Get down with the down market
October 11th, 2008 Adam SteinbergIt’s been a while since I was in an economics class, and even then, I was always more of a micro guy. My guess about what the market isn’t probably better than your mom’s. However, if there’s one thing I know how to do (I can produce references), it’s how to live cheaply and operate a business even cheaper. Here are some tips for getting your business and personal finances under the bare minimum. (Caveat - if you’ve been out of college for more than ten years, beware.)
Marketing - don’t even think about hiring a PR agency. There’s plenty of literature out there on this subject, but the easy answer is you can easily save $5k a month by spending 20 hours a month doing your own PR.
Want to get down to the nitty gritty? Forget about even releasing press releases via wire services. The $100 isn’t worth it. It’s doubtful the automatic delivery to the Des Moines newspaper is going to help your business. Build a highly targeted list of writers, send them custom letters, your standard press release, a stock article they can easily chop up, and some high-res pics. Followup every week in a very professional and respectful manner. Heck, I’ve seen interns be successful with this strategy.
Futhermore, cut your conference costs. You can do this without foregoing any of your scheduled conferences, but negotiate. Unless the conference is completely packed, which it rarely is for exhibitors, the opportunity cost of your exhibiting for the conference is whatever you are willing to pay. Get extra passes, additional sponsorship appearances, speaking slots, discounts - whatever. Build more value!
Final thought with marketing - if you have a demand producing professional, hold on to that person. I’m speaking to sales and lead generating - not awareness generating. There’s a difference.
Sales - First things first, get your costs under control. If your sales people aren’t using Skype or other VOIP, make it happen. For $5/month your sales people get unlimited domestic calls, practically-free international calls, video calls, and conference calling. Oh, and your IT team doesn’t manage this system.
Once you have Skype, have your sales people get Fring. This enables one to make Skype calls from an iPhone, Blackberry, etc. Anyime your sales folks are on the road and not in the car, have them switch to wifi to make their calls. Then, cut their plan in half. Force efficiency.
CRM - Salesforce is the best CRM, and that’s why it isn’t free. Now, this is a critical application. Your sales folks’ CRM is not to be screwed with. But, if you’re a new company just launching in this economy, forget about Salesforce. Just wipe it from your memory. Go with SugarCRM or Zoho CRM. They don’t cost any money.
Lead generation - this isn’t just for marketing anymore. If your salespeople aren’t building their own leads, this has to change. Forget lists, forget outsourcing this. Get your sales and marketing people in a room together and put together an executable plan. Use social media tools like Summize, Techrigy, Google News and Filtrbox.
Technology - I’m not going to delve too much into this here, but forget the frills. No more triple-monitor setups. Go buy a CRT for $25 bucks on craigslist if you want dual monitors. Start using even more open source. Handle web design and maintenance yourself. Get some interns to setup databases and servers for you. I’m not sure I can recommend outsourcing overseas unless you’ve done this previously.
Life
You’re not the King of France - stop eating steak and drinking fancy Merlot. Stop eating out during the week. Buy off brand Learn how too cook. Here are some cheap eats that aren’t disgusting:
Beans and rice (I throw in tomatoes, onions, garlic, plenty of spices) - cost ~ $4 for two meals
Spaghetti - I stay aways from spaghetti sauce (too expensive) and go with crushed tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and a nice mix of spices. Cost ~ $5 for two meals.
Smashed potatoes - boil potatoes. Mash them. Throw in some cheese, lots of salt and pepper, and maybe some extra veggies. I’m not joking, it’s tasty. Cost ~ $3 for two meals.
Notice the trend. Two meals. The next night it takes me 5 minutes to prepare dinner.
Other favorite: buy one get one free tombstone pizza, oatmeal or bran flakes every morning, animal crackers (two pounds for two dollars), and pancakes.
Other ways to reduce costs: drop the TV. Internet is TV these days - use Hulu et al. Start drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s better than you think.
Ok, I’ve exceeded my allotted word count. Stay positive, and be efficient.
Is there any good news out there today? This month?
September 29th, 2008 Trey PhillipsNo. Here’s something to cheer you up.
The Candidates and Companies They Resemble
September 22nd, 2008 Trey PhillipsRon Paul-Twitter
His campaign defined their message and let their followers carry the message relying heavily on the internet. Homemade signs started popping up all over interstates and intersections free of cost to the campaign. Their campaign reminds me a lot of companies like Twitter and Tumblr with a hyper-loyal following doing most of the marketing for them.
Barrack Obama- Apple
Obama’s campaign used slick marketing and a well crafted message to carve a niche with young people. From their they broke into older demographics. They relied heavily on slogans and great ads and commercials. Obama’s campaign reminds me a lot of Apple, cool, smooth, and hip.
Hillary Clinton- Microsoft
The Clinton campaign positioned themselves as the safe bet. She ran on having the most experience and being ready to take on any challenge the presidency had to offer. She built a huge organization from very early on and was thought to be inevitable winner.
Mike Gravel- Super Soakers??
Gravel knew he was a long shot from the beginning so he tried all sorts of wacky ways to get his message out there.
McCain positioned himself much like the big American car dealers. All American and up for any challenge.
How to Be a Man
September 18th, 2008 Adam SteinbergBack in May, Steve Pavlina published “How to Be a Man,” a collection of rules for men to live an honest, open and worthwhile existence. This could also be considered Startup 101 - or how to be transparent with your co-workers. Here’s my favorite from the list:
5. Express love actively.
A man is an active giver of love, not a passive receiver. A man is the first to initiate a conversation, the first to ask for what’s needed, and the first to say “I love you.” Waiting for someone else to make the first move is unbecoming of him. The universe does not respond positively to his hesitation. Only when he’s in motion do the floodgates of abundance open. Man is the out-breath of source energy. It is his job — his duty — to share his love with the world. He must wean himself from suckling the energy of others and become a vibrant transmitter of energy himself. He must allow that energy to flow from source, through him, and into the world. When he assumes this role, he has no doubt he is living as his true self.
Yammer
September 16th, 2008 Adam Steinberg 
Yammer launched at TC50 - everyone knows. What’s all the fuss about? I could care less about IP ranges, threaded conversations or security. The great thing about Yammer? It enables communication. Twitter is addicting, and so is Yammer. ADynammic is starting to use Yammer, and this is enabling us to share updates of our projects and work quickly and easily. Instead of wondering what projects or bugs each of us is working on - Yammer enables us to share this information in a fun way.Lack of communication can kill a company. Yammer might enable us to get over this hurdle more easily. Plus, we can say things on Yammer that we can’t say on Twitter. Like, “get your roll on.” Give Yammer a try and let us know what you think.
Esquire’s E-Ink and Why It’s Not the Next Big Thing.
September 11th, 2008 Trey Phillips**Given the nature of our company I am biased.
Esquire magazine celebrates it’s 75th anniversary this October! That’s a long time to be in the publishing industry. In honor of their birthday they produced a pretty cool special edition. The got together with E-Ink Corporation to produce this animated cover…
While visually stunning and definitely head turning, I don’t think it’s a practical solution for the woe’s haunting the print media industry. Here’s a couple reasons why…
Pollution. I’m not usually one to preach about going green. I don’t spend much time thinking people should buy a smaller car or only purchase Patagonia recyclable clothes. If something is this obvious though, I will speak up. There’s already countless paper magazines and newspapers going into landfills everyday, most of them never purchased off the newsstand. That’s a lot of wasted tree’s. Of course the E Ink cover has paper and electronics. There’s two screens, computer chips, and 6 batteries. That’s a lot of non-biodegradable materials in addition to the paper that would be going to the landfills if more magazines adopted E Ink covers or pages. Not to mention all of the energy wasted getting the parts from China and then shipping them all over the US to be assembled. That doesn’t make very much sense to me.
The fact that it’s still on paper. We consume more data than ever. News and information comes at us in larger quantities and at faster rates than ever before. It’s not that people have stopped reading the kind of content that’s in magazines. It’s that they’ve stopped reading on paper. When I’m home in Spartanburg with nothing to do, I spent large amounts of time in Barnes and Noble. I probably go two times a week. I get coffee from the in-store Starbucks every time. In a year I think I only bought 3 magazines. How many did I read cover to cover while there? Probably 5. I still saw the ads, but I didn’t pay to bring the magazine home. What if Esquire really shook things up and became the first old school magazine to go completely digital? It’s bound to happen right? Why not be the first to embrace the new wave instead of trying to restart the dying one’s heart? Why not try to become the first magazine preloaded onto the new Plastic Logic reader that also uses E ink technology?
Excitement will die fast. It will certainly be really cool the first time you see the E ink cover. You will probably pick it up and play with it. You may even buy it (I suspect you’ll read it in the store and put it back down like I would). The problem I see is that, even if they use the new covers every month, the novelty will wear off very fast. Especially if more and more magazines adopted the technology. Then it would be like walking through an entire isle of 300 annoying banner ads. I don’t know anyone who would enjoy that.
So in the end. Congratulations Esquire for turning 75. I think it’s really cool you’re trying new things to get circulation and ad revenues back. Just keep trying to be on the forefront of the next big thing in print media.
Enterprise 2.0 Implementation
September 10th, 2008 Adam Steinberg
Last year, I had the good fortune of being able to contribute to the book “Enterprise 2.0 Implementation.” If you’re the guy in a F500 company leading the charge to implement an internal social network or a build a RIA, this book was created to help you get started and get your project approved.
“Enterprise 2.0 Implementation” outlines all of the major issues facing organizations looking to make the switch to “Web 2.0 inside the enterprise.” The book covers everything from the history of Web 2.0 to measuring Enterprise 2.0 return on investment to technical implementation of Enterprise 2.0 software to managing security and compliance.
The lead authors (and the guys who undoubtedly lost countless weekends) are Aaron Newman and Jeremy Thomas. These guys both have awesome experience in enterprise software -I don’t think there’s a software concept in the last ten years to which these guys can’t speak. Do us, and hopefully yourself, a favor - check out the book’s Amazon page. You can skim through the book to get an overview, and if you like what you see, buy a copy!
Our Logo and What It(hopefully) Says About Us.
September 8th, 2008 Trey Phillips
1. magazine: We work with magazine publishers (this is kind-of important).
2. cute/weird blue people: We help those publishers mentioned above build social communities of Smurfs… I mean people online.
3. cartoon talk bubbles: We provide those communities with the ability to talk and share content online.
4. green on the top of the magazine and in the first letter of our name: We help the environment by helping publisher’s online instead of on all that paper. How many tree’s does it take to produce all those subscription cards that end up everywhere?
We used The Logoloft for our logo after considering a few other services. Although it took several weeks and a couple phone calls to get the finished product on time we were satisfied with the result overall. Much time was spent deciding what we wanted our logo to portray about us as a company and as individuals: how to convey the social aspect of what we do–how to seem fun and professional–how to show that we work with publishers. Do we even need an favicon? These are a few of the parameters we set when creating the concept for our logo and we think that they are exhibited in the final product — hopefully potential customers will too.
Chrome - my take
September 4th, 2008 Adam Steinberg
I’ve been using Chrome as my go-to browser for the past 48 hours. As most have noticed, this is certainly not a mature product, but it is a product that is already a V8 of a browser that has the potential for turbo charging. Here’s what I really miss/dislike about Chrome:- No plugins. I need Delicious, Skype, and the Web Developers toolbar. Yes, these are all plugins, but I need them now. FF remains on the hard drive until this changes.- Not as intuitive. How do I access my favorites? (Took a bit of hunting and searching to find this.)- Flash player conflicts. I’m running the Flash Player 10 Debugger in FF. Chrome comes loaded with Flash Player 9. For some reason my system doesn’t like this and Flash Player keeps crashing and having to be reinstalled. (Anyone know why this is?)- Quick searches. I have plugins for search Compete, Amazon, Ebay and IMDB in FF. I use those regularly.What I like:- The “home screen.” ’Nuff said about this already. - Simplicity. I have one address box where I can enter URLs or do searches. Dig it. - Tabs are independent threads. Those who know me know of my hatred for FF crashing. At least when Chrome crashes I don’t lose all my data.- History search. Go, search your history now. Now you can not only search the title of web pages, but thanks to the Google index, all of the content you’ve visited is searchable. Seriously, go try it now. - Fast. This sucker moves. What’s your experience with Chrome?
ADynammic Update
August 29th, 2008 Adam SteinbergThings have been a little quiet around here, as we’ve been heads down working on a client project that we’re hoping will turn out really well. (The past few weeks have been crazy, but a great learning experience and fun.) Not to fear, next week we’ll be seeing daylight again and attempting to return to regularly scheduled programming. We’ll be doing some more blogging as we inch closer to our big product launch.
Justin and I did have the great fortune to meet with Peter Waldschmidt yesterday. Peter’s a great guy helped start, build and sell TetraData. Now he’s moving onto his next ventures, Gnoso. It’s great to continue seeing innovative companies and technologies coming out of the upstate. Look for more of his story on SouthCarolinaStartups.com in the coming weeks.
Have a great weekend - enjoy the holiday everyone! And Go Tigers!!!
