Competition Sucks. Or Does It?

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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.

I know a song that gets on everybody’s _____

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My five year old daughter couldn’t stop singing this phrase over the weekend:

I KNOW A SONG THAT GETS ON EVERYBODY’S … NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE!

How cute is that?

She also calls an ear worm a “head worm.”

Why?

One day a great song came on the radio (I don’t know which one) and she said “TURN IT! TURN IT!  That song gets stuck in my head!”

I said “oh, that’s called an ear worm… when you can’t get it out :)”

Taking one word from her description and one word from my description, she said, “I don’t want a HEAD WORM.”

Love it 🙂

Gem: Scott Heiferman’s $20M Lesson

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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?

Diabetic Emergency Kit

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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!

Walmart Firing #Fail

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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.

New Email Signature

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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

Knock ‘Em Dead Garlic Spread (aka green dragon breath)

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My friend Shauna K. brought this amazing spread with some fresh garden tomatoes to a dinner. I couldn’t get enough. Shauna is one of the healthiest eaters I know… so anything from her is fair game. In her own words:

Its a lot like pesto but not so expensive because you can use any weeds from your backyard if you want instead of pinenuts.

I named this recipe because it really puts you in a position to have awesome garlic breath after its eaten!

Knock ‘Em Dead Garlic Spread

1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp – 1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried basil (fresh is even better)
few sprigs parsley
3-4 stalks green onion
(throw in a couple wildcrafted weeds from your backyard – optional)
8 cloves peeled garlic

Blend in blender or cuisinart. Pour over anything compatible (veggies, rice, pasta, etc). Enjoy the dragon breath!

I dare you!

On Parenting: Do You See Roots or Fruits?

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The last few days we had some painters in our home, painting a lot of stuff.  What I thought would take me a few days of after-work hours turned into more than 50 man-hours for these professionals.

Since they were in our home for so long they got to know our family a bit.  We shared meals with them and talked quite a bit. It was fun.

Last night was the last night they were in our house.  Before they left, the owner of the company expressed his thoughts about our kids, our family and our home.  He was very impressed with our family, and our kids.  More impressed, perhaps, than we were.  It’s so easy for us, as parents, to lose sight of any success we have as parents, and then an angel comes along and subtly (or not-so-subtly) reminds us that we are indeed doing a good job.

As I went to bed I thought of an analogy… this is the first draft, which will probably go nowhere, but if I make time, one day I could see storyboarding it to become a kids book (or a parents book, written like a kids book). Enjoy:

There was a certain peach tree people would walk by and admire. The peaches were beautiful, they were ripe. The travelers took the peaches and ate them, and remarked how amazing they were.

Everyone who walked past the tree could see the beauty and taste of the flavor, and all were greatly impressed.

The tree, however, didn’t recognize the depth of the beauty, and couldn’t appreciate the height of the flavor.

The tree was busy focusing on pulling nutrition from the ground through its roots. It focused on the underground, unseen, dirty and usually unappreciated work of finding nutrition. There is nothing glamorous about this work. No one walks by a tree and says

“wow, those roots underground must be amazing, and healthy, and doing the right thing. I think these must be the best roots around.”

Above ground, the tree was busy focusing on simply staying alive – getting nutrition up the trunk to each branch. The tree worked to have leaves which could pull nutrition from the sun. In early spring it showed blossoms, but those mostly needed nutrition and didn’t provide anything (except beauty) to the tree. The tree worked hard to keep the blossoms healthy.

As time passed, the blossoms became more demanding, even weighing down the branches, as they developed into peaches.

The peaches demanded more and more nutrition, and became heavier, and the tree continued to provide nourishment. It was too busy doing what it was meant to do that it didn’t recognize the beauty of the changes – from nothing to blossom to fruitling, on its path to a nourishing fruit. From green to the beautiful red and orange colors of the peach.

The tree continued on, as it always had. Get nutrition from leaves. Get nutrition from the ground. Ignore pesky bugs, which the tree couldn’t do anything about. Do the job at hand.

While this was happening, travelers saw a tree, with brown branches and bark, rich green leaves, and commented how beautiful the peaches were. They could see the beauty. They appreciated the beauty. They knew that in a short time, the peaches would be ripe and delicious.

When the day came, people picked the peaches, and enjoyed them, and shared them. They loved them, and were happy with the tree, and were grateful that the tree would produce for years to come.

Isn’t this the way it is with us, many times, as parents?

How many of us have gotten comments about our children – how cute they are, how well-behaved they are, how fun they are, how special they are, etc. We all get slightly different comments. Sometimes we think “yeah, but you don’t see them fight at bath time,” or “yeah, but you should try getting them down to bed,” or “yeah, but _______.”

We act like the tree… focusing on the dirt and the labor. We need to – that is our role as parents. Hopefully we can also see and appreciate what others see so quickly – the beauty that comes from the labor.

These, our children, are the fruits of our labor. The fruits show that the labor was good and the system was healthy. Even though we see dirt, and where we work is sometimes dark, and we are busy giving of our time and energy, and we feel tired, and sometimes we don’t see the changes, we must recognize the beauty. We must realize we had an important part to play in it.

Rough draft, but cool concept. Thoughts? I had a bunch of follow-up thoughts (where the analogy could go), which I’ll try to capture in the comments below.

Eight Lunches Feedback from a real Accountant

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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!

Visual Artist Tools (for logos, etc.)

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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.