Tag Archives: business

Essay

Unemployment Ideas

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You just never know.  I happened to be at a family gathering recently and was seated next to a woman who I did not know.  She mentioned that she worked for her state’s Department of Labor and was an unemployment counselor.  We got to talking and I found out a bunch of neat things that I didn’t know about unemployment.

(Disclaimer: I am not an attorney or unemployment counselor, so you should check out what I say with your state’s Department of Labor or a real labor attorney.)

  • Depending on your situation, you may be able to shop your unemployment claim to a different state.  If you have worked for employers in different states or even, sometimes, if your corporation has its headquarters in a state, you may be able to file there.  Why is this important?  Unemployment is handled as a state matter.  Therefore, each state has its own limit on weekly benefits. A list of 2008 maximums by state can be found here. The differences can be staggering.  Florida was at $275, but if there is some chance that you can collect from Massachusetts, your weekly maximum could be $900.
  • You can file for non-contiguous time frames.  Say that your boss lays you off, but then offers to pay you half your salary for half time.  You are better off working one week on and one week off.  In this case, you can file for unemployment on your off weeks until you get a job.  Do not work half days because any day that you show up for work cannot be counted towards unemployment.
  • If you do get laid off, look for opportunities to go back to school. Unemployment compensation can sometimes extend throughout your academic program, even if it exceeds the normal time frames.  In addition, there are often state grants for retraining that can be applied for to pay for tuition.
  • There have been many changes to unemployment law and practice in the past year due to the economic conditions.  Make sure to do your homework or talk to an employment counselor at your  Department of Labor to see about the $25 Federal increase and the extension of unemployment benefits.

Certainly, no one wants to be on unemployment, but if you or someone you know has been affected by this economy, it pays to know the rules at the Department of Labor.

Essay

The Young Entrepreneur – Winning

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My friend, Jeff Leitner, is fond of asking the question “What does winning look like?”.  This simple question neatly frames the problem that many entrepreneurs struggle with. Sometimes it is a lack of focus.  Sometimes it is a plethora of options.  Sometimes it is just getting overwhelmed by the speed of business. In sports, it’s easy — more points.  In politics — it’s 50% + 1 of the cast votes. In business, not so easy.

In a posting last week, I talked about negotiation.  The key to a negotiation is to understand the very essence of what winning looks like. In order to get what you need out of a negotiation, you need to take a deep breath and invest the time to really understand what winning looks like, both for you and what you imagine it looks like for the other party.  If you can clearly lay out what winning looks like, the negotiation becomes much easier since you know the winning strategy for each side.

But you do not need to be in a formal negotiation to see the benefits of thinking seriously about winning.  Think about meeting a new sales prospect.  As much as possible, you need to control the agenda for a meeting.  The agenda should be built with winning in mind. If you control and publish an agenda, you have the ability to help ensure winning.

In contracting, if you are asked to write a first draft of a proposed agreement, jump at the chance.  Yes, it will be more work for you, but it will allow you to shape the document towards your vision for winning.  You can certainly take this too far and write the agreement one sided, but if you can use the opportunity to shade things toward your winning strategy, you have a more positive negotiating position and the likelihood of getting a favorable deal is increased.

So, how do you know what winning looks like for the other side?  Many times you can guess as to the components of a winning deal, but why guess?  I have disarmed many people by just asking simple questions: “How are you compensated?”  or “What is your incentive for making this deal happen?”.  I don’t want to know their W2 or base salary.  What I really want to understand are those things that could be beneficial to my negotiating partner that are not valuable to me.  These become good bargaining chips.  Winning to the other guy could be something as simple as booking this deal by the end of the month.  Perhaps I can trade booking the deal this month with longer payment terms.

Sure, understanding what winning looks like before each meeting, negotiation or sales presentation is more work.  Documenting these strategies will take a bit more time.  But in business, as in sports, winning usually means working harder than the other side.

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The Big Picture, Economy and Entrepreneurship

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The Big Picture: For some reason, it seems that stories come in pairs; two totally different points of view on the same topic within 24 hours.  It just happened to me.  I had read a lengthy blog post and comments on MetaFilter about a woman who is confined to a wheelchair who is looking for love.  Then along comes a New York Times article written by the husband of a woman with a spinal cord injury.  The juxtaposition of these articles certainly makes you think.

By the way, if you ever have a half hour and want to learn something new, check out AskMeFi.  There is always something interesting there. But beware, that half hour could turn into much more.

Economy: Richard Florida, an urban studies expert, wrote a very interesting article in The Atlantic about the future of the American urban centers as a result of the economic crisis.  My favorite tidbit — Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, is now larger in population than Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Miami.
Now a question for you (Not in the article).  How many state capitals have a smaller population than Naperville, IL? Answer below.

Entrepreneurship: Daniel Tenner writes about the rules about starting a business with a friend.  I ran my first business with my wife, so these ideas were near and dear to me.  We’re still together, so that says something about how we navigated these waters.

Ever Wonder Why?: Ever wonder why the Nissan.com website doesn’t belong to the Nissan Motor Company?  Well, it is a long and convoluted story.  It is a bit scary for a small business proponent.

Answers to above: Naperville had a population of 128,358 as of the 2000 census.  There are 24 state capitals with a population below Naperville’s: Juneau, Dover, Hartford, Springfield, Topeka, Frankfort, Augusta, Annapolis, Lansing, Jefferson City, Helena, Carson City, Concord, Trenton, Santa Fe, Albany, Bismark, Harrisburg, Columbia, Pierre, Montpelier, Olympia, Charleston and Cheyenne.

Essay

The Young Entrepreneur – Tools

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In my last column on The Young Entrepreneur, I urged those of you with great ideas to adopt some habits that will further your enterprise.  I have gotten some good feedback on that article.  A couple of people asked if only Young Entrepreneurs were targeted in that post.  Certainly not.  I have been advising both young (twenty-somethings) and more traveled (forty and fifty-somethings) for some time now and the habits that I talked about were beneficial for all of us, even, gasp, those folks who are happily ensconced in Corporate America.

Today, I want to talk about tools.  I review a lot of business plans and one thing that entrepreneurs tend to do is overspend on tools.  Specifically computer tools.  There can also be a tendency to not look at IT management things like computer security and backup strategies.  In some cases, legalities are involved.  Let’s take a look at some specific areas.

Understand Your Needs

The first thing that you should do is clarify exactly what your business does.  Of course, you know what that is.  But really what technology is critical to your success?  For example, a printing business probably needs to purchase licenses to Photoshop.  An accounting firm probably needs the most fully laden copy of Quickbooks. For these products, bite the bullet and buy the correct number of licenses.  You don’t need the Business Software Alliance on your case (although my take their methods of enforcement should make another post).  You will get support and know that you will be able to perform your role with your clients.

If these products are critical, look to potentially become a development partner with the software company.  You may be able to get some very nice perks for joining as a partner, although it might stifle some of your creativity.  Your mileage will vary.

If your company needs to utilize software to build your product or service, be sure to get qualified legal advice before choosing a platform to build upon.  There are a lot of open-source products out there and as many different licensing agreements.  If you choose products with the wrong open-source licenses, you may lose out on patent protection or have other intellectual property issues.  This is an area that you need to spend the money to ensure that you are protected.  When you go out for financing, intellectual property rights can be critical to the investment decision.

Software

For all extraneous (non-critical) software, look for free alternatives.  Do you really need to use Microsoft Office?  At $250 a pop, this is a serious question.  Sure, you could buy the Student and Teacher Edition, but remember the BSA…  There are a lot of other alternatives.  If you decide that your documents and spreadsheets should be kept locally, Open Office is a fine substitute.  There is a no charge license, it will read and write Microsoft standard documents and it offers most of the functionality of the name brand.

I would think seriously about alternatives on the web.  In this case, you may lose some functionality (much of which few people utilize), but have the advantage of easily sharing documents and collaboratively editing them.  Two good free examples are Google Docs and Zoho Office. Google docs allows you to create (and import/export Microsoft formatted) documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Multiple people can edit the document concurrently.  The spreadsheet has functionality that allows you to present a form for data entry and distribute it to others to allow them to build a spreadsheet — good for things like party invites or benefits signups. Zoho Office has many modules, including standards such as spreadsheets, documents and databases and stretching to Customer Relationship Managment (CRM) and Human Resources Management.  The CRM solution is free for up to 3 users and rivals SalesForce.com for the functionality for the small business marketplace.

The benefit of web based alternatives go beyond the free price and collaboration.  You will have the confidence that the files are backed up and available securely, anywhere there is a browser.  If needed, you could update that contract from an Internet Cafe in Kauai.  If you need help with this, please call me, I would love to help.

For managing your finances, lots of times people will start out with Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet based product.  I would recommend starting out with the smallest version of QuickBooks that you can.  I have had experience with a number of other products.  They all work fine, but QuickBooks is the standard and your accountant will be sure to be able to take downloads of your files and work on them.  I have tried the QuickBooks online version and was very impressed with it.  If you have less than 20 customers, the service is free.  More fully functional versions are available.  The one including time and expense tracking for services firms is priced at $34.95 per month and can be well worth it for a company with a significant billable work force.

For other tasks, there are open-source or free products that work as well as the boxed software you can get at Fry’s or TigerDirect.

  • Diagramming software: Instead of Visio (MSRP $269) check out Dia or online using LovelyCharts
  • Graphical software: Instead of Photoshop (MSRP $999) check out GIMP
  • Programming Language: Instead of Microsoft Visual Studio (MSRP $799) check out Ruby On Rails or Java
  • Operating systems: Instead of Microsoft Vista (MSRP $270) check out Linux

Do you have others that you use and can recommend?  Let me know in the comments.

Online Identity

For your online identity, you will need to buy a domain.  Look out for deals from GoDaddy and 1&1 and Dreamhost, all of whom also offer low cost hosting.  If your product or service will require lots of access or usage will grow significantly over time, look for the ability to buy additional space or bandwidth, as needed. Potentially, you might want to look into dedicated server and facilities for managing multiple servers.  Day one, try to find a vendor that you can grow with. And check out the service level agreements.  These documents explain what the hosting company will agree to provide to you in terms of uptime and security.  Comparing pricing and service level agreements will lead you to the right value proposition for you.

Google Apps for Business can be a great way to keep everyone in the company on a single platform that will allow for web access to authorized users from anywhere.  This service will encompass email, calendaring, intranet, search, documents and spreadsheets and other Google based services.  You will get to use your domain, such as www.yourbusiness.com, to allow you to utilize your corporate identity. Google updates their products regularly and will take care of backing up and managing your servers.

Another solution for web developers is Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). Amazon provides as much storage for objects as you need and charges you for just what you utilize.

IT Management

IT Management is a key topic, even (or especially) in small companies.  You need to have a planned backup strategy.  It could be just copying your working files daily to a USB drive and keeping it at an alternative location.  It could be to use a service like Mozy or Carbonite.  Of course, the use of web based software could obviate the need for significant local backup capability.

In any case, make sure that you try out your data recovery.  If you needed to recover a file that was deleted, could you do it easily?  What would happen if your desktop computer broke on a Wednesday afternoon?  How would you recover so that you could still conduct business?  What if the problem was more widespread than just your desktop, say a natural disaster?  Could you still run your business?  All of these are key concerns and deserve a solid plan to support your business.

Security is also a concern.  Be sure to develop your applications and access to your systems with strong security.  If your business has to take broader precautions, for example if it takes credit cards or is obligated to follow the HIPAA laws, you will need to invest in stricter security systems.  Work with a security expert to protect your systems and data.  A lawsuit for a breach of security in any business is bad news.

Be sure to look at the costs of telecom systems.  The costs for VOIP (voice over internet protocol) service have decreased and the features of phone systems to integrate with your office systems have increased.  Get a free conference call number at The Basement Ventures. There is even an open source package for telephone management – Asterisk, where you can set up your own telephone system for your office, just like the big guys.

There are a lot of alternatives out there for reducing the costs and increasing the capabilities of your data tools.  If you have questions or other products that work well for you, please let me know in the comments.

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Failure, Warren Buffet, Writing and Wages

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Entreprenurship: One of the things that entrepreneurs don’t talk a lot about is failure.  But it happens.  I know.  Failure is the toughest thing in the world to go through, but probably the best learning experience.  I know that I learned more from failures than from success, although success was much sweeter.  Here is a story of failure in entrepreneurship.

Economy: Warren Buffett writes the best shareholder letter in the industry.  He has just released the 2008 version.  Besides his recollection of “We trust in God, all others pay cash”, he recounts the good and bad (unforced errors?) that made 2008 for Berkshire-Hathaway.

Writing: I pointed last week to Paul Graham‘s article on Startups in 13 Sentences.  The folks at EtherPad, a developer of tools for collaborative editing, posted a demo of a future feature of their program that allows one to see the writing process in real time.  The sample article that they used was the Paul Graham article.  I was mesmerized.

Business: Alex Krupp writes in the SixMonthMBA blog about why entrepreneurs should get paid more than engineers. What do you think?

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Economy, Reputation, Entrepreneurship & Writing

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Economy: Each of us is affected by the current economic situation. Bob is a sound engineer in LA.  He has been forced to declare bankruptcy and has started a blog to document his travel along the path.

Business: One of the key guiding principles that I use in my life (both business and personal) is that your reputation is crucial to your success.  You can’t afford to mess up on a project without figuring out how to fix it, possibly at a financial loss, for example.  I may be rethinking how often I publicly declare my feelings on reputation management. Freakonomics pointed me to an interesting interview with Bernie Madoff, several years ago.

Entrepreneurship: Sales has always been one of my weakest areas.  Today, Seth Godin talked about what are the prerequisites for sales at a first grade level, just perfect for me.

Writing: As part of this blog writing thing, I have had to find my voice as a writer. I know that some of you feel that I should probably find another one, but I believe that I need to use more of a strong active voice. Cindy has written a good post today on the ways that Eric Holder is using active voice and powerful verbs. I guess I could do worse than to try to emulate him.

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Retail, Entrepreneurship, Financial and Politics

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Retail: Microsoft has announced plans to open up retail stores and have hired their first VP of Retail.  Robert Scoble takes an opportunity to give Microsoft some pointers on what they should do to differentiate themselves from Apple and Best Buy.

Entrepreneurship: I just love it when I can uncover a new blog (to me) that takes a different look at things that I am interested in.  So, I found Micah who talks about entrepreneurship.  However, he looks at it at a little bit of an angle.  For example, here are three of his latest essays, “What is an Entrepreneur?“, “The Economics of Stripping” and “Cauldron of Friction“.

Financial: On Friday, I asked about what the big banks were doing with their taxpayer funds.  Apparantly, nothing, according to their testimony on Capitol Hill.

Politics: So, the Democrats handed President Obama the stimulus package that he asked for.  How are the Republicans taking this?  Frank Rich of the New York Times  talks about the win, while Andrew Sullivan of the The Daily Dish castigates the Republicans for getting us into this mess and then whining about fiscal responsibility.

Technology: Ever wonder about how the phone company figures out the charges for text messaging?  So, did Senator Kohl from Wisconsin.  He couldn’t get much further than you or I.

Fun: For a fortune cookie style blog, Amy Flanagan runs theshortestblogintheworld.  Today was a classic Amy: What if Snopes is a hoax?

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Technology, Art, Entrepreneurship, Bailout

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Irony Alert: Google just bought a paper processing plant in Finland, so that they could repurpose the building into a data center.

Technology: Kevin Kelly has written a great (and long) post about the Amish and technology.  To go back to my software days, the Amish are not in the Early Adopter portion of consumerdom, but surprisingly to many of us, they are a part of the technology buying spectrum.

Fun: Ever had a photo that you wanted to see reimaged as a charcoal sketch? You don’t have to break out the Photoshop. I have used the service at Dumpr in the past and been very happy with the results. Dumpr has some very interesting options, including celebrity pics.  There is a new site, BeFunky that offers a number of other transformations, including cartoon, stencil, sunburst and inkify.

Behind the Scenes: I admit it.  I love knowing what is going on behind the scenes.  Have you ever wondered what goes on when your television news team goes to commercial? Check this out.

Entrepreneurship: John Patterson writes A Counter-Intuitive Lesson in Clarity (grammar alert).  In it he talks about what makes entrepreneurs tick and why they need to surround themselves with people who have different worldviews. This is a key point in the growth of an entrepreneur… The ability to accept that you are a vision person and work with others who can help you refine your grand scheme into a viable moneymaking business opportunity.

Financial: Steven Pearlstein, writing in the Washington Post, today talks about Citizens South, a small bank in North Carolina. Citizens South is a well managed bank. They didn’t make risky loans and stayed conservative. Impressive among banks, they even turned a profit last year.  Their president, Kim Price, applied for TARP bailout funds and received $20.5 million.  Citizens South had no plans for the money until Price came up with a plan to offer, in conjunction with builders, low rate mortgages and no closing costs.  Now mortgages are available to people who otherwise wouldn’t buy a house in this economic climate.  A feel good story for sure.
However, I wonder about why a profitable bank that didn’t make bad loans is making the financial decision to take taxpayer money.  Apparently, the bailout funds don’t come with a strong enough deterrent to focus their use for the most heavily impacted banks. While I am excited that this bank thought outside the box enough to expand home ownership to their customer base, why is the American taxpayer paying for this and what have the big guys (Citi, Bank of America, Chase) done with their bailout funds?

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Philanthropy, Brand Execution, Security and Distributed Systems

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Philanthropy: Trendwatching.com writes about Generation G, the generation not of Greed (see Gordon Gekko of Wall Street fame), but of Giving.  In these troubled economic times, it is interesting to see that the generation coming of age now seems to be more interested in the G for giving.
Just this week, a group I am affiliated with held a fundraising breakfast.  This year’s total amount pledged was 40% more than last year and the official I spoke with said that she is seeing this trend at many of the breakfasts she hosts.
Lastly, my favorite Generation G story relates to Adam Carter. Adam is the son of a good friend of mine.  Adam spends about 7 months each year providing funds and manual labor on humanitarian missions in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia as a part of a group called 100 Friends.  The other 5 months of the year, Adam earns his traveling money as a beer vendor at Wrigley Field and US Cellular Field.  He maintains a blog with his current exploits (including a video about his visit to Senegal).

Marketing: Brand Execution. I have a friend who likes to say “It’s all about me.” In her case, it usually is :). But when it comes to your business, it can’t be all about you.  It has to be about the business.  Jeff Leitner has brought this point together with a short riff on American Idol.

I don’t know if you watch American Idol, but every now and then the judges ask the kids why they chose to sing a particular song.
And the kids ALWAYS say it’s because the song means a lot to them.
And, of course, that’s the wrong move.
Sing a song that best shows off your vocals – whether you’ve got a big voice, small voice, high range, low range, big range, whether you can do runs or are particularly good or bad at expressing the lyrics.
I see the same dynamic in business all the time.
Business owners choose locations, hire people, design logos and launch products because they like those locations, people, logos and products. That’s fine that they have taste, but they should leave the taste at home. Choose locations, people, logos and products that will make you successful in your business.

If you have thought through your business and made the vision tight, you can’t afford to bring in extraneous items just because you like them.  If your concept is a classic French bistro, you can’t hang Chicago Cubs paraphernalia from the walls, just because you are a die-hard Cubs fan. You can bleed Cubbie blue in the comfort of your home.  But unless you are opening a sports bar in Wrigleyville, the Cubs stuff needs to stay at home.   Utrillo prints, maybe. In a dark corner.

Entrepreneurship: On Tuesday, I posted about the Open Source Challenge that Mark Cuban had started. Today, Seth Godin talked about it and helps provide future entrepreneurs with some ideas to get started.

Security: Bruce Schneier pointed me to this article on Facebook security. Note than on that page, there is a link to a free Facebook security e-book to pass along to others.

Big Picture: In a post earlier this week, I pointed to a discussion with Amory Lovins where he posited that electric generators will soon be microsized and distributed into a giant web. Kevin Kelly has also broached the same general topic in his article “The Surest Way to Smartness is through Massive Dumbness”.
The future of business is distributed systems. Look at Google. Google could not serve its customers with mainframe systems; they use an extraordinary number of cheap, custom processors. Kevin Kelly’s article highlighted a most basic industry – cement delivery – and how distributed systems (computers, GPS, authority) created a competitive advantage for one company. How can you take advantage of this trend in your business?

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Strategy, Fun, Entrepreneurship, Politics and Talent

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Strategy: Andy Sernovitz talks about why things are going to be better. And I think I agree with him. (hat tip: JL)

Fun: The first harbinger of spring is about to arrive.  Not the robins.  Not the daffodils.  But the call for “Pitchers and Catchers Report to spring training.”  The Cubs are scheduled to start on Friday, February 13 and the White Sox are scheduled to start on Sunday, February 15.

Entrepreneurship: Andrew Anker introduces the term “flashlight” as it relates to corporate leadership.  Flashlights are “people who shine brightly in one direction, but don’t let off too much light otherwise“. He manages to compare the New York Yankees and Apple Computer into this discussion.

Politics: One of the things that I actually enjoyed about this past presidential election was the fivethirtyeight.com website that was created by Nate Silver.  Nate, who in his day job develops statistical models for Baseball Prospectus, took that same talent and used it to very accurately predict the outcome of the presidential and congressional races. He continues to write about current political issues with a statistician’s flair.  Mental Floss took a look at Nate’s work in this article.

Talent: I am currently reading Geoff Colvin‘s latest book, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.  I also have Malcolm Gladwell‘s book Outliers: The Story of Success on reserve at the library.  Each book uses examples of extraordinary achievers to show that there is no such thing as talent.  Each author uses the work of Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State University, as a basis for debunking the talent myth.  The Australian does a nice profile on Ericsson.