and we're mixin' and we're mixin' and we're dippin'
We'll be scooping here at Cold Stone when you tip!
to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." I noticed one server's friends came in not to buy ice cream, but to hear her sing.
I guess the lesson for young entrepreneurs is that sometimes the silly stuff makes the customers remember you. Funny or stupid commercials stick with us one heck of a lot longer than serious ones. And the little jingle, which no doubt wears on the servers pretty quickly during each shift, makes the customers smile. I would not at all be surprised to hear that the tips come in pretty high for high-school-age employees, too...
Labels: diversions
How to tell your customers what they need!
It's true. Sometimes we have to help our customers understand what it is they want. Nobody should be better at this than young entrepreneurs: naturally enthusiastic and having the fervor of a revival of religion when it comes to their businesses. But just in case the idea is new to you, here are some hints to guide you as you guide them.
- They don't want to buy things. They want to buy the services performed by things. Of course there are exceptions, such as (non-reference) books.
- They have other things that they value besides money.
- They want the need to purchase this particular product or service to go away.
- They don't need to become experts in this area.
- They have rules they must follow in any purchase.
If you remember their wants and needs, you will be better prepared to help them understand what you are offering. Now, about what to teach them:
- Show you understand the problem they have that made them seek you out in the first place.
- Give them the names of impartial third parties who've had similar problems. Even if these parties didn't buy from you. You may know what motivates potential customers to buy from someone else, or not to buy, but it's important that your new potential customers know this too.
- Show how solving the problem improves the bottom line, especially in the areas they value most -- whether those areas include cost or not.
In short, are they better off taking SOME action than taking NONE? If they must act, are they better off with YOU or someone else? There is a danger that they could choose someone else. But they must have that choice, and it's better that they have it early than late. If they have the choice early, they will begin to trust you as a person who is seeking their best interests rather than a sale. That is how you make repeat customers.
You don't necessarily have to tell them how your competitors are better than you, but if there is any area in which you are not better than the competition, you must not lie about it. They will find out if you do.
Once they decide to buy from you, you still get to teach them:
- Their responsibility after the purchase, and yours.
- What to do if (when) something goes wrong.
- How to find the fastest answers to their questions.
Here they should feel free to contact you. You have invested time and energy in establishing the relationship; even if you have "technical support" or "customer service" functions, let them know that you will be there for them. Again, that's how you win repeat customers. It's not about the one sale. It's about a lifetime worth.
Labels: consulting
IMET's best niche
The IMET Corporation has set itself up with several market niches in the early days of its existence, but this is the one that I think will work best: short-run production. Most other engineering design organizations don't do production; most other small manufacturers specialize in large runs. Of course they specialize in large runs! There's a cost associated with setting up for the run and tearing down afterwards! IMET feels that their small size, agile practices and in-house shop enable them to absorb the cost of set-up and tear-down, and reach out to the small-run customers with an affordable relationship. That works for me...
Labels: young entrepreneurs
An open letter to Stephen Chow
Dear Mr. Chow,
In my house, we are fans of your work, having repeatedly seen and enjoyed
Kung Fu Hustle,
From Beijing with Love, and especially
Shaolin Soccer. We respect the historical role you have played in developing the nonsense genre in Asian film, and in delivering it to the world for us all to enjoy.
There is, however, one problem. Your English translations are... well, there's no other way to say it. They're terrible. Whoever is doing your translations cannot distinguish between English verbs based on "to be" and those based on "to do." Making these verbs into contractions doesn't help. The English translation is so bad that it affects our ability in the USA and other English-speaking countries to fully appreciate your fine work.
If you read this, Mr. Chow, I can help you. I will edit your English translations for a modest $100 US per screenplay, plus a mention in the film credits. I am experienced at doing this, as I have clients in Beijing for whom I edit translations already. I have a TESL teaching certificate and an earned doctorate. I'll make your translations clean with no loss of humor. And you won't get a better deal from anyone in the USA. Just contact me at the e-mail address given for me on this page.
I'm doing this because that's what entrepreneurs do: they get their names out there. Sincerely, Ron
Labels: diversions
The burden of proof is a moving target
Normally, the burden of proof falls on those making the
claim, whatever the claim may be. Of course, I have seen even this simple principle of rhetoric wrongly used against those with unpopular beliefs. Christians, for instance, are widely assumed (at least on the Net) to be about converting everyone else, even when they apply their beliefs and requirements only to themselves. These folks are often shouted down by people who think themselves enlightened for shouting. People who are otherwise thoughtful and analytical fall all over themselves to throw the "burden of proof" at bystanders who are willing to admit to having unpopular beliefs.
But that's a digression.
The entrepreneur recognizes the burden of proof in trying to sell a new product or service. We must convince an audience of potential customers that (a) they need what we're selling and (b) they want us to sell it to them. But the burden of proof is (sometimes wrongly) thrown back at us by dissatisfied customers. They say our product or service is bad, or even just that we suck, and they aren't required to prove it. WE are required to prove we don't suck instead. Doing business with the public is about perception. If we're perceived as nonresponsive to customers, we are until be prove we're not. Again, the simplest principles of rhetoric fail sometimes in the face of human behavior.
This is why some companies ignore customers who squawk. We figure maybe they'll go away after their spleens are vented. Of course, once again the Internet has made even this a risky proposition. That's why the best advice I can give the young entrepreneur about the "burden of proof" is to have everyone in the company be responsible for
customer service, and that our responsibilities in that role include listening -- even when the burden of proof is wrongly thrown at us -- and doing the best we can to act on what we hear.
Labels: rhetoric
Just when you've heard everything: the toilet restaurant
This link describes a Taiwanese toilet restaurant. The following quote says it all:
The top orders are curry hot pot, curry chicken rice and chocolate ice cream because, well, "they look most like the real thing", [owner Eric] Wang says.
Ah, the ingenuity of the young entrepreneur. :-)
Labels: diversions
Rhetoric applied to sales
Here is an article even more dated than the last one I wrote about. It's by a fellow named Garry Cosnett, and it's called "The Art of Persuasion: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Sales Professionals." Funny, this article was written in 1996 and was originally hosted by
salesdoctors.com, but they don't have it there any more. You know how Web sites can be -- the old stuff will get pruned away, even if it's classic. So this article is getting harder to find. This school system in Iowa hosting it now won't do so forever.
Anyway, the point is that this article IS classic. Cosnett shows us how the act of selling is tied to the practice of rhetoric, and in particular how each vertex of the rhetorical triangle (pictured) contributes to our relationships with customers, and to ultimately making the sale. The argument Cosnett makes is beautiful in its simplicity. His summary goes like this:
To [apply rhetoric to sales], a sales presentation should be:- clear, simple, and direct
- systematic and easy to follow
- expressed in the prospect's own terms
- tailored to the prospect's needs
- supported by solid, memorable examples
- easy to visualize (illustrated, where possible)
- as brief as possible
So sales is all about having enough discipline to follow rules nearly as old as Western civilization.
Labels: consulting
15 richest fictional characters
I know, I know. This list is dated by several years. I just like it. It originally appeared in
Forbes magazine under the byline of Michael Noer and Dan Ackman.
I know what you're thinking: can I add value? Almost certainly. Elliot S. Maggin's excellent
Kingdom Come brings Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor together to fight a common enemy. And Luthor (pictured is the Lex Luthor played admirably by
Michael Rosenbaum in
Smallville), in the novel, makes it clear that Wayne is "old money" and the Luthor fortune is the work of little more than a generation. Let's see if Forbes comes back in, say, 2007, saying Luthor's caught up a slot or two on this list. :-)
And where does
Donald Trump stack up with these two guys? Is he just chump change? :-) :-) :-)
Labels: diversions
Dark times ahead for NASA Glenn?
Here is one of many news articles proclaiming the potential loss of 700 civil servant and 400 contractor jobs at
NASA Glenn Research Center, my one-time employer, because of President Bush's need to prosecute his war and tax cuts. This article was reported by Karen Schaefer of Cleveland radio station WCPN.
Ann Heyward (pictured), Vice President of Workforce Enhancement at the
Ohio Aerospace Institute and once a friend of mine when I was at NASA, had this to say at the time:
These are people who don't have ready replacement jobs in the region. This means these jobs leave our state, so talk about a brain drain. You're talking about the loss of 1,100 very fine brains going somewhere else in the country.
But
subsequent news stories showed a likelihood of more moderate cuts, as hinted by newly-crowned NASA Administrator Michael Griffin:
Glenn's not going away, and I won't let it go away. It's too valuable...
So why am I going on and on about a situation I can't control at a place where I no longer work? One reason: the contractors, at least, know the risk is there for a layoff when they hire on. That's the entire reason for the contractor system -- to absorb personnel cuts so that the civil service workforce can remain more stable as the economy fluctuates. Many entrepreneurs have recognized this system over the years, and started the right contract businesses at the right times to serve NASA and other federal agencies.
I feel badly for these contractors, really I do, but they should not forget that it's we who are responsible for our own professional destinies. Not President Bush. Thank GTFW -- I don't WANT that guy deciding MY destiny.
Really good advice about when to incorporate
Dan Marques writes in his blog about the relative virtues of when a start-up should incorporate, and with whose help.
But for the sake of the start-ups I care most about, he has this to say:
I have rarely seen (if ever) people telling prospective entrepreneurs the benefits and strategies of not incorporating (at least in the short run). [...] Basically, any major contract or cash flow that is foreshadowing the real start of your new venture is when you should incorporate.
There's the rub: even if you've started up, you haven't started up, until the money starts coming in. And you shouldn't spend a dime on incorporation until you reach that point.
Labels: consulting
My son has developed a gift for coming up with new jargon for describing what we observe. First there was fauxfanity, those uninterpretable phrases we utter when we drop a book on our toe and don't want to curse out loud. But my favorite is splogging, the phenomenon of spam blogging. Some sploggers are linked from this blog, because I can't seem to find the right keywords to keep them out. Examples include www.keyfranchises.com, homesecurityfocus.blogspot.com, and justbusinessleasing.blogspot.com. I'd like to get splogging trademarked, like J. Jonah Jameson (pictured, played by J. K. Simmons in Spider-Man) tried to do when he coined the name "Green Goblin."
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