I’m working on this a little at a time. I’m pretty busy with my wife’s business (which is going fantastically, thanks for asking) and I have other commitments that have to take priority…but we’ll get there.

Here’s an interesting statistic.  By age 21, the average American will have spent approximately 10,000 hours playing video games. Coincidentally, 10,000 hours is also the time a student will spend in in the classroom  from 5th grade to senior graduation, or the amount of time a doctor will spend in medical school.

Here’s another statistic.  The average MMORPG* player spends 22 hours in-game per week…quite literally a part-time job.  (*Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game – World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, Etc.)

There is obviously something ridiculously engaging going on here. Some people even say addictive, but I think that is missing what is really happening. Addiction does not involve making an active choice. I believe that as immersive as many of these games are today, players are not “escaping real life” in as much as they are creating a different life- One that they are better at – with clearer instructions, immediate cues if something is good or bad, no built-in prejudices, and absolute recognition of achievement.

Like it or not, games are an exceptionally important part of our lives and will be more so in the future. What surprises me is that a phenomenon that is clearly such a large part of our society that it rivals the time spent on public education, is seen as at best a way to pass the time, or at worst “rotting our brains.”  Is it really? Is opening a book really better? Or staring out the window vaguely paying attention in a mandatory World Geography class?

Let’s do a quick test. If you know someone who plays WOW, ask them to point on a game map where Howling Fjord is.  Now ask them to point to Iran on a real map or for that matter, even what continent it is part of?

Which geography program do you think has been more effective?

I believe there is a lot we can learn from games about motivating and teaching people in the real world.  I also believe that if we better understand what people are really getting out of games like MMORPGs, then we can find a way to use that collective horsepower to do real good.  Why can’t we make it as interesting for 12 million people to cure cancer as it is to kick the crap out of the Litch King?

The synthesis of an idea…

This series originally grew out of some thoughts I was putting together for work. Being that I am a marketer, but also an avid gamer, I was thinking about how I can build an all-encompassing marketing program that gets people as interested, enthusiastic, and ultimately engaged with a product or service as something like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, or Lord of the Rings Online.

What is it that makes these games so addictive to people? That makes you want to get “Just one more level” before bed? Creates a social environment so strong thatyou will put your virtual life in a complete strangers hands with no questions asked? So motivating that it gets you to do hours of repetitive tasks simply for the privilege of doing it more?  …and for the educators  out there, what gets a person who failed math so inspired that they will spend hours building complex spreadsheets and statistical models to determine if that new 2 hand staff with an extra bump to mastery and spirit is worth giving up the crit and regen buff on their current main hand mace and offhand combo?  You think players aren’t learning something in these games? Think again. This is a hell of a lot more complex than the typical “John leaves Toledo at going west at 45 miles per hour…”

In this series I want to explore a few things about gaming:

1.   What makes people knowingly choose spending time in a game over other options (say sunlight, friends, exercise, homework, and even, gasp, sex…like, with a girl…in real life)
2.   If time spent playing these games is really wasted? Are we really learning anything, and if so, what?
3.  What we can glean from these findings that apply to business, social interaction, and education?
4.  And ultimately, what can we do in the real world to make it as fun as virtual ones and harness the tremendous potential of masses of engaged desk monkeys.

My immediate goal is to build a marketing/usage/engagement campaign using everything that makes these games great in real world business. I’m genuinely curious to see what can be done, and I might as well do it while I have a few million of someone else’s marketing dollars at my disposal.  Goal number two is to figure out how apply these findings to education and other issues.   This series will be that journey.

I will leave you with a final thought before I wrap up for today.

12 Million World of Warcraft players have collectively logged 51,946,800,000 hours in Azeroth, toiling diligently to make a fictitious world a better place, safe from evil –and enjoying every minute of it, even the “grind.”  That’s 5.93 MILLION YEARS.  Think about the Earth-changing implications of that number.  How many hours have been spent working on a cure for cancer? Putting an end to world hunger? Renewable energy?

What could we do with 12 million engaged and highly motivated people working 22 hours a week on a common cause?

If we can make the REAL world as engrossing, rewarding, and fun as its virtual counterparts, we might get somewhere
That’s it for now.  Be cool – every you.

JJ

Time to bust out a 40 and brush off the obscure gang signs – the separation from corporate America is official!

 Now that there is no risk of me getting fired for saying something off color, I can share details. (yes I was asked by the CEO to disband Evil Genius Interactive and shut down Evil Genius TV…and to think, those are the tamest of our sites..lol)

Where have I been?

For the last year, I have been Senior Director of Online Tax Prep for Jackson Hewitt.  In plain English, I ran the online tax business for the second largest tax preparer in the world.   It would be fancy if not for the fact that the online team for such a large company was actually smaller than my own business and most of yours…. Granted the marketing and development budget was a hell of lot more, and I was responsible for the P&L which measured in millions, but it was still a shop of 1-2 people running the show.

I really do wish the company the best.  I think the future of the industry is going to play out a little differently than they think, but that’s their business now, not mine….although I plan to keep a close watch on how it plays out.  I also plan to become an affiliate partner driving the industry leads (whether to JH or their competition) because everyone in that market is paying a CRAZY amount per lead!    

Those of you with the big ass lists, pay attention when I write up that article.  These players pay out a HELL of a lot more than the nickel dime commissions  you are getting on places like ClickBank.

So now what?

Well, I have now officially been an entrepreneur several times, worked at several small startups, a few mid-size pre-IPO companies, small “major” corporations, and large Fortune 500 companies.  I have also come full-circle in my own career.  I am now back in entrepreneur mode myself, both here at Evil Genius Interactive doing marketing, eCommerce and SEO , and a new veterinary hospice and euthanasia business with my wife called Pets Remembered.

The next series of articles I am planning will center around different business strategies and ways to approach the same problem from several different perspectives.   I am hoping this will be both enlightening for myself, but also useful for you.  I haven’t spent a lot of time comparing how different strategies and tactics work across the spectrum of business size, but my instincts are telling me there is a lot to be learned.

So that’s it for now.  I’m glad to be back with you

As always, let me know if there is anything you would like me to write about. Like penises, lesbian horse stories, or Jennifer Lopez.

Be cool.

JJ

Long time no see! Just wanted to drop a quick update to let you know that a new series of articles are coming soon. I’ve been pretty busy over the last 6 months at my latest stint back in the corporate world. I can’t share what I do because…well I don’t know, but they told me not to. I can tell you that I’m a fancy pants, and I can tell you that the company I work for is the second largest in their industry. Other than that, it’s super double extra top secret.

…anyway.

As luck would have it, or more precisely, the way I planned it, my personal interests and work are overlapping for a little while. I have some breathing room to create a new product and marketing strategy and I am going to dive into something I have always found interesting. Gaming.

If you have ever played a MMORPG (Warcraft, Rift, Lotro, etc) You know that these games are incredible at creating an engaging environment. So much so that the medical community is trying to get game or virtual world addiction as a new classification.

What I am going to try to uncover in a series of articles is what we can learn about creating a compelling offer/product/experience that will keep customers coming back for more…and more… and more.

Hopefully it will be a fun ride. It’s going to take a little time to get back into the fun groove. I’ve already started a few and while they are heavy on the analysis, they are a bit light in the britches in terms of humor. I’ll work on it.

Aight. That’s it. Stay tuned, and as always. Be cool.

JJ

Working with my new client base of smaller businesses in Sarasota, I’ve been asked this question several times over the last few months. Blog or Website? I usually recommend a blog over a traditional html website in most cases, but it’s not for the reason you are probably thinking.

Most people associate a blog an unemployed person, sitting in their bathrobe, ranting about a particular topic. And I’m not saying that isn’t true. But that is also NOT at all what I am suggesting.

When I recommend a blog over traditional web pages, I am recommending a TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM, not what you will be using it for. And that’s a crucial distinction. Using a blog as a technology platform gives you access to a free, easy-to-use-and-administer content management system. It gives you the ability to change your design with the flip of a switch, and it gives you the ability to add tons of functionality at a fraction of the price you would pay to have custom built.

By building your site on a blog-based technology* you get a few things that a static HTML site just cant offer.

• With a blog, you have a built in CMS (content management system) that allows you to update your own content. That means you don’t have to pay me every time you need to update a phone number or add a page. If you can use Word, you can use WordPress.
• Blogs are waaay more search engine friendly. You can put all the tags right in when you are writing the page. No fancy coding needed. Tags show up more often on pages. Pings are set up automatically, etc.
• Blogs encourage interaction with comments. This both moves buyers along the decision making curve, but also creates more inbound links, and keyword appearance both bumping your Google visibility
• Blogs have THOUSANDS of free design themes. Don’t like your current design? Pop in a new theme. Flip the switch. Even if your theme is customized, the amount of work to change it in blog format is CONSIDERABLY less than redesigning and rebuilding an entire site.
• Blogs have THOUSANDS of free functionality plugins. Add a form or survey? No problem. Want a fancy photo slideshow for your portfolio? No problem. Calendar of events? No problem. All free, all with minimal setup. Pay me $100 to set it up, or pay a developer $1000 to rebuild the wheel… you choose?

Cases where a blog is not your best idea:

• Very design heavy sites- Customizing a blog or CMA base theme (either WordPress or Joomla or Drupal, or whatever) is NOT easy. They were designed for content, not pretty pictures and advanced interaction. It can be done, but it may require a lot of work.
• Programming intensive sites – custom shopping carts, fancy scripts in the works? Not so easy on a Blog or CMS

This ain’t yo mammas blog:

The last question I get a lot is this “Don’t blogs look like…well blogs.” And that question depends on how much you want to spend. This site for example is built on a blog. It has some pretty fancy customizations, but both the platform (WordPress) and the theme (Brandford), are the same as the frees one you can download. The design is seriously pimped, the wordpress install is vanilla.

Some other sites that are using wordpress as their base technology

People	Wall Street Journal Magazine	Playstation

Blogs that don’t LOOK like blogs

Camancho Cigars	Furniture Warehouse	Ford Autoshows

**(I usually recommend WordPress for most small busineses since it is both free and fairly user friendly. Joomla for larger businesses with multiple contributors or advanced needs)

And as I expected, her problem centered around one thing – finding good people.

If there is one universal thing that plagues small businesses, that is it.  While working with IM guru Rich Schefren, I had the opportunity to survey literally thousands of small business owners, and employee issues always topped the charts.

The truth is that finding, and more importantly, managing people is really really hard.  No mention of it is ever given in any specialty classroom (lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc) and even in business schools where you have entire semesters dedicated to management, it’s always centered on softball subjects with little or no application in the real world.

After all, working relationships are relationships just like anything else.  And people are complex F’rs.  For 99% of the population, work is something a lot more than your paycheck.  Nobody wants to feel like they are selling their soul for $15 bucks an hour.  Even the ‘tard on the fryolator at Burger King.

And those ‘tards are the ones I want to talk about. Because for the vast majority of you small business owners out there, you are not hiring VP’s with years of experience and a $200k price tag like me – You are hiring the college kid, housewife/husband looking for some extra cash, or the person, sans-doctorate from Stanford,  to help answer phones or file paperwork.

And this same exact boat my friend is in.

Now we have already established that I am a lazy bastard, and “unconventional” would be a polite way to describe me.  But I also do have a background in psychology, am a pretty good natural leader, and my particular style allows me to push people much harder than anyone has a right to, and still be somewhat respected by my team later.

Yes, I have fired people.  Yes I have had people quit because they didn’t like me. But, I think you would find that as a general rule, my teams kick ass, my teams really like what they do, and my teams would speak well of both me and what we were able to accomplish together.

So how do I do it?

I treat them all like human beings and make sure they know what their job is – From the highest paid executive, to the lowest paid assistant.  Profound isn’t it?

Finding good worker bees

I’ve discovered that the trick isn’t finding good people.  It’s making those people good.  Let’s face it, anybody, even the most stone-stupid mother F’rs can alphabetize.    So how is it that my friend can’t find a damn person that can just do their job and file legal documents correctly?

My guess is this:  It’s not that they can’t alphabetize, it’s that they could give a shit about doing it correctly.  And that’s not an employee problem, it’s a manager problem.  (Granted, it is possible that this person is just an idiot, but having 3 in a row tends to make me think otherwise)

The difference between senior muckedy-mucks and lowbies

I’ve noticed that a lot of managers spend a considerable amount of time thinking about what makes their executives happy and productive.  What motivates them, what they are looking to get out of a job, what their career path is.  But what I have also noticed is that once you hit the “glass floor,” (which is usually around the coordinator or assistant level in a big corporation) , managers tend to see people as a hired hand who is just there to collect a paycheck.

But if you take a step back and get rid of the corporate hierarchy and just look at Sally the VP and Bob the Assistant out of the context of work, are they any different?  They both have lives, other responsibilities, aspirations, problems, dreams, careers.

Now it may be because I grew up really poor, but I can relate to the worker bees.  I know exactly what it is like to feel like people see you as expendable, or the look in their eyes when they think your only use to society is to do a menial task just to pay your bills.  After all, YOU are the one who took the job for $12 an hour as a file clerk, and if you wanted more out of your puny life and had any ability at all, you would do it right? Wrong.  Remember, even in my own Rockstar case, after I had graduated with my MBA in the Top 3 of my class, I was still working at a 24 hour convenience store shilling gas and 2% milk until I landed my big break 6 months later.

Trust me, I know that some people do fall into that “slacker” category their whole lives.  But that also does not mean that they like it, haven’t dreamed of more, and don’t have the potential to do more

At a bare minimum, everybody wants to feel like they are doing something of value.

And sticking files in a cabinet just don’t cut it.

Tip 1: So what if their job IS just to Stick Files in a Cabinet?

This is where it gets hard, and most managers fall short – YOU have to motivate them.  And your immediate response is that “I don’t have the time to make sure than some dude making $15 bucks an hour is happy about their job.”  And my response is, well, then your employee is gonna suck.

It’s that plain and simple.  If you don’t challenge, motivate, and listen to ALL of your employees, your business will ultimately suffer for it.  Now, I know first-hand how counterproductive this sounds.  Your time is worth $200 an hour, and theirs is worth $15, so even logically this makes no sense.

My answer is threefold.  First, once you discover what makes them tick, motivating them  appropriately probably won’t take too much time. Second, it only takes 1 pissed off employee screwing up things at exactly the wrong moment to royally screw something up for you.  And third, I have found than in many, many cases, your employees become so good at what they do, it actually takes YOUR game up a notch or two.

So my advice to you:  Listen to them, find out what makes they tick, what interests them, what motivates them (cash will always come up, but in my experience, is NEVER anything more than a short-term improvement)

Once you know what works for them, find out a way to incorporate that into the dullest, suckiest  parts of their job.   A perfect example would be a bright but bored clerk who spends 3 hours every day putting files in a cabinet.  Who WOULDN’T want to kill themselves and everyone around them with a sawed off shotgun after doing that for a few years.

My recommendation would be to put them in charge of a project to come up with a new system to make your filing better.  More efficient, more accurate, whatever.  Have them analyze what they do, give them the inside dirt on what exactly you do with those files (making them feel more connected to something important that happens as a result of their work) and then entrust them with finding a way to make it better.  (giving them a sense of pride that their ideas are not only valuable but better than yours!)

Once the project is complete, not only do you hopefully have a better system, but you also have an employee who now has a sense of pride in “their” system, they will also feel like they fit into the big picture in a lot more prominent way, and you can guarantee that things will be done right.  After all, something screwed up now is a direct failure of the system they built, and in turn a direct failure of them. In short, they got skin in the game.

Tip 2: Let them know what is expected of them and where their position fits in

This is the second biggie I see all the time in startups – and if you are ever lucky enough to grow your business, it’s a show stopper.

When most small businesses decide to hire someone, it’s usually because they are overwhelmed, not the result of a strategic growth plan.  An employee is hired because “There just aren’t enough hours in a day to get it all done.”

So they put out an ad for “administrative assistant” or office manager, or whatever.  The ad usually reads something like this

“Part time help needed for growing Legal office.  Responsible for filing, answering phones, and clerical work.  Computer knowledge required.  Friendly office and competitive salary.”  

You then find someone, hire them, and realize a month into it that either that person is an idiot, or just not the right person for the job.

But if you stop to ask why, the usual response is that the employee was doing it wrong or their attitude sucked.  I then ask, well did you ever explicitly state how to do it right? Did you ever give them a job description to know exactly where they end and you begin?  Did you ever explicitly tell them how their role fits into the big picture?

And the usual response is “How retarded do you have to be to not be able to figure out how to file a folder?  You don’t even need to KNOW the alphabet, its printed on the friggin folder”  (My friends tend to be a bit blunt : )

And one the surface that makes sense….but…

Chances are that you have been doing things so long yourself, that many things just come second nature to you.  I mean it’s obvious than Cindy Duncan is filed in the same place as Hawthorne Dental.  Isn’t it?  Or that Joan Blackheart is the head of Blackheart, Smith, and Williams CPA’s.  I mean duh?

Or that the fact that the legal briefings you had them look up go with the other briefings in the folder.  After all when you go into court, it’s obvious you will need them in chronological order, and not just thrown in the file, because that’s how you present them.  Anybody knows that.

Except that the person you hired has never been in court, has no idea what the briefings are, never mind what they are for, and could care less in either case.

The point is that even the most mundane of jobs requires a detailed explanation.  You probably like things done a certain way for a reason.  Tell them that reason.  More importantly, let your employees know HOW and WHY they are important – what you use them for, what gets fucked up if they are not right, and exactly how you will castrate them if it’s wrong.

Specific job descriptions and responsibilities. 

In my experience, the best way to guarantee nothing gets done is to have two people do it.  If that occurs one of two things will happen.  First, an animosity will grow between employees.  Inevitably, one will be more aggressive and take the initiative, making the other person feel like they are wasting their time and pissed when the other gets praise for it.  Or, they will see that the other employee is doing it, and as a result, neither finish.

There is no problem having people work on their own parts of a project, but you have to be painfully clear on who is doing which part, and when they have to work together make sure that it is on an equal footing.

In an office setting, you may have 2 administrative assistants.  They are both required to cover the phone, research, file records, set up meetings, greet customers, ect.  Well, what if Jane is researching a document that has to be on your desk in 15 minutes, Joe is on the phone setting an important meeting, and a customer walks in the door.  Who stops?  Which task takes priority?

These things need to be made explicitly clear, because if the ball drops, you have nobody to blame but yourself, and ultimately, it’s your ass on the line.

The Moral of the Story

My final advice is this:  Don’t treat people like shit.  Realize that while you are paying them to do a job, it does not mean you own them.  You can TELL them what to do, but I think you will find they do the absolute bare minimum if they do stick around.  You are always so much better finding out what makes them tick, and then using that persons unique skills, interests, and goals to help them motivate themselves.  It’ takes a little more time, but as I said, I almost always end up with something better than I could ever hope to have done myself.

I also fully understand that you are a busy camper yourself.  After all, you hired someone to help you.

Just realize that a little time spent figuring out exactly what YOU want, taking the time to communicate it, and then taking the time to make sure that those around you have everything they need to become their own version of a Rockstar, is always time well spent.

…and if you can’t or won’t, then hire me. I’ll take half of what you make as a result of my efforts, but then again, you won’t have to worry about how to get your new office boy to stop taking copies of his penis and faxing them to his friends.  I’ve already had that one : )

Be Cool.

JJ

I drove up to put out some fires yesterday, and as I sit here, I’m in worse shape than I thought I was. What I thought would be a quick and easy solution has ended up being more complicated and costly than I had planned.  The fact that I now live 3 hours away just makes things exponentially more difficult.  I’ve basically wasted 2 days, have nothing to show for it, and all because of  the perils of getting things done when you are not there to take care of it personally.

Virtual teams or remote work can be a pain in the ass sometimes.  I forget about that as I am usually surrounded computers, high speed connections, and basically any tool I may need at my disposal.  The problem is that if everybody on the team does not have those tools, or if you have access to only SOME of those tools, it can be PAINFULLY unproductive.  Furthermore, sometimes the coolest technology is just no match for being there and seeing what is F’d up with your own eyes.

I have led several virtual teams over the years. At Anysoft, our developers and product managers were in Israel and Russia.  At Pitney, we had web teams literally around the globe. And a new project that I am thinking of launching has my partner in Chicago, me in FL, a possible lawyer in MA, marketing guys in Boston and Boca Raton, designers and developers in Miami, and consultants around the country.

Man if had to visit in person to look over a friggin’ LAWN issue, than this new business might be tougher than I thought.

I think I am going to set up some of my personal stuff as if it were a business group.  And that means instituting a few things I have learned over the years with regards to getting work done when all the players are in different places.

Communications

This is really the most important one.  If you don’t have a set way of reliably talking with others, you’re screwed. For me, that has always involved email (preferably on the same client, or at least all knowing how the other systems work), some type of IM for instant communications, phone, fax (or preferably scan and email), some type of central repository for shared stuff, the same apps (whatever your group uses)  and I now also think some type of visual conferencing ability or at least the ability for people to send pictures and video immediately is an absolute  necessity.

One of the keys to remote work is to OVERCOMMUNICATE.  Being a marketing and psych guy, I always over communicate anyway, but remotely you have to step it up even more.   Over the phones, things get missed.  Over email or IM, intentions can be misconstrued.  And when in relative isolation, what is usually a non-issue can become a giant ogre of a problem if left unattended and festering.

Expectations

Another biggie.  Nobody works the same. Nobody thinks the same.  But that does not mean that you can’t all be on the same page ALL the time.  When you set clear goals, in writing, for people to achieve, they do it.  One of the problems in remote work (especially from my perspective since I am usually the boss) is that people tend to slack when they are not being held to task.  “Not my problemism” creeps in pretty fast too.  It’s human nature, and I‘m certainly no different.  So prevent that by having due dates for EVERYTHING and a schedule for when project pieces will be handed off to each member.  Make it public, make it prominent, and have  painful consequences when missed.

Also on the expectation front, set a planned schedule for communications as well. Especially when you are in different time zones, never mind different languages, things can get screwy FAST.  A daily catch up with all members, even if for only 5 minutes can do wonders for keeping a team together and on course.

Don’t underestimate the power of the visual

This one I have added more recently.  I have tried this several times over the years, and it has always sucked.  I don’t know if it was because the technology wasn’t ready, or because people weren’t accustomed to it, but it never really worked.    However, its worth the time to MAKE it work.  The thing is, visual ability is the closest thing you will be to actually being there.  And it means a hell of a lot in a lot of situations.

I’m not talking about just videoconferencing.  I’ve found that by just having all players with a digital camera and the ability to send a bunch of pics helps out a ton as well.  My partner and I used to brainstorm on a whiteboard. We had someone transcribe it, or each player take their own notes, but something always got missed our screwed up in the process.  The solution?  We would just take a high res pic with a digital camera and print it out.  Ta da!  Worked awesome.

To prove my point, let me explain my current lawn fiasco and how things could have been sooo much easier.   Put simply,  if my lawn guy had a camera, I would not have had to make this trip at all.  I could have told him over the phone that my mower was dead beyond repair, and I would have figured out an alternative solution from Sarasota.  It would have taken all of 10 minutes.

Here is instead what happened.

 (Back-story, I traded my old big screen TV to a buddy who was going to maintain my lawn and pool while I was away and trying to sell the house.  He’s using all my equipment since he does not have any)

1. He called me and said the mower stopped working.  – belt was stretched beyond repair.  I said I would order one and have it shipped there.  I asked the model number and called Sears.

2. Sears said that the model number was not enough, they needed the specific number under the seat.

3. I called back and had him drive back to the house to get the number for me.

4. I called sears and ordered the part.

5. 6 days later the part arrives in G‘ville.  Lawn guy shows up on day 7 to install and do lawn. (back lawn hasn’t been done in 4 weeks at this point)

7. Lawn guy calls me.  Sears apparently shipped wrong part.  Right on order, wrong in box.  I call sears and they apologize.  Said they will send right part when they receive wrong ones. (another 2 weeks before lawn can be mowed).  I tell them to just cancel order, and will go in person to the store in Gville to pick up part.

8.I tell lawn guy to box up parts, Sears will pick up. He goes home.

9..  I call parts store in Gville to see if they have belt in stock. Apparently they are no longer in business, tell me to call the 800 number and order it…awesome.

10. I finally find part in stock in a different local store in Gville.

11. I drive 3 hrs to gville to get it.  Both because lawn guy does not have the cash on hand to pay for it, also so I can make sure it is the right one and get this taken care of once and for all..

12. I get the part, get to the house and start to change the belt.

13. In the process I find something wrong.  Old belt is ok.  But apparently the blade housing has sheared off the deck, and that’s why its not spinning.  It’s not attached to anything anymore.

14. Seeing as how a new deck for a lawn tractor is about $1k, its really not worth me repairing, and since I am moving, it just don’t make sense for me to buy a new tractor for $2k.

15. I now have to find a lawn guy with his own equipment and pay $100 a month to have it done.

16. I now get to drive back to Sarasota.

17. During this ordeal I has also had a photographer scheduled to come take pics of the house for a virtual tour.  I had already pushed him back 3 times because of other lawn issues.  He was scheduled to come out the day we discovered the Sears sent the wrong parts.  I was never able to get in contact with him, so I can only assume that my $200 virtual tour will look pretty interesting with my fancily landscaped and lighted pool surrounded by a lawn that now looks like a cow pasture/rainforest.

This entire process took about 25 hours between the time on the phone, driving, and time just stuck in Gville waiting on crap.  And it all could have been avoided with a few pictures. (Before you say it, his camera phone is broken, so that goes back to the point that everybody needs to have the tools to get the job done)

Lessons Learned

Apparently nothing. I’m still an idiot.  I figured while I was coming to Gainesville, I would try to kill 2 birds with one stone.  As soon as I wrap this up, I’m heading over to one of my rental properties to collect the now 16-day-late rent check from one of my tenants, and to shampoo the carpet as I promised when he renewed his lease.  I used to have a property manager up here, but not only did they suck at finding new tenants, and suck at collecting rent, but they also kept any late fees from the tenant due to their suckiness.  I’ve since canned them and taken over myself since I figured I was still the one harassing this guy on a daily basis to pay his rent, I might as well keep the $300 in late fees he inevitably racked up every month.  This too is proving to be a challenge working remotely.

I’m sure when I get over there I will find that either a. the locks have been changed and he is not there  b. my rug shampooer is no longer working, or c. there has been a fire at the complex and the entire thing has burned to the ground.

I’m praying for “c.”

Stay cool

JJ

I have resumed work on a project with an old partner with the goal of spinning a new company with the same exact purpose as the company he is working for now.  The reason for doing it is simple. The consulting firm he works for now (from this point forward I will refer to them as SuckCorp) treats him and all other employees like shit, they treat their customers like shit, and since he runs the division, he has a pretty damn good idea how to do it better.

The Atrocity That is Our Competition

Here’s an inside story on just how F’d up our soon-to-be competition is.   I met with the very top guy of their “Customer Excellence” department.  I’ll just call him Executive VP of Denial.  When going through their customer records, I happened to notice that almost every file was marked with having a “CUSTOMER INCIDENT.”  Assuming I was just a ‘tard and misread something, I went through them again.  And yes, 28 of the 30 records I was looking at were marked in the same big red letters.

I asked my buddy to set up a meeting with EVP Denial to get an idea of why this was showing up – surely there had to be some error.  I mean NOBODY has a 98% customer dissatisfaction rating.  For christ sakes, Hitler was more popular than that.

When we sat to meet, I started by asking in my usual subtle fashion, “What’s up with these numbers?”

In a pleasing tone (and he really did seem like a nice, if self-deluding  guy) he explained,  ” Oh no, that’s not unhappy customers, we just have a policy of marking a file if there has been an issue with the client.”

To which I replied, “Well what defines an ‘issue’?”

He then replied confidently, “Well it’s only if the client has refused to pay a bill, or requested another consultant, or had a problem with our telemarketing, or collection or something.”

And for one of the few times in my life, I shut up.   I just didn’t know what to say.  So apparently someone thinking a consultant sucks and requesting another, refusing to pay, or being pissed for being constantly hassled isn’t and “issue” for them.  Just wow.

And that was when I made the flip in my head that I am NOT working with this company, as I was debating taking a consulting gig with them to get this new division off the ground.  Not only that, but I decided to pull out my buddy so we could do this the right way.  In hindsight it might have also been that I found out that their employee retention after 6 months is 15% or that consultant’s call it “popping your cherry” the first time a client kicks you out or threatens to call the police if you don’t leave.

Again. Just wow.

So….If we combine their horrendously bad customer service with my modestly breathtaking marketing abilities,  I figure we got a pretty good shot competing with them.

My conundrum

The challenge I am currently working through is how to introduce ourselves.  We obviously want to target the same client list.  We also want to highlight the experience the team has, and want to try to use as many big name drops as we can (Having the IRS, several state governments, and a handful of well known Fortune 500 firms never hurts the marketing).  Unfortunately, they all come from the time the team worked at SuckCorp.

In the process of my brain scraping, I called on a few friends to help me with my conundrum.  One of the folks I asked was Jay White, copywriter extraordinaire who helps develop copy for a lot of the big name IM (Internet Marketing ) gurus including Schefren, Filisaime, and I think Kern and Walker as well.  In addition to being a retardedly adept wordsmith, he is also just a really cool guy – and that’s 90% of the game in my book.

Anyway, homoerotic adoration aside, Jay wrote back to me and his advice pretty much re-affirmed my original plan. He told me simply – just be honest.  It was just nice to hear it from another trusted source.  And coming from an IM guy where fluff, fibs, and spin reach atmosphere-breaking levels, it was a welcome surprise.

I like to think of myself as a pretty honest, ethical guy.  I’ve walked away from not one, but two ridiculously well-paying gigs because I thought what the company was doing was shady. So to recap:  Sellout, absolutely. Scumbag, I try not to.  Subtle distinction.

However, in business, and in marketing in particular, you are constantly walking a fine line.  Both for the purposes of greed, and believe it or not, the legality of what you are saying, – you sometimes have to censure things out.   Now I believe that a lie of omission is just as much a sin as a big flat out honker, so I have always strictly adhered to what I think I would want/need to know if I were the customer, and market accordingly.

The difficulty in this case is that this plan requires me to do two things that I am not particularly comfortable with.  The first being talking shit (all of which really is verifiably true) about someone else.  The second being that I have to creatively wordsmith some stuff to sound like WE did it (which technically is true, our consultants did do the work) , when in actuality it was done while at SuckCorp.   You see my conundrum – honesty for a less than honorable purpose, and stretching the truth for an arguably  noble one.

The Plan

I am still early in the process, but I think my pitch is not going to be to badmouth the competition, but to over-emphasize our commitment to customer service.  Hopefully SuckCorp’s rep will speak for itself, and customers will come to their own conclusion  as to why we are doing it.  (which is always a million times more powerful than anything I can say to them).  That does put a lot of pressure on us to excel at service, but I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, and truthfully, we could screw up pretty bad, and still be better than SuckCorp.

In terms of introduction, I am going to say that we are a brand new company with the same seasoned experts who have (performed this service) for industry leading companies like namedrop, namedrop, and namedrop.

Everything about the marketing will smack of building an ongoing relationship with our clients.  Not only is it true, but it’s a critical part of our business model where lifetime customer value is going to be used to offset upfront losses.  As we simply don’t have the capital or manpower (or inclination) to dump 500 telemarketers in a room to scour the phonebook for contacts, it’s gonna have to be.

I think theirs is a shitty model anyway -  Anyone with business experience will tell you it takes approximately 10x more effort, time, and money to gain a new client than to keep an existing one,  an important fact that seems to be lost on SuckCorp.  Apparently their company motto is “Burn the f’n bridge, they are making new ones all the time…”

As for the offering, we are basically gonna pull a Japanese de-engineer/reengineer on SuckCorps product.  Their service is truthfully pretty good, but its woefully out of date, and could be made a hell of a lot prettier and user friendly.  That part should be a no brainer.

Lastly in terms of marketing, I’m also gonna pull out all the stops on affiliate programs.  Something I learned from my days in IM.  Get affiliates, pay them a sick cut, and let em loose.  In this particular arena that means I’ll be going after divorce and bankruptcy lawyers, insurance agents, retirement planners, and accountants.  Tell me those guys won’t drop a load in their panties when I tell them I am offering them a 50% commission.

Yep, FIFTY percent.  Another trick I learned in the internet marketing world as well.  Let me explain: When you are selling a service that is VERY difficult to quantify, and relatively few people are doing it, you can charge people just about anything for it.  In fact, a higher price often makes if more desirable.  And since we are creating plans that will quite literally save or earn people 10x or more than they paid for it, it’s not too hard to justify the sale in their mind. I’m just gonna take SuckCorps price, bump it up enough to cover the commission split, and let my affiliates bring the contacts to me.  Slick, I know.  Do I know it will work? Not for sure, but I think it will.

So that’s the basic plan at this point.  I’m tending to think it will do pretty well, but there is always the possibility it will flop, or SuckCorp will come after us with some pretty big legal guns.  But then again, that’s why I partnered with a lawyer and why god created limited liability corporations : )

The Proof

I’ve seen the David vs. Goliath battle play out in real life.  One of the first companies I cut my teeth at was eRoom technology in Cambridge.  They pulled a similar coup against Lotus and won their particular product battle (Lotus at the time was a monstrosity rivaling Microsoft, not the shell it is now)  Granted, eRoom had not only funding, but minds that dwarf mine in comparison including my original mentor and to-this-day one of the greatest marketing minds I have ever met, Francois Gossieaux, in the VP of Marketing role, but I’ll try to do ‘em proud.  I have the added advantage of the  fact that company I am fighting against basically sucks – abysmal service and reputation, antiquated models, and stone-age technology.

All they got is size… and as my wife tells me on occasion, “Size doesn’t matter.”  Let’s hope she wasn’t lying to me.

I’ll let you know if how it goes.  Talk to you soon.

JJ

In case you live in a cave, or are my wife, Twitter is  “a  free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users – known as followers – who have subscribed to them.”

<– I KNEW Mr. Rogers was always after the Giant C*ck!

In noob terms, Twitter is like your Facebook status. Followers are kind of like your friends…but the ones you don’t really give a shit about or know personally.  Yeah, I mean the kid in high school in the cool crowd that picked on your when his friends were around but was nice to you when he was alone . Dick.

Why I originally liked Twitter

At first, I thought it was a killer app.  A great way to make new acquaintances with similar interests and a great way to follow up on what your friends are doing.  A couple of cool free tools out there like TweetDeck make it easier to organize tweets of those you follow and search for info.

Why I am really no longer a fan -The Popularity Contest, Hacks, and randomness

Twitter has become a popularity contest…and becoming more shady by the day.  Twitter etiquette usually implies that if someone follows you, you follow back in return. And there are dozens of mods to automate this process for you.  Combine that with the natural desire to have more and more people follow you, the twitter anonymity factor, and the fact that all the Internet Marketing gurus are always claiming that you want a giant “list” for marketing, and the ultimate result is hoards of people who know nothing about each other on each others “follower” list and an open door for spam abuse.

In addition, there is a new clever “black hat” technique that some of the shadier marketers have created to exploit the automatic return follow.  It goes like this.  A spammer runs a program that “follows” thousands of people.  A good percentage of those people (like me) have a mod that automatically follows them back.  The next day, the spammer runs another program that drops all those people they are following.

The result – The spammer has a Twitter account that looks like this :  Following: 8  Followers: 15,483

At first glance, you must think that they must be some type of celebrity with so many people following what they have to say, and so very few that they follow themselves. … but nope, in truth it is a fat sophomore in a community college that lives in his moms basement and collects transformers figurines who just bought the latest IM guru course on “How to make $10 Million Dollars in 17 Seconds with my Ultra-Ninja Secrets!”

I’m perfect proof of this tactic.  I have probably pro-actively followed about 25 people EVER.  And yet I am following 779, and have 707 followers.  I’m guessing 400-500 may have come from the blog.  Others… I have no idea.  And I certainly haven’t signed up to follow 779

The Unweildyness

I can honestly tell you that I have not opened up twitter or tweetdeck in 2 months.  It’s just too cumbersome.  For every 1 person I’m actually friends with (read: give a shit what they say)  there are 100 other people posting updates on what HAS to be a 15 minute basis.

A random snippet from approximately 10 seconds of my twitter feed:

HomeChik: OMG. My dog is barking at the dog on TV.  Yawn. 

WorkAtHome: Is frugality about saving money or making you feel less guilty? http://cli.gs/Wg4aNU.  Yawn

ManvDebt: Free limited time offer on an “exlusive” new marketing tool. http://bit.ly/Hf0MC Yawn.

DanB:  LOL. Dude hitting himself in the face with a hammer.  http://bit.ly/Mt0MC  Ok, that one was funny.

The result?  About 3000-5000 new tweets a day -  That’s a conservative number, and I have a comparatively small follow list.  Imagine if you follow a few thousand people?

Talk about a frigging time waster.  Is anyone actually going to read all those?  Even if they were all useful (which is becoming less and less so thanks to the inevitable spam component) there still aren’t enough hours in a day to read all those and get anything done.

Why Facebook is my new Twitter, mySpace, and LinkedIn rolled into one

I have been using Facebook quite extensively lately.  I can still post updates on a regular basis, and I can still see my friends’ updates on a regular basis.  In addition, more and more people of my age (read: over 12) are signing up every day.  The fact that I have to approve every person before I become “friends” with them means that I only get updates from the people I actually listen to.

Now what about mySpace?  What about it?  Have you been there lately?  That’s perfect proof that giving users too much power is never a good idea.  The whole thing is a mess or migraine-inducing backgrounds, autoloading 17 random videos, unreadable text, crashing pages, and background music from the latest American Idol contestant at brain-melting volumes.  I’ll pass.   I already closed that account. (PS: Sadly, still the best place for musicians and band pages tho)

LinkedIn is still a great business tool, but with so many people now on Facebook, the controlled user experience (ie more professional, but still personal) and the clear social networking advantages that Facebook offers, I have to say that LinkedIn is drying up as well.

A quick rundown of apps/sites I like, and those that now blow:

Daddy Like:

• Facebook - Some things still confuse me, but getting better by the day. My goto spot for communication with people with value to me.
• Digsby – ALL Instant Messenger programs rolled into one including AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook chat, Facebook statuses, AND Twitter updates (if you insist despite my warnings…’tard)
• Skype – Still a cool app. I have the phone plan and an actual physical phone hooked up to it. $25 bucks a year. Free calls to Dad in China, buddies in California, France and Germany? Priceless
• Rapidshare - At $10ish a month it ain’t cheap, but pretty much every movie, CD, ebook, and porn ever made has rapidshare links to it somewhere on the interweb.
• eFax.com - Don’t got a landline or want to deal with a fax machine?  Send faxes right from your PC and recieve them as an email.  Pretty nifty.  Free packages available too.  You get an actual phone number that people can fax to (can upgrade to your own 800 number as well for a fee). I tried to get 1-888-spankme but it was taken…damn.

Now Lame:  (Not worth the time to link…figure it out if you must)

• Twitter – Spamnificient waste of time
• MySpace – Should come with a Prozac prescription
• RSS Readers – Just don’t have time. I just check a few blogs I like regularly.
• Google Alerts – Same as RSS. Not enough time. But still useful if I am researching a particular topic over a period of time.
• Monster.com – Man this site turned into a clusterfuck of ads, non-responsive pages, and tedious application processes. Networking and headhunters work better anyway.

Scum of the earth:

Ecost.com – Avoid these guys like the plague.  Shady don’t even begin to cut it. NEVER EVER buy anything from these guys.  Just burn your money instead if you have to.  Amazon.com is a great alternative and usually has all the same stuff at similar prices.

Till next time…be cool

And just in case your are remarkably shallow and didn’t at all get the point of this article…..Follow me on Twitter at EvilGeniusTV

If you DID pay attention, you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jj.kennedy  if you have something interesting to say, I might even friend you   I have a pretty small group of very close knit friends, so we will see

JJ