• Feld Thoughts: Falling Down and Getting Back Up
  Brad’s colorful, quick posting on “how running is like entrepreneurship.”
  (tags: Entrepreneur VC)

Blogiversary, Part II

So it’s now been two years since I launched OnlyOnce.  Last year at this time, I gave a bunch of stats of how my blog was going.

The interesting thing about this year, is that a lot of these stats seem to have leveled off.  I have almost the same number of subscribers (email and RSS) and unique visits as last year.  The number’s not bad — it’s in the thousands — and I’m still happy to be writing the blog for all the reasons I expressed here back in June 2004, but it’s interesting that new subs seem to be harder to come by these days.  I assume that’s a general trend that lots of bloggers are seeing as the world of user-generated content gets more and more crowded.

Not that I’m competitive with my board members, but I believe that Brad and Fred have both continued to see massive subscriber increases in their blogs.  They attribute it to two things — (1) they have lots of money they give to entrepreneurs, and (2) they write a lot more than I do, usually multiple postings per day, as compared to a couple postings per week. 

I don’t see either of those aspects of my blog changing any time soon, so if those are the root causes, then I’ll look forward to continuing this for my existing readers (and a few more here and there) into 2007!

• Feld Thoughts
  Brad has a good posting today about entrepreneur accountability — along the lines of my “Forecast Early and Often” theme. — /2005/11/notsocounter_cl.html
  (tags: VC Entrepreneur)

It’s Not Having What You Want, It’s Wanting What You’ve Got

I’ve always thought that line (the title of this post) was one of Sheryl Crowe’s better lyrics. And there’s nothing like moving houses to bring it to life. We are pretty minimalist to begin with, or at least the size of our apartment had constrained our ability to be anything more. And we cleaned out and threw away a bunch of things before we moved. Now that we’re almost done unpacking, and we have several empty or nearly empty rooms in our much larger house, the lyric resonates.

I’m sure we’ll ultimately fill up those empty rooms, at least a little bit. That’s what everyone says happens when you expand into more space. But for the most part, we don’t NEED to. The furniture, toys, beds, and chairs that worked for us in one place SHOULD work for us in another. Happiness can’t come from forging forward on the volume of earthly possessions. It should really come from contentment when where you are in life. Anything else is icing on the cake.

That’s probably a good metaphor to think about the road ahead in business and the economy. It’s still not clear to me how much this current mess is going affect the general economy and spending across all sectors. Hopefully confidence returns to the financial markets, the credit crisis passes, and there’s not a general deep recession. But as my colleague Anita is so fond of saying, Hope is not a Strategy, so everyone needs to be bracing themselves for the worst right now.

And that means we all need to prepare for Not Having What We Want, but rather Wanting What We’ve Got. Businesses will continue to function and even grow if there’s a recession. But if there’s belt tightening to be done, it means that growth companies will have to shift paradigms a bit. They’ll be investing less in growth and in new things. They’ll be focusing more on profits. There will be less hiring. Promotions and raises and bonuses will be harder to come by (especially on Wall Street!).

None of this means we should stop forging ahead or reduce our ambitions. On the contrary – companies that can figure out how to achieve both growth AND profitability in tough times are the ones that win in the end. But it does mean that we’re in for a long road if we don’t all change our mindset and behaviors to match the times, as growth and profitability together looks quite different from growth at the expense of profitability.

We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now

I remember reading somewhere a while ago that the least respected professions in America were used car salesmen, politicians, and lawyers.  Well, step aside everyone — according to a J. Walter Thompson study reported in DMNews, only 14% of Americans have respect for people in the advertising business.  I’m going to include that anyone who works in marketing services, by extension.

Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have expected people in the advertising profession to join the upper echelons of the study with military personnel, doctors, and teachers.  But 14% is a pretty low number.  Beneath that single number, though, lie some conflicting data.  For example,

· 72 percent agree, “I get tired of people trying to grab my attention and sell me stuff,” and

· 52 percent agree, “There’s too much advertising — I would support stricter limits.”

And yet

· 82 percent indicate a positive engagement with media overall, and

· Two-thirds claimed, “Advertising is an important part of the American culture.”

My bottom line from these data is simple.  You know something is wrong with your industry when 52% of the general population wants to regulate it.  But with the dual movements towards more free content and more restrictions on data that could be used to target advertising…I’m afraid our profession will continue to do the things that consumers don’t like for years to come.

Physical Therapist or Chiropractor?

I was talking to a good friend the other day who is an executive coach. He was telling me that his clients are all over the map in terms of role (CEO or functional senior exec), need (small issue to large issue), company size and stage. But most important, he noted that his clients have different ways of learning, and that he has to tailor his coaching style to the client.

I had two main takeaways from this interaction.

First, he had a particularly memorable way of phrasing the differences in client learning styles that inform his approach. Some of his clients, he noted, need a physical therapist. They need someone to work with them every week, using whatever issues that come up that week as a means of stretching and building muscles. Other clients need a chiropractor. They are all good but once in a while need to stop by for him to wrench their spine for a few minutes and get things back in line. This is a brilliant metaphor.

Second, for anyone who manages, coaches, or mentors out there, if you can’t tailor your style to meet the needs of your direct reports or mentees, you aren’t being as effective as possible. We all learn and work in different ways. Good management isn’t ramming a set style down people’s throats. It’s getting the most out of people given who they are. I wrote a bit about this years ago and it’s still so true.

We’ve been in business at Return Path for almost 18 years now.  We’ve seen a number of competitors come and go across a bunch of different related businesses that we’ve been in.  One of the things I’ve noticed and never quite understood is that many of our competitors expend a lot of time and energy publicly trash talking us in the market.  Sometimes this takes the form of calling us or our products out by name in a presentation at a conference; other times it takes the form of a blog post; other times it’s just in sales calls.  It’s weird.  You don’t see that all that often in other industries, even when people take aim at market leaders.

During the normal course of business, one of sales reps might engage in selling against specific competitors — often times, they have to when asked specific questions by specific prospects — but one thing you’ll never see us do is publicly trash talk a single competitor by name as a company.  I’m sure there are a couple people at Return Path who would like us to have “sharper elbows” when it comes to this, but it’s just not who we are.  Our culture is definitely one that values kindness and a softer approach.  But good business sense also tells me that it’s just not smart for four reasons:

• We’re very focused and disciplined in our outbound communications — and there’s only so much air time you get as a company in your industry, even among your customers — on thought leadership, on showcasing the value of our data and our solutions, and on doing anything we can do to make our customers more successful.  Pieces like my colleague Dennis Dayman’s recent blog post on the evolution of the data-driven economy, or my colleague Guy Hanson’s amazingly accurate prediction of the UK’s “unpredictable” election results both represent the kind of writing that we think is productive to promote our company
• We’re fiercely protective of our brand (both our employer brand and our market-facing brand), and we’ve built a brand based on trust, reputation, longevity, and being helpful, in a business that depends on reputation and trust as its lifeblood — as I think about all the data we handle for clients and strategic partners, and all the trust mailbox providers place in us around our Certification program.  Clients and partners will only place trust in — and will ultimately only associate themselves with — good people.  To quote my long time friend and Board member Fred Wilson (who himself is quoting a long time friend and former colleague Bliss McCrum), if you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.  If we suddenly turned into the kind of company that talked trash about competition, I bet we’d find that we had diminished our brand and our reputation among the people who matter most to us.  Our simple messaging and positioning showcases our people, our expertise, and our detailed knowledge of how email marketing works, with a collective 2,000 years of industry experience across our team
• Trash talking your competition can unwittingly expose your own weaknesses.  Think about Donald Trump’s memorable line from one of the debates against Hillary Clinton – “I’m not the puppet, you’re the puppet” – when talking about Russia.  That hasn’t turned out so well for him.  It’s actually a routine tactic of Trump, beyond that one example.  Accuse someone else of something to focus attention away from your own issues or weaknesses.  Don’t like the fact that your inauguration crowd was demonstrably smaller than your predecessor’s?  Just lie about it, and accuse the media of creating Fake News while you’re at it.  Disappointed that you lost the popular vote?  Accuse the other side of harvesting millions of illegal votes, even though it doesn’t matter since you won the electoral college!  Think about all these examples, regardless of your politics.  All of them draw attention to Trump’s weaknesses, even as he’s lashing out at others (and even if you think he’s right).  We don’t need to lash out at others because we have so much confidence in our company, our products, and our services.  We are an innovative, happy, stable, profitable, and growing vendor in our space, and that’s where our attention goes
• Publicly trash talking your competition just gives your competition extra air time.  As PT Barnum famously said, “You can say anything you want about me, just make sure you spell my name right!”

Don’t get me wrong.  Competition is healthy.  It makes businesses stronger and can serve as a good focal point for them to rally.  It can even be healthy sometimes to demonize a competitor *internally* to serve as that rallying cry.  But I am not a fan of doing that *externally.*  I think it makes you look weak and just gives your competitor free advertising.

I’m thrilled to announce The Daily Bolster — a quick-hitting podcast for startup leaders scaling their businesses. It’s the actionable insight you need to scale—in about 5 minutes. The first episode drops this coming Monday.

Our team created The Daily Bolster for folks in the startup world who — like me — want to hear from industry experts of all backgrounds, but don’t always have the time to listen to full length interviews, even at 2x speed (which usually ends up sounding like Alvin & The Chipmunks, anyway).

Instead, we’re getting straight to the point. GTTFP, as Brad says.

Starting next week, I will be joined every day by experienced operators and industry experts who share their real-world experiences and practical advice. Each day of the week, we’ll cover a different topic or theme:

• Monday: CEO Tips & Tricks
• Tuesday: Scaling Yourself & Your Team
• Wednesday: The View from the Board Room
• Thursday: Ask Bolster (this one will be more like 20-30 minutes to go deeper with someone)

The schedule is jam-packed with dynamic guests and punchy interviews. Whether you tune in every day, when you see a guest you’re especially interested in, or only on Tuesdays, we’re so excited to share these conversations with you.

In Week 1, I welcome Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, board member extraordinaire and marketplace guru Cristina Miller, Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson, Helpscout CEO Nick Francis, and Bessemer Operating Partner and veteran CFO Jeff Epstein. They’ll share their practical advice and real-world experiences around professional development, company culture, startup strategy, and tips and tricks for executive growth.

Check out the season preview to learn more. You can also sign up for email notifications, to make sure you never miss an episode. The daily email will also include a pull quote and clips in case even the 5-minute version is too long for you.

You can subscribe to The Daily Bolster on these platforms: Bolster, YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, Pandora, and Castbox, plus we’ll put each episode up on LinkedIn and Twitter. You should either follow me (T, LI) or Bolster (T, LI) on those to see the content.

• Feld Thoughts
  Brad talks about comp for outside Board members
  (tags: Entrepreneur compensation)

I’m Sorry, What Year Is It?

My colleague Tami Forman saw the attached leaflet posted on the subway in NYC.  I’m not sure which is funnier — that someone wrote it and put it up, or that two people ripped off the phone number to make follow-up calls.  Fred, Brad, Greg, anyone interested?

The Very Unfriendly Skies of United

The 6 a.m. flight from LaGuardia to Denver is unpleasant to begin with, but the idiots who set customer-facing policies at United seem to have found a new way of making it even less pleasant.

I’ve long-hated United’s “Economy Plus” seating, which gives the first 5-10 rows of coach a huge amount of leg room at the expense of all the other rows in coach.  American, by contrast, has more leg room in all rows of coach, so I can actually work in any seat on an American plane, laptop and all.  On United, the seats in the majority of coach are almost unworkable.

United used to just automatically put you in Economy Plus if you were a frequent flier with status.  But now United is taking Economy Plus to a new level — they’re automatically NOT putting you in Economy Plus and then charging more for it on the spot.  You can move yourself into Economy Plus for free online ahead of time, assuming there are open seats in it.  So really, the new policy is just designed to hold a gun to customers’ heads at the airport.

This morning’s flight is a prime example of how not to treat your customers.  It’s 6 a.m., and coach is maybe — maybe — half full.  And the announcement comes on that United’s new policy is that you are forbidden to move seats into Economy Plus after takeoff, even if there are open seats (which there are).  You can only do that if you pay $44, and a United representative would be happy to take that money at any time.

My colleague Angela had the best line on this situation — it’s as if United has put up an invisible electric fence in the middle of coach.  Whether or not there’s a ringing and a shock, it certainly feels like United is treating its customers like dogs.  They now join my customer service Hall of Shame along with Verizon (the anchor tenant) and Fedex/Kinko’s.