Category: Daily Life

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Daily Life The Marketeer

If you are reading this, then it’s all over

For me, this is a sad post to write, but the good news is that if I ever hit the publish button, then I am probably enjoying an adult beverage and watching the sunset with a smile on my face.

How did I get to this point? Writing a post as digital therapy in July, knowing that it will sit in the draft bin for who knows how long. There have been two things this month that led me to this confession: I had touched base with Greg Verdino about his new book and he said “Man, where have you been?”. The other was Chris Brogan saying he was glad to see some blog posts out of me. Seth Godin said something to the effect that a good measure of your work is if people notice if you are missing. Given the busy schedules of Greg and Chris, that makes me feel pretty good.

So, where the hell have I been? Let’s rewind the clock to October 2009 for half the story – at Newton Wellesley after being awake for more hours in a row than I ever have before, our son arrived. That has been a wonderful adventure, taking up most of our lives but worth every minute. But the other half… that’s why this sits in the draft bin.

In December 2009 I did my annual review of how the year went. The dead week between Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time to take a look at the bigger picture. The elephant in the back of my mind was that it would be my 5th anniversary at work. In June I vested in the last of my options, and in the startup world this makes you start thinking about the next big thing. If everything goes perfectly (I know maybe 4 people that have scored that lottery ticket), the startup you are at goes public or gets acquired and you tough out the days until you get all your shares. There are many tales of people throwing the vesting day party and then riding off into the sunset for a tour of Europe, writing a book, start a Daddyblog, taking up Yak farming, whatever…

Although we haven’t hit an event, everything is going very well. The company has grown 6x in my time there and it’s been great to watch the business grow and see customers like the Auto company that Monty hangs with arrive, and the first monster deal (and the monsters got bigger every other year or so).

After many discussions, coffees, lunches with friends asking about what I should be looking at next, the nuclear winter of the current economy was confirmed. In April I decided that there was no point in starting search with the summer coming on, and decided to stick with working only one job (a job search is always a full time job), and setting up the summer vacation.

This was the impetus for the end of the M Show, giving it a proper finish, silencing the nagging voice in the background that asked when the next show would go out. This freed time up for Marketing Over Coffee, which has continued it’s run this year and has been a fantastic source of networking for me.

As usual, the universe has no regard for my plans and has its way of telling me so. From the silence of the summer I was contacted by some folks that I used to work with and started talking to them.

And here I sit in a random coffee shop. As I write this draft, I really can’t talk to anybody about anything. I’m not writing anything, not getting myself into situations where I have to talk about anything on the horizon. I’m all set with phone calls at weird hours so that I can respect the day with my co-workers. The only laugh I had was from John T., we were talking about catching up over lunch so I could give him his Marketing Over Coffee Award, and he joked that we could try to eat lunch at the Newton Marriott but that they probably wouldn’t let us in since it wasn’t a job interview (sorry for the local 128 humor).

One day I soon will hit the publish button. I’ll have plenty of stories in the backlog, but I’m  sure that by then I’m going to be spending all my time on the next big thing, and will be more than ready to stop staring at the horizon and itching to get down to work.

So after this gets posted I’ll be pretty busy with other stuff, but at least you’ll know where I’ve been.

Categories
Daily Life

Back to Work

Some random stuff today that I wanted to put out on my first day back. I completed our first Griswold-style road vacation, logging 2,000 miles in less than 2 weeks driving from Boston to Torch Lake, Michigan.

  1. Aside from some podcast editing I was able to get by with only my iPad for the entire trip. It does everything I needed, and it was great to spend the half hour in a line of cars trying to get through customs watching Ricky Gervais in Extras.
  2. The iPad is fantastic for managing photos. I was able to plug in 3 different digital cameras, review photos and delete the ones I didn’t want. What was normally at least an hour going through photos after a trip was eliminated, and everybody got to see photos real time.
  3. I was issued a new Dell at work today, it was sort of stuck between off and on, the keyboard and power button were lit, but I couldn’t get it to wake up without doing a 10-second hold of the power button. It’s disappointing when the first experience with a tool is “Geez, is something wrong with this thing?”
  4. While getting to the podcast backlog this morning during my commute, I picked an episode of Manager Tools randomly out of the pile, and was surprised to be mentioned in the show. That was very cool, I’ve never heard these guys give out a plug and they have an blue chip brand that is doing very well.
  5. Bill Green mentions Update: I had this all wrong, the term “Auto-Downloading” for podcasts was created by Bob Knorpp, host of the BeanCast. This is the most profound thing ever said about podcasting in its history. The fact that it took 5 years for someone to connect the dots and come up with this shows why marketing is so difficult, and by extension, why Bill Bob could be the best marketing guy on the planet.
    Addendum: So I wasn’t clear on this – It’s nothing big, but hugely profound. Bob has shown his ability as a gold standard copy writer when he coined “Auto-Download”. For five years podcasters have been saying “Subscribe to Podcasts” which has no intuitive meaning. “Sign up for Auto-Download” is intuitive (Zyman refers to this as “Cup of Soup” Marketing, a triumph of usability where the name tells you everything you need to know).
  6. Travelling with a baby is not really a vacation.

Ok, I still have a lot of stuff to clean up, I hope you’ve had a shot at a summer vacation this year. I’m going to be running the Falmouth Road Race this weekend, please DM me if you are doing the race.

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Daily Life

40 Lessons I’ve Learned

40 Things I have picked up along my voyage:

  1. My first memory is Look Park in Northampton. Not much of a lesson, but it was the day I was “switched on”.
  2. Read – My parents got me into reading. At the local library, the Berkshire Athenaeum, I had a game card that would be stamped once for each book I read. Two important lessons – reading is an efficient way to acquire knowledge, learning from other’s successes and failures, and people will do just about anything in return for worthless crap like stamps if you set up the rewards system properly.
  3. You will have to live with contradictions – Spending money on the tools of war will generate a peace dividend. My Dad’s work for the military paid for my college education. You can like the Yankees and the Red Sox.
  4. 4th of July is the best holiday – you don’t have to buy people crap they don’t need, the weather and barbecues are usually good, and if you are daring you can blow shit up.
  5. Go UMass – If you put a bunch of working class people together they will drink a lot, have fun, and maybe learn some stuff.
  6. Read things that inspire you. I still read Superman to remind me that heroes never give a second thought to helping others or standing up for what’s right.
  7. Debt is risk taking and is ok. I learned that from selling drugs (on a computer game).
  8. It’s all about how you choose to respond and how you communicate. Read The 7 Habits – you have the power to choose.
  9. Photography – Take pictures, get closer than you think, take hundreds and only show your best work, use the rule of thirds
  10. Hobbies are a stupid waste of time and money, except for mine and yours. I don’t care if my car is crappy but god forbid my Hard Drive isn’t an SSD. This is where tribes come from.
  11. I care a lot about computers, they are my craftsman’s tools (back to the 7 habits – keep your saw sharp). Tiny increases in productivity make a huge difference over time.
  12. Karma does earn interest – doing good may not pay off right away, but it pays back big over time.
  13. If heaven doesn’t look like Tanglewood I’ll ask to be sent somewhere else.
  14. Golf with my family has brought me many memories. My Uncle gave me my first clubs two weeks before he died. My Mom used to joke that on the course was the first time she heard me say “Fuck!” and really mean it. Before she passed away we had a great laugh when my brother drove  his cart over his bag.
  15. Going to see James Taylor at Tanglewood is to understand the Berkshires in one night.
  16. Remember that everyone dies and your time here is limited. Don’t waste even a day.
  17. Laugh once every day, humor is everywhere, take advantage of it.
  18. You can predict the future if you work to create it.
  19. Normal people aren’t very interesting.
  20. People hire the people they want to work with, not the ones that are best for the job.
  21. You have to balance saving for tomorrow versus having a good time today.
  22. Audio is my favorite medium, music is a gift in my life.
  23. Worry has no value at all.
  24. Character is only revealed when things get really bad.
  25. Nothing is worth more to the sick than compassion.
  26. “If you are going through Hell, keep going” – Winston Churchill
  27. Jazz is music for musicians
  28. The Boston Marathon is the only World Championship open to the common man, but the Falmouth Road Race is more fun.
  29. No one will ever love you more than your Mom, No one will do a better job of teaching you responsibility or duty than your Dad
  30. No one can make me laugh as easily as my brother.
  31. Spend all the time you can with your Grandparents
  32. Our annual family celebration is important because, contrary to what Aunt Bonnie may say, I am the best Scrabble player in the family, I just don’t brag about it because it’s at her house on Torch Lake.
  33. Faith – If I try to be a good member of my community and leave the world better than I found it, everything else will takes care of itself.
  34. Getting married was the best decision of my life. Having a big wedding? Let’s just say I’m taking “’til death do us part” seriously because I don’t want to go through another wedding.
  35. Sometimes men have to go back to their cave, they don’t talk things over.
  36. Women just want to talk things over, they don’t want you to go fix them.
  37. Read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, it explains a lot.
  38. I waited my whole life for Carin.
  39. Like most things, having children is hard work, and that’s why it’s so satisfying.
  40. Look out for each other and never give up – W.S.
Categories
Daily Life

The3six5 Project

Bill Green mentioned The3six5 project during the Beancast around December and I signed on.

The idea is that 365 authors do a short diary entry about their day. If you want to read about my day yesterday, or get a look at some of the 150 or so others, check out the 3six5’s posterous: June 24, 2010 John Wall.

If you’ve come here from The3six5, welcome aboard! You can see links to the popular stuff on the left column, and please check out Marketing Over Coffee if you are interested in audio programs at all.

Categories
Daily Life

Getting to the “Why” of Your Business

This week I wanted to post an interview I did earlier in the year with Simon Sinek, he was recently featured on the TED channel in iTunes, and this interview goes a bit deeper:

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/marketingovercoffee/MoC153-why.mp3]

Also, thanks to everyone that supported my fund-raising efforts for the Run to Home Base. You can check out photos from Fenway here.

Categories
Brain Buster Great Marketing

The Paradox of Choice

Yesterday I saw two demonstrations of  Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice in action. This is one of the most useful books about decision making that I have found, and is a must read for anyone in marketing.

Jeff Bussgang asked why everyone still uses 4 year vesting schedules at startups when, in the current economy, exits usually take longer. For those that don’t speak VC – employees at startups get shares of the company, usually granted in 25% chunks at the first four anniversary dates – to encourage them to stay four years and get all their shares. (Shameless plug – if you want to learn more about how to speak VC, check out the Marketing Over Coffee interview with Jeff that will be posted the first week in June)

It’s a good argument, but as you can see from the post it has generated many comments – and this goes right to the Paradox of Choice. The more alternatives someone faces when making a decision, the less likely they will make a decision.

This is most easily demonstrated at a store I go to during the summer in Northern Michigan. They sell different kinds of jam and jellies, and they have about a dozen of them out to taste test, and that’s a problem. If there were two out you would like one better than the other, and maybe buy it. An Economist can mathematically represent this, they use a unit called Utils (rhymes with noodles) to measure the benefit of making a purchase. Bob really likes Jelly A, buying it gives him +5 utils, he does not like Jelly B, buying it would not give him any utils. 5 utils beats the 4 util cost of giving up the $7 to buy it, so he does. His day is now 1 util up with his jelly, the store owner closed a sale, and there is much rejoicing.

Things get more complex when Jelly C is added to the table. Bob likes it, but not as much as Jelly A, he only thinks it’s about +3 utils. Here’s the problem – let’s also say that Bob will only buy one jelly because he knows that even one is really too much and it will sit in his fridge for a year and he will throw half of it out when it’s moldy.

With the third jelly on the table, now if Bob buys Jelly A he’s going to take a hit of -1 util for the regret of passing up Jelly C, which he also liked (but not enough to give up Jelly A). A buyer will be less satisfied with their purchase if they have to rule out alternatives. You can see where this goes, by the time the store owner puts Jelly K (the 11th jar of jelly) on the sample table, the psychological baggage of having to make a decision, including the negative impact of the foregone alternatives actually outweighs the pleasure of making a purchase.

So, changing a 4 year vesting schedule is an interesting idea, but is opens a world filled with alternatives. Unless any of these options are REALLY great (unintended VC pun), the odds are good that no decision will be made. This is the basis for all the stats you hear about having to be 10x better than a competitor to win customers away from them. If you only have one or two features that are better than the competition, odds are that’s not enough to get them to wade through all the work of making a decision (“switching costs” in Economese, which can be real dollars or just psychological labor).

At the other end of the spectrum, @cc_chapman generated some heat admitting that he’s never been to a Trader Joe’s. Many fans of the store cite the quality of the goods, the low cost, the selection. There’s one factor that’s consistently misunderestimated (yes, both): choice is often removed from the equation.  Schwartz gives the example in the book of 85 types of crackers at the local supermarket, again the weight of the decision making baggage. There are some items at Trader Joe’s that have only one option, from there the benefits pile up: smaller footprint for the store, more efficient use of space, more types of products, ability to cut the best deal by limiting suppliers.

And so, as my Friday begins I offer two pieces of unsolicited advice: read Paradox of Choice (and use that link so I get my affiliate kickback), and to C.C. (and everyone else), get the frozen Tuna Steak from Trader Joe’s, thaw it, throw a cast iron pan on to your grill on high to warm for 10 minutes, throw on half a stick of butter and blacken the steaks with a dry rub. Add your favorite beer and enjoy the long weekend.

Categories
Daily Life The Marketeer

Do You Know Anyone Serving in Iraq or Afghanistan?

On Sunday I will be running the Run to Home Base, a 9 km road race that will finish at Home Plate in Fenway Park. As part of this race I raised $1,000 for a fund run by the Red Sox Foundation and Mass General Hospital to benefit soliders with traumatic brain injuries and/or post traumatic stress syndrome.

For a huge change of pace I am not hitting you up for money. Thanks to the listeners of Marketing Over Coffee (and my family – thanks John and Helen), I’ve hit the goal so that I don’t have to pay any more than the entry fee out of my own pocket. But as a valued reader of this blog, you can still help out, and help someone you know.

During the race volunteers will be making care packages for service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are saying they will have far more care packages than recipient names. They’ll probably all be sent regardless, but, if you know anyone serving there send me their information and they will be sent one of these care packages. It would be best if I get the info before Tuesday, you can email me at john at them$how dot c0m ($=s), or friend me up on twitter @johnjwall and DM me.

I’ll also have to post some pics of the official Marketing Over Coffee race shirt…

Categories
Daily Life

Friday Entertainment

This is pretty much what our home was like when my brother and I were teenagers. It’s at about a 3 Stooges level, so I found it quite amusing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhcA4Ry65FU[/youtube]

Categories
Brain Buster

Ruled by Price

Seth Godin had a post today about Becoming the Bus Company, a list of common behaviors that are exhibited by organizations well on the road to trading commodities as opposed to providing a remarkable service. It makes me wonder if all companies that fail to innovate are doomed to walk this path after their glory begins to fade?

It seems like a vicious cycle – as competition gets fierce, customers use online tools or purchasing departments to always get the lowest price. As a result the companies focus on trimming every penny and things start to suffer. In turn, morale slowly fades as everyone gets crushed under the bureaucracy.

Companies like Southwest and Virgin, built around a vision (reminding me that they have their “Why” in order), remain above the fray while everyone else teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.

My big question is: Does anyone have an example of someone that pulled it back from the edge? The only thing I can think of is Apple with the return of Jobs. Even more interesting – has it ever happened from the bottom up, or is this limited to dynamic leaders?

Categories
Daily Life Podcasting

Headphone Update – Getting Better Sound Out of the iPod

Long-time readers of this blog are well aware of my addiction to audio equipment (and in fact, my post talking about Bose vs. Shure vs. Sony still gets a ton of traffic).

For some reason it’s always the product marketing guys that get me into new audio equipment. This time Bruce was showing me his iPod set up. For less than $30 you can get a converter that plugs into your iPod port that will give you something closer to a true Line Out. Hardcore audio people that use big expensive headphones are often disappointed at their portable player’s ability to really drive the headphones. By using a line out there are two benefits – being able to use a better quality amplifier than the one in the iPod (a “cleaner” sound, usually more bass that is tight, clearer highs and you can go louder overall), and some believe that bypassing the internal amplifier reduces some noise and gives you better battery life. I cannot attest to those, but I can say that while testing Bruce’s rig the sound is better.

So, for less than $50 you get the line out dock (or LOD as they call it on the audiophile boards), and a portable amp that  is only slightly larger than the iPod Nano that had the round control on the front. It should be noted that headphone.com makes a killer portable amp which can be a huge upgrade if you are running a PC laptop, but it is a lot larger than the FiiO and takes 4 batteries. I went for the cheaper, more portable amp.

I’ll post some pictures when the full geek gear shows up.

I also picked up some bluetooth headphones and a BT adapter so I can use it on any audio device, but the weather has been great so I probably won’t get around to those until the bad weather comes back and I’m in the gym.