Some Emotions Just Can't Be Transferred to an Ad

I really, really wanted to let this one go but it has seriously been bothering me for more than 2 days now.

I was driving in my car the other day and this ad comes on the radio. I believe it was an ad for action.gc.ca where they had new regulations for credit card fine print and terms and conditions changes.

The radio ad had one man pleading for the credit card holder to give him another chance, much like when a husband is found guilty of something by his wife. Amongst his pleas there were lines such as "I will really change this time, please give me another chance" etc. I wish I had a copy of the ad but this radio ad wanted to leverage off an emotional connection that credit card holders usually DO NOT have for their credit cards.

How can you transfer feelings of a husband/wife relationship to a user/credit card relationship? Plus, there is a negative connotation to the whole ad, since when a husband (I only use husband here because they used a male voice in the ad, it could very well be the wife pleading for forgiveness as well) does something wrong and they say things like this, the person on the receiving end knows that:

1. You say those things because you know that's what we want to hear
2. You promise that you will change but you really aren't sure if you can; again, it's something you know we want to hear
3. We forgive you because we love you, not because you gave us the facts.

The third reason above, is precisely why an ad like this is not going to work; rarely do we experience the same emotions with a credit card. 

Enough of me blasting this ad - I will provide an example of what works well. Have you seen Ally ads on TV? The theme is that fine print in credit cards' terms and conditions are a silly thing to have, and they illustrate it with children wanting to do certain activities and the salesperson saying no, the fine print says you can't. 

Now this is an emotion/feeling we can ALL relate to, because at one point or another, we have all been screwed by credit cards and their fine print. 

What?! I didn't know they changed to charging a 30% annual rate!

What?! I didn't know international usage would cost me 6% of my purchase!

What?! I didn't know that this offer is only valid for new customers that have never had this credit card and live in Shanghai.

You get the idea. We've all been there. Point is, when you are trying to arouse emotions to associate with your brand, make sure that it does transfer, in the right way.

A Customer Service Experience Story

It happened this morning when I woke up.

My Macbook Air had mysteriously put itself to sleep, or rather, turned itself off entirely, refusing to start.

I did not freak out because of a data loss, since everything important had already been backed up, but I needed my computer to work on things, and not being able to work on things when I want to drives me insane. I booked an appointment to bring my laptop in to the Apple store to get it checked out.

I show up on time, and a 'genius' diagnoses my laptop and tells me that the hard drive is fried. I ask whether I could fix it and the genius states that it can be done and it will last me another 2 years (looking back at the conversation now I really, really should have recorded it). Since I trusted the brand, the technical expertise of their geniuses, I agreed to replace my hard drive for two hundred dollars.

I was more than overjoyed when they called me later in the day to tell me that it had already been done - I seriously thought this was impressive, considering how all other electronics dealers would take days to fix something. I happily paid for and retrieved my laptop, carrying it back home and tried it out. I left my computer on and idle for half an hour while I had something to eat.

Seating myself back at my work desk after dinner, I fiddled with the keyboard and found that my computer had fallen asleep again. I shut it down and tried to restart it but to my horror, it failed to boot again.

This meant that the 'genius' had made a recommendation, made me spend two hundred dollars, gave me false hope that my computer is going to last me another two years, and very frustrated that I am still dealing with a problem that should have been resolved.

Despite having a great brand, strong customer following and supposedly a technical team that is extremely qualified to handle issues like mine, I am disappointed this time. I hope Apple will show me tomorrow, when I bring my computer back in, that they can treat me right as a customer, because this really hurt the trust I had in their brand. It really did.

Winners Don't Quit (Part 2)

Since my post on Winners Don't Quit a couple days ago I've gotten quite a few emails asking whether I'm OK and what's going on. 

My only response at this time is that I"m handling the change in the business quite well and actually love the fact that we'll be able to reconnect with our roots and original goals of Changing Exchanging for the better.  I'm really living the entrepreneurial life, with things changing constantly.  After a few years doing this you no longer worry too much about tomorrow, because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow!  It's great to have an idea of what you would LIKE to see, but 100% of the time it turns out to be not what you expected...which is PERFECT because it means every day you're creating something on the fly.

That being said - we're in the midst of switching gears...so stay tuned.

So I say...bring it on industry!

We're not about to be stopped yet...not. just. yet.

PS.  For those of you that cared enough to send me an email, phone call of encouragement - this is another reason why I continue to fight to make things happen - because of my great support network!

Winners Never Quit

I've hit so many roadblocks since day 1 in this business that it doesn't come as a surprise to me anymore when I hear this line: "We can't work with you because you are in the financial industry and are a Money Service Business." 

I can't help but think that the big boys are influencing the regulations so that the growing businesses like PeerFX, that actually want to do something for the everyday consumer instead of ripping them off, cease to be on the playing field. 

Of course, I still think rules were made to be broken :)

I've spent most of my morning trying to get on board with some potential new partners with no luck.  I keep hearing that damned line - "We can't work with you because you are a Money Service Business". 
After being in the industry for 2 years now it's FRUSTRATING!  Seriously, the rules you put in place lock out everybody EXCEPT the criminals.  Would a real criminal tell you that they are a forex broker or that they are trying to launder money?  I don't think so.

If they do then they should be on the show World's Dumbest Criminals.  Plus, we know that the "successful" criminals cannot be barred out by these regulations anyway, so who are we kidding? 

Hitting 5000 walls has not stopped me from building this business and though this wall seems larger than the ones before, I'm determined to break you down.

How Employers Think

I'm on the verge of spitting blood going through tons of resumes coming in for our PR and Brand Management position.  I think the job description really captures how fun and awesome this position will be, and its a job that I would have jumped at to do some real hands-on marketing if I wasn't already doing my job as President with PeerFX :)

Here are a couple things I noticed that grinds my gears:

1. If you can't write a good cover letter that tells me why you will do an awesome job at THIS particular job - don't apply.
2. If your skills aren't relevant to what's required in the job description - don't apply.
3. If you have grammar mistakes in your cover letter - don't apply.
4. I gave each resume a 30 second scan - because the candidate has to contribute to blogs and gain PR online...my focus was on the cover letter.  Are you engaging to read about?  Can you communicate to me why you should be part of the PeerFX team and not just part of any team because you are a "driven, self-motivated, results-oriented" individual?  
5. You have a hotmail account as your contact email - I would not want the media contacting our PR person at their hotmail address.
6. If you can't recall where you saw PeerFX before, don't make something up - I do most of the PR so I would know if you actually saw us.
7. Certifications and other abbreviations behind your name on your business card does not impress employers - we think it comes standard.  Now if you tell us you went on a trip around the world, or built a school in a third world country...let's talk.  Don't email me now trying to convince me that you did those things...what I actually mean is - what makes YOU special?  

That's it for now - I have to go back to shortlisting...I hope the above helps those of you that are looking for jobs right now :)

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Dear Employer, I am a fantastic candidate for this job...

How?

1) ...you are sending in generic cover letters?

Blows me away how most if not all of the applicants to our PR and Brand Management position send in cover letters that sound like they just changed the name of the company. 

I tuned out immediately after I read the first line.  "Dear Employer/who it may concern/hiring manager, I am a fantastic candidate for this job (because I have this degree). 

Guess what?  Another 10,000 people have this degree as well!  What have YOU done that makes YOU stand out as an individual?  Did you exceed sales quotas by 100%?  200%?  Did you drive tons of additional traffic to your company's website?  Did you get your company President on the cover of prominent business magazines? 

Be specific.  Identify yourself. 

OR....are you a fantastic candidate because...

2) ..you are not researching the company or reading the job description?

You know...we include certain tasks and responsibilities in the job description because its part of the job.  It doesn't say: "well, it would be great if you could do this, but it's ok if you don't."

So if you don't have all that we're looking for in that job, your time is better spent applying for jobs that actually fit your skill set.  That's where you can make a positive impact with your skills; not in a job where you can't shoulder the responsibilities required.   

Some people do manage to get past the first screening and we give them a call.  We usually ask them so...why PeerFX?  Amazingly we get awkward silence on the other side of the line or the attempt to make it sound like they went to the website.

"Umm...I went to your website, you guys do currency exchange right?"

YOU SERIOUS?!

Please. Please. PUH-lease.  My mom has always told me that opportunities come to those who are prepared to capture them; how are you going to capture any opportunities if you don't put any effort in up front?

Think about it.  Come more prepared and then you can stop wondering why you are unemployed.  

No Other Business Does What I Do - BS!

Complete BS.

If you seriously think whatever you're doing has not been done or is not being done by someone else right now - let me tell you, it WILL be done by someone else SOON, really soon.

Or for those that say other businesses can't do what they do - again - BS.
Have you thought about the number of substitutes out there that do exactly what you do?

Example:  Need: Quench Thirst

Substitutes: Coke, Water, Tea, Icetea, Nestea, Sprite, 7-UP, Beer(sssssssssss), Lemonade, the list goes on for about 5 million other choices

Coke Bombs

Example 2: Need: Foreign Exchange

Substitutes for PFX: Banks, Foreign exchange houses, online brokerages, online banking platforms, foreign exchange booths at airports, MoneyMart, Western Union, etc. the list goes on for another 5 million other choices.

Example 3: Want/need: Staying connected with friends

Facebook Logo

Substitutes: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Blackberry Messenger, Whatsapp, MSN Messenger, Skype, etc.  This list also goes on for another 5 million choices.

SO....if you still think you are the ONLY ONE satisfying a consumer need/want, then you seriously must be from another planet.  Unless you've discovered a new need/want that we don't know about yet - which I must ask that you kindly share with us what it is and why it's so "new".

DELETE THE WORD SHOULD

...because it limits your creativity for what you can do with your business.

IMO, and this is similar to one of those theories that Dilbert makes up, the word should was not in our dictionary when we came into this world (yeah yeah, neither were the other 10 billion words we would soon learn). 

As soon as we learned the word should, here's what happened.

...you should eat your vegetables.
...you should not try to fly - somebody gonna hurt real bad.
...you should not stay up late.
...you should word hard at your academics.
...you should this, that, you get the idea.

Same goes for business.

...you should build your business this way because it's been proven.
...you should cater to this group of customers because according to research this group has the most money.
...you should hire so and so.
...you should fire so and so.
...you should get senior people on the team.
...you should not badmouth the banks.
...you should not take a stand early in your business to be "under the radar".

I think I've hit a spot where I am seriously sick and tired of the word should and how I have been running my business by it.  SO. Everything needs to get put back in its place. 

Who cares if that customer group has the most money?!  If they don't love what we have to offer, then they're not going to pay us!

Who cares if so and so is a superstar in the industry?!  If they don't love selling what we have to offer, they're not going to generate results!

Who cares if we upset some people out there by positioning ourselves as an anti-something?!  If we don't upset some people then we're neutral to everybody and the business might as well be dead.  I take a stand for what I believe in. It's time I let my business do that too.

So how is the word should screwing over your business or even your life?  Delete it from your vocabulary.  One book I recently read suggests replacing it with the word want.  Works if it's something that you need to get done.

For example:

I want to hire so and so.
I want to spend on marketing.
I want the company to be positioned like this. 

YOU. YOU. YOU.  You own and run the business.  Once you start using the word 'should' you are letting other things that exist determine what you should do.  That ties your hands, and feet, from doing and creating whatever awesomeness will come out of your business. 

Planning Extremes - ZERO or 5 years out?

Image by adria.richards via Flickr

I started reading "Rework" by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.  I picked it up because on its front cover it said "Ignore this book at your own peril." - Seth Godin.

Just kidding.  I flipped through and it did appear to be written by founders of businesses and not some businessperson who has never built a business before themselves lecturing us on theories and what not.  Looked like it was in plain English :)

I started it yesterday and noticed that they basically said "Screw Planning Anything!" (at least that was the feeling I got) and I think to myself, well, I agree that for a start up you do have to do things differently as you go...I think we can all agree that the so-called business plan in the initial phases is like what the authors call business "guesses".  Sure. Since we all know that it definitely never goes according to plan with these things.  I also agree that it's silly to plan ahead for 5 years because you can't account for all the extraneous factors that will effect your business outcomes.

Here's the other side of the coin.

The business plan should be considered as business thoughts.  I use it as a place where I put down my thoughts on the who, what, when, where, how given the current situation.  It also makes you think about what you would do if sh*t hit the fan.  That's the key word - THINK.  If you stick to going through your day-to-day operations without ever THINKING about this how do you figure out your end game and how to get there?

Planning is almost a dirty word for entrepreneurs/starters/doers whatever you want to call start up business founders.  Why?  We want to be creative, innovative, whatever, that planning gives us the perception it inhibits our creativity.  This is why business plans are a pain - because of how we think of planning.

What if I told you that business planning as just taking a piece of paper out and jotting your thoughts down on how to get things done towards a specific goal?  Not so hard now is it?

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The G20 - Ground Level Woes?

Image by roch lasalle (farinn veiða) via Flickr

I've just returned from Toronto and luckily avoided the G20 that's happening starting this weekend. 
There hasn't been a lot of positive press for the G20 happening in Toronto, especially on the point where many are criticizing us for the large sums we've spent on the event to date.  Here's what The Economist had to say about it in their online feed:

LEADERS of the G8 group of rich countries gather in Muskoka, a Canadian holiday resort, for a two-day summit starting on Friday June 25th. The meeting overlaps with the two-day G20 summit that begins the next day in Toronto. Both get-togethers will give the opportunity to world leaders to discuss global financial regulation, reforming international financial institutions and responses to the crisis in the euro zone. The Canadian hosts have been criticised at home for the vast cost of the summit, in particular on the creation of a huge artificial lake for the media centre in a country with more real lakes than anywhere else in the world.

 What about the people that are actually in the middle of all this?   Residents of Toronto downtown that are discovering that the G20, which is supposed to boost the economy and bring in additional revenues, is transforming the downtown core into a tourist town, but ironically with no restaurants or services open?  Here are a couple things I heard at the ground level speaking to people around town.

• Waiter was saying if he knew that his restaurant would be closing during the G20 period, he would have taken more shifts outside of the downtown core.
• Person working at CIBC said that her company is transferring a lot of employees to either work from home or work from Mississauga - definitely increased expenses for the company since they have to pay for transport; also takes a toll on the employees, who now have to wake up extra early to get out of the downtown core
• Restaurants have said that they will be closed for fear that they will incur damages to their property due to expected protests in the downtown area
• Residents down by Queen's Quay, which is pretty much center of the G20 action (and road closures) are renting out their apartments for $1500 a day 

So what we have are companies that are cutting back/relocating their services and an influx of tourists that would need services.  Great.  Would like to see how it plays out in over the next couple weeks for those living in Toronto.

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Just Do It

Every moment spent whining, worrying, talking about a problem is one extra moment that you are NOT DOING ANYTHING. So just get off your behind and make things happen!

Rant of the day.

Are You Guilty?

Judge Says I'm GuiltyImage via Wikipedia

For not doing things you said you would for your business?  For not being your best self everyday?

Here are some key points that would tell you if you are guilty:

1. You list out your agenda items for the day, don't end up completing them and push some items to next day (huge backlog)
2. You are busy putting out fires and make up some excuse for not calling a customer/sales lead/advisor/investor/your mom back.  Guess what?  You're not too busy to take a few moments to read this now right?  So you have a few moments to call them back.
3. You identify the problem and think GREAT! We're halfway there already.  Well, GREAT, you're ONLY halfway there, so get on it!
4. You offload all the tasks that you don't want to do to your employees.  Hey, I'm not saying that's wrong, because if you're not good at something, I don't want you working in that job either.  Try setting an example though, and try the task yourself - this small thing you do will win the respect of your employees.
5. You don't put your foot down when you say you would.  You have mistaken the part of being "nice" with your contractors and employees and are now getting pushed around by them. I have to admit it's an art to being firm with and respected by your employees and people you work with.  Or you might be on the other end of the spectrum where people call you nasty names for being bonehead aggressive.

I'm sure that there are many other items that you would come up with upon reflection - now write those down and tell yourself you'll NEVER do that again or else...make sure there's a consequence too or else without a downside you likely won't enforce this on yourself.


Here's my kick in the derriere for myself - I am too involved in the day-to-day of the business and not prioritizing correctly.  Ever had that feeling that you worked 100% but only accomplished 50% of what you intended?  Yup - that's what I feel right now.

I think there could be more structure to my day - it's great that everyday I'm challenged with a new problem and meeting new people, so what I mean is structuring my day so that there are specific time slots for each of these activities.  It seriously does enhance productivity.

I'm starting to understand why people need gatekeepers.  I run a small business and get tons of calls not only from customers, people seeking advice, people wanting to sell me stuff, that it's hard to take all of these calls personally.  Apologies but this is the truth - I still give out my direct contact but chances of me picking up on the first try is slim because I'm either in a meeting, on another call or concentrating on doing what I should be doing - running the business.

Let's face it, there are things I love doing and things I hate doing (I am quite extreme like that).  I tend to push things I hate doing, like endless hours of market research and reviewing 500 pages of our patent to the end of my day, and sometimes I push it to next day - GUILTY.  I'm going to stop doing that.  I'm going to stick to the schedule down to the minute and make sure I leave some time at the end of my day to put out fires - deal?  Yes, deal.

This is my shortlist of things I do that is hindering my productivity right now and that I am promising myself to change.  What are yours?

What People THINK They Want

I find it funny - that most people perceive an office with tons of people bustling around to be a sign of stability, efficiency and hard work. 

Contrary to this belief, most of the time these offices are overstaffed, people are looking busy on Facebook and expensing their friend's dinner gathering on the company's tab :)

What's the problem with having a small staff base if things are functioning fine?  Do I really need a CTO, CFO, CMO, CXO, etc. to make it look like we are a credible company?  Sure, I can add an admin person and more salespeople to generate more sales...but then you want me to maintain a store front and incur additional fixed expenses when that isn't your real objection to not signing up - you actually want better prices, faster turnarounds, freebies, insurance, blah blah blah.  Yes. What you are telling us with words really don't match your actions.  If I gave you what you really wanted (if you were kind enough to let us know) then you would buy the service/product; but why throw false objections our way when it doesn't solve the problem? 

Which brings us to how good is traditional market research?  Where we ask people what they want?  Are they really telling us the truth or telling us some BS reason that they know isn't the real reason why they're not putting money where their mouth is. 

I did some work in traditional market research before and now after having run my own business for a 2 years I think these methods need to be modified to reveal the real truth.  Just take for example when we did our initial primary survey, all these students and travelers told us they would buy the service; when we launched we got small businesses and self employed individuals swarming us.  I would say almost zero correlation between the results we got through primary research and actual purchase behavior.

Frustrating. 

Are you an Expense or an Income Stream?

When a business is in its early stages of growth, I say that we should spend our resources focusing on generating MORE money inflow for the business. 

What this means is we shouldn't be spending money on things that are an expense not directly related to generating more sales. Expenses related to generating more sales are salespeople, client lists, marketing efforts, etc.

Expenses that add no value right now include: redesigning your business cards just because, adding/fixing minor details on your system/software that you can do without and are nice to haves, hiring on more developers than you need, hiring more of anything that you don't need...the list goes on.

So when we have consultants or other service providers approaching us to sell us stuff, the first thing I ask is whether they are an expense or an income stream for my business.  Usually its the former, and I send them on their way. 

I'm also constantly surprised by the quality of work provided by tech developers and designers.  I say I'm surprised because sometimes a really good one goes for cheap (ie.$40 or $50 an hour) and then you find one that really sucks and they are charging $80 an hour.  Yet there's still a market for them.  Totally got sidetracked there.

Point is, in an early growth phase I am only interested in growing sales.  What things do you worry about as a start up owner?

"I Want to Pick Your Brain..."

I want to pick your brain, Pinky and the Brain.Image by drumecho via Flickr

and do what?  I'm sure other entrepreneurs who have been building their businesses for a while now and those who are already successful have been approached by an email that involves the words "I want to pick your brain..."

Most of the time I'm left wondering...where does this person think I can help him?  Usually these emails do not clarify what it is that the person is actually looking for.  A complete request would be: "I want to pick your brain because I am trying to build my own retail business." or something like that.  In this case, I would be able to say that "My apologies Sarah/Jack/Jim/Ben (whatever their name is), my background isn't in that area and I wouldn't be providing enough value add if we were to meet."

So, help us out by clearly stating what it is that you want, because maybe we can point you in the right direction even though we can't help you ourselves.  Saying "I just want to pick your brain." isn't even a complete sentence unless you tell me what it is you want to pick my brain about. 

That's my weekend rant :)

Accounting - 2nd time's a charm?

Image by sylvdoanx via Flickr

I can't count the number of times I've made fun of accountants (Yes - I'm sorry but I do come from a Marketing and Finance background and you guys get a couple of shots in on us too :) It's all in good fun)

The point is, lately I've actually revisited accounting and some of those liquidity, profitability, solvency ratios and analysis of financial statements.  Honestly, this time around I find it so much easier to understand and it's a lot more applicable to my business situation.  When I analyze my own financial statements what would I say about my company?  Is it doing well?  Would/should an investor put money into it based on the analysis?  I'm sure investors go beyond just looking at the financial statements to decide whether to invest, but it is still one of the criteria that they look at.

For all you business/commerce kids.  Remember how financial statements seemed like endless memorization of ratios and elements of the financial statements?  If you spend some time running your own business big or small, you'll quickly find that it's quite easy to understand when applied to the real world. 

Profit/Loss (statement of earnings) = Revenues - Expenses.

Statement of Retained Earnings: What you have right now in RE + the Net Earnings - Dividends you paid out = Your new balance (it's just like a bank statement!)

Balance Sheet:  Really?  Just make it balance.  Expenses aren't in here.  Just stuff that you own, owe, confirmed that you will receive, and confirmed that you will pay.

Cashflow Statement:  Three ways to use/get money in a business - operating activities, investing activities, and financing activities.  All things having to do with getting money into your business is under financing; all things having to do with your company buying/investing in hard assets is under investing activities, everything else - operating. 

Alright accountants, don't give me hell just yet, these are just some easy guidelines I'm providing, I'm sure you guys will say there's a deeper science to this.  This summary is for all of us who aren't accountants.

So there you have it.  Financial statements summarized in a blog post :)

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EQ does not come with age

I've been pretty under the weather the past couple days (down with the flu), and having to deal with people that are supposed to be older, wiser, more experienced than me but with a low EQ is driving me insane.

It's OK to vent, if it's to the right party, if you know you have pull with the other party, and you won't appear insane to the other party. Those are just the basics. It boils down to interpersonal skills, which is absolutely the most important thing in business. Successful people aren't only smart, they know how to use their interpersonal skills/pull/connections to make things happen. Stop wondering why people who don't seem as capable get to the high positions in a company, because they had the other side of the equation: people smarts.

I've always approaches situations like this analyzing each parties interests; make sure everyone's interests are laid out on the table and don't play telephone - ie. don't call me, tell me one thing, and then call the other party telling them another - if you end up doing this you are just making it tough for yourself.

Just let me know what you want; surprisingly most of the time people just like to whine and complain but are not sure of what they want as a result. So why are you complaining?! Is the result that you propose the best for the company or the best for yourself? Are you trying to convince your boss to side with you? if that's the case then you better not propose the case where it's best for you, because your boss would see right through that and end up re-evaluating your EQ - which is exactly what I've done. Ta-da.

Hated Business Term: Reasonable Progress

Image via Wikipedia

I know. The word hate commands a strong emotional response and we tend to navigate away from that in business. Still, there are many "hated" business terms, just go around your office asking for a couple of them from your employees...you may get terms like "touch base, high-level, shelving the idea for now..." what you would probably read in Dilbert comic.

So here's why "reasonable progress" is such an annoying term. How do you define reasonable progress? To an employer or someone on the management end of things, it translates into: "I'll make sure things are happening, but nothing is actually getting DONE."

You see why it's tough for us to negotiate anything based on reasonable progress? I think over the past 2 weeks this term has come up more than 10 times with 10 different individuals which is why I've snapped and had to write about it. I think the term really means nothing because it's so vague. In order for parties to agree to something you need to have it defined. Take for example, if we want to sign up a new partner association, what is defined as reasonable progress?

1) I sent the association an email to their general inbox and I'm crossing my fingers that someone would get back to me.
2) I spoke to the membership manager who said they will connect me to the partnership coordinator who will then connect me to the partnership manager.
3) I waited outside their office and caught the partnership manager and did a 5-minute pitch of our idea.
4) I did the 5-minute pitch and secured a 20 minute meeting with the decision makers Monday of next week with the partnership agreement drafted and ready to be signed.
5) I signed the partnership agreement and have the implementation plan ready to go.

ALL OF THE ABOVE can be made to sound like reasonable progress. The boss always has the end goal in mind, that's what we want to see - the signed partnership agreement. We like seeing progress but at the end of the day if that new account/partner/client isn't signed on and doing business with us, we've only made "reasonable progress", we have not hit our goal. I guess accountability is high on the charts with a tightly-knit business such as PeerFX, where there are few employees, and its transparent who is responsible for what; to throw around the term reasonable progress makes it look like the person is setting themselves up to avoid accountability and to cover their rears.

I'm sure there's another side to this if you're in the employee's seat and see the employee's perspective on this. If that is you, I'd like to hear your comments.

Google Buzz and the New Facebook Layout

You know, I like how companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter continuously try to find more efficient ways for me to stay connected with my friends.  Google updated my Gmail today with the new Google Buzz and last night Facebook surprised me by changing its layout as well. 

First of all, it's too much.

Facebook: have tons of people been complaining about how the old layout really sucked?  If they didn't...then why are you just rearranging things on the same page every so often?  Why don't you just build the entire page widget-based so that we build our own page layouts?  Thank you very much.

Google Buzz: You know, I had to add my friends to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc....all these other social platforms that want to jump on the social network bandwagon.  Thanks Google for getting on board - now I need to do that all over again; plus, I have enough emails to read during the day and enough news feeds on my Google Reader that I'm already going insane trying to keep up with all these things. 

One day, these companies are going to go through some awesome merger so that everything can be consolidated in one place :) If only someone had billions of dollars to buy all these companies.

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Why Google may not be Making a HUGE Mistake Leaving China

Image via Wikipedia

Over the past week there have been many articles popping up on forbes.com rss feeds and other blogs that I follow that say it's a HUGE mistake for Google to leave China.

The main focus seem to revolve around the 1.3 billion people that are in China making up the potential userbase for Google. The articles also reference the large amount of growth in internet usage in China and that it's projected to keep increasing.

My thoughts.  SO WHAT?  Google management may be thinking that it's not the right timing for them to continue expanding in the China market right now, with the government regulations and hackers amongst other issues that they have run into in this market.  Why are the writers making it sound like they are leaving China forever?  They almost sound like they have read and know of Google's management direction. 

Plus, focusing on the huge population in China as the main reason why Google shoudn't leave the market is silly.  That's pretty much the same as entrepreneurs that pitch: "if we only got 1% of this market, then we'll be rich."

If Google does end up leaving the China market temporarily, I think they are taking the time to regroup their market re-entrance strategy and will come back stronger than before.

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