Sunday, April 4th, 2010

7 Business Lessons I Learned From The Grateful Dead

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I’m a big fan of the Grateful Dead — I attended 100+ shows, collected 300+ bootlegs (that are in cassette form still in the hallway of my San Francisco apartment!) and I received an original signed 1968 Grateful Dead concert poster as a signing bonus when I sold the Mojam business.

In additional to bringing me a bunch of musical joy, The Dead taught me a ton about my other passion: business.

Just look at the numbers: The Dead pulled in $95 million a year at the height of their 30+ year journey (according to Booz & Co.) and was referred to by The Altantic Magazine as “one of the most profitable bands in the history of music” (see Management Secrets of The Grateful Dead article).

So allow me to elaborate on two of my favorite subjects: business…and the Grateful Dead:

7 Business Lessons I Learned From The Grateful Dead

1) Moving the “Free Line”

There’s a lot of talk in Internet business these days about “moving the free line” — in other words, providing more of your products/value available for free and make your money on the back-end.

Well the Grateful Dead were doing this 40 years ago.

The Dead made much of their product (their music) free by allowing fans to make recordings at their shows — they even set up a “taper section” dedicated to the fans who were recording so that all of their tall microphones and other equipment could be conveniently placed in one part of the concert venue.

Those recordings were of course copied and shared amongst many fans (both those who attended that particular show and those who didn’t) and acted as free viral marketing for the band (I had 50 bootlegs of the Grateful Dead before I even attended my first show!).

So, let’s take me as a customer for instance: the Grateful Dead didn’t have any of my money for the first year of my exposure to their products.

But by the time I attended my first show (October 12, 1983 at Madison Square Garden in New York City) I was hooked as a customer– and would invest many thousands of dollars on additional live shows, t-shirts and recordings over the next 12 years.

Think about it: Would you allow me to have some of your products for free for a year if you knew I would be a loyal customer paying you $5,000 for additional products over the following decade (and turn on a number of my friends who would also invest around the same!?).

I think so!

2) Product First, Profit Later

Sam I. Hill, Chief Marketing Officer of Booz-Allen & Company in Chicago, points out that the Grateful Dead were leaders in the “Product First/Profit Later” philosophy later executed by Nike, IAMS Pet Foods, Snap-On Tools and MTV — (e.g. Nike set out to build a better running shoe; IAMS, a high-quality pet food) in this  “How to Truck The Brand: Lessons from the Grateful Dead” article from 1997.

Hill added: These companies simply believed in what they were doing and “were smart enough to see when it worked, and to exploit it.”

One former President of the Grateful Dead, Ron Rakow (whose cool business card from the time is here) is an uncle of a friend of mine. Ron once told me a relevant story that I’ll do my best to paraphrase:

Rakow said that early on in the Spring of 1967 he asked the band (before the band was successful) what they envisioned success looking like. A few of the band members responded with such comments as:

• “I want to have a number one record;”
• “I want to have a number one hit;” and
• “I want us to be famous”

But Jerry Garcia, the band’s unofficial leader, said something more to the effect of:

“That all sounds good, but I think we’d just like to have as many people as possible enjoy our music.”

Rakow told me at this point that all the band members nodded their heads in agreement with Jerry, saying “Yes, yes, …lots of people should listen to our music — that’s it!”

As Rakow tells it, the band then agreed to empty all the money out of their pockets (there was a total of $50 or so) and rent a flat-bed truck on which they would play a free live concert in the Panhandle near Golden Gate Park in San Francisco).

The band indeed put on a free show on May 28, 1967 in the Panhandle…Rakow says that initially very few people showed up but the band kept playing for a few hours and eventually many thousands of people joined in.

…and the Grateful Dead product was on its way (with profits very soon to follow).

3) Secret to Being #1: Do NOT Be The Best At What You Do…

Music Promoter Bill Graham famously described the Grateful Dead on the Marquee of the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco as:

“They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do.”

I think you get it? Focus on what is truly unique about you or your business…and then OWN that!

Examples of the uniqueness of the Grateful Dead included:

• Making up the setlist every night — They operated without a setlist most nights
• NOT playing their biggest hits every night — They repeated songs live (including their most popular) only once every 4+ shows
• Creating their own music category — Because they blended so many musical styles — rock, country, bluegrass, jazz, funk, R&B, reggae and more! — The Dead were impossible to put into a category…so, guess what: the world created a new one for them: called either “Jam Bands” or just simply “Grateful Dead type music”
• Being the first band to play at the Pyramids in Egypt — The Dead invested $500,000 to visit Egypt and play at the Pyramids and donated the proceeds to local organizations within Cairo (the final night’s performance was capped off by a full moon and total lunar eclipse)
• Using two drummers — Hardly any top rock bands were using two drummers. One of them, Micky Hart, played an unusual 11-count measure to his drumming
• “Spacing” Out — Every night, the band would play music with no words for about 20 minutes (this was called “Drums/Space”
• Recording when they felt like it — They were known to go into the recording studio only when they felt like it. I’ve heard Garcia admit that they simply weren’t very good studio musicians — live music was their strength!

I can’t tell you how they came up with such unique approaches as above…but if I had to put money on it, I’d bet that these things happened organically, played to their uniqueness/strengths or that they did it just for the hell of it.

One thing’s for sure: they did NOT conform to the industry norms!

4) Embrace Your Community

The Dead invested a bunch in their community.

I already mentioned the taping they allowed, which helped build a massive community that they could not easily reach on their own.

Another example of community was that they allowed fans to mail in requests for tickets (as opposed to relying on buying tickets from a ticket seller like Ticketmaster) (there was also a Dead hotline).

This gave Dead fans a feeling of connection with the band (as in, we kind of know where they live).

Here’s a cool shot of some of the mail that the Grateful Dead Ticket Sales (GDTS) received in their offices (which last I heard were in Stinson Beach, California)

Other examples of the Dead’s support of community included the Parking Lot scene at shows.

The Dead allowed vending in one part of the parking lot (which Deadheads called “Shakedown Street) and many people made their living selling t-shirts, bagels, grilled cheese and pizza.

One friend of mine sold $70,000 per year in pizzas at Grateful Dead concerts! And the Dead embraced it!

The band eventually brought these vendors in as official licensees, according to Booz & Co.

The Dead also embraced fans making money from small community projects such as Deadbase, a print-out of every concert the band ever played with the setlist of songs (that some people sold (such information is now free)).

The Dead was constantly testing cool new things for its community.

I remember walking up to their sound engineer Dan Healy at a 1986 show in Pittsburgh, PA and he explained how they were testing out emitting a radio signal from their soundboard of each show — so that people could listen to the show on their radio.

I tested it out and it was amazing: I was inside a concert listening to an FM Walkman with higher-quality audio than I was hearing within the arena itself. And the fans in the parking lot (who didn’t have tickets to the show) were even more excited that they could hear the show with nothing more than a radio (for free!).

5) Organized Chaos: “Grateful Google?”

A big buzzword in business strategy these days is “Organized Chaos” — Google may be the true master of the concept.

Examples of Google’s chaos: employees can decorate their offices however they want, ride around offices on scooters and goof off on company time and the founders have a “we’ll do what we want, whenever we feel like it” attitude.

However, Google is highly organized/structured: Google breaks down most teams into small groups with two engineers co-running them; the recommended allocation of goof-off time is 10% and the entire company is behind Google’s mission of organizing the world’s information.

But long before Google it was the Grateful Dead who were laying down the magic formula for Organized Chaos.

I probably don’t have to spend much time explaining the chaotic part of the Dead (picture the band showing up in their t-shirts and jeans jamming out to whatever setlist they felt like that night with their avid tie-dyed clothed fans twirling around in circles (many of them under the influence of LSD).

But in actuality, there was a lot of organization to the Grateful Dead:

• Touring — They consistently toured 50 to 100 shows per year (including a Spring & Fall Tour) in four regions with very specific dates and locations/venues.
• Sets of Their Shows — Almost all of their shows were structured into two sets with 5 to 10 songs in each set, followed by an encore.
• Drums/Space — The second set of almost all shows (from the mid-1970s on) included a section in the middle called “Drums/Space” in which the percussionists jammed out alone for awhile and then the rest of the band noodled around with non-song music. While Drums Space was highly chaotic at times (check out this 1987 show (with some cool visual graphics), it was predictably time in the concert with a handful of songs before and after it.
• Distributed Management — The Dead’s band members (and some crew) rotated as CEOs on a regular basis — how’s that for sharing accountability!?

6) Co-Opetition: Grow Your “Orbit” By Inviting In Your Competition

Long before Silicon Valley coined the phrase “Co-Opetition” (the concept of cooperating with your competition), The Dead made it a key part of their movement.

1. They invited bands who were competing for the Deadhead customer base — including Phish and The Dave Matthews Band — be their warm-up band for concerts.
2. They openly invited competing musicians, such as Carlos Santana and Pete Townshend, to join them onstage to strutt their stuff.
3. They played cover songs of many other bands such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Marley) whose products were still marketed at the Deadhead demographic.

This had the effect of keeping such rival music closer within the Grateful Dead “orbit.”

Afterall, if you could get a bit of The Beatles, The Stones or The Who as part of your Grateful Dead experience, isn’t the Grateful Dead orbit even more powerful!?

7) Reinvent Yourself

While the Grateful Dead’s leader Jerry Garcia died August 9, 1995, their music and business lessons live on with members of the original Grateful Dead playing in such bands as The Dead, Phil Lesh & Friends, Bob Weir & Ratdog, Rhythm Devils and 7 Walkers.

It’s a testament to the powerful momentum of the Grateful Dead, that numerous successful bands emerged from the ashes of the death of its de-facto leader.

And the business innovations from these Grateful Dead spinoffs keep comin’.

Marcom Professional’s Marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead points to his recent experience with the spin-off band The Dead:

• They continue to sell tickets directly to fans (they are one of the few bands who can bypass Ticketmaster)
• They sell recordings of any of their new shows at The Grateful Dead Store
• They sell a print book customized for ANY show customers want

So, 45 years after the Grateful Dead were founded, the band’s enterprise value “keeps on truckin onnnnn, on.”

I hope you leverage these tips to design your business to last that long!

Postscript:

One more thing: After I wrote this, I got pinged by a guy named David Merman Scott who said he found this article valuable for his Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead book.

Here’s the Grateful Dead Marketing Lessons Book on Amazon:

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Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Inside Tips From Apple & Steve Jobs

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I just finished reading a terrific book called Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney.

If you’re interested in Steve Jobs or Apple or technology or design, I highly recommend you read it.

I dog-eared a handful of pages of favorite bullets or quotes – here they are:

Beware the “Osborne Effect”

Jobs is careful to announce new technology (e.g. the Mac OS X) still under development before it’s ready to be sold…so as to avoid the “Osborne Effect”(named after the Osborne Computer Corporation) in which sales of existing technology or products being sold can be hurt.

The Osborne Computer Corp. took more than a year to get its next product available, ran out of cash and went bankrupt in 1985.

Borrowing Design Ideas Is Encouraged

The inspiration for the type of plastic case (a first for computers) for the Apple II came from Jobs seeing a Cuisinart food processor in the kitchen section of Macy’s.

Additionally, Jobs showed up at a design meeting for the Quicktime software product with a brochure from Hewlett-Packard with the H-P logo in a brushed metal.

The brushed metal ended up being adopted in across much of Apple’s software and some high-end hardware including the Safari Web browser and iCal calendar.

Design Tip: It’s More Important What You Leave Out Then What You Put In

Former Apple CEO John Sculley believed that a key part of Jobs’ greatness were decisions he made about things NOT to do.

Kahney points to an interesting study by Elke den Ouden, of the Eindhoven University, in which nearly half of products returned by consumers for refunds still work perfectly but new owners just couldn’t figure out how to use them.

Jobs and Apple are widely credited with keeping their product line lean and product functionality simple.

Another Design Tip: Functionality Is More Important Than How It Looks

Jobs explained in an interview with Wired in 1996 that:

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it worked. The design on fht eMac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked…”

Apple’s Design Problem Solving

Apple designers subscribe to the “generate and test” approach to solving problems in which all the possible solutions are generated and tested to see if they offer a solution.

It’s key to use trial and error to make an “embarassing” number of solutions to get to one solution

Apple designers spends 10% of their time on traditional industrial design (brainstorming ideas, drawing, etc.) and 90% of their time working with manufacturing on implementing their ideas.

Jobs Doesn’t Believe In Focus Groups for Technology Products

He quotes the Henry Ford line: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

The “Hero/Asshole RollerCoaster” Management Style

Kahney says he interviewed many people who work for Apple who say that the management style of Jobs and other Apple leaders is what is known as the “hero/asshole rollercoaster” in which there’s a constant tension at Apple between the fear of getting fire and a “messianic zeal” to change the world.

Apple’s Stock Plan

Apple employees can buy discounted stock of Apple in chunks based on their salary . The stock price is determined by the lowest price in the previous six months plus a small percentage discount.

Motives Are More Important Than Profits

“The older I get, the more I’m convinced that motives make so much difference,” Jobs is quoted in the book as saying.

“…our primary goal here is to make the world’s best PCs — not to be the biggest or richest.”

Great Steve Jobs Quote (from his 2005 Stanford commencement speech)

“Rembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

…have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I really recommend you read this book!

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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

How To Innovate: 5 Tips From The Top Innovators

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I was fascinated by a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article on how to innovate (an abstract is here with the option to purchase).

They researched such innovators as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, Intuit’s Scott Cook and Proctor & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley.

Their key finding was that innovative entrepreneurs (who are also CEOs) spend 50% more time on five “discovery activities” than do CEOs with no track record for innovation.

 

I fully agree with these five tips for how to innovate; and want to provide my insights on them:

Five Tips On How To Innovate

1) Question (The Status Quo)

HBR points out that Michael Dell famously created Dell with the question:

“Why do computers cost five times the cost of the sum of their parts?”

Innovators are excellent at asking questions that challenge the status quo such as:

• Why not try it this way?
• Why do you do things the way you do?
• What if you tried this new thing or stopped doing some old thing?
• What would you do if failure was not an option?

2) Observe

Innovators are strong at observing people and details. …

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Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

What Is Thought Leadership & How Do You Apply It To Your Business?

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I met an interesting woman, Natalie Wood (not the deceased actress) who’s focusing her career on the subject of Thought Leadership. I asked her to cover the topic with me in a Q&A.

Read on to learn more about what thought leadership is; why businesses should care; examples of thought leadership in business; and how to leverage thought leadership marketing.

Q: What is your definition of Thought Leadership?

We see Thought Leadership as the new paradigm for how businesses market themselves and build brand. Thought leadership evolves through the efforts of both individuals and businesses making the commitment to develop a deeper understanding of the specific forces shaping their industry.

Why is Thought Leadership important?  Gautam Ghosh of Accenture claims that… “Simple, great thought leadership means never having to ‘pitch’ or ‘sell’ for business.” You become a trusted advisor, counselor and partner, not just a vendor.

Today, Thought Leadership is becoming the new standard for how people and companies communicate their value to the world and their customers.  This includes B2B strategy, marketing, product development, customer support and sales. Companies can no longer avoid the impact of Thought Leadership and what it means to their market and to their customers.

Thought Leadership enables companies to build strategic value in their industry that transcends ad campaigns, PR efforts or marketing initiatives. These types of contributions can directly affect a company’s success and brand.

Q: Why should businesses care about Thought Leadership?

Many companies are now taking on thought leadership branding initiatives as a part of their own intellectual branding campaigns. The main reason a business should care about Thought Leadership ties back to how their company is viewed by the marketplace.

Thought Leadership, as defined by RainToday.com… “centers on earning trust and credibility.” Thought Leaders get noticed by offering something different—information, insights, and ideas, for instance. Thought Leadership positions you and your company as an industry authority and resource and trusted advisor by establishing your reputation as a generous contributor to your industry.”

A growing number of companies have started to realize that thought leadership is a core component of becoming a successful market leader.  Most companies aspire to having their brand seen as one of the more knowledgeable and innovative in their field or industry.  And, many may want to be seen as the market leader, but haven’t put together a strategy or resources needed to make this happen.

Thought Leadership has the ability to help you and your company:

1. Raise Company visibility and credibility to the world
2. Educate and reach customers
3. Enlighten the media on your contributions to the market
4. Inspire customers and partners to connect with you in new and meaningful ways

As the business world changes, thought leadership is playing a greater role in how many of these changes are taking place. People are becoming a part of the new era of brand development. Many product focused brands are also now transitioning to people focused brands through social media, communities and increasingly through thought leadership.

People represent how a product and company are perceived by their customers and the market at large. A company’s credibility, market reach, standards of conduct and recognition are affected by the value and brand of their people. Thought leadership is the new marketing platform for people and the companies they represent.

A key finding from the survey: Engaging Global Executives: Ten Megatrends in B2B Marketing, shows that 56% of companies consider Thought Leadership as their second biggest objective for B2B marketing.  That’s number two behind building new business as the top priority in the next 3-5 year (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008).

Q: What is “Thought Leadership Marketing,” a term I’ve heard used in this area?

Thought Leadership marketing is focused on helping a company position itself as a “thought Leader” in a specific marketplace.  The strategy supports the company’s core initiatives while at the same time promoting its intellectual corporate branding.

Thought Leadership marketing programs are a part of a larger thought leadership strategy and help raise a company’s visibility with their key customer base and market.

Thought Leadership seems a little nebulous until you understand the value it brings companies. According to Dana VanDen Heuvel of the Marketing Savant Group, the value of Thought Leadership marketing includes:

1. Prospects put themselves further into the sales cycle – shorter sales cycles,
2. Changes the pattern and terms from how customer buy from you,
3. Diminishes Price Resistance and
4. Prospects experience your value before buying.

Another way to define Thought Leadership is “the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers and the broader marketplace in which it operates.” Elise Bauer.

A great way to put Thought Leadership into context is to think of it as the economic impact of ideas and content.  Thought Leadership is both macro and micro.  It helps define and influence the macro forces of markets while shaping micro forces of product innovation, marketing, and resource management of companies.

By understanding the full impact of Thought Leadership companies can align the macro forces shaping their markets with the micro strategies of their company for smarter product and marketing decisions.

As a result Thought Leadership marketing has now emerged as a new and growing standard for how companies leverage this important medium to develop market awareness, reach prospective customers and evolve into smarter, more effective organizations.

Thought leadership marketing programs include the following:

Research and Publications: Thought leadership content through market research, executive surveys and interviews. Client sponsored white papers, executive summaries and advertorials.  These are not company product or service white papers, but rather research regarding specific industry pain points and future trends.

Online Marketing, PR and Lead Generation: Integrated thought leadership marketing campaigns that tie into corporate branding and advertising campaigns with specific thought leadership messaging. Developing recognition and influence through the public dissemination of important industry research and information, incorporating podcasts, webcasts, online polls, social networking and online lead generation tools.

Custom Events: Multi-sponsored or smaller single sponsored thought leadership events that focus on specific topics and bring together various related industry thought leaders to debate and discuss current issues. These types of events help sponsors to gain visibility with senior-level target audiences and can offer invaluable networking opportunities. Event programs are often tied into larger thought leadership marketing programs and provide additional content for marketing campaigns via multi-channels that include online branding, distributed video and research. These type of events range in size from 50 to 300 plus attendees.

Thought Leadership marketing help companies be seen as more knowledgeable and innovative in their industry. These types of marketing programs enable companies to share knowledge with their clients and public, along with delivering programs that speak to the corporate social responsibility needs of their company’s branding initiatives.

Q: Please provide some examples of Thought Leadership in the business world (including the Internet) and the impact it had on each business.

Companies such as Cisco are focused on educating prospects through thought leadership. At Cisco every executive must establish and develop themselves as a Thought Leader through public speaking, blogs, whitepapers, etc.

“Once thought leadership is established, the rest of the industry, the media, academia, government policymakers and the broader business community turn to that company for ideas and for insights into where things are going.” Mark Peshoff, Senior Director of Cisco’s Executive Thought Leadership

Both Cisco and HP have several divisions with resources and programs dedicated to ongoing thought leadership research, marketing and events; many of which tie into their corporate citizenship and thought leadership branding initiatives.

One example is Cisco’s large scale thought leadership program for Cisco’s Global Education Group .

Over the past several years, Cisco’s Global Education Group has partnered with a number of leading corporate, government, educational and endowment groups to help improve education on a global basis.  They put together a 21^st Century School Initiative to help improve education, technology infrastructure and the skills needed for employment in the 21^st century.

Cisco also created internally a job skills training group called The Cisco Networking Academy which has classes set up in 160 countries to help teach people IT/networking skills.

In January 2008, Cisco, Microsoft and Intel sponsored a “project to research and develop new approaches, methods and technologies for measuring the success of 21st-century teaching and learning in classrooms around the world.

The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project is focused on defining those skills and developing ways to measure them.”

As a part of this they also created an Education Leaders’ Program and Education 3.0, what they call, “systematic approach towards education transformation.”

Another example of Cisco’s Thought Leadership research on education is a white paper they sponsored entitled, “Global education 20/20: What role for the private sector?”

This white paper was developed for a thought leadership event, held by The Economist in 2009 in New York, called Education 20/20: Creating partnerships to educate the global workforce of the future and used specifically for Cisco’s thought leadership education marketing and partner outreach programs.

A 21st century education system is governed and managed with the ultimate goal of maximizing learning outcomes for all students. There are transparent processes in place to communicate and implement decisions, develop and monitor curriculum, sustain the budget, and procure resources.

Additionally, policies and procedures are implemented to enable these education institutions to use data to drive school standards and accountability while stimulating and managing innovation.

Finally, school learning is recognized as embedded within and dependent on an ecosystem of partners that support learning and/or provide other essential children’s services (e.g., health, social services).

The entire system is a learning organization with a supportive culture that promotes ambitious and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Leaders throughout the system champion and model the 21st century educational vision and work with well-trained and -supported teachers.

Emphasis is placed on the recruitment and retention of both principals and teachers through carefully designed outreach efforts and training programs. A 21st century system explicitly promotes a culture of high expectations, respect, collaboration, and shared accountability.

These efforts have helped Cisco become a market leader in the area of education through their thought leadership programs which include research, marketing, events and partnership programs. All of which tie back directly into their corporate citizenship and thought leadership branding initiatives, and which incorporate their company’s main services and product offerings.

Other companies such as Crest Toothpaste, HP, Qualcomm, Coke and other Fortune 500s view Thought Leadership as imperative to their success.  What are some of the ways companies become Thought Leaders?  There are many, but to name a few… whitepapers, blogs, public speaking, cause marketing (Pepsi’s “refresh” program is a great example), PR, events, case studies, and social media.

The list goes on. But what is most important is a company’s vision and the thoughts and ideas of its people.

The ability of a company to harness the collective thoughts, ideas and vision of its people is very powerful and often inspiring.  But without a proper Thought Leadership program these visions and ideas are trapped inside companies.

They don’t see the light of day or they are crafted into PR sound bites that only reveal a fraction of what a person or company is thinking.  That is why many companies are now implementing Thought Leadership programs to help guide and develop their executives to help align their ideas with company vision and innovation.

As I mentioned above, Cisco’s thought leadership programs have been on a much larger scale than most mid-size businesses will ever employ, however, the basic principals still apply. Thought leadership programs can range in size, apply to any industry and be successful if they are part of a company’s core business and branding strategy.

If you want to be seen as a thought leader in your market, it’s important to come up with a thought leadership strategy that will enable your company to develop and deliver expertise over the long run to help your clients and the marketplace improve.

This can produce rewards for your business that can be exponential to both your company and clients along with the marketplace as a whole.  That is why Thought Leadership holds the hope of inspiring something great.

The world is watching for guidance, ideas and suggestions.  Customers and prospects want to know that you understand the pressures and challenges that affect them just as well as you know your own challenges.  And yet, they also want you to inspire them, show them the way to a better tomorrow and to a better future.

Q: If someone wants to get in touch with you, how should they do so?

The Thought Bank is a Thought Leadership Consulting Firm in San Francisco, CA where we help companies and senior executives implement Thought Leadership practices for the benefit of their brand and overall marketing.

We combine our experience in various industries along with capabilities across a wide set of business functions to provide clients with comprehensive thought leadership programs and events that build company market success and brand.

Our mission is to help companies become more effective thought leaders and increase their visibility and client engagement in the world as corporate social citizens.

The Thought Bank is currently doing thought leadership events on The Power of Play…The evolution of games and their growing impact on business and social communities and The Future Paradigm of Housing Finance in the US. 

For further information, please contact me bu phone at 415-425-7124 or by email at [email protected]

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Saturday, March 20th, 2010

How To Process Credit Cards In-Person With No Merchant Account (It’s Called “Square”)

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I believe the new payment application SquareUp (some call it just “Square”), which allows anyone to accept credit cards in person, is a game-changer in business.

I just bought a book using it from author Dom Songalla (pictured below) at a conference we both attended — it was simple yet powerful.

Dom simply popped his credit reader reader  into the phone jack of his iPhone; and then swiped my credit card for $20.

Here’s the receipt I received via email (note that it shows me the location of my purpose):

The whole thing really took just three steps:

1. The author swiped my credit card on his iPhone
2. I signed my signature with my finger on his iPhone screen
3. He typed in my email and emailed me my receipt

And the beauty is that Square does not require you (the seller) to have a merchant account to accept credit cards — and there appears to be just one fee (2.9% of the transaction amount).

Others, including PayPal’s new Bump iPhone App, are also getting in the market of exchanging money between phones.

I like Square chances as much as anyone’s as it has smart folks like its co-founder Jack Dorsey (creator of Twitter) and Board member Gideon Yu (previous executive at Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo) behind it.

Click here for tweets from some Square advisors.

And since SquareUp is still in beta, you’ll have to go to the bottom of Square’s home page and give your email address to get in line to receive the card reader.

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Saturday, March 13th, 2010

How To Raise Money From A VC: Insider Tips

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I’m sitting in on a packed breakout session at the SxSW conference with Charlie O’Donnell of First Round Capital.

If you’re interested in creating technology-driven businesses, you should know about Charlie.

I like Charlie because he’s worked both sides of the fence (founder/CEO of businesses and venture capitalist); and he’s extremely well-networked .

His current employer First Round helps entrepreneurs with their early financing (before the big venture capitalists get involved).

Note: If you want to know more about the different stages of raising money, check out The 5 Major Stages of Startup Funding article I wrote.

Think of them as a “feeder fund” to the larger investors. If you can sell First Round on investing in you, you’re about 100X as likely to get larger funding from more venture capitalists.

Here are some tips he shared with entrepreneurs:

Ask For Advice (not money)

He says: “If you ask for advice (from venture capitalists), you get money…if you ask for money, you get advice.”

Vet Your Product/Product Management is Key

Most startups have a biz person and a techie…but it’s the translation in the middle that’s key (someone to focus on what the milestones are, priorities, etc. for the product).

Simple things like getting wireframes of your products nailed down before you start coding can be a huge time saver.

“The best ideas are the ones that nobody thought would work.”

Everyone is good at coming up with feature ideas…it’s a lot tougher to pick the ones to prioritize on.

So, be very clear about who is in charge of product management.

Things Take Longer And Cost More Than You Think

Building a company will take three times as long and cost twice as much; or take twice as long as cost three times as much.

Have 2-Week Plans (not 6-month plans)

Focus on Small/Short Milestones

This is tougher but will make you more efficient. Again, this is where someone with product management is key.

Hiring Is Harder Than You Think

On-boarding is harder and takes longer than you think. A programmer, for example, takes awhile to get to know your systems.

Venture capitalists, O’Donnell adds, don’t always help: “VCs look only at top-level employees…and never ask details about lower level hires.”

Embrace Failure

Find people who have failed in your space because they’ve learned the most — don’t just talk to people at a successful company like Twitter.

You Might Consider Selling Customers First, VCs Later

It’s way easier to ask a venture capitalist for money than it is to ask a customer…but you should focus on getting sales from customer to increase your leverage with VCs.

For example, Square Space in New York focused on generating sales (as opposed to raising money from VCs) and is now in a position of greater control with raising money from VCs.

Launching Products/Businesses

PR is really hard to do…there are not that many people who do it well.

You may get a bunch of public relations on the launch day, but it will be much tougher to get PR a few months later (unless you have a new milestone) — again, having greater frequency of milestones is a theme here.

Building a Startup Is All About “Unfair Advantages”

A key leverage point with VCs is your “unfair advantages.”

Examples of unfair advantages:

1. You worked at the #1 competitor and you know the inner-workings of that company like noone else.
2. You have visibility in the community and folks will want to work with you.

For example, Gary Vaynerchuk can jump on his Wine Library video blog right now and get a developer hired immediately — that is a good “unfair advantage” he has over his competition.

3 Must-Haves To Attract A VC

• Solid Team
• Market The VC Wants to Play In
• A Strong Product

Caution: Don’t Idealize Strategic Investments

Don’t assume that when a strategic investor puts money in you that you’ll get everything from that company that makes sense.

He points to his startup Indeed raising $1 Million from the New York Times and assuming that the newspaper would promote Indeed on its highly-trafficked Jobs Web pages (which it wouldn’t do).

Start The Wind-Down Process Early

When you’ve raised venture capital and your business isn’t working out, leave yourself enough time to sell your assets.

That’s because the “wind-down” period of a business goes very fast and selling your remaining assets takes time and energy.

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Saturday, March 13th, 2010

How To Make a Six-Figure Income From Blogging (Darren Rowse of ProBlogger)

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I’m here at the South By Southwest (SxSW) conference listing to blogger Darren Rowse give a talk on blogging.

If you are interested in blogging, you should listen to what Rowse says; his three blogs are among the highest ranking Web sites, according to Alexa:

• Problogger blog is ranked 1,978
• Digital Photography School is ranked 6,151 and
• TwiTip is ranked 14,859

Here are some tips he shared on turning your blog into a six-figure a year business (all specifics and examples are related to his Digital Photography School) :

1) Start With Content

• Don’t start with making money in mind.
• Focus on value
• Don’t forget beginners — E.g. when Darren wrote a post on how to hold a digital camera it ended up getting huge traffic.

How frequent should you post : He believes you should post at least one to two blog articles a day (to build up your content library for the search engines to index).

In addition to posting content himself, he hires other writers who he pays  about$60 (U.S.) per post.

His other bloggers can come up with their own topics though Darren also gives them ideas on topics.

2) Promotion

Ask yourself: Where are my readers gathering already (and then go and find them).

Chances are your audience is hanging out already in places like Twitter, Facebook and forums.

3) Community

He recommends using forums in addition to blogs. While Darren and I chatted later in the day he told me that forums appeal to a different community than his blog does.

However, he pointed out that Google and the search engines don’t crawl his forums content as much as they do his blog content.

He also recommends engaging the audience in polls — For example, a member of his photo site asked for advice on how to photograph their dying grandma and they generated 100+ responses.

4) Capture Contacts — Find a way to stick visitors to your site

Of the 410, 000 subscribers, over 300,000 are email (versus 100,000 for RSS feeds)

Traffic is three times the volume of normal days when he sends an email update out. Advertising revenue goes up too.

5) How to Monetize Blogs

In years 1 and 2, he used ad networks and affiliate markets.

In years 3 and 4, he hired 50 writers initially (from his audience) (now it’s 12 writers writing 50 posts per week).

He says he generated $13,000 in Amazon affiliate revenues last month.

How he monetizes his blogs now:

• Sell ads directly (to Adobe, Lenovo, etc.)
• Higher-end affiliate marketing (ebooks, training courses (they pay 30% to 50%)
• Recently sold 10,000 of one ad partners ebooks within a couple of months
• Launched his own ebooks (for $29.97) and sold $70,000 in ebooks within a couple of weeks.

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Monday, March 8th, 2010

The Near Future of Twitter's Ad Platform, Google Buzz, iPad, Etc. (According to Mashable's Ben Parr)

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I’m at the 140 | The Twitter Conference and Ben Parr (@BenParr), Co-Editor of Mashable, is sharing his thoughts on social media with Steve Broback, (Host of the conference).

Here are some highlights:

The top three social media platforms business should care about:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. YouTube

Two newer social media platforms to keep an eye on:

1. FourSquare — It’s a mobile application that let’s people know where you are and what you’re doing.
2. Google Buzz — It’s already bigger than Twitter in terms of users (at 40MM+).

Upcoming Changes In Google Buzz

If Google doesn’t create a standalone version of Buzz, it won’t succeed.

You will see Google Buzz withing Google Apps/Google Docs within the next few months.

“I’m bullish on it — it has strong features and big user base. I’m getting better engagement on Google Buzz than Facebook.”

Google Buzz API is coming — Google will throw APIs out like they’re candy.

Twitter’s Ad Platform

Twitter’s plan is to probably launch an ad platform this month, probably focused on search. This will probably involve in-stream ads and developers to integrate it and share revenue with it…so applications (such as HootSuite or TweetDeck will carry ads).

Twitter is cash-flow positive due to the “Firehose” (allowing Yahoo, Google, Bing and 6 or 7 search startups to index the Twitter content/data).

Tips & Tools For Businesses Use To Maximize Value of Twitter

• Figure our your goal (have a specific goal in mind). Examples of goals: Monitor discussion, promote products, build a stronger brand, etc.
• Recommends these tools for businesses: CoTweet, HootSuite and WildFire (whatever tool you use, make sure it has analytics)

iPad

The second version of Apple’s iPad will likely include a camera.

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