It's been a fascinating journey. We're raising awareness of cancer through beautiful butterfly jewelry. It started with a butterfly pendant designed by Rita Willeart, and has grown into a huge collection of Butterfly Pendants, Butterfly Pins, Butterfly Earrings and Butterfly Charms.
We've grown the website to 500% more orders in the first few weeks than the previous version of the website had in three months. The redesign of the site was just the beginning - and we used the same design and coding firm. The magic was drawing the knowledge out of the team, and thinking of the project as a new business - not just a website.
If your company needs help overseeing the development of a new venture, please drop me a note.
I've been following Apple as a stock for years. It was the first stock I ever purchased - 10 shares around 1980.
I own a bunch of it, purchased a various times over the past 8 years. I'm way up.
Yesterday, another big announcement. New phone, lower cost, .ME subscription service.
The stock went down. Why?
Well, a couple of things to remember. On any given day, a stock price has nothing directly to do with the fundamentals or health of a company. The price is a product of supply and demand.
Yesterday, more people wanted to sell than buy... the price goes down.
Lots of smarter people than me (Warren Buffet being my favorite) point out that great companies perform very well over time - that there is a 100% correlation - sooner or later great, profitable companies are rewarded with higher valuation.
Back to Apple - my first take, watching the Keynote address by Jobs - Apple just launched a $99 a year "Exchange for the rest of us." - and lowered the price of their phone, and made it a lot more usable.
I doubt this makes the company worth less in the long term.
I love Quickbooks. I want to use Quickbooks. I really, really do.
I own Quickbooks. I bought Quickbooks edition 1998, and upgraded to 2000, 2002, and 2004.
I own all sorts of "Tips and Tricks" books on Quickbooks.
I teach my entrepreneurship students how to use Quickbooks, and recommend it to my start-up clients.
So why am I not using Quickbooks?
Because the process sucks. Here's my story:
I needed to send out a few invoices - and I finally had rid myself of my desktop. I had moved everything over to my Vista laptop a while ago. I just had never tested Quickbooks 2004.
Crashed. Reinstall. Crash. Google. Not Vista compatable, sometimes. Crash.
Decide to upgrade.
Upgrade box on website requires longer number than my number.
Call. 45 minutes. Lots of "absolutely sir, can you hold a few more minutes."
Call center guy: "Upgrade is only $189.99, regularly $209.99"
"But your website says the regular price is $189.99?"
Call center guy: "But this is for an automatic download plus the backup CD."
"I can get this on Amazon right now for $169"
Call center guy: "Hold sir." ... ... ... ... ... ... ... "I can sell it to you for $169"
We do the deal. Phone number, credit card, email. Lot's of "can you repeat that."
Call center guy: "I'm sorry, but this price is only for the automatic download."
Sigh.
Call center guy: "And now I give you your free one month trial to our support. In 30 days your credit card will be charged $29.99 a month."
Thinking "AAAGGGGGGGRRRRRGGGHHH @#$@#$@$"
Saying "No, no, no. I don't want that."
Call center guy: "But you can cancel."
10 minutes of polite arguing.
End up agreeing to it.
I try to download. Not Firefox compatible. Try with IE. Oops, not Google tool bar or any download manager. Find link for direct download.
I finally just canceled my order - and it appears my card was never charged. We'll see if I get charged for tech support. Surprisingly, this was the easiest thing to do all day.
I ended up installing my 2004 version on my wifes laptop... took me 10 minutes to print invoices. I'll use her computer a few times a month. A hassle, but not worth $189 and a day of my life to work around.
Why their process sucks is that they are not following through. They need to make sure that what happens never happens to anyone else. EVER.
It's O.K. that my experience with Quickbooks sucked. I still love their software, will still teach students and recommend it to clients. Just not as enthusiastically. Price and Jaffe argue that the best companies take experiences like mine and use them as an opportunity to improve their products, their customer knowledge, and strengthen relationships.
Radio, shedding talent as fast as it loses audience, is rapidly becoming irrelevant to the younger generation. Yet most Americans still listen to something for much of the day. Radio could be the way into those ears, but only if it invests in creating compelling reasons to be there, only if it grabs hold of us the way the voices of past decades connected to the loves, pains and dreams of young listeners. As always, the future lies in the past.
Want to help save radio? So do I. Let's figure this out together...
Here's a metaphor (or is it a simile?) for working together:
Here's the deal - the metronomes stay out of phase until they can freely transmit energy between each other - that's what the pop cans do. A little energy is passed in one direction, which slows or speeds up the others, until they are in perfect harmony.
Does that happen in your organization? Do people freely communicate with each other? Or are they stuck in their own silos - each out of sync with the other?
It is perfect. A design firm without the flash and noise... simple contact info, what they do, and examples. One page. At the end, they say Thank You, and invite you to contact them.
After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!
Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)
I think back to the hundreds of people I employed over the years. There were a handful of bad picks - people who just weren't right for the company. For a few thousand dollars I could have saved myself hundreds of thousands worth of headaches. I probably would have save a few good employees who quit because they had to work with the misfits.
What do you think?
P.S.> Check out www.butterflyoflife.com. I'm consulting on starting a new ecommerce site. If you go in the next few days you'll see the "before" - next week we launch the "after." If you are curious, the site features fine Butterfly styled jewelry to raise awareness and money for cancer research.
I just learned that our Sales Manager at the station we used to own just went to work at KNXR in Rochester, MN.
This brought to mind several recent nuggets of information. First, was Seth Godin's fantastic article on Passion vs. Pop. He talks about making a choice - are you going for the larger "Pop" audience, think Olive Garden - or are you going for the "Passion" curve, think Ciola's neighborhood Italian restaurant. And, more importantly, do you have the guts to stick to one or the other?
When I first read Seth's article - I thought of radio, and my mistakes. (It's sure more fun to remember our successes, but we learn more from our mistakes.) When I owned KEEZ, I often wasn't content at being the best "pop"station possible, so would program music and features that I thought to be more hip and cool. Because I wasn't willing to commit, we were doomed to drift into the valley between the two curves - neither "true" enough to appeal to those passionate about music, but not "pop" enough for those interested in the latest popular music.
Mark Ramsey is a broadcast strategist that really gets this concept.
KNXR in Rochester Minnesota is the best example of a "passion" radio station. Tom Jones (No, not that Tom Jones) has owned and operated the station for years. He program's beautiful music - what an unsophisticated guy like me would call 'Elevator Music."
He does it right, and is absolutely true to his audience. He is a world class engineer - and his station is the best sounding in the world. He digitally samples all of his own music without compression - he still employees engineers to assist voice talent. Every aspect of the process is about the brand promise he has with his audience.
The listeners are fanatical fans. They send in money to support a commercial station. KNXR plays ads - but in a true way - few, if any produced ads. No jingles accepted, nothing to insult their audience. He turns down the inane, shouting crappy ads that pollute the commercial dial.
Now I learn that Greg Soderberg is joining KNXR. Greg is simply the best radio salesperson I have ever met or heard tell of. He worked for our family for 20 years - and constantly amazed us with his performance.
Greg simply worked hard, listened to his customers, and cared deeply about their success. Every day, every year, he showed up early and worked later. His clients loved him.
He was not a push over, however. He is passionate about his product, and would not hesitate to demand the attention and respect of his clients.
Matched with fantastic owner operator like Tom Jones, the two should do very, very well.
I just spent the day with Mike Kerrison and his team at Endurance America. We were in Minneapolis providing corporate education and leading change within a very large medical insurance group. This was the third event, with over 100 employees and middle mangers attending a two day training session.
Mike's team is fantastic - he has put together a group of energetic, exciting people. Together they lead the group through trust building exercises and dynamic thought provoking lessons. On day two the real learning starts. Once the group can trust each other, a town hall style discussion ensues, with the employees themselves creating the agenda for change.
It's the employees who begin to create the company that if it existed today, would put their company out of business. Mike wrote a great book - avalable here at Amazon - "Landing on Your Feet: A Story of Business Mistakes." Mike has had an incredible career - from Rookie of the Year at IBM, the successful launch of one of INC. Magazines fastest growing small companies, and the incredible growth and eventual sale of three start-ups. I highly recommend it.
I met Mike through one of his partners - The Lantern Group - another great group of team building and compensation specialists.
If you are interested in leading change within an orginization, please don't hesitate to contact us.
If you only follow one other blog, make sure it is his. He's the sharpest guy in the Northern Hemisphere writing and talking about marketing.*
Read the post, but the gist is about choosing between being "Pop" and being about "Passion." Though true about most everything, it is especially true about commercial radio.
I keep trying to figure out how to save radio. I know the "Pop" curve isn't working too well, and feeble attempts at moving to "Passion" get stuck in the middle.
Read the post, you'll understand what I mean.
Mike
*The best marketer in the Southern Hemisphere is Mark Ritson - a great professor at Melbourne Business School
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