StrategicPoints

This post is the 3rd post about the Web Feature Discovery Process.  If you want to read all three articles, click here, to start with article 1, and click here to get to article 2.

So far in this series of articles, I have described dealing and identifying Assets and dealing with People, the two ingredients needed to build any web site feature.  The next step is information discovery.  The first article talked about Assets.  Assets, as I describe in the first article, need to be understood and evaluated in an open and free environment, not restricted by management that has already indicated the final outcome.  Knowing the exact, final website product on day one is ok as a goal, but to know the exact way it will work is a not just a mistake, it can create a terrible work environment for those who see the mistakes and can’t fix them.  You start with a general idea of where you want to go in development of web features, and great spec’s can make this possible, but there is a transformation that needs to occur between concept and final product, and that is where a lot of websites go awry by simply never fixing what needs to be fixed.

Information Discovery

Information discovery is all about looking through the data, which leads to idea discovery.   But even before you go through reams of data, you need to figure out what you are trying to accomplish.  This is a bit of a conundrum, like which came first the chicken or the egg.  Let’s say you have a web page or a web site that is already doing its job.  Your site could be a simple page or 2 or be as large as a 20,000 SKU online catalog.  I’ve built both sites in the past.  The question is how do you figure out that you need to add a form to collect information or to place ads on the site?  How do you know if the site should be a marketplace or a straight e-commerce site.  This is not just about data here.  This is about business and business models.   If you have worked on developing websites, and at this point in time, and a few million people have, based on the fact that millions own domains, you probably know a thing or 2 about making your own website.

In my first post on this subject, I described assets, where you have to look at few key pieces of information.  Is there any anomalies showing a possible opportunity, or as Google in their web analytics product calls it, Intelligence?  Is this site getting tremendous numbers of visitors?  Is this site already collecting email addresses?  One site I know of, because I am a part owner, gets an email address added to the system every 10 minutes during the day.  This asset is important, because email addresses can be, should be used properly, by properly, I mean when people give you an email address, they are expecting an immediate response.  The value of the email starts to go down when you wait 6 months till you email them.   The fresher, the more valuable, and that’s because people have a small period of time to read that email you will send them.  This has lead to the concept of email sequences.  First time I had heard about this was from my business partner, who pointed out a company called InfusionSoft, that is big on it.  It’s really a simple concept.  You have a series of emails that get sent out to a person that signs up that go out in phases, like one a day, one a week, perhaps growing in length of time.  Each email has a different message that is part of an overall strategy.  You don’t need InfusionSoft to do this, but they are great at it.

Let The Wind Tell You Where To Go

Often data is telling you something.  For instance, on Whois.net, we noticed a high amount of international visitors, yet we did not offer the ability to look up international domains.  So we solved the customer’s quandry by offering what they were looking for.  So one clue is looking at the key words people search on to get to your site in Google Analytics or Adobe’s/Omniture’s Site Catalyst.  This is a simple task and 90% of online marketers know this.  What they don’t look for is the missing link.  The missing piece is what ties information to a new potential set of features.   Another good example is on checkout of most registration sites, there is a term we now call “Co-registration”.  Co-registration means the customer was here to signup for x, and you added another potential thing for them to get at the same time.  We have considered using this in the event business website I am a partner in.  Another interesting anomaly I noticed in the dating business recently, is that people are using Iphones and Android apps to signup, in significant numbers.  This is where you have to brain-storm, not about features, but about assumptions.  You can confirm these assumptions, through research.  My assumption that people are using smartphones, specifically at work during the day, because it offers more privacy, and the employer can’t track you specifically.  This is one of many reasons, but the end result is we need to have an app for the Iphone and Android…  That is simple detective work.  This is the big breakthrough.  It is finding a new channel.  The big question is having the resources to capitalize on this new channel.  It may not be a new channel to you, but to a lot of executives out there, who don’t know how to deal with this channel, it is a strange new world.

In the retail side its called Cross-Sell or Up-Sell.   Just sign-up for Godaddy and you will get your complete lesson on up-sell and cross-sell.  They are the masters at this.  I used to have people say that is not what I would put on the checkout, because it does lead to Friction, one of the key points in the MarketingExperiments.com formula, where it will actually causes less conversion potentially.   This all depends on the site.  On a dating site, yes, it can slow the process down, especially if the person is not ready to convert.  On a retail site, however, when people have made up their minds to buy, only a broken, poorly designed web page can stop them, especially if the deal is an amazingly good value.  So most features are figured out as extensions of what you already have in place.  If you build on your success, you will succeed even more.  There is no need to be radical, as you will find out the hard way…

Slash And Burn

If you let the status quo dictate what you do, or worse, let the current sales and marketing team make all the decisions, you could end up with a situation I call “slash and burn”.  I came across the concept of slash and burn, while working on a few sites.  The analogy of slash burn comes from the military tactic of burning the crops as you retreat, so your enemy will not have the luxury of food.  It refers to the, sometimes unforeseen, consequences of making a decision to kill one part of a website in order to enhance another.  This is a human decision process, typically driven by revenues.  The best example was on this Whois.net site, where, when I arrived at this company, the previous people who managed it, had attempted to drive all the traffic through links on the site to hosting sales on another site, because that is where the money was for them.   This was a major mistake in my mind.  Yes, they had driven people to where they make money, but that is not why they came to Whois.net.  They were there to look up domains that were available, find out who owns them, and potential buy them.

Consistency

Another very important point I learned from MarketingExperiments.com, and I will discuss them a lot here, is that consistency is real important in the process of building out web features.  You have to start at the beginning of the customer path.  The beginning is when they are sitting at their computer on Ipad.  Let’s say they have not even turned it on.  They are interested in South Florida Real Estate, as an example.  They open the computer and type those words into Google.  Google presents them with relevant results.  Let’s say your site is in those results.  When you click on one of the links, and let’s say its one of the top paid links, you are delivered to a web page.  The words you put in should arrive right in your face at the top of the page in big bold letters.  If not, you are not getting a consistent experience.  This is true for many of the paid links, because they are using something called Long Tail, which has a few meanings.  To me, it  means extending the search words they are buying out to more obscure words, to pay less and get more traffic.  This would typically mean they are looking to buy “Real Estate”, but it was cheaper to buy “South Florida Real Estate”.  This is great for smaller sites and pages that are meant to be for finding this exact stuff, but when you arrive at a generic Real Estate Seminar, you are disappointed.  This is not Google’s fault, it’s about people trying to get traffic, and the result is a lot of inconsistency.  Your consistency is critical in making your site found well and sticky, a term these marketing guys love to use (meaning they stick around).

Don’t Make Me Think

If you have not read this book, “Don’t Make Me Think”  and you work in the web field, you should get it, read it, and live by it.  The book’s simplicity, and I will hopefully sum it up here, is that people have developed common methods of experience online.  This means that they are expecting the same words, in the same spot, each time they arrive at a web page.  A good example is the word “About” or the word “Search”.  The book basically says if you say “Quick Search”, you are going to confuse people, and therefor making them think, like is really “Quick” or different.  More importantly, if your site is missing any of these common elements, such as the words “About”, “Contact” or “Search”, there is a customer disconnect.  And you need to understand that “Search” is a feature.  So for the basics, you need to make sure the customer experience is not so different they run away.  That also means that placing the word “Search” in the upper right of the page is preferential to let’s say the bottom left.  From the web features perspective, deliver to customers at least the minimum they are expecting on the site.  More and more, customers are expecting a web form on the home page and sometimes many site pages, where they can put their email address in, maybe with their first name or some additional data and get on that companies’ mailing list.

Short Form or The Long Form

One of questions is whether or not to put a short form or a long form onto a home page.  So, inevitably with these kinds of web forms, information collection forms, you have techniques that are learned over time.  You can learn this stuff by observing and taking the best of breed (they call it) and do things like this.  One of the methods that is recommended is you ask for a small amount of information up front, like just an email address or email address with a first name.  On the second page, you would then ask for additional information, saying that they are now on the list and they can further tell you more information about themselves.  This two step process like everything, reduces friction on the first step and allows the website visitor to make intelligent choices on the second step.  One thing I ran into when working for a hosting company was a situation where they required a domain name when buying hosting.  This was a system requirement.  It turned out to be a very costly financial requirement.  The reason is, and like everything, it came down to how people react.  The visitor, in many cases, had not decided on a domain name, so often they would just pick up and leave to figure it out…

This Web Feature discovery process article is 3 in a series of 3 so far.  The articles about Web Feature Discovery will continue in a new article next month.

Continue reading

android, co-registration, domain names, Don't Make Me Think!, Google Analytics, idea discovery, information discovery, Iphone, Marketing Experiments, slash and burn, web assets, web feature discover, web product management

This article is the second part of 2 articles on the Web Feature Discovery Process.  You probably should click here and read article 1 if you are here for the first time.

Ok, so you have finally figured out the key assets and are starting to go down the road of making your new web feature happen… well let’s just say you are only 20% towards the finish line.  There are some major hurdles involved for most of us, including even the big guy or gal at the top.  The thinking part of discovering ripe juicy revenue or visitor producing features is the easy part.  The difficult part is making it happen, navigating the human beings all along the way, especially when you know they are all trying to make sure you either fail directly, fail indirectly, fail just by the fact that you don’t have the energy to fight anymore, fail because you left the job or fail because the job left you.  It is a fight to the death my friend and its all because you sorted through the company assets with a flashlight at night when nobody was looking and you had an idea, you brought it into the daylight, and now you are a pure unadulterated target for those who don’t want you to succeed.  So how do you proceed  in the most murky of environments…

Social Engineering

I first began to understand social engineering, when I was reading a great article about Kevin Mitnick, the infamous hacker who broke into Sprint and stole tons of information about their customers.  He was not genius.  He was not very technical.  He was basically a petty thief.  How did he do it?  He used social engineering.  If you think about it, social engineering (in the Mitnick version)  is about figuring out how to use information and people of an organization to think what you want them to think and do, using that information wisely.  Mitnick figured out that when executives names where mentioned, people lose their minds and do what you want. “Uh, Dick Lynch the VP said we need that report now!”   Minick found out that if you know some small piece of information or just a name, you could easily navigate an entire organization, call around to people and they would hand you off like you were a friend.  He would use person X’s name and say hey person Y, Person X recommended me.  What really did is say the VP wanted me to get onto System Z, now so get me a login and password…

The point is, you need to understand the dynamics of the organization, the motivations of people in the organization and the hierarchy of decision-making.  Getting the organization on board with you is what I am getting at!  But ultimately, like I have said before, you can take the high road or the low road.  Taking the high road means bring the organization along on a ride towards success (success means getting your feature implemented).

Education Camp

Sometimes unusual methods are needed in order to gain the trust of execs and the whole organization.  For instance, some of the features I was trying to get implemented at my last company required me to make sure that the organization understood the features. What did I do about it?  I ran a seminar.  Now people in my company who came to my seminar looked at me in strange ways as I ran them. Once again who was I to run a seminar?  I was just a programmer there, sometimes a manager, but in no way did I have the keys to the kingdom or really was in charge of much there.  Fellow employees would look at me with confused looks. Who was this guy standing up there talking about things?  I ran periodic internal seminars at the office.  This means a short 45 minute talk, on WordPress for instance.  I ran a seminar on Whois.  I was planning a seminar on a variety of subjects. What was I doing in my crazy convoluted method was starting the social engineering process by planting seeds through my seminars.  I wanted this company to adopt certain strategies and methods.  Once again, nobody stopped me from running a talk at noon time in the conference rooms.  This is a great place to flesh out your ideas and don’t freak if someone shows up to show you up.  My answer to them would be, show me how to do it better!

Plan 32

One thing that a great product manager should always have is a pile of ready to go plans in their back pocket.  You have all the plans (I mean PPTs, Power Points) that are company planned, on the so called “Road Map”.  Actually I am going to digress here and tell you that if there is a Road Map beware!  The kind of process and thinking a Road Map can create can be a real negative, because from experience nay-sayers love to use the Road Map as a way to block new Road Entrances. Never let the Road Map not allow the process to be re-prioritized and redeveloped.  I have yet to see the Road Map (in the web feature world) be the best guide.  Now, as far as plans are concerned, you have the top line plans already planned out from the execs and board.  You have the plans that others know about that you are promoting, and you have a dozen others that they are not aware of, but you have them ready to go, in standby mode, in a file on your hard-drive or cloud, just in case the time is right.  Why the three types of plans?  Well, part of succeeding is not giving it all away too soon.  You have to release plans periodically to the organization, who can’t handle all the plans at once.  They have to be part of a series of changes over time.  Once again, as a champion, of a lot of other people’s ideas (OPIs), you need to map out these features properly and get your presentations just right. Sometimes you have to sit on things and let osmosis occur.  You wake up some morning and your brain somehow figures it out.  Who knows why things work that way, but often they do.  I would highly recommend sitting down with all the guys and gals who thought them up and show them where there idea is now!

The Shadow Government

Sometimes all the education and all the presentations and all the board room brawls are insignificant compared with the reality that something has to be done subversively.  It is a rare thing to do, and there are some well documented cases where it is a necessity.  A great example is the case of the James Cannavino at IBM.  I read a great story about Jim in the late 1960s trying to convince management that he could speed up the IBM Mainframe.  They rejected his notion, but in a subversive move, he had the technology developed outside the company and when it was finished went over his bosses and showed it to the board.  He faced either being fired or being promoted.  Luckily he was promoted.  Hopefully it doesn’t come to this, but sometimes getting things done in an organization require unusual activity, because like I have been inferring there are many more forces at work trying to not make things happen than happen, even on the smallest scale.

Project Mercury

Those funny project names, that often mimic Nasa project names are not just wild imaginative words that are spread around at a company.  They are used to get your attention, to try to get the organization to recognize a plan.  These project names may sound strange and odd, but customer oriented, improved website features are often a shift and they may seem quite odd at first.  Social networking stuff like Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook. These are now household names, but 10 years ago they would sound strange.  And it is only going to get stranger.  When I say Tweet, Joomla, Droopal, lamp or soap to people in the web world, they better know what I mean…  What should be happening in most American web firms is an injection of militarization combined with humor and something to spice it up.  That’s what a project name is all about.  If project names are not attention-getters, they should be.  I would always try to make the name relevant, but a good bit of creativity is a positive not a negative.

Misdirection And The Book Of 5 Rings

Talking about military tactics, people’s military training can go a long way in corporate America.  Just because I was not in the army, doesn’t mean we can’t learn from military tactics.  They are important. At the end of my MBA program I took a class which revolved around Musashi’s “The Book Of Five Rings“. Musashi is a Japanese expert on war in the middle ages who survived to his old age and therefor, because he was only one of the very few warriors to survive, he wrote about his tactics. One of the tactics listed is a method of drawing an enemy towards oneself and at the last minute let the enemy run themselves off a cliff.  In our language we call it misdirection. Sometimes you have to lead people down a path and not stop them from their self destruction.  Often your plan has one way of doing things and another person has their plan.  If you see their plan is faulty you don’t always have to stop it from failing. Sometimes it is best to let it fail.  When I worked back at the phone company we used to leave documents around about projects that were never in existence in order to confuse people about what our real intentions were.  Sometimes it is important to not reveal these intentions until you are ready to present and make it happen.

This the second of a 3 part articles. I have not  yet finished article 3 about Making the Web Feature Happen.

This is the first article (You should read them in order)

http://www.strategicpoints.com/2011/06/22/web-feature-discovery-process-part-1/

Continue reading

IBM, internet features, James Cannavino, Kevin Mitnick, MBA, Musashi, product manager, Road Map, The Book Of 5 Rings, Web Feature Discovery

Not that I am any bit an expert on web features, product management… and not that I know something that anybody else couldn’t figure out, but I am somewhat obsessed with the website “feature” development process, especially when it comes to overlooked, under-estimated, misused assets. This blog entry is about how I would go about discovering features and services and solutions towards increasing website traffic as well as finding new profitable directions and increasing conversion rates.  I am going to give a few examples, mainly from my experience working on a site like Whois.net (which is far from maximized; as far as I know they have just started the process).  But first, before I describe the process to develop these features and new products (aka, the old product management process in a new era), first we have to understand the lexicon of the web feature discovery process

Assets

Assets are virtual and sometimes physical things that an organization or company owns and manages.  Examples are domain names, websites, email addresses, segmented email addresses, unique site visitors, pageviews, sms, twitter accounts, Facebook and LinkedIn,  Persona of the visitors (how can we break up the kinds of visitors based on background), programs and applications, patents, copyrights and internal resources like people.  Oh yes, even people are assets.  These assets have a value and if you don’t put a value on these assets, you are making a mistake.

You need to start the web feature discovery process by working with asset value and not revenue, because while most everything in marketing is revenue based, the overall value of what you are building towards (ultimately revenue) may be determined by the value of the assets, and assets may ultimately determine long and even short term revenue.   When I say assets, many technology and marketing execs would often give me a blank stare, like they have no clue what I am talking about. (I can only chalk this up to the fact that asset value is not how they are compensated, so don’t blame them, blame the boardroom for not keeping up with current valuation measures!)  But what is going on in the start-up world, whatwe can call the modern world of business, is a whole new world of asset valuation.  And if your division created a website worth $20 million that only made a net income of $100,000 a year, maybe it is time to sell it and take the profits…

The second thing to know about these virtual assets are the more detail you know, and the more they are optimized, the more valuable the assets are worth.  We are in a world where websites, domain names and other assets are sold off to make some cash.  So, don’t overlook asset creation vs. revenue creation.  They now go hand in hand.  20 years ago you would think I’m a loony bird, but the world has changed and companies do sell stuff.  At my last firm they did sell assets, except not after we maximized them, but after they personally devalued them.

Often a firm may be collecting email addresses. I say “may”, because some out of the way places don’t.  Good luck to those outfits.  If  most organizations just knew 10 things about these email addresses, what people were interested in, or simple things like their first and last names or where they are located, the asset value of the list may be double or triple the value.  Add more detail detail like age, demographics, what they like, who they like, etc and increase the value further.

How do you value these assets?  My way of valuing them is simple.  If you were to take them away and wanted to get them back, how much would it cost you?  For instance, and I am often going to use Whois.net as an example, because that was the last large site I worked on.  The Whois domain search site got about 2 million unique visits a month.  Now the company saw no real value there because they had a hard time understanding the relationship to their sales, but when I asked execs how much would it cost you to buy 2 million visits a month by buying the PPC (Pay Per Click) words “Domain Name” and “Hosting”, it would have cost them a minimum $2 million dollars a month budget and therefor, just the traffic was worth $12 million a year or $36 million over 3 years.  It’s a bit of fuzzy math, but going with “remove it and try to reacquire it”, is a great way to get them to understand.  The reason most don’t understand is they typically don’t sell assets and are graded on revenue…but is that really what this is all about in the end…  Because if you make something worth millions maybe the asset sales is bigger than any revenue you would ever be able to generate.

So start the process by doing an inventory of assets.  First day on the job and you want to make a new web features happen at your web company, start by finding out the basics.  What domains do we own?  What websites do we run?  What are total number of email addresses?  How many visitors to each site?  How many segments are we catching from customers in the email area?  How many members?  How many orders?  How many skus?  How Many? What? Where? Why and How?  Get this information down on paper, because this information is the foundation for new and improved services.

Champion

Leaders, execs, people who have an idea, guys in the company basement, people on the customer service lines, MBAs with a business plan or just a lonely CEO with an idea are champions of web features.  This means that somebody has to believe in it and want to make it happen.  A group of people may want the features to happen, but a person has to ultimately answer and stand up and say I am the product champion.  Groups don’t champion stuff, individuals do.  This is one of the critical mistakes made by corporations, to think that a group of people will decide by committee ultimately what a web feature will do and how it goes is a big mistake.  Not that web features are made by a dictator, and if the champion is a dictator, he probably will fail.  If he is a benevolent dictator and listens well, it will succeed.  Funny thing is this champion can not be limited to execs with great salaries and titles like VP, Director, CEO, CIO, CTO, BFD or Founder.  A champion can and should be everybody.  That is what makes companies succeed, not a special group who say only we do the thinking.  It can and should by anyone, including employees, shareholders, customers, husbands & wives, sons & daughters, friends and the UPS man. Champions need support and guidance and promoters from above, below and sideways. Being a champion has its risks, as I’ve learned and you can get burned by being the champion or you can get the accolades and make it happen.  You can even make it happen and not get the accolades, but then you would have known inside you made it happen.  So it does not matter!  Money comes later, first comes action!

Little Trees

Years ago we used to pay to plant trees in Israel.  And then years later when I visited Israel I got a chance to see those trees grow.  In order to grow a tree, a big tree, you have to plant seedlings or small trees. This is where many execs lose their patience and understanding of the product management process.  You have to test, test and test again these little trees in order to find a big one.  Ok, if you don’t get the tree allegory of ideas, you may be missing the point. Where do you find these little ideas?  Somebody recently said, “Dan’s An Idea Guy!”  That is not true.  I am not an idea guy, I am a guy who listens and hears other people’s concepts and evolves them into ideas. There are ideas all around us, if we would take the time to just listen and sort through the data.  Remember, the assets… Just doing an inventory will start to flesh out these little trees or concepts or ideas.  One thing I always did at these companies is walk around and chat with the various people in the business.  They have ideas.  They know what may or may not work and though they don’t know how to implement, they do know something they are not telling everybody.  Often its something in the business that bugged them for years that they want to share.

Sharing

Never thought the web feature discovery process would come down to sharing, but learning to share, something my 3 year old has not yet mastered, is the key way towards finding those little trees.  People need to get together and chat and think and find answers. These answers are something somebody read somewhere.  A company environment where people don’t share their thoughts is a place that will never flesh out new concepts or web features.  Look at Google, they are actually asking for the ideas and look what they have produced.  If we want the rest of corporate America to be successful on the web, they better listen up and start to share. Like I said earlier, it is the champion that takes an idea and makes sure it happens, not the product management guy or gal. The product management person should be the facilitator and not the creator in the end.  Listen and learn, not ignore and complain. Sometimes doing your job requires less not more of giving and taking.  Learn from your childhood and share.  The secret to sharing is giving of oneself.  If you can not give to others, by give I mean tell people something about yourself or your ideas, you will not be able to acquire ideas.  The sharing has to start with you.

The Other Guys

Now this is the easiest way to find those things that people have not thought of and get the real brainstorm on what is happening in the market. You actually need to go off and look carefully at the competitors.  This is not about mimicking people, this is about concept development.  You see a feature on another competitor and you grab it.  Fine, but you not only have to take it, you have to own it and therefor it needs to come from you in a new way.  What I ended up doing for my Whois.net thesis, which you will read about in my other blog articles on Domain and Whois Tool searches. This meant locking myself up and reading through 500 websites.  From this exercise alone I ended up with a dozen new products and features for the Whois.net site.  No rocket science involved here.  It is simply looking and learning.

Integrative Strategic Thinking (Aha Moments)

Once you have all this data in front of you, such as the assets, the new ideas from those around you, and the competitive information, you now start to see things from a different level. At this higher level, as you look holistically at information.  You can start to piece together stuff you did not see originally in just the assets.  For instance, when I looked through and discovered that Whois.net did not allow international domain  name look-ups, I knew immediately this was an important issue.  The importance was simple enough. If you increase upon (extend) what people already like, you will probably have success.  They used to call it product extensions.  This is where you take a product that is already successful and you add on a new feature or extend the product to new areas.  Not a high risk activity.  For Whois.net, international domain name traffic look-ups blew out the traffic, automatically doubling it in six months and it tripled and quadrupled traffic over a year.  Just satisfying people with stuff they already wanted is easy.  However, what is easy to do, is often not seen by the blind.  And when you are busy in a high end corporate product management job,  you are blinded by the requests from above and from the sides.

Stats and Prioritization

What did I do with the 500 websites I viewed in my these on Whois searches?  I came up with a scientific approach to figure out what feature was important.  Most of you who read this probably prioritize every day.  I rated each feature by value (yes a monetary value), ease of implementation, where I found it, as well as the monetary value of the websites I reviewed. This review process was not about money, it was about assets again.  What I focused on, was how do I get visitors to this site, not on how do I convert.  I was leaving conversion and selling at this point up to marketing and sales. That was something they knew how to do pretty well. What you need to as a good champion is to understand the data beneath the hood and how to use this data to make a point.  Prioritization and hitting low hanging fruit are extremely important ways of working as well.  We are in an impatient world, where execs don’t have the time or energy to listen unless they are just seeing the cream of the crop.  Maybe they shouldn’t know everything till the time is right.  Sometimes companies kill a product or project the first time around because it failed.  That does not mean the second time it will be the same.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Organizations that learn from their mistakes and take actions the second time around to make things right are rare.  Most organizations bury a concept that has failed and when it is mentioned again by an newbie, the newbie is crushed with the notion that “this has failed here”.  This is a big mistake.  Failure should never be viewed as a doorway an organization can not go through again.  It should, however, be the shining example of how not to do the same thing, the same way.  Failure should be used as a way to understand what to do right next time. Like a pyramid, building upon their knowledge, great organizations store this learned mistake information and use it positively going forward.

Leapfrog

One of the concepts I learned while working on a well ignored site like Whois.net was if you are so far behind the competition, it is sometimes worth it, to not mimic, but rather take a leap of faith and go for something greater, different, in a way that competitors would never do.  Why won’t they?  The competitor has already made their product or web feature decision and taken the current path.  If they are leaders in the market already, it will take a lot for them to change.  This leap of faith may be something like give it away for free, or combine it with something new or offer something completely different or in a way that is easy to identify but not the same.  Simply cookie cutter mimicking is a nuisance on the web. Who wants to go to Bing, when Google does it so well?  Why would I ever do that, other than Microsoft has figured out a way to trap me when I load the next IE Browser?  Now if Bing did something so different, so incredibly well done, it would make sense.  If they were better on an Ipad, sure.  If they were better with voice search, sure.  If they were bettter or different…it would matter.  Making it matter means being different not the same.  In the case of Whois.net, I was determined to make the site a competitor with Sedo, the domain auction house, except my idea was to make it a free place to buy and sell domains.  Sedo is not free.  This is the kind of leap that makes a difference.

Hopefully this blog entry got you interested in discovering a new web feature…  I will continue this blog entry in Part 2.  Click Here to go to Web Feature Discovery Process – Part 2!  And it turns out there will be a part 3, which I am currently working on.

Continue reading

bing, domain searches, Google, microsoft, Persona, product discovery, product management, traffic, visits, web features, whois, Whois.net

A few years ago, and I would love to find this article again, on Yahoo Finance, there was an article about why you should just forget about getting an MBA.  Just start an Internet start-up and skip business school!  That is what the writer prescribed. Not sure if this was written to get the Yahoo Finance readers up in arms or to make a point.  It did get lots of responses, good and bad.  And in some ways I totally agree with the writer.  In some ways I did not.  I had my own answer to this, but my situation was very different than the audience the writer was writing for. Seemed like she was writing for a group of 20 something technology hacking recent grads.

Your GMAT Score Is Inversely Related To Your Ability To Run Your Own Business

Your GMAT score is inversely related to your ability to run your own business.  I stole this line from a book I read years ago on how to survive the Harvard business school. Yes, it is true that MBA programs train people to work at companies and deal with big company issues.  It is also true the degree is a generalist degree in many ways, kind of like an engineering degree.  What you learn in school is not what you are going to be doing in real life. And it may actually be true that those who go to get their MBA are often not able to start and run their own business, but when I ask entrepreneurs if they could have an MBA right now to assist them in their business and their answer is always yes.  It is always better to have more education.  I would get a PHD, if I had unlimited money, time and resources.

More Learning Means More Money

If you do some research, like here, you will find that the more education you get, the more you earn in general.  Obviously we would all love to start a company and make money on our own working for ourselves, but the statistics say that overall getting more education means more money.  It is a simple principle.  Also, not everybody can go off and start an Internet company.  There are as many failures in online business as there are offline.  It is easier and faster to start a business online and thousands of new websites every year prove it.  You can’t knock people from trying, but don’t argue this start-up method is an alternative to an MBA.  You can have an MBA and be in a start-up, in fact that combination is more powerful than a start-up founder without an MBA.

I Went To Learn

My MBA education was not about the degree.  Well, it became about finishing the degree in the last year, but overall, it was done over time, at 2 programs and I literally took my time and made often my class work about my day job.  This was not about the degree in my mind, it was about my mind.  I think it is important to learn and not just be handed a piece of paper.  One of the issues that speaks broadly about this, is the lack of ethics among MBA grads.  Well, if they are not about learning, and just about the degree, what do you expect them to be like.  There are many with no scruples, no ethics and why do we often hear about guys like Madoff attempting to run a scam.

Education Realization

I recently had a epiphany not about my own MBA, but about certain pillars of my own learning in the past 10 years, especially about the web.  What I realized is that there are probably a dozen foundational areas of being an expert on websites, such as web design, web programming, web analytics, business development, product management, email marketing, search engine marketing and organic SEO.  What I realized is that you can be an expert in one of these areas.  Once you become an expert, you will find that your desire to learn more in that specific field may top out, especially after many years in the field.

This just means you need to get knowledge in the other areas, if you work in the web.  Our brains can handle the same thing day in, day out for just so long.  And learning something new does not mean giving up what you know, it means building on what you know by learning a new area, especially if it is related. Maybe I am nothing like the rest of the web workers out there, especially if their answer is I am happy knowing my little silo of information and that’s that.  This is a rare person, and in fact, this kind of person is the perfect company person.

Ford’s Assembly Line

If you look at the original concept of Ford’s Assembly Line and why it was so ground breaking, its because of specialization.  Each person in the factory would specialize in one small area of the making of the car and just do their job.  I probably would have quit that job at some point, or maybe I would have moved around the plant and worked on the fenders for a while.  I need to get around and learn more about different areas after I master an area of business.  I had for the longest time been considered a web analytics expert.  This expertise, which is somewhat uncommon in the market, is in my opinion, not an end unto itself, but one of many disciplines needed to truly understand the web.  It is foundational.

The Designer Becomes The Programmer And Vice Versa

I have actually seen web designers start out writing a few PHP programs here and there and turn into a full time programmer.  I have seen designers become directors and engineers become writers.  We seem to migrate towards not what we know, but what we are good at.  In fact, maybe initially we did not even know we were good at these things, but when we found out, by chance, that we were good at it, be decided to like it.  I stole that idea from the New York Times article on why Chinese Mothers are superior (They make their kinds learn something.  They say be good at something, and then one day you will learn to like it!).

Web Education

Let’s face it, you can get an education on any subject in like 15 minutes today.  I use Youtube.com when I cook and watch videos on how to make Indian food.  I use Instructables.com to figure out how to do this or that.  I research facts that make me as knowledgeable as any doctor, on certain matters, in a matter of minutes. I even found out at a retail outlet going out of business recently, the approximate value of a painting on the wall, before it was sold to me.  We are empowered with the ability to discover and learn at a moment’s notice.  Think about the impact of this on future generations who will have an answer to any question imaginable in a second.  Still the web doesn’t give us the core part of an education that we get in the classroom, and that is working in teams, directly with an instructor that can’t exactly be mimicked online.  The day is coming with Skype, Wifi and iPads where this will not be true anymore…

Continue reading

Education, MBA, start-ups, Yahoo Finance

Synchronicity seems to happen in 3s.  You hear something once, then you hear it again. When you hear it a third time, you may want to listen up.  Maybe the world is trying to tell you something.  Three times in the past 2 weeks either a person or a short video stated bluntly that you might as well hang it up as an internet start-up if you are not in Silicon Valley, NYC or near Boston.  That sounds kind of ominous if you are not in those three cities.  What are we to do?  Are the other 95% of Americans in a technology business, trying to make an Internet start-up a reality, supposed to just stop right now.

The answer is no.  This “you have to be in these three cities” is not a prognosticator of success, but rather the possibility of receiving venture capital for an Internet start-up.  And venture capital is the fuel that makes big or decent size Internet software ventures run. But from listening to videos of successful start-ups out of the San Francisco area, it would seem that it goes way beyond just venture cap.  It is finding the management, getting the right employees, having the right legal work done.  And it seems this is just the way it is.  I think if you are wanting to be a start-up and you are in Kansas, South Florida, New Mexico, or Maine, it just means you have to focus back on either boot-strapping, self-funding, using Angels, or try the long shot of getting backed from another interested firm, like Google Ventures.

In South Florida recently, we’ve heard that Cross-Bow Ventures is no longer in business in Palm Beach County and that there really is not a lot of VC dollars to go around in the south east at this point in time.  This means that trying to raise certain amounts of capital will be nearly impossible unless some new funds start to take up the slack.  It could, however, point to a major problem in South Florida trying to raise capital.

Continue reading

south florida internet, Venture Capital

Back in 2001 I met up with Vince Gerlormine at the Association for Internet Professionals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  A few months later he asked if I could build a speed dating website for him that could run events in multiple cities, run by multiple event hosts.  By mid-2002 we were in 15 cities and growing fast.  Pre-Dating.com went on to be the largest speed dating business in the US, in over 80 markets and was sold in 2004 to Cupid.com.

One issue that I observed working with Vince was is he would often overload the home page with tons of details and he went on to write an enormous FAQs page.  He was concerned about the customer not having enough information to make a decision to sign up.  He had questions in there like “What should I Wear To The Event?”, “Where Should I Go Afterwards”, “What Happens If It Snows?”, etc., etc.  And we also had several clicks till a person could actually purchase the speed dating event.

I told Vince that my preference would be to have the registration form right on the home page and to not have all this cluttered text and information and links on that home page, so that it would be clear to me how to buy.

So a few years later I realized that he and I had two differing ways of surfing a website and that is why we had a different opinion of the checkout process.  In 2009 I was certified by Marketing Experiments with a Landing Page Optimization Certification and went through their quite amazing training on optimizing web forms and step by step usability methods.  So, I do have a background in this area now.  Back in 2001 I was simply the web developer.   We can actually take our two ways of thinking and segment the market of surfers into Insecure Focused and Secure Unfocused.  If you are going to segment and don’t know what they are, this is one way of segment and serving these two audiences.  Years ago at another large ecommerce company we segmented on new vs. existing, which is another common way to go.  But the Insecure Focused, Secure Unfocused is a psychographic we discovered, making it a good way to segment.

Insecure Focused

Insecure Focused are people that surf a website and have a lot of concerns about buying and need to have these issues overcome by selling the customer and providing enough information to get them to be “secure” about their feelings of buying. These are people who are concerned about the site being a rip off and not providing or living up to the standard that they are reading about.  These people sometimes go as far as reading the terms on a website and they will read all the fine print.  I am not sure of the % who fit this segment, because each site will be different.  Though that would be an interesting number to figure out.  Let’s just say that the Insecure Focused person most likely has to leave the website and think about buying before checking out the competition sites, the better business bureau and mulling over it in their bed overnight…

Secure Unfocused

Secure Unfocused people are just that.  They are confident in taking a risk on a website, and generally have arrived at that website for a purpose that they knew in advance they would jump at.  Basically think of these people as having tunnel vision.  Their eyes lock on to an actionable part of the website page and if it makes sense they take action.  People like me don’t read everything and if we do, we often miss some of the details. It is like the whole page on the site other than the actionable items gets fuzzy. Some people have laughed at me when I say to put an email box saying “get on our list” on their website, even if there is no reason to get on the list.  These secure unfocused folks will jump on the list.  I had been working on Websites.com for Verio/NTT corp and put a box on it like this and several months later we had a couple thousand emails. I am a secure unfocused person.  I will basically not want to take the time to read everything.  I am a sign up kind of guy.  I don’t believe its worth my time to read all those terms and if the deal looks decent enough, I just jump in and get it.  Thus, we end up with sites for Secure Unfocused people like Woot.com.  One of my favorites.

So, as a web manager you have to say to yourself, where do my beliefs lie.  If you are Insecure Focused, then you have to not just design a site you would use, you have to solve the problem for quickies like me who don’t want to read everything.  If you are Secure Unfocused type of person, you have to understand that there are people who look at a big form box with fear and trepidation and will never put their email in… unless you coax them.  You need to create a path for success for both types of visitors.

There are two mantras for site visitors to consider here, Insecure Focused and Secure Unfocused, in addition to a many other ways to segment.  But overall this way is a very actionable way to design for both types of individuals and solve both paths towards successful conversion.

Continue reading

Insecure Focused, Marketing Experiments, Online Segmentation, Pre-Dating, Secure Unfocused

If you don’t already have an Ipad, and you are wondering what all the fuss is about, and why every manufacturer of devices like HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Dell, HP/Palm and Others are falling all over themselves to make a copy… well apparently it is not immediately obvious. I am now saying it is as game changing as the cellphone was to the end of the 20th century. It was not obvious to me.

For instance, before I had one, I stubbornly told my wife one day late in December that the Ipad is a useless device. Little did I know she had already made the purchase and the box was sitting in her car waiting to be opened. Boy she felt foolish, and then I did.

Well, on first glance it is a useless device…from the perspective of replacing either your Notebook PC or your Cellphone. The Ipad is somewhat like playing the piano with big fat mittens on. As a Notebook PC replacement or PC replacement; it just can’t do it like a PC. It’s got no keyboard really, other than a hunt and peck method, and you can’t write the American novel on it. It has no camera. It has no web cam. An Ipad is no cellphone replacement. It’s not for making phone calls and it does not fit in your pocket. The Ipad is basically the flightless bird of the technology world.

Apple should have named the Ipad, “The Ostrich”. Ok, all that said, why am I claiming so boldly that the Ipad is THE Game Changer. And why do millions of people around the world agree with me. A simple statement: The end of newspapers and books as we know it today. There is a reason News Corp introduced the first paid version of an Ipad only newspaper recently.

The Ipad is the first device that makes it possible for me to read The New York Times In Bed, before the wife and kids wake. You can easily read the NYT at 2am, at your desk at work, etc., etc. It is the first device that makes it reasonably possible to read the paper in the toilet. Yes, I know a lot of Crackberry.com people read their Iphones and Androids in the lavatory, but that was child play, and bad for your thumbs and bad for your eyes.  And then there are those who take it to work and use it to sign up for dating sites like speed dating without their company recording it on their servers… I know I am in the speed dating business and the numbers show that Ipad users are using it to sign up.

Why is this a breakthrough for me and other technophytes?  It’s because we haven’t read a real newspaper in 10 years. Web developers, designers and other web team members have discontinued our paper reading, newspaper piling up ways long ago, and we just don’t get and don’t want a newspaper around the house. It is silly. It is wasteful. And if you work on the computer all week long you don’t want to waste your eyes on a newspaper that leaves ink on your hands. And those 20 or so novels and other books, like What To Do At The End Of The World or Unbroken that I bought last year at Costco, I never read.  I never opened up the cover.  Why?  Because I have to preserve my eyes.

And there is more…

I have only hit the tip of the iceberg on the positives versus other devices.  The Kindle, from Amazon, looks like a frail, gray-scale, ninny of a device that can’t run a pinball game or let you play Words With Friends (Our version of Ipad Scrabble, yes, with your friends).  The Nook, from Barnes & Nobles, is a device that was extinct before its species evolved.  I guess we can describe this as an evolutionary point in time and these other species will just die off.  On an interesting note, because the Kindle is also software, it apparently has the option to live on, on these other devices like the Ipad.  Kind of reminds of recent archeological studies which now believe that Neanderthals may have mated with Homo Sapiens.  I guess you have to do something to survive…

And Finally…

My father, who had one before me, asked me with bated breath what applications do I run on my Ipad.  So here is my top list so far:

The New York Times
The International Herald
NPR
CNBC For Stock Quotes
Words With Friends (Scrabble with your friends and relatives)
Evernote (A MUST, thank Guy Kawasaki for this recommendation)
Pandora (Another must for radio/music listening!)
Google Apps (Gmail, Google Chat, Calendar, Picassa)
Scrabble
Scramble
Sky Star Viewing Program To View Planets and Stars (unbelievable)
The Deep Pinball & Wild West Pinball
iBooks
Woot
Godaddy
Paper Toss
Etrade
Labyrith 3D

Continue reading

apple, dell, game changer, hp, htc, Ipad, motorola, palm, samsung

For about 3 days my WordPress site, StrategicPoints.com was not working.  This was not an accident.  I was playing around on a Sunday afternoon showing somebody how easy it to use, ironically, and I basically destroyed the site.  So this was not an act of god, it was something I did.

Well, if you are reading this and your site comes up with a blank screen, because you simply changed your theme, and you can’t get back into your wordpress admin, you are in the same boat I was in. 

How Did This Happen

Interestly enough, the theme I chose to switch to used to work. That is, it used to work under a previous WordPress version. This is something that you can control.  Just don’t go switching your themes like I did.  Eventually you will hit a theme that is not compatible with your current WordPress version.  That is when you have to do some stuff to get it back, you may not have the ability to do.

What Did I Do?

First I determined it was from switching the WordPress theme.  Our brains get kind of cloudy right after we do something, especially if you get stressed out.  You may not remember what happened.  Of course, if this has happened to you, you are probably already googling, “my wordpress site disappeared” looking for some guidance. 

In order to fix this problem, I had to get WordPress to point back to the original theme.  I had to FTP into the site (and this was a site I don’t typically log into). 

Once I ftp’d to the site, I copied the offending theme directory back to my PC and renamed it old.  I then renamed the theme directory on the server to the name of the current theme. This is a temp fix, and for a moment the homepage showed up on WordPress. 

Then I copied the good theme down as well to my PC, and made sure I had a copy back on the server with the right name.  I then went in and moved the site to the original theme it came with.  This gave me access to wordpress. With temporary access to WordPress I had to go in and specifically activate the original theme. 

Site is back up and running.  This blog entry helped me out considerably.

Continue reading

bad theme, old wordpress versions, wordpress blank screen, wordpress disappeared

This blog post is about how to get a loan using the SBA for $25,000.  I recently closed on a loan using the SBA.  I am not going to specifically say which bank I used or SBA person, I will get into how to start your search, because this is a region/local issue, and you need to use the SBA effectively on the local level to figure this stuff out.  I am not a banker, in the SBA, a lawyer, or have anything to gain by giving you this advice.  I am just a fellow entrepreneur.  Plus at the end of this blog, I will tell you some of the biggest mistakes I made in the process.  Quite honestly the biggest mistake I made was being honest…  I would do it the same way all over again though.  Being honest is your best policy in working with a bank.

If you are reading this blog post, you are either interested in the process of acquiring a $25k loan, because you are thinking of starting a small business, have already started the business, are a regular reader of my blog, a friend or relative.  If you just found this post by accident and just like reading this just, well, good for you!

First, let’s start by analyzing whether or not  you need this loan.

Are you starting a business that can use the $25k effectively?  This means, for instance, many businesses are needing a lot more than $25k.  I guess even if you are looking for $2 million to start your business, having $25k is a start.  It would typically pay the legal fees, business costs, etc., that you need to get to the $2 million. If you are seriously getting the $25k because that is all you need to start, like a consignment shop or a hot dog stand or a small franchise then this is probably the way to go…

I will get into the positives and the negatives with this type of loan and how I felt the wrath of banking,  a feeling you apparently aways get, in getting a business loan.  One question, a very important one, is can you afford to pay back the $25k?  This means is your idea or current business viable, does it make money or lose money, what is the break even point, and will it have the cash flow to afford the monthly payments.  The loan I acquired was for 7 years, so this is a good amount of time to pay it off.

One thing a lot of entrepreneurs think is “I don’t want this debt”.  Let’s say you can live without this loan, because you have $50k or a $100k in savings or a 401k plan.  Well, don’t break open the 401k plan if you don’t have to.  Keep your money in the bank is my feeling, especially since you have to separate business and personal money. They are 2 separate issues you see as I discuss this. One of the best issues behind the SBA $25k loans, if you get the loan, the loan is not personally guaranteed.  You need to qualify in terms of credit and many, many other issues, but once you get it, it is not like you are personally responsible.  Your business, however, is responsible.  So if your business fails, the business will be in trouble with the loan, not you.  Important reminder, remember to set up a corporation if you need a loan, because if you don’t have an S corporation or an LLC you will be making a big mistake.  Like many gotcha’s in this article, that is a big one.

That said, even if you have the cash on hand, here is why you should get the loan, especially if you are a startup:

1. You are a startup, having a source of cash for your business is always a smart move, especially with a decent term and rate.
2. This “express” loan is only for startups.  If you are in a failing business and are thinking of starting a new business to get this loan to help your business sliding out the door, stop right now.  That is one of the red flags they look for.
3. This type of loan is great for establishing credit.  A guy I consulted with at SCORE once told me to get credit early on in your business.  It establishes credit to get larger loans down the road.
4. You don’t have to give up equity in your business.  There are pluses and minuses to this, but having an investor is a guy or gal looking over your shoulder.

So, let now tell you about all the crap I had to go through to get the loan.

I first contacted the SBA. You can just go to http://www.sba.gov and on their website find a local contact or office.  They are most everywhere.  This is the first step.  Going directly to the banks will not be the right process.  You need to get SBA consultation to get this loan!

Once you contact the SBA, typically you have a call or meeting with an SBA advisor. They will confirm for you if you are ready for a loan.  If so, they will recommend a bank and give you all the contact information you need.  They will also tell you the ins and outs of getting a loan.  They will give you a song and dance about how hard it is to get money for a startup business these days, and if they are a good advisor they will tell you how easy it is to get this $25k loan, as long as you quality.

Next  you contact the bank.  You will shortly find out if you qualify for the loan.  If you have anything wrong in your life, such as a felony, bankruptcy, foreclosure, bad credit, and a litany of other problems you are probably not getting this loan.  If you are a government employee, an SBA employees, have gotten this loan before, defaulted on loans such as student loans or are a party to a major lawsuit, your chances of getting this loan are diminished.  If you have any of these problems, kiss this loan goodbye.  Sorry about that, but there are other places to get loans.

Once you get the banks attention they typically, or immediately ask for a financial disclosure form.  This means telling them about all your assets, all your loans and all your monthly payments.  They will ask for a credit check.  If you are below a certain level, I assume they will raise the rate possibly.  This form needs to be filled out for you and your spouse, if you have one.  They need to know about YOU, and the potential risk level you pose to them.

Next they give you a list of about 10 things you need.  Having these in advance of the process, really, I MEAN REALLY HELPS…. They are what is required:

1. A business plan with about 2 years of projections.  I have a feeling this is a problem for many people.  But they understand you are a start-up…  If you have a buddy who has an MBA, ask them to help you out.  Doesn’t have to be fancy, but you need it.
2. Incorporation Proof/Papers.  If you lost mine, well, thank god, in florida they have an online way of downloading a copy.
3. Signing Forms to release  a summary of your last 5 tax returns.  If this is a problem for you, because I have been back 3 years on getting my taxes filed, you are in for a big problem.  Get your returns up to date before continuing with this process.  You will not get the loan unless they are up to date!
4. Your EIN, your Federal Tax Id and a government document proving you have one…  This one was a pain in the butt for me.  I did not know where this was.  If you don’t have one, contact the IRS and get one.  If you lost the original doc, call the IRS and ask for another one.
5. Business or Occupational License.  This one drove me insane.  I started a software company so what the heck is a occupational license.  I thought this was for restaurants and hair salons.  Turns out you can get a occupational license in any state for any profession.  Typically it is associated with a location, but for a virtual company like mine, it is just a piece of paper.  To start the process of getting one go to your local township and ask them and then the county…  In my county they are now calling a business receipt.  Huh?
6. Copies of Drivers license
7. Personal statements that say you are who you are that are notarized.  You will have to do this.
8. Rent or lease statements if you lease.  This one drove me insane because if I had just said I run the business out of my house I would have been good.  However, I slipped and was honest and said I was going to share an office with a local CPA firm.  Basically I would be subletting, and I had not yet started.  Was this info I should not have offered?  Well I did.  This caused the loan process to back up 2 weeks as I had to get the CPA firm to write up a lease agreement…  What a pain.
9.  Signatures from Directors of Company.  Once again I was honest and told them about another officer of the company, which I did not have to do.  This caused me to have to duplicate all the documents I signed for the other officer.  The officer in my company by the way was not listed on the corporation papers.  No matter, once the bank found out, it had to be done.
10. Resumes
11. Signoff from the SBA.  Remember you will need the SBA to approve your application as well.
12. Explanation of Corporate Interests.  If you have founded other corporations, and they are no longer active.  Doesn’t matter.  In the state of florida they can look you up and they will all be available at http://www.sunbiz.org.  Now I know why people incorporate in Delaware and Nevada.  I hear those states don’t have an online Database you can quickly look somebody up on.  What this meant is explaining each and every business I am in or have been in.  If you have a dirty history, thank god not a problem for me, you may have an issue.  It still may not be an issue, but you will have to write a document telling them what the heck business you did back when and why and how, blah, blah, blah.  Did I give you the caveat that if you have dirty laundry.  They will find it.  I still have not regrets here, just another pain to write the letter to explain things.
13. More documents.  Only saying this because I am forgetting something.  There was always one more this and one more that.  This process made buying a house look easy, even under the current conditions of the mortgage industry.

Let’s face it, it took me 3 months to get them all the documents…  Once time I got close to finishing and they wanted one of the original documents again.  Huh?  And of course I could not find it, so I had to get my notarized document done twice.  Turns out the UPS stores do it but the Fedex stores do not notarize things.

All that said, we got down to the wire and 4 months from the date of first filling out the paper work, meeting with the SBA, lo and behold I finally got a settlement date, when the underwriters would approve and they would fund a bank account.  At the last moment, a lot of gotchas.  Turned out that I was off base on the loan, and I ended up with a variable rate.  I was happy to get the loan and did not complain.   Worse case scenario, if the rates go up, I will pay it off…  Also at the end they sent me a bill and told me that they would take $500 off the loan right at funding.  Did I know about this?  No.  Was there anything I could do about this?  No.  So the biggest caveat is, if you are business starting the business, and you are not OCD or anal retentive you are going to miss something and be surprised later on.  I am not OCD, I am your regular mortal guy, you may miss something like this in the documents they first send you.  You have to just be happy to get the funding and live with whatever small details you missed.  It is a price you pay.

One interesting thing I learned in this process is that there was no discrimination, no reverse discrimination or anything like that.  I remember going down the path of looking for an SBA loan like 10 years ago and there were problems with being a white adult male…  Back then if you were not a woman, a minority, Latino, American Indian, a senior, handicapped or a veteran you could just say bye bye to a loan.  All of these criteria seem to have been removed.  This is not the focus of the current SBA and I really think this is truer under the Obama administration than any other time.  And this is the right way to do this.  There should not be any criteria if you want to start a business, even if you are 15 years old…  It is an open system, which means those who need this loan should go and get it.

End of story, get the money if you need it.  Nothing is for free and you seem to pay a price for any loan you get.  It is a bit of mental anguish.  What I learned is it is probably just as much pain to get a loan for $2 million as it is for $25k, so next time I will try for a bigger loan if something like this will take that much time.  I could have easily taken the time that went into getting the $25k loan and consulted as a programmer.  In the 4 month period I could have made a part of that in cash with my blood, sweat and tears and not have to pay it back!

Another interesting thing I realized when they sent me a form asking me a simple question of how many employees part time or full time I hired is that I did have an impact on the economy.  My start-up business will use about 10 separate part time people over the next year as 1099s.  This means the loan is helping our economy and this is a very important part of the economic recovery!

Continue reading

$25k, bank loan, entrepreneur loan, express loan, patriot loan, SBA, startup loan