This past weekend was tax free weekend in North Carolina. For those of you who don't have a tax free weekend, it's a beautiful thing. Select items, usually focused around back to school, are exempt from sales tax all weekend (see a full list of exempt items). You can purchase them online or in the store -- either way you're safe from that pesky 7% of taxes.
I used this year's tax holiday to buy that MacBook Air I had my eye on for the past month. Macs are a high priced item that are almost never on sale, so tax free weekend is the perfect time to knock ~$100, depending on the model, off a price that would never be discounted like that in other circumstances. However, it's not just these big ticket items that drive people crazy over the weekend -- malls are swamped, highways are backed up, and stores are flooded with people looking for items as cheap as $10. I actually had someone tell me they were looking forward to tax free weekend to use a $10 Kohl's coupon they had randomly found.
You don't need to a lecture from Dan Ariely to understand that consumers can act predictably irrational when goaded with a perk or gimmick -- this one being the 7%. While many of the items likely would be bought anyway, there are certainly people who buy more than they intended to or end up visiting more stores at the mall because of the allure of getting something tax free.
People get put to work by stores bringing in part-time help or working people overtime, local businesses get an influx of dollars, and consumers get some much needed relief in hard times. Tax free weekends seem like a win all around to me and yet only 20 states currently have them in place. Some state governments are concerned about the cost to the state.
Don't get me wrong, in the recent debt ceiling debate I was on the revenue-raiser side, but a gimmicky weekend to spur spending doesn't strike me as something that could imperil a state's balance sheet. This year's tax free weekend is anticipated to cost the state of North Carolina around $14.5 million. Certainly not a number to scoff at, but let's put it in a little perspective. The state's current budget is $19 billion, meaning that in budget full of loopholes and tax breaks, this weekend for consumers amounts to .07% of the state's spending. Hell, the earned media the state and its Department of Revnue get for hosting the weekend probably amounts to close to $14 million.
It seems like a no-brainer to me that more states (I'm looking at you, Ohio) should put this policy in place to promote in-state shopping and give consumers a break.
With the recent debt ceiling "compromise," more and more people are growing increasingly vocal about how the President is dooming himself by alienating his left base that helped get him elected. The NYT is even joining in the fray, warning Obama about the rift he's creating. While there's no doubt that the left isn't pleased with the President and they view recent events as more of a capitulation than a compromise, it doesn't mean he needs to worry about losing their support.
The Republican field of potential challengers is the farthest right it has been in decades. All of the candidates, except Hunstman, publicly admonished lawmakers for the deal. The GOP candidates have been relentlessly courting the Tea Party vote by going as far right as they can, even when those sentiments are against the views of the majority of the country. All of this is happening in the background while the foreground is represented by Republican lawmakers playing chicken with our country's credit rating, limiting collective bargaining in states, and defunding Planned Parenthood in others.
These things will mobilize Democrats plenty, even if they're somewhat disappointed in Obama. Democratic voters have now seen what a Republican Presidency and/or Senate majority could look like, and that will be all the motivation they will need to fight in 2012.
Even with these uniting factors among them, there's always the chance that the left base could fall into disrepair or fail at driving home their message to more moderate voters. However, that sentiment is ignoring the fact that the top of the ticket in 2012 is perhaps the best campaigner, organizer, and messenger in recent electoral history. If people are wanting to be organized and inspired, then Obama is the one who will do it. Even with low approval ratings and all of these distractions, he has already started shattering fundraising records. Just imagine what he'll do when campaigning becomes his primary focus and he has a bankroll to start driving home this message to voters around the country.
Even if they don't formally approve of the job he's doing, Democrats will be out there canvassing, fundraising, and voting for Obama. I believe the President and his team are well aware of this fact and will continue letting the Tea Party alienate the rest of the country and the GOP start to tear at the seams. No doubt about it, 2012 is going to be a true fight for both parties, but to think that the President's base won't turn out for him is a failure to understand all of the other factors in play.
The other day, I was watching NFL free agents scroll on the right side of the screen of SportsCenter while eating my lunch. I looked down at my food, back up at the screen, and down at my food again. It was then that I realized I thought I had seen something odd (and no, it wasn't that the Browns had made a great acquisition), but everything on the screen seemed normal. I then rewound for 10 seconds and realized that ESPN had replaced the scrolling players for about five seconds with an ad for the next Planet of the Apes movie!
We're all familiar with the idea of product placement and that companies may insert their brands into shows, but I had never seen such a blatant ad thrown into a broadcast like this. It's a little weird to me that it ESPN is doing this, as just about they have been the Cable Champions of the DVR era, continuing to dramatically grow ad sales as people tend to watch sports.
I'm curious though if this is just a sign of things to come. Will Brian Williams reports on the debt ceiling soon be flanked by ads for Goldline? Only time will tell, but this could be an interesting development for television advertising.
I found this interesting enough to snap a pic on my phone, so I figured I would put it up in case it piqued anyone else's interest.
Today, The Atlantic posted some beautiful visualizations of Twitter and Flickr usage around the world. The images were originally created by Eric Fischer and posted to his Flickr page. The blue dots in the images below represent Twitter and the red are Flickr. In addition to the pure beauty of these images, there are also some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from them.
Here's the image of the US, followed by some thoughts:
First, I think they serve as a great reminder that the growth that is still available in these channels. There are vast dark spaces in the US and especially in the world where no one is connected to either service. I don't think everyone in the world should be tweeting, but it is pretty eye opening that there are pretty wide chasms in usage around the country.
Next, it's a great demonstration of how networks have natural fits. Flickr is more widely used in places in the west where there are beautiful mountains and scenic trails to hike than it is in my home state of Ohio. On the world scale, you see Japan brightly lit up in blue due to that nation's deep connection to technology and also likely due to the importance of Twitter being validated to the Japanese during the terrible earthquake and tsunami in March.
Finally, the images really show the connecting between use of new technology and infrastructure. The networks are the most widely used in areas where there is robust technical infrastructure, typically places like cities. Just reaffirms the importance infrastructure and cities will play in connecting the whole world.
"I see all these people who just keep going and going and going, and I just feel like, ‘Hey! You made it!’ But they get up every day and just keep going. You love the game, but the game for us? We just wanted to be in fourth place. We just wanted a good little company."
A cool quote from Andy Spade (Kate's husband) about their decision to sell their business with no plans for a huge second act. Nice to see someone achieve a goal, comprehend the feat, and then walk away on their own terms in order to enjoy life. (Also, yes, this means I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting here, even if just snippets like this).
I recently watched Note by Note, a really stellar documentary on the making of Steinway pianos. Steinway is one of the only brands in the world to still make their pianos 100% by hand. Their craftsmen are very passionate, interestingly diverse, and extremely skilled. The movie is as much about the workers and their individual stories as it is about pianos. One of the piano makers said something that stuck out to me:
When you work with your hands, you know a mistake. You can just feel it sitting right there and you can fix it.
The quote doesn't seem that complex at first, but as you continue to ponder the remark, it will hit you on deeper and deeper levels. Being able to truly feel mistakes and fix them as we go along is a rather unique situation available to only a select group of professions. Craftsmen, programmers, and chefs, to name a few, are able to receive instance (dis)gratification by quickly feeling or testing the solution their working on to see if it's up to snuff.
However, there's a far larger group of professions that don't have the advantage of instantaneous feedback. This fraternity includes people like architects, journalists, and...marketers. I'm obviously in that last classification and this frustration with going forward blindly for days, weeks, and months at a time has been even more recently evident for me as our company markets our first product, HiFi CMS.
We've worked on marketing plans, made advertising buys, and put strategic initiatives into motion, but there's really no way to know if these things will ultimately be successes or failures until they've had a time to run their course. Marketers aren't able to add a piece of code to the app, test it, get a bug report, attempt a fix, and repeat. We add in the line of code and unless it blows up the whole damn machine, there's no way to know its success or failure for a bit of time.
However, even with the inability to feel mistakes as you go, marketers do have certain tools in their tool chest to feel around mistakes, trying not to fall victim to them. Here are a few tactics our team has tried lately to get an inkling of where an imperfection might pop up and attempt to circumnavigate it.
Always be testing. While you can't upfront run a test to see if a certain program will be a failure or not, in absolute terms, you can be continually testing along the way to look for relevant successes and optimize for that. As an example, you may not be able to answer if it's worth spending a lot of resources to make a kickass product screencast video. That's a hard question to answer, you can A/B test your site layout to optimize placing that video wherever it'll get the most views, thus making the most of your either prophetic or idiotic investment. (Note: we *love* Optimizely for A/B testing.)
Watch competitors. One of the best ways to avoid mistakes is to observe what your established competitors do in the space. If they all send out weekly email newsletters, then it probably makes sense for you to do the same. Your competitors have been doing this for awhile and certainly made plenty of mistakes in the past -- you have to assume they learned from them and they're doing certain things and ignoring others for a reason. That's not to say you should always 100% emulate your competitors, they may miss or ignore some things you know are great strategies (blogging is a popular one), but you should use them as a baseline for your activities and avoidances.
Get feedback at every step. Similar to always testing, you should also always prod users, prospects, friends, and others for feedback. Thoughts from a small minority should never 100% shape your direction and will never tell you if you're going to fail or not, but it will give you some solid foundations from which to tweak messaging, change an ad buy, or launch new initiatives. By getting feedback, you'll get others to buy in and get a timely response if you ever do make a truly ghastly decision or gamble.
Those three are just a start of things to do and still don't solve the biggest issue, which is that all could be for naught if you've started down the wrong path anyway. What are some other ways to minimize room for error as a marketer or another professional who can't feel mistakes as they're going?
There are just seven and a half hours left in 2010. It has been a really great year for myself and New Media Campaigns. Personally, I got to travel around the country to see friends, attend several weddings, make some great stories, achieve several personal goals, witness some awesome sporting events, have some inspiring conversations, read some great material, and plenty more. Professionally, NMC worked on more than 100 projects, added a new team member, grew revenue by more than 30%, launched our first product, got some awesome press, and plenty more.
I'm a firm believer in New Year's Resolutions, as I think they're a great goal-setting mechanism and really inspire you to achieve. For even more incentive, this year I'm going to make my top resolutions public on this blog. Below are my top 5 resolutions I came up with over the past week, and I'll update everyone as I achieve them. If I don't complete all of them, it won't be the end of the world, but I'm really going to make a concerted effort.
Travel Abroad - I haven't been abroad since I went to Italy in the summer of 2007. That's just way too long in my opinion. I've been able to see some awesome places around the US in the past three years, but I want to go abroad this year to be exposed to a different culture and a totally new place. Right now, the leading contender is a winter trip to India.
Read 12 Books - I read a lot. But not books. I love reading the NY Times, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Inc., various blogs, and plenty more. Most of these items are longer pieces that consume a good amount of my time (I'm a slow reader). However, I often find myself reading quick little articles that I don't really care about too much and that I don't retain much info from. This year, I want to focus on reading books that really dive into topics and give me a much better grasp of a subject than an article ever could. I think one a month is an aggressive pace that will still allow me the time to read the articles I love.
Run 10 Miles in Under 76 Minutes -- This past year, largely thanks to my girlfriend, I got into running. I ran a 10 miler in April and recorded a time around 82 minutes. My goal had been 85 minutes and since I'd never run in a race longer than a 5k, I was really pleased with my results. This year, I want to break the 8 minute mark and finish at around a 7:30 pace. It's going to be tough, but I think I can do it. My first shot will be at the same April 10 Miler, the Tar Heel 10 Miler.
Blog Every Two Weeks -- This one is self explanatory. I suck at blogging consistently on this domain. My time is usually consumed by blogging on the NMC site or doing other things. This year, I'm going to blog at least twice a month and hopefully more often than that. I've got a whole list of topics written down and I plan on going through them one by one. Keep me honest on this one!
Cook More -- I eat out for just about every meal. It's expensive and unhealthy. This year, I want to learn to be a better cook and also focus on making more meals for myself. I did a CSA for the last few months and that really forced me to cook, because I didn't want to waste the different items.
Grow NMC and HiFi -- Considering that this blog is largely about entrepreneurship, this resolution shouldn't come as a surprise. We had a great year at NMC. We grew the company in a plethora of different ways. However, one of the most dangerous things is to get complacent and just assume that growth naturally happens. It doesn't. It takes hard work, persistence, risks, trial and error, and some luck. In 2011, I'm focused on helping our company taking the next step in our growth and really focused on helping our new product, HiFi CMS, become the success that we know it deserves to be.
Well, there you go. That's what I'm shooting for in 2011. I'll let you know how I fare. Thanks again for helping make this such an awesome year and here's to 2011!
There is a stigma against picking fights. It's seen as crude, immature, and cheap. Anyone who has been with me after a few drinks knows that I have a different point of view. Actually, even in the most sober of states, I'm more than happy to pick a fight or push someone a little too far.
It's not because I'm hoping for an actual all out brawl or because I revel in the discomfort of others, but because I understand the emotion that it can evoke. When speaking to coworkers and employees, if you position an upcoming competitive task as a fight rather than just an objective, they are far more likely to fiercely rally behind the cause, and your opponent is much more likely to feel intense heat from your efforts rather than just an uninspired flicker.
Examples of this strategy can be seen across the business world. Larry Ellison is the perfect example. Boisterous and provocative, he doesn't see things in gray, only black and white. Right and wrong. Oracle or a contender. When he hired Mark Hurd, he didn't shy away from confrontation -- he went so far as to step over the line and immediately called into question the entire HP partnership. He rallied the troops and spit fire, and HP limped away.
The same strategy can hold true for startups and small companies. One of my favorite marketing strategies of the past year was when Posterous called out Tumblr and encouraged people to "graduate" and switch services. They could have been coy and hinted at the advantages associated with Posterous, but they instead chose to be blunt and pick a fight. I don't know the final results of the campaign, but I know it convinced me and was a well trafficked promotion.
While business has good examples of the value in picking fights, the best niche is probably politics. Look at the tea party -- isn't that what they're doing (maybe the only thing)?
A couple weeks ago, I was disappointed to read that President Obama was shying away from a public fight and was going to use a loophole to temporarily appoint Elizabeth Warren as the chief consumer watchdog.
I understand that it's a delicate time of year for politicians, but I cannot understand how it would hurt his standing to publicly advocate and fight for a nominee whose sole charge is to protect consumers from Wall St. That would be a hell of a rallying cry for the November GOTV efforts. However, by avoiding the fight, the issue has slipped virtually under the radar and the administration is unable to leverage the fervor that a public fight would stir up.
I'm not saying that you should use a sledgehammer to kill ants -- many situations are still best resolved by discussion and compromise. However, it's important to remember the value of picking a fight when you want to really create momentum, corner a competitor, or rally the base. Don't be afraid to throw the first punch.
Barry Sanders is one of the greatest running backs ever. It seemed impossible to bring him down unless you had an entire team tackling him. A sportswriter once asked Barry, "What do you see different than the rest of us that allows you to find all the holes and make these amazing runs?" Barry responded simply and powerfully, "I see the same thing as you. The difference is that I know I can get there."
What an awesome quote. Sanders was fast, but not the fastest person in the game and he certainly wasn't the tallest, at 5'7" he was actually one of the shortest. However, he knew he could get there.
I think this philosophy applies to business and life as much as it does to football. We're all seeing the same thing, the difference is some people just know they can get there.
Everyone experienced losing a package or having it arrive two days late -- we all saw that the mail system was broken. Well, Fred Smith saw it and knew he could get there, causing him to start FedEx.
Companies had already built mp3 players, people knew the music industry was changing, but Steve Jobs saw it and knew he could get there, leading to the iPod.
Look at Facebook -- there were plenty of people in the space before Mark Zuckerberg, and while they recognized the value of social networking, they were content to just go with the flow and enjoy the ride. Zuckerberg's determination to actually get to what he saw is the real difference in why Facebook crushed the competition.
These people all have unique skills, similar to Sanders' speed and agility, but those assets alone don't explain how they become such gamechangers. The real difference is their supreme confidence in those skills, even in the face of daunting challenges, and their committment to getting there.
You can have all the foresight in the world, but if you're not totally confident in being able to close that gap and do what's necessary to get into the endzone, you will fall short of the mass disruption you're shooting for.
For me, I vividly remember the first time I embraced the concept that I could "get there." Our startup was less than six months old and two of our co-founders decided to go on to graduate school, and Joel and I decided to buy out the majority of the shares. Joel and I sat in a room, talked about the option for maybe 30 minutes and decided to do it. The decision put us in debt and altered our career and life trajectories toward the unknown.
At this point, the company hadn't paid us a dime, struggled to show a longterm growth path, and was seriously hurting our chances of graduating from college. However, I remember sitting there thinking, "If it comes down to it, I'm willing to get up at 6 am everyday to cold call or knock on people's doors to talk about websites. I'll do whatever it takes to sell some damn websites."
That was me realizing that my vision may be blurred and there could be some big obstacles approaching, but I was confident that I would do whatever I needed to to get there. That was almost 400 websites, nine employees, one co-founder returning, and four years ago to the day. I know the next time I'm presented with such a grand decision, that I can have confident in my determination to get there.
We could all learn from Barry's philosophy whether in work or pleasure, there's value in not just resting on the fact that you recognize something, but actually taking the strong steps to get there.
Over the past decade, Google has become so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how remarkable and powerful of a company they are. However, it’s amazing to sit back and think about the sheer might of their algorithm and data processing capabilities. I wanted to share a couple of articles that came out over the past weeks that highlight this very idea.
This article is the most comprehensive about Google’s Algorithm that I’ve ever seen. Definitely a must read. It explains how Google’s algorithm has been honed over years and billions of queries. It also highlights an awesome anecdote about the mike siwek lawyer mi test.
Good article on how Google is building a better web translator. To me though, the most interesting part of this story lies in two sentences:
“In 2007, for example, it began offering 800-GOOG-411, a free directory assistance service that interprets spoken requests. It allowed Google to collect the voices of millions of people so it could get better at recognizing spoken English.”
Talk about brilliant! I’ve used Google 411 and never knew why the company offered it for free, but now it makes sense. A perfect example of the innovation and power of Google.
Just a couple of quick articles that I found really interesting to help peer into one of the most interesting companies, ever. I hope to start posting quick, link-heavy thoughts like this more often.
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