I am doing some research on freemium models, and specifically the upgrade page (technically, I’m looking for design ideas to enhance the “user interface” (aka: UI)).

I came across an excellent must-read post for anyone who thinks they want to do freemium, written by John Greathouse, who was involved in the precursor (?) to GoToWebinar  (BuddyHelp). I can’t find much info on BuddyHelp… but hey, that was internet eons ago.

Anyway, John writes How To Make Freemium Customers Generate Revenue For Your Startup. Go read it, as he seems to have identified a lot of pitfalls that you can avoid.

When I started JibberJobber, there really wasn’t any competition.  I’d get on the phone with a career center and they’d say “wow, that is brilliant!!”

No one had heard of a relationship manager just for the job seeker (job search CRM).  It was novel.

That was good and bad… bad because I had to educate people on what it was.  Job seekers didn’t immediately get why they should use such a heavy duty tool.

Then, I got my first competitor.

I have to say, I hate competition. I hate losing, and I hate having to compete.

But everyone said “competition is good!”

I thought “I’d rather not have any competition.”

This week, by Tuesday morning, I had learned of TWO new competitors in the job search CRM space.  One is ____ and the other is ____. (nope, not going to link to them :p)

Are these two competitors going to be good for the space?  For our clients?

Who knows.

Before they came along, over the last five years, I’ve seen about 9 others come out.  I refer to them as “me-too” plays.  They mimic or copy JibberJobber.  One even got a software team to develop accounts on JibberJobber so they could rebuild what we had.

Two of them are now out of business.

They couldn’t figure it out.

Another one, I’ve been told, doesn’t “get” the job seeker. I heard that from a user of mine who started using them.  They don’t “get the job seeker like I do,” I was told.

Is that my competitive advantage?

No, but it might be a component of it.

Competition – good or bad?  I don’t know.

But I do know this: I have a window of opportunity, and it will only be open for a period.  I have to take advantage of that, because when it closes things are dramatically different.

I saw that with my last company.  We tried, the window closed.  End.

Not this time.

Every once in a while I find a gem that is hiding in plain site.  Here’s one I read this morning on a TC post:

… Heiferman jumped back into the startup scene with RocketBoard, a project he describes as “a colossal failure and actually we blew through about $20 million dollars of AOL money.” The silver lining? Heiferman received advice that sticks with him to this day—create products to help the greater good of society.

I LOVE THAT.

Sounds too simple, but if Heiferman “spent” $20M to learn it, and he remembers it for an interview, that’s good enough for me.

What are you doing for the great good of society?

I’m working on my fourth book (I know, I know, I swore off books after the first one!), which I’ll announce shortly.

As I research, and read the news, I like to find stories of people who find a problem and figure out a solution that can go to market.

That’s exactly what Jennifer Lindley did.  She’s a diabetic, and has a son who is diabetic, and was concerned about what to do in an emergency.

In a local news article she says:

Someone had used spray-paint to emblazon “DIABETIC” on the rooftop where a group was stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It was a really hopeless, helpless feeling for me,” Jennifer Lindley said about seeing the image on the news. “I didn’t know what to do for him.”

These kits are what she came up with:

I love how brilliant this is.  Combine Utah’s “thing” about emergency preparedness (it’s a theme I don’t see as prominent outside of Utah/Idaho) with a HUGE, HUGE need we have around the world, and you get a simple solution that is affordable, and can help set your mind at ease. Learn more about her product here.

Why do I love this?

Because I’m looking for ideas where you and I and regular people like Jennifer Lindley can CREATE our own income, independent of a boss.

Kudos, Jennifer!

I think this happened in January of 2011, but it could have been 2010. News story here.

I remember reading about it in the newspapers… when four Wal-Mart employees had a thief in a back room, accused of stealing something.

Right after the dude took the laptop out of his pants, he took out a gun, and put it in the back of one of them.

They went into self-protection zone, without a moment to even think about it, and eventually got the gun away, and had the guy pinned down until the cops came.

Dangerous? Yes.

Heroes? Yes, to one another for sure, and to all shoppers who would have been in danger as the crook tried to flee.

Against store policy? Yes.

Rewarded? Only by being FIRED.

This, in my mind, is a huge failure on Wal-Mart’s part.  I get that it was against corporate policy.  I don’t get the impression any of these people were out to be Chuck Norris in Texas Rangers. No one was out to be a hero and take down this bad guy.

But there’s a gun pointing in your back, or your coworker’s back, and it is a highly volatile situation – what do you do??

Do you try and talk the guy out of it?  You probably aren’t trained in hostage negotiations (of course, you probably aren’t “trained” in wrestling a gun away from a guy).

What if you talk the guy out of it, then what?  Hope he gives you the gun, and waits for the cops?

Or do you let him go, and hope he doesn’t shoot or kill anyone on the way back?

Regardless, corporate policy is, well, policy. You can’t have a precedence set that will encourage others to act this way, right?

I get where Wal-Mart is coming from, but I still think this is a huge failure.

Want more failure out of this?  How about this: The local news (KSL) tried to get the surveillance video, and had to request it FOUR TIMES through “government records requests.”  FOUR TIMES?  Seriously.

Check out the Wal-Fail, though:

When KSL News persevered in getting the video, Walmart even threatened Layton City to try to keep them from releasing it. In a letter last week, Walmart attorneys wrote: “If Layton City intends to release Walmart’s video tape to KSL, Walmart will move forward in district court, seeking an injunction to prevent Layton City from doing so under GRAMA.”

That’s a good idea, Wal-Mart.  Cover it up by not letting the video out.

Who am I to say, though. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know what GRAMA is.

If I were Wal-Mart, though, I’d try to make this go away, and fighting and fighting, just to protect a policy, doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.  Heaven forbid their employees are empowered to make decisions.

If my family where at that Wal-Mart I’d want to know that the security people tried everything they could to not let a gunman run through the store… kudos to the heroes.

I think about these things a lot, especially when I’m speaking.  I think “my heavens, I need a new email signature.”

Why?

Because the current one isn’t communicating what I want it to communicate.

Here’s the old one, from this morning:

Any guesses on what each number means?  I’ll list them below, but here’s the new signature:

Here’s what each number is for:

1. This is a special string of characters I chose to tell JibberJobber to not make anything below it a log entry.  I could change it, and probably will, but this is a very important line, even though it really means nothing to anyone.
2. I think it’s important to put LinkedIn DVD, instead of just DVD.
3. I moved this description behind the link, to be consistent with the other lines.
4. I decided to take this off… my Twitter followers hasn’t necessarily grown, and if you really want to find me you can search for me.  We’ll see if I flop back on this one.
5. I took the JibberJobber mobile link out… I think there are more important things to communicate…. like the new line for my LinkedIn book!

Luckily I can change things as often as I want… make changes for yourself… if you hate it, you aren’t locked into anything!

Here are other posts one when I changed my signatures:

Today I (tearfully) retire my email signature
A new email signature

When I started getting into finances and accounting in Eight Lunches, I got nervous.

I honestly don’t like this type of attention to detail.

I have a professional bookkeeper/accountant who I outsource it to.

I like to ignore the detail part of finances, but entrepreneurs really can’t.

I was anxious to hear what some real accountants had to say.  Luckily, I have someone in my network who is an accomplished accountant and bookkeeper, and someone I count as a good friend.

Valerie Gonyea is someone I was blessed to meet in person, and then share some meals and several conversations with over the years.

Here is part of her feedback on Eight Lunches:

OK, yes, I know I am right up against your requested deadline, but I wanted to be sure that I read – and absorbed – the whole thing.

I’ll just start out with my **only** negative comment, which is that this is not my favorite type of book format, the “ongoing conversation”. But because it was YOU talking, it was much easier for me to appreciate. If I didn’t know and respect you the way I do, I probably wouldn’t be drawn to this “conversation”. That’s just me, though.

That said, I am thrilled you did this project. Although very little of the content seemed new to me, I believe that is because I read your blog so there are many common themes, obviously. They are all very good themes and very, very relevant. I can only guess that many people try to pick your brain in this way and so this book will be a great way to short-circuit those precious time-suck conversations.

… I get the homework each chapter, is there more to them? I know you follow up with some email correspondence for clarifications, but it seems like you could add some more self-reflective questions at the end of each chapter, whether you relate them to your convo or not.

This stuff is NOT natural for most people to think about when they are just getting started so maybe add some additional questions at the end of each chapter that really forces the reader to think beyond their comfort zone…or worse what they THINK they know! This is particularly relevant to lunch 3: Packages.

I, of course, really appreciate the chapter about finances. One thing that Paul says is that he’s missed entering some expenses and you make a comment about this being more of a chore part of a business rather than a key focus.

I don’t want this to sound self-serving but a good bookkeeper for 3 hours/week at $40-$70 per hour could really help with this. Paul could get some referrals and as long as he is able to give CLEAR direction as to how expenses should be categorized (and a GOOD BK can help him get clear on this) then he can get more focused on his main goals, sales and marketing. I mean I have one client who has very thin margins and he is very particular about how the expenses get categorized…we work well together because I am equally careful and I ask questions when I am unsure. I HELP him stay focused on the business and my cost is a true business benefit. Just my .02 on that.

I also think that you could clarify that this is really a 2 step process, the first step is the uncomfortable number crunching but the payoff is to get to the second step which is the conclusion drawing, as you call it.

random thought: somewhere in the passive revenue/packages convo maybe relate to ordering at a fast food restaurant….look I HATE that stuff and I really resist doing it if there is ever a better option, but in a pinch, I know I can drive up to a window and order a #3 and get a burger, fries and a drink, addressing all of my needs so I can focus on what I am actually trying to get done that day. Again, just a random thought.

Isn’t she amazing?  Thank you for taking the time to read and absorb it… !

Valerie had some other excellent suggestions, which I’m incorporating into the book.

It pays to know awesome people!

I’m toying around with changing some visual elements of one web page (not a website), and I found some AMAZING tools:

Color Scheme Designer: This helps you see what colors go good with one another… very cool tool.

Flaming Text – Free Logo Designs: Put in the word, change some settings, and it gives you text with different visual characteristics.  Super cool.

Choosing Color Combinations: blog post that is excellent, from Veerle’s blog.

Paul Copcutt, personal branding speaker and consultant, sent a link to a group I’m in to The Examined Practice, a post by Alan Weiss with a number of tough questions everyone should ask about their business.

It’s worth printing out and answering, ever year.  Some questions (read entire post here):

• Are your revenues increasing by at least 10 percent a year? Why or why not?
• Have you created new intellectual property in the prior year?
• Do you have contracted business that will pay fees over the next six months, and contacts going beyond that?
• Do you have a financial, liquid reserve equal to a year’s expenses?

These are four of the sixteen questions. No matter how you answer them now, you can use these sixteen questions as goals to work towards to answer them better next year.

In November I bought a projector from Electrocloseout for presentations… I was uber-excited about it because, well, real companies have presentation projectors, right?

It took way to long to get it (I think I finally got it in January (((((), but it was cool, for about a week or two.

Then we got a white dot on the screen.

Then we got a few more white dots on the screen.

Then the screen started filling with white dots….

Now, in July, check out what our screen looks like:

Today I finally got in touch with the warranty company… I’m really hoping there is a “happily ever after” to this story… we’ll see how it goes!