Run on the Bank

I love this clip in Its a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart talks to people panicking during a run on the bank. The people did not realize what their money was doing - that it is was invested in other families, other people’s homes and businesses, etc. He was able to calm them down and ends the day with a liquidity of $2.00 which is enough to keep his bank open. From there it grows to small town prosperity.

Our money does a lot more than just comfort us. It is the seed for things around us to grow. Something to think about in these times.

The economy is us

Since this blog is about entrepreneurs, small business and the media - regular people, most of us - I want to write about the economy.  As I write, the debate is going on in the Senate over the $700 billion bailout. Even if it passes there, there is uncertainty that it will pass in the House next time around. Everyone knows that even if it passes, we are in for a long hard slog to re-establish our economy on a real foundation.

People are worried. Why throw money to soak up bad debts banks have, when people are facing potential debt or mortgage payments problems of their own, especially if jobs drop and interest rates rise - as seems sure to happen no matter what congress does.  Even if banks are kept solvent, who is to assure that they will still help out the small businessperson?

I have a little experience and a general philosophy here.  I started my business with family help in 1988, buying a store. The recession of 89-92 hit right after I moved the store to a new shopping center and quadrupled my rent and overhead. It was tough.  But there were good things about it. Businesses had to be smart to survive. You had to take better care of your customers. You had to forge relationships with them. It could not be a semi-anonymous thing just centered around goods and money.  People got a little more serious about life in the hard times. It was not all bad.

Here is a little thinking on banking. My experience in business was with a small business and a locally-owned bank. When I went to get my business loan to buy my business I spoke with the banker for a long time. He explained that his was the last locally-owned bank in Knoxville, Tennessee. He explained the difference between a locally-owned bank and a larger chain bank. Local banks take local money and primarily invest it in the local economy, in giving loans to businesses like mine. There is accountability there. There is a relationship. We are business partners. I would often go over to the bank and just talk, get help, advice and wisdom; not just deal with money. There is a lot more to running a business (and life itself) than just money.

Larger banks tended, he said, to take the local money and invest it in broader, often removed, markets. They would invest Knoxvillians’ money more in the various funds and national or international banking schemes out there. They might make a great profit, but it was not as much by supporting the people where we lived and whom we knew personally and providing them capital to follow their dreams.

I was tremendously struck with the fundamental difference. I had never before realized that every dollar I invested in a bank, even in my own savings or checking account, could either be earmarked to support a vague fund with who-knows-what control over it in who-knows-which place; or it could be put in the hands of my local banker who could be freer to lend it to my neighbor who ran a hair salon in my own shopping center. Or, for that matter, my business.When you boil it down that way, it is very simple.

I became a huge fan of investing locally, and investing in a relationship that provided wisdom, commitment to me and my neighbors as well as liquidity.

Perhaps it it time for the the entire nation - or even the world - to get the grandiose banking schemes out of their heads and return to investing in -and being accountable to - people they can sit down and talk with. Then we can all learn more - about money - and about life.

A new slogan: It’s about the fact that the economy is us - ’stupid

More on Newspapers, The Media and Monopoly

This Google “Monopoly” claim the traditional media is throwing out there simply will not leave me alone.  Here’s a starter:

Newspaper Group Slams Google-Yahoo Ad Deal

Besides the “pot calling the kettle black” aspect of it all, the worst part is that the local newspapers (they are the ones getting hurt the most by Google AdWords) are screaming bloody murder because the Google ads WORK so well for the small businessperson.  There is a lot of jealousy there because the vaunted classified ads from newspapers’ heyday no longer work for the small businessperson as they once did. Not to mention that the local newspaper used to be the monopoly in that area (see my previous post).

Bear this in mind, though newspapers stopped pulling a decade ago as they once had for many businesses and the readership demographic got older and older, the price never stopped going up!

Many - most - small businesses (I was a retailer in those days) simply stopped paying it and left the papers. Why?

It did not work.

Small businesspeople have to eat. They have to pay employees who have to eat. It HAS to work. That is business. That is life.

Now read with me this statement that galled me so much this week from the article above:

The deal could adversely impact the economy and the newspaper business in at least three ways, according to O’Reilly. Less competition in the online advertising space means less revenue, according to WAN. “The proposed deal will fatally weaken Yahoo as a competitor for these deals,” according to a WAN communique on the issue. “Advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google since they will see diminishing price advantages to advertising through Yahoo. Yahoo will then have fewer of its own ads to serve and therefore less ability to offer a better deal than Google.”

This decreased revenue will then lead to increased costs, WAN said. The majority of traffic to news Web sites comes from paid and natural search through search engines….

All this will lead to a greater dependence on Google, WAN said. “By handing Google control of up to 90 percent of paid search and content advertising, Google will exert tremendous power over both newspapers’ ability to reach readers and their ability to generate online advertising revenue,” the group said.

Did I read that right?

The reason that the Google-Yahoo deal is bad is that it will decrease the competition for Google so that Google can then raise advertising prices for advertisers (read-small businesses) - (or raise the paid search costs to the newspapers themselves, which increasingly have to resort to Google paid ads to get people to their own sites ? They don’t even know how to optimize to get the free, organic search traffic when they have thousands of pages of content and should be pulling them in in droves - for free!

- Don’t get me started.

That sounds like a blatant admission by newspapers that they have lost the ability to get an audience by themselves. Add that to the fact that they cannot deliver the proper demographic readership to small business advertisers and they are complaining because Google (and increasingly Google-Yahoo) CAN?

Did you catch that line? “Google will exert tremendous power over both newspapers’ ability to reach readers and their ability to generate online advertising revenue.”

It is called competition. It is not about newspapers’ “revenue.” It is about small businesses living or dying.

Radical concept.

I thought the idea was to invent a better mousetrap? Did I hear it wrong or was the saying that the world would then beat a path to your door?

Sounds like the newspapers are wasting their time trying to barricade the path.

Oh, by the way, neither Google nor Yahoo “set” the prices for paid search. It is an auction. The market bidding sets the price.  And that same market that invented the Googles and the Yahoos, if it gets too expensive or the ads stop working, can invent other solutions! The Internet makes it pretty easy.

That is what hurts the newspapers the most. Everyone has a press now.

Come to think of it that same marketplace also invented newspapers, once upon a time.

I really do love newspapers.    See my other posts.

But it is high time for the marketplace to reinvent them.

Search and Social Networking - more marketplace power for those who understand how to use them.

Search. (Drum roll).

Social Networking. (Louder drum roll)

Everyone knows by now that Search - especially Google AdWords - is taking over billions of advertising dollars and delivering fairly recession-proof results to millions of small businesses.

Steve Rubel on Micropersuasion.com makes the startling point that not only is Search rocketing in dollars spent but Social networking will soon be doing that as well (we have been asking how?).

Here’s how - because Social Networking will soon be combining the power of search with the astounding popularity of connecting with other people on the social networks. Once that happens - once the database of intentions is mixed in the ’search’ activity with the desire of the masses to connect - advertisers will have the scent and can deliver their ads on target!

Look out, traditional media, one more time!

I well remember the days when people were pooh-pooing search engines. “Yea, they do some neat stuff but they will never make any money…” How many times we heard it.

You don’t hear it any more. Instead, what you hear now is “Social networking is popular but it will never make any money…”

Only the critics don’t say it as loudly as they did… maybe they learned something.

Read Steve on this one - worth reading.  How Search Will Revolutionize Social Networking.

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/09/how-search-will.html

Google and Monopoly?

Interesting headlines lately about the words Google and monopoly - from the media - of all people!

I was somewhat associated with the newspaper business for a while and realized from the inside that many of the problems newspapers face come from the fact that they haven’t adjusted well to losing their ‘monopoly’ in the local marketplace.

This is especially true with small business advertising and classified ads.  They had the monopoly because they were the only ones who could deliver consistently in that marketplace for a long time. They had it for decades!

Now it is gone. Local businesses have so many other ways to play in the marketplace - and win!

Suddenly everyone is so concerned that Google is going to get a monopoly like that. Why? because Google can deliver.

For those same small businesses.

But so can many others on the Internet. Everyone owns a press now. As strong a player as Google is, it is still a MUCH more level playing field out there than it was for years - or has ever been.

Read this from the Buzzmachine, a blog by Jeff Jarvis.:

Except the issue isn’t that Google is a monopoly. It’s that Google has become the marketplace. It where we all go for information. It’s where advertisers go for us.

It’s no different from a newspaper. Even when there were two papers in towns, one of them was the marketplace for homes, cars and jobs. That allowed the paper to set rates as high as the market could bear, which was very high…  read more

Lately I’ve been reading Jeff.  He is a true media expert, having worked with and even started some of the most significant media channels in recent times (such as Entertainment Weekly).  He is a very interesting writer and he knows what he is talking about.

Search Marketing

Search marketing - that amazing ability that the Internet brings to us to allow the smallest entrepreneur, advocate or person selling anything, to be found, continues its powerful advance in our society. 

I am very glad.

I wrote already about John Battelle’s book “The Search” and his use of the phrase “database of intentions” to describe what Google and other search engines both offer and garner.” That phrase keeps working on me as I think about what is happening in the marketplace today.

We are able to now match ‘intentions’ with amazing acuracy, across the country, across the world, and across town.

Think about it: I ‘intend’ to sell my car. I know its strengths and weaknesses. I also know its value. Someone else ‘intends’ to buy a car, with a value in mind similar to that of my car. They also ‘intend’ to get a car with similar strengths as mine offers. If I am honest and transparent in my post, I also communicate its weaknesses and the person on the other end decides if they are sufficient to thwart the other matchup of ‘intentions.’  A deal is made and sealed. It may well have cost me little or nothing. The buyer had access to an amazing array of information, both from me and thousands of others.

There was a lot of help in matching up the ‘intentions,’ thanks to the incredible power of the “Databases of intentions,” the search companies.

Compare that to traditional small marketing. I want to sell my car. About my only choice to do so myself previously was to buy a limited space small classified ad in a newspaper or shopper. I cannot describe much due to the cost of the space. The available people to buy, those with possibly-matching ‘intentions’, are far fewer. They have to scan hundreds of used car ads to find out if there is a possible match. It was a much different, and poorer, marketplace.

Multiply this effect by tens of thousands of industries, hundreds of millions of people and many  billions of dollars. You get an idea of what the power of “SEARCH” and the matching of intentions has and will have in our business world.

And as the databases get better - the people learn to use them more efficiently, both buyers and sellers - our economy is becoming a much more efficient fullfiller of intentions.

It is happening at lighting speed.

 

Life and Business

Nothing like saying you are going to write again and then staying mum for two weeks.

I guess that is the world of blogging. The amazing thing is that people keep coming back to read - according to my stats and my user- location finder (yes I can sort of see where you are! scary, eh?)      :-)

[ It is a fun guessing game to guess who might be reading, and hard to resist. Sort of like putting the ear to the train tracks to listen for ringing in the rails, though. Can't stay there too long and one might not really want to know what is coming!]

So easy to divert. But back to my theme - business and life.

I think about it every day. Starting a new job - at Nutramax Laboratories as Internet Marketing Manager - helps keep the thoughts fresh as well. (It is also much of the reason I have not had time to write - a lot of new stuff to learn).  But it is amazing, no matter how large or small a business is - it still boils down to one thing: It is about people. And life.

Well - let me amend that. It is also about animals - as I am learning at Nutramax. Many of our products are for pets, horses and other wonderful living beings. Let’s just say “Life.”  Business really is about life. 

As we continue to explore the new marketing possibilities of the Internet, mobile, digital communications and whatever else is out there on the horizon, I can’t get away from the fact that the most fascinating part of it all is the way people (and pets) are connecting with each other - across continents. It is absolutely fascinating. I guess that is what always drew me to the Internet, from the beginning, because I am a people person. I had pen-pals in Europe when I was in 5th grade (yes back when people actually wrote with a pen and sent letters).

But now it is not just about meeting people and talking to people all over the globe; it is actually possible to make money doing it! Businesses are discovering that as never before. In fact, it seems that just during the  year, a great number of business people I have talked to have come to the realization that this is not a sideline thing any more, but will soon be the predominant way most companies do business. 

And to some the realization is also dawning that there are new rules and new paradigms involved in what that business looks like. As I have pointed out in precious posts - that more closely resembles a middle-eastern bazaar than it does a crisp bank lobby. People all over the place, laughing, shouting, crying, yelling and many just watching. That about sums up the Internet marketplace. It also sums up “Life.”

Can that be so bad? To do business in a totally, technologically-new way that is really much like an old-fashioned way that goes back to the dawn of history?

Dunno.

But I love it.

Of course, I have a penchant for drama.

 

 

To write again

It is time to start writing again. 

The posts have been scattered and a little shot-gunny,  aiming all over the place - but I’d like to focus now back on where I started this series - dealing with Business and Life.  I’d especially like to get back to the theme of the entrepreneur - the smaller business, and the changes going on in our culture about how people interact and conduct business.

There are a lot of unfinished posts to finish up like the page about my background , the “take on what is going on‘ and others.  There is also a lot more to explore concerning the place of search, collaboration and networking online with regard to the entrepreneurial and open business spirit we promote.

But above all I would like to write again, and often, about the sense of freedom that comes when people follow their dreams, produce good stuff and offer it to a needy world, however cynical and jaded that world may be. To me that is what life is all about.

I am reminded of what a poor farmer with a large family once said, in the heartland of America. When asked a question by a self-important and slightly disrespectful questioner “Well, what do you GROW on that farm?” he spoke the stunning answer - “We grow people, son.” 

This makes a lot of sense to a kid like me who grew up reading stories of Abe LIncoln learning to read, write and think by the shallow light of a candle. I could always imagine him poring over  The Bible, Shakespeare and Blackstone’s Law again and again in a prairie lean-to and later in a small barely-surviving country store.

As one who travels several times a week through a city filled with marble monuments and symbols of hope and vision, many of them decorated with the inspiring words penned by that same country boy who later became president, I can think of nothing better to do in life than to “grow people.”

And it is not an easy thing to do.

But behind all the talk here about communications, entrepreneurship, new media and new opportunities - that is the heart of this blog.

Obama Dream ticket - YES WE CAN!

OK we all know the famous Barak O’Bama video that all the stars made and put on YouTube back when the campaign was really interesting (gosh - it seems like a year ago already!). 

Well, I came across something really good. I rarely delve into the front-end of political campaigns, preferring to go after foundational stuff and basic principles rather than criticize sound bites and grimaces on some tired stumper’s face.

However, if it is really funny, I am sorely tempted; and if it showed how HUMAN (silly) politicos are, I can no longer resist.

This one is a RIOT.

The other day my two-year-old came walking into the room chanting “YES-WE-CAN!” with an enthusiasm and coherence that startled us (mostly the coherence thing). Our jaws dropped and we both stared at each other. Was he an Obama fan? Had he been watching political speeches? Incredible! This was too much; we had to get to the source.

Upon interrogation (difficult with a 2-year-old) he pointed to his little DVD player. He started it up and we heard a crowd chanting “Yes we can!” On HIS DVD player! Peering more closely, it was a crowd of 2-10 year-old’s in an audience at a Bob the Builder live stage show.

Here’s a good video of a Brit talent show where a bunch of people (looks like a school group) does their own rendition - has the stage group chanting “Can we fix it?” and the crowd shouting back “Yes We Can!”  (I’ll tell you, even in this group, especially in this group - I see hope for the human race. If I were a presidential candidate, I would consider stealing this momentum as well!)

This was too much! I had gotten him the DVD but never listened to it. Could it be, after all the plagiarism ‘non-scandals‘ of the past 6 months, that Obama had ripped off a kids’ show for his famous phrase?  I couldn’t believe it. What even pales beyond that is that the press mostly missed it!

It seems the part of the video where Obama says “three words that will ring from coast to coast and from sea to shining sea - ‘Yes We Can’” are a little presumptuous. Those words were ALREADY ringing from coast to coast - thousands upon thousands of kids 2-10, responding to Bob the Builders chant: “Can We Fix it? YES WE CAN! Can we build it? YES! WE CAN!

Searching my memory, I recalled the thing about O’bama admitting some borrowing from other people, but never heard of him borrowing from Bob.

Think about it: If Obama could preface another use of a catchy phrase with  I’m stealing this line from my buddy Deval Patrick, why on earth could he not have also said “I’m borrowing this infectious chant from my buddy Bob the Builder - Yes we can fix it!” or something like that?

And since the media was in such a frenzy after the so called plagiarists (they attacked all three front-runners) why did they largely miss this one? Not to mention all the celebrities who helped make the Obama YouTube video which freely used the phrase - the very same celebrities who are so picky when anyone ‘borrows’ any of their words from their shows or songs - how could they so blithely ride on poor Bob’s powerful words with not one iota of credit given?

It just shows what the world has come to. Why not fix the basics? The KIDS HAVE IT RIGHT! Give them credit! (Honestly, I have HOPE that kids could fix Washington! - sorta like the kid who cried out “That emperor has no clothes on!” Did not the ancients say - “a little child shall lead them.”)

Well, it seems I was not the first person to catch the unheralded plagiarism. Some really creative souls even did some YouTube work. Here is a brief overview:

Someone did a remix here that put the Bob the Builder footage into the superstars clip and ended up the whole thing with what looks like a 4-year-old who says “Yes We Can America! Obama 2008″ This one is already spinning the possible scandal towards a pro-Obama twist! Hire that guy for campaign PR!

Here’s another one more satirical and more artistic! You have to go all the way to the subtitles with this one!

This one is a real hoot! It starts with the Bob The Builder theme and has Obama driving a backhoe over the political roadbloacks (people) in Washington to FIX IT! Actually my favorite.

You know, the more I think about this, the more I ask: Why steal it? Why not just attach it? Obama is still searching for the perfect VP - running mate. It seems clear - the real momentum is with Bob the Builder!

What a dream ticket!

 

 

 

Newspaper of the Future

Lately I have been working a good bit on a project and proposal for The Newspaper of the Future. The whole thing started with the work on the project for Garrett Graff as part of his Social Media and the Digital Disruption class at Georgetown University in Washington DC.  Having just completed two years in the newspaper business as Internet Director for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis (I am now back in full-time Internet Marketing consulting) I realized first-hand how much pressure the newspaper industry is under as we speak.

The pressure is coming from all sides. Newsprint costs are rising, advertising revenues are falling, readership is falling and the age of the average subscriber is rising. Media attention by the average American is increasingly being carved up into smaller segments for traditional media, such as newspapers, TV, and radio, and larger segments for new digital channels. 

Some of these are exploding in popularity and, more importantly, in time invested by millions of users: social networking (The MySpaces, YouTubes, FaceBooks of the world), increased connection through individualized feeds, syndications  and interfaces (RSS, Twitters, SMS messaging, vlogging) and other user-directed content and self-publishing channels, simple SMS messaging on cellphones which is so common you see people punching the little keys everywhere (my thumbs are too big). When time and attention gets soaked up by all these new things, there is not as much time or interest left to spend on the older things. A law of nature - or physics - or thermodynamics or something like that!

Anyway, you get the picture. The times, they are a’ changin’.

Speaking of Bob Dylan ( I know - terribly dating myself here) listen to those words again:

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again…..

For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Well nowadays the ‘prophesizin’ done by the writers and critics may still be done on a word processor - they are late to Blackberrys, but everything else is right on - the loser now will be later to win and the times are changing dramatically. It is a ‘digital disruption’ but more than just a digital or technological thing . 

There is a cultural revolution going on.

My opinion? It is not at all a bad thing. In fact I think it is a good thing. Many earlier posts on this blog talk about why. Above all else, it is bringing a voice to the common person and bringing thousands into the great debates of our day. It is helping us rid ourselves of this monstrous ‘hitmaker’ culture we grew up with. It is empowering the small publisher, the unconnected writer, the self-thinker. It is extending the freedom of the press to those who previously had no press. People are getting involved and are no longer satisfied just being passive listeners or readers.

But whither the newspaper? I grew up in a town where most read three newspapers a day; a morning regional paper, an afternoon regional paper, and an afternoon (then 5-day) hometown paper. Our family took 2, plus 5 major news and photo-journalism magazines. It was great, fascinating and instilled a life-long passion for news, good photography, community affairs, poignant essays, world-wide interests and much else good in me. There is something to be said for the sponsored professionalism and excellence in storytelling that has marked American media for the past 70 years.

I hate to see that all go away.

That is why I started writing this project, which is actually turning into a business proposal. I believe newspapers have to dramatically change their business models. I am not sure there can be enough modifying or tweaking done with 100 year old business models to accommodate the cultural upheavals in communications taking place. Was it not said 2000 years ago that “you cannot take new wine and put it in old wineskins, else they will burst the skins and the wine be lost? New wine should be put in new wineskins”

This is a new wineskins project. It is a fascinating one and has me excited. It develops an idea for a grassroots newspaper that starts where social media is now - and where it might be in two years. It takes the dynamic of people doing self-publishing (specifically in social media and social networking),  keeps that lively force, and works upwards to a solid, semi-edited, credible mass market / cross-channel communications platform that can again represent the soul of a community.

And yes, it does also involve newsprint and ink at some point.

Stay tuned…