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It's Banks vs. Families, Who Will Come Out on Top? Q&A With Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren is Main Street's woman in Washington. A professor at Harvard Law School, she's researched the travails of the consumer credit market and the hidden bankruptcy epidemic for over 25 years. Not satisfied with merely publishing academic research, she leaped at an invitation from Senator Harry Reid to take a more public role in reforming the financial system after the credit crisis: She's now the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the group charged with overseeing the bank bailouts.

I caught up with Elizabeth Warren at a table outside the Senate Office Building cafeteria, a few hours after she finished grilling Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit at a typically contentious hearing. With new financial reform legislation imminent--"You're talking to me in the 4th quarter of the basketball game," she said--Warren spoke frankly to Fast Company about her hopes, fears, and frustrations.

FC: You said it's the 4th quarter of the basketball game--what's the score?

EW: The economy has been pulled back from the abyss, and Secretary Paulson, Secretary Geithner, both presidential administrations and Congress deserve credit for that. They saved the life of the patient.

That said, the Treasury demonstrated that it was much better at shoveling hundreds of billions of direct grants and guarantees at the largest financial institutions than it was at protecting the real economy. The largest institutions were "too big to fail," but the foreclosure crisis and small business credit slowdown have been "too hard to solve."

FC: I was really struck by your interview last fall with Adam Davidson on NPR's Planet Money. (The shouting match drew hundreds of blog comments.) He seemed to suggest that protecting the real economy, as opposed to bailing out Wall Street, was some kind of marginal issue or a personal issue of yours. What do you think about that?

EW: I think the worldview that America begins and ends with its largest financial institutions is not only wrong-- it is dangerously wrong. Businesses are not America, and America does not exist to serve big institutions. America is about families. People who get up every day and earn their salary to pay their bills and try to make it one day to the next.

I am a bit stunned that, in the depth of the financial crisis, anyone is saying that the focus should be on the Wall Street banks.

FC: And yet it does seem sometimes that the business and economics news focuses on the fact that big banks are turning a profit again, or the stock market is back above 10,000, to the exclusion of foreclosures and unemployment and bankruptcies affecting Main Street.

EW: There's a larger point here about diversity of views. Are you familiar with The Wisdom of Crowds? The underlying insight is that a crowd must be drawn from different points of view to make good decisions. That's how it is that 1,000 people can guess with such accuracy the number of jellybeans in the glass jar. We were actually talking about this at lunch today: If all the people who are providing the input have the same worldview, then errors are built into the system. And those errors are not small. They are seismic errors.

You want the person who has a unique interest in defending the collapsing system as the person to oversee the bailout? That's astonishing!

FC: So let's leap into your role as an advocate for financial reform. The Senate's version of the financial reform bill already passed in the House and is due in the Senate any day now. Senator Dodd has been signaling potential compromises, like housing the Consumer Financial Protection Agency within the Federal Reserve instead of as an independent agency. Paul Krugman said in his column recently that unlike with health care reform, where progressives ought to grit their teeth and pass it, the time has come to actually stand up and say, this so-called financial reform isn't worth supporting. Understanding that final details aren't out yet, can you imagine a situation in which you'd say the same?

EW: Of course. There are already seven agencies in Washington that own a piece of the consumer financial protection apparatus. This is the worst of all possible worlds: a bloated, ineffective, unaccountable bureaucracy.

We need to merge those bureaucracies into a single, streamlined, accountable regulator with autonomy and teeth. If we fall short of that, we will just be recreating one more bureaucracy so that we can all congratulate ourselves that we did something for the American people when the reality is otherwise. That would be a terrible thing.

FC: What kind of assurances have you gotten from the Obama administration about their commitment to real reform?

EW: President Obama has been clear from the beginning that he supports a strong, independent consumer agency. He has put a lot of energy behind it. He has had events at the White House, has spoken about it in public town meetings, and even made the ultimate commitment--talked about it on Leno.

FC: I understand that at one point you pursued an entrepreneurial path to reform the consumer financial products market.

EW: The short version is that I studied the economics of the middle class and I began to see that credit products were becoming increasingly dangerous. Families didn't know how much they were spending on credit and comparison among the products was practically impossible because of all the incomprehensible fine print. It wasn't the products that were priced the best that survived. Instead, the ones that were most loaded with tricks and traps provided the most revenue.

So I thought at first that my academic research will be enough. I will publish a law review article and surely the world will change--that didn't happen. So I wrote a couple of popular books about it--The Two Income Trap and All Your Worth. But it still didn't change the world.

The PEW Charitable Trust then got in touch with me and asked what ideas I was working on. And I told them: I'd like to build a private, market-based solution. I want to build an Underwriter's Laboratory to certify credit cards.

The whole idea behind the current model is, "I will hold something shiny in front of your eye, 3.9% financing, and the way I'm going to make money is on tricks and traps that I've buried in the fine print: $29 there, $49 there, triple interest rate, double cycle billing, over and over and over ... ."

So the idea was to take an independent group that will say here's a clean, clear industry credit card. It was called the Clean Card. So Pew said, we love this. They took me out to San Francisco to meet with the head of a very fancy bank consulting group. We put together a proposal and many of the executives we met with just loved it.

They loved it at the first meeting and at the second meeting. It was almost as if you could see the CEOs thinking, "I'll have my picture on the cover of Business Week for transforming this market." They were saying, "We want to be part of this! We want to be the first movers, we want to be America's Credit Card." Then we come back for the 3rd meeting after the numbers guys have taken a closer look, and they say, "We can't do this." As one VP put it, if people really understood how much a credit card cost, they wouldn't use it and the bank would lose too much market share.

And one of the issuers took me aside and said, "We get that our business model is unsustainable over the long haul, but no one of us can jump first. We all have to move together. If we all move together, we'll be fine competitively, but if one of us moves and we lose market share, then the ones who issue the dirty cards will control this market." So it was literally on the plane on the way home from the meeting with the issuer that I realized how broken the market is and started thinking about a new agency in Washington.

FC: Ok, so you've concluded that the market is broken. Now you've come to DC and are working in the midst of biggest credit crisis the country's ever seen. What are you going to do if we finish out this crisis and still the market's not fixed?

EW: If America can't come out of the crisis and repair the broken consumer credit market, then this government really is broken. The lobbying over this bill is enormous, and it's all on one side. It's one thing when insurance companies are on one side and doctors on the other. This one is exclusively big Wall Street banks who have a tremendous amount of money to spend on this to protect their revenue stream.

FC: So even though you can call Vikram Pandit on the carpet and get him to answer a few questions, his lobbying staff is hard at work behind the scenes to make sure nothing changes.

EW: The money is all on one side and the votes are all on the other. So, that's what we'll find out. It's banks vs. families. And we'll see who comes out on top.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cElizabeth Warren www.thedailyshow.com

(03/11/10 09:00 AM)

Mobile Retail Expected to Top $12B in '14. The global mobile retail market is expected to top $12 billion by 2014, according to [pdf] a new study by Juniper Research. “Mobile Marketing & Retail Strategies: Advertising, Coupons & Smart Posters... (03/10/10 09:00 PM)

IBM's Hottest New Cell Phone Market: Senior Citizens (and the Illiterate).

woman with mobile

Among cell phone users in developed countries, IBM is betting the market with the biggest growth potential is...people over the age of 65?

It makes more sense than you'd think. According to recent findings, most of them already own cell phones, so it's not as if they're adverse to the technology. But unlike younger generations, who are seemingly targeted with a new cell phone gimmick every week, they're largely ignored on the marketing front--excepting a few efforts from Nokia and Samsung, which makes the senior-friendly Jitterbug

IBM's two-year research program, which also involves the National Institute of Design of India and Tokyo University, will explicitly focus on making cell phones easier to use, for both the elderly and the illiterate. Moreover, the software it develops will be open-source, so all governments and businesses can take advantage.

"As the population in Europe and North America ages, the need for specialized mobile devices will become acute," Ben Wood, research director at British consultancy CCS Insight, told Reuters. "Phone makers will have to adapt if they want to appeal to a generation that has grown up with mobile devices, but can't use them in the ways they used to."

In other words, the conventional "wisdom"--make the buttons bigger! make the ringtones louder!--is old news.

[Story via Reuters; image via AARP]

(03/10/10 09:00 PM)

Missiles to Mammals: Old Nike Missile Base Now Home to Cutest Seals EVER.

Noll & Tam Architects and Scott Dennis Architect turn a decommissioned missile silo into a marine mammal rehabilitation center.

Marine Mammal Center

It's one thing to turn an empty building over to plants--set up a couple veggie carts, like they did in Cleveland, or strap on a green roof. But what about turning it over to animals? And what if that building is a missile silo?

In one of the most unlikely architectural transformations I've seen, San Francisco studio Noll & Tam Architects and Scott Dennis Architect, turned a decommissioned Nike missile base in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area into a new home for Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center. The Center has been using the base since 1975, when the last Ajax and Hercules missiles were dismantled, but hadn't done anything with the silos themselves. When they started renovating in 2005, some suggested they abandon the two, 3,000-square-foot chambers. Instead, the designers turned one into a specimen research library and the other into a water recycling plant that cleans and recirculates 200,000 gallons of fresh or salt water to the various tanks around the center.

Marine Mammal Center

It's a big deal: you wouldn't think it, but the headlands where the Center is located can get pretty try, so saving water is a smart move. It's also hot, and since most of the tanks are outdoors, their temperature has to be carefully monitored and adjusted. Normally, heating and cooling different pools to different temperatures for different animals would make for a nasty electric bill, but the designers outfitted the Center with thousands of square feet of shading panels, which do double duty as solar cells, providing about 20% of the energy for the buildings.

The coolest thing about the design, though, is that Noll & Tam and Dennis kept the silos' military/industrial vibe intact. It's a tricky idea, filling silos with seals, but it works--the raw concrete floors, vinyl-coated chain-link fences, and black asphalt roofing make it feel kind of like a sleek, hipster spa (like the one from Zoolander...) which, if you're a sea lion, it kind of is.

Marine Mammal Center

[photos by David Wakely]

(03/10/10 09:00 PM)

Why the End Times Might Reek of Methane.

What does a climate change "tipping point" look like? We may be about to find out first hand.

methane Carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas out there. Other substances, such as water vapor and nitrous oxide, also trap heat to varying degrees. Discussions about global warming focus on CO2 for a couple of key reasons: the first is that human activities have demonstrably increased carbon dioxide; the second is that the other gases tend to cycle out of the atmosphere pretty quickly. For the most part, unless there's a sudden, massive increase in the amount of the other greenhouse gases, we can safely focus on CO2.

Well, guess what?

Scientists from Alaska's International Arctic Research Center, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Stockholm University have published an article in Science magazine indicating the discovery of a startlingly large amount of methane coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf--methane that was thought to be frozen, in the form of methane clathrates. How much methane? An amount equivalent to the total of methane coming from the rest of the world's oceans. The key paragraph, from the National Science Foundation press release:

They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and more than 50 percent of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached more than 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter. They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

Okay, it's a lot of methane... so what?

Methane Melt--NSF Click for larger

Methane--CH4--actually traps a significantly greater amount of heat than does CO2. The NSF article cites it as 30 times greater greenhouse impact than carbon dioxide, and I've seen references between 20x and 72x, depending upon how it's measured. Regardless, this is a big difference, and the amount of methane frozen under the Siberian permafrost can be measured in the millions of tons (up to 70 billion tons across the entire permafrost region). If the East Siberian methane melts, it would be akin to tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, raising temperatures around the world by 8-10° C, and arctic temperatures by 20° C by the end of this century. That would be very, very bad, like you-really-don't-want-to-go-there bad.

It turns out, in fact, that one of the biggest mass extinctions in Earth's history has been tied to a rapid methane clathrate melt.

You see, the East Siberian methane is fairly close to the surface; as temperatures rise, methane clathrates deeper down will start to melt, making temperatures go up faster, melting even deeper stores of methane ice, and so on. It's a runaway feedback loop--what some folks call the "clathrate gun." This whole process would take just a few decades. Melting methane clathrates are pretty much the scariest of the so-called "tipping point" effects of anthropogenic global warming. We don't need to burn every fossil fuel on the planet to make something awful happen, we just have to burn enough to start to thaw out methane ice, and natural processes take it from there.

There are two immediate questions we need to answer:

1) Does this study show us that there's a runaway methane event underway? The short answer is no. This is the first detailed study of methane concentrations in the region, so we don't know for sure whether the methane concentrations are increasing slowly, increasingly quickly, or not increasing at all. That the amount of methane is so disproportionate (and is higher than amounts found in ice core samples from thousands of years ago) suggests that something is happening, but in my expert opinion, it's not yet time to panic.

2) What can we do about it? It depends on how fast the methane clathrates are melting. If they're melting slowly, our best bet would be to do everything humanly possible to cut anthropogenic carbon emissions to zero. We have to avoid pushing the climate into a runaway methane tipping point; the faster we cut our carbon emissions, the better chance we have of avoiding this catastrophe.

If the methane clathrates are melting quickly, however, the story gets more complicated. Although we'd want to get to zero as quickly as we could, because of the carbon we've already put into the atmosphere--which keeps warming us--and because of ocean thermal inertia--the pace at which the ocean warms up and cools down--we'd still see another few decades of warming. Simply going to zero wouldn't be enough to avoid a methane runaway, if the clathrates are already melting quickly.

This is where the desperation moves come in. It's quite likely that, for many people, a clathrate melt would mean geoengineering goes from being a "Plan B" to "Plan Ohmygodyouhavetostartdoingthisnow." At the very least, we would need to step up the study of how temperature-management geoengineering would affect the overall environment, because there's a very good chance we'll want to use it.

We also would want to look at ways to remove the methane from the oceans and the atmosphere. I have a long post over at my main blog detailing what this would entail, but it's enough to say here that while it wouldn't be easy, it looks like it might be possible. This would have its own side-effects, too, of course... but probably not as bad as a mass extinction event.

The big lesson here is that the Earth's environment is a fantastically complex system, and changing one parameter--in this case, the temperature--can have effects far beyond what a simple straight line extrapolation would suggest. If we're lucky, follow-up studies will show that the methane emissions are either stable or only growing slowly, giving us enough time to upgrade how we live without having to do anything risky. But even if this is the case, good luck can't hold on forever.

(For more details on the effects of rapid methane melts, see this piece at Climate Progress, and this piece at Worldchanging.)

(03/10/10 09:00 PM)

Branding in the Age of Social: Gaining Insight Through Research . Do you have a clear picture of your organization's strengths and weaknesses, and of the opportunities and threats in the marketplace? Is your position vis-à-vis your competitors clear and compelling? Does anyone else in this vast universe know or care? What brand signals echo back from the noise in the ... (03/09/10 09:00 PM)

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Home Business Internet Marketing -Tips You Need to Know. Doing an online business, especially if it is a Home Business Internet Marketing, requires researching and effective advertising strategy. Running an online home business can be really tough to handle... (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

MLM REVIEWS: Xyngular Fact or Fiction?. So you?^TMre doing some research on a company called Xyngular? (pronounced Singular). Many people are coming online doing the exact same thing as you are. In fact, in the last 90 days, ov... (03/09/10 09:01 AM)

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Don't Be Afraid of Negative Reviews. The occasional negative review on online review sites, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, is nothing to fear, according to a report by Forrester Research, which recently studied the issue. In its report,... (03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Futuristic New York and Sustainable Sao Paulo Projects Win Zumtobel Prize.

How can we examine ways that the built environment impacts both sustainability and humanity? The Austrian-based Zumtobel Group created an award that focuses on those contributions in architecture and engineering that can improve quality of life. The Zumtobel Group Awards were announced today with a dozen bright ideas including the two winners: A creative work environment that's completed in Sao Paulo, and a visionary research proposal for a "self-sufficient" New York City.

In the built category, a Sao Paulo workspace named Harmonia//57 designed by French-Brazilian architects Triptyque was named as the winner. The firm was charged with creating a flexible environment on a unique site deluged with heavy rain and very high temperatures. Taking advantage of the abundance of natural resources, the designers added not only a green roof, but vertical gardens as well.

They also created a rainwater catchment system which could store water for toilets and landscaping on bright green cisterns on the roof. To engage the local community in a highly-creative neighborhood, the architects stopped construction for 10 days to allow a series of programs to be held in the half-realized space, transforming the site into an open studio.

The research winner, New York City Resource & Mobility is an intensely exciting proposal for the future of New York, where hovering pod-like robots (like War of the Worlds, but friendly, we assume) will assist us with everything from transportation to farming. Architects Terrefuge/Terreform ONE created a master plan for New York that assumes the city will need to be completely self-sufficient due to rapid growth and radical climate change.

Streamlined mass transit and an efficient food supply are among the issues tackled by the master plan, which even closes the loop between a growing population and the increased trash it generates: The proposal hopes to reuse the solid waste in landfllls to build seven more Manhattan islands.

[Zumtobel Group Award]

(03/08/10 09:00 PM)

Work Smart: Avoid Office Distractions With Time Blocking.

Work Smart

The most important decision you'll make today is about what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

[twistage f975f499540cb]

In an interruption-driven culture, it's too easy to let everyone else decide where your attention goes and how to spend your next 10 minutes. If you jump every time your phone rings, a new email arrives, your Blackberry buzzes, or someone stops by your desk, you're undermining your most important work and costing your company money. A recent study shows that unnecessary interruptions costs the U.S. economy $650 billion dollars in lost productivity per year.

Being available to your boss and co-workers is part of your job. But the most creative and important work you do requires total focus and attention for an extended period of time. Your brain needs at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time to dive in, concentrate on one thing, and get into the zone where you're truly focused and doing your best work. Time blocking is a technique that sets the stage for that to happen.

When you've got a project that requires deep thinking, block out hour-long "meetings" with yourself to devote your full attention to it. During your time block, forward the phone to voicemail, shut down Microsoft Outlook, silence your Blackberry, and if you have to, leave your desk with the materials you need and focus solely on the task at hand. Sound crazy? Even an employee low on the totem pole can do it.

I used to work as a software programmer at a busy office that had an open seating layout. There were no cubicles--sales people sat elbow to elbow next to graphic designers who sat next to engineers, and people constantly interrupted each other. It got so bad that when I was on deadline, I'd book hour-long meetings in a conference room where I was the only attendee. I'd put the meeting in my calendar a day or two ahead of time so that I showed up as "busy" in Outlook. When the time came, I'd steal off to the conference room with my laptop to work uninterrupted. When I confessed to another programmer that I was holding fake meetings with myself just to get work done, he asked if he could join me--under the condition that we would not distract one another. I got the most work done in the shortest amount of time during those blocks.

Time blocking works best when you've got a discrete, single task or project that involves deep engagement, like research, number crunching, brainstorming, or writing. Set a definite start and end time when you don't have other meetings to attend. Commit to coming out of a single time block with a specific task accomplished. If the Internet is too tempting a distraction, download the files you need to get the job done before you start, and turn off your laptop's Internet connection during your block.

When you work in an office where interruptions are the rule and not the exception, use time blocking to reclaim hours you'd otherwise spend dealing with distractions.

Gina Trapani is the author of Upgrade Your Life and founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Work Smart appears every week on FastCompany.com.

Last week: Three Ways to Use Google Wave in Your Business

(03/08/10 09:00 PM)

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How to Use Articles in Your Business. Whether you already own a business or anticipate launching a business, it pays to do your research and stay abreast of issues that could affect your company. In the past, understanding business manage... (03/06/10 09:01 AM)

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Married to RFID, What Can AR Do for Marketers?. Marketers are just beginning to explore what augmented reality can do for their campaign and brands. However new research - along with some speculation - suggests that the promise this technology... (03/04/10 09:00 PM)

Edelman: Typosquatting Costs Google Advertisers $497M Per Year. New research from Harvard Professors Tyler Moore and Ben Edelman suggests that Google may be profiting from typosquatters - at the expense of online advertisers. The scheme is a simple one for the... (03/01/10 09:00 PM)

Smartbooks Set for Rapid Growth. Smartbook devices, which first appeared on the market in 2008, are set to ship 163 million units worldwide in 2015, according to ABI Research. Smartbooks Defined “Smartbook” is somewhat of a nebulous... (02/25/10 09:00 PM)

Online Shoppers Rely on Search Engines. Ninety-four percent of online shoppers conduct research prior to making a purchase and 61% of online shoppers always or often use search engines, according to the Compete Online Shopper Intelligence... (02/24/10 09:01 PM)

Mobile Location Based Services Ready to Move. A convergence of factors is setting up ideal conditions for the global mobile location based services (MLBS) market to boom by 2014, according to Juniper Research. Global market revenues for MLBS and... (02/24/10 09:01 PM)

Dogs and Stocks.

The Research Puzzle has a good post about how picking a winning dog (a la last week's Westminster Dog Show) is similar to picking stocks: Watching the televised coverage of the archetypes of the canine world parade around Madison Square... Read more

(02/24/10 09:00 AM)

Battle of the Video Ad Formats. New research has shown that consumers are likely to watch and remember a video ad that they actually choose - as opposed to one that was forced on to them. This research, conducted by Vivaki, was... (02/23/10 09:00 PM)

The Placebo Effect Works on Products, Too.

Image: Chemistryland.com When consumers associate a certain effect with a product, they tend to underestimate the time it took for the product to delivered its desired effect, according to a Journal of Consumer Research study: “People... Read more

(02/22/10 09:00 AM)

The Single Greatest Way To Discover Innovation.

The Single Greatest Way To Discover Innovation

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

ShareThe Single Greatest Way To Discover InnovationThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Warning: I have no scientific research to back up the theory I’m about to ponder, but I would love to hear your thoughts after/if you complete reading this post. I don’t really recall the first time I discovered this, but it’s happened enough that I [...] (02/02/10 09:00 AM)

5 Ways to Guarantee Your Marketing Works.

5 Ways to Guarantee Your Marketing Works

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

5 Ways to Guarantee Your Marketing WorksThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing can, at times, be part art, part science, part intuition. Toss into that the fact that traditional market research produces results that are often misleading and sometimes flat out wrong because people don’t tell the truth in the traditional survey or focus group [...] (12/22/09 09:00 PM)

The State of Social Media Marketing, by the Numbers: A Sneak Peek. Before writing The State of Social Media Marketing?an in-depth, thorough study of social media use among marketers?we looked around at the existing research to see what other organizations were asking in their surveys. Much of it seemed interesting, but lacking in nuance. Here are a few rich examples of the ... (12/15/09 09:01 PM)

Why We Really Buy.

Why We Really Buy

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Why We Really BuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Martin Lindstrom (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Project Buyology was a fascinating research project conducted by Martin Lindstrom that used brain scans to better understand what really motivates someone to buy a product or get [...] (12/08/09 09:00 AM)

Recruiting Executives and Industry Experts for Qualitative Research. Your studies are not appropriate for participants found on purchased lists, and the participants will take part in a series of in-depth interviews. So how do you find your interviewees? (11/24/09 09:01 PM)

Webinar on Effective Lead Management: How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline. Research shows that about 80% of leads marketers generate end up getting lost, ignored or discarded. So, instead of continually struggling to find new leads for Sales, marketers should begin focusing on developing effective lead management processes for converting more... (10/12/09 09:00 AM)

B2B Webinar on Integrating Online and Offline Strategies to Address Risk. Addressing risk has always been a factor in the B2B complex sale. But new research shows that buyer risk must be better understood and addressed by marketers and sellers. Why? It's a primary motivator in B2B purchase decisions and it... (05/07/09 09:00 PM)

How Toyota Followed Baby Boomers. Last week I presented on a panel with Professor Arturo Perez-Reyes (UC Berekeley) at an event in San Francisco we put on with Jupiter Research. One story the Professor shared about Toyota was something I hadn't heard before... He said that Toyota followed the baby boomer generation as a market. They looked at the demographics and spending power of that generation. I think it went something like this... They started with the Corolla, then Celica for when they got into college, then Corona/Camry, then launched Lexus when they had discretionary income. They followed the 'bulge' of spending the baby boomers had. It's an interesting way to think about the markets you're going after. Is it big? how will it evolve? How will it effect your product strategy? (04/03/09 09:00 PM)

Lead Nurturing Best Practices Research and Data. MarketingSherpa just published data on lead nurturing best practices based on a survey of 1,000 marketers. Sherpa's research focuses on the following nurturing best practices: Using multiple tactics rather than relying on email only. Timing of teleprospecting response to web... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Podcast: Interview on lead generation with Dave Stein. I was was recently interviewed by Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, and author of How Winners Sell (a great book by the way). During the interview we talk about the following topics: What works to get... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs. Marketers are usually challenged to justify word of mouth social media marketing programs to the finance department. With economic challenges ahead, your job doesn’t get easier. As someone who’s focuses on both creative and measurement, and as Interim CFO at Bazaarvoice, I started thinking more about the question of what marketers need to sell CFOs on the social marketing opportunity. Ultimately everything comes down to the bottom line – drive revenue, margin or costs down – but every marketing strategy has a different familiarity, timeline to ROI, or measurements that have to tie back to the P&L. So the approach to start, grow and sustain social marketing through the eyes of the finance department will differ from doing business as usual. And the justification needs to span beyond the numbers to get the entire management team to understand the ‘ecosystem’ effect of how customers make purchase decisions in a networked world.I posed a question on LinkediN question to my marketing peers and colleagues: With the economic downturn, how will you convince the CFO that "social" marketing is a priority?I’ve summarized the 25 answers to the question into these 8 tips: Provide financial leaders with hard facts—give numbers representing the anticipated dollar value of social media marketing compared to its cost (ex: anticipated ROI) for your company, cite research on the proven effectiveness of social media (ex: reviews/testimonials turn potential customers into actual customers, which is crucial, especially during an economic downturn) and emphasize that a company should always aim to... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Small Business: Your Employees and Politics.

I was poking around on the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) website this morning doing some client research and found this helpful page on 'how to educate your employees about politics". Namely, how policies affect small business and thus how they affect your employees.

Great resource - check it out here:
Get Ready for Election 2008: Educate Others - NFIB

Factoid: Did you know that of the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, 51 percent are small-business owners, their employees or dependents. Wow...

[UPDATE] Better yet, check out the 'Protect Free Enterprise' site and the NFIB YouTube Channel!

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Small Business: Your Employees and Politics.

Great resource - check it out here:
Get Ready for Election 2008: Educate Others - NFIB

Factoid: Did you know that of the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, 51 percent are small-business owners, their employees or dependents. Wow...

[UPDATE] Better yet, check out the 'Protect Free Enterprise' site and the NFIB YouTube Channel!

(09/11/08 09:00 AM)

Insight for Ad Agencies - Listen or Go Back to Print.

This is quite possibly the most timely and exciting article I've read as of late (come to think it, this I've been rather busy and this might be the only thing I've read of late...nope, this really is the best).

Joseph Dumont penned a piece for Imedia entitled "Why Agencies are Failing" in it, he lays out several of his own observations that are founded in a report from Forrester (might be worth the $279 price tag if you're seeking some Forrester Research Therapy for your agency) and compiled from his keen insights into the agency world.

This article really hits home as it comes at a time when I'm doing a bit of work with a few agencies that I regard with the utmost respect and I can't help but see some of their challenges echoed in this article. Those are the agencies that are truly students of advertising, marketing, customer behavior and have a genuine purpose in this world. They will succeed because they can learn, they can grow and like energy (you know, never at rest) they are always moving and changing and they're on the right path.

On the other end of the spectrum are agencies who are truly stuck. They're afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone, afraid to admit that they need help, don't have a mastermind group internally that's challenging their age-old positioning and their clients are suffering as a result by way of crusty old strategies, reheated ideas and basically an ignorance of the end customer that we're all trying to reach. Those agencies will fail a they aren't even on a path - they're standing still.

Here are a few observations that I took from Joseph's article. I really recommend read though it with you highlighter handy - there are some real nuggets in there. If you're an agency, take this to your next staff meeting and discuss it. It's that important. If you like, buy the Forrester report (and tell me if it was worth it!)

1. Damnit, get out there and do the hard work to really understand how your client's consumer has changed their habits, where they hang out and what they want to hear from you. Media kits are for armchair advertisers. You need to get out there, listen, react and move. Oh, and get your client's leadership and front line folks on the same page too. Customers are smart. They see through the disorganization.

2. Watch political marketing. I've said this for years and I'll say it again "the harbingers of the next generation of marketing are working in politics". Watch all 3 candidates and how they leverage the digital space. Also, pay attention to their budgets. They're moving mountains and spending very little (comparatively) online...they reach the masses on TV and the influencers through digital (online) means...it's a great country we live in!

3. Interactive does NOT mean Internet. It means really in-ter-acting... get people involved, acting and interacting and engaging. Most of what's called "interactive" is anything but.

4. User generated content is not the holy grail. User generated genuine interest in a brand that excites consumers and pushes their 'loyalty button' is what we're really seeking. There are many UGC campaigns that are bolt on piles of crap... If UGC is not aligned with your brand and the only respondents are professional contestants, you should rethink things a bit. Just because it's cool doesn't mean it's you (or that an agency should sell it to you)

5. I actually think that we're in pretty good shape - there is BRILLIANT marketing going on out there (just read iMedia, Marketing Sherpa and others to see the kick ass campaigns and strategies that are rocking the marketing world)...but there's always room to do better. Both agencies and internal marketers can't afford to get lazy. The entire profession of marketing is founded on a "faith in the future" perspective! That's why we market - for the future...so hurry up and let's all get there!

(06/09/08 09:00 AM)

Insight for Ad Agencies - Listen or Go Back to Print.

3. Interactive does NOT mean Internet. It means really in-ter-acting... get people involved, acting and interacting and engaging. Most of what's called "interactive" is anything but.

(05/29/08 09:00 PM)

The Gap in Customer Engagement. Late post from the Forrester Marketing Forum Conference I attended a couple weeks ago. The topic was “Customer Engagement”, which is heralded by many publications as the new marketing buzzword. I love buzzwords…they get buzz! Which gets people talking, which gets people trying things, which causes failures, which creates learning, which (hopefully) creates better companies. I digress. The primary research and paper behind customer engagement was conducted by Brian Haven, who’s a great Forrester Analyst. I’ve known him for years and spoken in his workshops on Social networking and UGC. I’m a big believer in the idea of customer engagement. But I have 2 cents to add on where customer engagement comes from and where the gap is in achieving this goal in organizations. The conference was a balance of ideas to measure customer engagement, with tools, principles and experiences that result in more engaged customers. During the show I posted to Facebook “Customer Engagement is a more measured way of defining Customer Experience”. Said another way, Customer Engagement is an outcome…and outcomes (as well as inputs) are measurable. There are a lot of metrics that can point to engaged customers. I don’t think the absolute figures of these measures matter as much as trending to understand if you’re winning or losing customer engagement. But what is a point of customer engagement worth in revenue, margin or saved costs? Some of the metrics for customer engagement – such as time on site, Net Promoter, or Brand awareness -- could track... (04/23/08 09:01 PM)

9 Guerrilla Marketing Answers. A few weeks ago I was on an Austin Technology Council panel for the topic of Guerilla Marketing (YouTube Videos here). I’ve always loved Guerrilla marketing, and wrote a book on Guerrilla and Word of Mouth Marketing in 1997 with foreword from Jay Conrad Levinson, the "father" of Guerilla Marketing. I also have this unpublished book of 193 Clever marketing ideas ... I’m not going to do anything with it, so I posted it to Scribd for people to read for free. I made a few notes to answer the questions the moderator was going to ask for the panel. I’m on a long flight back from London right now...a good time to expand these notes and publish them... 1. What criteria do you use to choose where to spend marketing dollars for new technology companies? Start with sales first. You need very little marketing in the beginning. They are the most productive form of research and recon for the market, because they're selling at the same time, adapting the message and learning what works. From this intelligence you build your foundation for the marketing plan and priorities. The bulls eye spend is on establishing outside credibility, typically through press and case studies. Also identify the customer objections from the sales team and work on overcoming those first. Finally, build and leverage partnerships. Leverage their spend and be associated with brands that are larger and more credible than yours (for now!). 2. What is the most efficient way to get... (04/21/08 09:01 AM)

Workweek.

Is "workweek" one word or two? I think it used to be two, but has now morphed into one. Or maybe not. Anyway, there's a lot going on out here in proposal land. Over the weekend I finished up revising the Corporate Experience section of my law firm client's resubmission and e-mailed it to her. Due to the nature of that resubmission, my client ended up with over 400 pages that had to be scanned and put on a CD to send off to the government. She also needed to reproduce the entire proposal and submit a hard copy to accompany the CDs. It took her all weekend to get everything together and then, of course, the scanner broke down. I could have told her this would happen.

I'm now preparing the technical section of a DOD proposal for a long-time client. Much of it is similar to a proposal I helped prepare for her late last year, so I can recyle parts of it. But I still need to do some background research and gather information on the local market for a couple of categories of healthcare specialists. My client doesn't like to do this research, and neither do I. But I'm doing it anyway.

Then on Monday, re-compete #3 arrived. Oh joy. It is due at the end of May, so we have six weeks to work on it. My client sent me the RFP, which I haven't read yet. I did open the file, but when I saw that the RFP was over 125 pages, I closed it up without actually looking at it. Maybe I'll read it today. My client and I have been playing telephone tag, so we haven't talked about the proposal yet. But this assignment will keep me pretty busy for the next month and a half.

Then maybe I can take a little vacation.

(04/16/08 09:00 AM)

Private Bid Notification Services.

In addition to the government's bid notification services from FedBizOpps and Grants.gov, there are many private firms that provide these types of services. You can find some of these firms by doing a Google search on phrases such as "find RFPs" and "bid notification."

Although you have to pay for it, there are several advantages to using a private bid notification service:

Many of these services can also provide you with information on solicitations issued by state and local governments. While more and more state and local governments are putting their bid opportunities on the Internet, not all of them have geared up to do this.
Since FedBizOpps and Grants.gov may not cover all all bureaus and departments within each federal agency, you may be able to get access to these bureaus' bid opportunities via a private service rather than having to search for them by going to individual websites.
If you are interested in seeing bid opportunities at two or three levels -- federal, state and/or local -- you can may be able to receive these opportunities via daily e-mails or through online access. This can be a real time-saver.

One of the private serices that has been around for a long time is Bidnet (see clip below), which offers customizable packages to meet your specific needs and interests. However, since Bidnet is only one of many private services, it will probably be worth your while to research and compare these services with respect to their prices and offerings.

clipped from bidnet.com

With BidNet, you will have access to Government Bids from thousands of Federal, State and Local agencies, and see bid opportunities you won't find anywhere else. Our diverse network of agencies will give you the competitive intelligence needed to compete effectively for the nation's largest buyer of goods and services - governments across the nation and right in your hometown.

(04/02/08 09:02 AM)

Site Update and New Feature.

This weekend I spent some time adding some great new resources to my site. Check out my What's New Page to see what I've added.

I've also instituted a new feature for these and subsequent new resources. Recently, I discovered Clipmarks, a tool you can use to clip and stash snippets from Web pages. I've been trying to come up with a way to incorporate Clipmarks on my site and decided to begin using it to highlight the new additions. A possible other use might be to incoporate it in this blog, maybe for a "Site of the Week" or "Site of the Day" feature. I'm still thinking about this, so stay tuned.

Now what you will see when you go to a page on my site where I've added a new resource is something like what is shown at the bottom of this post -- a clip from the Foundation Center website.

To see the clips for the new resources, go to any of these pages:

Business Plans
Grant Writing
Small Business
Grant Subjects
Grant Samples
Legal, Financial & Contracts

What do you think?

clipped from foundationcenter.org

"The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors."

(03/24/08 09:01 AM)

Referrals From Great Sites.

Every once in a while I take a look at the Google Analytics reports for my website. These reports provide detailed statistics about the number and type of visitors to a site, where they came from, what pages they visited, etc. The reports contain a lot of data and take a while to review, which is why I only look at them occasionally.

But one of the reports I do like to look at is the Referring Sites Report, which indicates which sites referred people to my site via a link. And if you are interested in grants (both government and non-government grants), grantwriting, or grant research, you'll want to take a look at some of the websites that send the most visitors to Proposalwriter.com . Among my top 10 referring sites are:

The Grants Information Collection at the University of Wisconsin. This fabulous site has a wealth of information on grants, funding, and other related topics. I'm delighted to say that they link to my site on four different pages. They have consistently been my #1 referral site.
My #2 referral site is The Foundation Center, which sends visitors to my site via links on 3 of their many pages. If you want grant-related information from the nation's leading authority on non-profits, The Foundation Center's site is one of the first places you should investigate.
The third site that sends the most visitors to my site is the US House of Representatives. Somewhere among the its many pages there has been a link to my site for several years. Except I don't know where it is, and oddly enough the link is to my Guestbook. I've never taken the time to try to figure out how people get to my site from this site.
#9 on the list is the University of Michigan's Proposal Writing Help Page, which of course contains info and links on proposal writing.

In addition to Google Analytics, I use Google Webmaster Tools to find out how many other sites have links to mine. At present, Webmaster Tools shows that there are over 4,100 external links from other sites to the various pages on my site. But this number seems to include quite a few dupicates, so it's hard to tell what the real number is.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty satisfied.

(03/06/08 09:01 AM)

Keeping Up (Not).

I'm behind with everything, and this blog seems to get pushed down on my priority list. I don't want it to, but even so, I just can't seem to find the time to get the blogging done. Still, people keep reading it and signing up for my subscription notification form. So now I feel guilty for not writing anything here for a while.

I have been bogged down with work and more work. First, I finished the little sole source proposal that I wrote about earlier. My client submitted it to the federal agency, which liked the proposal but didn't like the cost. So my client is having to revise his numbers and re-submit. One of my colleagues, a CPA who specializes in government costing, is working with him on this. My client is certain to get the contract, but not before the feds make him jump through a few more hoops.

Second, I've been working on a USAID proposal. Somehow, I got assigned to prepare the largest section of that proposal and it took longer than I anticipated (no surprise there). As soon as I finished it, USAID issued a one-week extension. My client is happy to have this extension, but I'm not because it means that I might have to do more work. I'm waiting to hear from them maybe today. In the meantime...

I've moved on to starting yet another assignment that I put off because I had to finished the USAID stuff. This is what I am behind on now. It is a very large proposal for NIH -- a services project, not a research project. The technical section consists of 5 separate volumes: Personnel, Technical Approach, Management Plan, Past Performance and Work Samples. I'm almost done with the Management Plan and it is about 50 pages in length. My client is working on the Personnel Section, and I am going to have to move on to the Technical Approach section probably beginning tomorrow. NIH wants lots and lots of details about everything, and there are no page limits to any of the volumes.

So, I just continue to plod along here in my little world of proposals. Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought that this would be a good career. A lot of people think it is, but frankly I'm not sure. It's a good career if you want to be under a lot of stress all the time and if you like having one deadline after another -- deadlines that rarely slip. Ugh, I can't really even think about it right now because I have to get back to my writing. I have a conference call with my NIH client later this morning.

Later...

(03/01/08 09:01 AM)

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing -- WOMM-U, May 8-9. This year the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is doing something completely different (disclosure: I'm on the board). It will be WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University), the first training-based conference full of case studies, operational cookbooks, and practical advice to make Word of Mouth Marketing work in your organization. The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO ...and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. (02/28/08 09:01 PM)

Keeping Up (Not).

Later...

(02/21/08 09:01 PM)

VP of Marketing Responsible for Shipping & Logistics?. Harry Joiner, a marketing recruiter and good friend, asked me to comment on his blog regarding what a VP of eCommerce or VP Marketing candidate should be asked or should answer regarding shipping & delivery logistics. Here's what I said... As you know, I believe word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing and sustainable growth. So, a VP of marketing candidate needs to have an appreciation for the overall customer experience. Shipping logistics are a huge part of that experience. You can weight the satisfaction and loyalty impact of each part of the customer experience – researching products, buying, receiving and using a product (support). The weight of impact is correlated to the the emotional residual for that part of the experience. Shopping and research is a relatively forgettable experience, unless there is severe frustration. The buying experience is overshadowed with the emotional weight of the receiving and the out of box experience, as well as resolving customer service and support issues (downstream activities). Amazon is consistent with shipping and logistics. Apple and Chumby have great out of the box experiences. So, word of mouth and branding (and thus, top line revenue over the long term) are driven from upstream decisions (great products, packaging) and downstream logistics (shipping, service, support). A great VP of marketing should realize they have to balance between immediate, short term tactics to drive revenue and the sustainable long-term activities that may even be out of his direct control. In this case, marketing... (01/31/08 09:00 PM)

Prioritizing Marketers Top Priorities. This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in email infrastructure, build operational data warehouse, and improve web site. However the 'basics' by definition from this study were more customer-centric and more concepts and objectives rather than strategies. And unfortunately for most companies, they're not all that 'basic' in achieving success. 60% of marketing executives said the following 'marketing basics' were important: Customer satisfaction Customer retention Segmentation Brand loyalty ROI I have a copy of the study. To be clear, the study asked marketing executives to choose from over 60 concepts or buzzwords (such as the 5 above) which were then categorized. Other categories, in order of votes, included: SEO (by itself) Personalization: concepts include Data mining, CRM, Lead Generation, Personalization, Ecommerce, Competitive Intelligence Green Marketing: Multicultural / Ethic issues. Breakdown of old media Innovative Branding Viral / WOM: concepts include viral, WOM, blogging New Media: concepts include Web 2.0, Mobile, CGM, Long Tail, Social Networking Macro Economics Tech Strategy Outsourcing Social Issues Other Now, as a marketer, if I participated in this study I may have answered the same way. After all, the 'marketing basics' are overarching objectives. What... (01/02/08 09:00 AM)

Future of Online Retailing -- Four Predictions. Forrester and Jupiter report that more than 70% of online shoppers seek out user reviews before making a purchase decision. MarketingSherpa reports that 84% of consumers prefer the opinion of other consumers vs. experts. Hundreds of retailers including WalMart, Best Buy, HP, and the Home Depot have followed Amazon’s lead by allowing their consumers to review products in the online channel. Consumers demand social commerce solutions and retailers are driving measurable results. As consumers are presented with increasing choices, channels, and messages, they will continue to turn to peers to discover, research, and make decisions about products and services. Retailers will need to utilize technology and best practices to provide authentic, relevant, and effective social commerce solutions to retain their customers into the future. 1) SOCIAL CONTENT IS GOING MULTI-CHANNEL The future of reviews and social content is going beyond the product page and into other channels such as mobile phones, kiosks, print collateral, online advertising, and social networks. It is clear that consumers rely on social content to make purchasing decision. They will expect to be able to access to this content regardless of channel in order to inform their purchasing process. The retailers that provide this multi-channel access will develop competitive advantages in their markets to attract and retain consumers. Additionally, more retailers will see the value of integrating social commerce with CRM and other “back-end” channels. Retailers will start to leverage social content as a key input into driving decisions in marketing, sales, advertising, customer support, and... (12/09/07 09:01 PM)

Yahoo Prez Susan Decker Bets $1 Million On Its Stock. Yahoo President Susan Decker is buying up shares the company's beaten down stock (YHOO), to the tune of $1 million. CNNMoney reports:The buy was Decker's first ever open-market stock purchase, according to filing tracker InsiderScore.com, and came one-day after the stock fell to $22.44 - its lowest level since March 2004. Decker's buy was just the fourth by any Yahoo insider in more than four years; and, the largest by any Yahoo insider in more than four years, InsiderScore analysts wrote in a research note FridayThat's quite a vote of confidence. Is she just trying to shore up the stock, or does she know something we don't?... (08/10/07 09:01 AM)

Tips for CIO / CMO Relationships. Forrester just published an in depth research paper titled Partnering for Success: The CIO - CMO Relationship They interviewed me months ago for this paper based on my experience working with IT in startups and Dell. Bottom line: the most important aspect to good relationships is open and frequent communication. Here was the sidebar on my answers to these questions:How can CMOs and CIOs build a more effective partnership? In my experience, there are four key principles for a culture ofeffectiveness: 1) agreement and accountability, 2) face-to-face work with no “over the fence” mentality; 3) open communications andsharing of plans and results; and 4) investment by the CIO, CMO, and their employees to build relationships. What can marketers learn from their IT peers? Marketers can learn that IT is interested in how its solutions impact the business and customer, and, by sharing this, IT is more invested in their work and have a better understanding of requirements. IT thinks in terms of architecture and how things are done. It needs to fully understand the spirit, intent, and detailed requirements of what needsto be done in order to avoid missteps. The more that marketing shares with IT, the better.... (07/18/07 09:01 AM)

Microsoft Plays With P2P TV. Video: LiveStation Demo Microsoft Research (MSFT) and a UK-based company called Skinkers are developing peer-to-peer software called LiveStation for streaming live television over PCs. Think of it as a Slingbox Without the Box. (See demo video above). Except that TV stations would have to sign up to stream their broadcasts over the service. Using P2P networks is the most bandwidth efficient (and least costly) way to deliver video over the Internet. Joost, Babelgum, and Veoh also all use P2P distribution techniques in one form or another. But they all deliver videos that are already stored somewhere (their servers or the computers of their members), as opposed to live streams. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for any of these services to offer live streams as well. It doesn't seem like that big a deal. Joost, for instance, is working on (or already has) the ability to synchronize the streaming of a particular show so that you and all of your friends can watch it at the same time while chatting over Joost. Making that a live stream should be easy enough. The bigger question is: On the Internet, does live TV even matter any more? The TV schedule is a product of the historical limitations of broadcast television, where you have to broadcast the same shows to everyone at the same time. But those limitations are falling away. Even in cable and satellite TV, the growth of pay-per-view and on-demand channels proves that if you give consumers more... (07/06/07 09:01 AM)

Yahoo's SmartAds Offer Better Targeting. Yahoo is slowly but surely trying to make its display ads just as relevant and targeted as Google's search ads. It is beginning to test what it calls SmartAds, graphical Web ads that can be customized in an automated fashion to the demographics of the audience most likely to see them. Cnet gives this example:For instance, instead of just seeing a generic ad for a Toyota Prius, a woman in San Francisco who conducts research on hybrid cars on Yahoo Autos could be served an ad for a local San Francisco dealer, along with information on the types of Priuses in stock and their purchase price. The ad, which is configured on the fly, could also feature a background color targeted for women in her age range, as well as a Golden Gate Bridge logo.In order for this to work, however, the advertiser must provide all the different variations and permutations of the ad it might want to show That could get complicated. Will Toyota have to prepare iconic logos for every city—the Gateway Arch for St. Louis, the Sears Tower for Chicago—as well as different colors and copy for each demographic slice it is targeting? A typical Google AdWords campaign can involve hundreds of thousands of different keywords. There is a practical limit to what an ad agency can gin up for one campaign. Still, even if advertisers come up with just 5 or 10 different combinations of the same online ad, in theory it should be more effective... (07/02/07 09:01 PM)

Notes on "The Likeability Factor" (Tim Sanders at Austin Texchange). Last week I became president of Texchange, a local association of Technology entrepreneurs and executives. At our June event we had Tim Sanders, formerly of Broadcast.com, Yahoo, author of Love: The Killer App, and more recently The Likeability Factor. He spoke to a June audience of 130 entrepreneurs and shared some sobering statistics, research, and recommendations. Thanks to Josh Toub at BluefishGroup and Secretary of Techange, I can share these notes for you. [Note: if you are an Austin-based technology entrepreneur or in a Austin-based startup, email me to join]. Biology behind increased importance of emotion in business and everyday life The amygdala (part of brain in charge of emotion) has grown ~1% in the lat 35 years Makes liking the people you do business with much more important than it once was EVP When Tim evaluates a company to invest in or do business with, he evaluates three things: What is the emotional value proposition What is the emotional cost of ownership What is the emotional compensation plan Did research at Yahoo about the essance of loyalty--it's all about emotional attraction In life, the likability factor is almost always the tie break Every presidential election since 1976 has been won by the likability factor. What is likability? Not about charimsa Not about being popular It's about reciprocity, not attraction Emotional Attraction (EA) Leadership An emotionally attractive salesperson will gross 40% more than a neutral person 3 benefits: Reduced risk Doctors who smile are much less likely to get sued... (06/18/07 09:03 PM)

Small Business Fundamentals - The List. When I went through business school I wasn't taught the fundamentals of small business. It wasn't until I started researching online business after graduating that I came across practical advice regarding the core facets of successful small business. There was one thing in particular that was continually hammered into me as I read more and more about building profitable businesses - the targeted mailing/contacts list is vital - and the web is the perfect vehicle to collect and maintain a list whether your business operates on or offline. List Based Direct Marketing As I delved further into online marketing I... (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

Keeping Up (Not).

Later...

(12/12/06 08:42 AM)

Tuesdays Contract Management News and Comment (22nd August 2006). Inaugural Call for Papers: The W. Gregor Macfarlan Excellence in Contract Management Research and Writing Program (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance) The National Contract Management Association is pleased to invite the submission of high-quality papers in the inaugural solicitation for the W. Gregor Macfarlan Excellence in Contract Management Research and ... (08/22/06 09:01 AM)

Nailing Down the Best Deal When Buying a Car. Whether you've found the vehicle you want through your own research or have been steered to a dealership by a buying service, you're still going to have to do some negotiating before you drive away i ...

(08/22/06 09:00 AM)