EQ Journal Archive 15

https://www.eqjournal.org/?paged=15

         Six Questions with Manpacks’ Andrew Draper        

       
   Posted on
       Friday 11 March 2011  
     
   
       

Name: Andrew Draper
Company: Manpacks
Bootstrap Gold Medal Award Won: Best Website 2011

1. In three sentences or less, what is your enterprise’s value proposition?

Manpacks makes shopping simple for men (and the people who love them)
by automating the basics and allowing them to do the things they really
want to in life, like build empires, climb mountains or slay dragons.

2. What motivated you to first get involved?

While working on another project myself and my co-founder, Ken
Johnson, had a conversation about creating a service that would be
simple, free up time and create recurring revenue for us, within 20
minutes the basic concept had been hashed out and the domain secured.

3. What has been the single most exciting thing that has happened so far?

I’m not sure there’s just one, the last year has been an incredible
ride, allowing me to quit doing contract/consulting work and focus on
service/product based web services. Being invited to speak at a
conference in Ireland was definitely huge, but I think the biggest was
simply creating something that resonated with others enough that they
signed up and shared the service with their friends.

4. What has been your biggest challenge and what did you do to get past it?

Probably the startup incubator we took part in this summer – we were
forced to answer tough questions about what we were doing, continue
supporting a growing business, doing multiple presentations in front of
our peers, the community and other venues.

It’s a bit of a cliché, but my attitude to getting past any challenge
is to just do it, there’s so many safety nets and other things in place
in western society that ending up in a position worse than you
currently are in is very difficult, and if you end up at the same spot
you currently are, just keep iterating and trying, eventually you’ll
have a net gain somewhere.

5. Why did you choose the life of an entrepreneur or intrapreneur?

It partly chose me, many in my extended family have been
self-employed and built businesses in the past, I knew I would
eventually do that too, and through a series of layoffs in the early
2000’s, I just started working for myself and nine years later here I
am.

6. If you had one piece of advice for other entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs, what would it be?

Ideas are the cheap & the easy part, execution is the difficult, time-consuming part, and where the true rewards come.

(This is the first in a series profiling the winners of Exploriem.org Bootstrap Awards 2011.)

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 2:21 pm

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         Entrepreneur Sayings and Quotations        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 20 February 2011  
     
   
       

Some Quotes from Prof Bruce and Fellow Travelers to Help Entrepreneurs Along their Way
(For Quotes 1 to 600, please refer to: https://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1084.)

601. “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way,” Aristotle.
602. “Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes,” Benjamin Disraeli.
603. “Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game,
because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own
standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to
mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into
it,” Seth Godin.
604. “It is what it is,” Erich Fried.
605. “An idea is salvation by imagination,” Frank Lloyd Wright.
606. “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution,”-Hannah Arendt.
607. “Never start a business without a succession plan. That way, you
can be sure you will have created a lasting enterprise,” Prof Bruce.
608. “There is never a good time to have kids, so why wait?” Prof Bruce.
609. “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman,” Margaret Thatcher.
610. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” Harlan Ellison.
611. “It is easier to die for one’s principles than to live up to them,” Alfred Adler.
612. “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom,” Bob Dylan.
613. “Until you find something worth dying for, you’re not really living,” Rebecca St. James.
614. “A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting
along with people, of getting things done,” Dwight D. Eisenhower.
615. “The things you own, they end up owning you,” Chuck Palahniuk.
616. “Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember,” Seneca the Younger.
617. “The joy that isn’t shared dies young,” Anne Sexton.
618. “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another…,” Luciano de Crescenzo.
619. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing,” Warren Buffet.
620. “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom,” Malcolm X.
621. “If I had listened to the people, they would have gotten faster horses,” Henry Ford.
622. “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade,” Rabindranath Tagore.
623. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today,” Malcolm X.
624. “Of all man’s miseries the bitterest is this, to know so much and to have control over nothing,” Herodotus.
625. “To have money is to have power, to be able to reach out with long arms…for good or for ill,” Prof Bruce.
626. “Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life,” Bertolt Brecht.
627. “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible,” St. Thomas Aquinas.
628. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” Anais Nin.
629. “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
630. “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors,” African proverb.
631. “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises,” Demosthenes.
632. “Make sure your everyone around you pulls up their own socks. It’s hard enough just minding your own,” Prof Bruce.
633. “A dozen little kids will slaughter three big men in tug o war, not
just because they weigh more but because they develop a lot more
friction. So remember that 12 customers paying something is a lot better
than none paying everything,” Prof Bruce.
634. “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,” Confucius.
635. “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew,” Marshall McLuhan.
636. “Wisdom outweighs any wealth,” Sophocles.
637. “Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses,” Confucius.
638. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin
it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently,” Warren
Buffet.
639. “Do not fear- only believe. All things are possible to him that believes,” Jesus of Nazareth.
640. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop,” Confucius.
641. “Don’t count the days, make the days count,” Muhammad Ali.
642. “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought,” Jonathan Swift.
643. “Relatives are the family we are born with; Friends are the family we choose,” Carlos Robinson.
644. “When there’s an accident on the track and the other drivers take
their foot off the gas, I put mine down,” probably by Jean-Pierre Sarti,
fictional Formula One driver in the film, Grand Prix.
645. “You’ve heard of horse whisperers and dog whisperers. Well, what we need is more startup whisperers,” Prof Bruce.
646. “Want to make better presentations and make more sales? Then
remember to smile when you walk into that room,” Professor O. J.
Firestone.
647. “If you get the business model right, the harder you work, the more money you make rather than the reverse,” Prof Bruce.
648. “You don’t have to be a genius to create a great business model but
you do have to have something that differentiates you from the
competition,” Prof Bruce.
649. “For the first time in 10,000 years of recorded history, we can
mass customize products and services by reversing out much of the work
to customers and suppliers through the intermediary of the Internet,”
Prof Bruce.
650. “By connecting and matching clients with suppliers through an
Internet application, we can create scalable service businesses for the
first time,” Prof Bruce.
651. “If you have a great idea but lousy execution you are going to get
stomped by someone who has a mediocre idea but great execution: just
look at the toy industry,” Prof Bruce.
652. “How cool is it that we can create custom products from standard inputs?” Professor John Callahan.
653. “Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!” Harvey Logan.
654. “Entrepreneurs make up their own rules as they go along,” Prof Bruce.
655. “All teaching should be augmented by a learn-by-doing approach,” Prof Bruce.
656. “If a predictable level of income is important to you, get a JOB,” Prof Bruce.
657. “If you never read the instructions and prefer to figure things out
as you go, maybe you’re cut out to be an entrepreneur,” Prof Bruce.
658. “If you have a fallback position or a Plan ‘B’, you’ve set yourself up to fail,” Prof Bruce.
659. “You’re either in the boat paddling like heck to get to the other
side of the ocean or you’re onshore. You can’t have one foot in the
entrepreneur’s boat and one foot onshore,” Prof Bruce.
660. “If you have a Plan ‘B’, it becomes Plan ‘A’,” Prof Bruce.
661. “If you had to take care of a pet when you were a kid, you probably
know how to take care of a startup now that you are an adult,” Prof
Bruce.
662. “If your parent or parents or grandparents were entrepreneurs, you probably are too,” Prof Bruce.
663. “Entrepreneurs have to do everything in parallel. So if you can’t juggle, get a JOB instead,” Prof Bruce.
664. “There are no ‘fire and forget missiles’ in business. You have to check everything,” Prof Bruce.
665. “I’m glad I started most of the businesses I have been involved
with before the age of the Internet arrived because there is always
someone working on the same idea as you are and it is quite intimidating
to find that out before you launch,” Sir Terence Matthews.
666. “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then,” Bob Seger.
667. “When you say ‘no one else is doing this’ you are undoubtedly
misinformed. There are tens of millions of smart Americans, Chinese,
Indians and others in their basements, right now, thinking up great
ideas including yours,” Prof Bruce.
668. “Standards like, say, a common language, a common currency, a set
of Laws, Internet Protocol, Building Code, Electrical Code, traffic
management, file extensions, fax transmission, temperature, date, time,
distance, weight, volume, accounting, railway gauge and 18,000 other
things covered by ISO have always made everyone wealthier by reducing
transaction costs, allowing all of us to ‘talk to each other’, reducing
barriers to entry and upping innovation. So why hasn’t the tech industry
got its act together?” Prof Bruce.
669. “There are many forms of government: democratic, socialist,
communist, dictatorship, kingdom, feudal, Utopian, libertarian, gift,
communal, kleptocratic, mafia, friends of the boss, religious, tribal,
military, anarchic, council, money-based, Klingon, Romulan, Federation.
It turns out that democracy has a bit of them all,” Prof Bruce.
670. “As you get older, you change: from wanting more quantity to
wanting more quality in pretty much everything. But why wait til you’re
older?” Prof Bruce.
671. “It’s a privilege to do it and it’s voluntary, so stop wingeing
about your critics being unfair and get on with the job,” Cherie Booth
to husband and PM Tony Blair.
672. “When you are a downhill skier, you know that if you don’t fall
occasionally, you’re not learning or pushing hard enough. Same thing in
entrepreneurship,” Prof Bruce.
673. “An entrepreneur is someone who does everything in parallel, i.e., they can suck and whistle at the same time,” Prof Bruce.
674. “If you are starting a new enterprise, it would be nice to be able
to talk to a ’startup whisperer’, someone who has a natural feel for
what it takes to build a successful new venture, an unconventional
mentor,” Prof Bruce.
675. “Sell what you have not what others say they wished you had,” Prof Bruce.
676. “People don’t like to say ‘no’ to a salesperson so instead they
give you the ‘hoop treatment’: they keep raising the hoop, until you,
the trained poodle, can’t jump any higher,” Prof Bruce.
677. “When someone says they would buy what you have to sell if only you
made a few changes first, what they are actually saying is ‘no’,” Prof
Bruce.
678. “If you sell your advertising properties in pairs and for a term of
not less than two years then you’ve just cut your workload by ¾,”
Prof Bruce.
679. “The most beautiful home in the world is the one you drive up to and there’s no mortgage on it,” Anon.
680. “The owners of Pizza Pizza make millions but they still have their eyes on my pennies,” Pizza Pizza Franchisee.
681. “It was easy to make money with my new Pizza Pizza franchise: all I
had to do was work 16 hours a day for the first three years, lose money
each day for the first two and keep a smile on my face at the same
time,” Pizza Pizza Franchisee.
682. “Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is,” Walter Wriston.
683. “Our greatest fear as individuals should not be of failure, but of
succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter,” New Tribes
Missionary.
684. “The best test to use before you press ’send’ is whether you are OK
with the content of your email showing up on the front page of your
local newspaper,” Prof Bruce.
685. “When you want to get even with someone and send them an angry email, don’t do either,” Prof Bruce.
686. “You need a little suspension of disbelief if you want to be an entrepreneur,” Prof Bruce.
687. “The reason artists are studying entrepreneurship now is that they want to get rich while they’re still alive,” Prof Bruce.
688. “A harsh environment is a good thing,” Terry Gou.
689. “Facts tell, stories sell,” Saul Jacobson.
690. “I look for players with the character to know right from wrong and to conduct their lives by that knowledge,” Sean Payton.
691. “John Maynard Keynes may have said: ‘It’s better for your
reputation if you fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally’ but
entrepreneurs know better,” Prof Bruce.
692. “You know what happens if you are the owner of a NHL team and the
coach tells you the team bus leaves at 12:30 and you’re 30 seconds late?
It’s gone,” Prof Bruce.
693. “The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things
that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events
that occur,” Vince Lombardi.
692. “We could have finished last without you,” Atlanta Braves Manager.
693. “It’s hard to win a pennant, but it’s harder losing one,” Chuck Tanner.
694. “If a team wants to intimidate you physically and you let them, they’ve won,” Mia Hamm.
695. “The vision of a champion is someone bent over, drenched in sweat,
to a point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching,” Anson Dorrance.
696. “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail,” Roy Keane.
697. “Every battle plan, every business plan or model changes, often
unrecognizably, after coming into contact with the enemy or the
marketplace,” Prof Bruce.
698. “Know your exact plan of attack. Then adjust,” Jon Gruden.
699. “Show some adaptability,” Marine Corps Unofficial Motto.
700. “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true,” Bertolt Brecht.
701. “Give a lawyer one problem to solve and they’ll come back with two more,” Anon.
702. “If you want to be able to sell, you have to know and understand
your client’s business almost as well as you know your own,” Prof Bruce.
703. “A signed contract has as much value as the intention of the other side to actually honour it,” Prof Bruce.
704. “To win in life, overcome obstacles. Along the way, climb mountains,” Mike Shanahan.
705. “You have to sell to your suppliers because you trust them to
perform on time and on budget and they trust you to pay them,” Prof
Bruce.
706. “Suppliers will often give your startup access to credit and even
sometimes cash. Why? Because if you succeed, they have created another,
loyal customer for themselves,” Prof Bruce.
707. “Your customers will often give your startup its first orders and
sometimes even cash deposits. Why? Because if you succeed they have
created another link in their supply chain,” Prof Bruce.
708. “If you ever get into trouble, you can go four places for help: to
your shareholders & Directors, your employees, your suppliers and
customers; after all, they want you to stick around as part of the
business ecosystem,” Prof Bruce.
709. “Every time you draw a line on a piece of paper, at least as far as
real estate is concerned, you create additional value,” Prof Bruce.
710. “Even in very small businesses, there are probably things you are
doing that you should stop doing by outsourcing them, closing them or
selling them,” Prof Bruce.
711. “If you could differentiate every square foot of your office space,
or for that matter, any product offering, you’ll command higher prices,
better margins and lower vacancy rates,” Prof Bruce.
712. “We once sold a word processing business inside a mini office
business that was losing $3,000 a month to an entrepreneur for $50,000.
Within 90-days she turned that around and was taking home $5k a month.
Shows what a narrower focus and an emphasis on core competencies can
do…for both parties,” Prof Bruce.
713. “Never act against your own best interests out of spite,” Prof Bruce.
714. “The stock market is for insiders,” Professor OJ Firestone.
715. “Pricing is an art. If you can break your price into two, like,
‘buy this car for $9,000, engine extra’, you’ll sell more,” Prof Bruce.
716. “Commercial Landlords know a lot about the art of pricing. They
quote you a low net net net rent on usable area then add operating
costs, property taxes, utilities priced at retail, administration costs
and common area charges, all based on rentable area (your usable area
grossed up for common area),” Prof Bruce.
717. “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain
the largest possible amount of quills with the smallest possible amount
of hissing,” Jean Baptiste Colbert.
718. “Lenders are just like everyone else, highly influenced by good
media coverage and bad. So make sure yours is good,” Prof Bruce.
719. “The worst time to cut your marketing budget is when your sales are
in the dumpster. It’s also the easiest time to do it,” Prof Bruce.
720. “Out of crisis, opportunity but only if you can see it and seize it,” Prof Bruce.
721. “Recessions provide great political cover for actions you should have taken anyway,” Prof Bruce.
722. “Governments keep all the best businesses for themselves like
lotteries, casinos, alcohol, energy and, of course, taxation,” Prof
Bruce.
723. “In what other business could you raise prices without regard to
the value you are delivering and, if the customer doesn’t pay, you can
get an ex parte judgment against them and, if they still don’t pay, you
can jail them? It’s called the government,” Prof Bruce.
724. “Did you know that top shopping centres in Canada produce more than
$1,000 per square foot in sales each year? But top casinos produce more
than $5,000 per square foot and they do that every day,” Prof Bruce.
725. “Hire your toughest competitor,” Prof Bruce.
726. “In real estate markets, you have to buy before the bottom of the
market. If you wait for the bottom, market psychology has already turned
positive and Sellers won’t sell. So it turns out you can never actually
buy at the bottom just like, for the same reason, you can never sell
exactly at the top of the market,” Prof Bruce.
727. “Never regret selling too soon if you made a profit,” Professor OJ Firestone.
728. “If you are thinking of a second career or starting a new business,
remember what Malcolm Gladwell said: it’ll take you 10,000 hours to
master it,” Prof Bruce.
729. “If you’ve spent years building up a skill set, why dump it to start something new? Ever heard of a holiday?” Prof Bruce.
730. “There is no such thing as a human colony with zero environmental
impact, we have always made a mess of things. It’s just that now there
are so many more of us and we do everything on an industrial scale,”
Prof Bruce.
731. “Humans with their big brains and opposable thumbs have always
liked shaping the environment around them; startups are in us,” Prof
Bruce.
732. “A tree here or there in the city is not an environmental issue
although from the hullabaloo from local politicians and nimby’ites you
might think it is. If you want to see a real environmental issue, check
out the deforestation of Canada’s boreal forests or the burn off in the
Amazon basin,” Prof Bruce.
733. “I recently had the opportunity to speak to two MIT physicists;
they don’t speak a word of ‘business’ but then, that’s up to you,” Prof
Bruce.
734. “Want to see how a narrow focus works? Think about being NBC, CBS
or ABC and competing in sports with ESPN, news with CNN and TV series
with HBO,” Prof Bruce.
735. “I am quite sure coaches’ decision making would improve if they
practiced more too and had a better brain trust around them,” Prof
Bruce.
736. “Sometimes, despite everyone telling you one thing, an entrepreneur
has to do the other. You just have to know which is which,”Prof Bruce.
737. “I have an international speed limit theory: the speed at which
business can move in your city depends on legal, accounting and
financial services plus its culture too. If Hong Kong is 100, then NYC
is 10, Toronto is 1 and Ottawa is .1,” Prof Bruce.
738. “If you’re mad at your parents for how your life turned out, quit it and get on with your life,” Prof Bruce.
739. “If you are waiting for your parents to die so you can be rich, do
the math. If the last one lives to 90 and they had you when they were
25, you’ll be an old age pensioner when you finally read the will only
to discover: a) the IRS is owed the bulk of their fortune or b) they
spent it all or c) gave it to the dog,” Prof Bruce.
740. “The information economy is at least 10,000 years old: if I saw
that you were good at hunting antelopes and you knew that I was good at
making flint knives and, if we both decided to specialize in what we do
best, there would be an explosion in our little village’s GDP,” Prof
Bruce.
741. “Defending a lawsuit is a lot like defending Stalingrad. You can
kill two or three attackers for every one you lose,” Prof Bruce.
742. “Litigation is a last resort but if someone is trying to kill your
business with it, ‘go to the mattresses’ as the mafia would say,” Prof
Bruce.
743. “In defensing a litigation, delay is often a winning strategy,” Prof Bruce.
744. “One day for you is one less for your enemy,” Prof Bruce.
745. “If you don’t think you have any enemies, you’re just not looking hard enough,” Prof Bruce.
746. “80 percent of your sales comes from 20 percent of your clients,” The Pareto Principle.
747. “It’s OK to fire a client,” Prof Bruce.
748. “Stephen Covey teaches us not to be driven unconsciously by the
‘tyranny’ of the urgent but (mostly) unimportant but instead to focus
and spend more time on the non-urgent, important things in life and
business. If you are always being pushed around by urgent tasks, you
will never establish a business that is sustainable, that will have a
life beyond you, its Founder,” Prof Bruce.
749. “Who pays whom? In the modern economy it isn’t always obvious.
Should the cable company pay ABC because ABC has Diane Sawyer and
Primetime News or should ABC pay the cable company because it has the
feed into millions of homes? Steve Jobs figured that out before he
launched the iPhone when he insisted that AT&T give him a share of
its subscriber revenues and he would give them a share of app revenues;
with that, he revolutionized yet another industry’s biz model,” Prof
Bruce.
750. “You can think your way to wealth a lot faster than you can work your way there,” Prof Bruce.
751. “Whether you are running for office, managing a complex
organization or masterminding a huge wartime effort, the ability of your
team in the ‘war room’ to react quickly, correctly and in a coordinated
fashion as new circumstances arise is crucial to success,” Prof Bruce.
752. “Spock, I’ve found that evil usually triumphs unless good is very, very careful,” Dr. Leonard McCoy.
753. “Freedom, that is a worship word of the Yangs,” Cloud William.
754. “Entrepreneurs know that nothing is ever really ‘free’ and they don’t expect or want anything for free,” Prof Bruce.
755. “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character said: ‘I’ll be back’. That’s also the entrepreneur’s credo,” Prof Bruce.
756. “Entrepreneurs are eternal optimists; their headstones should read:
‘Here Lies Entrepreneur Bill, He’s Life-Challenged’,” based on
‘Bizzarro’ by Dan Piraro.
757. “Playing it safe never works. Ever watch ‘Final Destination’?” Prof Bruce.
758. “Entrepreneurs are too busy inventing the future to bother about predicting it,” Anon.
759. “If you play not to lose, you will,” Jim Rome.
760. “Work with you have have not you wish you wish you had,” Peter Harris.
761. “Don’t be afraid of going slowly, only be afraid of standing still,” Arnel Santos, ‘The Turtle Principle’.
762. “From the first time you walked to school by yourself, you started
to become the boss of you. So take advantage,” Prof Bruce.
763. “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well,” Zig Ziglar.
764. “Many entrepreneurs feel that access to high cost capital is better than no access,” Prof Bruce.
765. “A bad business with money is still a bad business,” Robert Herjavec.
766. “I would rather invest in someone who has failed three times than someone who has never run a business,” Kevin O’Leary.
767. If you do this for the rest of your life and all you do is making a
living out of it, will you be happy? If the answer is yes, go for it,”
Robert Herjavec.
768. “We do things this way because we’ve always done it this way. We’ll
always do things this way because that’s the way it’s done,” Moron
Business Executive.
769. “Startups often think that giving up equity to employees, partners,
angels and VCs is a cheap way to finance their companies. If you are
successful, it’s the most expensive,” Prof Bruce.
770. “It’s axiomatic that there are only 10 tens in a 100 so be careful
how you divvy up the equity in your new startup,” prof Bruce.
771. “After getting back alive, I realized that every day is a holiday,” American Vietnam Vet Larry Cochran.
772. “When you’re a salesman and you don’t have money, then ipso facto you are authentic,” Ted Wright.
773. “Everyone in your organization is in sales,” Prof Bruce.
774. “Plans change, goals don’t,” Prof Bruce.
775. “When ‘experts’ are talking bafflegab, it’s because they don’t know what to do and won’t admit it,” Dawn MacMillan.
776. “Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’
That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now,
let’s write a swimming pool’,” Paul McCartney.
777. “I believe that business modeling is the key to decoding the DNA of successful startups,” Prof Bruce.
778. “Expecting the best from people can be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Daniel Goleman.
779. “Want to become indispensable to your clients? Then digitize all
their information and know where to find it fast on your PC,” Prof
Bruce.
780. “Businesses and business models based on Open Standards will win, I am sure of it,” Prof Bruce.
781. “Don’t wait for your ship to come in…swim out and meet the bloody thing,” Barry Sheene.
782. “Chase your passion, not your pension,” Denis Waitley.
783. “The best way to predict your future is to create it,” David Shepherd.
784. “Habitually double check every knot….whether or not your life depends on it,” Allan Beckett.
785. “Form an early (and lasting) attachment to the customer,” Sir Terence Matthews.
786. “Stay team focused—superstars must park their egos at the door,” Sir Terence Matthews.
787. “Create a great biz first and cool tech second,” Sir Terence Matthews.
788. “Leverage your investment with government grants and OPM, Other People’s Money,” Sir Terence Matthews.
789. “Follow a global mandate from the get go—Canada is too small a market to be the primary focus,” Sir Terence Matthews.
790. “Not only should you go after every geography, you also want to go after every vertical,” Sir Terence Matthews.
791. “Standing is more tiring that walking,” Paradox.
792. “If it’s to be, it’s up to me,” Anon.
793. “Opportunity always comes disguised in work clothes,” Anon.
794. “You have to have a dream, if you want to make a dream come true,” Anon.
795. “None of the characters central to the (Facebook) story really cared that much about getting rich,” Ben Mezrich.
796. “It’s easy to miss an iceberg provided you turn early enough,” Prof Bruce.
797. “To entrepreneurs, the unattainable is unknown,” Prof Bruce.
798. “I have found that ‘great’ ideas that are never tested in the real world tend to suck,” Prof Bruce.
799. “If you start a business in which you don’t have any expertise, you
begin at the top and work your way to the bottom from there,” Prof
Bruce.
800. “Entrepreneurs know in their guts that the only reason the waters
are calm is because they haven’t looked behind them recently to see the
next huge wave about to crash down on their heads,” Prof Bruce.
801. “Your business will never go out of ’style’ as long as your value proposition doesn’t either,” Prof Bruce.
802. “There are many things you need to know about your business that can only be discovered after you start it,” Prof Bruce.
803. “To be sustainable, every business needs to control some kind of
‘franchise’ or ‘concession’, also known as a value proposition,” Prof
Bruce.
804. “The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan,” Carl von Clausewitz.
805. “Corporate get-togethers should only be held in order to celebrate or teach or both,” Prof Bruce.
806. “Want more clients? Then be as passionate about their business as they are,” Prof Bruce.
807. “Want more sales? Then don’t ask a client for a retainer, ask them for coffee,” Prof Bruce.
808. “As an entrepreneur you have to believe, on your darkest day, that better days lie ahead,” Prof Bruce.
809. “When Tenants of ours got into trouble, we didn’t distrain or sue
them. We worked with them and guess what? We saved about half,” Prof
Bruce.
810. “Put a human face on all aspects of your business and watch client retention rates jump,” Prof Bruce.
811. “Faces count, even in the Internet age. So why do so many ‘About Us’ pages tell you nothing about anyone?” Prof Bruce.
812. “If Steve Jobs had been afraid to ask for a share of AT&T’s
subscribers’ fees, where would the iPhone have gotten its recurring
revenues?” Prof Bruce.
813. “When you have several pieces moving around at the same time, if
you nail one in place, often the whole project will crystallize around
it,” Prof Bruce.
814. “I’m like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz: I have half a brain. My computer is the other half,” Prof Bruce.
815. “If a judge is nodding ‘yes’ to your opponent in court, he or she
should worry. Judges don’t like to be overturned on appeal,” Prof Bruce.
816. “If a friend of yours promises to vote with you on a BOD and then
doesn’t, it could be because of strategic voting: you were going to lose
anyway,” Prof Bruce.
817. “Selling is persuasion. Marketing is persuasion. Every business
meeting is based on persuasion…. You can do all of them better if you
understand how the mind works, how people think,” Scott Adams.
818. “Authentic goals become self-fulfilling prophecies,” Prof Bruce.
819. “Authenticity comes when heart, head and gut are all in alignment,” Prof Bruce.
820. “A typical entrepreneurial battle plan sends scouts out to quickly
and cheaply take as much territory as possible/later slow-moving armor
and infantry move in to secure the gains,” Prof Bruce.
821. “Bend but don’t break,” Defensive Coordinator.
822. “Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure,” Earl Wilson.
823. “No pressure, no diamonds,” Mary Case.
824. “By spending time in the past, reliving old glories or getting even
with old foes, you’ll never have any new ones,” Prof Bruce.
825. “Learn to swim instead of worrying about drowning,” David J Schwartz.
826. “Entrepreneurs don’t turn down any orders no matter how big they
are; they just find a way to produce on time and on budget,” Prof Bruce.
827. “The reason I think you need to have at least three launch clients
is that you can probably convince one fool or maybe two but not three,”
Prof Bruce.
828. “Sometimes I go to a meeting by myself knowing I’m going to be
outnumbered but it disarms people so they stop negotiating & start
talking,” Prof Bruce.
829. “No matter how fast you run, you can’t win if your biz model is
broken. I can beat Usain Bolt in the 100m … if I start at the 80m mark,”
Prof Bruce.
830. “Fear of loss is a stronger motivator than desire for gain so if
you want to make more sales, get customer buy-in early and often,” Prof
Bruce.
831. “To be a clutch performer, you need focus, adaptability,
discipline, be present mentally and a combination of fear of failure and
desire to succeed,” Paul Sullivan.
832. “Anyone who thinks people make rational decisions just hasn’t done enough deals yet,” Prof Bruce.
833. “I never want to hear from someone who works for me just to prove
how hard they’re working; I just want RESULTS,” Prof Bruce.
834. “If you give someone, who ‘runs onto the field & moves the
goalposts’ during a deal, incentive, don’t be surprised when they do,”
Prof Bruce.
835. “Ruskies never do anything without a plan. You should too but assume the best yet prepare for the worst,” Prof Bruce.
836. “Whenever I leave a sales presentation, I leave behind 2 or 3
reasons why they should buy from us. 2 or 3 not 10. No one can remember
10,” Prof Bruce.
837. “As you get older, you realize that the only people you should have
around you for the rest of your life are both tested & trusted,”
Prof Bruce.
838. “You need to stiffen the spine of people around you so you are not
the only person standing up for your organization,” Prof Bruce.
839. “Engineers want to be perfect but in business, you have to settle for good or, maybe, great,” Prof Bruce.
840. “Harvard students would rather invent a job than find one,” Larry Summers.
841. “It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting,” John Shook.
842. “Entrepreneurs don’t really like to ask for free stuff, they want to trade with you instead,” Prof Bruce.
843. “Be nice to your employees even if you don’t feel like it; they’ll work harder and smarter if you do,” Prof Bruce.
844. “Corporate culture is about how you behave not what you think,” Prof Bruce.
845. “Never lie to someone who trusts you; never trust someone who lies to you,” Lumen Anne Pierce, character on Dexter.
846. “If you’re only in it for the money, you won’t see any,” Prof Bruce.
847. “Do what’s right for your clients and that’s what’s right for you,” Prof Bruce.
848. “Sell like you don’t need the commission,” Steve Mitchell.
849. “If you’re not seriously embarrassed by the first product you
shipped, you probably waited too long,” Anonymous California VC.
850. “Declarative knowledge means you understand a concept; procedural
knowledge means you know how to put that concept into action.
Entrepreneurs do both,” Prof Bruce.
851. “The reason people might be tenants or employees rather than owners
is that they may not have the right mental stance for it,” Prof Bruce.
852. “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future,” Marshall McLuhan.
853. “Money is the poor man’s credit card,” Marshall McLuhan.
854. “Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade,” Marshall McLuhan.
855. “Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business,” Marshall McLuhan.
856. “Give me a nickel,” Expert Negotiator.
857. “If your excuse for not doing something is that you’ve never done it before, you’ll never do anything,” Prof Bruce.
858. “Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t tell if a girl was interested in a date
since she didn’t carry a sign which led to the innovative ‘relationship
status’ feature on FB. Opportunity lies where you find it,” Prof Bruce.
859. “Got a problem you can’t solve? Get up/move/breathe/stretch/change
rooms/do something else. The answer will pop into your head
momentarily,” Prof Bruce.
860. “You can control your upside by planning your way there but you
don’t plan your way to failure so why worry about it,” Prof Bruce.
861. “You can invest your way to wealth a lot faster than you can save your way there,” Prof Bruce.
862. “Want longer arms? Then hire up. Great hires provide you with
terrific leverage for the time and brain power you invest in your
business,” Prof Bruce.
863. “Leverage in business comes from 8 sources: great HR, using OPM,
forced savings, innovation, capital equipment, location, brand &
inflation” Prof Bruce.
864. “You can talk about your work or do it but not both,” Prof Bruce.
865. “In real estate terms, if you occupy a particular location, it
obviously means that no one else can, so make it a good one,” Prof Bruce
866. “Entrepreneurs get ‘magic from a hat’, that’s really what they do,” Prof Bruce.
867. “Just because you could price your new product at $1.99 when your
competition is at $9.99, doesn’t mean you should. What’s wrong with
$8.99?” Prof Bruce.
868. “Existing customers are annoyed when you give another client a
price break until they get one too. Build flexibility into your pricing
model,” Prof Bruce.
869. “High returns tend to get competed away unless you continue to
innovate & you have some type of concession or franchise in your biz
model,” Prof Bruce.
870. “Got a problem you can’t solve? Get up/move/breathe/stretch/change
rooms/do something else. The answer will pop into your head
momentarily,” Prof Bruce.
871. “Play to the whistle & a little beyond is good advice for entrepreneurs too,” Prof Bruce.
872. “Steve Jobs believes that the most important decisions you make are
not the things you do, but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a
minimalist,”, John Sculley.
873. “Your call centre reps & receptionists are your real Chief
Information Officers; make sure they are the first to receive your media
releases,” Prof Bruce.
874. “Both of them (Steve Jobs & Dr. Edwin Land) had this ability to
not invent products but discover products,” John Sculley.
875. “People can copy whatever you do, especially in the age of the
Internet, but what they can’t copy is what you are going to do,” Daniel
Beauchamp.
876. “It takes time to find your voice on social media; it can’t all be
planned but must be discovered through trial & error &
feedback,” Ryan Anderson.
877. “Entrepreneurs are like Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit: trying to stay
on top of half-filled barrels as they rush down the River of Life,”
Prof Bruce.
878. “An entrepreneur looks at the probability of success; an employee, the possibility of failure.” Prof Bruce.
879. “Self knowledge is the foundation of wisdom because you can look
inside yourself & counteract your own worst tendencies,” Prof Bruce.
880. “Want to be happier? Then focus on making enough money so that your wallet is not on defibrillator mode,” Prof Bruce.
881. “Your employees ‘own’ part of your company even if you don’t know it because they are stakeholders,” Prof Bruce.
882. “I’ll tell you what happens if you don’t prepare before a
presentation or a meeting: nothing, you’ll muck it up,” Prof Bruce.
883. “I don’t pay much attention to skeptics, they’re just envious of people who actually do stuff,” Prof Bruce.
884. “An empty wallet won’t make a person happy but a full one doesn’t either,” Prof Bruce.
885. “At 14, I met McGill’s Dean of Engineering. Remember to smile, my
Dad told me. Years later the Dean said he accepted me because of the
smile,” Prof Bruce.
886. “A simple but sincere smile is a ’secret’ selling tool,” Prof Bruce.
887. “Getting good media coverage lately? Just wait awhile. Journalists
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” Prof Bruce.
888. “Politicians, journalists & other sophisticates think around
corners, 3 moves ahead of you. Don’t play their game, you’ll lose. Be
authentic,” Prof Bruce.
889. “The absence of proof isn’t, in itself, proof that a new concept or
theory is wrong & skeptics should know better. Listen to your inner
self,” Prof Bruce.
890. “Richard Branson believes that EVERYTHING should pay for itself
even his principal residence on Necker Island. Never invest to lose
money,” Prof Bruce.
891. “Cities and civilizations are created by positive people doing positive things so stay positive,” Prof Bruce.
892. “Everyone reports to someone even entrepreneurs who must report to a
Board/Bank/Partner/Investor/Customer/Analyst/Media/Spouse,” Prof Bruce.
893. “When starting a new enterprise, begin at the teeth end of the
snake not its tail; i.e., find launch clients & build it backwards
from there,” Prof Bruce.
894. “Sometimes it is better to have 2 or 3 launch clients instead of 20
or 30 so, if you muck up, you only have to say ’sorry’ a couple of
times,” Prof Bruce.
895. “By an early & relentless focus on launch clients, you get ‘wet
& splash around’ before having to swim in the deep end of the
pool,” Prof Bruce.
896. “Networking is really about remembering to thank the people who’ve
helped you, telling others about them & generally closing the loop,”
Prof Bruce.
897. “What ever happened yesterday is irrelevant; what’s important is
what’s going to happen tomorrow… I don’t have much of a reverse gear,”
Peter Brown.
898. “Creativity should not be confused with enthusiasm— truly creative ideas are not full of holes,” Prof Bruce.
899. “A successful SMEE needs you to be: an entrepreneur, manager &
technician. You cannot delegate away 100% responsibility for any one of
them,” Prof Bruce.
900. “It’s still true today that if you get in to work an hour before your competitors, you’ll eat their lunch,” Prof Bruce.
901. “Dollars are democrats,” Prof Bruce.
902. “One person with passion is worth 40 people merely interested,” Peter Brown.
903. “Some people are afraid of becoming an entrepreneur because it’s
like walking a tightrope with no net. My advice: stop looking down,”
Pierre Azzi.
904. “The people I know who are successful work hard, they’re goal
oriented, they set targets for themselves and they’re disciplined. And
when they reach their goal, two things happen: one, they get the
satisfaction of doing that, and then, two, they raise the target. If
you’re succeeding, the bar is always moving up,” Peter Brown.
905. “If you don’t mind if it ends up in your local newspaper, it’s
probably OK to send, tweet, IM, FB, text… Otherwise fuggedaboutit,” Prof
Bruce.
906. “The people you really want in leadership positions are those that don’t seek power,” Prof Bruce.
907. “The thing I ask myself almost every day is ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’” Mark Zuckerberg.
908. “Most coaches are interested in how fast you can run. Great ones want to know how much guts you have,” Anon.
907. “If you wait until all the lights are ‘green’ before you leave
home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top,” Zig Ziglar.
908. “One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must
develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s
greatest efforts,” Albert Einstein.
909. “The time it takes to reach your destination is sometimes twice as
long as the time it takes to get back home since, you might get lost,
make mistakes and have to do detours while reaching your destination.
However on the way back, the path is clear and smooth since you know
what to avoid. The same concept applies to a business, think of where
you are going with your business and then work backwards. The next steps
you need to take suddenly seem clearer,” Robert Thompson.
910. “Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal,” E. Joseph Cossman.
911. “All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things
unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong
convictions precede great actions,” James Freeman Clark.
912. “Life is short, but talent is immortal,” Anon.
913. “Don’t forget to celebrate your small successes…it will keep you energized to go the distance,” Glo Higdon.
914. “…small businesses in the United States simply do not work; the people who own them do,” Michael E. Gerber.
915. “Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at it,” Anon.
916. “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful,” Warren Buffett.
917. “Greedy people want every deal to be ‘heads I win, tails you lose.’
You know what? They almost never get deals done + everyone hates them,
Prof Bruce.
918. “In life and business, there are two cardinal sins: the first is to
act without thought, and the second is to not act at all,” Carl Icahn.
Tx 2 Allison Chen. #ec3396
919. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go,” T.S. Eliot.
920. “Opportunities multiply as they are seized,” Sun Tzu.
921. “Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it,” Bill Cosby.
922. “Whomsoever misses an opportunity, misses an opportunity,” Bob Cross.
923. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky.
924. “The odds are against you, so what?” Robert Herjavec.
925. “The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds,” Samuel Clemens.
926. “If you can’t smile, don’t open a store,” Anon.
927. “Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement,” Randy Pausch.
928. “You can take the smartest kid at Wharton, the one who gets
straight A’s and has a 170 IQ, and if he doesn’t have the instincts,
he’ll never be a successful entrepreneur,” Donald Trump.
929. “Money isn’t everything but you can buy freedom with it and freedom is everything,” Arian Foster.
930. “The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth,” Seth Godin.
931. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” Anon.
932. “Those mundane and tedious little things that, when done exactly
right, with the right kind of attention and intention, form in their
aggregate a distinctive essence, an evanescent quality that
distinguishes every great business you’ve ever done business with from
its more mediocre counterparts whose owners are satisfied to simply get
through the day,” Michael E. Gerber.
933. “The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that
a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes
everything either as a blessing or a curse,” Don Juan.
934. “Nothing in this world that’s worth having comes easy,” Bob Kelso.
935. “To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need the
reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of
an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do,” Anthony Greenbank.
936. “Your business is either growing or it’s dying, even if you don’t know it,” Prof Bruce.
937. “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave,” Ronald Reagan.
938. “Whoever said: ‘It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one’s
enemies. It is the successes of one’s friends that are hard to bear,’
has no friends,” Prof Bruce.
939. “If you spend all your time in the trenches, you will not be
successful in biz. If you spend all your time at 30,000 sf, you won’t be
either,” Prof Bruce.
940. “Live today as you wish to live tomorrow by bringing the future into the present moment,” David Engwicht.
941. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall
into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not
much.” Jim Rohn.
942. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail,” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
943. “Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they
want to, when all they need is one reason why they can,” Willis R.
Whitney.
944. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost
300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and
missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is
why I succeed,” Michael Jordan.
945. “My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job,” Ted Turner.
946. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune,” Jim Rohn.
947. “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort,” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
948. “Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners,”Robert T. Kiyosaki.
949. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to
succeed is always to try just one more time,” Thomas Edison.
950. “If a colleague & I schedule a meeting & one of us can’t
go, the other does. It’s called a tag team approach; worked for
wrestlers & for us,” Prof Bruce.
951. “I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to
act like a great company long before it became one,” Tom Watson.
952. “The Entrepreneurial Model … fulfills the perceived needs of a
specific segment of customers in an innovative way,” Michael E. Gerber.
953. “Know what you do, do what you know,” Peter Hauderowicz.
954. “I carry around a piece of paper that says: ‘It’s Real Estate,
Stupid’ to remind me to ALWAYS invest in something I know something
about,” Prof Bruce.
955. “If you work on your business instead of in it, you will fail. You must do both,” Prof Bruce.
956. “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things,” Theodore Levitt.
957. “If you build it, they will come,” misquote from Field of Dreams.
959. “The Godfather tells his son, Michael Corleone, not to be careless,
to go over things again & again to get it right. Same for
entrepreneurs,” Prof Bruce.
960. “The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the
latter know more facts… The difference between stupid and intelligent
people–and this is true whether or not they are well-educated– is that
intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by
ambiguous or even contradictory situations– in fact, they expect them
and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly
straightforward,” Constable Moore in Neal Stephenson’s ‘The Diamond
Age’.
961. “Let us never fear to negotiate. But let us never negotiate out of fear,” John F. Kennedy.
962. “When you win, nothing hurts,” Joe Namath.
963. “Everyone should do two things each day that they hate to do, just for practice,” William James.
964. “When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of
my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say, and
two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say,” Abraham
Lincoln.
965. “Most people forget that while you are looking out through your eyes, others are looking back through theirs,” Prof Bruce.
966. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” John Wooden.
967. “It’s what you learn after you know it all, that counts,” Harry Truman.
968. “Whenever two people meet, there are six people present. There is
each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and
each man as he really is,” William James.
969. “When I’m angry, I count to ten before I speak. When I’m very angry, I count to one hundred,” Thomas Jefferson.
970. “You don’t know what pressure is until you play for five bucks with only two bucks in your pocket,” Lee Trevino.
971. “The best way to get what you want is to help the other side get what they want,” Ron Shapiro.
972. “Whatever you are most passionate about is what you will be best at,” Prof Bruce.
973. “When negotiating, you’ll get further if you ask a question rather than demand an answer,” Prof Bruce.
974. “What I hear, I forget. What I read, I remember. What I do, I understand,” Confucius.
975. “In negotiations, try to get agreement on the little things first—to build momentum and trust,” Prof Bruce.
976. “In deal making, try for WIN-win. Big win for you, little win for the other side,” Ron Shapiro.
977. “It’s not the sale, it’s the relationship that counts,” MBNA Bank.
978. “Negotiation is the commerce of information for ultimate gain,” Ron Shapiro.
979. “I think the future will be brick and clicks not just clicks and not just bricks,” Prof Bruce.
980. “Negotiating with amateurs takes forever: they’re never prepared
& can’t make a decision because they’re never sure it’s the right
one,” prof Bruce.
981. “When negotiating, if you know what you want & what they want,
you are way ahead of any negotiator who only knows half the equation,”
Prof Bruce.
982. “Bad things happen to good people. Maybe a client doesn’t pay &
you go bankrupt. You’ve 3 days to pick yourself up & get on with
your life,” Prof Bruce.
983. “I hate to lose more than I like to win,” Jimmy Connors.
984. “Prepare, probe, and propose,” Ron Shapiro.
985. “To determine what is important in your life, let Death be your advisor,” Don Juan.
986. “It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the
degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to
seek exactness where only an approximation is possible,” Aristotle.
987. “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are
any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats,” Howard Aiken.
988. “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong,” Mahatma Gandhi.
987. “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough,” Mario Andretti.
988. “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it,” Pablo Picasso.
989. “A committee is twelve men doing the work of one,” John F. Kennedy.
990. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence,” Robert Frost.
991. “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will,” Mahatma Gandhi.
992. “If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway,” Anon.
993. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” Albert Einstein.
994. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away,”Antoine de Saint Exupery.
995. “All that we are is the result of what we have thought,” Buddha.
996. “Do or do not… there is no try,” Yoda.
997. “You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won’t back down. No I won’t back down,” Tom Petty.
998. “Once you become an entrepreneur, it’s almost impossible to become an employee again—it’s a one-way journey,” Prof Bruce.
999. “Almost everything humans do is ultimately an act of faith despite all the analysis and debate,” Prof Bruce.
1000. “A witty saying proves nothing,” Voltaire.

Hope this was helpful,

Prof

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 4:35 pm

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5 Comments

         Cash Conversion Cycle, CCC        

       
   Posted on
       Friday 4 February 2011  
     
   
       

Plus How the CCC Affects Your Internal Rate of Return,
The Power of Leverage to Work for You and Against You, and
Effectively Manage your Enterprise by Measuring your Cash Position

Entrepreneurs intuitively understand the importance of the old saw:
“Collect early, pay late.” Most SMEEs are bootstrapped and most
bootstrapped SMEEs are chronically short of cash so they know in their
bones how important collecting their receivables is.

What they often don’t understand is the importance of structuring
their business models in the first place to create receivables which are
collectible earlier in the process while at the same time negotiating, in advance, terms with their suppliers that provide them with some breathing room.

The reason you negotiate terms with suppliers in advance is so that
you establish an aura of trust with them. If you tell them that you are
going to pay them in, say, 90-days, then you should do your utmost to
live up to that. Your suppliers are almost as important to your
business’ survival as your clients.

When you also find ways to minimize your inventory, you are now well
on your way to improving your cash conversion cycle even if you don’t
know what that is. In fact, the CCC is one of the most important
attributes of any business model and probably the most overlooked. If
your CCC is negative, it means you have created a model with the happy
outcome that the faster you grow your top line, the more cash you will
have on hand and cash, my friend, is King (or Queen).

Here is the Golden Rule rewritten for entrepreneurs:

“He/she who has the gold, rules.”

The most basic aim of a good business model is to help you make sure
that ‘the harder you work the more money you will make’. What good is a
fast growing business if you go broke in the process? Don’t think that
can happen to you? Sure it can if your CCC is too long.

Basically, this means that if it takes too long for you to collect
your receivables or you have to pay for your inputs too early before you
can deliver your product or service, your enterprise is doomed.

Some businesses grew as fast as they did (like Dell for example)
because they took this to heart. Dell didn’t make anything in its early
days unless they were prepaid—they kept practically nothing in
inventory. Consumers and businesses pre-ordered and pre-paid for their
PCs or laptops and, hence, Dell had a CCC that was negative—which meant
the more they sold, the more cash they had on hand which, for a startup,
is absolutely essential.

The CCC is calculated as follows:

CCC = ART + INVT – APT,

Where:

ART is Accounts Receivable at Year End multiplied by days of the year divided by Annual Sales,
INVT is Inventory at Year End multiplied by days of the year divided by COGS, Cost of Goods Sold.
APT is Accounts Payable at Year End multiplied by days of year divided by COGS.

You can read more about this at: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=610. The actual calculation of CCCs are surprisingly complex and so I put a spreadsheet online to help you with this: https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/BusinessModels/CashConversionCycleMeasurement.xls.

You may prefer using our CCC calculators in your browser, so we also put them up for you at: https://sheet.zoho.com/public/profbruce/cashconversioncyclemeasurement.

Many entrepreneurs and even some mature businesses do not give enough
thought to this. We had one client of ours, a top notch advergaming
firm, nearly go out of business despite: a. fantastic growth in their
order book, b. a client list to die for (including several Fortune 50
and Fortune 500 companies) and c. having tremendous technology and
creative resources within the business.

Each time they signed a contract, they had to hire more, highly paid
tech developers and build their ‘pipeline’ to deliver the product. They
forgot to get any (or at least not very much) money up front from their
clients and didn’t ask for or receive progress payments when they hit
certain project milestones. For complex projects that lasted a year or
more, they had to wait until delivery plus 30 days to get paid—it was
feast or famine for them.

As a result, they needed huge amounts of capital from their Bank (the
faster they grew, the more cash they needed), which predictably enough
put them in a precarious, in fact, untenable, position. I received a
panic summons from them when their Bank called their loan and they were
threatened with extinction. They had ten days to their next payroll
which they would not have been able to meet.

We got their Bank to agree to a 90-day standstill agreement and then
we asked their client base for help. Practically all of them came to
their assistance.

Today, their biz model calls for 30% deposits up front when
each new contract is signed and then progress payments that always put
the firm out front in terms of their cashflow. They usually collect two
follow-on progress payments from their clients of 30% each and, thus,
just 10% is due upon final delivery plus 30 days. Essentially, they are
like lawyers, paying themselves from ‘retainers’.

Their CCC went from over +300 days to a -40 days and the firm went on to do really great things.

Why did their clients agree to both a change in their billing formula
and provide them with cash advances so they could pay off their bank
line of credit and stay in business? Because the advergaming firm had
some leverage: they have a great brand and are one of the top three
advergaming firms in the world. So if they were to have folded, their
clients would have had to go elsewhere; their projects would in all
likelihood have been delayed  since other top firms in this field all
had bulging order books and quality would have suffered.

When you get in trouble, you can usually go to four places for help:
your shareholders and Directors, your employees, your clients and your
suppliers*. They all have a stake in your survival and will often go to
great lengths to see that you do.

(* You’ll note I didn’t say you can go to your Bank. That’s because
Canadian Banks have a habit of only lending to people who don’t need the
money.)

Another advantage from a CCC that is less than 0 is that your IRR,
Internal Rate of Return, on the equity you have invested in your
business (note: this can be cash equity, in-kind equity or sweat equity)
will likely increase significantly. Internal Rates of Return are highly
sensitive to when positive cashflows occur. If you make a significant
up front investment (negative cashflow) and it takes a long time before
you see any return on that, your IRR is likely to be low or possibly
negative even if the ultimate return is, in absolute terms, quite high.

This is the power of leverage and compounded interest rates– they can
work for you or against you. If you can borrow 50% of a project’s cost
at, say, 7% p.a. and your project’s IRR is, say, 14% then your IRR on
your equity will be roughly* 21%.

(* Please don’t calculate IRRs like this. Do them properly. Here is a simple spreadsheet for you to use: https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/IRR/SampleIRR2.xls.
This is an example of a single family home bought as an investment. In
one scenario, you capitalize the project with equity (your ‘down
payment’) of 25%. In the other, you only put down 5%. You will see that
increasing your leverage (i.e., using more debt and less equity), will
boost the IRR on your equity, at least for this example.

I have some further notes that can help you with these concepts; they are posted at: https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/IRR/IRRPowerOfLeverageGoalSetting.htm.)

Returning to our simple project above, let’s put some numbers
together. To start, say, your Summer Student Painting Business, you
borrow $1,000 at 7% p.a. interest only and put in $1,000 of your own
money. After paying all your expenses and labour, you are left with a
$280 return on capital. Of that, you have to pay $70 in interest on your
loan which leaves you with a $210 return on the $1,000 of your own
money you put in. So this is where I got the 21% ROE (Return on Equity)
from.

Now suppose you got a $1,500 loan instead? Your interest payments
will jump to $105 leaving you with just a $175 return on your equity.
But hold on, you only had to put in $500 of your own money so your ROE
has actually increased to a whopping 35% p.a.

Once student entrepreneurs figure this out, they soon decide that
starting with zero equity or negative equity (where you end up with more
cash on hand after starting the business than you had before– this is
called accretive financing) is better. Not always.

If, say, your project’s return ends up being 5%, you won’t even have
enough money to pay the interest on the loan you took out (which now
stands at $2,000). Perhaps you decided to finance the loan with a credit
card, enticed by an initial low interest rate offer of 7% from your
card issuer (basically, to get you hooked on debt).

The rates on credit cards can be changed, instantly, by card issuers
acting unilaterally and often without notice to you. Their right to do
that is somewhere in the contract you originally signed, probably in
8-point type. Pretty soon you may be paying 28% or even 35% on your card
and now you are about to enter Creditor H_ll. For more about how to
creditor proof yourself, please read: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=526.

So leverage can work for you or against you.

Archimedes Understood the Power of Leverage

Bootstrap entrepreneurs have to pay attention to when cashflows
occur, they can’t afford to have CCCs that are greater than zero and
need to have project IRRs that are significantly greater than the coupon
rate on their debt. In fact, if you are an intrapreneur or product
manager in a large firm, you’d better pay attention to this same set of
facts. I have found that most large firms are quite disciplined about
these things and they want IRRs on the firm’s cash in the range of 18%
to 22% p.a., at a minimum, and you can’t get those types of returns if,
say, your CCC is out of whack.

I estimated, for example, Apple’s Internal Rate of Return on the
iPhone at a fantastic 288% p.a. By tweaking their business model for
mobile phones, they unleashed perhaps the greatest single profit making
gadget this planet has ever seen. For more on this, please see: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1714.

I would also guess that Apple knows what its CCC is for the iPhone
and you can be sure it’s negative: they know how to keep inventory to a
minimum as well as how to pre-sell and sell their phones before they
even have to pay their suppliers.

You could also figure out that its CCC is negative just by observing
things from 30,000 feet: Apple’s cash hoard on its balance sheet has
grown from a big pile to a mountain. By the end of February 2010, Apple
had more than $40 billion in cash on its balance sheet just two and a
bit years after the introduction of the iPhone.

Alright, let’s look at a simpler example than the iPhone. Here is
Acme Promotional Products and it only has one product: it sells branded
pens. In fact, it only made one sale during the year and it was for 300
bucks:

1x sale of $300.00 (Branded Pens)
COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) = $200.00
1/3 is paid to their supplier of Branded Pens when the order is placed -66.67
ACME asks for and receives a 50% down payment or deposit when sale is made.

Therefore, you have:

AR = $150 (50% of $300)
INV = 0
AP = $133.33 ($200 – 66.67)

Calculating the Cash Conversion Cycle

You can see that Acme’s cash position increases as it makes each sale. Another good news story, right?

But this happy state can change in a hurry. What if their supplier
wanted 100% up front with each order and their customer decided to pay
them COD instead?

Now the equation looks quite different:

($300 x 365.25)/$300 + ($0 X 365.25)/$200 – ($0 x 365.25)/$200

= + 365.25 days.

In this scenario, Acme is going to starve and will be oob (out of business) in a hurry.

OK, here’s one last Acme case. Suppose their supplier’s standard
contract allowed for a 10% variation in amount supplied. So Acme ends
its fiscal year with some inventory. If its supplier shipped exactly 10%
more product, then Acme will have $20 worth of goods on hand at year
end and its AP will also be higher since it paid cash for its original
order but not for the overstock. So its CCC gets even worse:

($300 x 365.25)/$300 + ($20 x 365.25)/$200 – ($20 x 365.25)/$200

= + 438.3 days.

You can read more about the Cash Conversion Cycle at: ‘Trade Credit/Supplier Credit’, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=610.

How does Acme’s CCC impact their IRR? It turns out a lot.

In the first case I gave above, where they were collecting a 50%
deposit from their customer but giving their supplier just a 1/3 down
payment, their IRR can be estimated using the following cash flow chart.
Time is measured in days.

0 ($66.67)
1 $150
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30 ($133.33)
31 $150
$100.00

IRR 83%

Obviously, this is a terrific project IRR.

In case 2, where they were paying their supplier 100% up front and
not receiving anything from their client until they delivered COD, their
IRR plummets to just 14%.

0 ($200.00)
1 $0
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30 $0.00
31 $300
$100.00

IRR 14%

For case 3, their IRR drops again (to 12%) because they have taken delivery of and must pay for stock overage.

0 ($200.00)
1 $0
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30 ($20.00)
31 $300
$80.00

IRR 12%

From this simple example, you can begin to see the inverse
relationship that exists between CCC and IRR and its importance to the
overall welfare of any new enterprise.

You can also see how important it is to shorten the time between
order and delivery, between paying your suppliers and receiving payment
and keeping inventory on hand to a minimum.

Businesses also measure inventory turns, the number of times they can
turn over inventory in a given amount of time, usually a quarter or a
year.

If Acme only does one inventory turn per year, even though their IRR
is terrific, it obviously isn’t a viable business since its volume is so
low (one order for $300 worth of pens in a year isn’t going to cut it
even if their IRR is 83% on the deal.)

If the business is a grocery store, inventory turnover is easy to
understand– how many times a year does the enterprise flush its complete
inventory out the door? For a software company, it seems a bit foggier.
But suffice it to say here, if it is taking too long to turn out
finished code and get paid for it (or start creating revenues from it),
your ‘inventory’ of developers, IP, computers, furniture, chattels and
fixtures is not being used productively enough by the firm.

You calculate your turnover rate for any reporting period (usually a quarter or a year) this way:

Inventory Turnover = COGS/Average Dollar Value of Inventory On Hand

COGS is the inventory cost of goods sold during a particular period.

If Acme’s COGS during a one year period is $200 and their inventory
on hand is $200, they obviously have 1 inventory turnover per annum. If
their COGS during a 12-month period was to increase to $2,400 and if
average inventory on hand during the year was $200, they would have been
able  to turn their inventory over 12 times.

This example is trivial but for larger, more complex organizations, the calculations are more subtle*:

COGS = Dollar Value of Inventory at the Beginning of the Reporting
Period + Dollar Value of Purchases During the Reporting Period – Dollar
Value of Inventory at the End of the Reporting Period.

‘Purchases’ refers to materials and supplies bought for producing new outputs.

(* Source: Jacob J. Bierley, Jr., MBA, How to Compute Inventory Turnover, Vital Enterprises, Feb. 2008.)

What if Acme reduced the time it took to deliver its pens from 30
days to 15 or perhaps to 7 or went to overnight delivery? You can test
these scenarios for yourself. Reducing delivery times not only provides
Acme with the opportunity to improve its cash conversion cycle and its
ROE (by increasing its IRR), it also gives them an opening to turn its
inventory over more times in any given reporting period.

Inventory turns is a measure of the ‘velocity’ of a business and acts
in much the same way as the velocity of money in a national economy:
GDP is more influenced by the velocity of money rather than the total
amount of money extant.

Many entrepreneurs and even CEOs of quite large corporations measure their businesses by tracking just three variables:

1. their bank balances at the beginning and end of each month;
2. their AR, Accounts Receivable at the beginning and end of each month; and
3. their AP, Accounts Payable at the beginning and end of each month.

Why these three variables? Because they measure cash and cash does not lie. Accounting statements are usually based on accruals.

Accrual Accounting is:

“An accounting method that measures the performance and position of a
company by recognizing economic events regardless of when cash
transactions occur.” (Investopedia)

So if you do a deal to ship 1,000 widgets, say, in Q1 (Quarter 1) and
you ship them in that quarter but are paid in Q2, accruals accounting
would allow you to recognize the revenue in Q1. Cash accounting would
require you to recognize that sale when payment is received, presumably
in Q2.

These differences are important because they bring interpretation and
opinion into accruals accounting-based financial statements. Revenues
and expenses can be moved from one quarter to the next and clever
accountants can find ways to goose financial statements by, for example,
advancing revenues from the next quarter to this one and delaying
payables from this quarter to the next one.

This can be done quite legally under GAAP (Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles) rules. But many executives are more comfortable
knowing what their cash position is and how it is changing month to
month. For that, you need to track just the three variables shown above.

One owner of a successful chain of pubs told me that he never accept
terms from his suppliers; he always pays COD. Why? “Because when I look
at my Bank balance at month end, I know that every cent in that account
is mine.”

This is a $20 million per year business with 0, zip, de nada, AP.

Let’s see if we can construct a series of plausible scenarios from
changes in these three variables that may help the student entrepreneur
better manage and understand his or her enterprise:

( i = increasing, d = decreasing, s = static)

Case 1
Bank Balance i
AR i
AP i
Sales are probably increasing with AR and AP increasing in proportion

Case 2
Bank Balance i
AR d
AP s
You may be seeing more cash in your Bank Account not due to increasing
sales but from a more aggressive receivables collection effort.

Case 3
Bank Balance i
AR s
AP i
You may be seeing more cash in your Bank Account not due to increasing
sales but from a more aggressive receivables collection effort and  by delaying payments to your suppliers.

Case 4
Bank Balance d
AR i
AP d
You are seeing less cash in your Bank Account perhaps not due to
decreasing sales but from aging of your receivables (you are not paying
enough attention to your collection efforts) while at the same time, you
are continuing to pay your suppliers.

Case 5
Bank Balance d
AR i
AP i
You are seeing less cash in your Bank Account even though your sales may
be increasing because your receivables are aging (you are not paying
enough attention to your collection efforts) and/or your CCC requires
adjustment and you are not paying your suppliers as promptly as in the
past. Trouble ahead.

Case 6
Bank Balance d
AR d
AP i
You are seeing less cash in your Bank Account probably because your
sales are dropping. You have fewer receivables and you are not paying
your suppliers as promptly as in the past. Double trouble ahead.

Case 7
Bank Balance i
AR s
AP d
You are seeing more cash in your Bank Account probably because your
sales are increasing. You are also managing your receivables well while,
at the same time, you are building trust with your supply chain
partners by paying them on time or perhaps even early. Good times ahead.

There are many more scenarios that you can construct from these three
variable but you should now have a bit of a feel for what you can learn
by studying what is, in effect, your cash position, changes in your
cash position and the the velocity of cash in your enterprise.
Successful entrepreneurs get very good at this and often know more about
how the business is really doing than an army of paid accountants who
have many more facts at their fingertips but less knowledge.

I tell my student entrepreneurs that they can’t be dilettantish;
i.e., they have to be experts in their chosen field and they have to be
able to execute expertly and they have to pay attention to detail and by
doing all the little things right, the big things will take care of
themselves. But Michael E. Gerber (The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small
Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, HarperCollins, NY. 1995)
says it much better than I do:

“Those mundane and tedious little things that, when done exactly
right, with the right kind of attention and intention, form in their
aggregate a distinctive essence, an evanescent quality that
distinguishes every great business you’ve ever done business with from
its more mediocre counterparts whose owners are satisfied to simply get
through the day.”

Prof Bruce

Erratum: I believe there is an error in the IRR calculations above for Acme.

A trial and error solution for IRR from first principles gives a different result for Case 1:

-$66.67 + $150.00/(1 + 1.25)**1 + (-$133.33)/(1 + 1.25)**30 + $150.00/(1 + 1.25)**31 = $0.00

-$66.67 + $66.67 – $0.00 + $0.00 = $0.00

$0.00 = $0.00, QED

This gives an IRR of 125% instead of the 83% shown above that I got
from my spreadsheet. I am unclear as to why the spreadsheet produced an
unreliable figure but, one thing I am sure of, is that the IRR produced
from first principles is correct.

When I solve Case 2 using first principles, I get:

($200.00) $199.79 ($0.21)

irr 0.0132 1.0132

Which means the IRR for this case is 1.32% not the 14% I showed above.

For the final case, the IRR should be about 1.1% not the 12% shown above, viz:

($200.00) ($14.40) $213.72 ($0.69)

irr 0.011         1.011

The conclusions don’t change from the arguments I put forward above–
the CCC is inversely related to IRR but the absolute values do.

This shows the importance of mastering the theory of any subject not
just the practicum, the software or the app so you can find errors in
your work.

The underlying formula for calculating IRR from first principles is
based on essentially answering this question: What discount rate do you
have to apply to future positive cashflows so that they exactly balance
out your initial investment (negative cashflow)? The higher the discount
rate you have to use, the better your project is from a financial
return point of view. If you make one investment at time 0 of $X and you
have positive cashflows over the next three years of $M, $N and $P and
you sell the business in year four for $Q, you can solve for IRR this
way using trial and error:

-$X/(1 + irr)**0 + $M/(1 + irr)**1 + $N/(1 +irr)**2 + $P/(1 + irr)**3 + $Q/(1 + irr)**4 = 0

Future cashflows can also be negative (say, when you undertake a
major renovation or invest in some new technology). You can adjust the
formula accordingly. Watch your signs and be aware that when cashflows
transition from + to – and back again, you can get more than one IRR
value that will solve the equation.

Over time, you will get a ‘feel’ for the thing and apply a reasonableness test to your results.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 6:16 am

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        Filed under:

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Why Businesses Fail

3 Comments

         Tree’d City        

       
   Posted on
       Tuesday 1 February 2011  
     
   
       

Question: How long does it take to grow a tree? Answer: As long as it takes. That is what makes trees so precious.

Years ago, my wife and I bought a lot in Kanata Lakes (in the west
end of Ottawa) on a golf course for our growing family. Although, we
only had two children at the time, we wanted more (we ended up with
five).

We bought a lot that had about 40 mature trees on it (all of them at
the rear). The average age of this stand of trees was about 30 to 35
years and they ranged in height from 10 to 15 metres plus we had a nice
variety too.

A few months later when I was inspecting the construction on our
home, I’m inside and I hear what sounds like a chainsaw. “Huh?” I
thought. I went into the backyard and sure enough there’s a guy cutting
our trees down.

I asked him: “What are you doing?”
“I’m cutting down yer trees.”
“I can see that, but why?”
“I was told ta.”
“By whom?” I asked this garrulous guy.
“The boss at XSDFB Construction.”
“Well, you can stop now. I own this place. So that’s it, clear out. Don’t touch anything else. I’ll clean up.”

The next day I was talking to the head guy at XSDFB Construction. He
told me that they always take down all the trees on all the properties
they work on because, if they don’t: “They’ll die anyway. Once we get
the water and sewer lines dug and the storm water works finished, the
water table will drop and the trees will all be goners.”

I said: “Hang on Bill (not his real name). Trees have been on this
planet for at least 600 million years and during that time they have had
to endure long term droughts and, on at least one occasion, a complete
freezing of the entire Earth, so they can probably successfully adapt to
whatever it is you guys are doing.”

In fact, trees can send out tap roots that travel incredible
distances in a single year as they look for new sources of water and
nutrients. Tap roots that look like scraggly gray hairs can travel up to
10 metres in one season.

The real reasons most developers get rid of all their trees are:

1. site planners are a bit lazy and want total freedom to put homes,
roads and services, wherever they want without regard to terrain, flora
or fauna;
2. trees get in the way of their construction equipment;
3. some trees might die and developers are afraid they will get stung by the costs of removal after
the subdivision is built which is much more expensive than just
leveling the whole plain to begin with and making it a moonscape;
4. they are afraid of their legal liabilities if trees die and fall on people or property;
5. preserving trees might cut down on their yield (homes built per hectare).

Not to be deterred, I went to visit Bill and made a deal. He would
not cut down any more trees and I would sign a legal document making me
solely responsible for them in case of their deaths.

Out of the 40 or so trees, I thinned out a few to let the rest have
more room to grow and I lost only three more to a change in the water
table. Now 20+ years later, the treescape at the back of the property is
fantastic. It’s a heck of a lot better than what the developer had in
mind: giving us two or maybe three, one or two inch caliper trees that
would take 50+ years to match anything growing there now.

Trees add a lot of aesthetic value to a property. They
provide natural air conditioning. They clean the air and provide shade
in summer and a wind break in winter. They’re a co2 sink while alive.

We actually tried to measure the economic value of a city’s treescape too. You can read more about our research on that at: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=437.
We want (and still want) to organize tree planting across
Ottawa-Gatineau: one seedling for every citizen (that’s 1,300,000
seedlings we’ll be needing BTW.) Anyone interested in helping out can
contact me at: www.Twitter.com/ProfBruce

I believe that we could probably save about 55% on the high end and
45% on the low end of the trees in any urban subdivision. (More in rural
sub-divisions.) There is plenty of room for roads, services and
construction within these ratios.

Generally, parkland, open space, roads and services should not take
up more than 30% of the lands and lot coverage is usually around 40% for
singles so a target of 50% might be achievable even after taking into
account a further loss of ten percent or so of the trees to trauma.

It requires more creativity and work on the part of urban designers
(it’s called Conservation Sub-Division Design and is a big hit in New
England States) but, at the same time, developers will get almost as
much yield plus they will be rewarded with higher prices per lot so they
should be able to make even more money.  They may earn a bit
of green cred too which will help them with their branding and
marketing. Families will also reap the benefit of a more beautiful place
to live, a whole generation sooner.

Prof Bruce

Postscript 1: There is a story about Sir Terence Matthews, also a
lover of trees, moving one of his massive buildings in the Kanata
Research Park just to save a single tree and there’s another tale that
goes something like this.

They dug a deep trench on either side of a humongous maple. They
lowered a dozer into the trench on one side and it pushed the tree
sideways into the other trench to make room for a road. The tree lived
and the road got built.

Postscript 2: My sons and I and our friend, Barry Lett, planted over
3,000 pines in the sandy soil around Dunrobin Lake 18 years ago and they
have thrived ever since. The Ministry of Natural Resources had insisted
that we exhaust the sand pit before they would release the lands to
other uses and they wanted us to go strip the lands to accomplish that.

Instead, we got their permission to go down and we subsequently took
out 1.1 million tons of sand (it took over 17 years to do it), saved
most of the 162 acres in its natural state and then reclaimed the sand
pit with all those pine saplings. We also got a beautiful Lake out or
the deal.  

You can read more about Dunrobin Lake and its formation at: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=2130.

Dunrobin Lake Looking South

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 5:14 pm

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        Filed under:

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Home Building

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IRR

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         To Make Yourself More Successful        

       
   Posted on
       Thursday 20 January 2011  
     
   
       

First Make Your Clients More Successful

Aurélien Leftick, Director of Customer Success, and Harley
Finkelstein, General Counsel of Ottawa’s fastest growing tech company,
Shopify.com, recently gave one of the best University of Ottawa Magic from a Hat lectures yet. You could hear a pin drop as the audience listened to the two young brainiacs from Shopify.com.

I know how hard they work; I built my own Shopify store on their
platform in less than ten minutes and, when I was having a problem
understanding their back end customization system, I sent an email to
them at 5:50 pm on a Saturday night. My wife and I were going out for
dinner at 6. At 5:57, I got an answer from one of their ‘gurus’, made
the change and was ready at the door by 6.

Most young people (the age range at Shopify is 22 to maybe 32) on a
Saturday night want to party. Shopify folks were still working.

So they have made customer service one of their ‘secret weapons’ in
their success. They currently have thousands of stores using their
platform ranging from the invisibly small like mine (it’s an IP Store: https://ipstore.myshopify.com/) to much bigger ones like https://www.dodocase.com/
which single-handedly resurrected the handmade book binding business in
San Francisco. This was an old craft with a long history in SF that had
almost gone extinct before aptly named Dodo Case built their Shopify
store and won a $100,000 prize* from them for being the fastest growing
business on the platform over a 6-month period.

(* Although the competition had a face value cost of $100,000, they
acquired 1,300 new stores during the 6-months that it ran (½ of which
are still with them) and, with marginal revenues of $86,000, their
out-of-pocket costs were just $14,000 which has to qualify as great
Guerrilla Marketing given the fabulous earned media they garnered in the
New York Times and Wall Street Journal amongst others. Plus each new
store became a brand evangelist for them so it tends to compound.)

Shopify closed a $7 million (Series A) round with Bessemer Ventures,
the third largest and oldest VC in the US, in December 2010. The
Bessemer deal was straight equity– they bought Preferred shares and the
Founders did not lose control of the business.

The reason they got this sweet deal was because Shopify didn’t need
the money: they were cashflow positive from their first twelve months on
and thus they had some leverage in their negotiations with the VCs. If
more startups first focused on acquiring real clients and building real
cashflow, they would be much better off in every way.

Established by Tobi Lutke and Scott Lake in 2005, Shopify’s original
mission was basically to fund the guys’ interest in snowboarding. They
wanted to have their own snowboard shop and sell boards online.

Unhappy with then e-commerce offerings, Tobi, who was a sophisticated
developer originally from Germany, built a better mousetrap using Ruby
on Rails. RoR* is an open-source web framework that is “optimized for
programmer happiness and sustainable productivity” meaning that just
about anyone can learn it and use it competently in a relatively short
period of time. It was an inspired choice– coding was no longer an
indecipherable, exclusive priesthood.

(* Things have come a long way since I was programming in assembler
(near machine language coding required) and using punch cards.)

It wasn’t long before friends started asking them if they could build
online shops for them, after which the two fellows began to realize
what business they were actually in. This is so typical– I have yet to
see one business plan or model introduced into RL (Real Life) that
doesn’t transmogrify into something quite different when it greets its
first customers which is why I put so much stress on getting launch
clients in my teaching, writing and mentoring. Pre-launch or launch
clients will not only help you with things like your credibility,
confidence and cashflow, they will help you redesign your business model
which probably is the most valuable thing anyone can do.

Shopify took Bessemer’s money because they found that every dollar
invested in marketing, sales and their ‘guru’ program (more about this
later) returned four and it made sense to ‘suivez l’argent’.

It also doesn’t hurt that Bessemer Ventures is superbly well
connected in Silicon Valley. This makes Biz Dev at Shopify a lot easier
when they can get first hand introductions to tech titans like Twitter,
Facebook and Google.

They also opened up their platform using an API to best-of-breed
providers of services of, for example, email marketing (Mail Chimp) and
accounting software (Intuit and Quick Books). They found that their
clients wanted to integrate these services into their e-stores and
Shopify accommodated them while at the same time greatly expanding their
reach. Powerful companies like Intuit now have a strong incentive to
integrate Shopify into their offerings too.

Shopify’s business model is based on SAS, Software as a Service, and
it has brought them to the promised land of tech companies– a place
where they have CMRR, Committed Monthly Recurring Revenues. With a COGS
(Cost of Goods Sold) of approximately zero, top line growth powers
profits because gross margins are so high due to the fact that,
basically, the platform is built. In other words, each new customer they
acquire is gravy.

They are also using a subscription model with a clever pricing
strategy– the price each store pays for the service per month is
(roughly) proportional to bandwidth use with a minimum charge for the
smallest stores (under $30 monthly). Traffic on the site could come from
people doing some window shopping or people actually making
transactions, Shopify doesn’t care.

From their client’s point of view, they’re not giving up a percentage
of each transaction to Shopify so there is an incentive to pump up the
average of all sales. The latter increases profitability and efficiency
for the e-tailer– it is much more effective, as Amazon found out a few
years ago, to sell each customer a couple of DVDs, books, CDs rather
than just one. So the question that Amazon asks each customer before
check-out: ‘Would you like to see what others who bought this
book/CD/DVD also bought?’ is hugely important to Amazon and also useful,
it turns out, to customers. On Shopify’s platform, there is no penalty
for ‘doubling up’.  

Shopify is adding new stores at a prodigious rate (in the hundreds
and hundreds per month) and currently employs 45 people, about half of
them developers and will go to about 60 this year. They have funky
offices in the Byward Market (a cool downtown part of Ottawa) and every
Friday afternoon, they expect their developers to work on projects not
related to their work, ones of their own choosing.

The stores on their platform currently have an annual run rate of
$135 million and it’s increasing fast. They were No. 7 on Canadian
Business’ List of Canada’s Fastest Growing Businesses.  

They have done something else remarkable– everyone has a secret,
private dream that they don’t share with others (or at least very few)
and then there is their workaday world, the one they trudge to every day
to make a living.

I’ll tell you mine if you promise not to tell anyone, OK? I want to
be a full time writer. That is what I am most passionate about. But
apart from the $150 that Ottawa Business Journal kindly donates to our
not-for-profit organization, Exploriem.org, for each column I write for
them, that’s it, that’s all in terms of revenues. Kind of hard to
support my wife and our five kids on $150.

At Shopify, they have brought together everyone’s secret heart’s
desire and their commitment to their day-to-day work lives into one
searing, passionate cauldron of ambition to make Shopify the ‘democratic
engine of e-commerce on the web.’ If the people you work with are
passionate about what they (and you) do, your chances of success just
rocketed skyward. We had that same passion amongst our group during and
after the Bring Back the (Ottawa) Senators campaign and it worked for
us.

If you want to work at Shopify, you have to bring passion and
commitment. They feel they can teach you everything else but not those.
They’ll ask you the question: “What’s the first thing you think about
each morning in the shower?” If it’s not what cool and unexpected stuff
you are going to do that day at work, don’t bother applying.

People want to feel that they belong to something bigger than
themselves; this is what creates real joy in life. At Shopify they don’t
talk about work-life balance; that’s bogus especially when you bring
both halves of yourself together– the private person and the public
person.

As Harper Lee said in To Kill a Mockingbird about her hero,
lawyer Atticus Finch, the highest compliment you can pay a person is to
say that he or she is the same in their private life as they are in
public, i.e., they are authentic and not a phony.

Before Shopify, you could get a Yahoo store or have a developer build
you one at a cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and it
would probably take them months to launch it and another year or two to
get the bugs out.

Now, if you are the lucky lady who gets the call on a Thursday that
you are going to be on ABC’s morning show on Monday and you realize this
is your big chance and you also realize you don’t have an online store,
your designer can build you one on the Shopify platform from Thursday
to Monday and you can do $2 million in watch sales over the next two
weeks. (Good story, huh? Better too since it’s also true.)

At one point, Leftick said that one of Shopify’s innovations was to
create a class of people (Shopify Gurus) who, although they have
technical training, are neither in technical support nor sales. Instead,
their gurus are in the business of helping Shopify’s clients develop
their business and not just when they open their stores. They follow
them and coach them during the life of each store. Their job is to make
sure that their clients do well on the Shopify platform. Their belief is
that if their clients do well, Shopify will too.

At this time, Shopify does 80% of their business in the US, 8% in
Canada and 2% in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. They would like to
change that. Interestingly, their clients sell into 62 countries so
their global footprint is probably bigger than it might first appear.

Perhaps they will follow Facebook’s example and get their user base
to translate their site into other languages. Facebook was able to roll
out new language services in weeks and, in some cases, days as their
user base translated their site into the local lingo.

There are seven things that the Shopify Gurus keep in mind when they are helping clients with their biz dev:

1. Don’t try to out-Amazon, Amazon, basically, sell what Amazon
doesn’t*. Amazon has fabulous selection, incredible pricing and
fantastic delivery. Dodo Case sells hand bound covers for the iPad that
they choose not to make available on Amazon.

(* They borrowed this from Seth Godin’s story that even mighty
Wal-Mart has signs up around their HQ that say: ‘You can’t out-Amazon,
Amazon’.)

2. Demonstrate awesome customer service. Melondipity.com, which sells
baby hats, allows mothers to text for customer support since many of
them are not allowed to use the telephone at work or their PCs for
personal use, so they text for help instead.

3. Pick a group and interact with it. Don’t try to sell to the world.
GoodAsGold.co.nz sells wacky clothes to unique individuals and they
have more than 8,000 fans on Facebook. They interact heavily with them
using their Facebook account.

4. Articulate your value proposition and your mission. Acts of Random
Kindess sells t-shirts but their mission statement is that, every time
you wear one of their shirts, you must perform one act of random
kindness, a beautiful thought.

5. Entertain your customers. LooseButton.com lowers the
price of a product if you can get more people to ‘Like’ it on Facebook.
Every ‘Like’ is worth (approximately) a negative 16 cents. That means
that they are paying $160 per thousand pairs of eyeballs (their CPM*)
but it’s worth it to them since this is also their magic marketing
button. Every ‘Like’ has the chance to go viral too since it appears in
your news feed and if you too ‘Like’ it, then all your FB friends see it
as well. This is smart pricing. Even Profs today are in the
infotainment business.

(* For more about how CPMs work in the advertising business, please read: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=622.)

6. Curate* your site. Curating is an old profession and one that is
making a big comeback in the 21st Century. Even old-line department
stores get it; they are reducing the number of items they stock in
favour of fewer, more interesting combinations that a consumer would be
hard pressed to find on their own. Shop.Holstee.com, for example, stocks
fewer, impossible-to-find-anywhere-else items like super strong, long
lasting belts made from…old firehoses.

(* I wrote more on how this profession is making a comeback at: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=487.)

7. Lastly, believe in something. The founders of Dodo Case and
Holstee share their core beliefs with their audience and they interact
with them every day. Holstee publishes their manifesto on their site and
it is one of the most often seen images anywhere on the Shopify
platform.

As I was listening to Aurélien and Harley, I thought about my Shopify
store and remembered my time in Sanata Cruz, circa 1969. As young,
naive Canuk from a small town, SC and Berkley in the late 1960s were a
revelation. One night, having got the munchies, my girlfriend took me to
a donut shop she knew in downtown Santa Cruz (basically a few blocks in
those days, not that it has changed all that much since).

The owner was in the back of the shop, naturally enough making
donuts. Customers would help themselves to coffee and donuts. But what
blew me away was, when they were finished, each of them would calculate
the amount they owed and then go to an open cash drawer and put in the
cash.

The owner, a long haired fellow, would just wave to them.

So I thought maybe I’ll go back to my IP Store and change the pricing policy to: just pay what you can afford.

Prof Bruce

Postscript: It’s interesting that about 30% of Shopify’s revenues
come from designers who embed the platform in their offerings, in
effect, becoming Shopify resellers. It wouldn’t surprise me to be told a
year from now that this is the fastest growing part of their business.

I built my Shopify store in ten minutes and it costs me less than $30
per month to maintain. Designers can do much more with the Shopify
platform than I can and they can charge much more which means that the
markup they can make on their Shopify monthly expense can be huge.

What Shopify realized early on is that they exist in a business
ecosystem that has at least two dimensions on the client side of their
business model: customers who want to set up e-commerce enabled stores
on the web and designers who create stores for customers who want to
participate but can’t self serve. It would be interesting to look into
the third level– what do the customers of designer built e-stores want?

In The Complete Business Model (https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=692)
I go into the idea that businesses need to look at their complete
ecosystems (on both the supply side and the revenue side) to discover
new opportunities in the inter-relationships in the supply chain, in the
revenue chain and then examine possible links between parties on the
revenue side and parties in their supply chain. It’s in this way that
you can sometimes discover then unlock enormous new value from your
business model.

It’s my view that: “You can think your way to success a lot faster than you can work your way there.”

Postscript 2: Shopify is in a strong position to use Negative Cost
Selling with both their direct customers and the design community. For
the latter, as a kind of reseller, the cost of using Shopify’s platform
to them is likely to be a lot less than what they can charge for a
custom e-store so demonstrating that buying from Shopiy is, in fact, a
negative cost for them is easy.

For direct customers, Shopify has to be able to prove that the cost
of running each e-store is less than the margins each client is
realizing from their sales. In other words, they have to understand
their customers’ businesses almost as well as they do themselves which
is what makes the Shopify Guru strategy so frigging brilliant.

For a couple of examples of NCS, please see: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=425 and https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=297.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 8:34 am

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Guerrilla Marketing

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Intellectual Property

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Internet– the Internet is Eating a Hole in the Global

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Pre-selling, Finding New Clients, Keeping Existing Ones

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Pricing is an Art

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Rules? There are no rules in entrepreneurship.

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Value Differentiation and ‘Pixie Dust’

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         How to Write a Great Testimonial        

       
   Posted on
       Tuesday 18 January 2011  
     
   
       

The Difference Between your Value Proposition and Differentiated Value

I just wrote a testimonial for a mortgage broker that I admire (Dilys Hagerman). Here is what I wrote about her:

“There are five reasons why I believe Dilys is a great mortgage
broker: first, she is très sympatico. She has a good heart and really
cares. Second, she does most of the work for you, things like filling in
forms and completing documentation. Third, she is always available when
you need her. Fourth, she is creative and finds ways to get people a
mortgage on decent terms that they might never be able to find on their
own. Lastly, she is a finisher—she won’t rest until it’s done,” Dr.
Bruce M. Firestone, Founder, Ottawa Senators; Executive Director,
Exploriem.org; Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Telfer School of Management,
University of Ottawa; Real Estate Broker and Mortgage Broker, Century 21
Explorer Realty Inc. Ottawa, Canada. January 2011.

You’ll notice that I actually put forward her differentiated value
for her. People are usually bad at that. It’s like the Doctor that
treats himself—he has a fool for a patient or the lawyer that represents
himself—he has a fool for a client. Without the benefit of perspective,
it’s hard to say exactly what makes you special.

Looking at the above, Dilys’ differentiated value is, in part, that
she can relate to her clients. She cares and it shows. Next, a lot of
mortgage brokers expect you to fill in MONSTER forms. They shove
enormous documents at an unsuspecting client and say—“Hey, fill in this
13-page form and give me your family history for seven generations and
maybe I can get you a mortgage.”  It’s—‘If you’ll do the work, I can get
a fee for doing practically nothing.’ Ugh.

You might not think that mortgage brokers are like paramedics but
being on-call is extremely important because everything that can go
wrong as you try to complete your home, condo or commercial transaction,
will.

Being creative is key today in just about every field of endeavour
and Dilys has that in spades. If one approach doesn’t work with one
lender, she’ll try another then another then another.

Lastly, she only gets paid if the deal completes so she has to be a finisher or she starves. That’s also good for her clients.

So writing a good testimonial for someone is a lot like understanding
their value proposition and, once you do that a few hundred times, you
might be able to write or explain your own.

One of my students asked me: what is the difference between ‘differentiated value’ and ‘value proposition’? Good question.

DV is a descriptive look at the elements of your business model that make you different/distinguish you from your competitors.

Your value proposition, on the other hand, should be a more formal
statement that quantifies (usually using a spreadsheet) how you turn the
differentiated value in your business model into either lower costs or
greater benefits or some combination of the two for an individual client.

I call this negative cost selling or, as one of my students put it:
“I’ll pay you to hire me.” If you can show a potential client or
customer how, by hiring you or by buying your product or service, they
can save more money than they are paying you or that they can add more
to their bottom line than they are paying you or through how some
combination of lower costs for them and higher revenues for them is
greater than what they are paying you, you have an irresistible,
negative cost proposition for them. As the Godfather once said: “Make
them an offer; they can’t refuse.”

I quantified the value proposition for a residential REALTOR here: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=73. You can download the spreadsheet in .XLS format from our server at: https://www.ottawarealestatenews.com/ValuePropositionFSBOVersusAgency.xls.

You want to be able to show your value proposition to a single client
because that’s the way sales are actually done. Even mighty IBM doesn’t
go out at the beginning of each year and make a single $85 billion
sale. It does $85 billion in revenues, one customer at a time, just like
you.

So don’t do sales projections by saying: “If we get 1% of the
population of the US, we’ll have over 3 million clients and, with an
average price of $10, we’ll have $30 million in revenues this upcoming
year.” That’s bogus. Just show me how you can win a client’s business
with a compelling value proposition (based on the differentiated value
in your business model).

Then get yourself at least three launch clients (because you may fool
one person into buying your product or service, maybe two but probably
not three).

Next set some (monthly or weekly) goals, then go out there and do it. And hold yourself and your team accountable.

TEK Systems, one of the largest tech recruiting agenices in NA, holds not one but two all-hands meetings (by teleconference) each
day. Everyone in each of their regional offices is in on the calls and
everyone is accountable for reaching their goals an amazing twice a day.

Prof Bruce

For more on Negative Cost Selling, please see: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=425.

For more about differentiated value, please see: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=962.

Postscript: for full disclosure, Dilys works with Mortgage Alliance
which is affiliated with one of the firms I work with too. Her personal
website is: https://dilys4mortgages.com/. When I need a mortgage for moi, Dilys is one of my go-to people.

Postscript 2: I also wrote: Six Reasons to Call Your Independent Mortgage Agent (https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=397) and Why Use Mortgage Brokers? (https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=34)

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 4:53 pm

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         Highest and Best Use        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 16 January 2011  
     
   
       

A Guiding Philosophy for Neo-Urbanist Designers
Why Nimby’ites are Wrong to Oppose Higher Densities and Mixed Use
Negative Property Taxes
Urban Catalysts/Anti-Catalysts

Highest and Best Use

“Highest and best use for a property is achieved when the
value created by its development for a  specific set of physically
possible, permitted uses (its functional program) and a particular form
of structure combine to produce the highest present value of rents over
the economic life of a project,” Bruce M Firestone.

Since the beginning of civilization, there have been many models
developed as organizing principles for villages, towns and cities.

The first villages were probably founded by a handful of families
joining together for mutual protection. Perhaps serendipitously, they
discovered that division of labour would increase the well being of
their village. Those who were better skilled at farming, hunting,
gathering, flint knife carving or producing textiles would specialize in
those tasks.

The result was a marked improvement in the wealth of the village from
intra-village trading. Over time, a surplus developed in one village
which led to trade with other nearby villages which had  their own
specializations. Regional trading blocks then emerged prompting faster
growth and eventually the development of city-states, which in turn led
to the formation of nation-states.

As these cities, towns and villages grew, the problem of how to
efficiently organize them became more pronounced. How to rid the budding
urban area of wastes, where to place dirty industry, how to bring
products and services into and out of the town for the growing numbers
of artisans and guild members, how to best protect citizens from
external attack and internal predators, how to move people and their
domesticated animals safely within the city, how to gather people
together for religious observances, markets and entertainment, where to
put courts, jails and schools, where to locate government officials,
judges, kings and queens, emperors, their subjects and nobles– these are
some of the questions town governments have wrestled with for
millennia.

Spatial organization of the city has, at various times, been based
on: a) religious or other forms of hierarchical systems, b) defense
principles, c) royal edict, d) class or race based systems, e) guild
based separation, f) fiat based systems (a master planned community with
its zoning codes is an example of this), g) FOB (Friends of the Boss –
Mayor, Fire Chief, Chief of Police and so forth), or combinations of the
above.

Structuring cities based on the principle that each individual parcel
should be put to the highest and best use is an idea that has come into
prominence over the last century. The highest and best use for a
particular piece of land is that use or combination of uses that
produces the highest land rents. This is derived from a comparative
analysis of the costs and benefits of alternative projects; the project
that produces the highest IRR (Internal Rate of Return) is arguably the
right use for the subject property. It presumably also produces the
highest land rents too.

This rule can also be thought of as the ‘DAD rule’– Dollars are
Democrats rule. The DAD rule suggests that those persons or
organizations that have the where-with-all to develop the parcel to its
highest and best use will also be those willing to pay the highest price
for the lands or the highest land rent. This means that: a) land supply
will be rationed using a price mechanism, b) anyone can participate
irrespective of race, creed, gender or religion and c) lands will be
used efficiently at the greatest intensity and density of use.

That land is a limited resource and should be used efficiently seems
self-evident. However, it is remarkable how often neo-urbanists run into
the NIMBY mentality, the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome.

Special interest groups often decry the spread of cities into the
countryside (as ‘urban sprawl’) but react vociferously against the
concept of higher (‘build up not out’) density which would result in
more efficient use of expensive infrastructure (roads, water mains,
sewers, schools, libraries, etc.) Nimby’ites can’t have it both ways: if
they won’t allow a city to expand outwards, at least let it expand
upwards.

But nimby’ites seem to be afraid of both urban ‘sprawl’ and higher
densities. Furthermore, they react poorly to mixed use development as
well.

Urban sprawl and urban growth are often thought to be synonymous.
They are not. Urban sprawl is what results when zoners and master
planners separate land use into compartments– this area for an office
‘park’, that zone for a regional shopping mall, this place for single
family homes. On top of this, they add a layer of density limits– only
so much floor area per hectare for office ‘parks’, no more than so many
single family homes per hectare or sq. m of retail per hectare. These
arbitrary limits are more guided by how many cars can be parked than
what the right built form is for the city.

And so, urban planners seek to restrict ‘organic’ growth of cities;
they impose order on an otherwise chaotic process but is this right kind
of order? Mono-cultured, low density suburbs require a near total
dependence on the private automobile for trips to school, work, theatre,
store, gym, market, dance, arena, dentist, doctor, community centre,
library, pub, concert, restaurant, soccer pitch, social, opera, … It
disenfranchises children and makes everyone without a car a second class
citizen.

Nimbys fear that urban growth, especially somewhat higher density
growth, will create congestion and lower their property values.

Nimbys oppose almost all development and such development as is
permitted must conform to existing zoning codes and master plans or
official plans. They fear intensification too– the mixing together of
uses such as office, retail and housing.

Nimby’itis is generated by two primal emotions– greed and fear.
Ironically, their worst fears will be realized by applying most of
today’s existing zoning codes to urban growth.

In contrast, allowing the highest and best rule to work in a
de-regulated environment where a community consensus has been reached as
to what constitutes sound, sustainable development would produce more
variegated, interesting, pedestrian-friendly, efficient, public
transportation-promoting communities. It would lower the decibel count
at town hall public meetings and lead to a better understanding of what
constitutes excellence in urban design.

Application of the highest and best use rule must, of course, be
subject to the constraints of building, health and safety codes.

Unfortunately, zoning codes and master plans are not only a straight
jacket on urban growth but are also subject to arbitrary change by FOB.
Zoning rules are often decided in a process distorted by competing
interests, many of whom have no real expertise in the field of urban
design.

It is a travesty that politicians and municipal planners, who seem to
know only how to interpret zoning codes, are in near complete control
of the process. Architects have, by and large, left the field entirely.
Many seem willing to accept a site without any reference to a larger
urban context; they seem willing to let others determine setbacks,
height limits, densities, types of uses and locations for access and
egress, parking lots, signage, greenspaces and landscaping. They attempt
to design the ‘great’ building without understanding the wider urban
context and the needs of the community.

That land use should not be based on discriminatory principles also
seems self-evident. Civilizations that have privileged, gated
communities based on income or other factors within the urban fabric
separating them into have and have-not zones are courting social unrest
and longterm instability.

Perhaps it is possible to paraphrase Winston Churchill that the
‘highest and best’ rule for organizing towns and cities is the ‘worst
possible system, except for all the others.’

The ‘modern’ alternative seems to be to place all our faith in
all-seeing, all-knowing master planners and zoners to dictate how cities
grow, change and develop. This is just another form of FOB, Friends of
the Boss, because sophisticated developers and special interest groups
can influence these plans and change them as it suits them through the
exercise of their power and influence.

The development industry’s power derives from the application of
money to enlist the best lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and engineers.
Community groups, special interest groups and nimby’ites derive their
power from the application of grass roots lobbying techniques,
picketing, protesting, harassing, heckling, anonymous letter writing,
libeling, invocation of sacred shiboleths, creation of ‘new’ issues,
problems and requests for further studies and extended process, review
and appeal, reference to the courts, name calling, net-based scare
mongering and employment of activist lawyers, professional protestors
and ‘instant’ experts, applications made only for the purposes of delay
and Internet campaigns of all types. All of this is done in the name of
democracy but it really is an abuse of process: ‘democratic abuse’, if
you will. Citizen lobbyists are at least as effective as the development
industry. Neither approach produces excellence in urban design.

The greatest cities are ‘walk-about’ ones built for pedestrians with
abundant mixing together of uses and reasonably high densities.

These cities have grown ‘organically’ as layers of complexity have
been added over decades and centuries as hundreds and thousands of
individual decisions are made, (unconsciously) guided by Adam Smith’s
invisible hand or the application of smart urban design principles in a
lucky few examples.

The existence of an underlying consensus as to what constitutes good
design and the use of the ‘highest and best use’ philosophy have played
their roles.

In North America, we say that: “People want to live in castle but are
willing to work in cave.” In Europe, with its greater appreciation for
art and design, offices are given as much or more attention as a
residence; people, after all, are working from these places for many
hours of their lives and many Euros seem to want their place of work to
be not only efficient but beautiful too. Happy, positive people are much
more pre-disposed to making positive investment decisions which,
ultimately, results in the development of great cities.

The highest and best use principle will produce a city that yields the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

What are cities but survival machines that allow people to exchange
goods, services and ideas that best utilize individual skills of their
citizens to greatest effect. They make best use of scarce resources
including land and infrastructure and, if we put our trust in this
principle subject to fire, building and safety codes, we will produce
better towns and cites that are more interesting places to live, provide
more options and varying lifestyles at a higher level of efficiency and
defeat the forces that would base city planning on either arbitrary and
stultifying decisions made by ‘master planners’ and zoners or the rule
of the mob, whether it is financed or championed by the development
industry or nimby’ites.

Nimbys are Wrong to Oppose Mixed Use and Higher Densities

Nimbys fear growth and sprawl; they also oppose densification and intensification.

Highest and best use rules imply an increase in city density over
time as urbanization increases and population grows. Rent curves,
measured cross-sectionally at any point in time, tend to peak in the
city centre and fall towards the urban/rural boundary, all else being
equal. As the city expands outward over time, overall demand for all
types of land uses and demands on the public room, increase. Rent curves
tend to secularily increase as demand for land, apartments, commercial
and institutional space increases.

If this were not true, the rent curve (and density gradient) of a
place like Manhattan would not look significantly different from, say, a
town like Ottawa.

To meet such demand, landowners are inclined to increase the density
of built form. If they own a parcel of land in the city core, they might
remove smaller structures at the end of their economic life and build,
say, the Trump Tower. Or if they own a home in a mid-town location, for
example, they might add a granny flat in the rear yard or an
above-the-garage apartment or an in-home apartment in the basement or
attic. In the aggregate, total rents achieved will be greater. They
might even add an in-home office, convert to a duplex or triplex or
rooming house or add a ‘corner store’ type operation with an apartment
or apartments above.

Rents for existing housing stock and commercial property are
secularly increased from this combination of greater demand,
intensification and densification. Creeping commercialization of
residential areas, the addition of commercial uses to homes and more
mixing together of various uses will, prima facie, also contribute to rising rents.

As long as public order and safety are maintained, home owners should not fear densification or mixed use coming to their neighborhood. Land rents will go up and property values will go up
not down. If a new office tower is constructed nearby, more would-be
potential homeowners or renters have just moved into your community.
Demand for housing in the area goes up and so do prices.

Densification and increased mixing together of different land uses
(aka, intensification) make for more interesting communities; ones that
better support public transportation and can be safer too.

It makes no sense to construct single purpose suburbs made up
exclusively of single family homes where no employment uses are
permitted. Every weekday morning, homeowners depart for work leaving
behind deserted, expensive suburban homes that easily fall prey to break
and enter burglars. How much more sensible to allow people to work from
their homes, start businesses there and provide increased daytime and
weekday security too. It also lowers traffic congestion.

Communities that are wistful that they once had corner stores,
neighborhood pubs and local hardware stores have no one to blame but
themselves; they have given way to the megamall, the big box store and
the burger franchise. Instead, they need to arrive at a consensus that
pedestrain friendly, live close-to-work, vibrant neighborhoods require
that they support mixed use and densification. They need to find a way
to increase local demand to the point where these types of uses become
feasible again.

It may be that boarded up store along Main Street will never again
have Mom and Pop shops of the old variety but it is almost certain that
if town councils allow people to live and work in the same neighborhoods
that folks will find a way to repopulate these areas and find clever,
new things to do with the infrastructure they find there. It’s a shame
that we built better cities circa 1930 than we do circa the first part
of the 21st Century.

Negative Property Taxes– a Possible Response to Nimby’itis

Nimby behaviour is not limited to exclusive residential areas and
gated communities. It is surprising, perhaps, that nimby behaviour can
manifest itself shortly after a neighborhood begins to ameliorate;
people who see their lives improving in urban areas that are
experiencing a renaissance can demonstrate the same impulses– to seek to
limit the flexibility of land use to prevent the incursion of
‘undesirable’ types of built form.

One of the greatest impediments to renewal of derelict urban spaces
is the degree of difficulty in effecting zoning changes and the
resistance to change– residents whose lives are improving want to ‘gate’
themselves off from change and development.

It has been suggested by planner, Lily Chi, that one way of
addressing the impulse to nimby behaviour is to give the neighbors an
ownership stake in the proposed ‘undesirable’ use; that is, to address
the ‘greed’ part of nimby motivation by giving the community a financial
stake in new development. The question she raised is how to accomplish
this effeciently and fairly.

One way to effect this would be to create a special assessment zone
(SAZs) in which a negative property tax would be levied on immediate
neighbors. Most municipalities have experience with the creation of SAZs
often to levy additional property taxes on benefiting property–
landowners who, for example, benefit from a new piece of municipal
infrastructure like a sewer line or new road can be subject to a special
assessment to pay for the new infrastructure.

It would be a simple matter to create a SAZ to credit property taxes
for lands which abut or are adjacent to (or proximate to) a new
‘undesirable’ development. This would be at no cost to the municipality
as the decrease in property taxes for nearby owners would be offset by a
higher assessment on the ‘non-conforming’ use.

In this way, value is permanently transfered to the neighbors giving
them a financial or ‘ownership’ stake in the outcome of a rezoning.

For example, rezoning to allow a change of use from single family to,
say, a rooming house or corner store would result in an increase in
assessed value together with a special assessment. The latter would be
redistributed to abuting lands. This tax credit would continue as long
as the new uses and new zoning remain in existence. A $5,000 special
assessment on, for example, a proposed rooming house would save, say,
five neighboring properties $1,000 annually on their property tax bill.
Capitalized at 10%, this would result in a $10,000 one time increase in
each neighbor’s property value. It is compensation for the ‘intrusive’
nature of the proposed use. It is a way to bring market discipline to
the nimby problem.

Defining the watershed for the imposition of the negative property
tax should be based on some simple formula and probably should be
extremely localized. The amount of the special assessment levied against
the proposed development should be determined as a function of the
increase in rents caused by the proposed change in land use but should
be set low enough so that the development does not become infeasible and
yet high enough that it is meaningful compensation for the neighbors
and sufficiently interesting to them to defuse nimby impulses. Let us
leave it to some talented econometrician to derive a precise formula for
this.

It may be, as argued above, that there will be no negative impacts
from the proposed uses. Indeed, as we have already seen, uses that
create higher densities can increase property values, all else being
equal. One way to test for this could be to do a cross sectional
regression analysis using MLS (Multiple Listing Service) data of house
prices to see if we could measure the impacts of, say, introducing a
group home or a corner store into a micro neighborhood. If we could show
no negative impacts, this in itself could serve to difuse nimby
opposition without the necessity of introducing negative property taxes.

Over-Investment in Real Estate

The highest and best use rule (constrained by building, health and
fire safety codes) should allow for the development of interesting,
safe, ‘organically’ grown villages, towns and cities, which achieve a
level of density and a mixing together of uses that are decided by the
market rather than by fiat (FOB).

Application of the highest and best use rule also requires that
potential projects are put through a rigorous financial review.Too many
developers and architects analyse their projects only from a cost point
of view; they are constantly cutting their costs to meet budget. This is
a one sided approach– project analysis must take into account benefits
as well as costs and a time dimension too. The most effective means to
do this is using an internal rate of return calculation that can reduce
the cost/benefit equation to a single number.

Thus, there is a feedback loop between design and costs and revenues so that the design program can be modified as required.

The objective is not to get as much development as possible on a
given site but the right level of development and the right mix too.

It is interesting to note that many successful people do not apply
this type of approach to their own homes; there are plenty of examples
in nearly every city of people over-investing in their residences. They
may not be able to sell their homes for anything close to their costs.
Examples such as Bob Campeau’s home in Toronto, Michael Dell’s home in
Austin and Bill Gates’ home in Redmond come to mind. Indeed, both Dell
and Gates have publicly argued that their (property) tax assessments
should be lowered for exactly this reason. Clearly, this is not an
application of the highest and best use rule.

Conclusion

Ottawa is suffering from a shortage of industrial land. City Council
has allowed much of this inventory to be converted to residential uses.
They have buckled under to pressure from the development community.
Building single family homes and freehold towns is a ‘cash and carry’
business; it allows for a quick return.

This is anything but optimal for Ottawa. Industrial land prices have
increased from $80,000 per acre to more than $400,000 per acre in parts
of the City, a sure sign that the market is being distorted by meddling
politicians, know-nothing urban planners and fast buck developers.

I meet weekly with salt-of-the-earth types, people who are metal
bashers, plumbers, electricians, consultants, HVAC maintenance people,
small tech companies, logistics providers, wholesalers, truckers,
contractors, repair persons of all sorts, who want to own their own real
estate and can’t. They can’t find land to buy because most of the land
in Ottawa is controlled by a handful of developers and the City won’t
re-designate any more and, what there is, is being converted to
residential use.

These folks are condemned to being renters; they can’t expand their
businesses; they can’t develop any equity in the real estate they are
using so when they are too old to break their backs fixing stuff for
everyone else, they have nothing to sell to cushion their retirement.

People who own and occupy small post-War houses that cluster along
many main arteries in Ottawa should be able to convert them to
commercial uses and sell them to the highest bidder. Who really wants to
raise a family with 40,000 vehicles blasting past the door each day?
Much better that these folks should realize a higher return on what is
probably their biggest personal investment and for commercial
enterprises to be able to buy them and legally use them for
their offices. There are hundreds of Not-For-Profits based in Ottawa–
they too would have an opportunity to find a permanent home and develop
some equity in their real estate to tide them over tough times like the
2008-2010 recession. But for reasons that escape me, zoners and master
planners here in Ottawa won’t hear of it.

People who own their own homes and places of business have a stake in
their societies; they are more involved as citizens and they are being
denied that. Industrial users pay more than their share of realty taxes
and get practically no city services in return. Thanks for coming out.

The reason I point all this out is that it’s an example of why master
plans are doomed to fail and why they put a strait jacket on both the
design of cities and their economies. You can’t sit on Mount Olympus (or
down at City Hall) and make decisions for earth-bound creatures (i.e.,
the rest of us) and expect that things will turn out fine. The regional,
national and world economies are far too fast changing to allow for
that.

Dollars are democrats and, in the absence of some new discovery, the highest and best use rule, rules.

Bruce M Firestone

Postscript 1:

Dan Gilbert’s efforts to revive one neighborhood in Detroit

Here is a NYT article on Dan Gilbert’s efforts to revive one
neighborhood in Detroit. I have highlighted it using red to denote
elements of Mr. Gilbert’s plan that act as urban catalysts and blue to
denote anti-catalysts–

PDF version https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/images/detroit.pdf

Word doc https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/images/detroit.doc

Postscript 2:

Catalysts For Urban Growth and Development–Promoting the Health of Cities
Common traits found within cities, boroughs and communities that are experiencing prosperity

Here is a list of urban catalysts/anti-catalysts put together by the
author during his time at Carleton University’s School of Architecture–

· Education
· Employment
· Honest City or State Government (a precondition for economic take-off)
· De-Regulation of Zoning By-Laws- use of ‘performance zoning’, reliance
on building code, health code, fire safety and ‘do no harm’ rules
· Mixed Use Development (i.e. Commercial, Residential, Recreational, Educational, Markets, Cultural and Entertainment)
· Adequate Public Transit System- big time people movers allowing higher densities
· De-Segregation of Social Structure
· Distribution of populations- mixing of income groups and
socio-economic strata, dispersal as opposed to concentration of
‘unwanted’ uses such as shelters, halfway houses, rooming houses,
duplexes, triplexes, jails and other ‘less desirable’ development
amongst many communities to create less threatening environments
· Mixing together of building forms to produce a variegated skyline and individuation of address
· Requirement for architectural intervention to give building forms
individualized expression and design promoting civic pride and a sense
of self worth while avoiding tract housing look and feel as well as
inferior construction and materials
· Renewed Civic Presence
· A Visible Police Presence & (On-the-Beat) Interaction Within the Community
· A General Respect for Public and Private Property and quasi public spaces (the ‘public room’)
· Zero Tolerance Towards Acts of Vandalism, police on the beat and out of their police cruisers
· Investment by Public and Private Interests- encouagement of
gentrification through tax holidays and other special assessments
including reconstruction of public infrastructure including roadways as
beacons (initiators) of economic development
· Strong Public Interest & Motivation
· Supportive Political Advocacy instilling a sense of hope and civic pride back into the community
· Land Growth Potential
· Establish and Maintain Basic Social Infrastructure (i.e. Health,
Education, Sanitation, Day Care, Recreational Facilities etc.)
· Municipal and Collective action re. Funding and Tax Incentives with Respect to Civic Reform and Urban Renewal.
· Involvement of various Community and Urban Interest Groups (i.e. C.N.U. or Congress for New Urbanism etc.)
· Build UP not Out! (minimum densities not maximums!)
· Look to ‘Smart Growth’ Solutions and innovative design to exploit underdeveloped sites
· Home Ownership and belongingness (identification by the people with
their surroundings giving them mental, physical, spiritual and,
eventually, financial stake; a feeling of possession)
· Mixing of uses, variation in housing types and dispersion of ‘less
desirable’ uses leaves a buffering role for the single family home
· Sense of ownership cause people to remain in the same neighborhood even as their financial situation improves
· Institutions (cultural, educational, …), domains of shared values and
interests, neighborhood participation and programmatic ideas and themes
(festivals, street dances, mural art, …)
· Gardens, market gardens, urban farms
· window-on-the-world architecture (retail and residential uses at grade emptying onto the street with zero frontyard setbacks)
· use of glazing and portals at grade
· presenting your buildings to the street (+.5 to 1 metre to road grades)
· o sideyard and frontyard setbacks
· traffic calming including on street parking, left turns permitted
· grided streets and connectedness between neighborhoods
· connected open space, conservation subdivision design
· parks need active recreation to act as a hub for the community-
passive recreation is not sufficient to improve community safety
· uniform transition lines (eg., retail at grade with different
treatment transitioning to offices and residential above at prescribed
height above grade)
· parking underground or at rear or on-street
· vertical windows
· golden section design
· steep pitched roof lines with eaves
· complete roof treatment
· consistent street planting and uniform tree placement
· boulevard design instead of collector streets or freeways
· front porches
· granny flats, in-home apartments, above garage apartments, duplexes,
triplexes, brownstones, row housing, rooming houses permitted
· work from home, in home businesses permitted with employees- increase
in use of expensive infrastructure including housing stock and increased
daytime block safety
· Civil dialogue between urbanists and environmentalists
· Consensus or, at least, a process for reaching civic consensus (eg.,
charettes) amongst community groups, urban planners, municipal
politicians, developers, residents, conservationists and other special
interest groups
· clear legal title
· legal process for obtaining clear legal title through power-of-sale process
· sanctity of contracts
· protection of private property rights from confiscatory policies
restricting uses including building form and type of use, rent control,
density limits, downzoning, signage, wind rights, air rights, riparian
rights, subsurface rights, grazing rights, …
· protection from arbitrary expropriation
· broadband access
· adopt-a-cop programs- direct community interaction with police
· higher density residential communities using low rise, street oriented
housing forms instead of high rises, encouraging development of
‘theatre of the street’ and block safety
· home grown solutions, local initiatives, taking matters into ‘your own
hands’, community ‘buy-in’ supported by appropriate public policy
· enterprise zones
· government supported micro-loans to local entrepreneur start-ups
· tax abatements (realty taxes, excise taxes, duty free zones, …)
· mortgage availability for purchase and renovation of derelict, abandoned and deficient buildings and homes
· repopulation of downtown
· repopulation of abandoned sites
· replacement of parking lots and unsafe parks with residential buildings
· Feng Shui- letting the light in, managing building pressures and the
wind, respecting the top of the mountain and high places and views,
nestling structures into hillsides, locating windows and doors and
people spaces so they relate to inside and outside realities
· Constructing welcoming buildings- bringing the outside in and the inside out (tropical climes and northern climes too)
· ‘Organic’ architecture- structures that seem to have grown on their sites rather than having been constructed

Anti-Catalysts
Common traits found within cities, boroughs, and communities which have experienced serious urban decay

· Corruption in city or state government
· De-Industrialization
· De-Population- flight to gated communities and suburbia
· Property taxes levied on improved values instead of unimproved land values (a tax on renovation)
· Racial, Social and Economic Segregation
· Crime (“Value can only be created when social order prevails”)
· Neglect- ‘holes’ in the urban fabric
· Abandonment- land and buildings achieve negative value (rent curves are negative)
· Tax sales- city repossessions for unpaid taxes
· Obsolete, Oppressive and overly specific Zoning By-Laws
· “Broken Windows Syndrome”
· Rent Control
· Homelessness
· Neighborhood Pollution (i.e. litter, air, water, soil, etc.)
· Suburban Exile/Suburban Apartheid
· Lack of Adequate Public Transit System
· N.I.M.B.Y. Mentality
· Building OUT instead of UP
· Social/Economic Dependence
· Lack of Public Resonance, Concern or Civic Pride
· Low Development Density
· Shortage of Urban Infill
· Dis-Investment by Public and Private Interests
· Lack of Basic Social Programs (i.e. Health, Education, Sanitation, Day Care, Recreational Facilities etc.)
· Tenements (a.k.a. “Towers In The Park”) and derelict and abandoned buildings
· Unemployment
· Home invasions
· Criminal and disruptive elements living in neighborhoods and the ‘next door’ apartment
· absentee ownership
· failed renovations
· fraudulent speculators
· mortgages in excess of FMV (fair market value)
· shoddy workpersonship and incomplete work
· mortgage defaults
· tax liens and foreclosures

Defining Characteristics of Urban Deterioration*

(* North American Physical Clues that distinguish areas of urban decay)

· Overgrown, derelict sites
· Street lights out.
· Peeling Paint
· Broken windows
· Numerous “For Lease/For Sale” signs
· Prostitution
· Drugs
· “Panhandlers”
· Homeless
· Roaming Gangs
· Absence of police, or excessive police presence
· Graffiti
· Ports
· Heavy industry
· Air pollution
· Noise Pollution
· Abandoned cars
· Defended institutions and homes
· Razor wire, barb wire, security fencing, video surveillance
· Large recent immigrant population and those just starting out.

Bounding Characteristics of Urban Class Distinction

· Highways and freeways
· Railroad tracks
· Racial Segregation
· Parkland
· Waterfront access
· Elevations (higher elevations imply higher rents except where access to water and waterfront takes priority)
· Wind Directions… west side is usually the prosperous areas are
located, while depleted areas are more commonly seen to develop on the
east side. (“Go west young man, break bread in the new land…” First
immigration began from the east and as people began to prosper, they
generally moved west.)
· Car traffic directionality (well-to-do people live in the west end,
drive to work later and drive home later to avoid glare from sun;
industrial workers in the east end leave for work earlier and leave for
home earlier)

@ProfBruce
@Quantum_Entity

Dr Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, Phd. Founder, Ottawa
Senators; Author, Quantum Entity Trilogy, Entrepreneurs Handbook II;
Executive Director, Exploriem.org; Broker, Century 21 Explorer Realty
Inc; Entrepreneurship Ambassador, Telfer School of Management,
University of Ottawa. 613.566.3436 X 200. bruce.firestone @ century21.ca

Follow Prof Bruce on Twitter @ProfBruce and @Quantum_Entity and read his blogs at www.EQJournal.org and www.dramatispersonae.org.

You can find his works at www.brucemfirestone.com and also at LearnByDoing.ca.

You can engage with him on Facebook via https://www.facebook.com/QuantumEntityTrilogy and https://www.facebook.com/Exploriem as well as via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/profbruce.

His real estate interests are summarized at www.ottawarealestatenews.com and www.thelandstore.org.

YouTube channels include https://www.youtube.com/user/ProfBruce and https://www.youtube.com/user/quantumentitytrilogy.

You can also read the first four chapters of Quantum Entity Trilogy or send it to your friends for free from: https://www.old.dramatispersonae.org/images/QuantumONE_CS_Third_Edition_First_Four_Chapters.pdf

You can read the first two chapters of Entrepreneurs Handbook II or send it to your friends for free: https://www.brucemfirestone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/entrepreneurs-handbook-2013-edited-first-two-chapters-withCovers.pdf

Prof Bruce’s current motto is: “Making Each Day Count”

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 6:20 pm

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2 Comments

         GTBMR        

       
   Posted on
       Friday 31 December 2010  
     
   
       

Get.The.Business.Model.Right: so the harder you work, the more money you make!

“You can think your way to wealth a lot faster than you can work your way there,” Prof Bruce.

Why do People become Entrepreneurs?

a. Can’t get other work,
b. Hate their boss,
c. To work fewer hours,
d. To create more interesting work for themselves than others can create for them,
e. Money is secondary,
f. Because humans with big brains and opposable thumbs are driven to be creative and change the environment around them?

Answers: d and f

Humans Have Big Brains Limited Only by the Size of the Birth Canal

Opposable Thumbs and Big Brains = Irresistible Creative Force

-Would I have had the opportunity to work on:
the Ottawa Senators/Palladium (now Scotiabank Place)
-1,200+ homes
-dozens of office buildings + shopping centres
-OBJ, etc. if I had stayed with GOC?
(Prof Bruce was employed by the Gov’t of Canada for three years; not a match made in Heaven for either party.)

The Entrepreneur Skill Set

-bootstrap/self-capitalize
-take initiative
-do everything in parallel
-innovate
-ability to sell
-not easily discouraged
-business modeling
-guerrilla marketing
-social marketing
-building cashflow
-flexible
-creative
and more …

(The Entrepreneur Skill Set: A to Z, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1274)

Skills that are relevant to Intrapreneurs too!

Intrapreneurs must have skill set of entrepreneurs but don’t like risk profile of entrepreneurs.

Who gets the promotion/green lite?

Robert has a new project costing $10m to develop + 2 yrs of R&D

Amanda w/ new project costing $10m to develop + 2 yrs of R&D but she also has:

-3 launch clients
-willing to contribute $2.5 million each of dev. capital
-and take the 1st 6 months of production.

Amanda’s project – green lited and she gets the next promotion!

This skill set is also needed in
not-for-profits/NGOs/even charities and gov’t.

-Sens foundation: 80% out to the community for good works/20% retained for admin
– >$50m (cash and in-kind) as of 2010.
-80% efficient

-People like to give to charities that are efficient (e.g., Christie
Lake Kids and the Sally Ann) so they need quality business models too

-Intrapreneurs need to be able to make 97% of decisions by themselves and 3% with others and know which is the right 3%
-No one has time to baby-sit you anymore

How to build a new business (for entrepreneurs ) or a new
Division/Product/Service for existing business (intrapreneurs) in 10
Steps:

1. Select the right idea/get a good mentor
2. GTBMR – get the biz model right so the harder you work the more money you make (i.e., not Pets.com)
3. Add DV, differentiated value: “Pixie Dust”/Innovation”
4. Create a compelling value proposition/build cashflow/cash conversion cycle: low or negative.
5. Self-capitalize/bootstrap (so you own it and not a VC)
6. Use smart marketing/ GM+SM “Earned Media”
7. Mass customize/make it scalable
8. Find launch clients/sell, sell, sell.
9. Execute expertly/good ideas are not
10. Set goals and make your own rules.

1- Select the right idea E.g.: GradeATechs.com

-2x U of O students/2x CU Students
-5 ideas: each one worse than the one before
– Idea # 4: the “Silent alarm clock”

-Student entrepreneurs often think that they have to something never tried before /first mover/no competition – all over-rated
-Maybe the reason that you have no competition is because it’s a bad idea
-If it is a good idea, you WILL have competition

Grade A Techs value prop:

A. able to explain it clearly in less than two minutes
B. AND be compelling

-Virus/can’t print/can’t log on/can’t install software/…
-unplug your tower/get in car/go to “Mom & Pop” repair shop/told
it’ll be 2 weeks & $150/not ready yet/another week and it costs $200
not $150/return home/plug in/works fine but they wiped your hard drive

OR

-GAT.com comes at appointed hour to your house or biz/fix it same day on-site, guaranteed for $125

-600m PCs in N.A.
-30% don’t work properly at any one time
-180m potential customers
-NerdsOnSite.com, pre-existed but so what?
-Google was not 1st search engine but was most trusted

-GAT.com > $5m/yr

2- Get the Business Model Right

-Biz model is the engine of the biz
-it is not a big plan
-it is a 1-pg graphical depiction
-it goes into (at least 2 dimensions either side (clients’ clients and suppliers’ suppliers)
-IT IS A FULL BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM
-what do the clients of your clients want?
-GASnet is the “brain” of the biz (matches techies to clients, contract billing, orders, supplies, software, hardware)
-Sympatico/Rogers/others hate doing the ‘last mile’

Grade A Techs Biz Model

3- Reverse out the work

-the Internet is the most important new invention of the last 40 years
-it is where electrification was at same stage, 18 yrs in
-it’s still a teenager!
-create custom outputs from standard inputs (e.g. new age virtual home builder and Dell)
-reverse out the work to customers and suppliers (e.g. Reddit.com, Digg.com and Threadless.com)
-match making (e.g. suppliers of customers at the Spa: manicurists, pedicurists, massage therapists, hairstylists…)
-mass communicate at ~ no cost (Twitter, FB, blog, email, IM, messaging,…)
-Crowd sourcing (e.g. Reddit voting on stories/links, Threadless voting on designs)
-relational d-base (e.g. Amazon’s: “See what other people who bought this book/CD/video/etc also bought?”)
-Increased order size and overall volume
-user generated content by customers (and suppliers) e.g.: YouTube,
Twitter, FB, Reddit & Threadless (suppliers: artist community submit
t-shirt designs voted on by customers)

Virtual home builder:

-tried in 2000 to get home builders to do this
-very conservative industry
-put lots available and designs online in a physics engine together w/ all options/finishes
-allow everyone to use physics engine
-go online: choose lot, design, fit-up, finishes (carpet, tile, kitchen cabinets, lighting package, plumbing fixtures, etc.)
-put cash register online too
-consumer can see what granite or concrete counter tops add to cost
-can fool around for 30+ hours
-then hit “submit” button

Homebuilders fear putting prices online – their competitors might find out!

Ever heard of “Secret Shoppers?”

-Put CPM (schedules) online: let customers see where their home is at
and let suppliers see too when they’re needed for Footing and
Foundation, framing, roofing, windows, electrical, plumbing, insulation,
dry wall, paint, carpet, cabinets,…
-As more options are available, more users will visit the site, as more
users visit the site, more suppliers come onboard and you have a
virtuous cycle

Best Homes 4 U: A Virtuous Cycle

-Now “Best Homes 4 U” is enjoying network effects
-Suddenly, the flow of cash could reverse direction w/ suppliers becoming advertisers and sponsors

-In the modern economy, the answer to the question of ‘Who pays whom?’ isn’t always obvious

-Should a cable company pay ABC because ABC has the content, shows like Diane Sawyer and Primetime News?

-Or should ABC pay the cable company because it has the feed and access into millions of homes?

-Steve Jobs understood the importance of this before he launched the iPhone
-He insisted that AT&T give him a share of its subscriber revenues
-He used Apple’s brand to leverage unprecedented concessions from AT&T
-He ‘might’ give them a share of app revenues.
-So he revolutionized yet another industry’s biz model:
-Cell phone manufacturers went from selling a ’shrink wrapped’ gadget
for a one-time payment in a brutally competitive market that was racing
to the bottom to an industry with multiple sources of revenues, some of
which are recurring: the holy grail of techdom.

-Imagine how much harder Steve Jobs and Apple would have to work and
how much lower their productivity as measured in revenue per employee
would be without recurring revenues from iPhone app sales and revenues,
advertising revenues on their mobile platform, downloads of paid content
from iTunes and a share of their carriers’ subscriber fees?

-From a simple question and a tweaking of their business model flow
great benefits. The harder they work, the more money they make and, in
Apple’s case, this relationship has become geometric.

-You can see why Sam Palmisano (CEO of IBM) has said he spends a great deal of his time tweaking IBM business models

-I felt a long time ago that Nortel missed a great opportunity to add
more services (and more stable revenue streams) to their hardware sales
by changing its business model to include operating and maintaining the
complex switches they sold to their clients
-After all, who knew these machines better than NT?
-NT leadership focused more on high margin tech sales than the less glamorous business of fixing and maintaining stuff
-Meanwhile IBM and later HP recognized that by selling more services not
only would they enjoy counter-cyclical revenues streams but they would
have a huge leg up on the next round of hardware sales
-By providing outsourcing, they became trusted advisors to their
clients, sat on the ’same side of the table’ as their clients and could
spec their own equipment to fix or augment client networks that they now
knew better than their own clients did
-They missed it and now they are dead
-It’s a shame for all their stakeholders including Canada and the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of their leadership

More about Best Homes 4 U:

-Allow lawyers access for e-closings
-Allow lenders access for e-funding
-Now if your WS attracts 10,000s of visitors, you can get your suppliers
and your suppliers’ suppliers to pay for ads so more people will buy
higher-end products (chandeliers, beveled mirrors, granite, counter
tops, home theatre,…)
-more options => more people => more options => more people…

-In a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle (Google is also an example of Network Effects)
-30+ hours in Design Centre with clients can become just 60 minutes
-Imagine the productivity increase for homebuilder sales staff, lawyers,
mortgage lenders, the GC, the foreman (Worst problem? Homebuyer
questions about when this or that happens..), suppliers, trades, subs, …

-Also, customer satisfaction increases since: they get EXACTLY what they want

-They feel they had a hand-in its creation (like Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix: just add eggs and milk)

-The folks who bring you this pancake mix famously had an erroneous
insight years ago—they thought that by adding powdered eggs and milk to
their mix and eliminating the instructions “Just add eggs and milk”,
they could save the busy consumer time and sell more product.

-It turned out that homemakers liked adding ‘real’ eggs and milk:
first, they thought it was healthier that powdered eggs and milk and,
second, they wanted to be involved in ‘making’ their kids’ breakfasts.

-For most kids, you are what you do for them. By taking this away, sales went down not up.
Best Homes 4 U, by involving the consumer in the design of their own
home are catering to a deep seated need in humans to ‘buy-in’.

-This is a powerful lesson for tech—giving consumers the power to
customize products and services is big business. For example, Dell is
currently using Threadless.com’s platform to allow artists to submit and
prospective customers to select winning designs for laptop covers.

Virtual Homebuilder Biz Model/Eco System

4- Create a Compelling Value Prop w/ a CCC that is low or negative

GradeATechs.com had a compelling value propostion.

Now let’s look at CCC, the Cash Conversion Cycle

Cash Conversion Cycle Equation

E.g.. Acme Promotional Products: “One Product Model”

1x sale of $300.00 (Branded Pens)
COGS = $200.00
1/3 is paid to their supplier of Branded Pens when order is placed -66.67
ACME asks for and receives a 50% down payment or deposit when sale is made.
Therefore, you have:
AR = $150 (50% of $300)
INV = 0
AP = $133.33 ($200 – 66.67)

Calculating the Cash Conversion Cycle

Therefore, Acme’s cash position increases as sales increase

=> VERY IMPORTANT for entrepreneurs

-Fuel Industries
-Fortune 100 Client list
-$1.0m orders
-CCC is >180 days
=>cash decreases as sales increase
-untenable biz model
-went from 10% down and balance > completion/delivery + 30days to:
30% down, 2x 30% progress payments only + 10% (their profit) > complete/delivery + 30days
-now CCC is negative and FI is doing very well.

You can read more about the Cash Conversion Cycle at: ‘Trade Credit/Supplier Credit’, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=610.

5- Self Capitalize

-why?
-VC-funding is hard to get and takes a lot of time
-also, you may end up losing control of your business
-VC funded biz are just large biz w/ 0 revenues
-power comes from having real clients/real cashflow
-if you do go for financing and you do it at the mezzanine stage, you’ll have more leverage

Maple Leaf Design and Construction

-Brain Saumure, B. Arch (CU and SOA)
-Fred Carmosino, B. Com (Sprott)
-No serfdom* for Brian: wanted to be his own boss because he could
create more interesting work for himself than others could create for
him
-Started with ~$0

(* Most graduating architects have to apprentice for years before being eligible to hang up their own shingle.)

What is cheaper? Debt or Equity?

Debt (Usually)

What is cheaper than debt?

Bootstrap Capital (e.g.: Trade Credit, Deposits,…)

-It’s FREE!

Sources of BC:

Home Equity
Trade (or Supplier) Credit
Consulting
Deposits/retainers
Launch clients/pre-sales
Receivables factoring
Soft capital (Mom, Dad, Rich Uncle Buck)
Credit cards (be wary)
Trading
Government grants
SBL (Small Biz Loans)
Sponsorships
Ads
Parents and royalties
Financial leasing
+ much more

(See: Bootstrap Capital—The Last Word, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1162.)

Self Capitalization Model for a Home Builder Startup

More Examples of Bootstrapping:

Internic.ca

-Pixie Dust = its name
-Lawyers, patent agents and TM/copyright specialists and speculators know “Internet Nickname”
-CIRA releases dot-ca
-“Gold” rush
-DOC sues in Canada for “Intermic.ca” (owned “Intermic.com” in USA)
-Rob Hall had GOC protection (Federal incorp. of “Internic.ca Corp.”) and TM of name in Canada
GTBMR
-DOC loses (DOC controls the Internet – 13x root servers around the world.)
-Rob sets up multiple channels to ping CIRA’s server (DAC, Internic, others – all accredited).
-80,000 dot-ca backordered
75% success rate
-60,000 domains at $50/yr (then) x 2 yrs
-$6m in cash in < 72hrs

Pool.com

-Snap names $60/backorder up front
-Pool.com: “free to backorder/only pay if successful”
-Several million backorders port over to Pool.com
-e.g. if you have Manchester.ca and want Manchester.com, if
Manchester.com deletes from VeriSign registry, Pool.com will get the
domain for you.
-$60 if successful or highest bid (when >1 backorder)
-Again multiple channels against VeriSign server

Domain Backorder Service Revenue Model

Make money while you lie on a beach!

6- Use smart marketing/GM, SM, Blogosphere…

E.g., Ottawa Business News (now Ottawa Business Journal):

-wanted to bring paper boxes into Ottawa (1st to do so in 1980s)
-Need political cover

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After OBN did This, City of Ottawa
passed a By-Law Making it Illegal to Put Money in a Parking Meter Not
Your Own

-Positive T.V. and radio coverage (earned media)
-1st in N.A. to “save” people from Parking Tickets.

“Entrepreneurs would rather ask for forgiveness than beg for permission,” Anon.

-if we ask city of Ottawa < , they would either: (a) say “no” or (b) convene a committee

…which would meet for two years, then say ‘NO’. (Ottawa Citizen#, G+M#, “Ordinary” citizens##)

[# Entrenched competitors don’t want to give you a hand up.]
[## Would argue “visual pollution”]

-Paper boxes are cheap advertising (GM = “Substitute brains for money”) – 24/7billboards!

-So, we dropped 120 paper boxes on Ottawa sidewalks overnight.
-…all h__l breaks loose
-Lawyer letter threatens us

-We are ready w/ Phase 3 of the plan:

We write back citing Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom (introduced by former PM Pierre Trudeau) FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

-This backs the city off immediately.

Phase 4: suggest to Mayor, license the boxes at $50/yr/box

-Politicians love money and power.
-Mayor agrees! …(@ $75/box/yr)
-$=power
-5,000 paper boxes @ $75/yr
=$375,000/yr new revenues for the City!

-Cost to city = $0.00
-Nicer car for the Mayor + Chauffeur!
-OBN (now OBJ) 120 boxes @ $75 ea.
-G+M, OC, FP etc: 4,880 boxes @ $75ea.
-Force larger competitors to spend big $ to defend their turf
– Same as what Vietnam did to the USA (TOOTH TO TAIL RATIO)

Tooth to Tail Ratio: Make your Competition Spend Multiples

7. Mass customize/Make It Scalable

– Virtual homebuilder can produce an almost unlimited # of
combinations of lot/design/finishes from a list of standard inputs
because the work is reversed out to homebuyers who can spend unlimited
amounts of time on the physics engine and virtually build their own
homes.
-Totally scalable and, in fact, Network Effects take place

Crowd Sourcing

-In the case of Threadless, their marketing from Day One has been confined to a limited repertoire including:

-Some paid ads on Facebook, Digg and Twitter
-A voting system that their community uses to select winning designs for Tees submitted by independent artists
-Using unpaid models for their Tees drawn from their employees and
consumers, many of whom have friends that blog, Tweet, FB and vote on
the matter
-Extensive social comment on the whole process
-More recently, other companies such as Dell and Alpargatas use (and pay
to use) Threadless’ voting system and community to select winning
entries for the design of PC covers and sandals.

Here is Threadless’ Biz Model, circa 2010:

Threadless Business Model

-The cost for each design they produce is quite low: they pay the successful, independent artist $2,000.

-But they test many designs at the same time by way of their voting
system so the cost per design is much lower than this and, happily, they
can be quite sure that designs that are approved by their customers for
production will also likely be bought by them.

-This year, other companies such as Dell and Alpargatas are paying
the company to use their crowd sourcing system to select winning designs
for PC covers and sandals.

-This obviously helps Dell sell more computers and Alpargatas sell
more shoes but it also helps Threadless: a) spread the word about what
they do and b) turn their crowd sourcing business model into a platform
which can be widely applied to other industries.

-This is an efficient and effective, early 21st Century Business
Model. It shows that you can put a ‘marketing engine’ in front of your
business that works, in a highly energetic way, independently of your
enterprise.

-Tony Greco and Greco Lean and Fit Centres use their charitable
foundation (The Foundation to Fight Obesity in Children) as a kind of
stalking horse marketing for their fitness centres.

-Involvement in the Foundation by kids and their parents to fight
childhood obesity is almost certainly going to lead to adult
participation in Greco fitness programs—either by the kids when they
grow up or by their parents dealing with fitness issues themselves.

-The Threadless and Greco examples show how the marketing dimension
of a business can itself be a ‘profit centre’ or, at least, cost
neutral.

-For Threadless, other companies will pay to use it and their stakeholder group will do much of their marketing work for free.

-For Tony Greco, the amount of earned media he receives for his Foundation is remarkable.

-If you are planning on going into marketing as a career or you are
thinking, as an Intrapreneur, of building a new division for an existing
firm or you are an entrepreneur, your job security/your next
promotion/your business success will be mightily enhanced if you can
turn your marketing costs neutral or negative.

Postscript: Threadless might even be able to turn part of their supply chain (the design side) into a profit centre.

Artists and corporations might pay them to have their designs
featured and voted upon in a sponsored process much as Digg and Twitter
allow sponsored links and tweets, which, for authenticity sake, are
clearly identified as sponsored links and tweets.

For a budding artist, what is it worth to them to see one of their
designs voted on and (hopefully) chosen by the Threadless audience?
Could be quite a career-booster. Turning your supply chain into a profit
centre? Harry Houdini would be proud of today’s biz modelers.

Postscript 2: In the above biz model, I show the business in a square
in the middle of the ecosystem and above it, a brain. The brain is a
crucial part of a modern business model. It is the part that matches
customers and suppliers, in this case, to vote on designs.

In other models, the brain matches suppliers and clients as, for
example, in a spa where suppliers are hairstylists, massage therapists,
manicurists, pedicurists etc. Clients can pick out which services they
want and which suppliers they would like to book with and suppliers can
book which clients they want and how busy they would like to be.

In both cases, the model allows the enterprise to reverse out much of the work to their suppliers and customers.

The Evolution of the Business Model: from Barber Shop to 21st Century Spa

8- Find Launch Clients/Sell/Sell/Sell

-If you can’t sell your: ideas/leadership/suppliers/staff/clients/customers/
boss/BOD
…you can’t be an entrepreneur or intrapreneur.

9- Execute

-You have to be able to execute – ideas are not enough.
-Won NHL franchise to Ottawa, what do you do?

(a) Party all night
(b) Return from Palm Beach to Ottawa, organize a season tix drive, collect $22m in cash in 10 days?

Answer: (B)!

10 – Set your goals (high)

-How did we win a NHL franchise v. Seattle, Portland, Hamilton, Milwaukee, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Houston?
-Only 21 voters and President of NHL
-Political Campaign
-Person to person, F2F meetings
-Sell Ottawa and us to the NHL
-Execute
-120 people including Ottawa Fire Department Marching Band in Palm Beach
-Humour
-Bumper stickers (taxis, hotels, airport) “Bring Back the Senators”
-Hard work

-Last thing they saw before making their decision? Bruce’s Happy Face

Brucie’s Big Adventure

-Night before: “You will never, ever, ever get a franchise in… Ottawa”
-Keep working
-Unanimous vote 21-0
-3 weeks later, a surprising phone
call … a test.

…They don’t give franchises to a city, they give it to a person!

Prof Bruce

Postscript:

Please also refer to: Nine things that You can Do for the First Time in Recorded History Because of the Internet: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1609.

In addition, please read: The Complete Business Model: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=692.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 5:45 pm

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        Filed under:

25 Steps to Business Success

and

Bootstrap Capital

and

Business Models

and

Cash Conversion Cycle

and

Creativity and Value

and

Differentiated Value

and

Franchise and Concession

and

GTBMR

and

Intrapreneurs and Intrapreneurship

and

Not-For-Profits

and

Pixie Dust

and

Pre-selling, Finding New Clients, Keeping Existing Ones

and

Product Management

and

Value Differentiation and ‘Pixie Dust’

and

Value Proposition

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Why Businesses Fail

3 Comments

         Pine Nut Medallions        

       
   Posted on
       Friday 31 December 2010  
     
   
       

And the Story of Dunrobin Lake

According to Russian folklore, wearing a Siberian Cedar medallion
around your neck is good for your health, both physical and mental. The
oils from the wood and its aroma are part of its magic. The other part
is, well, magic.

Ontario’s Pine Nut trees are similar to Siberian Cedar and are native
to Ontario. Years ago, I planted 3,000 saplings (actually my two boys
and my friend, Barry Lett did most of the work) at Dunrobin Lake.

Gone Fishing at Dunrobin Lake

Dunrobin Lake is a kind of sacred place for my family. My oldest son,
Andrew, and I ‘discovered’ the Lake in the 1980s. We went exploring the
adjacent wetlands in early spring and found a colossal artesian well
bubbling ferociously and noisily to the surface about 1,000 metres in
from the road.

Later, looking at aerial photographs, we realized that this part of
the wetlands never seemed to freeze over– the action of the well being
too vigorous.  We also realized that the well was the source for what
was an elevated water table in the area– it never drains.

The lands in that area have significant sand deposits, left there at
the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. We
conjectured that the whole area had been a lake at one time and that if
we dug out the sand, we might uncover it.

Bill Karson (Founder of Karson Kartage) kindly loaned us one of his
shovels (the diesel-electric kind) and, sure enough, 25 feet down
through the sand was this incredible, soft, green spring water, purer,
it turns out, than any bottled water you can buy in a store.

The Girls Having Fun

Over the next 17-years, Karson removed about 1.1 million tons of
washed sand. The water comes through about 7 kilometres of sandstone
(from the Carp Ridge we believe) and then around another 1,000 metres of
sand before filling what is now Dunrobin Lake.

Pine Nut trees love sandy soil and there is plenty of that there. So
last year, after reading the first book in ‘Anastasia, The Ringing
Cedars’ series and getting a nice gift of a Siberian Cedar medallion
from one of my friends, Jennifer Clark, I decided to go looking for a
local source of Pine Nut trees– I didn’t have to go very far with 3,000
of them now 25+ years old growing nicely in Dunrobin.

We harvested four branches from our trees without damaging any of
them. Each branch varies in diameter from ¾ of an inch to two inches
and we can cut up to 120 medallions from a single branch.

Prof Bruce and his Pine Nut Medallions

These medallions should be worn around the neck allowing the surface
of the pine nut to rest against the skin for good health and good
fortune. (I made the last part up.)

They make great crafts for kids and adults but you should only adorn
one side. The other remains in its natural state and rests against your
skin.

We used them last summer at family camp (Red Pine Camp on Golden Lake, Ontario) as a craft. It’s folk art but it’s fun.

Happy Campers at Golden Lake with their Pine Nut Medallions

I pre-drill them so it’s easy for the kids to string them around
their necks. We only use natural fibres for that. I try to bring
something for the kids (and adults) to do each year at RPC so I am going
to have to come up with something else for 2011.

Prof Bruce

ps. If you would like a few medallions, we put them on our IP Store: https://ipstore.myshopify.com/products/pine-nut-medallion. In return, you have to make a donation of 5 bucks plus postage to our Not-For-Profit organization, Exploriem.org BTW.

Postscript 1: More Background and History of Dunrobin Lake

The original purchase of this property dates to 1956. The property
purchased included frontage on Dunrobin Road and on an unopened road
allowance to the east.

At one point, we offered to gift the adjacent wetlands area to the
Province of Ontario for safekeeping by the responsible authority (MOEE,
Ministry of Environment and Energy).

The proposed gift mandated that there would be no change in land use,
no hunting allowed and the Province would not change the level of the
water table.

The then Cabinet Minister responsible for MOEE rejected the gift
based on the cockamamie idea that somehow the Ministry might be held
responsible for fixing the adjacent road, Thomas A. Dolan Parkway,
which, at the time, was the responsibility of the (former) City of
Kanata and the (former) Township of West Carleton. Instead, these
Provincially significant wetlands are now owned by a group of investors
(mainly dentists).

We retained the lands that are now known as Dunrobin Lake.

The artesian well was discovered in 1984. The sand layer is anywhere
from 20 to 40 feet deep. The Karson firm began excavating the sand in
1989 after the Ministry of Natural Resources permitted the firm to go
down instead of out.

The MNR is within its rights to insist that mineral resources in
Ontario be exhausted before allowing the lands to be used for anything
else. If they had insisted that the estimated remaining capacity of 1.1
million tons of sand be reached by surface mining (above the water
table) then the entire parcel of land would have looked like the Moon
and no possible after-use would have been practical. Instead, Dunrobin
Lake and its follow-on sub-division of Dunrobin Springs provide a
wonderful backdrop for more than 45 homes.

Dunrobin Lake Sub-Division Plan

Water and well tests over the years have shown that the water
deriving from the artesian well is comparable to Evian water and the
experience of swimming in the (soft) water is marvelous.

The level of the lake remains largely unaffected by the amount of
precipitation during the summer. Over the last decade and a half, we
have found that the water level does not change by more than a foot from
spring to fall.

The volume of water in the lake turns over frequently and one can
actually feel the current by swimming to the bottom of the lake which,
even in July, is cool; the water moves west to east and flows freely
through the sand layer and the lake is constantly recharged.

There is a significant isocline in the Lake which means that small
children or adults who are not strong swimmers should wear life jackets.

Local hunters do not use the property and, as a result, wild life is
abundant. It includes: ducks, geese, seagulls, blue herons, all manner
of other fishing birds, porcupines, deer, bears and wolves have been
seen from time to time. Beavers have not settled in the lake.

The lake contains minnows, cat fish, Cray fish, turtles, frogs and toads.

We introduced, with MNR approval*, large mouth bass in the Spring of
1997. In fact, seeding the Lake was a sad day: we transported the large
mouth the day Princess Diana died.

(* You need a permit to transport live fish in Ontario.)

Large mouth bass have prospered in this environment — the Lake now
holds around 300 mature fish. There is a catch and release policy for
fishing by residents. However, about 10% of the stock is fished out
every year to keep a healthy and balanced demographic.

Years later, I noticed that the Lake, already an amazing body of
spring-fed, sand-filtered, soft water, was getting clearer and clearer
every year. Visibility was only getting better. Now how was that
possible?

We discovered that mollusks (actually bivalves aka clams) had settled
in the sandy-bottom of the lake. Clams (like oysters) are nature’s
great filters, filtering as much as 50 US gallons of water per day
each*. How did the clams get into Dunrobin Lake? They flew in! Small
clams, using their single foot (a hatchet-shaped muscle protruding from
its shell) get themselves caught up in the feathers of birds and
hitchhike their way to the lake, et voila, become an essential part of
their new ecosystem.

(* In the aftermath of 2012 super-storm Sandy, architect and
landscape designer Kate Orff proposed protecting the Red Hook and
Gowanus neighborhoods of Brooklyn using oyster-covered reefs which she
calls ‘nature’s wave attenuators’. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/nyregion/protecting-new-york-city-before-next-time.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121104#h[TaaBph,1].)

We also planted 3,250 seedlings from the Kemptville Forestry Nursery
(now closed). Red pine, white pine, white spruce and cedar seedlings
were planted and are thriving. These trees love sandy soils.

Mature coniferous trees exist on the property today.

The total area of the lands is 162 acres.

To fully appreciate the natural beauty of the property it is necessary to walk it.

To the north the lands are at a higher elevation and the geology
changes from sandy soil with a 12 inch overburden to a slate at surface.
From the north, a beautiful view of the Gatineau hills is afforded.

The original sub-division plan had 32 lots gently setting down around
the Lake and along Constance Creek. All lots had access to the Lake and
island (now called Windward Island) for swimming, canoeing, sailing,
wind surfing, kayaking, beach volleyball and so on. No motor boats are
permitted not even electric motors are used. Their propellers can damage
fish and wildlife as well as damage healthy plant life that provide
oxygen to the Lake’s ecosystem.

The subdivision was designed to protect natural areas; on a gross
area basis, each of the lots represents around 5.5 acres. The smallest
lot in terms of net land area is 2.0 acres and the largest is over 7
acres. Home sizes start from a small 1,200 square feet to monster-sized.

No landowner is permitted to use fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides,
insecticides or pesticides. Natural ground covers are used. This is to
preserve the quality of the environment and, especially, the Lake.

Spot hand spraying of ‘Round Up’ is permitted for noxious weeds only such as poison ivy.

Residents are not permitted to fence their entire properties since
this is a wildlife corridor and their free movement through is
encouraged.

Windward Island is approximately three quarters of an acre. A
peninsula to the island was constructed. The island is used for
recreation, picnics, swimming, volley ball, croquet and so on. The
northern part of the island has a gently sloping swimming beach and we
use it to launch our windsurfer, Albacore sail boat and canoe.

To fully understand how the original Lake was formed, it is necessary
to go back to the end of the last ice age. Glaciers melt from the bottom up as the earth is warmed and heat is radiated upwards into the glacier.

Under-the-ice rivers form and gravel, then sand then silt settle out
in separate deposits. So if you go north-west from Dunrobin Lake to
Galetta, you will find gravel deposits. Then, as the ancient river
flowed from the north-west to the south-east (and towards what is now
Ottawa and Orleans), you will find sand deposits and, ultimately, silt.

Thus, Dunrobin Lake filled-in with sand deposits at the end of the
last ice age. The removal of 1.1 million tones of sand over 17 years
uncovered this wonderful resource for all residents to share.
Interestingly, during the excavation period, some large boulders were
uncovered from time to time, surrounded by 20 or more feet of sand. The
crew wondered how these huge boulders came to be buried in an otherwise
homogeneous layer.

The answer is that they literally fell from the sky—as glaciers move,
they scoop up boulders which become embedded in the ice. As the ice
melts from the bottom up (the ice could have been as thick as one
kilometre in this area), the boulders are suddenly loosened and fall
from a great height driving themselves deep into the sand deposit below
only to be dug up 10,000 years later…

Some of these boulders remain at Dunrobin Lake as evidence of Nature’s power and form part of the natural environment.

Postscript 2: Dunrobin Lake– Part of a True, Mixed Use Village

“A village without employment is just another subdivision,” Kanata Councillor Sheila McKee, October, 1999.

Dunrobin is a village of long standing and my family’s involvement in
the area goes back to 1956. We built the Dunrobin Village Plaza, a
Barry Hobin-designed village focal point of 10,000 square feet. We
contributed to the creation of the Trails of Dunrobin (76 home sites),
Dunrobin Lake (32 home sites), Dunrobin Springs, Dunrobin Village and
Kennedy Meadows (now Blue Moon Storage).

What makes a sound rural village is a mixing together of uses. In
some old Ontario villages you will find uses such as: garage, welder,
car repair, gas station, french fry trucks, cheese factory, corner
store, restaurant, churches, veterinary clinic, kennels, post office,
liquor store, community centre, gift shop, wine making, saw mill, sign
shop, quarry, sand pit, video store, retirement residence, bed and
breakfast, marina, cemetery, golf course, farm, horse ranch, hair
cutting salon, boat builder, cartage company, car sales, vehicle and
boat storage, general storage, antique sales, firewood sales, junk yard,
car care, etc. All of these uses closely intermixed with homes provide
the village with its dynamism, jobs for its residents and convenience
for all.

Amazingly, the list of uses above have all been present at one time
or another in Dunrobin Village, which was established in 1840 and,
despite its tiny size, is shown on world maps of Ontario.

Dunrobin Lake is fortunate to be close to Kanata, one of the
technology centres of the metro Ottawa region. It is a pleasant walk (1
km) away from the Village core. My kids used to walk up to the local
store for a Popsicle on a hot summer’s day.

The Dunrobin area has persons from every income group living together
about 30 minutes from downtown Ottawa. Homes from $240,000 to well over
$1 million co-exist.

The (former) Township of West Carleton is one of the most beautiful
geographic zones in the area with a rolling topography, streams
(Constance Creek is a lovely canoe ride to the Ottawa River), lakes
(Dunrobin Lake, Constance Lake), rivers, water courses, forests,
wetlands, broad fields, country villages (Fitzroy Harbour, Galetta,
Carp, Kinburn, Dunrobin), the Carp airport, golf courses (Eagle Creek,
Edgewood, Irish Hills), beaches, boat launch, marina, sailing, ski doo
trails, new schools (Stonecrest Public School), trans Canada Highway
access, wildlife (deer, wolves, fox, moose, bear, etc.), fishing, snow
shoeing, cross country skiing and so forth.

Dunrobin Lake is a mixture of the old and new– the Gatehouse (my old
summertime office) and the Barn (built by moi from recycled lumber from a
barn that was about to be demolished) reflect old English-style, land
use concepts.

The Barn is an Amish type structure, relocated from its original
location on March Road. The lot that it sits on is four acres with its
own pond and it is zoned for the construction a new home alongside. It
has over 3,500 square feet of storage space.

Barn with Pond

Home sites around the Lake were sold to families who appreciated
nature and the environment and felt that Dunrobin Lake was a special
place to live. They tend to respect the environmental covenants that we
put in place, even poop-and-scoop rules. We did not want excrement
flooding into the Lake every spring.

Higher-end homes over-look the Lake as you move northward and away
from the road. This created a density gradient (from less expensive
homes next to the road to more expensive ones to the north) so no home
sites remain unused.

Ontario has wisely (in my view) stayed away from allowing the
creation of gated communities. I believe the US will find out one day
that you cannot have gated communities where you have good roads,
schools and services surrounded by communities who have nothing. This
won’t work. Dunrobin Lake was designed to be a mixed community that
reflects Canada’s desire to live together in harmony with our neighbours
and to learn from each other no matter what your beliefs are or
socio-economic status.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 10:45 am

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         Twitter Nation        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 19 December 2010  
     
   
       

A Primer on Twitter for Beginners
Putting a Value on Your Twitter Account
(With edits to December 1, 2013)

In 1953, Arthur C. Clark predicted (in his novel Childhood’s End)
that by the turn of the 20th Century, long distance would cease to
exist. The Browser, Email, IM, My Space, Skype and others (Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ et al) came along around that time to make
his prediction largely come true and then some.

There has never been a better time in my view to start a new
enterprise. The tools that are available, many of them free or near
free, are infinitely better than at any time in human history. I
recently downloaded to my iPad 2 word processing, spreadsheet and
presentation software for around $10 each. It wasn’t that long ago that
this type of software cost $700 or $800 or more. I also got a fine draw
program for $1.99. Many of the free apps on my iPad are essential to my
daily workflow including Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and various Google
apps. It’s amazing.

But I wrote this primer on Twitter for beginners because I believe
that Twitter, which is outward facing in a way that its competitors are
not, brings with it a level of utility beyond other social media that
benefits entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to a great degree. Imagine
being able to communicate, two way, with the world for free. To
influence your clients, customers, suppliers, colleagues, partners and
sponsors in a way never possible before.

So I am a big believer in Twitter, despite its unfortunate name, for
professionals. As I said I like it better than Facebook for those
purposes because Twitter is an outward-facing service while Facebook (or
Google+/LinkedIn) are gated universes. For me, FB is about friends and
family. Twitter is for friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances,
co-workers, direct reports and fans—but remember ‘fan’ is short for
‘fanatic’ and I am not sure I want to be friends with fanatics.

Just imagine for a moment, if you are a young Twitter user and new to
the service, that when you are my age (60), say 30 or 40 years from
now, you could have 1,000 followers or maybe 5,000 or possibly 50,000 or
even 500,000. If you change jobs, need a job, start a new enterprise,
learn something cool, participate in an event, need input on a new logo,
want to run a poll on a new product or service, want to share
information, feel like speaking your mind, need an apartment, want to
organize a meet-up, publish a book, write a new blog post, need more
clients, have to find a new supplier, whatever, you can broadcast a
message that will be instantly seen by everyone who follows you.

(Obviously, young people agree with me. Teens are migrating to
Twitter from Facebook and where teens go, the future follows. Pew
Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit organization
monitoring tech habits, showed 8 percent of teenagers using Twitter in
late 2009 and the number doubling to 16 percent by July 2011. Of the
teens with more than one social network account, by July 2011, 99% were
using FB and 29% had adopted Twitter as well. Teens like the simplicity
of Twitter as well as the fact that they can have multiple accounts and
multiple (anonymous) personalities too which can be useful when
organizing different social groups or, for that matter, protest groups
like OWS or the Arab Spring.)

You can DM (Direct Message) your followers privately, you can mention
them publicly using the @mentions feature (recently renamed @connect),
you can create lists of certain groups (like I do for my former
students).

You can follow people of interest to you and see what they are doing,
what they are reading or watching and learn from them. You can tailor
your follow list so that it includes news on subjects of interest to
you—which might include current events or obscure subjects of interest
only to a handful of people on the planet including you.

If you create a list that people are inclined to follow, that they
find useful and important, they may also want to follow you. So creating
an influential list may be a way to acquire more followers. But like
most things in SM, if you are inauthentic, it will just backfire so only
create lists that are meaningful to you and your community. For
example, I am creating a list of Ottawa-Gatineau entrepreneurs who are
also on Twitter. This is really important given that this community of
influencers is relatively small but highly important to the future well
being of our city-state.

I also integrate Twitter into the classes I teach—every student must
have a Twitter account (which is free) and follow me. That way, when I
answer questions like: ‘Hey Prof, when is my essay due?’ I can tell the
whole class with a single tweet instead of, say, 45 emails, using the
hashtag feature (which the Twitter community apparently created). We
use: #ec3396 and #MBA6298, which are course codes preceded by the ‘#’
sign (which is nicknamed a hashtag).

I’ve been using hashtags to mark things on the Internet since I hand
built my first website in late 1992 or early 1993, Methuselah-aged
places now.

Every tweet with #ec3396 in it will appear as a group. So students
can see not only answers to mundane questions like the one above but
also answers to more substantive questions. This hashtag feature allows
cross-conversations to develop where it isn’t always the Prof talking to
his or her students or vice versa but students helping each other and,
other students seeing what is going on, jumping in.

I will have much more to say about hashtag conversations soon.

The @mentions (@connect), favorite and retweet features allow you to
give props to a follower or, for that matter, anyone on the service. You
can expose your followers to a new Twitter user who has something
relevant to say to your group. One thing you should know is that if you
start a tweet with @connect, it will only show up in your Twitter feed
and that of the person you are mentioning as well as people who follow both
you and the person you just mentioned (via @connect) so that if you
want to give them wider exposure you can retweet them or use another
Twitter convention: put a period in front of their name so it shows up
in the feeds of all your followers. That is, rather than use @ProfBruce
(my Twitter handle), you would use .@ProfBruce to start a tweet*.

(* Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO Co-Founder of Vayner Media, explains it well in a slidedeck he put together, please refer to: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131122213518-10486099-the-number-one-mistake-everybody-makes-on-twitter?trk=tod-home-art-list-small_1&utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferc58dd&utm_medium=twitter.)

If you want or are hoping that one of your tweets will go viral via
RT (Retweeting), keep the length of your tweet to a maximum of 120
characters instead of 140. This is so none of your Tweet get cut off by
RT by @ProfBurce. Thanks to Brent Mondoux (@betterwebsites) for pointing
this out although I think this is a problem that has potentially gone
away* now that Twitter (Nov. 2012) is putting ‘Retweeted by Bruce
Firestone’ in half tones under the actual RT itself.

(* When asked about Twitter’s evolution, this is what Brent had to
say, “Most Twitter power-users (users who typically have a higher # of
followers) still tend to use the older way to re-tweet by mentioning “RT
@” or “@” methods of retweeting in order to ensure that they create
increased exposure for others.  In this instance, tweets would end up
being truncated.  There’s also the challenge that there are many 3rd
party software applications that still use the RT @username (original
and/or modified tweet) which in these instances as well creates a
truncation issue.  Finally if someone retweets a tweet of mine and then
their followers retweet theirs, it will still include a mention of who
it was retweeted by up the line which then cause the issue in this
instance as well.  Using all 140 characters just creates too many risks
of potentially lost opportunities that I’m not willing to take.”)

Twitter’s intra-community communication is still a bit clunky. If you
can’t remember someone’s Twitter handle, just put the @ symbol in the
Tweet bar plus the first letter or two that you think starts their name
and Twitter will auto-fill with suggestions. This will save you a lot of
time finding names. It’s another reason why you don’t want to give
yourself a Twitter name like @K00lyst_Dood87. Twitter has an absolute
limit on name length (14 characters) and you’ll want to keep it short
anyway since you and everyone else will only have 140 characters to work
with. (This length is based on the original limit on SMS Messages.)

Twitter’s own search capability is pretty rudimentary and most folks
looking for people on Twitter will actually use Google’s search bar.
Just type in ‘Bruce Firestone on Twitter’ and Google will almost always
perform better than Twitter search. Twitter is not particularly solid
when it comes to backing up your tweets either. They kind of appear and
disappear at random intervals. Every so often you can just copy your
tweets to a word doc as a sort of crude back up. Then, you also own
them. You never know if Twitter might one day decide to cut you off for
some reason. There are services you can use like https://twistory.net/user/ProfBruce to back up your tweets but when I tried it, it only backed up a 1,000 Tweets which is not enough for someone like me.

You’ll want 2 develop a certain amt of shorthand that works 4 u and
ur Twitter followers but u don’t want it 2 b completely indecipherable 4
ppl who read ur stuff either. :–)

When you respond to an @connect of your name, give the person you are
responding to some clue what it is that they originally said. Huh?
That’s right, people forget what they tweeted out with your name in it.
If you Tweet ten or more times per day, when you see someone has
responded to an @connect you did yesterday, you may not have any idea
what they are referring to. Twitter is now helping with this by
providing more context for Twitter conversations by adding ‘in reply
to’. So if you click on that, you can see the history of this
conversation. They’re getting better at what they do.

Still here’s an example from my Twitter account:

.@DaveCHale That, my friend, is crap. How u tie ur tie is not important. Never judge a book by its cover: https://bit.ly/i1h7VH

A couple of days later, maybe David writes me back: “@ProfBruce Really liked that link.”

Well, friends, two days in my life in the Twitterverse and in RL
(Real Life) is a long time—I will do hundreds of things in that
interval, so this response will probably draw a complete blank. A better
response would be: ‘Liked ur link about not pre-judging ppl including
those Microsofties from the 80s.’

(Note that Twitter has recently fixed this by adding an ‘In reply to’
feature, ed. March 2012. They now (Nov 2012) call it ‘View
conversation’.)

If something is really important to you, you can tweet it out at
different times of the day. Not everyone is sitting at their PC or
watching their smartphone waiting for you to Tweet something. I don’t
like to repeat my Tweets but I will if it is meaningful and important
for the community. Twitter may require you to subtly change each tweet;
they’ll prompt you with ‘You already said that’ so make some type of
change in each repeated tweet even if it is just reordering your words.

I did that recently to make sure as many entrepreneurs as possible
got their nominations in for the Bootstrap Awards before the deadline. I
even went so far as to run down my list of followers and send out as
many messages as I could individually using the @connect feature, one at
a time. This will definitely get their attention but don’t do it too
often, otherwise, it’s a form of spam.

You can individualize the backdrop to your Twitter home page (I use a
photo collage of the things I have been involved in like the founding
of the modern day Ottawa Senators, the establishment of our
not-for-profit, Exploriem.org, my affiliation with the Telfer School of
Management and so forth). You can and should link it to a secondary site
that is meaningful to you (I link it to my blog) and hopefully to the
people who follow you.

Faces count, especially on the Internet where trust is hard won and
easily lost, so don’t use an avatar of yourself, a caricature or an
animal to represent yourself. Just you be you.

Use this:

Prof Bruce’s Image on Twitter

or my summertime avatar looks like this:

Prof Bruce’s Summertime Avatar

Not this:

Brett Serjeanston’s Image on Twitter

Ever think about the first two proto-humans who met at a water hole
and decided to not try to kill each other but instead to cooperate by
forming a village for mutual protection and intra-tribal trading? They
did it because they (correctly) interpreted, first, the signals from the
other person’s face and then their body language; i.e., that they
weren’t hostile. (See: Teamwork in the 10th Millennium BC, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=862.)

So make sure your Twitter place is a welcoming sight.

Twitter has recently added a Header—this is a larger panel that
surrounds your profile picture and you can do a lot with that. Good
quality images can be combined into a header image that speak to the
values you are trying to convey through your Twitter channel. YouTube
has also done this—they are encouraging everyone now to do a 1-minute
video that introduces visitors to your channel. It’s television with
personality and very smart differentiation.

You will want to use a URL shortener with Twitter. One of the main
uses of Twitter is to include links in your tweets to interesting places
on the web. Most URLs are too long for Twitter with its 140 character
length. So I used to use bit.ly. Before that I used to use tinyurl.com
but for obvious reasons, bit.ly is better (6 characters versus 11*).
It’s a free service and bit.ly basic will even keep some history for
you—if you check back an hour or a few days later**, you can see how
many people have clicked on your link which will give you some idea of
what interests your audience and what doesn’t.

(* I hope you will NEVER have a business model that can be knocked
off as easily as this. Even bit.ly’s business is threatened by Twitter’s
own URL shortener, t.co which is obviously as short as these things can
be. The shortest TLDs, Top Level Domains, are 2-letter country codes.
T.co is now available to regular Twitter users as well as power users
(that’s shorthand for large media companies who have made a deal with
and pay Twitter for the privilege) so bit.ly is in tough now***.)

(** Many of these free services will only keep track of your data for
a short period after which they will delete your traffic history or
make it unavailable to you unless you upgrade to a paid service. So if
there is something you may need longterm, save it yourself somewhere
safe.)

(*** You can now type long URLs into your Twitter feed and t.co will automatically shorten it.)

Many power users of Twitter like Guy Kawasaki (with more than 500,000
followers) tweet dozens of times a day (actually more than 60 tweets
per day on average by him) and Twitter is an integral part of their
business. Guy runs AllTop.com, a news agglomeration site, and I would
guess that links that he includes in his tweets are one of, if not the
primary, generator of traffic for it. I no longer follow Guy because he
tends to overwhelm my twitter feed and I am really more interested in
Twitter as a 2-way communications medium than a firehose of promotions
even if they are from a clever guy like Guy.

One of the things that you will want to do is use Twitter as a
’social’ media which means you will engage in conversations. Kawasaki
uses it mainly as 1-way narrowcasting of (mostly interesting) content. I
try to answer as many @connects as I can and all my DMs.

Like many Twitter users, I spend about 10 minutes a day on the
service because I integrate it into my workday. I check out what
friends, fans and followers are saying or doing from time to time, just
to take a break from normal work. And when I am meeting someone or
working on stuff and I trip over something that I think my friends, fans
and followers would find interesting, I jot down a note to self on my
iPad and add it to my Twitter feed later or use my Twitter app on my
iPhone (which is much better than my FB app) to do it right away.
Twitter also allows you to add photos and videos you take or make to
each tweet either from your PC or tablet or using your mobile
app/smartphone so you can be a very au courant news, instant source for
your followers. Just ask people who are in the streets fighting for
their freedom around the world how important Twitter is to their
revolution—these social media which turn everyone into powerful news
channels and connect people in a hard to disrupt network are the real
weapons they use to fight oppression.

Kawasaki repeats each of his Tweets a few times per day. He does this
because, when you have more than 500,000 followers from all points of
the Globe, they aren’t all going to be on Twitter the first time he
decides to tweet something out and also because he is in the business of
goosing traffic numbers on AllTop.com. But for most of us, less is
better: try not to bore people or have them think you have an inflated
opinion of yourself.

Awhile back, I attempted to put a value on Twitter accounts. The
methodology is based on an old advertising formula that uses CPMs (Cost
per Thousand Pairs of Eyeballs) to value exposure multiplied by the
estimated number of thousand people to see your work. CPM varies a lot:
from $3.50 per thousand for bus boards to $15 or $20 for high end
magazines or newspapers to as much as $60 for high quality, targeted
Internet ads* and $120 for 1,000 pieces of direct mail delivered by CPC
(Canada Post Corporation). I used $50 per thousand for my calcs.

(* Facebook ads are a marvel of precision in terms of targeting a
geographically specific audience or a particular socio-economic group.
See how Jennifer Schweers of UrbanLensPhotography.ca in Vancouver
bootstrapped her wedding photography biz to success using just $500
worth of FB ads over three years. All she had to do was wait for people
in that city to change their status from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’ et voila,
a FB ad showed up near their wall or timeline: https://www.eqjournal.org/?p=2981.)

Estimating the number of people who see each tweet is quite
complicated; I’ll leave it to the avid reader to look carefully at my
spreadsheet and see how I did it. You can download my spreadsheet in
.XLS format from: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/ValueOfYourTwitterAccount.xls.

Anyway, here are my results for three Twitter users:

Twitter User/No. Followers/Avg. Tweets per Day/Twitter Account Value (est.)

Prof Bruce 690/5.4/$1,793.41
Guy Kawasaki 256,188/60.4/$6,986,771.58
aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) 5,312,333/10.6/$8,635,196.29

Another way to look at the above is to ask the question: What would
you have to pay Guy or Ashton not to tweet? I think for both it would be
in the millions so maybe my estimates of value are not too far off. Now
you might cleverly ask why, with a puny value of less than $2,000, I
bother with Twitter. The answer is: I like it.

How you actually use a tool like Twitter is completely up to you but
one thing you mustn’t do is think of it solely as a marketing program.
It isn’t ‘Social Marketing’, it’s ‘Social Media’. Remember, it’s about
communicating and also about learning and educating; it’s about
authenticity, sharing, listening and speaking out. Twitter isn’t just
about broadcasting, it’s about communicating. What it’s not is just a
shill for your products or services or even your research and writings.
As former student, Ryan Anderson (@RyanAnderson) told me when I first
logged on to Twitter years ago, it takes a while in blogging or micro
blogging to find your voice but when you do, it’s very gratifying.

(If you are new to Twitter and, as many of my students feel, you
don’t think you have anything interesting to say, try this: tweet once a
day for 90 days. Don’t stop, you’ll get the hang of it.)

Even though it isn’t marketing, per se, social media is part of your
personal (or corporate) brand. So indirectly, it may help you sell more
products and services, find a cool job, stage a successful event, what
have you. But that is not its primary mission. However, if it helps to
build your brand that will help you build a trust relationship within
your community and, at the end of the day, people like to buy from
people they like and trust, so be mindful.

When I first saw Twitter, most people were asking and answering the
question: ‘What are you doing?’ Later, Twitter prompted you with the
question: ‘What’s happening?’ Now they just say: ‘Compose new Tweet.’
What you don’t want to do is tweet out things like: ‘I have a hot date
with my wife tonight.’ Nobody is interested in that except you and,
maybe, your spouse. People I find more interesting and content on this
micro-blogging service that is likely to have legs (i.e., last) is when
they answer the question: ‘What are you thinking?’

As mentioned above, Twitter’s search tool is not as good as it one
day will be and searching your own Twitter feed is a bit of a nightmare
so you can ‘favorite’ your tweets and, hopefully, reduce the time it
takes you to find, say, a useful link you tweeted out that you need
right now. I also created a log of my tweets (basically, a series of
word docs with all my tweets in them) and put them on our server so: a) I
could search them and b) I could own them instead of Twitter. It’s all a
bit clunky but no doubt it will get cleaned up in the fullness of time.
If you want to find someone on Twitter, you are much better off the put
‘Jane Doe on Twitter’ in your Google search bar and let Goog do the
work for you. There is no doubt that their search tool is still the best
on the planet. (BTW, there is an @JaneDoe on Twitter– it’s the twitter
channel for a Massachusetts-based organization against domestic
violence.)  

I only wish the Internet was where it is at today when I was 22 like
most of my students. I love the tools that these amazing kids have
created for us to use for free, like the original Netscape browser,
Skype, FB, Twitter, Word Press, Google docs, Dropbox and so much more. I
believe the Internet is about where electrification was at about the
same stage and age (remember, the public Internet is still just a
teenager only about 19 years of age). Electrification evolved over a
century or so into something that changed every aspect of our lives and
you cannot possibly have a modern economy without it. The Internet will
evolve and reshape everything we do—it is and will continue to eat
industry after industry. It will overlay reality and 50 years from now
its capabilities will be unimaginable. In other words, I can hardly wait
to see what it will be when it grows up, if I last long enough.

I created this Twitter primer for some of my colleagues at the
University of Ottawa who have asked me if Twitter is worthwhile and how
they might be able to use it too in their teaching. It may save them and
me a bit of time to have them read this before I give them a fifteen
minute how-to demo. It also might save them a few years of frigging
around with Twitter. The interface and use of Twitter has some subtlety
to it.

You can and probably will have multiple Twitter channels. My main
account is @ProfBruce but recently we’ve added @BootstrapAwards,
@Exploriem, @BizModelComp, @OC67, @Century21Expl and others. We can
narrowcast with these other Twitter feeds and be more openly commercial
with the latter without compromising the integrity of @ProfBruce. People
who follow @Century21Expl are presumably folks interested in commercial
real estate and so they will want to watch this feed to see if they can
pick up any commercial property that suits their portfolio or budget or
learn any ‘tricks of the trade’ so to speak.

We recently decided to build a new website (to be called
TheLandStore.org). We also grabbed the Twitter handle that goes with it
(@TheLandStore) which, these days, you also need to do. The former will
include our inventory, the latter is, of course, our newsfeed. Facebook
accepts Twitter’s API so when you tweet out something using, say,
@TheLandStore, it’ll also appear in your newsfeed on FB and FB pages and
plenty of other places too (for example, on my blog or on some of our
websites). In this way, you can create timely (hopefully interesting)
content for multiple sites from ONE platform.

I would not buy any URL today without getting the exact @Twitter
equivalent whenever possible. I would also probably try to get the
identical Facebook page vanity URL too. So if you are buying
ProfBruce.com, try to get @ProfBruce and Facebook.com/ProfBruce too. You
only have a few seconds to impress someone with your brand so why make
it harder on everyone if you own ProfBruce.com but your twitter handle
is kool_dude-1990?

You can use Twitter clients like HootSuite to manage multiple Twitter
feeds plus Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm and WordPress
profiles too. You can add Twitter’s mobile app or HootSuite to your
iPhone or smart phone and your iPad and update your Twitter feed from
anywhere. Twitter has also made it a snap to add photos (and videos) to
your tweets from their iPhone app. They’ll be added to a free yfrog.com
account which you can log onto using your Twitter user id and password.

Here’s a coupla tweets I put out while I was writing my novel Quantum
Entity, We Are All One (Book 1 of a sci-fi trilogy to be released in
June 2012*) from my home office in the summer of 2011:

The evening sky outside my office:

It’s not the secret door to Narnia. My home office from just outside:

So some tweets are professional (most are) and some are a bit more
personal. It doesn’t hurt to show some of your inner self once in
awhile; authenticity matters a lot to Gen Y as it does to most people,
young and old.

(* You can read the Foreword of Quantum Entity here: https://www.eqjournal.org/?p=2932.)

There will be a tonne of services that will latch on to your Twitter
id and password (and your Facebook user id and password) as long as you
give your permission. This is quite safe as long as you are not on some
crappy phishing site or worse.

Twitter’s API (application programming interface) is being adapted to
add a social layer to many biz models today. If you can place your
enterprise at the centre of a community tied together through the
fan/friend/follow/follower model (Twitter is just one option among many
you can choose from), it will be much harder to knock off or outsource
and kill. It can create a sustainable competitive advantage for you.

People are building amazing services on top of Twitter, using their API. I recently (March 31, 2012 as I write this) used https://tweepsmap.com/ to map where my Twitter followers are from. You can sort by country, state or city. Here is the city map for my followers:

Tweetmap.com tells me: 81% of my followers are from Canada, 71% from
Ontario & 59% from Ottawa. What is also cool is that my other
followers come from Australia, USA, Chile, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan,
France, the UK, Sweden, India, Pakistan and many other nations.

I think Facebook comments was a brilliant move to extend the FB
franchise and I think Twitter should respond by embracing that as well. I
have never liked anonymous comments—they can be outrageous, libelous
and untrue with no repercussions for those posting these sometimes
hateful and shameful things.

One thing that Twitter and FB do very well (especially FB) is verify
who you are; how many people will follow you if you are a fraud?
Folks’ll catch on and drop away.

There is no hard and fast rule about who you follow. Should you
follow everyone who follows you? I think you should be selective
because, if you have a lot of followers, it’s hard to have a real
conversation with 5,000, 50,000, 500,000 or millions of followers. But I
also understand the democratic urge to follow everyone back. It’s up to
you.

I read on https://mashable.com/2011/12/16/sweden-twitter-acount that:
‘Sweden’s people have officially taken over the @sweden Twitter
account—and with the blessing of the Swedish government. One Swedish
citizen will control the handle each week, tweeting about whatever
they’d like, as part of a new project called Curators of Sweden.

‘No one owns the brand of Sweden more than its people. With this
initiative we let them show their Sweden to the world,’ said Thomas
Brühl, CEO of VisitSweden, the tourism ministry that had been updating
the @sweden account since January 2009.

Curating of Sweden is based around the idea that no single voice can
represent the country, so a slew of weekly guest Swedish curators will
do the best job of portraying their national character.

Now this is a pretty cool idea and I can see a lot of uses for this.
Say, you manage the National Gallery of Canada, why not create a Guest
Twitter account and let visitors curate the collection for other Canuks?

Outside the National Gallery of Canada: Maman Sculpture*

Companies, not-for-profits, charities, NGOs, political movements could all do a riff on this.

Artful curating is really what Twitter is all about, at least for me
and I suspect many people like me. I rely on folks I follow there to
curate the world for me—to parse ideas and news from the firehose of
information being created each day in the vast Metaverse that the
Internet has become. This story came via one of them: Pete Cashmore, https://twitter.com/#!/mashable who has more than 2.7 million followers.

I can see cities setting up @Ottawa or @NewYork this way and letting
visitors as well as residents curate towns and cities for each other and
the world beyond. Maybe you could create @Cisco or @IBM too although I
can see the obvious corporate risks that would come from bad PR
generated by obnoxious tweets or offensive ones. But I think that you
could formulate an application process whereby people would have to sign
up in advance for a chance to be a guest Twitter Master for @IBM or
@NewYork and then you’d vet them and screen out weirdos (maybe) or shut
them down if they are.

Perhaps it only works in Sweden because they are all nice, non-crazy people. But I would give it a go.

Prof Bruce

(* The giant spider called Maman was created by French-Born artist
Louise Bourgeois, who passed away in New York on the 31st of May, 2010,
age 98.)

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 2:57 pm

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         Social Nation        

       
   Posted on
       Sunday 19 December 2010  
     
   
       

A Review of Social Nation by Barry Libert, John Wiley & Sons, NJ, 2010
[A Primer on Twitter: see Postscript below.]

I recently read a promotional copy of Social Nation, a new
book by Barry Libert. Libert makes a living at this—his Mzinga.com
provides cloud-based, social networking software solutions for
enterprises.

The book is basically an exaltation of all things social media.
Sentences like: “It’s time to embrace your social self”,  “Change is
hard” and  “Change takes sacrifice” do not necessarily have the intended
affect—proselytizing for a social media revolution requires more than
cheerleading.

What I was looking for was how to integrate social media into business models because, as Libert points out, social media is
an important innovation. There is no question that enterprises that
have a social community built around them will be harder to knock off
than those that don’t.

A company like Threadless.com has built a successful business despite
the fact that it has innumerable competitors—it is a t-shirt
distributor after all. A Google search returns about 1.69 million
results so there are a lot of them. What makes Threadless.com different
is that they have built a community around them—artists who compete to
have their designs incorporated into the next shirt to be made and
distributed by them and consumers who get a say in what Threadless.com
does—by voting on each design.

I don’t have to tell you that people whose favorite tees end up being
made by Threadless are far more likely to buy the product. Threadless
is so successful that other companies are now using their platform to
allow people to vote on their products (and Threadless takes a fee for
this).

There are at least four things that social media allows you to do for the first time ever:

1. Mass communicate planet-wide through social media and other Internet tools at almost no cost.

2. Crowd source (using social media and the Internet as intermediary)
to distill the wisdom of the crowd as, for example, Digg.com does when
they allow people to promote and vote on stories or as Threadless.com  
does with t-shirt designs (https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1541).

3. Develop a relational data base allowing you to mine your customer
(or supplier) interactions so you can, if you are Amazon (for example),
ask questions such as: “Would you like to see what other people who
bought this book (CD, video, etc.) also bought?” This resulted in
significantly higher average order sizes for Amazon and lifted their
overall sales volume as well. (See also: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1541).

4. Obtain user generated content, which is a form of reversing out
the work to customers or supplier. It underpins the business models of
YouTube.com, Digg.com, Threadless.com, Facebook, Twitter and many other
Web 3.0 enterprises. (See again: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=1541).

In Chapter 5, Libert spends quite a bit of time on the story of Tony Hsieh and Zappos.com, a company I am familiar with (https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=973).
Libert admires Zappos, especially the open and slightly wacky culture
that Hsieh has put in place there. But what he doesn’t show is how
social media had anything to do with Zappos’ success.

He makes a great point about etiquette in his next chapter and it
certainly won’t hurt the reader to be reminded that things like sarcasm,
anger and put-downs don’t translate well in the new social nation. I
have a rule for my students and employees: “If you don’t mind if it ends
up on the front page of your local newspaper, it’s probably OK to send,
tweet, IM, FB, text, what have you. Otherwise fuggedaboutit.”

Libert is on stronger ground when he talks about social intelligence
software which can now track six dimensions: influence, engagement,
sentiment, connectivity, relevance and reputation. He’s right that if
you are serious about integrating social media into what you do, you
also want to be able to measure its impact.

I also like Libert’s way of breaking down social nation into friends, followers and fans
and he correctly identifies that it is your fans who will proselytize
for you and who you can mobilize as, say, Apple does to create value for
them through, for example, their app store.

Libert ends the book with Ten Pitfalls You Want to Avoid, things like
under investing in SM or giving up too soon. The one thing I was
looking for here, the one thing that I think that differentiates people
and groups who are successful with SM from those who are
not—authenticity—is not mentioned. If there is anything I admire most
about the next generation after mine—these incredible young people who
have created much of the Social Web—it’s their desire for authenticity
in everything they do and it shows.

Prof Bruce

Postscript: A Primer on Twitter for Beginners

I couldn’t resist putting a bit of a primer on Twitter here for my
readers. I am a big believer in Twitter, despite its unfortunate name,
for professionals. I like it better than Facebook for those purposes
because Twitter is an outward-facing service while Facebook is a gated
universe. Anyone can follow me on Twitter (unless I block them) while on
Facebook I have to become friends with them.

For me, FB is about friends and family. Twitter is for friends,
family and fans—but remember ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’ and I am not
sure I want to be friends with fanatics.

Just imagine for a moment, if you are a young Twitter user and new to
the service, that when you are my age (59), say 30 or 40 years from
now, you could have 1,000 followers or maybe 5,000 or possibly 50,000.
If you change jobs, need a job, start a new enterprise, learn something
cool, participate in an event, need input on a new logo, want to run a
poll on a new product or service, want to share information, feel like
speaking your mind, need an apartment, want to organize a meet-up,
whatever, you can broadcast a message that will be instantly seen by
everyone who follows you.

You can DM (Direct Message) them privately, you can mention them
publicly (using the @mentions feature), you can create lists of certain
groups (like I do for my former students).

You can follow people of interest to you and see what they are doing,
what they are reading or watching and learn from them. You can tailor
your follow list so that it includes news on subjects of interest to
you—which might include current events or obscure subjects of interest
only to a handful of people on the planet including you.

I integrate Twitter into the classes I teach—every student must have a
Twitter account (which is free) and follow me. That way, when I answer
questions like: “Hey Prof, when is my essay due?” I can tell the whole
class with a single tweet instead of, say, 45 emails, using the hashtag
feature (which the Twitter community apparently created). We use:
#ADM3396, which is the course code preceded by the ‘#’ sign (which is
nicknamed a hashtag).

The Hashtag Symbol on Twitter

Every tweet with #ADM3396 in it will appear as a group. So students
can not only see answers to mundane questions like the one above but
also answers to more substantive questions. This hashtag feature allows
cross-conversations to develop where it isn’t always the Prof talking to
his students and vice versa but students helping each other and other
students, seeing what is going on, can jump in.

I will have much more to say about hashtag conversations in 2011.

The @mentions and retweet features allow you to give props to a
follower or, for that matter, anyone on the service. You can expose your
followers to a new Twitter user who has something relevant to say to
your group. One thing you should know is that @mentions only show up in
your Twitter feed and that of the person you are mentioning so that if
you want to give them wider exposure you can retweet them or use another
Twitter convention: put a period in front of their name so it shows up
in the feeds of all your followers. So rather than use @ProfBruce (my
Twitter handle), you would use .@ProfBruce.

You can individualize the backdrop to your Twitter home page (I use a
photo collage of the things I have been involved in like the founding
of the modern day Ottawa Senators, the establishment of our
not-for-profit, Exploriem.org, my affiliation with the Telfer School of
Management and so forth). You can and should link it to a secondary site
that is meaningful to you (I link it to this blog) and hopefully to the
people who follow you.

Prof Bruce’s Background Image for Twitter

Faces count, especially on the Internet, so don’t use an avatar of
yourself, a caricature or an animal to represent yourself. Just you be
you.

Use this:

Prof Bruce’s Image on Twitter

Not this:

Brett Serjeanston’s Image on Twitter

Ever think about the first two proto-humans who met at a water hole
and decided to not try to kill each other but instead to cooperate by
forming a village for mutual protection and intra-tribal trading? They
did it because they (correctly) interpreted, first, the signals from the
other person’s face  and then their body language; i.e, that they weren’t hostile. (See: Teamwork in the 10th Millennium BC, https://www.eqjournalblog.com/?p=862.)

So make sure your Twitter place is a welcoming sight.

You will want to use a URL shortener. One of the main uses of Twitter
is to include links in your tweets to interesting places on the web.
Most URLs are too long for Twitter with its 140 character length (which
originally came from technical limits on SMS messages). So I use bit.ly.
I used to use tinyurl.com but for obvious reasons, bit.ly is better (6
characters versus 11). It’s a free service and bit.ly basic will even
keep some history for you– if you check back an hour or a day or a week
later, you can see how many people have clicked on your link which will
give you some idea of what interests your audience and what doesn’t.

Many power users of Twitter like Guy Kawasaki (with almost 300,000
followers) tweet dozens of times a day (actually more than 60 tweets per
day on average) and Twitter is an integral part of their business. Guy
runs AllTop.com, a news agglomeration site, and I would guess that links
that Guy includes in his tweets are one of, if not the primary,
generator of traffic for it.

Like many Twitter users, I spend about 6 to 10 minutes a day on the
service; I integrate it into my workday. I check out what people I
follow are saying from time to time, just to take a break from normal
work. And when I am talking with someone or working on stuff and I trip
over something that I think my followers would find interesting, I jot
down a note and add it to my Twitter feed later.

Kawasaki repeats each of his Tweets a few times per day. He does this
because, when you have 300,000 followers from all points of the Globe,
they aren’t all going to be on Twitter the first time he decides to
tweet something out. While not necessarily the same for a person with
300 followers, you might still choose to repeat your tweets if you think
it is especially important that everyone see them. I would do this
judiciously though; you don’t want to bore people or have them think you
have an inflated opinion of yourself.

Back in July of this year, I attempted to put a value on Twitter
accounts. The methodology is based on an old advertising formula that
uses CPMs (Cost per Thousand Pairs of Eyeballs) to value exposure
multiplied by the estimated number of thousand people to see your work.
CPM varies a lot: from $3.50 per thousand for bus boards to $15 or $20
for high end magazines to as much as $60 for high quality, targeted
Internet ads and $120 for 1,000 pieces of direct mail delivered by CPC
(Canada Post Corporation). I used $50 per thousand for my calcs.

Estimating the number of people who see each tweet is quite
complicated; I’ll leave it to the avid reader to look carefully at my
spreadsheet and see how I did it. You can download my spreadsheet in
.XLS format from: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/ValueOfYourTwitterAccount.xls.

Anyway, here are my results for three Twitter users:

Twitter User/No. Followers/Avg. Tweets per Day/Twitter Account Value (est.)

Prof Bruce 690/5.4/$1,793.41

Guy Kawasaki 256,188/60.4/$6,986,771.58

aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) 5,312,333/10.6/$8,635,196.29

Another way to look at the above is to ask the question: What would you have to pay Guy or Ashton not
to tweet? I think for both it would be in the millions so maybe my
estimates of value are not too far off. Now you might cleverly ask why,
with a puny value of less than $2,000, I bother with Twitter. The answer
is: I like it.

How you actually use a tool like Twitter is completely up to you but
one thing you mustn’t do is think of it solely as a marketing program.
It isn’t ‘Social Marketing’, it’s ‘Social Media’. Remember, it’s about
communicating and also about learning and educating; it’s about
authenticity, sharing, listening and speaking out. Twitter isn’t just
about broadcasting, it’s about communicating. What it’s not is just a
shill for your products or services. As former student, Ryan Anderson
(@RyanAnderson) told me when I first logged on to Twitter, it takes a
while in blogging to find your voice but when you do, it’s very
gratifying.

Even though it isn’t marketing, per se, social media is part
of your personal (or corporate) brand. So indirectly, it may help you
sell more products and services. But that is not its primary mission.
However, if it helps to build your brand that will help you build a
trust relationship within your community and, at the end of the day,
people like to buy from people they like and trust, so be mindful.

I answer all DMs and try to answer all my @mentions.

When I first saw Twitter, most people were asking and answering the
question: “What are you doing?” Today, Twitter prompts you with the
question: “What’s happening?” I think both can be useful as long as you
don’t tweet out things like: “I have a hot date with my wife tonight.”
Nobody is interested in that except you and, maybe, your spouse. But the
people I find more interesting and the content on this micro-blogging
service that is likely to have legs (i.e., last) is when they answer the
question: “What are you thinking?”

Twitter’s search tool is not as good as it one day will be and
searching your own Twitter feed is a bit of a nightmare so you can
favorite your tweets and, hopefully, reduce the time it takes you to
find, say, a useful link you tweeted out that you need right now. I also
created a log of my tweets (basically, a series of word docs with all
my tweets in them) and put them on our server so: a) I could search them
and b) I could own them instead of Twitter. It’s all a bit clunky but
no doubt it will get cleaned up in the fullness of time.

I only wish the Internet was where it is at today when I was 19 or
29. I love the tools that these amazing kids have created for us to use for free,
like the original Netscape browser, Skype, FB, Twitter, Word Press and
so much more. The Internet is where electrification was at about the
same stage of its evolution into something that reshaped everything we
do. In other words, the Internet is a teenager and I can hardly wait to
see what it will be when it grows up, if I last that long.

Prof Bruce

Postscript: I created the above post for some of my colleagues at the
University who have asked me if Twitter is worthwhile and how they
might be able to use it too in their teachings. It may save them and me a
bit of time to have them read this before I give them a fifteen minute
how-to demo. It also might save them a couple of years of frigging
around with Twitter like I have experienced. The interface and use of
Twitter has some subtlety to it.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 10:44 am

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         Making Each Day Count        

       
   Posted on
       Saturday 18 December 2010  
     
   
       

Set Goals, Internalize Them and Then Make it Happen

We all know what went wrong during the ‘Year that Was’. People tend
to remember the bad stuff. When I first started teaching again in the
1990s, I used to read each individual review of my performance by my
students.

What I found was that if I had 60 students, 50 of them loved the work
I did, 6, 7 or 8 of them couldn’t care less one way or the other and
there were always 1 or 2 that hated the classes.

Now I am a pretty highly rated Prof: one of the proudest days of my
life was winning the student-nominated Educator of the Year Award in
2002. But student reviews are anonymous so if a student didn’t like the
class, the material, or the lecturer, they could write some very
personal and hurtful things.

At one point, the University Administration was talking about making
these individual reviews public—in essence giving students a forum to
vent, anonymously. I opposed this—it would be like your local newspaper
accepting and publishing anonymous Letters to the Editor—which would
lead to character assassination of public personalities and give license
to the worst characteristics of human nature.

I suggested that the Uni could, instead, release overall scores for
each Prof—I am not against performance measurement including publication
of those results—people are motivated by competition and Profs would no
doubt compete to get better and be better. The Uni decided to do
neither.

From time to time, I would see fellow academics wandering around
campus with grey, drawn, haggard, stricken expressions and I would know
that they had just read a devastating review. I would tell them: “Just
look at your overall score. See where you can improve. That’s what I do.
The individual reviews? Just shred them without ever looking at them
because it won’t matter if you read 50 terrific comments—you’ll only
remember the one bad one.”  

Years ago, my Dad, Professor O. J. Firestone, seeing me downcast,
told me to write down a balance sheet of my life: “Put everything that
went right on the left hand side of a piece of paper, Bruce, and
everything that went wrong on the right. Add all the things that you are
grateful for on the left too. Then call me.” I did it and there were a
lot more things on the left side and I felt better after that—it got me
through a low point in my life. Thanks, Dad.

So as we near the end of 2010, I am going to suggest to my kids, who
are now about the age I was when OJ gave me that advice, do the same
thing. I’ll also give them my list of what I can celebrate and be
thankful for this year and it’s a lot.

Personal Balance Sheet of your Life

(I created the above form for you to use. Click on the image above or on this link to get a full size image: https://www.eqjournalblog.com/GeneralLedgerPBS.jpg.)

The other thing that I will suggest to them is that they prepare a
list of goals for 2011. Humans are uniquely good at setting and
achieving goals. I have seen top ranked downhill skiers set their goals
for a run and achieve split times that are within 1 or 2 hundredths of a
second of their targets for the top and bottom of sections of a
mountain. It’s amazing.

For those who read this blog, you’ll know I am not keen on long term
planning—too many things change every day for detailed ‘battle plans’ to
be of much use. I believe success comes from knowing where you are,
where you have been and where you are going. The latter is best served
by setting goals for yourself and referring back to them from time to
time thereby internalizing them. After that, seize the day.

Prof Bruce

Postscript: There are two lines from the James Cameron film, Titanic,
that people seem to remember: both of them uttered by a young,
exuberant Jack Dawson played by Leo DiCaprio. The first comes out when
Jack climbs up on the bow of the ship (a completely unlikely event in
that this part of the ship would undoubtedly have been off limits to
passengers), spreads his arms and shouts: “I’m the King of the World.”
The second comment is made when Jack is sitting for dinner with a group
of first class passengers and he tells them his personal philosophy is
to: “Make each day count.”

I have adopted and slightly adapted the latter for a personal motto: “Making each day count.”
By substituting ‘Making’ for ‘Make’, the line is now more inclusive;
instead of telling you to make sure you do something to make each day
count, it now reads: let’s both  do something together  to make our (shared) days on this planet count for something.

ps. I think James Cameron would have been better off to use the line
“Make each day count” rather than “I’m the King of the World” when he
received his Oscar for Best Director in 1998.

       
       
       
     Prof Bruce @ 11:06 am

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