How I Roll

I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about business. I have started businesses in the past. I have closed businesses in the past. I know how to do those two things. But I also know that interrupting your viewers before they even have a chance to see your business is really, really bad business. I know this because this is exactly what Fast Company's web site does.

Interruption marketing is nothing new on the web. If you go to CNet's websites like GameSpot, are not logged in, and try to click on content, there is a chance that you will see an ad on the way to the content you really want to see. I do not have a really big problem with this, even though it interrupts the usability of their site. I know that they need the revenue from the ads and interruption marketing is well-entrenched.

Fast Company, on the other hand, interrupted me before their main page...and the ad did not load correctly. It was akin to walking up to a shop that looked somewhat interesting and being told by the doorman that there was a really cool thing to see down the block. He was not exactly sure what it was, but that it was better than what I had been looking for at the shop. Undeterred by the doorman, I entered the shop and found he was right.

The site definitely has some interesting articles, but most of them are somewhat underwhelming to be gracious. I should have taken the doorman's advice and gone somewhere else. However, just like I did not click the ad that refused to load, I would not tip the doorman in this case; providing no click-through revenue for Fast Company or whatever company's ad had failed.

Now, I don't like people stopping me on the street to sell me encyclopedias and I don't like sites interrupting me when I'm trying to find something relevant to my interests. But I'm willing to say no to the pushy encyclopedia salesman and I'm willing to click the "skip this add" link if I have to. I'm trained to jump through bad marketing hoops, and I'm good at saying no and forgetting whatever was pushed at me--the likelyhood of me actually being interested in your interruption is low and my irritation rate is high at having to be interrupted.

However, I do often click ads and such that I find interesting on social media sites like Facebook (which often have a voting mechanism to let the marketing group know if their ad was effective or not). But I have to find it interesting and find it on my own. If I'm in the middle of something, I'll bear with your ad and clicking to ignore it. But if I see an ad before I even see your front page and who you are and what you do...there's a problem with the way you do business.

If I can't connect with what you do, why would I want to go to your site at all? Maybe, if interruption advertising on this front were effective, I would never go to your site at all because I would keep clicking on your partner's. Sadly for those partners, I think that in my many, many years of being online and dealing with online marketing, I have never clicked on an ad presented in this fashion.

It just tells me that you do not care about your customers or your own brand (or else you would show your frontpage before anyone else could stop someone from getting there). Or else that your only focus is on advertising; any conent that you have that might draw customers to the site is secondary (if not further down the list).

If I'm going to your site; if I might be interested in spending money there (if you have such services) then let me get there. If one of your premium services is that I do not see ads (as many sites are wont to provide to paying customers)...how will I even know that the service exists if I'm blocked from actually going to the frontpage of your site?

Just some thoughts.

None from me. I'm not the best giver-of-advice, but I do like to read the advice given by others. Here's some great advice from some people that I quite enjoy reading:

Joss Whedon's 10 Tips for Writers

The biggest one, in my opinion, is the first one: finish it. This is an area where most people I know who write have an issue. Finishing is hard, and often times nigh impossible because we try to incorporate all of our revisioning into the first draft. And yes, I know that I need to follow this as well. Manifest Destiny is actually coming along nicely for dreaming about it two nights ago and writing it the next night while getting snockered on Jameson.

Lefsetz Letter on FedEx

Love him or hate him, Bob Lefsetz has a lot to say about the music industry, and I think that we should listen to him. He's been throwing punches around the music industry for a long time. Unlike many people who comment about the industry without being an insider, Lefsetz is an insider who does not pull punches and isn't afraid to go for the throat. His advice in this piece, while a bit rambly in comparison to his other pieces, is on good word of mouth. People who have their own businesses, who work support for other businesses, who deal with customers, who are members of non-profits, or who are interested in sharing the things they like should take notice.

You're Boring by Seth Godin

Seth's one of those great marketing minds who fits into two very distinct categories: 1) he is successful enough at what he does that people listen to him and really want to listen to what he says even if they can't quite fathom it in their practices or organization, and 2) he makes a lot of marketing people or people embedded within the status quo quite nervous, often because he makes up analogies that they just do not understand (the Big Moo, the Purple Cow, etc). He is also worth listening to since he has a great perspective on how to stand out. I've been a fan for years; now if only I would take some of his advice.

Unhappy Thespians - A Manifesto on Training

I love Jill Dolan. She's an extremely gifted mind in theatre and has one hell of a head for theory. Her Utopia in Performance, while lighter on the theory than say Geographies of Learning, is a testament to the utopian power of theatre to transform the indivuals involved in it and the spectators engaged with it. In this essay, presented at the ATHE 2008 conference "elephant in the room" session, Dolan asks fundamental questions about why departments break down the spirited enthusiasm of their students during the course of training.

Original Manifesto

Response by Fran Dorn

Rebuttal by Jill Dolan

(as a side-note, Dr. Sandra G Shannon's "American Theatre History: A Segregated and Untruthful Affair" is also an interesting read)

From Jeff Tunnell's blog at MakeItBigInGames.

"If you want bling-bling. If you want to buy the jets. You want to do shit? Work. That's how you get it."

Marni and I have done a lot of work on our house. There are some things, like putting on doorknobs, that I can do. For example, last night we re-arranged the computer/scrapbook room to better accomodate the flow of how Marni works on bills (on the computer) and scrapbooking. It is not the ideal arrangement of the room, but it is the best we could do without buying new furniture. This is stuff that we can do.

There is a ton of work that Brin has done that we do not know how to do. I took out two walls that had been built only a couple of years before. Neither were weight-bearing walls. In fact, they were extremely shoddily assembled. So it was something that I could do. Get hammer, break drywall, tear out 2x4's, release manly cry.

Brin took out a weight-bearing wall and added a support beam to distribute the weight. He rebuilt a wall where I had previously torn one down and added in our 6' French doors. He has put up our beautiful railing around what was once a hole in the floor and stairs to the basement. He put on our baseboards and crown molding.

Now, could I have done the crown myself? Maybe. Cutting it is messy and not a lot of fun; and I would have to learn to do it. That would mean ruining several pieces of crown molding, which I was not about to do. However, Brin already knew how to do it. He had redone his father's house from top-to-bottom and has had a huge amount of set construction experience; of which crown and baseboards are often wonderful touches to make a space feel real and lived in.

But one thing that I have learned in my time on this earth is that there are some things that I am definitely not good at; and some that I am particularly not good at. Anything which requires coordination or precision with my hands is definitely out. I learned this when I discovered that I could not paint detail work well on plaster ornaments or Dungeons and Dragons figurines. I am better at large sweeping strokes, though not much better.

Brin could teach me to cut the angles and alignment needed to make crown look wonderful. Of that, I have no doubt. But my ability to do it, make it look right, and not ruin a lot of crown in the process...that I have less faith in. Brin is very good at what he does, both as a handyman between contracts, and designing lighting and sets for the stage. He has a very strong skillset that I do not have, and more importantly, will never have no matter how technically proficient I become at a specific thing.

There are a lot of plumbers in the phone book, and dentists, and doctors, and mechanics. Why do you have the one you have? Most likely it is because of a personal referral. If not, it is most likely out of habit. Or both. Unless we have an absolutely horrendous experience, we often will stay with the same doctor or mechanic or plumber even if it makes sense to change--for example, because of the price we pay for service. But there is often something about them that makes them right for us.

Word of mouth is still the strongest form of advertising no matter what ad execs in highrise boardrooms make believe. We do not recommend people that are merely technically proficient at their craft. "Bobby can rebuild your engine...it might not be tuned correctly...but he can rebuild it." We recommend people who are exceptional at their craft. Sure, we will sometimes recommend family if they are only mediocre, but if it starts to rain negatively on us, we stop recommending them to avoid backlash from people who trust our opinions. But when it comes to things that count, we usually recommend the best.

There may be 50 companies listed under a plumber or a dentist, but we recommend one or two (though usually just one). That one is the exception to the other 50. They are the one that counts. Their industry must be "easy" since there are so many in it...but only one is getting our recommend and our business. That's the one that is doing this "easy" job well. The rest are, in our eyes and at best, merely technically proficient.

Marni and I went and saw Twilight last night, and while I quite enjoyed the books I had a really "meh" feeling about the film. I did a bit of a long write-up on my experience with the film and why it didn't click with me in the same way the novels did.

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I'm an avid WordPress user and fan, but some of the projects that I am thinking about need something much more than a simple blogging system. They need something that traditionally falls into the CMS category. Unfortunately, a lot of the CMS's out there aren't organized the way I would like or are not as intuitive as I would like (or else, I guess I just don't like them or something). So I get to thinking about what I want in a CMS and just how I feel it needs to work for the sites that I'm planning. A big question is whether I develop my own or retrofit an existing one. The problem is time and support and development.

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There's an old idiom: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This traditionally means that the person who complains or comments loudest gets service or at the very least, attendance. This idiom, while interesting, is popular among people who like to note that being loud gets them the service they deserve or justifies their feelings of entitlement. But in many experiences, the act of being a squeaky wheel can also cause you to seriously consider replacing the wheel. After all, if you're spending all your time greasing one squeaky wheel, wouldn't a new, shinier wheel squeak a little less? Maybe it would fit a little better than the current squeaker.

Now, I'm not saying that all squeaky wheels are good to get rid of. The vast majority of squeaks that add up over time are definitely justified and have problems that need to be solved. But there are a very loud minority of wheels that squeak over the competition and require oodles of time. It is these wheels that I'm talking about. Are those wheels causing undue misery for your company or organization not because they are pointing out active and very real problems that should be solved...but because you are not conveniencing them in the manner that they expect or feel they are entitled?

A few squeaky wheels are good. They keep us honest and get things done that need to be done. But wheels that speak due to imagined entitlement that they have neither earned nor deserve...Those wheels should be bound for the junk heap.