www.grantdeken.com

Twitter for Marketing Your Business

2009-03-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

See more content at http://www.tangentinitiatives.com

Tiger Tari & the Davis Entrepreneurs

2009-03-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

2009 Small Business Marketing Guide

2009-03-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

As a business owner you know that marketing is one of the most integral parts of driving your bottom line. Sales keep you in business, but marketing keeps you in sales. However, marketing does not have to be expensive. In fact some of the best ways to build a small business are through inexpensive marketing strategies. Listed below are some great ways to build your business without burning a hole in your pocket.

Chamber of Commerce Councils:
The general chamber can be too big and not worth the effort if you're in the city (Jacksonville is second largest in the US for example). I suggest starting by choosing a local council to get involved with. For those in Jacksonville, check out the following link which has a listing. (http://www.myjaxchamber.com/general.asp?id=572) The women's council in Jacksonville is very strong and the networking is phenomenal. Not in Jacksonville? Just google “[city name] chamber of commerce.”

American Marketing Association:
Develop relationships with people who get what marketing is all about. Business is all about relationship building. This a good source for building your natural market since most of these people are professional networkers and marketers. Listed below is the link to find a local chapter.(http://www.marketingpower.com/Community/_layouts/FindaChapter.aspx)

Search Engine Optimization:
Websites need to be submitted properly to all search engines in order for them to start showing up in people's searches. Use map tools to get your business to show up on google maps, mapquest, etc. Identify appropriate key words for your website. Having appropriate keywords is helpful to boosting your websites search rankings. The better your content and keywords, the better quality of the visitors that go to your site.

Not sure how to set up Search Engine Optimization? Be careful when considering hiring an SEO consultant. Many are novices and deliver poor results, causing you a loss on your investment. Consider doing some basic research to understand what SEO is and how it can help your business. Tangent specializes in creating effective web marketing strategies. We offer SEO packages as well as per hour work.

Here is an informational link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Craig's List for Recruitment:
You can also post listings on Craig’s List (www.craigslist.com) for business opportunities and it is free and is a huge resource for both job seekers and job posters.

Social Networking:
Online social networking communities (facebook, myspace, linkedin, etc.) are growing rapidly and can be used effectively to promote your business and products/services, many times for free. Here is an article on how to get started and doing effectively.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/07/28/facebook-for-business-what-it-needs-what-it-has/

www.myspace.com
www.facebook.com
www.linkedin.com
www.twitter.com

Trade Associations:
Look at the statewide as well as local trade organizations. Many times you can sponsor meetings or be an associate member. This will give you some opportunities to get in front of your target audience. Listed below two examples of Florida trade associations. Almost all professions have some sort of association, and many of them have a statewide association with chapters in individual cities.

Examples:
http://www.fcachiro.org/
http://www.ficpa.org

Not in Florida? Just search google or yahoo to find one in your state.

Printing Costs and Production:
Kinko’s and other print shops are extremely expensive. As an example, Kinko’s may charge around ¢.50 per color copy. Our company’s rates start at just ¢20.9 per color copy and ¢3.9 per black and white copy. We also deliver right to your home or office.

Marketing your Business’s Events:
Press Releases - Write up press releases. It is important to know how to write an effective release. Poorly written releases end up in the trash. It is well worth the investment to find someone with experience to write them. Tangent charges between $20.00 and $40.00 for a professional release and submission to local newspapers.

Newspapers - Do some research and see if your paper has a column about your area of expertise. Start submitting content to them. Write something original. Remember, if it's published in the paper you are an expert in your field. If you’re short on time, consider outsourcing the work to a marketing firm. They can conduct research and put together professional work. Tangent does this on a per hour basis.

Craig's List - Under the community section you can post information about your events. This is FREE exposure for you and it takes 10 minutes. You can also post multiple listings in different communities within your city.

Gift’s that Keep on Giving:
Referrals - How much do you pay for your leads? Are they even hot? A referral is a free lead with an excellent response rate. Never cold call again! Get your customers to talk about you (positively). Provide your customers with incentives for talking about your product. Many people spend lots of money on marketing materials like pens and coffee mugs. While these can have a nice touch they are much less effective than a customer who sings your praises. Create a culture with your employees and clients that makes referrals an expectation. Be proactive, ask for referrals. Referrals are the cheapest and often most effective way to drive your bottom line. Not sure how to ask? See the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/ArticleReader/website/default.aspx?Print=1&ArticleId=Learnhowtoaskforreferralsandgrowyourbusiness

Email Newsletters - Using email marketing campaigns is a great way to stay in front of clients and increase your sales. It is extremely important however that you use email marketing effectively and appropriately. Sending too many emails will turn off customers. Sending too few won’t produce results either. There are many different opinions on what is appropriate, but we recommend sending around one per week (typically on Monday’s). How many emails do you get that you don’t even read? Would you read them if you felt there was actual value in the email? Of course you would! Make sure you understand your customers needs and wants and provide them with tons of value!

I had the chance to meet Ryan Allis, CEO of Icontact.com at a conference in November. His company is one of the best for email marketing software. Go to www.icontact.com to try a free trial. If you like it you can sign up for next to nothing.

Happy Marketing,

Grant Deken
Tangent Initiatives
Tel +1 (904) 254- 5768
Fax +1 (904) 212-1520
Email Grant@tangentinitiatives.com
www.tangentinitiatives.com

Davis Entrepreneurs to Host First Meeting

2009-01-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

The Davis Entrepreneurs, formally known as the Jacksonville Entrepreneurship Club, have reorganized to launch themselves as the premier business organization at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University. The organization plans to help students compete against some of the top schools and entrepreneurship programs in the world. "Business competitions, conference opportunities, and renown speakers are all part of our newly rolled out plan," said president Chris Salley.

The organization could not have come at a better time. With students looking for competitive opportunities to apply what they are learning in the classroom, organizations like the Davis Entrepreneurs are there to make it happen. "Students often take the concepts they learn in the classroom and file them away. We don't let that happen. We're preparing students to be better than the competition. People in our organization come out with the skills to start, run, and grow any type of business. You don't find these types of skills in most recent grads, who spend their summer breaks working in the retail or the restaurant business," said vice president Grant Deken. "We are aggressive, organized, and know what it takes to set ourselves apart."

If you're in the Jacksonville area, the organization's next meeting is January 22nd at 7PM at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University. For more information you can contact Chris Salley at Csalley@jacksonville.edu or Grant Deken at Gdeken@jacksonville.edu.

Lets Talk Private Equity

2008-12-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

I recently had the opportunity to interview the chairman of a mid-level private equity firm. Here's what he had to say about private equity, business degrees, and people skills.

Q: How did you find your way into this business?

A: I started my career as an attorney working on numerous types of mergers and acquisitions. I brought one of my clients into a deal based on my judgment and in turn made them about $350 million dollars. Soon after they asked me if I would be interested in starting a private investment firm with them and a few others. The rest as they say is history. We’ve been doing business for fourteen years now.

Q: It was tough to find much information out about your firm prior to our interview. Do you guys keep a pretty low profile?

A: We like to be mysterious. We find that being under the radar we are able to target the specific types of investments we want. When everyone knows about your firm you tend to get hundred of business plans and phone calls a week – most of them are exactly what you are not looking for.

Q: So how do you approach prospective businesses you may want to invest in?

A: Actually we don’t. We have a third party marketing firm create the initial marketing tools to contact prospective businesses. The reasoning behind this is that the marketing firm knows how to make us stand out from the crowd. If we just sent a letter out chances are it would get thrown away.

Q: How does communication play a role in what you do?

A: Communication is one of the most important aspects of this business. When we’re involved in a deal with a business and we need to find very specific people or resources, we are on the phones networking with everyone we know to find what we need. The interpersonal skills are invaluable in this business. We are a small firm so our ability to leverage our contacts and networking to find what we need is imperative.

Q: Leveraging resources is so important in this business. As a small firm, how are you guys competing with other firms how have so much more at their disposal?

A: We started a fund a few years back. We have social events for members to interact as peers and get involved. The events are huge for networking. People know what we’re investing in and since they have a stake they start sending us referrals for top-tier finance and management professionals we otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Since everyone has a stake in the investments people are eager to give us names and numbers. It makes getting your foot in the door that much easier. I can call a CEO and set a meeting. No gatekeepers, no voicemails.

Q: How do you primarily communicate with your team members and prospects?

A: I love email. While we do have a team, most of us are involved in specific things. One person usually stays somewhat involved as a back up person. Usually we keep each other informed primarily through email.

Q: One of the main documents you are giving me as a writing sample is the Letter of Intent. Can you tell me a little more about it?

A: The letter of intent is what we send businesses we are seriously interested in working with. It’s essentially a loose contract that formally states that both parties are interested in conducting business with each other. It’s very wordy and there is a reason for that. If we begin to work with a company and things go wrong before we commit [financially] we can get out of the contract. It’s important to build a back-door into everything. Sometimes things are not what they seem going into something.

Q: You graduated from Harvard Law School. Looking back, has a brand name like Harvard given you opportunities that other schools could not? Does the School make or break your options?

A: I’ve worked with people from all over that have been to top law schools and average law schools. Typically the person either has it or they don’t. The law school you go to doesn’t guarantee anything. I will say that going to Harvard provided me with excellent connections. All in all, going to a top school just makes it easier to get where you want to go.

Q: What’s some sound advice you would give to a business student who is on their way to graduating?

A: Two things come to mind. The first is to make sure you are very familiar with balance sheets and have a good financial background. A lot of people forget the basics. Don’t forget that stuff. Secondly, get solid experience. I can not count how many highly intelligent kids come out of top business schools with MBA’s but have no real experience.

New Network for Young Entrepreneurs

2008-11-30T10:43:00.000-08:00

Today’s youth are emerging as entrepreneurial powerhouses, and more and more are putting new ideas into action. These entrepreneurs refuse to accept things for the way they are. They’re relentlessly trying to push new concepts and practices into the world. They’re young, motivated, and unparalleled given today’s vast amount of available technology and resources.

Under30CEO.com is the birth child of this “young entrepreneur” paradigm. A new social network geared primarily towards young entrepreneurs has emerged and is pushing the boundaries of social networking and interaction. My inherent first question was, “do we really need another social network?” I was sure I knew the answer to my somewhat rhetorical question. There’s so many networks out there all playing tug of war for users. It became clear soon after joining that even in its infancy, the guys at Under30 had asked themselves the very same question and vowed to make it clear that there is still plenty of space in the social network world.

“I remember when we first thought about this,” said co-founder Matt Wilson. “We all had finance, accounting, and business degrees, and graduation was coming up quick. Companies like KPMG and Price Waterhouse Coopers were recruiting from our class, but a few of us had this realization that the corporate job and lifestyle just wasn’t for us. We started thinking of a way to connect young entrepreneurs like us together to brainstorm and share resources.”

Under30CEO launched at the 2008 Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization in Chicago, IL. The site is utilizing a wide range of media to build a library of essential resources for young people looking to start a business.

“Whenever people start these things, they’re thinking, OK, how can we drive as much traffic to the site as possible. That’s the wrong mindset. We want the type of users who keep coming back and want to contribute to the site. If we build a great user base, and the mindset is kept on producing valuable content the rest will fall into place,” Wilson said.

You can check out Under30 at www.under30ceo.com. For more information on Under30, or to explore sponsorship opportunities, contact Matt Wilson.

www.grantdeken.com

So You Want to Sell Advertising

2008-11-18T10:17:00.000-08:00

Many people start sites with the preconceived notion that they can make tons of money by selling advertising. Don't be fooled, the road to riches is more detailed and complex than you know. For those of you moving forward, here are some tips for getting started.

What you need prior to selling anything is a detailed breakdown of your traffic. Understanding the types of visitors and members you have is going to be essential to successfully finding advertisers. You want a user base that is targeted, but not so targeted that you are limiting advertising prospects.

You need to know that in addition to users being interested in your site's primary focus, they are also within 'x' age range, 'x' income level, gender, etc. You absolutely need to understand figures such as bounce rates, the average time spent on your site, where the majority of traffic is coming from and the rate of growth/month.

Being that the economy is presumably slower than it was in the ad boom we saw about a year ago, you can be pretty sure that budgets for advertising are somewhat smaller. The rate of spending is still increasing, but at a slower rate than before. Because advertisers are a bit more cautious, a Pay Per Click (PPC) package may be more attractive, since the ROI is much more tangible.

CPM advertising (cost per thousand impressions) is the other alternative. Advertisers looking to maximize exposure in a specific market will likely flock to this option. Again though, the ROI is less tangible, and MOST companies, in my humble opinion, are looking at PPC options.

When you structure deals you want to emphasize the uniqueness of your audience and understand who your key prospective advertisers are going to be. Offer all encompassing advertising packages in addition to a single banner, like what you see on sites such as break.com, where a company gets the banner, in-video ad, and perhaps a "free offer" opportunity from the advertiser. Sponsorship is a great word to use and paradigm to embrace since it feels less "advertisy" to consumers.

Traffic: this will be a tough barrier to overcome given that you probably don't have start up capital to spend on advertising yourself. My suggestion is to structure a vigorous grass roots campaign Which is often much better for long term results and for generating a consistent user base.

Blogs are a great first step in spreading the word and building natural traffic. Submit value based content to article databases as well. Original videos are also an emerging tactic that can build viral traffic to your site. My suggestion is keep it somewhat short, and very funny. Humor is key. Submit releases to other websites that may have an interest in your site. Offer to write stories on other companies in order to get them to post your story on their blogs.

Be creative. The more creative you can be as far as distribution methods the better.

Be patient! Don't expect your traffic and page rank to skyrocket over night. But also know that the harder you work and the more time you put in, the faster you will see results.

Visit Grantdeken.com to get more ideas and information on how to boost your company's marketing efforts!

Jacksonville University Creating CEO's

2008-11-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

The Davis College of Business is out to make a name for itself and this past weekend was no different. The College of Business, along with the JU entrepreneurship club, sent three students to the Collegiate Entrepreneur Organization’s annual conference in Chicago, Illinois.

Roughly 1,400 students, faculty, and entrepreneurs gathered together for three days of networking, workshops, and keynotes by some of today’s most prominent business leaders. “It was a rewarding experience to be surrounded by a group of people who have many of the same goals as you, that think the way you do,” said Grant Deken, a senior economics major and founder of a small marketing firm, Tangent Initiatives, LLC. “We came out of the conference with a different paradigm. The three of us feel energized and confident we can take our businesses and our organization to the next level.

The conference featured more than twenty workshops from basic concepts to more advanced subjects such as venture financing and search engine optimization. Veteran attendees competed in business plan and elevator pitch competitions for large cash prizes. “The workshops and keynotes were amazing,” Said JU Entrepreneurship Club president Chris Salley, “but the opportunity to network with peers and business leaders was truly invaluable. We are really thankful to have the support of Dr. Rossiter, Dean McCann, and the whole College of Business.”

The JU Entrepreneurship Club currently meets once a month and focuses on bringing in local entrepreneurs to discuss different aspects of starting and running a business. “We have big plans for our organization this year. We want to continue to bring in speakers, but also move towards bigger things, like competitions, more conference opportunities, and social entrepreneurship within the city,” Salley said. “Our organization encourages anyone interested in starting their own business to attend our events and meetings.”

If you would like more information about this topic or to schedule and interview with Grant Deken, please call him at 904.254.5768 or e-mail at Gdeken@jacksonville.edu

Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization 2008 – Chicago, IL

2008-11-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

It was like a breath of fresh air, being surrounded by 1,400 young, motivated, big thinking, wealth aspiring entrepreneurs. This year the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization hosted its annual conference in the heart of the windy city and between the speakers, the company, and the city, it did not disappoint.

Speakers like Robert Kiyosaki inspired and motivated us with stories of triumph and failure and most importantly, overcoming failures to go on to triumphs. As first time attendees to the conference, the experience was an unforgettable one. Advanced workshops gave insight into specific issues like venture capital, internet marketing, and understanding the importance of bootstrapping (and how to do it effectively). It was a hub of unbelievable resources for anyone aspiring to start a business or take theirs to the next level.

Now back in Jacksonville, I’m more ready than ever to continue with my plans to create a multi-million dollar enterprise. But it’s not all about the money, and that was a point of emphasis that CEO illustrated. The success of business allows us to think bigger, change the status quo faster, and access the needed resources to solve the world’s problems. It’s our responsibility to create jobs, find better sources of energy, and end the disease and hunger that millions of humans face every day.

So here’s my challenge to you. Stop what you’re doing and just think for a minute. Where do you want to be in five years? Do you want to be a millionaire? Do you want to help people? Even better, would you like to be a millionaire helping people? The questions are a bit rhetorical, but I sincerely hope you consider that entrepreneurship is the key that can open the door into a new world of thought and freedom. Can you work hard enough to obtain that? Do you want to?

Managing a Marketing and Sales Transformation

2008-10-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Authors: Joel Claret, Pierre Mauger, and Eric V. Roegner

The marketing environment is unprecedentedly changing and becoming more complex. The result is a need to reorganize brand portfolios, rethink spending approaches, generate more fine-grained customer insights, overhaul pricing and segment management, and restructure sales, service, and channel strategies. Each change is a challenge in its own right, and some companies are tackling more than one: GE, for example, has been trying simultaneously to improve the way it approaches innovation, brand management, and customer care. This level of change represents a commercial transformation—that is, a transformation of the company's broad-based marketing and sales elements.

It's difficult to carry off change of this magnitude at a brisk pace: deeply ingrained habits keep employees from embracing new techniques, skill-building efforts break down, and leaders lose focus. To counteract these problems, companies have developed a variety of change-management approaches, particularly in operations, where techniques such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) have flourished. Making change stick typically requires both planning and action—centering change on a powerful aspiration, establishing systems and processes that reinforce the goals of change, modifying mind-sets by creating a sense of shared purpose among employees, conducting targeted skill-building efforts, and creating role models for employees.¹ While such change-management practices are useful, they are difficult to apply to marketing and sales. One reason is that these organizations—encompassing brand managers, market researchers, and segment and channel managers, to name just a few—are more diverse and complex than the shop floors where many improvement programs take place. Figuring out how to keep disparate parts of the organization working together is a key challenge of change. Second, the rationale for transforming a marketing organization is often to jump-start growth. That requires creativity, not just strong execution, so the change effort is more difficult and the related decision making more complex. Finally, the responses of competitors and customers to marketing changes are difficult to predict, so it is hard to eliminate variability (a goal of many operations change efforts); maintaining flexibility is essential; and the establishment of goals and metrics is complicated.

In our experience, five critical ingredients of transformation are key to overcoming these issues (Exhibit 1):

Leadership, aspirations, conviction, and clarity of purpose: committed leadership that can bring together disparate parts of an organization to achieve an ambitious and clearly articulated aspiration
New ways of working: a combination of improved processes and tools that help make sense of complex information, redefined pivotal roles, and performance management that drives the transformation forward; together, these serve as the foundation of a commercial operating system that, when fully developed, improves consistency, coordination, insight, and decision making
Capability building: on-the-job apprenticeship and high-caliber coaching designed to upgrade critical skills while delivering results
Changes in mind-sets and behavior: necessary steps such as removing cultural barriers to change and developing a tailored set of interventions to shape behavior
Transformation design: an approach that delineates the scope of the journey of change and the support needed to meet its objectives

You can read the rest of this article and others at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com

Grant

How Retailers Can Make the Best of a Slowdown

2008-10-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Moving quickly to improve performance can help retailers to recover faster.

Ashish A. Kotecha, Josh Leibowitz, and Ian MacKenzie

September 2008

Downturns are tough on retailers. Recent McKinsey research indicates that during the last two recessions (1990–91 and 2000–01), growth slowed for nearly every retail subsector in the United States. Ninety-three percent of the retailers surveyed that existed during both downturns experienced slowing revenue growth in one of them, and 59 percent endured it in both.¹

Unfortunately for retailers, their position on the front lines of consumer spending doesn’t translate into a rapid turnaround when the general economy experiences a subsequent uptick. The average retail subsector growth rate during the first year of recovery following the 1990–91 and 2000–01 downturns was 0.3 percent. And 12 of 15 retail sectors lagged behind even that rate of growth during one or both upturns.²

These downturn dynamics—declining sales followed by a sluggish recovery period—mean retailers should move quickly to minimize performance deterioration. The challenge, of course, is that retailers have a large number of options to sort through, ranging from cutting costs by shutting stores or restructuring support functions, to increasing revenue by refreshing stores or overhauling promotions. Many make the mistake of focusing on what is easy or known to them and fail to tackle more challenging goals that might improve their competitive positioning during the inevitable upturn.

In our experience, some basic rules of thumb are invaluable for helping retailers rapidly sort through their options and set priorities for action—in particular, determining whether to take an offensive or defensive approach. Combining a tough self-assessment with a hard-nosed scan of the environment can help retailers decide on the relative importance of reducing costs, increasing investments, creating financial flexibility, and seeking near-term revenue growth (exhibit).

Retailers should start by taking a rigorous look at the health of their balance sheets, management teams, and overall operating performance. Companies with reasonable cash reserves and ready access to credit lines, for instance, have options—such as investing in stores, people, or acquisitions—that weaker competitors simply lack.

At the same time, retailers need to be realistic about the potential of their businesses. Do they operate store formats or play in a subsector with strong growth prospects? To what extent is the market already saturated, and where does the retailer stand versus competitors? Recent growth rates, market penetration figures, and a serious review of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors are all important factors to consider.

Companies with good financial strength in markets with significant growth potential should lift investment to gain strategic advantage over competitors. Big bets, such as doubling down on new stores or remodeling old ones, are one possibility. Equally important are smaller bets, such as recruiting talent from weaker players or investing in more precise local market execution. For example, when one specialty retailer began suffering from declining foot traffic in its stores, the company built an analytic tool to help merchants and members of the central marketing organization more effectively use data from customer-relationship-management (CRM) and transaction databases. This allowed the retailer to better predict local demand and decide which items should receive how much space in its advertising circular. Comparable store sales have risen between two and four percent in test markets employing the new promotion-effectiveness tool.

Retailers with good financial health in mature industries can also go on the offensive, taking actions to quickly grow revenue by driving traffic into stores through more compelling offers and ensuring that staff is ready on the floor for the assisted sale. For example, a North American soft goods retailer has reversed declining sales, improved customer satisfaction, and increased the frequency and average size of transactions by focusing on eliminating out-of-stocks, raising the effectiveness of front-line salespeople, and making small store-layout changes that help customers find the goods they want.

Companies with weaker financial health will need to focus more aggressively on reducing costs. Our recent experience suggests that weak performers have major opportunities to rationalize inventory stock keeping units (SKUs)—freeing up working capital—and to renegotiate terms on direct sourcing. These companies can also increase shop-floor efficiency, an area where they frequently lag. By applying lean operations techniques to redeploy labor, they can shorten the time staff spend on noncustomer-facing tasks and increase the time spent helping customers. The focus should be on getting more from existing sales resources, not just on cutting labor hours. Indeed, the key driver of economics is sales—not just cost as a percentage of sales.

More broadly, retailers should bear in mind that the least effective thing to do during a downturn is to simply “hunker down” and “weather the storm.” Though there’s no escaping some pain, moving quickly to improve performance can reduce the odds of a deep dip in sales and position retailers to participate fully in the inevitable upturn.

Original Article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Retail_Consumer_Good/Strategy_Analysis How_retailers_can_make_the_best_of_a_slowdown_2188

Leverage Your Marketing Efforts

2008-09-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Today's economy is volatile and unpredictable. Markets feed off of each other like nothing before, and the world economy is one marketplace. Consumers today are smart. They research purchase options, talk with others, and can make or break a business. Understanding how to engage this marketplace changes is essential to being successful. However, complex problems tend to come with long complex answers and complex answer eat up precious time. So, for our purposes, I have shortened some simple small business recommendations into short, easy to understand strategies that every business should be actively engaging in.

1. Enterprise Branding - Many companies are doing an exceptional job branding at the micro level (product) but is missing the mark on creating an enterprise presence. Evolving your company's - not just product - brand is an essential part in growing the business and establishing a larger market presence.

2. Analytics and Email -

a. Leverage the internet by employing an email marketing initiative. You can use this to put your products in front of more people, more often while at the same time increase the availability of feedback and behavioral data from consumers. This will also help with enterprise branding, customer loyalty, and market exposure.

b. What are you currently spending on marketing and where is it going? Based on current pay per click (PPC) rates, what kind of turn over are you seeing. How leveraged are your key words respectively to the search volume of those key words?

c. Home Page - What is the click through rate on your home page? Bounce rate? Building high value content into your home page, such as product demoâ€™s or a welcome video to captivate an audience will encourage a higher CLR and a lower Bounce rate. Ideally, to work in conjunction with enterprise branding, consider re-tooling your home page.

3. Economic Outlook - An economic slowdown will take a toll on businesses expecting U.S. retail to maintain its current pace. To hedge against losses, consider some of the following:

a. Inventory turn over - Has it gradually slowed? Keep less inventory on hand if so and more cash available.

b. International Markets - Consider putting your sites in multiple languages and buying country specific domain names (.cn - China, .se - Sweden, .uk - London). This can help you penetrate similar target markets in foreign countries. Be sure to do some thorough research to ensure you are marketing a product correctly given the cultural differences of foreign consumers. This is an ideal growth strategy (if done correctly) but can be even more rewarding when you need to find new channels of distribution due to economic slowdown.

These are some of the essentials that every business can employ with little real capital while at the same time seeing exceptional results.

Stocks tumble as bailout plan fails in House

2008-09-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Monday September 29, 2:26 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

Stocks tumble as financial bailout plan fails in House vote; credit tightens further

NEW YORK (AP) -- Fear swept across the financial markets Monday, sending the Dow Jones industrials down as much as 705 points, after the financial bailout package failed the House.

As the vote was shown on TV, stocks plunged and and investors fled to the safety of the credit markets, worrying that the financial system would keep sinking under the weight of failed mortgage debt.

"Clearly something needs to be done, and the market dropping 400 points in 10 minutes is telling you that," said Chris Johnson president of Johnson Research Group. "This isn't a market for the timid."

While investors had some worries that the vote would be close, many investors appeared to believe it would ultimately pass.

The markets were highly volatile, with the Dow regaining ground then falling backing again, trading down 577.37, or 5.18 percent, to 10,565.76.

Broader stock indicators also tumbled. The Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 79.35, or 6.54 percent, to 1,133.92, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 146.72, or 6.72 percent, to 2,036.62.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment on the market's decline.

With Wall Street in turmoil, the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill fell to 0.32 percent from 0.87 percent on Friday. That showed that investors were prepared to get meager returns on an investment as long as it was secure.

Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, said investors are worried about the spread of troubles beyond banks in the U.S. to Europe and other markets.

"Things are dying and breaking apart while they sit there and vote on this thing," he said.

Sarah Palin: Qualified for Vice Presidency?

2008-09-28T22:26:00.000-07:00

I think that everyone should know that if John McCain wins the election and dies, this woman will run the most power country in the world. What do you think?

Bad Break Causes United Airlines a Billion!

2008-09-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

September 10, 2008, 12:09 pm

By Mike Nizza

From left to right, the journey of old news that would cost $1 billion. A Sun Sentinel story from 2002 resurfaced in an automatically generated area of the Web site, soon landed on Google News before getting posted to Bloomberg terminals.

What made a six-year-old article about a bankruptcy filing by United Airlines reappear on Wall Street traders’ screens on Monday as if it were fresh news, prompting a sell-off that erased $1 billion in the company’s market value in a matter of minutes? The path the article followed from forgotten archive entry to present-day stock-killer has begun to emerge, and it raises some interesting questions about how news rockets around the Web.

Both human error and far-from-foolproof technology seem to have played a role in the episode, which involved a 2002 Chicago Tribune report; the web site of the Sun Sentinel, a Florida newspaper owned by the same company; the Bloomberg News financial wire service; and Google, all apparently unwittingly.

The Tribune Company laid out the results of its preliminary investigation into the incident in a news release late Tuesday afternoon, beginning with a line that painted its newspapers as victims of circumstances beyond their control:

The December 10, 2002, Chicago Tribune article on United Airlines’ bankruptcy filing, along with thousands of others stories in the searchable database of the Sun Sentinel website, was accessible for years.

The trouble seems to have started on Sunday, when a link to the old article turned up on a page on the Sun Sentinel site that automatically lists the most popular business stories of the moment. Why did such old news suddenly garner enough attention to land it there? Tribune hasn’t offered an explanation so far, except to say that the story was not promoted elsewhere on the site. So one open question is precisely how many clicks it took to earn a spot on that ranking — dozens? hundreds? thousands?

Any effort to find out more would lead down the many roads that readers may follow before converging anyplace on the Web. Sometimes, there’s an obvious answer tied to the news. Sometimes, it’s seemingly random phenomena. Just one look at Google Trends, the search giant’s version of a most-popular chart, would yield both kinds of items.

Had the old article merely spent a bit of time on that Sun-Sentinel list before returning to the archive, no harm would have been done to United. But a second piece of software apparently stopped by to analyze the work of the first one, and it would call the article to the attention of a much larger audience.

Normally, Web sites welcome the arrival of Google’s “bots,” which “crawl” around the Internet, following links and cataloguing the content they find for users to search. Indeed, many sites have been optimized in recent years specifically to make it easier for Google’s bots to detect new material quickly and bring it to Google’s monstrous audience. Most-popular-articles rankings are one place where Google News bots find the headlines they aggregate for readers. Up it went.

And there lies a rather big catch, which constitutes the biggest disagreement between Google and Tribune. Google believes that the fact that the bankruptcy article dated from 2002 was not obvious to either robot or human:

It has been widely reported that many readers were unable to determine the original date of publication of this article, and our crawling was similarly unable to recognize that the article was old.

For its part, Tribune says that no one who actually read the story could have mistaken it for fresh news:

The December 10, 2002, story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002. In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002. It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself.

Neither assertion contradicts the other, but Tribune seems surprised by a reading style that is commonplace in the age of Google. As Nicholas Carr wrote in an Atlantic essay entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” last month, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

As for preventing another similar incident, leaving sharper date cues for Google would seem to be far easier than changing the habits of millions of readers. In this case, though, it only took one reader to open the barn door for United stock’s shockingly swift decline — the one working at Income Securities Advisers, who saw the item on Google News and sent out a summary of it on Bloomberg News.

Stripped from its original context, the report gave traders who were already nervous about airline stocks just enough information — “UAL Files for Bankruptcy” over the weekend — to start them pounding the sell button, and not enough time to think twice about salvaging whatever was left of their stake.

Of course, software had a hand in the sell-off as well. “The damage was exacerbated by the growing use on Wall Street of automated programs that trigger stock trades without any human interaction,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

As the search for blame returned once again to something rather than someone, it appeared that United and its shareholders will have a hard time getting satisfaction after an astonishingly bad break.

Looking to Lose Weight? Look No Further!

2008-08-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Obesity is one of the most prominent diseases in the United States. Check out my new site,
www. dekenfitness. com, where you can have access to unbelievable health and nutrition products that will give you the results you're looking for.

My mom got on this stuff and lost 39 pounds! She got on the products in March of this year! My brother, who is a culinary student, packed on some pounds taste testing his creations. He got on the products earlier this year and started to make me look bad as he got into the best shape of his life!

I came home from college with a beer gut, weighing in at 212 lbs. I'm down to 190 now and I'm in better shape than when I rowed crew for Marietta College. Two of my colleagues at Prudential have been on the products for two weeks and lost 12 pounds! Two weeks!

The best part? This isn't some Atkins, starve yourself diet. It's all about vitamins and nutrients and eating right and moderately. I rigorously tested these products and found the success I had been looking for! So I started my own site to share these products with you and everyone else! Go check it out!

www. dekenfitness. com

Phelps Real Estate Worth Big Money!

2008-08-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

For a guy who wears a Speedo to work, Michael Phelps sure seems to have a lot of room on his person to advertise.

So much so that Phelps' corporate partners -- Speedo, Nike, Adidas and Visa -- have enjoyed estimated in-broadcast exposure valued at $9 million through Tuesday night, according to Joyce Julius & Associates in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The firm is one of a handful of media companies that track logos and corporate branding during television broadcasts in order to estimate the perceived value that accrues to sponsors.

Big money is involved. Back on July 9, Ticket To Beijing wrote about a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that set Nike's endorsement and sponsorship obligations in coming years at just under $3.4 billion. That's a huge jump from a decade ago, when Nike's endorsement and sponsorship obligations were about $500 million.

Joyce Julius calculates that Phelps' corporate partners have combined for six minutes of exposure during prime time. The company estimates the value of on-screen time by calculating the cost of commercial spots running during NBC's broadcasts.

Phelps' races are won by cutting down on the number of seconds spent in the pool, but sponsors obviously win when the seconds mount up.

Nike's winning time through Tuesday night was 3:33 -- the minutes and seconds that Phelps wore his warm-up jacket with the Nike logo. Joyce Julius set the value to Nike at $5.3 million.

The Speedo logos on Phelps’ warm-up jacket, swim cap and bodysuit currently are in second place with 2:24 of airtime valued at $3.6 million. The remaining time was shared by Adidas and Visa.

Joyce Julius estimates that Phelps has accounted for 72% of Nike’s swimming-related exposure during NBC’s nighttime coverage, and 18% of Speedo's in-your-face time with Olympic fans.

-- Greg Johnson

Challenge to lose weight is offering a cash prize

2008-08-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

By MAGGIE FITZROY, Shorelines

When Scott Rubenstein stepped off the scale, he got good news. He'd lost eight pounds in a week.
"You lost eight pounds?" asked his wife, Lynne, who was waiting in line for her turn to get weighed. "Good job," she said, slapping his hand in a high-five.

The Rubensteins are among 40 people taking part in a 12-week Weight Loss Challenge program that meets every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at The Players Community Senior Center in Ponte Vedra Beach.

The program, led by personal wellness coaches Tracy and Steve Deken and their son Grant Deken, costs $39 to register. From that fee, $10 is donated to gofitkids.org, an organization that aims to raise awareness and prevention of childhood obesity. The rest goes into a pot, to be divided at the end of the 12 weeks by the three people in the group who lose the most weight.

The biggest loser will receive $500, the second will get $300 and the third will get $200.

So many people signed up for the program, which began July 16, that the Dekens began a new class Monday at the senior center on Landrum Lane. Classes are capped at 40 participants, and people can still join that one if it's not full. If it is, the Dekens, who run the program as volunteers, plan to create an additional class.

"We embrace any healthy method of weight loss," said Tracy Deken, who teaches the program with her husband according to guidelines of the company they are affiliated with, Herbalife International.

They offer a "lifestyle" eating plan for participants to follow, but she said their plan is not mandatory for the program, no products must be purchased and many people follow their own diets, some at the advice of their physicians.

The first week, they weighed each participant then took chest, waist, hips, thigh and upper arm measurements. On July 23, Grant Deken weighed everyone again, since getting weighed every week is a big part of the program. Then he took two full-length photographs of each person, from the front and side. During the last class, everyone will be photographed again for comparison.

After the weigh-in, Steve Deken led a 45-minute class on nutrition and exercise advice, gave a quiz on calorie counts of common snack foods, and then everyone stood to applaud each other for completing a successful week.

Some were more successful than others. Scott Rubenstein had lost the second-most amount of weight; a woman who didn't want to be identified lost 81/2 pounds. Leisa Atkins of Ponte Vedra Beach, who is taking the class with her mother, was happy that she'd lost 6.6 pounds.

Her mom, Charlene, wasn't as successful. She gained 2 pounds. Since the rules of the program stipulate that participants have to pay $1 for every pound gained, she had to put $2 in the pot.

Unlike some reality television shows, "we don't announce measurements and weights, and we don't ship anybody off any islands," Tracy Deken said. "We celebrate success."

Jeffrey Rubin of Nocatee, who is taking the class with his wife, Nancy, said so far he's happy with the 4 pounds he lost.

"Coming in to get weighed every week is motivating," said Nancy Rubin, who lost 1.8 pounds.

"Getting the appropriate education and exercising will hopefully do the trick."

"It's all about changing your eating habits," her husband said.

He doesn't expect to win any money, but "I'm not here for the money," he said. "I'm here to lose weight and feel better."

Maggie FitzRoy can also be reached at (904) 249-4947, ext. 6320.

Link:http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/073008/nes_310610012.shtml

Marketing in an Economic Downturn

2008-07-31T17:54:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to a recent American Marketing Association (AMA) www.marketingpower.com survey, 60 percent of AMA member marketers believe that halting or reducing spending on key marketing programs is the biggest mistake marketers can make in an economic downturn. Marketers also report that focusing on short-term tactics and sticking to the status quo are some additional missteps marketers make.

“Our survey reinforces that these are challenging times to be a marketer,” said Nancy Costopulos, Chief Marketing Officer of the American Marketing Association. “Management is pressing for greater accountability from the marketing function, and the industry must rise to the challenge.”

Many marketers surveyed feel their greatest internal challenge is demonstrating the value of marketing when sales are decreasing. Other top internal issues include realigning marketing strategies to match business objectives and focusing on longer-term brand strategies.

To help the marketing community manage these mistakes and challenges, American Marketing Association offers the following four strategies to enhance marketing plans in a downturn: shape the message, don’t slash the price; focus on who NOT to target; stand apart from the crowd and invest in innovation; and sustain the brand.

1. Shape the Message, Don’t Slash the Price

“Focus on the company’s value to the market” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Only 3 percent of American Marketing Association marketers believe that it is important for marketing functions to adjust pricing strategy to help sustain and grow business during an economic downturn.

Implications for Marketers

Conduct research to understand your competitor’s positioning and your target audiences’ perception of the economic environment.
Hone and refine your messages.
Highlight the value of your product or service, rather than slashing the price.

2. Focus on Who NOT to Target

“Fish where [your] fish are” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Sixty-seven percent of AMA marketers feel it is important to mitigate the impact of an economic downturn by refining target audiences.

Implications for Marketers

Assess which segments of potential customers you do NOT want to target.
Demarket to inappropriate market segments. Simply stated, some customers are more costly to serve than to lose.
Focus marketing strategies on customer segments that will produce the greatest ROI.

3. Stand Apart from the Crowd and Invest in Innovation

“Major opportunities when others are cutting back” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

A majority of AMA marketers, 66 percent, report that they would take the same amount or less risk with a new product and/or service innovation during a time of economic uncertainty.

Implications for Marketers

Differentiate through innovation with a product or service that performs in a faltering economy.
Invest in R&D now to ensure your company is in a position to compete when the economy rebounds.

4. Sustain the Brand

“Sometimes it is the reeducation of a product [that can help sustain or grow a brand]” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Sixty-three percent of marketers believe that they can lessen the impact of a downturn by investing in brand building, as part of their marketing plan.

Implications for Marketers

Establish access to executive officers to understand ongoing shifts in business strategy.
Realign marketing strategies to match business objectives quickly to demonstrate a commitment to the bottom line.
Qualify and quantify results quarterly to establish an ongoing dialogue with executive officers.

“The key to success for marketers in this economy will be supporting the short term, and managing for the long term,” said Costopulos. “It is more important than ever that marketers simultaneously run a sprint and a marathon.”

Survey Methodology:

From May 6, 2008 through May 16, 2008, the American Marketing Association conducted online interviews with 244 AMA members in the continental United States. The sampling error associated with a sample size of 244 respondents is plus/minus six to seven percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

For an executive summary of the data, please contact Christine Heath at christine.heath@fleishman.com.

About the American Marketing Association

The American Marketing Association is the largest marketing association in North America. It is a professional association for individuals and organizations involved in the practice, teaching and study of marketing worldwide. It is also the source that marketers turn to every day to deepen their marketing expertise, elevate their careers, and, ultimately, achieve better results. American Marketing Association members are connected to a network of experienced marketers nearly 40,000 strong.

American Marketing Association offers highly acclaimed Training Series, professional conferences and Hot Topic events focused on the immediate needs of marketers, as well as trends shaping the future. American Marketing Association’s website, MarketingPower.com, is the everyday connection to marketing data, articles, case studies, best practices and a robust job bank. Additionally, the American Marketing Association is the source for the field’s top magazines and journals, including Marketing News. Through local and collegiate chapters, American Marketing Association members are connected with the best people and the best practices.

American Marketing Association is also the creator of Mplanet, the unparalleled industry event that brings together the world’s most creative thinkers, including senior marketing executives, top academicians and other thought leaders, to share fresh insights, new concepts, the latest research and solutions for the most pressing marketing challenges and opportunities. Mplanet 2009 will take place in Orlando, Florida, January 26-28, 2009.

For more information on the American Marketing Association or Mplanet 2009, please visit www.MarketingPower.com

Idea of the Day

2008-07-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

If you already know what I'm talking about, then you're probably mumbling and rolling your eyes as you think about that boss or manager who had serial entrepreneurial tendencies. The rest of you are thinking, "what is he talking about." Let me start off by saying that entrepreneurs truly are some of the most influential people in today's society. Fortunately we live in a society that rewards free thinking and creativity. However, in the business world - especially the small business world - the prevalence of the "Idea-a-day" mentality can be seriously hurtful to a business's longevity.

As an example, think of the stock market. Sound investments are typically well thought out and formulated for consistent long-term growth. The majority of day traders who are trying to buy and sell and make the quick and easy buck typically - although a few beat the market - grind their savings into sawdust.

The same goes for business strategy. You have to plan the work and work the plan as the old adage goes. Ironically, you would be surprised how many leaders get caught up doing just the opposite. People tend to get an idea and become excited and want to get it in place as soon as possible but typically observe the opposite.

My suggestion: Team accountability. Get together as a team and spend time to formulate a long term plan. Where is your business now, and where do you see it in five years? Write down the goals and vision of your business. Then work on a shorter term, 90 day plan to orchestrate your sales and marketing strategy. Take time to really plan things out. Often times I see excitement rush a project from conception to launch in just a few days and as a result it typically falls apart after a few weeks.

My step-by-step prescription for success:

Set your organization's goals. Make sure they're on paper. Ideally, you should have them hanging in every office. Open goals lead to more accountability. Where will your company be in 5 years?
Create a 90 day plan. This is where you formulate strategy. How are you going to grow the business? This is where you fill the proverbial tool box with the necessary items to be successful.
Stick to the plan. Work the plan. It's OK to have ideas, but develop them slowly and launch them accordingly. I can't tell you how many times Managing Directors and other executives have come to me with the next huge idea that they can't wait to start. Nine times out of ten they are a waste of time (the other one idea is the reason why they are managing directors).
Measure performance and make changes as needed. Monthly is ideal.

Do the research, plan your "investment" and attain consistent growth. The days of the day traders are few and far between.

Yahoo Rejects Microsoft/Icahn Proposal

2008-07-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday July 12, 11:08 pm ET

Yahoo! Suggests Microsoft Make A Proposal To Acquire Whole Company SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - News), a leading global Internet company, confirmed today that it has rejected a joint proposal from Microsoft Corporation and Carl Icahn for a complex restructuring of Yahoo! that would include the acquisition of Yahoo!'s search business by Microsoft.

The proposal was made on Friday evening and Yahoo! was given less than 24 hours to accept the proposal, the fundamental terms of which Microsoft and Mr. Icahn made clear they were unwilling to negotiate. After reviewing the proposal with its legal and financial advisers, Yahoo!'s Board of Directors determined that accepting the proposal is not in the best interests of its stockholders.

The Board’s rejection of the proposal was based on a number of factors, including the following:

1. Yahoo!’s existing business plus its recently signed commercial agreement with Google has superior financial value and less complexity and risk than the Microsoft/Icahn proposal.

2. The Microsoft/Icahn proposal would preclude a potential sale of all of Yahoo! for a full and fair price, including a control premium.

3. The major component of the overall value per share asserted by Microsoft/Icahn would be in Yahoo!’s remaining non-search businesses which would be overseen by Mr. Icahn’s slate of directors, which has virtually no working knowledge of Yahoo!’s businesses.

4. The Microsoft/Icahn proposal would require the immediate replacement of the current Board and removal of the top management team at Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Board believes these moves would destabilize Yahoo! for the up to the one year it would take to gain regulatory approval for this deal.

Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! said, “This odd and opportunistic alliance of Microsoft and Carl Icahn has anything but the interests of Yahoo!'s stockholders in mind. Clearly, Microsoft, having failed to advance in search, is aligning with the short-term objectives of Mr. Icahn to coerce Yahoo! into selling its core strategic search assets on terms that are highly advantageous to Microsoft, but disadvantageous to Yahoo! stockholders. Yahoo’s Board of Directors will not allow that to happen. Yahoo!’s Board remains open to any transaction that delivers full value to our stockholders – we just do not believe such a transaction should be dictated by Microsoft and a single short-term investor.”

Mr. Bostock continued, “After negotiating among themselves without the involvement of Yahoo!, Carl Icahn and Microsoft presented us with a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal under which we would be required to restructure the Company, hand over to Microsoft Yahoo!’s valuable search business and to Carl Icahn the rest of the Company, giving us less than 24 hours to respond. It is ludicrous to think that our Board could accept such a proposal. While this type of erratic and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we have come to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interests of our stockholders.”

Mr. Bostock also noted that Microsoft’s position that it would not deal with, or otherwise engage with, Yahoo!’s management to reach agreement on this proposal or to implement it, is completely absurd and irresponsible given the complexity of the deal – one that requires the removal of half of Yahoo!’s business from Yahoo! and then the integration of it into Microsoft.

Yahoo!'s Board points out that a transaction to acquire the whole company would be much more straightforward and involve far less risk than the new proposal or any similar alternative. The Board believes a whole company transaction could be negotiated and executed prior to August 1^st. In rejecting the Microsoft/Icahn proposal, Yahoo! not only repeated its offer to sell the entire Company to Microsoft for at least $33 per share, but also offered to negotiate an improved search only transaction. Microsoft rejected both offers.

Ironically, Carl Icahn, who jointly with Microsoft developed and presented this proposal, had previously urged Yahoo! not to sell its search business to Microsoft. Specifically, in an interview on CNBC's Fast Money program, on June 4, 2008, Mr. Icahn said, “... it's crazy for this company now to do this alternative deal and give the store away, because obviously, an alternative deal is a poison pill because once you've done an alternative deal and given the search to Microsoft, you don't need Microsoft to buy you anymore. So, that would be a poison pill….”

Significantly, the Board believes Microsoft and Mr. Icahn are overstating the value their search and restructuring proposal would deliver to Yahoo! stockholders and are substantially understating the risks. Yahoo! noted that a transaction that would separate the Company's search and display businesses is an undertaking of great complexity. While the Board acknowledges that the current proposal contains a number of improvements over Microsoft’s earlier proposal, the Yahoo! Board's conclusion that the current proposal is not in the best interests of stockholders is based on a number of factors, including:

The revenue guarantees suggested, which are conditional and subject to reduction, are well below the search revenue that the Company is expected to generate on its own and in association with its announced commercial agreement with Google. That agreement alone is estimated to generate $250 to $450 million of incremental cash flow for the first twelve months following implementation, while allowing Yahoo! to remain a principal in paid search;
The success of the remaining Company is critically dependent on Microsoft’s ability to effectively monetize search;

Microsoft/Icahn’s proposed Traffic Acquisition Costs rates are below market;
The proposal calls for Yahoo! to sell its industry-leading algorithmic search business and its related strategic and valuable intellectual property portfolio for no incremental consideration; and
Many of the components of the headline value that Mr. Icahn and Microsoft put forward, such as the spin-off of the Yahoo!'s Asian assets and the return of cash to stockholders, are steps that could be taken by Yahoo! on its own and the Board continues to evaluate these options.

Mr. Bostock concluded, “Microsoft and Mr. Icahn are trying to dismantle the Company and deliver our search business to Microsoft on terms that would be disadvantageous to Yahoo! stockholders. We are prepared to let our stockholders, not Microsoft and Carl Icahn, decide what is in their best interests and we look forward to the upcoming vote.”

About Yahoo! Inc.

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

This release refers to operating cash flow (operating income before depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and stock-based compensation expense, or OCF), which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The most comparable GAAP measure is income from operations. With respect to the OCF numbers provided in this release, the estimate of income from operations is the same as the estimated OCF, as the Company does not expect to incur any additional depreciation and amortization or stock-based compensation expense related to this agreement.

Forward Looking Statements

This release (including without limitation the statements and information in the quotations in this press release) contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Yahoo!'s projected financial performance as well as Yahoo!'s strategic and operational plans. Actual results may differ materially from those described in this release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the expected benefits of the commercial agreement with Google may not be realized, including as a result of actions taken by United States or foreign regulatory authorities and the response or acceptance of the agreement by publishers, advertisers, users, and employees; the implementation and results of Yahoo!'s ongoing strategic initiatives; the impact of organizational changes; Yahoo!'s ability to compete with new or existing competitors; reduction in spending by, or loss of, marketing services customers; the demand by customers for Yahoo!'s premium services; acceptance by users of new products and services; risks related to joint ventures and the integration of acquisitions; risks related to Yahoo!'s international operations; failure to manage growth and diversification; adverse results in litigation, including intellectual property infringement claims; Yahoo!'s ability to protect its intellectual property and the value of its brands; dependence on key personnel; dependence on third parties for technology, services, content, and distribution; general economic conditions and changes in economic conditions; potential continuing uncertainty arising in connection with the withdrawal of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal to acquire Yahoo! and the announced intention by a stockholder to seek control of our Board of Directors; the possibility that Microsoft or another person may in the future make another proposal, or take other actions which may create uncertainty for our employees, publishers, advertisers, and other business partners; and the possibility of significant costs of defense, indemnification, and liability resulting from stockholder litigation relating to the Microsoft proposal. More information about potential factors that could affect Yahoo!'s business and financial results is included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in Yahoo!'s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007, as amended, and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All information in this release is as of July 12, 2008, unless otherwise noted, and Yahoo! does not intend, and undertakes no duty, to update or otherwise revise the information contained in this release.

Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact:

Yahoo! Inc.
Brad Williams, 408-349-7069 (Media)
bhw@yahoo-inc.com
Marta Nichols, 408-349-3527 (Investors)
mnichols@yahoo-inc.com
or
The Abernathy MacGregor Group for Yahoo! Inc.
Adam Miller, 212-371-5999 (Media)
alm@abmac.com
Winnie Lerner, 212-371-5999 (Media)
wal@abmac.com

Source: Yahoo! Inc.

I'm a Punk Rocker, Yes I am

2008-07-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post this up a while back and forgot. For two reasons. One, Iggy Pop is in this song, and that's reason enough. Also though, this song is super catchy, and you will all walk around humming this at work and think "Damnit Grant!"

Oil Drops on Profit-Taking, Easing Iran Tensions

2008-07-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

Reuters
Monday July 7, 3:23 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil dropped over $4 a barrel Monday on profit taking and signals that Iran will be more flexible in negotiations over its nuclear program.

Oil received additional pressure from news Hurricane Bertha will likely avoid damaging Gulf of Mexico energy facilities.U.S. crude settled at $141.37 a barrel, down $3.92 and below Friday's low of $143.22. Brent crude settled at $141.87 a barrel, down $2.55. The New York Mercantile Exchange did not issue an official Friday closing price due to the July 4 holiday.

"Crude prices are down on profit-taking as the fears that brought prices up before the July Fourth holiday didn't materialize -- there was no attack on Iran and the storm Bertha does not appear to be a threat to oil production," said Phil Flynn, an analyst with Alaron Trading in Chicago.

Oil hit a record $145.85 on Thursday, but later eased as traders anticipated lessening tensions between Iran and the West after Tehran responded to a package of incentives to try to resolve the dispute.

Tehran's foreign minister Sunday expressed optimism about what he said was a "new environment" for talks.

"Iran shows signs of improved lines of communication," said Barclays Capital in a report.

But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday Iran would not abandon its right to enrich uranium and rejected a major powers' demand to do so as "illegitimate," the official IRNA news agency reported.

Earlier Monday, oil prices were pressured by a gain in the dollar, which reached a one-week high against a basket of major currencies, benefiting from a European Central Bank tone that has reduced expectations of further interest rate rises.

Strength in the U.S. dollar can reduce the appeal of oil and other commodities to investors as a hedge against inflation.

Oil has gained over 40 percent this year, driven partly by tension over Iran's nuclear program and expectations that global supply will fail to keep pace with demand from fast growing Asian economies such as China.

The rally has led to fuel protests worldwide and begun to dampen demand in some consumer nations, including the United States, the world's biggest energy user. World leaders are concerned prices could move even higher.

Leaders of the Group of Eight nations gathering for a summit in Japan fear further rises, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said.

"There are fears oil prices could increase further. Some people fear they could reach $200," Berlusconi told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

(Reporting by Rebekah Kebede and Gene Ramos in New York, Alex Lawler in London and Fayen Wong in Perth; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

2008-06-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

I hate to open with such a conspiratorial post, but the mood of the times ain't exactly sunshine and roses....

Also, Newsmax can be tenuous at best as news source, but I believe this article may be right on the mark. Furthermore, Bolton knows what he is talking about, regardless of one opinion of the man.

Bolton: Israel Will Strike Iran if Obama is Elected

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton believes Israel will stage a raid against Iran's nuclear facilities if Democratic nominee Barack Obama wins the upcoming presidential election in November.

Bolton, often labeled a resolute neo-conservative, believes the Israeli attack would take place sometime between the day after Obama's win and his inauguration on January 20 of next year.

In an interview with FOX News, Bolton says, "I think if they are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President."

read the rest here:

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/bolton_israel_iran/2008/06/25/107224.html?s=al&promo_code=64FD-1

Combine that with the latest Iranian threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and the storm clouds become rather clear. It has become clear, to this author, that the Neoconservative lobby has been pushing for war with Iran, and should Obama win in November, the lame duck months will be their last real chance to expand the war. An Israeli strike would provide a perfect pretext, if not concurrently, likely within the week of its occurance. Even should election politics not prove a factor, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that the Israelis would deal the opening blow (in fact, i'd put money on it) of the war against Iran, as IDF commanders do not have to worry about the same level of political fallout that americans do.

If this plays out, it might be time to reexamine what Nostradamus had to say about a great middle eastern war, as I don't see it getting better any time soon. Think 1929 and $250+.

May you live in interesting times....

ABC - Always Be Closing

2008-06-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

This is a great clip from Glen Gary Glen Ross. Probably one of my all-time favorites and definatley Baldwin's best work. This one goes out to all my friends in sales. Enjoy it. Get Motivated. First place is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second place is a set of steak knives. Third place is your fired...

Tourist Snapshots from North Korea

2008-06-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

While on vacation in Asia in 2007, Paul Koontz got the rare chance to spend a few days in North Korea as a tourist. He brought along his kids and his camera. In this talk, he shares his experiences, from quotidian details to grand spectacle. (Ted.com)

Paul Koontz was the first VP of marketing at Netscape; in his current work at Foundation Capital, he focuses on the same kind of right-tech-right-time companies around the world.

Origional: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/244

The Power of Blogging

2008-06-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in March of this year, not really knowing what to make of it but mostly to learn more about the world of blogging, what it entails, and how to use internet communication as a means of marketing. My philosophy is that the best way to learn something is by diving in. So I jumped, and landed in a crazy world. Not only have I learned a tremendous amount about what blogging really is but I've also come to understand why it's so widely popular.

I remember when I was young my mom would always threaten to write a letter to a business or organization when she was frustrated or had had horrible service. I always laughed and gave her a hard time. "Yeah Mom you tell them what's what," I used to say in a sarcastic tone. The irony is that today's digital age has made "letters" highly replicatable through emails, blogs, newsletters, and article databases. Writing a letter is now a powerful tool.

In my previous post I talked about my horrible experience with Next Student, a Private college loan company similar to Sallie Mae and others. It was a late night when I posted the rant, about three A.M. where I'm writing from. The next day I received a call from a senior manager who had seen the article. It had been found by a member of the company's marketing team and passed on to management in the customer service division. She had called to apologize for the poor customer service and frustrating situation I was going through. To help fix as much as she could, she offered to call my school and speak with financial aid to make sure that they do not drop me from my classes. They also offered to overnight my funds to me in an effort to speed things up and get everything taken care. She understood that student loans are a commodity and people can go anywhere to get them these days. The companies with the best value get the most business. She is absolutely right.

While most of the damage has already been done, it is not to go unnoticed that someone did reach out and apologize. It's just an unfortunate shame that it has to come to what it did to get the value that every customer really deserves. Think about any business. If we treated everyone the way I was treated after I shared my experience with the world there would be some businesses out there killing the competition. The sad truth is that most businesses lack effective training, qualified outsourced services, and experienced individuals (you get what you pay for).

Blogging has made it too expensive for companies to have bad service, because I can tell the world about it instantly. In less than 24 hours over 600 people had read my article. Businesses absolutely do not want this. However, what if I ranted about how great the service was? What if 600 people heard how great my experience was? That's powerful for business. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. Some of the most powerful marketing tools can be customer testimonials. If you have a great service or product, your customers will reward you for it.

The internet has given each and everyone a powerful voice if we choose to use that way. This is what I believe a big part of blogging is about. Consumers finally have a voice. I hope that companies are adaptive enough to thrive in a world that embraces this.

Need a Student Loan? Next Student is Not the Place To Go

2008-06-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

With rising tuition costs it's no wonder more and more students are taking out loans to get through college. Because students are dependent on the loans to continue education in many cases, the loan companies often discard the notion of customer service since they know you need them. Let me share the nightmare of my experience with Next Student, a private student loan company with a hip mantra - "College funding made simple".

I first applied for my loan at the beginning of May. After the hullabaloo of document gathering (which is standard don't get me wrong) and time spent waiting for reps to return my calls I had everything signed and sent in. It was May 12th at this point and I was eager to finalize everything since I was taking summer classes and tuition was due sooner than later. Weeks began to go by and my endless calling was answered by a placated voice on the other end telling me that there was nothing that could be done. The department was backed up.

I can understand things are busy, but after 3 weeks I still had no answer, only to be continually told the same thing over and over. Begging my school not to drop me from my classes at the same time I began to feel helpless in the battle to get my student loan. The sight of Next Student's logo infuriated me. "College funding made simple." Soon after I was told that the underwriters had a hard time reading my faxed documents -THREE WEEKS AFTER I SENT THEM - and that I would need to resend the documents to the general fax line and restart the underwriting process. I actually laughed out load I was so shocked.

Upset and perplexed, I worked my way up the ladder until I spoke with someone who had enough intelligence to make decisions on their own. We got the documents into the department without resending them and things were starting to look a bit progressive. I was assured by Next Student the check would be ready at latest June 2.

I am writing this today, on June 5th, frustrated and eager to share my experience because no one should have to go through the stress and frustration of what I have had to go through this last month. Since June 2nd I have left three voice mails, none of which have been returned, and am fearful that despite my efforts I will be dropped from my classes and have wasted the first half of the summer. This will also cause me not to graduate on time.

I hope when you look into private loan funding you look to a company who has a reputable customer service staff. Perhaps a company that still believes in delivering value to clients. That company is not Next Student.

Saving Lives One Dollar at a Time

2008-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Many people are not aware, but malaria kills over one million people per year. The most unfortunate part of this is that it can be easily prevented unlike other diseases like HIV. People all over are rallying together to raise support to create awareness and raise funds to help put an end to the destruction causeD by malaria.

Lance Laifer has started an awareness campaign to get more people involved and educated on what's going on. Here is an excerpt from his facebook campaign

"On October 17 - World Poverty Day - we will attempt to blackout all the profile pics on facebook. This will be done to draw attention to the one million faces every year that die from malaria and to draw attention to the fact that malaria is a circular disease of poverty. It causes poverty and is caused by poverty"

This campaign is part of a larger effort to raise money for the proper drugs to prevent malaria. One dollar - notice it's not one dollar a day - will cover the basic costs of getting the right drugs for a child. Africa Fighting Malaria, Laifer and others have launched the highly successful "March of the Washington's" Campaign. The idea behind this is that each person contributes a dollar bill (George Washington had Malaria too). To see more about how to get involved visit

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17178141045

It just never ceases to amaze me that billions of dollars are spent every year on so many things, why can't we use a tiny fraction to help save lives? Below are more recourses for this cause.

Links:
www.malarianomore.org
www.nothingbutnets.net
Study Finds Africans Getting Sub-Standard Malaria Drugs
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/giving/12malaria.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

2008-05-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

"Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks, which turn the $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer." - TED.com

Gasoline Is Cheap: Four dollars a gallon is outrageous! We should be paying much more.

2008-05-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

By Robert Bryce
Posted Thursday, May 15, 2008, at 3:24 PM ET

The next time you have to take out a loan just to fill up your tank, remember this: Four-dollar-per-gallon gasoline is cheap.

There's no doubt that high fuel prices are hurting low-income consumers, and high energy costs are placing a tax on the economy that is slowing investment while sending billions of dollars overseas. It's unsurprising that presidential candidates and members of Congress issue new proposals practically every day to lower gas prices: Stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve! Suspend the federal gas tax! Open ANWR to oil drilling!

These proposals are delusions, and Americans are living in a fantasy land when it comes to energy and energy prices. Over the past few years, consumers have been inundated with news stories about the soaring price of gasoline. Invariably, these stories include comments from a motorist who is outraged at the evils of a) Saudi Arabia, b) OPEC, c) Big Oil, d) all of the above.

But by almost any measure, gasoline is still cheap. In fact, it has probably been far too cheap for far too long. The recent price increases are only beginning to reflect its real value.

When measured on an inflation-adjusted basis, the current price of gasoline is only slightly higher than it was in 1922. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 1922, gasoline cost the current-day equivalent of $3.11. Today, according to the EIA, gasoline is selling for about $3.77 per gallon, only about 20 percent more than 86 years ago.

Given the ever-increasing global demand for oil products—during the first quarter of this year, China's oil consumption jumped by 16.5 percent—and the increasing costs associated with finding, producing, and refining crude oil, it makes sense that today's motorists are paying more for their motor fuel than their grandparents and great-grandparents did.

Gasoline is also a fairly minor expense when you consider the overall cost of car ownership. In 1975, gasoline made up 33.4 percent of the total cost of owning and operating a car. By 2006, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, gasoline costs had declined to just 17.1 percent of the total cost of car ownership. Of course, fuel costs have risen by about $1 per gallon since 2006, but even with those increases, fuel continues to be a relatively small part of the cost of car ownership. By contrast, the fixed costs of ownership—insurance, licensing, taxes, and financing—have increased nearly fivefold since 1975. Maintenance costs have also quintupled over the same time period. Given those increases and the relatively low price of fuel, it's not surprising that Americans are opting for big vehicles with powerful engines. Considering the overall cost of owning a vehicle, fuel expenses just aren't a very big deal.

History shows that significant declines in U.S. oil consumption occur only after prolonged periods of high prices. Over the last two decades, U.S. consumers have been spoiled by low fuel prices. And those lower prices led to a buying binge that put millions of giant SUVs, pickups, and other gas guzzlers on our roads. Today's higher prices are forcing consumers to adapt. The EIA now expects U.S. gasoline consumption to decline this year—the first drop in demand in 17 years. In April, sales of small cars in the United States were up by 17 percent over the same period a year earlier while sales of SUVs, trucks, and large cars all fell by about 30 percent.

On the environmental front, people concerned about greenhouse-gas emissions should be cheering today's oil prices. Expensive motor fuel is the only thing that will lead consumers to use less oil and make the switch to hybrid vehicles, smaller cars, and public transit. Higher oil prices are convincing automakers to change their fleets. Earlier this week, Nissan Motor Company announced that it will begin selling an electric car in the United States and Japan by 2010. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan, made it clear that fuel prices were a factor in the company's decision to build electric cars, telling the New York Times that "the shifts coming from the markets are more powerful than what regulators are doing."

American gasoline is also dirt-cheap compared with gas in other countries. British motorists are currently paying about $8.38 per gallon for gasoline. In Norway, a major oil exporter, drivers are paying $8.73. In 2007, out of the 32 industrialized countries surveyed by the International Energy Agency, only one (Mexico) had cheaper gasoline than the United States. Last year, drivers in Turkey were paying three times as much for their gasoline as Americans were. The IEA data also show that in India—where the per capita gross domestic product is about $2,700 (about 6 percent of the per capita GDP in the United States)—drivers have been paying more for their diesel fuel and gasoline than their American counterparts.

(Gasoline is also cheap compared with other essential fuels. A Starbucks venti latte costs the equivalent of $23 per gallon, while Budweiser beer runs $11 per gallon.)

The simple truth is that Americans are going to have to get used to more expensive gasoline. And while they may continue grumbling at the pump, they need to accept the fact that even at $3.50 or $4 per gallon, the fuel they are buying is still a bargain.

Make Room for The Kings of the Internet...In Mobile

2008-05-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Apple plans to release its new 3g iphone in June. I'm sure so many people are excited that their 500 dollar iphone is outdated, but what I'm more interested in is the anticipation of Google's android operating system. While many have been anticipated Google to release an actual phone - which could very well happen - what is for sure is that they have developed an operating system known as "Android".

The goal here is to create a world-class platform that becomes a benchmark in the mobile industry. Right now every phone manufacturer, from Sony to LG has different operating software. Because of this innovation is particularly slow. Another way to think of this is to look back and remember facebook when they opened up their platform to third party developers. Now there are thousands of application that users can choose from and innovation has increased drastically.

This all comes down to expansion. Google is looking to open up the mobile market and continue to expand search volume and advertising revenues. Can they do it? It seems quite possible. Many carriers seem to be receptive. The software would come standard on phones and would be "Free". I quoted free because there's always a price, and in this case it could be more mobile marketing campaigns, and not the ones I talked about in my "Could Mobile Marketing be Good" post.

What everyone wants to know, but doesn't, is whether Google will rival Apple in the mobile market. If they are able to transcend their PC application into a smooth mobile package, I will be the first one to tote around my cool new Android Phone. More information about the Google Phone is listed Below:

My Stock Picks for CNBC Portfolio Challenge 2008

2008-05-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

Here are my picks for my 2008 CNBC $1 Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. I'm hoping to win big...

1) Andersons Inc (ANDE)
2) Caterpillar (CAT)
3) Herbalife (HLF)
4) Yahoo (YHOO)
5) CME Group (CME)
6) FTI Consulting (FCN)

If you want to to see more about the contest visit milliondollar.cnbc.com

I'll post up my earning or losses at the end of the week...

Bruce Lee's Five Rules of Productivity

2008-05-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

By: CC Holland

Famed martial artist and actor Bruce Lee was undoubtedly an icon and a trailblazer. But did you know he was also a personal productivity guru? Well, maybe not exactly. But The Positivity Blog notes that several of his fundamental beliefs for life can translate pretty well into guidelines for personal productivity.

“As you think, so shall you become.” Keep yourself and your thoughts on the right track to reach your goals.
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” Don’t overthink, don’t procrastinate, and just do it.
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.” How people respond to you says a lot — and what you see, hear and feel in other people may be a reflection of you.
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.” Bragging is an attempt to gain validation from others, but it alienates those around you and makes you look needy. Instead, practice inner validation by setting and achieving goals.
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” Be proactive instead of reactive; don’t blindly go with the flow. Be willing to take the lead to get what you want.

Track Back: http://blogs.bnet.com/teamwork/?p=226&tag=homeCar

You Can't Just Be an Entreprenuer

2008-05-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Someone told me that. She had asked me what it was I really wanted to do. "An entrepreneur," I responded "You can't just be an entrepreneur. You don't have the experience or have the capital," she said. I didn't know whether to take it as advice, criticism, or an insult. I will say that yes it's harder for young people to run out and borrow millions. Today though technology is cheap, resources are plentiful, and the best start up capital is "know how".

Here is a reaffirming article from BusinessWeek about the "Start-up Itch" and how today's entrepreneurs are becoming younger and younger.

The Startup Bug Strikes Earlier
Slide Show >>

By Stacy Perman

As the entrepreneurial career path becomes more accepted, its appeal to the young is rapidly growing, as are the resources to make them successful

There was a time, not so long ago, when a person choosing the entrepreneurial career path wasn't exactly greeted with rampant enthusiasm. Among the notable exceptions: Michael Dell famously started his eponymous computer company (DELL ) out of his University of Texas, Austin, dorm room. And what would eventually become software behemoth Microsoft (MSFT ) began life when Bill Gates was still a Harvard undergrad.

Both men eventually dropped out of college to pursue their wildly successful ventures, but their paths to fame and fortune were decidedly not the norm. For the most part, and for the rest of us, conventional wisdom held that to be successful, one got a degree or two and then worked for an established company. Tinkering and dreaming was left to -- ahem -- entrepreneurs, not serious businesspeople.

That was then. Nowadays, "Entrepreneur is no longer a dirty word," says Gerald Hills, an entrepreneurship professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and executive director of the Collegiate Entrepreneur's Organization, a network of student groups on 500 college campuses. "It's nearly what everyone thinks of when they think about opportunities. They think of entrepreneurs now." Shorn of its stigma, the once-risky career route is now viewed as a positive calling, particularly given the wobbly economy and the no-longer-sacrosanct benefits of corporate life -- pensions and job security are fast becoming relics of a bygone era.

OUT OF THE CRADLE. The short-lived dot-com epoch that launched countless ideas into startup ventures before imploding also helped make the entrepreneurial route a viable alternative to the traditional job path. While a more sober reality has replaced the heady New Economy days, entrepreneurs are finding an expansive array of sophisticated resources, tools, and options for helping them start and operate a new business. More simply, the trail has already been blazed.

And while more and more young entrepreneurs may be embarking on the same general path, their destinations couldn't be more varied. Take surfer Matt Rivers, who five years ago used money he had earned dishwashing to buy the Pump House Surf Shop in Orleans, Mass. -- at the age of 17.

Then there's Alasdair McLean-Foreman, who started HDO Sport, a high-tech sporting-goods company in Cambridge, Mass., when he was a Harvard freshman and a member of the track team. And in 1997, Paula Yakubik, then 25, quit her job as a newspaper reporter and founded public-relations firm MassMedia in a rented cubicle in Las Vegas. Today, she has two offices in Nevada and over 30 clients.

DORM LABS. Instead of flying blind, fledgling entrepreneurs of all ages can turn to a number of organizations and resources for help in nurturing a diverse set of ideas. Business-plan competitions with juicy cash purses have sprouted up all over the country. In September, the Small Business Administration announced a partnership with Junior Achievement Worldwide to launch a small-business portal for teen entrepreneurs, mindyourownbiz.org.

A number of networking associations are also targeted to particular communities of likeminded businesspeople and their specific issues. For instance, YoungEntrepreneur.com, based in Blaine, Wa., is an member-based Web site that offers advice, strategies, information sharing, and help in securing funding.

In fact, colleges and universities that once emphasized academics in recent years have established a number of entrepreneurial programs and incubators to help polish, educate, mentor, and develop those dorm-room eurekas into full-fledged businesses. No longer the exclusive purview of MBAs, many entrepreneurial programs are now geared toward undergraduate students (see BW Online, 10/25/05, "Teaching the Startup Mentality").

"I've been in education for 30 years," says the University of Illinois' Hills, "and I've seen a real shift as more and more students want to start a business. They don't necessarily want to wait to give it a go."

VIRGIN VENTURE. Five years ago, the University of Maryland in College Park, launched the Hinman Campus Entrepreneurship Opportunities (CEO) Program. The two-year course was established with a $2.5 million grant from alumnus Brian Hinman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. It takes 35 students at a time, who must apply for admission. The program and its students are housed in a special high-tech dorm that's designed to give participants a residential learning environment where they experience an entire business lifecycle, from concept to execution to operation.

According to Karen Thornton, the program's director, while 75% of the students take part as a learning opportunity, 25% have actually gone on to create businesses from the ideas they hatched at Hinman. In recent years, Iowa State and Oregon State have launched similar programs based on Hinman's model.

Being an entrepreneur means making your own opportunities, and there's no telling where a good idea can lead you. After all, Virgin Group got its start when 15-year-old Richard Branson dreamed up a magazine called Student in his native London. Virgin Group is now an $8 billion global empire comprising some 200 companies in 30 countries, and in 1999, the celebrated founder became Sir Richard Branson when Queen Elizabeth II knighted him -- for "services to entrepreneurship."

Big Ideas Need To Be Nutured

2008-05-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

This is a really cool commercial I found while watching some videos on TED. Autodesk was the official sponsor and I thought I would post the commercial up for everyone to see. Now, go innovate.

Electronic Job Fairs Innovate Industry and Create New Opportunities

2008-05-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

If you’re like me, you’ve been reading the news over the past months about the economic slowdown and how college grads are facing lower salaries and tighter job markets. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more students are heading to college than ever before. The number of college graduates is rising and that means fiercer competition in a tougher labor market. If you want a great job in your field with a good starting salary, you better work at it smarter than everyone else. One of the newest and innovative ways to do this is through electronic job fairs.

I spoke with Jason Vrane, Chief Marketing Officer of EJobFairs.net last week and had the chance to see first hand how E-Job Fairs can be a valuable source for solid employment opportunities. Ejobfairs.net minimizes the hassle of traditional career fairs by allowing employers to search and reach out to specific candidates and speak with them. “It’s a great time saver because you are engaged primarily with people who see potential value in you as an employee for their firm,” Vrane said. The site, which is currently working on a second round of funding, plans to add many more tools for both job seekers and employers to maximize the experience and create even more productivity. You can visit their site at www.ejobfairs.net to see a demo and view upcoming e-fairs.

There’s an old adage that sales is a contact sport - the more people you contact, the better your sales will be. Translated for jobs, the more exposure and networking you do will ultimately increase your odds of finding the right career move for you. What I like about Ejobfairs is that it leverages the technology to create more effective exposure for everyone.

Forget about the economic statistics and make it happen. You are now one step ahead of the rest. Whether you’re a recent graduate looking for a great starting job or a seasoned professional looking to make a switch, electronic career fairs are a great way to get started.

Mobile Marketing - Could it be Cool?

2008-05-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

The second I heard the words "Mobile Marketing" I thought of the spam box on my email, full of offers for free Ipods and get-a-way trips. My initial reaction to the concept of mobile marketing was quite negative and the future was looking bleak.

At last though, I thought, could there be a way to make mobile marketing valuable for consumers? I brain stormed a few examples and want to see what people think about using SMS in marketing strategies.

1) Airline Companies - This was the first example I thought of: Airliners. Southwest paved the way for paperless E-ticketing. Using text messages to notify customers that they can check in or perhaps sending a text about cheap rates in their area could boost revenues for the airliners and at the same save consumers money.

2) Ticketmaster.com - Receive a text message when tickets go on sale for that band you've been dying to see. I can't tell you how many times Rush has been to Jacksonville and I missed out on the show because I forgot! If I had been reminded to get those tickets I could have seen Neal Pert rock a ten minute drum solo!

3) CNBC - Text me the opening numbers of the NYSE, DOW, and NASDAQ. Be the wise guy at work who knows everything before everyone else. Sound smart and look good for clients and bosses and be the king of the water cooler. Oh yeah, CNBC can throw a few ads up - Not to mention grow their branding efforts.

Maybe mobile marketing isn't all bad? Maybe it's just change that I was afraid of. I hope that ad executives and marketing officers will stay creative and remember that the best way to gain and keep consumers under their guise is to keep providing them will good value. If I start getting spammed I'm going to take the high road - I'll sue somebody.

A Complete Guide to Internships

2008-05-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

Internships are becoming more and more important in obtaining a great job right out of college. I found this article and thought it would be helpful for anyone looking to do an internship over the summer or in the upcoming year.

By Derrick Dortch
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2003; 4:00 PM

If you want a great job after college you must do more than earn good grades and get involved in extracurricular activities. Good grades and extracurricular activities are looked upon favorably by employers but they are not enough. According to the 2001 Job Outlook Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers say that the perfect candidate is a graduate who brings relevant work experience to the table. This experience is mostly gained through internships.

The purpose of this article is to provide you with information on internships and give you a starting strategy to get one.

What Is an Internship?

An internship is a structured learning experience in a work setting that gives a student the opportunity to learn about a career interest and gain valuable knowledge and experience in a particular field. In an internship, you work just like an employee but your purpose is to receive mentorship, supervision, and training. Internships are designed to assist students in the career exploration process to determine if that career matches their interests and skills.

Are Internships Important?

Internships are very important to a college student preparing for the world of work. It should be seen as an integral part of your academics. To get this relevant experience, students should intern with employers who are doing the kind of work they are interested in pursuing after college. Here are a few reasons why internships are so important.

Internships:
•Test your skills and interests.
• Provide insight into prerequisites needed for employment.
• Develop a network of professional contacts for future opportunities and references.
• Increase your awareness of the skills you need to develop.
• Provide valuable work experience such as workplace communication skills.
• Build a strong resume.

How Early Should I Begin Planning for an Internship?

Plan your internship as soon as possible. If you are able to intern your freshman year that is great but it should be a priority for your sophomore and junior years. Take your first semester in college and get acclimated but after you are settled, consider talking to your career center about internships and how to develop an internship search strategy. Even if you are not sure what you want to do, exploring various fields will help you decide on what career match your interests, passions, and goals.

When Are Internships Available?

The majority of internships take place in the summer but many are available year around. In Washington D.C. and other major cities, companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations will have interns working during the fall, spring, and summer semester.

How Early Should I Begin Applying?

Application deadlines vary from organization to organization. Summer internship positions in large organizations or very competitive internship programs sometimes have deadlines as early as October, November, or December. Others will have deadlines in February, March, or April. It all depends on the organization and their hiring process. During the beginning of the fall semester or even at the end of the summer begin planning where you want to intern in the summer. Check with the organization(s) about the application procedure and deadline. Remember proper planning and preparation are key to getting the internship you want.

How Many Hours Should I Work at an Internship?

Summer internships can be full or part-time positions depending on the organization. If you decide to intern during the fall and spring semesters, it is recommended that you work 10 - 15 hours a week maximum. Remember that your academic studies are a priority. Exceeding 15 hours at an internship during the semester/quarter is not recommended unless your class load is light and flexible.

Are Internships Paid or Unpaid?

Summer internships can be paid or unpaid depending on the organization and career field. The majority of summer internships are paid. If a summer internship is unpaid they may only require you to work part-time so that you will be able to get another job. Internships during the academic semester/quarter many times are unpaid but there are a few organizations where interns are paid. Some organizations will pay for travel to and from work so make sure you discuss this with the internship provider before accepting a position.

Do I Need to Do Anything Before Looking for an Internship?

Whether you are just beginning your career exploration process or if you're a veteran, there are some steps that are always helpful to follow. This process should begin with a self-assessment. Evaluate your interests, skills, and passions. Select the career fields that match you the best.

Where Do I Find Internships?

Your career center. The staff and resources of your college/university career center are available to help you find an internship. There are private career consultations and workshops. Most career centers also have a library and Web site with a number of books and online resources to help you find an internship. Career centers usually maintain internship opportunity listings online or in their resource area.

The Internet. Use the search engines on the Web and see what you discover.

Company Web sites. Most companies will list internships, summer opportunities and special programs in the employment or career opportunities section of their Web site. Look for Career Employment/Opportunities on the home page. This link is sometimes on the home page but if it cannot be found look in the site index, contact us, about us or search sections of the Web site.

Online internship listing services. There are a number of online internship search engines available for you to conduct your search.

Career books. There are a number of books published on internship opportunities. Two of the most popular are "The Internship Bible" published by The Princeton Review and "Peterson's Yearly Internship Book" published by Thomson Learning. Libraries and bookstores usually have a good selection of books on internships. Also online bookstores like Amazon.com are good resources as well.

Newspapers. Look in the employment section of newspapers. If you see a full time listing that interests you, contact that company and see if there are any internships available. Every spring, The Washington Post runs a section in the employment guide of internship listings.

Career fairs. Each university will usually have an annual career fair with companies, organizations and agencies looking for interns. Talk to your career center and find out when the career fair will be held and how to prepare it.

Alumni. Alumni can be a great resource for information on internship opportunities in their career field or place of employment. Contact Alumni Affairs/Relations office for alumni contacts in your field(s) of interest.

Network contacts. Networking is very important in your career development. Joining associations and attending professional events and job fairs will help you build your network. Use contacts to learn about opportunities that are available in your field of interest. Each career area has at least one association and newspaper or journal. Associations for various industry sectors and career fields (i.e. American Management Association, American Medical Association, etc.) may have internship listings in their publications or Web sites. Check out AssociationCentral.org for a directory of associations listed by industry or career field.

Professors/Professional staff. Many professors or professional staff will have contacts outside the university in organizations of interest. At many colleges and universities, a good number of professors are adjunct and maintain a professional job outside of teaching. They may have internships at their place of employment or know of organizations in need of interns. Talking with them about your interests may yield great contacts and opportunities.

Parents, family, and friends. Share your career interests with your parents, family member and friends. They may know of a contact who can help you get an internship in that area of interest.

Develop your own internship. You may know of a contact in a career field of interest. Talk with them about an internship in their place of employment.

Explore each of these options carefully and you will find that there are a number of internships available. Although there may be many opportunities remember there are many college students like you working to get the internship. Make sure you waste no time in sending out your sales package to assure your candidacy. Now you know where you want to intern, go for it!

Follow the Trends

2008-04-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Almost 70 percent of executives around the world say that global social, environmental, and business trends are increasingly important to corporate strategy, according to a McKinsey survey. Yet relatively few companies act on the global trends they think will affect them most; among those that do act, only 17 percent report significant benefits.
One reason might be underinvestment in trends. For instance, many companies that pursue growing consumer segments in emerging markets build operations there but don’t develop lower-cost products.
Companies that don’t act on trends they think will be important cite a shortage of skills and resources, higher strategic priorities, or a lack of possible responses to these trends.

Click here for the complete article

The Coming World of Collaboration - Follow up

2008-04-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Howard Rheingold, author of Street Mobs and invited lecturer at California’s renowned TED conference explains the phenomena of collaboration and its evolutionary effect on creating new forms of wealth and perhaps reforms to traditional economic theory. He initially notes that traditional success in both business and politics was fueled by the notion of Darwin’s biological theory of evolution; that the strongest and fiercest survive. But while this ideology has held true throughout the life of capitalism – he’s sure to emphasize that capitalism will continue to rule – the birth and growth of technology has vastly spread cooperation, collective action, and complex interdependencies. This, he notes, has forced competition to make a little room.

What Howard is really trying to get across to us is that through the cooperation, collective action, and interdependencies new forms of wealth can and are being created. In an example he gives early in his lecture he compares this collaboration to prehistoric times when small family units survived by hunting small game like rabbits and other animals. At some point however, hunters gathered together and collaborated to hunt the massive mastodon. His point being that today we can collaborate to conquer bigger “game.”

While the ideas presented could be criticized as rudimentary, it’s no farce that this level of collaboration is occurring today and is being led by some of the world’s biggest corporations. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and other leading IT firms are open-sourcing much of their software and encouraging other developers, be it graduate students or high school kids, to work and advance the available research. Toyota gives extensive training to its suppliers to help them increase their production efficiency even though many suppliers also work with their direct competitors. Even within these fierce markets, companies are opening up and welcoming collaboration. Why? Rheingold argues this is happening because it is a certain kind of sharing in self-interest.

For example, by allowing bloggers to earn money through its Adsense program, Google enriched itself by creating a new market for advertisers. Amazon.com opened its application interface to over 60,000 designers which in turn has grown the number of Amazon stores significantly while making money for virtual store owners. EBay, the auction giant, created an enormous market by creating a feedback mechanism that allows users to trust each other. All these examples reinforce how collaboration can turn a Prisoners Dilemma into an Insurance Game.

The Prisoners Dilemma, as in all game theory, states that “the only concern of each individual player is maximizing his/her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution—that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperate.” The distrust players have for each other in this model is what dictates their rationale. If both could trust each other, they would be apt to work together and obtain larger rewards. This model in which trust is present between actors is known as the insurance game. This is what is beginning to happen. The most evident example of this is EBay. By establishing trust between buyers and sellers a huge new market was established where lower prices are often found for buyers and many new markets for goods that normally can’t be sold are now a click away for sellers.

These actions are all about self-interest to grow and add more to the already existent. Rene Descartes, the famous philosopher explained that we need a new way of thinking to understand absolute truth. While absolute truth would be nice, we can start by understanding the sociological and economic evolution that is the future of commerce and innovation. Globalization is shaking the foundation of traditional thought. To finish, I will leave you with the question Rheingold poses in his book Street Mobs. Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests? The answer seems to be getting clearer.

Sources:

TED Lecture – http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/216

Wikipedia: Game Theory & the Prisoners Dilemma –

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The Coming World of Collaboration

2008-04-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons.

You can learn more about Howard Rheingold and his work by visiting his blog at http://www.rheingold.com/

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Young People Embracing Entrepreneurship

2008-04-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

I found this survey on Inc. Magazines entrepreneurial section of their website (www.inc.com) and thought I would post it up and see if there's much of a response...

"A recent survey commissioned by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found that four out of 10 youths between the ages of 8 and 21 either have started or want to start their own business in the future.

Of those who have the entrepreneurial spirit, 92 percent said they want to found a business to use their skills and abilities, 89 percent want to build something for their future, and 85 percent hope that creating their own company will result in a high salary, according to the survey of 2,438 young people.

Overall, 63 percent of all respondents said they think that if they work hard enough, they can start their own successful business. (Source)"

With the amount of information and tools at the tips of peoples fingers it's now easier than ever to accomplish the goal of starting your own business. I'm curious to know who many people reading this are interested in being their own boss some day??

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

2008-03-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Who's Who of World Wide Business

2008-03-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Who are the mover's and shakers? Here they are, the worlds top 25 businesses. Coincidentally almost all of these businesses were listed on Forbes' list of most desirable companies for MBA's to work at. It's also important to note that many of these countries are growing and expanding due to new ventures in emerging economies like China, India, Bangladesh, and eastern European countries. View the full Fortune 500 here.

Rank	Company	Revenues ($ millions)	Profits ($ millions)
1	Wal-Mart Stores	351,139.0	11,284.0
2	Exxon Mobil	347,254.0	39,500.0
3	General Motors	207,349.0	-1,978.0
4	Chevron	200,567.0	17,138.0
5	ConocoPhillips	172,451.0	15,550.0
6	General Electric	168,307.0	20,829.0
7	Ford Motor	160,126.0	-12,613.0
8	Citigroup	146,777.0	21,538.0
9	Bank of America Corp.	117,017.0	21,133.0
10	American Intl. Group	113,194.0	14,048.0
11	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	99,973.0	14,444.0
12	Berkshire Hathaway	98,539.0	11,015.0
13	Verizon Communications	93,221.0	6,197.0
14	Hewlett-Packard	91,658.0	6,198.0
15	Intl. Business Machines	91,424.0	9,492.0
16	Valero Energy	91,051.0	5,463.0
17	Home Depot	90,837.0	5,761.0
18	McKesson	88,050.0	751.0
19	Cardinal Health	81,895.1	1,000.1
20	Morgan Stanley	76,688.0	7,472.0
21	UnitedHealth Group	71,542.0	4,159.0
22	Merrill Lynch	70,591.0	7,499.0
23	Altria Group	70,324.0	12,022.0
24	Goldman Sachs Group	69,353.0	9,537.0
25	Procter & Gamble	68,222.0	8,684.0

Thinking of Going for an MBA?

2008-03-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

A big question a lot of people ask is are MBA's really worth the cost?

You can expect to spend anywhere from $30,000 to $150,000 (Typically these are the ivy league's) for the degree. While more compensation is one of the benefits of MBA's they typically provide more opportunities for higher corporate positions and leadership roles. Simply put, they can turbo charge your business career.

Recently there have been some criticisms of American MBA programs, specifically the lack of emphasis on ethics and perhaps an over emphasis on management theory.

I figured I would let the numbers do the talking and dug up this table that shows pre and post MBA compensation from top American business schools. I thought it might be of interest for others to see.

Rank	Business School	Pre MBA Salaries*	Median Total Pay Package	Percent Increase
1	U. of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	$60,000	$156,000	160%
2	Northwestern (Kellogg)	$56,000	$142,000	154%
3	Stanford	$65,000	$165,500	155%
4	Harvard	$65,000	$160,000	146%
5	Columbia	$50,000	$142,500	185%
6	Duke (Fuqua)	$49,000	$128,500	162%
7	MIT (Sloan)	$55,000	$149,000	171%
8	Chicago	$55,000	$140,000	155%
9	Cornell (Johnson)	$50,000	$135,000	170%
10	Dartmouth (Tuck)	$50,000	$149,500	199%
11	Michigan	$50,000	$131,000	162%
12	NYU (Stern)	$45,000	$140,000	211%
13	UC -- Berkeley (Haas)	$50,000	$135,000	170%
14	Virginia (Darden)	$50,000	$135,000	170%
15	Yale	$45,000	$130,000	189%
16	UCLA (Anderson)	$55,000	$136,500	148%
17	Carnegie Mellon	$45,000	$125,000	178%
18	UNC -- Chapel Hill	$48,000	$125,000	160%
19	Texas -- Austin (McCombs)	$45,000	$107,000	138%
20	Indiana (Kelley)	$42,000	$114,000	171%
21	USC (Marshall)	$45,000	$112,000	149%
22	Purdue (Krannert)	$35,000	$101,500	190%
23	Rochester (Simon)	$40,000	$110,000	175%
24	Georgetown (McDonough)	$45,000	$116,000	158%
25	Washington U. (Olin)	$42,000	$109,000	160%

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Companies Want Intercultural Managers

2008-03-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

In today’s world the list of qualifications for many management positions is of more and more resemblance to the Renaissance man. Sure you must understand some finance and economics and of course business strategy is a must-have for success. Then throw in some leadership and marketing know-how with a dash of sheer creativity and what do you get? You get someone who still needs to understand how to deal with people from a multitude of different cultures and then capitalize on burgeoning international markets.

Cultural diversity is extremely prevalent in our work force and populations. A company who wants to be successful needs management that both embraces this notion and understands it. The reality is that this is not happening enough. “Many leaders are operating on an old conception of the world around them and of human nature, including the nature of work, the worker, and the management process itself,” John Saee explains.

Further, many international assignments bring along with them high costs, low performance, and social challenges for involved parties. “The predominant reason for such failure is not a lack of managerial technical competence but the dynamics of intercultural experience”. What are these overpaid managers lacking? It turns out that our list of skills just lengthened. “These ‘dynamics’ include differences in cultural perceptions, in values and practices that influence understanding, in attitudinal satisfaction with living in a foreign culture, in relationship development, and in the accomplishment of goals”. In other words many international ventures involve people who cannot adjust to these environments.

As organizations begin to understand these complexities the first step they have taken is for the installment of language training programs for employees. While this is a step forward most make the assumption that speaking a language and understanding culture go hand in hand. The author notes, “Cultural dimensions to communication go far beyond syntax and vocabulary”. He goes on to say “Studying intercultural communication without studying culture is analogous to studying physics without looking at matter”.

Obviously placing emphasis on cultural understanding is important, but how do we become inter-culturally competent managers and people? Saee emphasizes Cultural awareness, the valuing of differences, and being non-judgmental as some of the most significant ways to improve on being culturally proficient.

How we become more culturally competent is important but for arguments sake we need to understand more clearly why it is important to diversify our cultural competency. In one word that answer is opportunity. The world is becoming interconnected. International trade is growing year after year and people want what developed nations have had for decades. It means that as more and more people make more and more money in emerging economies the demand for products and services is going to increase significantly. For example, think of the fraction of the 1.2 billion Indians who can now afford DVD players and Play Stations? What can your company bring to their market? It’s happening now. The companies who are successful in penetrating these markets will be the ones who are culturally diverse and understand how to work with all kinds of people.

This article is a testament in and of itself to the importance of globalizations role on our accepted business practices and management theory. It is quickly shifting the status quo of what is necessary for success. The list of qualifications may be long for top-tier managers but if you take the time to educate yourself and embrace cultural diversity you may find yourself in a much better place than you thought possible.

Origional Article

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Shift Happens

2008-03-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is a stylization of a slideshow originally created by Karl Fisch, examining globalization and America’s future in the 21st century. I thought this was really interesting...

| View | Upload your own

Your Links Help Educate

2008-03-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

From now until June 1st I will donate one dollar for every person who links to my site to Unicef's Education initiative. I don't care if you want to link to me because you like the content I provide or you just want to help raise money for one of the most important humanitarian issues. As I grow and learn about the world I see more and more that people like us who have the opportunities to learn and speak out and advance ourselves in society also have a responsibility to help others do the same.

By linking to www.grantdeken.com (or any article on grantdeken.blogspot.com) you help me to grow my web exposure, but also allow me to reach more people and raise awareness about poverty, education issues (both domestically and internationally) and other important social and economic issues.

What your Links can buy:

$3 can provide a child with a pencil, paper pad and a pen to use in the classroom.

$16 can buy a double-sided chalkboard for classroom or outdoor use.

$176 can buy one school-in-a-box kit—a ready-made educational solution packed in a lockable metal box, containing equipment for 80 students such as pencils, erasers, exercise books, writing slates, scissors and carrier bags.

Support UNICEF's education programs.

If you want to join in on the initiative I encourage you. Contact me at Grdeken@gmail.com with link information so I can keep record. Also contact me with any ideas and perhaps we can create a network.

Trumping the Multinationals

2008-03-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is a great article on bnet that explains how local companies are beating the competition from multinational companies like Wal Mart and Google. Below is an excerpt of the article.

Full Article: http://www.bnet.com/2439-13239_23-190912.html

Excerpt:

If you're setting out to compete in rapidly developing economies, beware: Smart domestic enterprises are staving off the challenge from global market leaders. And they're seizing new opportunities before multinationals can.

Consider: In China, search engine Baidu is used seven times more than Google China every day. In India, Bharti Airtel has trumped Vodafone as the market leader in cellular telephony. And in Mexico, Grupo Elektra has beaten Wal-Mart as the country's top retailer.

Domestic dynamos like these dominate foreign rivals by applying six strategies. For example, they use their deep understanding of consumers in their countries to create highly customized offerings. They leverage cutting-edge technology to keep operating costs down. And they tap into pools of cheap local labor instead of relying on expensive automation.

To prevail over local winners on their turf, set aside your tried-and-true strategies, advise Bhattacharya and Michael. Instead, understand--and emulate--domestic players' tactics.

Beating the Currency Crunch

2008-03-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

Written by: Grant Deken

Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat explains to readers the concept of “wholesale” and “retail” reformation within economies. As transitioning economies adhere to these reforms globalization’s spread continues to reach the farthest places on the globe. The end results are more businesses, faster production, and fiercer competition in the marketplace. As this phenomenon takes place, the familiarity of the micro multinational company is more and more common as businesses aim to tap the brightest minds for the best price. What happens though, when your country’s currency declines to a thirty year low? What do business owners do to overcome this adversity? These are questions many American business owners are asking as they try to cope and develop strategies to beat the currency crunch.

WineCommune, a California based wine company that does a great deal of business through its e-commerce outlets has noticed a decline in growth compared to its stellar $17 million in sales for 2007.The company decided to mitigate its losses by entering into forward contracts. The idea is to lock in a price early with speculation that U.S. currency may be headed for a downturn. WineCommune locked in an exchange rate when the euro was worth roughly $1.25. When they were ready to purchase in the spring the euro had risen to $1.36, saving the business about eight percent. What’s especially intriguing (and ironic) is that the French consumers are now turning to WineCommune to take advantage of lower prices. What they lose in currency they are making up in higher sales volume.

Other companies are working with international vendors to make flexible payments since rates may be more favorable on different days of the week. This gives businesses a chance to try and pick the best day to pay suppliers. Naomi Novotny, whose company SaltWorks utilizes this practice explained that “when you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars, every last penny counts.”

Other companies have struggled to beat the crunch and are seeking domestic suppliers. Rainbow Packaging, which primarily handles distribution, made the switch from German machines to ones manufactured in the U.S. “It’s like starting from scratch,” CEO Wes Henriksen said.

Certainly globalization isn’t the culprit of our current problems, but is it guilty by association? While some may be quick to point fingers, they need only to point to themselves. Third Quarter GDP in the United States, driven by exports and fueled by a weakening currency, soared this past year.

Globalization is responsible for our diversified collaboration, global work forces, shifting market places, and new opportunities if we open our eyes to see them. Millions of people in emerging countries like China and India are now able to afford products and services they thought they would never be able to enjoy. Labor costs are lessoning as more people gain the needed skill sets abroad. So while many businesses are struggling to stay afloat with a weak U.S. dollar I have just one question- Why?

With international market places growing, every company’s marketing department should be conducting extensive research on the three billion new capitalists in the first world. What’s the best way to reach these people? What do they prefer? How much does the average household buy online? Take advantage of a weak currency to grow and open new international markets. Your cost of doing business may be higher, but sales volumes will soar which should make up for loss in the short term and build your business’s international presence. Think “business cycle.”

Source: Inc. Magazine March 2008 Issue

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Domain Holders Take Advantage of You and Me

2008-02-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

Source: http://news.findlaw.com/ap/high_tech/1700//02-27-2008/20080227100502_25.html

As if it's not difficult enough to find a marketable and appealing domain name these days, some companies are now suspect of manipulating buyers by analyzing recent domain searches and using the data to inflate domain prices. This has been a growing issue as the number of domain purchases over years has skyrocketed and along with that so have the number of companies facilitating domain purchases.

To combat this issue a law suit was filed with a Los Angeles court Monday against Network Solutions, LLC, one of the many domain facilitation sites (networksolutions.com). The importance of this lawsuit is extremely prominent in protecting businesses and consumers involved in online business development. As someone who owns more than ten domains and has experienced the aforementioned problem, let me tell you, this is huge.

Here's how it works:

For the purpose of this argument, let's say I am a apparel designer in Florida who realizes the potential to grow my business through the outlet of e-commerce. I put together my online business strategy, hire a couple of designers, and begin to create what will soon be my online presence. Using a domain facilitator I search and scour through thirty possible domain names but decide to come back and purchase after I speak with a marketing consultant to get some ideas on which domains have the most marketability. During this gap of time the domain facilitator has accessed its search analytics and notices that I, as well as others, have been searching for possible domains. In turn they purchase the domains, making them unavailable to me upon my eager arrival to get up and running online. At this point I am either forced to search for another, likely less appealing domain, or purchase my first choice at a much higher price. The domain facilitator has just manipulated me to increase its profit margins.

Many companies who do this defend their actions by stating that they are helping the consumer by ensuring domains are available when their customers return to purchase. Don't be fooled. This is a cover for their blatant misuse of search data. I commend them for developing a strategy that allows for higher profits, but they've gone about it the wrong manner. There is a better solution, which I will outline below, to both increase company profits AND provide value and honest service to consumers. Now Network Solutions and others will likely deflate their profits in a vigorous class action law suit that in my opinion could have easily been avoided.

My Solution:

Surely it would be nice to have some more insurance that my domains would be available upon my return to purchase, but as the buyer I should have the option to obtain that insurance. What Network Solutions and other companies should do is develop an option to purchase domain insurance for a nominal fee that reserves the domain for a period of time. This both opens a new stream of revenue for Network Solutions and the like while also preserving the rights of the consumers.

As the competition for domains increases and more and more businesses establish themselves online it will be more and more important to have ethical standard for businesses and consumers to follow and understand. Especially when it comes to private data.

Tips for buying domains:

Use a reputable site - I use GoDaddy (godaddy.com) because they not only have a great reputation, but also offer a full suite of domain and hosting services.
Be alert of suspicious behavior - If you're domains keep disappearing before you can purchase them, consider investigation the company you're working with.
Report suspicious behavior - Visit RNS Domain Fraud and know how to handle potential misuse.

Chinese Inflation Affects You

2008-02-21T15:18:00.000-08:00

Sources: http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/02/19/china-inflation-food-markets-econ-cx_vk_0219markets04.html
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/default.htm

Have all good things come to an end with China? Highly doubtful, but Chinese officials reported Tuesday of record high inflation rates. Their Consumer Price Index (CPI) was up 7.1% for January, making rates higher than they have been since 1997. The problem stems from the detrimental winter snowstorms which devastated crops and cattle. This, according to both Forbes and BBC News, was the main force behind rising inflation rates.

Unfortunately things are only expected to get worse. Goldman Sachs expects inflation to worsen in February as the severe winter storms took place only after January 21^st. “In our view, the inflation impact from the snow storm may have not been fully reflected in the January inflation data,” they said. They also made note that the suggested 7% CPI reading for February is likely to be closer to double-digits.

As a result of the inflation levels China’s central bank is expected to increase interest rates at least four times this year. Monetary policy is expected to continue to be very tight with higher reserve requirements, accelerated currency appreciation (yuan), and more “heavy-handed controls on bank lending.” Speculators note that China continues to constrain monetary policy despite the United States’ economic slowdown. The extremely fast growing money supply of China is another potential threat that could play a role in keeping rates higher. To be blunt, China needs to slow down, and they know it.

As China tightens policy we can expect the economy to slow down as it tries to stabilize itself. Record high Chinese interest rates will cause Foreign Direct Invest (FDI) to increase. With the United States at such low interest rates, a spike in investment from China could be just the thing we need to catalyze us back into motion.

On the opposite side, FDI to china should decrease, which could mean higher prices for durable goods. This would in turn decrease consumption for Americans and other countries who buy Chinese produced goods. Because of globalization, the interconnection between countries not only affects the stock markets, it also affects how monetary policy in one country could potentially effect consumption, prices, and growth in another. That’s globalization.

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How Collaboration Can Enhance R&D

2008-02-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

Source: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5750.html

Alan MacCormarck, a professor in the Harvard School of Business, conducted research with a team on how collaboration is changing the way Research and Development takes place in today’s businesses. He explains to readers that while traditionally companies gained competitive advantages through internal research and patented intellectual property, global collaboration and partnered development is becoming a more effective means of gaining those oh-so desired competitive advantages.

MacCormack points out that one reason for collaboration is product complexity. Cars now send maintenance data to dealerships and sneakers have microchips in them. His point being that it’s just too hard for one firm to master all these technologies under one roof. From an economic perspective one can easily see that what’s going on here is specialization. Rather than trying to do everything, firms are now partnering and each focuses on what it does best. Brilliant!

While this seems like such a logical way to operate in a flattened world, businesses struggle to collaborate effectively. This stems primarily from an ideology that innovation collaboration is about lowering costs. MacCormack explains that many firms adopt what is called a “production outsourcing” mindset to collaboration. In other words, firms choose to focus on lowering costs and forgo other potential opportunities. “Production and innovation are different activities. While the former seeks to replicate an existing product at lower costs, the latter seeks to discover something entirely new and valuable.” However, if done properly, the cost benefits to innovation collaboration can be huge. Researchers were quick to note it is one of the main benefits.

There are other benefits that go beyond cost reduction. “Collaboration can help to shorten development lead times and increase capacity; it can facilitate access to skills, capabilities, and intellectual property that a firm does not possess internally; and it can allow a firm to acquire relationships and knowledge in a part of the world where it has no experience,” MacCormack says.

Innovation collaboration is a big transition for most businesses, but companies like Boeing and Microsoft are having great success at it. What you get out of innovation collaboration is efficiency and savings, but it’s important to note the irony that those most concerned with saving money often have a hard time actually doing it. Letting the cost savings come as an added benefit is the key to success at this method. It's interesting because we can see how the variables in the globalization equation are interacting. With the vast amounts of technology available, along with increasingly complicated business models and legal systems, it’s insanely difficult for a firm to develop every facet of a complex product and the world is adjusting to that by understanding we have to work together to continue to be successful.

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Globalization does my work for me!

2008-02-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

What if I could click a button and have someone else write this post for me? Believe it or not, some people are now given this luxury in the workplace. “OOF,” which stands for Office of the Future, is the result of years of flattening and globalization and companies like Pfizer and other major corporations are taking advantage of it. many other people are focusing on globalization and their wheels are turning too.

As the result of a major financial crisis in 2005, Pfizer had to create ways to work more effectively while also reducing costs. Senior director of Organizational Effectiveness Jordan Cohen, who at the time was reading Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” decided to take advantage of globalization and convergence. After some research he found that employees were spending 20% to 40% of their time on tasks that could be done by someone else. Who did he call? The companies Friedman mentions in Chapter two of his book (The World is Flat, 2005)!

This scenario is as real as it gets when we’re talking about outsourcing and globalization. What’s more fascinating are the initial results and the struggles that occurred. At first things went poorly. Assignments were often flawed with typos or incorrectly analyzed data. The problem stemmed from both sides of the world. Pfizer employees were communicating ineffectively and Indian firms found it difficult to tackle the multi-step projects and were unorganized. As a result the process had to be reorganized and tweaked to work effectively. Office Tiger, the Indian firm working with Pfizer, decided it would create teams that would tackle certain assignments, and the work would be passed around. Speculation by Cohen and others circled management meetings as people discussed the high number of “handoffs” for outsourced projects.

Fortunately after minor adjustments the pilot took off and the program grew to two-hundred Pfizer employees. The benefits for Pfizer are huge. The amount of time to complete projects is cut close to half, while savings are huge. “Pfizer pays $15 to $35 per worker hour, far less than they would pay the McKinseys of the world, whose rates typically start at $215 per hour.”

Globalization is an unbelievably significant opportunity for businesses. This article is significant in showing how globalization can be helpful to your operations and employee effectiveness. But information outsourcing isn’t without its own flaws. The convergence of technology and collaboration has been available for years, but even in 2008 it can still be a struggle to effectively integrate these tools and processes into your business. This was clearly seen as Pfizer struggled to identify an effective process for outsourcing menial tasks. However Cohen notes that after the kinks had been worked out things we’re significantly more efficient. “It’s kind of amazing,” he said. “I wonder what [our employees] used to do.”

Source from Fast Company February 2008 Issue.

Track Back: http://grantdeken.blogspot.com/2008/02/123do-my-work.html

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