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Archive for the 'Business' Category

HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray: From the Consumer's Perspective

Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD

As an HD (High Definition) consumer here’s what I want from my HD player:

1. I want it to play ALL available movies. Exclusivity is the opposite of what I want. I want one player for all movies. I don’t want to have to take sides. I don’t want to buy multiple players (an HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray player). I just one one player for all my movies.

2. I want it to be affordable. HD-DVD is now very affordable, at about $250 for a basic player (I’m willing to pay some premium to be an earlier adopter but not Blu-Ray’s current premium). Blu-Ray isn’t affordable, about $1200 for the latest version. I’m ignoring the PS3 option because I don’t really want the PS3 gaming system, I just want an HD player.

3. I want to be able to rent movies from the local video rental store. I don’t want to have to buy all my movies. Where I live there are really only two major chains. Blockbuster and Rogers. Of course Blockbuster has signed an exclusive agreement with Blu-Ray. Rogers on the other hand has a 66% Blu-Ray and 33% HD-DVD selection. that means that if I want to rent a movie the odds are that I have to rent a Blu-Ray movie (and hence buy the very expensive player). And I can only rent movies from certain stores depending on which player and movie I want. The opposite of what I want again!

4. I would really like to be able to play my new HD movies on a regular DVD player For example it would be great if I can play my HD movies on my portable DVD player in the car. Only HD-DVD offers this with their combo releases.

Am I asking for too much? I don’t think so. So what’s happening? The reality is that the two formats are fighting each other instead of working together. This means that people like myself who desperately want to view movies in HD aren’t willing to spend money on an HD player because we don’t want to make the mistake of spending our hard earned cash on something that might be gone tomorrow. We don’t want to buy today’s Beta.

There are dual players coming out soon, and hopefully that will alleviate the issue. But at the end of the day I just want an affordable a movie player to play any HD movie I rent at my local video rental store.

It’s too bad these companies aren’t listening to their customers (a big mistake!), otherwise I’m absolutely convinced that they’d both have already made significantly more revenue. The adoption of HD players would be much much higher. I know I’d be buying an HD player today!






Now That's Motivation!

Floppy Disks

It’s amazing how simple things really energize and motive a team. Small simple things can sometimes be incredibly effective. A great example I’ve just read about for the umpteen time came from the latest book I’m reading called The Old New Thing. The book is about the history and evolution of the development of Windows, but importantly there’s one poignant story that sticks out. It’s also referenced in the book Rapid Development as a great team motivational example, and many others. I’ve also read this same story on countless websites and blogs. It’s become folklore. It was very effective!

To quote The Old New Thing:

During the development of Windows 95, application compatibility was a high priority. To make sure that coverage was as broad as possible, the development manager for Windows 95 took his pickup truck, drove down to the local Egghead Software store (back when Egghead still existed), and bought one copy of every single PC program in the store.

He then returned to Microsoft, unloaded all the software onto tables in the cafeteria, and invited every member of the Windows 95 team to come in and take responsibility for up to two programs. The ground rules were that you had to install and run the program, use it like a normal end user, and file a bug against everything that didn’t work right, even the minor stuff. (Of course, you had to provide the program to the person investigating the bug upon request.) In exchange for taking responsibility for ensuring that Windows 95 was compatible with your adopted programs, you go to keep them after Windows 95 shipped. If you did a good job with our two, you could come back for more.

The cafeteria was filled with Windows 95 team members, browsing through the boxes upon boxes of software like bargain hunters at a flea market. And there were the inevitable “What’d you get?” comparisons afterwards.

If Microsoft had decided to keep all the copies of the software they had just purchased for testing I can assure you there would’ve been a lot less enthusiasm in testing as many applications as possible. It would have made more financial sense, why give away everything you just purchased. Especially if you might need to re-test these same software applications when you updated Windows 95, or for future versions of Windows such as Windows 98, etc..

However this simple, very simple, idea of just letting the software developers take home the software they properly tested created great excitement and energy on the team. I have no doubt that if Microsoft had to re-buy all the software afterwards, they still would have been ahead financially with all the extra effort, energy, and goodwill they got.

Frequently in business trying to scrape the bottom line financially isn’t always the best thing. Often it’s worth looking at alternative options. Simple acts can sometimes be more valuable than giant acts.






Be the Best at Something Instead of Average at a Lot of Things

Be the Best

It’s common knowledge that you should work on things you’re not so good at. If you’re a star baseball pitcher who can throw the ball faster than anyone else but can’t throw a curve ball to save your life then you should improve your curve ball. If you’re really good at math but can’t write worth anything then you should really try to improve your writing skills. You should try to improve your weaknesses so that you can do everything. Basically you should focus most of your energy on improving your weakest points.

I completely disagree! Spend most of your energy improving the things you exceed at, not your weaknesses.

If you’re a great baseball pitcher that can throw a ball faster than anyone else, being able a throw a curve ball becomes less and less important. Not only that, but if you don’t improve on your main skill (throwing an amazing fast ball) than you’ll just be like everyone else. A pitcher who can throw a decent fast ball but with a limited repertoire of pitches. Nobody will really care. But if you throw the fastest and meanest fastball people will care. You’re skill will be rewarded. You will get attention. You will succeed!

If you can do math like no one else people will pay attention. You will succeed. People will overlook the fact that you can’t write. They’ll care that you can do amazing mathematical feats. They’ll focus on that. You’ll be rewarded for that. Only few people can achieve the heights off any skill.

Another example is basketball. Look at Shaquille O’Neal. He’s a very famous basketball player but he continually struggles with free throws. Something that’s considered a standard skill in professional basketball and he can barely do it. The reality is that it doesn’t matter, he’s focused his time and energy on improving his greatest strengths rather than working on his biggest weaknesses. Do you think people would care if he could get a decent free throw percentage if he hadn’t built up his other basketball playing skill? I doubt it.

I’m not saying that you should ignore your weaknesses, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t worry too much about it. Put some effort to improve them but instead focus the vast majority of your effort and energies on improving what you excel at. Focus on your strengths. If you’re beyond amazing at something success will follow. People will overlook your weaknesses.

I’d rather have a Shaq on my basketball team than an all around average player. I’d rather have a team of Shaq’s, each with a very different expertise than an all around team of average players.

As Joel Spolsky says:

“The mediocre talent just never hits the high notes that the top talent hits all the time. The number of divas who can hit the f6 in Mozart’s Queen of the Night is vanishingly small, and you just can’t perform The Queen of the Night without that famous f6.”






The Year 2007 in Retrospect

Seeing as the year 2007 is about to come to a close I thought now would be a great time to go back and reflect on everything I’ve accomplished throughout the year. Like I always like to say, reward your successes and learn from your failures.

Successes and Achivements

Successes

LandlordMax

FollowSteph

  • Traffic to FollowSteph has greatly increased!
  • RSS Feed subsribers is growing at a very good rate
  • Increase the direct revenues of FollowSteph by about 800% (from advertising, affiliate links, etc.)
  • I was interviewed on StartupSpark.com
  • Many articles have had very high search engine placements
  • Many articles have received high numbers of comments
  • Many articles rank very high in the search engines

Others

  • I started to write a book interviewing several of the most prominent bloggers online (for which I’m almost done compiling all the interviews and will be sending it off for editing very shortly). A lot of very prominent bloggers accepted to be part of this project which is great (I need to update the list). After reading all the interviews and compiling them, I can tell you this is definitely going to be an amazing book to read. There’s lots of great advice!
  • I’m in the process of creating a new website called FindYourWeddingDress.com. We’ve already hired one part-time person to assist us in this task. We’re hoping to fully launch it within the next few months.
  • We released the website WhichJar.com

Failures

  • We had an issue with our SSL certificate on the LandlordMax purchase page. We always maintained 100% security, it’s just that we somehow didn’t renew our certificate on time and therefore weren’t officially certified for a few days. This was quickly rectified. It won’t happen again!
  • Although we released the website WhichJar.com, there is currently not enough data in the database to really make it viable (we only have a few hundred open source projects stored so far). Therefore this project has been sidelined for now until I have the available resources and time or until I can find someone to partner up with. The failure is that I didn’t appreciate the data population effort that would be required
  • I started an Online Sales and Marketing book which I didn’t complete. The good news is that it successfully transitioned this effort to the blogging book, which is a great success! I’m hoping to return to it sometime in late 2008 if time permit but for now it’s on hold.
  • I had quite an experience with Telus with my cell phone service

This is what I can remember by just going through the blog. All in all a pretty busy year. For next year I expect to achieve even more.

Here are my goals for next year:

Goals and Objectives

Goals:

  • I expect the book to be available in bookstores such as Amazon.com by the Spring of 2008.
  • I expect to sell over 100,000 copies of the book by end of year 2008
  • I expect to more than quadruple LandlordMax sales revenues by the end of 2008
  • I expect to multiply my RSS feeds on FollowSteph by end of the 2008.
  • I expect to release a new major version of LandlordMax by spring/summer of 2008
  • I expect to release the Mac version before the end of 2008
  • I expect to release the networked/multi-user based version of LandlordMax by fall/winter of 2008.
  • I expect to release the browser based version of LandlordMax by end of year 2008 or early 2009
  • I expect FindYourWeddingDress.com to be fully functionning by spring/summer of 2008
  • I expect to appear several more times in the media (newspapers, tv, etc.) for LandlordMax by the spring of 2008
  • I expect to multiply the traffic of FollowSteph.com by at least five times before the end of 2008
  • I expect to break several LandlordMax sales records this year, and again receive more testimonials than all previous years combined.
  • I expect to fully complete the LandlordMax website redesign before the end of 2008
  • I expect to give FollowSteph.com a significant face lift before the end of 2008
  • I would like to release a cash flow analyzer software application as a complimentary product to LandlordMax before the end of 2008. We currently offer a free online cash flow calculator on the LandlordMax website, but I’d really like to expand this offering.

This is my list of successes/failures for 2007, and my goals for 2008. And because I publicly stated them here today, I’ll review them same time next year.

What about you? What are your big successes? What are your goals for next year? Did you know you increase your odds of achieving your goals if you publicly state them, especially if they include concrete terms and timelines.






Christmas Book Gift Ideas – Business

Today I continue the list of great Christmas book ideas, focusing on business books. For those of you just found this page now, the category of books I plan to share this week include:

So without further ado, here’s today’s list of great Christmas business book ideas:

 

And don’t forget to come back tomorrow to see my list of marketing and sales books for Christmas ideas. You can also subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t forget. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, don’t worry you can also subscribe to receive the articles by email here.






HelpSpot a Great Customer Service System

As some of you know we use HelpSpot from UserScape as our technical support system. We’ve been using it for some time and it’s a great product. Today we performed a much needed upgrade as we were behind one major upgrade and at least a few minor updates. That being said, I know Ian, the founder of UserScape, has been very busy increasing its capabilities, adding many new great features.

We’ve been wanting to upgrade for a while, the only issue we feared was that we had significantly customized the templates to our website’s look and feel and it might cost us some effort. Right now we’re extremely busy and will continue to get busier until tax season. Our busiest time is actually from early fall to the end of tax season. We however decided to go ahead with it because our discussion forum is getting hit with more and more spam and we could therefore use the new captcha feature in HelpSpot to try to reduce it. There are many other great features, it’s just that this is the one that interested us the most right now.

Well let me tell you how incredible easy it is to upgrade HelpSpot! They have a page which lists all the changes to the template files you need to make. I’ve never seen clearer instructions. Not only did he highlight the changes, but he also included some of the template code above and below some of the examples. This really helped in cases where we weren’t a hundred percent sure because of the heavier customization we had done. I’ve personally gone over many technical documents which were suppose to be “simple and clear instructions” but were completely useless. This one clearly explained how to upgrade the custom templates.

The upgrade was so easy and simple that I can’t give it proper justice. Based on some of my other experiences I expected it to take some effort, especially since we significantly customized our integration with HelpSpot. It took me all of 15 minutes! Yes, that’s right! In 15 minutes I was able to upgrade all our template files as well as the full system. Everything worked right out of the gate the first time. Even the templates. That’s amazing! Congrats to you Ian and your team.

The only negative thing I can say about this upgrade is that I didn’t do it sooner. Not only is HelpSpot a great product for customer service, but upgrading is a also incredibly quick and easy. Even with heavy customization!






LandlordMax Customer Testimonial

Today’s testimonial for LandlordMax Property Management Software comes from Daniel Bonnell. Here’s a great example of how positive and friendly customer service can really help your company achieve success:

“I had spent many of months studying many of other software. I had thought that I had found the best until they had gotten my money. After the payment had been made that was the last of any support. We had gone live with the other program and found many of problems, tried to get support and only showing them what was wrong with their program and was unable to help resolve the problem. By mistake, I had emailed LandlordMax. They were so kind in trying to help me with the program that I thought was theirs. The support from LandlordMax was so fast and not making me feel stupid that I was asking questions about the wrong software. Once I figured out my mistake, I realized that I needed to switch to a company that cared. LandlordMax is so much easier to understand, and if you have a question it is answered fast and accurate. Any problem that I have had has been one of mine and not the program as was what the problem before. Thank you, LandlordMax for the best program and support. There isn’t a better program out there, I know and stand behind them 100 percent. They have made my job so much easier.”

Thank you again,
Daniel Bonnell
DT Rentals

It would’ve been easy to push his first support request aside and assume he didn’t know what he was talking, that it was the wrong software as we suspected, but instead we assumed the issue was on our side. Great customer service means assuming the issue is yours first and foremost.

And because of this small act of assuming the issue was with us, we actually tried to get to the bottom of it, we didn’t just ignore it hoping he would go away. He went from getting no response (or negative responses) from his previous software to a company that truly backed it’s product. He was very pleased with this, so much so that he decided to check out our product and found it was a the solution for him. Not only did Daniel buy LandlordMax, I’m sure he’s also going to share his positive experience with many others.

Great customer service is priceless. And thank you Daniel for sharing with us your story!






12 Tips on How to Prepare Your Laptop for a Presentation

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at presentations or meetings where the laptop projected on the overheard hadn’t been prepared beforehand. What do I mean by prepared beforehand? It wasn’t ready or cleaned up ahead of time for the presentation. I’ve seen MSN Messenger popup windows appear in the middle of a meeting (several years ago one person’s message was even very inappropriate for work). I‘ve seen emails come through with popups displaying large portions of confidential emails. You name it I’ve seen it.

Presentation

So today’s topic is how to prepare your laptop for your next presentation and/or meeting. Here’s a list of things you should always do with your laptop before you start your presentation:

1. Close all instant chat clients. Close your MSN Messenger. Close Yahoo Messenger. Close Trillian. Close whatever instant chat clients you’re using. Even if you did get the message, there’s no way you can respond. So why get the message in the first place. And secondly what if the other person sends an embarrassing or confidential message…

2. Close your email client. Who reads their emails during a presentation? Close it. A popup window will only distract your audience. Never mind embarrassing or confidential emails.

3. Turn off your screen saver. Nothing is more annoying than a screen saver going on all the time. Turn it completely off. Why would you ever want your screen saver to turn on in a presentation? It will only distract your audience. Nothing good ever comes from a screen saver coming on during a presentation. Just turn it off, it’s as simple as that.

4. Pre-load the applications you’ll be using in your presentation. As many as you can. No one wants to wait for you to start an application, find the file to open, and wait for it to load. Load them all beforehand. Make it as seamless as a program switch (alt-tab).

5. Try your absolutely best to plug in your laptop. Laptops that run on battery generally run slower to extend the battery’s life. When you’re presenting the last thing you want to do is have your laptop run slower. This is especially true if your showcasing a product. But even worse, nothing kills a presentation as effectively as running out of power!6. If all at all possible, bring a backup of your data on a USB key. If for some reason your laptop won’t work with the projector, at least you have an alternative option. This isn’t always feasible, some systems need you to pre-install a bunch of applications, etc. But if it’s at all possible, bring a backup on a USB key.

7. Exit all unnecessary services and applications. Why slow down your computer down if you don’t need to. As well, the less windows you have open the less clutter people see. The less applications you potentially need to navigate between.

8. Clean up your desktop icons. And if you’re going to use a desktop background, make sure it’s appropriate for your audience. Although it doesn’t happen that often, it’s possible that you need to navigate to your desktop. Be prepared for this. The less clutter and background, the less distractions. As a quick anecdote, I was once in a meeting where one of the presenter’s desktop folders was very “inappropriately” named for the audience (I’ll let your imagination go wild). Luckily he, nor anyone at the meeting other than me, noticed. Otherwise it could have been a very embarrassing situation for him.

9. Be the first one to arrive. Have your laptop setup before anyone else shows up. You will look a lot more professional if you’re up and running than if you’re fumbling around trying to get your laptop working.

10. Test all your hardware before. Make sure the projector works with your laptop. Make sure the mouse works. Make sure you have internet connectivity if you need it. Basically make sure everything works before. And absolutely make sure you bring everything. Don’t forget your mouse if you need it. Don’t forget your clicker if you use it. Double check that all your required hardware is available and works.

11. Prepare a background image/show to display before the presentation starts. While everyone is entering the room and waiting for the presentation to start there is some dead time. Put something up. At the very least put your logo, a screenshot, a mug shot. Something. Even better, if you have the time and resources, prepare a small repeating presentation. Maybe some screen shots of your product. A small repeating demo of your key features. Maybe some stats about your products usage and benefits. Basically display something for your audience to look at that’s interesting while they wait for the presentation to start.

12. Double check all the above at least once!






Blogging Book Interview Update

Earlier this month I stated that I am in the process of writing a book which will interview some of the most prominent bloggers, asking them what it takes to blog successfully. Since that time the list of people who have agreed to participate in this project has significantly increased. Not only that but all of them are very successful bloggers. Many have traffic above 100,000 unique visitors a month!

As part of choosing who to contact and interview, I’m trying to bring in as many different types of bloggers as possible. As many different niches as possible. There’s the obvious choice of bloggers who choose to write about how to blog such as John Chow. But in addition to this I tried to include people from as many different topics as possible, including business, marketing, software development, specific niches, etc. What I hadn’t realized beforehand is that bloggers seem to congregate to certain common topics more than others, making it harder to get a breath of experiences. And This is why you’ll see that most of the bloggers fall mainly into a handful of different blogging categories. I’m trying my best to extend the range of experiences as much possible.

As well I was planning on keeping the list of bloggers confidential until I had completed all the interviews, but I’ve decided it’s better to share it now. This project is just too exciting to keep it under wraps until the last minute. So without further ado, here’s a list of some of the bloggers that have already agreed to participate in this project (in no particular order):

If you have any others you’d like to suggest to be interview for the book then please comment below. Especially if they are blogging for an interesting and somewhat different/unique niche. If you yourself are a blogger and you have traffic exceeding at least 10,000-25,000 unique visitors a month (preferably over 100,000) then please email me directly. There’s still a few spots left, at least until the end of November. At that point I will definitely not be able to include any more bloggers because of some harder deadlines.

This is a very exciting project! And as you can see from the people who have already agreed to participate the book has quite a range of knowledge and experiences. I’m really looking forward to its release!

** Update: As of today several new people are looking to participate in this exciting project. You’ll find I’ve just added their names to the list tonight.

** Update: A few more names have again been added.






Free Business Idea

Ideas are a dime a dozen, and today I’m going to give you my latest business idea. It’s easy to say I came up with this idea (I’m probably not the only one) and I could possibly make decent money from it, but the reality is that it won’t go anywhere unless I do something. Again, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is 99% of the battle. And I can honestly say that in this case there won’t be any execution. Even if it was the best idea I just don’t have the time or resources to execute on it. So if you’re interested in pursuing this idea, please by all means take it and roll with it. It’s all yours!

The Idea:

Car Carrier

Today there is a large discrepancy in the price of new car for the same model between Canada and the US. The difference is large enough that people are taking trips to the US with only the intention of buying a new car. Even after taking into consideration the loss of the warranty, the costs of the time, lodging, dinning, export fees, currency exchange, and so on, you can come out quite ahead. For example I recently saw the same new car advertised for $40,000 CDN and $25,000 in the US. When you consider that the CDN dollar is worth more than the US dollar right now, that’s crazy! $15,000 goes a long way to paying repairs in the first 5 years of ownership, more than your warranty will ever cover.

So the business idea is not to buy and sell cars, that’s too complicated and there are already tons of car dealerships doing that. Rather what I’m proposing is a delivery service, much like FedEx. The business is composed solely of picking up a pre-purchased car at a dealership in the US and bringing it to a specific location in Canada for pickup. A simple delivery service. It would include going through customs and paying the appropriate fees, but in essence it’s just a very niche delivery service taking advantage of a limited time price difference.

Again, this is simply a delivery business. Nothing more. You don’t buy the cars, your customers have already done this. At no point do you ever own the car. You’re just picking up a parcel, in this case a new car, and bringing it to another location.

Why would someone pay for this? Well if you charge a reasonable amount it’s worth it. You’re basically saving your customers the hassle of a road trip, the time to wait at the border for customs to process your car, etc. The advantage for you is that if you do this with a car carrier truck you don’t just bring one car at a time, you can deliver a small fleet of cars at once. You get the advantage of economies of scale. Not very large, but large enough to make a pretty good profit margin.

Of course this business opportunity won’t be around forever. Eventually the new car dealerships will have to adjust their prices. That’s just a matter of time. But if you’re willing to make the effort and execute on the idea then I’m pretty confident there’s profits to be made for at least several months. If you charge somewhere between $2,000-$5,000 per car, that should easily cover your expenses and give you a decent profit margin.

Since this is a limited time business opportunity, you also don’t want to grow too big. Therefore I would suggest local advertising, possibly something even as simple as classified ads. If you’re even more ambitious you could definitely get some media attention. I can easily envision seeing this on the nightly news.

So there you have. A free business idea. Will it work? I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty confident there’s profit to be had here. The idea does have a lower barrier to entry, anyone can come up with it and execute on it. The question is how many people will actually do it. Ideas are a dime a dozen!






 


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