Tag Archives: news

How I Got Swindled.

Business Mistakes, , , ,

He hooked me easily. On the phone. He had a believable story, how he’d partnered with my company’s main competitor for strategic business alliances, but that person screwed him, took the deals but didn’t pay him.

He knew the market segment we were in, he knew that competitor, and he dropped a lot of very convincing names. Decision makers in major companies, websites, all very convincing. And he had deals ready to go, he said. Contacts in companies who wanted to do volume buying of our product.

This was exciting. I’m an entrepreneur; I wanted the sales. And the names he dropped checked, the companies checked. It all made me happy.

But it was just a plain swindle. He ended up taking several thousand dollars as an advance payment. He cashed the check, closed the account, and disappeared. The telephone number he’d been on was disconnected.

And I had made a point of trusting him. Before we sent the check, our controller suggested we should check him out a bit. I said no, thanks, but I trust my instinct, send him the check. Sigh…

If you explore this, there’s an obvious lesson in healthy cynicism, but there’s also a bit of a morality play here, because he was offering me a shortcut, leverage on work already done, something vaguely akin to something for nothing. I admit it.

This all happened more than 10 years ago. I’m posting it today because I liked Alexis Martin Neeley‘s post on The Scammers Who Conned Me Out of $10,000 on her Intreprid Mompreneur blog a week or so ago. It’s a refreshingly honest account, which might help others. And when I saw it, I decided to post this one.

Both stories could go onto John Caddell‘s Mistake Bank, a delightful collection of stories about mistakes. Learn from my mistakes, or Alexis’ mistakes, and don’t make the same mistakes. Good idea, no?

Some Things You Should Never Call Yourself

Advice, Business Mistakes, , , ,

Irony: seems like people who call themselves experts, gurus, mavens, and inspirational speakers usually aren’t.

Have you ever been inspired by a self-proclaimed inspirational speaker? I haven’t. I’ve been inspired by authors, writers, researchers, teachers, founders, entrepreneurs, poets, even, lately, by Presidents. But they don’t call themselves inspirational speakers.

The greatest collection of inspirational speakers I know of is at www.ted.com. Hundreds of people, many of them, maybe even most of them, inspirational, but not one carries that particular label around. That’s not what their name tags ever say.

Yesterday I read this on PR Workbench by Jack Monson:

Self-described Social Media Experts beware!

If you call yourself a social media expert, the rest of us will soon see that you’re saying nothing.

And then, in this second post following up, this:

Don’t misunderstand – there are many true social media experts out there. The best of them do not need to call themselves experts; their clients and peers are doing that for them.

That seems clear to me. Do you agree?

(Photo credit: Original cc by Memekiller on Flickr, modified)

Is Software Management Doomed?

Creativity, Management, Software, Technology, , , , , , ,

Committees don’t make great software. It takes a single person, an author. Maybe he gets some help. Teams don’t do it. Nobody sees the whole elephant.

I’m pretty sure I heard that basic sentiment first in about 1986, from Dave Winer, who was then the author of a Macintosh outlining program named More (now he’s better known as the de-facto father of blogging).

What reminded me of this over the weekend was my son emailing me about Jeff Atwood’s Software Engineering: Dead post on Coding Horror. In his post, Jeff’s looking at this article by Tom DeMarco, author of Controlling Software Projects, a software management classic.

Creative Programming

What DeMarco seems to be saying — and, at least, what I am definitely saying — is that control is ultimately illusory on software development projects. If you want to move your project forward, the only reliable way to do that is to cultivate a deep sense of software craftsmanship and professionalism around it.

The guys and gals who show up every day eager to hone their craft, who are passionate about building stuff that matters to them, and perhaps in some small way, to the rest of the world — those are the people and projects that will ultimately succeed.

That sounds to me a lot like what Dave Winer was getting at about 25 years ago. And if it takes a single user, someone writing code and working the application because he or she wants to use it, then that’s hard to manage.

And if you’re interested in software quality, creativity, and management, you might want to look at an exchange between user interface designerDustin Curtis and an interface designer at American Airlines. It starts here with Justin’s rant about the hostile interface on the AA website; and gets more interesting here with an AA interface designer’s answer.

However, there are large exceptions. For example, our Interactive Marketing group designs and implements fare sales and specials (and doesn’t go through us to do it), and the Publishing group pushes content without much interaction with us… Oh, and don’t forget the AAdvantage team (which for some reason, runs its own little corner of the site) or the international sites (which have a lot of autonomy in how their domains are run)… Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that AA.com is a huge corporate undertaking with a lot of tentacles that reach into a lot of interests. It’s not small, by any means.

And apparently frustration was had by all.

And it certainly won’t make you wish you had a creative or design oriented position in a large company.

Two guys wrote the original spreadsheet (VisiCalc), one, Paul Brainard, wrote the main part of the first page layout program (Pagemaker). One of the more interesting facets of a lot of Web 2.0 work is that the programs are smaller, written more by authors, less by teams.

True Story: Building Business, Changing Lives, One at a Time

Business Stories, , , , ,

I hope you heard–you could have read it here— of the Palo Alto Software’s Oregon Small Business Boost, earlier this month, where we gave away thousands of units of business plan software to help the Oregon economy and reduce its unemployment problem.

The effort depended on more than 85 locations of chambers of commerce and small business development centers and related development organizations. They cooperated by giving away the cards that people used for the download.

I posted here about the results as we knew them immediately afterwards.

Yesterday I received this email. I’m reproducing it word for word here:

One late evening after work, a bunch of us were playing an online game, having fun and just relaxing. It was Friday, and we knew we would be playing all night, since the boss sometimes came in and played with us. It was a great opportunity for the developers, customer service reps and technicians to unwind, though we often were hard core gamers and loved playing whenever we could, sometimes during the day at lunch.

As it turns out, we soon discovered a small business that had opened up in Huntsville, Alabama, called Net-Tricity. It was a computer center that had dozens of stations and with all the newest software that we otherwise didn’t have or didn’t want to purchase for all of us to play. So, on many occasions we’d pack up and head over there and commandeer a dozen stations and duke it out online! The business was a hit and the year was 1997, and such stores were far and few between. Often the only venue for gamers was the colleges and universities, till they started restricting who could access, let alone play. Quake was big then and seemed to be on every available system in the area, though many establishments overlooked it, many did not and made it harder and harder to enjoy camaraderie in a LAN environment.

Eventually, the owners of Net-Tricity sold their business and in the subsequent months, the new owners mismanaged and the store closed. A tried and tested success, shut down after only a year in the black and led the way in the south for this business model. It was 1998 and I was determined to reopen that dream and make it mine.

As with life, I had a family to consider, remarried, moved, change career goals, and resumed trucking. Many years went by as I raised my kids, drove a truck across America, and day dreamed about opening my business. Fortunately, I started a side job repairing computers and consulting for friends in 1998. It was called N3tricity, sounding pretty much like the other company, and exclusive to my operation. It didn’t amount to much till later, as fate would have it. In 2004, my family moved to Oregon to be closer to our family roots.

In 2007, frustrated with serving others interests and making little to nothing for it, I went to visit the Eugene Chamber of Commerce. With a half baked idea and a good intention, I soon discovered that without a business plan, it would be hard to convince anyone to help me out. I hung up my dreams again and returned to my job. Determined to make some progress, I kept running into Business Plan Pro advertisements. I couldn’t afford it and settled with something less and waded through the mountain of information. With my laptop, hunched over my meal in a truck stop, I poured over countless articles online about writing a business plan. It was enough to discourage even a hard-core trucker.

In late 2008, I lost my job and faced the reality that I was quickly becoming too old to be a new hire, and the fear that everyone faces when re-entering the job market. My skills were dated and what worked years ago is no where good enough by today’s hiring standards. The recession made it worse, since it was now an employer favored climate, job seekers are not in demand and businesses can be picky. As early as January, I was quickly moving from interview to interview, all of them saying no, or no thank you. I began ramping up N3tricity’s services through craigslist, business cards, word of mouth, and even networking through the Web.

Now, volunteering my time in the community, church, and social groups, I took another look at business planning software, and came across your product. I still couldn’t afford it and knew if I was to move this project forward, now was the time. I began attending life coaching seminars, gained self confidence and reached out to the malls to find out what they thought about my idea. They loved it. I actually sat down and manually wrote my business plan out. It was done in about a week and I was exhausted. Determined to see N3tricity impact the local community during this recession, I visited SCORE, often. I learned about the give away and planned my entire week around insuring I was first in line.

Now, with it up and running, N3tricity business plan has gone through several revisions, using the resources, assets and outlines, I have a nearly complete plan. It has given me the renewed vision and focus to recommit to building this business. In a follow up meeting with SCORE advisors, the plan actually allows me to focus on what’s important, concentrate on weak areas of my vision, and use my time more wisely. Though it doesn’t remove the anxiety a start-up, it has relieved me of many of my obstacles by simply letting me build a bridge, one step at a time.

Today, N3tricity’s team is becoming a reality. The business plan continues to be a center piece for negotiations, that prospective candidates want to read it, look at the numbers and understand where, what, when, why, and who. Last week I secured my operations coordinator, a gentlemen with over 50 years in the entertainment industry, this would not have been possible without having this plan. Yesterday, I spoke someone I want to be on my IT staff, and he also looked at the business plan first. Later that day, I secured my CPA. Again, the business plan was the first thing they looked at.

With the help of the Chamber of Commerce, SCORE and Palo Alto Software, I am well on my way toward meeting with investors in Seattle and delivering a convincing business plan. There isn’t enough I can say to express my deepest thanks and appreciation for this opportunity you’ve provided to so many, including myself. The simple fact is that this tool is an essential component of any businesses ability to succeed. The resources within were immediately recognized, valued and quickly utilized to create momentum, polish the design, and forward my project to print.

I owe a lot my success to Wings Seminars, the process of moving me off the fence and back into my life, taking charge and moving myself towards my goals, through deliberate action and commitment to change. I owe Business Plan Pro, SCORE and Chamber of Commerce a huge round of applause and gratitude for being available, supportive and a constant reminder to me that success is about passion, drive and intention.

Thank you.

Kind Regards,

Richard Beers

So there: trucker, entrepreneur, and a really good writer of emails (that one is not edited at all, that’s the way I received it).

True Story: A Challenge

Back to Fundamentals, Business Planning, True Stories, , ,

I was the planning consultant to Apple Computer’s Latin America group from 1982 until 1991 or 1992, the end of the relationship being a bit hard to define as I was called on steadily more by Apple Japan and less by Apple Latin America.

The challenge came in the spring of 1985. The annual business plan was done every spring, turned in to management in June and then discussed and revised and resubmitted and eventually accepted in July. In April of 1985 I had been the consultant for that process for four years running when Hector Saldana, manager of the group, said:

“Tim, yes I want you to do our annual plan for us again this year. But only on two conditions: first, I want you to stop working for other computer companies. Second, I want you to take up a desk in our office, come every day, and sit here and see us implement the plan.”

Happily, he also had some good news related to giving up other competing companies as clients: “And, if you agree to do this, I want to contract you for all of your hours for the next year, and at your regular billing rate.”

The condition of giving up competing clients was difficult for a one-person business. What if Apple had problems, or changed its policy regarding consultants? What if Hector got promoted or fired? Where would I be then, if I had given up other business relationships.

That’s not the real point of the story, although it does relate to planning as you go. That certainly wasn’t part of my business plan for my business, but it was a classic example of changed assumptions. We talked about it at home at length, and decided to go ahead with it. However, we also modified the plan we had going related to efforts to generate new leads and new business: we would focus that effort within Apple itself, different groups that didn’t talk much to each other, to reduce risk of having two many eggs in the single Apple Latin America basket. The plan was modified for cause, to accommodate changed assumptions.

The problem of implementation, however, forced me to consider the difference between the plan and the results of the plan.

There was some history. The previous year or two had been the time of “desktop publishing” for Apple Computer. Desktop publishing, which we now take for granted, started with the first Macintosh laser printer in 1985. It was a huge advantage for Apple in competition against other personal computer systems.

Our plan for fiscal 1985 had been to emphasize desktop publishing in most of our marketing efforts. And it didn’t happen. While we talked about desktop publishing in every meeting, the managers would go back to their desks, take phone calls, put out fires, and forget about it. They didn’t intend to, but they’d had so much emphasis on desktop publishing that it seemed boring, old hat. Multimedia was the thing.

So, faced with the implementation challenge, I created what became the strategy pyramid to manage strategic alignment. We ended up with a relatively simple database of business activities. Collaterals (meaning brochures and such), bundle deals (software included with the hardware at special bundled prices), advertising, trade shows, meetings and events, all were tied into a system that identified what strategy point they impacted, and what tactic.

So during that year, as business went on, we were able to view actual activities, spending and effort, divided by priority. We set more budget money for desktop publishing activities than any other. During the review meetings, we compared actual spending and activities (the beginning of what I talk about as metrics)  to planned spending and activities. And over time, with pie charts and bar charts to help, we were able to build strategic alignment. What was done was what the strategy dictated.

The plan-as-you-go implication was that this didn’t happen just because it was in the plan. It took management. There was a plan review schedule with the meetings on the calendar way in advance, and for every meeting I was able to produce data on progress towards planned goals. The managers discussed results. Plan vs. actual metrics became important.

When things didn’t go according to plan, the meetings would bring that to the surface. Managers would explain how the assumptions turned out wrong, or some unforeseen event — we had good results as well as bad results — and we would on occasion revise the plan.

Does the News Business Die Along with Newspapers?

Current Affairs, Journalism, Reflections, , , , , ,

In the olden days, when I was a grad student in Journalism, for instance, or a night editor for UPI, the business model of the news business was fairly clear:

  1. News organizations sold advertisements.
  2. They needed news to get readers to be able to sell the ads.
  3. News needed credibility to get the readers.

So we had a news business.

We tend to forget the factor of volume, as related to credibility. Newspapers, and later, television news, had to appeal to a mass audience in order to make a living. That helped us generate a news ethic, such as objectivity — covering the news, trying to keep opinion out of it.

News was never really objective, of course. But there was the goal of objectivity. As journalists, most of us tried to be objective. And when we weren’t being objective and we knew it, we tried to make our bias clear, and label the content something different from news.

“Yellow journalism” was about sensationalizing the news. And it was always a problem, back in those olden days. Some media did it more than others.

News values changed with the growth of television news. The business of selling ads got better with more audience, and the audience liked celebrities, violence, puppies, and things that could fit into 30-second spots.

What we didn’t imagine, back then, was the splintering of the audience into different interest groups; the impact of having 600 channels on the television, and millions of websites. That changed the business entirely, and we — not just the journalists, but the world at large — haven’t figured that out yet.

Specifically, what does that mean? Well, to start with, now you can make a good business being the blatantly conservative television cable news channel, for example. You don’t have to appeal to a cross section; you appeal to a segment. And you can do the same as the blatantly liberal blog/news source.

So what does this mean for news?