My friend Mark got hit by the downturn in construction. He owns a steel truss plant that makes -- surprise--light gauge steel trusses used in the construction of high end homes or commercial and industrial buildings. In the last two years, Arizona has not been a hotbed of new construction activity.
However, there is still SOME work, just not enough to incur overhead. Mark's problem was how to re-organize to cut costs without losing quality.
He's an entrepreneur; he solved his problem. And he solved it with business process automation in an industry not known for it.
Mark built a conveyor belt next to a metal shed on his property. He had a big, expensive Italian saw, hard to secure on the site, that he had never assembled. He put it together inside a metal shed where it could be locked up at night. Along the way, he installed electricity and learned how to wire 3-phase current (by trial and error).
He cut two holes in the shed: one for raw material to feed in, and one for finished cuts to come out. He programmed the saw to measure the size of cuts.
He let go all but two laborers, because he no longer needed people to measure, people to cut, people to assemble. The cutting process is now automatic, which also means he saves money in materials, where he formerly had a lot of waste. He installed video security, too.
The coolest thing? The empoyees who are left LOVE the fact that it's an automated process now and admire Mark for doing it. They are more interested in doing quality work because they understand more about what's going on. And they respect their boss, who literally did all the heavy lifting himself.
I am at the luncheon keynote of the Digital Media Mixer, and Arianna
Huffington, entrepreneur extraordinaire and middle-aged blogger like
me, starts off with riff on Sarah Palin's shoes.
Before you get to hear about her, don't forget to sign up for the Third Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference
on Nov. 19. We have put together an incredible program of both local
and out of town entrepreneurs. We steal $150 from you (the rich) for a
ticket, and hand it over to the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation (the poor) in the form of skills training to help disadvantaged populations break out of low wage jobs. In exchange, we offer content that you would have to go to New York or Silicon Valley to hear. It's a Robin Hood fundraising scheme.
Arianna, whose Huffington Post took the world by storm when it launched
in 2005, goes on to talk about where she is now in the digital space
and where she is going. She points out the differences between this
presidential election compared to 2004: no YouTube, no HuffPo in 2004
She points out that Obama would have not been the Democratic nominee
without digital media; would not have defeated the Democratic royalty.
Obama beat the Clinton records for fundraising by using the Internet,
and then translated the viral to the street--a million people knocking
on doors. She tells of meeting Chris Hughes, the young man who left
Facebook to run Obama's digital campaign. She was stunned; he was 22.
Because of the Internet, Huffington says, Rovian politics is over. Karl
Rove believed that you could say anything in a campaign, and it could
never be proven false. But Rove had never met bloggers. Rumors can
spread in blogs, but they will be proven false.
(It's like Robert Scoble always says: if something appears online and it isn't corrected in 24 hours, it is probably true.)
There could not be Swiftboating or McCain's black illegitimate child
rumors today. They would be corrected, because bloggers have
obsessive-compulsive disorder; they stick with a story until they prove
the rumors false. And that is the key to the Internet success.
As a blogger, Arianaa gets to sit on panels at conferences with very
interesting people, most of them younger than she is. She loves them.
Will.i.am, a singer with the group Black Eyed Peas once told her: "If
you are consuming old media, you are consuming it on your couch; if you
are consuming new media, you are consuming it on your horse." You are
active, and interactive.
How and why did the HuffPo start? Arianna always wanted to be a news aggregator with a definite point of view
She says it doesn't mean being partisan. It does mean being about facts, reality and truth.
Her passion was to have a collective blog, and bring interesting people
to the online conversation who were not in it right now, either because
they were too old or too busy. The first person she asked was the late
historian Arthur Schlesinger. She taught him to blog. He told her he
didn't use a computer.(She didn't care if he sent it by pidgeon.) He
typed his blog and faxed it to her.
Her editors take faxes, take dictation. Many famous people dictate their blogs.
From its beginnings in 2005, Huffington Post
now has over 2500 bloggers, 2000 of them post themselves and the others
use the editors..Last month, HuffPo had a million comments, so Arianna
employs 30 comment moderators, who pre-moderate comments in real time.
There is no technology to replace this yet, she says, and she wants a
civil environment on HuffPo in which to blog. On HuffPo, you are not
going to be called names by trolls
Why did she start it? She saw when Trent Lott was forced to resign by
bloggers how powerful they were, and that's when she started being
interested in blogging.
Now she is opening up new verticals. All the verticals attract new
readers. Someone will read a blog by Jamie Lee Curtis, and then come
back, or not. Of 120,000,000 unique visitors a month. 72% of traffic
does not come back. But the ones that do are usually faithful.
50% of the site's traffic does not come from politics. Their goal is
to keep shifting and keep introducing new initiatives, like local
pages and big news pages. She's also moving more toward a social
networking platform.
To safeguard for accuracy, there are roundrules for HuffPo: if you have
a mistake in your blog, you have 24 hours to correct it or your
password is withdrawn. She wants fact-based writing. No conspiracy
theorists.
In the hybrid future shared by digital media and print, Arianna sees a
new form of journalism emerging: Fact-based, reality based, but not
necessarily committed to taking both sides of an issue like the MSM
does. She believes the concept of "objective journalism," where you
show both sides of the issue, is dead. The truth is not in the middle.
We should not be debating evolution or whether the earth is flat. There
are such things as facts. :-)
I am at the luncheon keynote of the Digital Media Mixer, and Arianna
Huffington, entrepreneur extraordinaire and middle-aged blogger like
me, starts off with riff on Sarah Palin's shoes.
Before you get to hear about her, don't forget to sign up for the Third Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference
on Nov. 19. We have put together an incredible program of both local
and out of town entrepreneurs. We steal $150 from you (the rich) for a
ticket, and hand it over to the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation (the poor) in the form of skills training to help disadvantaged populations break out of low wage jobs. In exchange, we offer content that you would have to go to New York or Silicon Valley to hear. It's a Robin Hood fundraising scheme.
Arianna, whose Huffington Post took the world by storm when it launched
in 2005, goes on to talk about where she is now in the digital space
and where she is going. She points out the differences between this
presidential election compared to 2004: no YouTube, no HuffPo in 2004
She points out that Obama would have not been the Democratic nominee
without digital media; would not have defeated the Democratic royalty.
Obama beat the Clinton records for fundraising by using the Internet,
and then translated the viral to the street--a million people knocking
on doors. She tells of meeting Chris Hughes, the young man who left
Facebook to run Obama's digital campaign. She was stunned; he was 22.
Because of the Internet, Huffington says, Rovian politics is over. Karl
Rove believed that you could say anything in a campaign, and it could
never be proven false. But Rove had never met bloggers. Rumors can
spread in blogs, but they will be proven false.
(It's like Robert Scoble always says: if something appears online and it isn't corrected in 24 hours, it is probably true.)
There could not be Swiftboating or McCain's black illegitimate child
rumors today. They would be corrected, because bloggers have
obsessive-compulsive disorder; they stick with a story until they prove
the rumors false. And that is the key to the Internet success.
As a blogger, Arianaa gets to sit on panels at conferences with very
interesting people, most of them younger than she is. She loves them.
Will.i.am, a singer with the group Black Eyed Peas once told her: "If
you are consuming old media, you are consuming it on your couch; if you
are consuming new media, you are consuming it on your horse." You are
active, and interactive.
How and why did the HuffPo start? Arianna always wanted to be a news aggregator with a definite point of view
She says it doesn't mean being partisan. It does mean being about facts, reality and truth.
Her passion was to have a collective blog, and bring interesting people
to the online conversation who were not in it right now, either because
they were too old or too busy. The first person she asked was the late
historian Arthur Schlesinger. She taught him to blog. He told her he
didn't use a computer.(She didn't care if he sent it by pidgeon.) He
typed his blog and faxed it to her.
Her editors take faxes, take dictation. Many famous people dictate their blogs.
From its beginnings in 2005, Huffington Post
now has over 2500 bloggers, 2000 of them post themselves and the others
use the editors..Last month, HuffPo had a million comments, so Arianna
employs 30 comment moderators, who pre-moderate comments in real time.
There is no technology to replace this yet, she says, and she wants a
civil environment on HuffPo in which to blog. On HuffPo, you are not
going to be called names by trolls
Why did she start it? She saw when Trent Lott was forced to resign by
bloggers how powerful they were, and that's when she started being
interested in blogging.
Now she is opening up new verticals. All the verticals attract new
readers. Someone will read a blog by Jamie Lee Curtis, and then come
back, or not. Of 120,000,000 unique visitors a month. 72% of traffic
does not come back. But the ones that do are usually faithful.
50% of the site's traffic does not come from politics. Their goal is
to keep shifting and keep introducing new initiatives, like local
pages and big news pages. She's also moving more toward a social
networking platform.
To safeguard for accuracy, there are roundrules for HuffPo: if you have
a mistake in your blog, you have 24 hours to correct it or your
password is withdrawn. She wants fact-based writing. No conspiracy
theorists.
In the hybrid future shared by digital media and print, Arianna sees a
new form of journalism emerging: Fact-based, reality based, but not
necessarily committed to taking both sides of an issue like the MSM
does. She believes the concept of "objective journalism," where you
show both sides of the issue, is dead. The truth is not in the middle.
We should not be debating evolution or whether the earth is flat. There
are such things as facts. :-)
I've just gone on the Advisory Board of Unicorn Media a new breed of integrated media company. Today it launches a diversified distribution channel for a full range of video and audio content. I've got the press release here, and I'm going to stick pretty close to it so I can give you all the facts. I'm not used to breaking news, but I got to see this on Friday. Bill is on his fifth company, so this isn't his first rodeo, and he has seeded this one pretty much by himself with a few of his Limelight buddies.
Plagiarizing from the release: Unicorn Media’s patent-pending, rich Internet application features work from a broad range of studios, independent musicians and film makers, including CBS Interactive, IMAX film producers, Revision3, Silverback Management and many more. Designed to showcase all content in its best possible form, and with the highest quality user experience, Unicorn Media connects artists to their target audiences directly and dynamically, ensuring that worldwide consumers have access to broadcast quality video and CD-quality audio. At the same time, an innovative revenue sharing model enables artists and their distributors to monetize their work.
“Unicorn Media was founded with the understanding that only a small fraction of professionally produced content actually ends up in commercial distribution,” said Bill Rinehart, CEO and founder of Unicorn Media. “We spoke with artists who told us that their primary concern with online distribution was that it didn’t always promote their work in a high quality format. We’re taking a different approach with Unicorn Media. We provide a diverse range of studio and independent content that connects consumers with the artists worldwide with the best possible quality. We’re revolutionizing the way content is viewed, distributed and monetized in this industry.”
In response to many of the hurdles faced by artists today, Unicorn Media has created an environment to help them thrive. With Unicorn Media, artists have the assurance that their work is being distributed in the manner in which it was meant to be viewed or listened to when it was created.
CONTROL FOR ARTISTS Artists who distribute their content through Unicorn Media are also able to retain complete control of their work. The company offers a non-exclusive media delivery platform at no cost to the artist or their studio. This ensures that artists are able to control the destiny of their content and that they can freely spread their art around the world.
REVENUE SHARE FOR ARTISTS Artists and content owners are able to monetize their work by leveraging Unicorn Media’s ...(here I cut out the word unique, which I hate in press releases) revenue sharing model. As the artist’s audience and popularity grow on Unicorn Media, more revenue is generated. Revenue share is based on each content selection’s advertising value, which is determined by audience size and realizable advertising rates. Artists have the opportunity to share up to 50 percent of the revenue generated by their content as opposed to the pre-set percentages offered by other online venues.
Additionally, artists have input as to where in their work advertising is placed so that the effectiveness of their art is not compromised.
HIGH DEFINITION The Unicorn Media experience is different because of a core competency in scalable, high-performance, efficient application and content delivery. Patent-pending technology ensures that content available through Unicorn Media can be shown on a high-definition screen rather than being limited to a PC. A rich Internet application provides the performance of a desktop offering without forcing consumers to download a plug-in while cloud computing allows Unicorn Media to maximize speed for the consumer. Unicorn Media’s social architecture allows users to identify friends and to share their favorite playlists, videos and songs or to connect through popular social networks.
The Unicorn Media experience is now open to both consumers and artists. Additional details are available at: <a href="http://www.unicornmedia.com">www.unicornmedia.com</a>.
It's beautiful on a big Vizio monitor. That last line does not come from the press release.
EmpowHer, the patient advocate communicy for women, has just closed a $6m round, which will allow it to come out of beta and grow. It has actually been growing very quickly, because it's a site with a mission -- to connect women with information that is difficult to find, trustworthy, and useful It's not a search engine, it's a community of women sharing their experiences.
EmpowHer has just hired a "real" CEO, Shahi Ganem, formerly Presdent and COO of DivX and board member of Brickfish . Founder Michelle Robson will be off evangelizing for the company, which was founded from her personal experience with the unwanted aftereffects of a (probably) unnecessary hysterectomy.
And the company has just moved into sleek, minimalist loft-like offices in Scottsdale, signing a screaming deal with a developer who has been affected by the glut of real estate inventory in Arizona.
Don't Blame Me for your Credit Crisis, Mr. Paulson
You changed the rules for what constitutes a smart financial decision, and now you want to turn around and blame ME because I borrowed money? Screw you, buddy; let me tell you how I see it.
I grew up in an era when our parents still remembered the Great Depression and debt was the enemy. They waited four years to get married and four more to have children because they couldn't afford to live away from their parents until my dad became an attorney.
I built my first home with my husband, literally with our own two hands and out of our pockets. We had no mortgage from day one. I learned to plumb and wire and pour concrete with my Ivy League degrees. I started my first business in 1980 and I paid for my computer and answering machine with cash.
Somewhere in the 1980's it changed. My mortgage interest was deductible, so when I bought my second house, it seemed like a smart decision to take a mortgage.It was a terrifying amount of debt. I put 30% down on the house, though, because I was by then a single mom and "self-employed" (that was how they looked at a business owner then). I always lived below my means,
After a long successful track record in business, I finally got a line of credit to grow, which was frozen in the 1980s during the real estate crisis and the market crash of 1987, and I almost went out of business. I was advised by all the best attorneys and accountants to declare bankruptcy and start over again.
I couldn't do it. Fearfully, I repaid every dime while everyone else around me (all the really "smart" businessmen) went bankrupt as a good "business decision." I sold off assets to do it. My prized Mercedes, some art work: material things I knew from my studies of Eastern philosophy meant nothing but suffering.
I learned never to repeat the same mistakes. So in 2005, I sold all my expensive real estate in Phoenix, because I saw the bubble burst coming. I bought a home in Half Moon Bay to be near my children. (But I did take one of those "interest only" loans because it was the "smart" thing to do.)
And by now, debt was referred to as "leverage," and real estate was known as a game of "leverage." You only gained through "leverage." I would have felt stupid not doing it. It gave me more money to invest and put away for the mythical retirement. Retirement counselors all over place urged me to save and invest. So I leveraged my present to pay for my future.
By now, I'm substantial enough to get tax advice, and established enough to be an angel. I'm invested in many different startups in various stages of growth and/or disarray. I own land. I'm starting a bank.
I judge what to do and what not to do by what the government incentivizes me to do. I pay a big mortgage to live in a place that's expensive, but where I want to be. It's all tax deductible. I use my home equity line to fix up the place. It's deductible. I lease my equipment and my car. Most of the interest is deductible, or else I don't borrow. Most of what I do with my business is deductible, or I don't do it. My life follows the instructions of the tax code.
I'm a good girl. A good and proud American, investing in entrepreneurship, spending to keep the economy going, doing my damnedest to encourage American markets.
I'm not a deadbeat NiNJA with a sub-prime mortgage sold to me by a fraudulent mortgage broker. I'm a high value customer at Wells Fargo with a FICO score of over 700.
And yet I'm being blamed for the current financial crisis, because I'm a borrower. And I am suffering because once again those lines of credit you told me to get are frozen. I can't invest, I can't save, I can't spend, and I can't exit.
I can only go to yoga. You smart guys on Wall Street and in Washington are all the same. You make the rules and then you blame me. Well, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
I've been working with ESS, now the leading provider of EH&S software to the enterprise, for many years. As you know if you know me, Arizona companies have to be strong in order to survive, because capital formation is an issue here. As a result, management has to be continually on its toes; there's no money to "burn" through. Fortunately, quite a while back I introduced ESS to Harvard Investments, one of the Hill Companies, and they formed a relationship that allowed ESS to grow both by acqusition and by internal expansion.
But nothing prepared me for the last two years, during which ESS has emerged as a global market leader. Part of this is the vision and tenacity of founder and CEO Robert Johnson and a team that has been with him for years with minimal turnover, and the remainder is the awakening of the enterprise to sustainability issues. Interest in the company's sustainability solutions has recently surged as businesses seek ways to address their EH&S business challenges and drive corporate sustainability initiatives.
ESS' solutions have recently been selected by both
public and private organizations:
-- Abbott Laboratories -- Logan Aluminum Inc.
-- Ameritek -- Marathon Oil Company
-- Amgen -- N.K. Parts Industries
-- BlueScope Steel North America -- NorthWestern Energy
-- Barrick Gold Corporation -- Novelis Inc.
-- ConocoPhillips-California -- Nucor Corporation
-- Cytec Industries -- PPG Aerospace
-- DuPont -- Reynolds Packaging
-- EPCOR Utilities Inc. -- Sutter Home Winery
-- ExxonMobil -- Tampa Bay Water
-- General Motors Corp. -- Tidewater Barge Lines
-- Google -- TransMontaigne Inc.
-- Interstate Brands -- Wyeth Pharmaceuticals
Business and regulatory drivers are fueling interest in ESS'
integrated solutions, because they collect, aggregate and communicate data for
greenhouse gas management, worker health and safety management,
environmental reporting, crisis management and Corporate Social
Responsibility reporting. Recent CSR reports have really changed: they aren't simply lists of feel-good volunteer efforts and charitable giving, They are now replete with charts, graphs and tables that tell of company's efforts to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and improve working conditions for employees.
I don't seen much of this changing, because it is driven by investors and employees, who don't want to work for or invest in companies that waste, pollute, or poison our planet.
Tomorrow I leave the Bay Area with its plethora of innovators, resources, early adopters and smart people and travel back to reality.My thoughts are drifting back to the entrepreneurs I deal with in Arizona, who are trying to survive, thrive and grow in a difficult environment.
The environment is partly a reflection of outside events, partly a mental state, and partly a true shortage of capital.
The angels have gone away, slapped down by the real estate crisis and their own illiquid assets. The banks are burdened by their bad loans. And most companies I coach are either not ready for VC money or will never be in a space that interests a VC.
So the entrepreneurs are stuck, aren't they? If they want to grow, or even to stay in business, they have to get serious about marketing. Now's the time to ask yourself whether you have a product or service
the market even WANTS, and then how to reach that idea universe of
customers. Because you aren't going to do it without customers.
Props to Aaron Bare from Career Tours, one of our Fasttrac volunteer resources, who sent me the correct list of questions to ask yourself if you are a small business looking to get into or grow a market.
1.What is your value proposition?
2. What is your target market?
3. What sales shannels can you tap into?
4. Do you have an online marketing plan? (SEO + SEM)
5. How do you enable PR, word of mouth and guerrilla marketing?
6. How can I use partnership opportunities to help both my company and the partner?
7. Is there a joint venture opportunity somewhere?
8. What is my plan for growth?
These are the right questions. Ed Nusbaum, Phil Blackerby and I will spend the next ten weeks helping companies ask them.
Why won't we be helping them answer the questions? Because you can't answer them until you ask them, and many small companies don't devote the time to learning what to ask themselves before looking for answers. That's why companies ask marketing providers for "a brochure" a "web site," "a blog," without knowing what they are going to do with these tools.
Last night, when I saw Barack Obama accept the nomination, I cried. I wanted my father to be there to see this. He was the one who taught me a black person was my equal, and the person who taught me a woman could be anything. He put his money where his mouth was, doing legal work that paved the way for black entertainers to live in the hotels they performed in when in Las Vegas. That took guts; at the time Vegas was run by the mob. He was also the person who sent me all the way through school to get a Ph.D. even though he wanted me to be a lawyer. He didn't care if I never got married, as long as I was a professional.
As a result, I am the girl from Hope! I always think anything can happen (and to me, it often does.)
But until recently, I was despondent about the direction of the country and worried about how little power I (or anyone like me) had to do anything about the two issues that really bug me: the economy and the war. All this other stuff, it's commentary. The war takes our young people and makes us look stupid globally, forces us into maneuvers like torture and wiretapping, and strains our resources.
Not that we don't need to protect the country. It's just that we need a paradigm shift in how to do it.
And the economy? Well, for me that encompasses all of every day life: gas prices, cost of food, health care, outsourcing, insourcing...everything everyday people worry about, one paycheck away from poverty.
I am a firm believer in the power of entrepreneurship. I have been an entrepreneur for forty years, and I'm still engaged. I take a broad view of entrepreneurship -- anyone who assumes responsibility for his own economic survival, whether by starting a business, helping one grow, or taking responsibility for his/her own employability is entrepreneurial to me. That's how I've learned to view it from my travels in India, China, Malaysia, Africa.
I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, so don't fall back on stereotypes. And I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an independent and I take it issue by issue, election by election.
But I cried last night, and this morning I laughed. I laughed because John McCain, whatever else I think of him, has continued changing the game. Maybe he had to do it, but he did it. Maybe it wasn't the right woman, but it acknowledged the sea change happening in our country.
America will never be the same after this election, and that makes me very happy. In a lot of ways, we can no longer afford to be the same.
Last night, when I saw Barack Obama accept the nomination, I cried. I wanted my father to be there to see this. He was the one who taught me a black person was my equal, and the person who taught me a woman could be anything. He put his money where his mouth was, doing legal work that paved the way for black entertainers to live in the hotels they performed in when in Las Vegas. That took guts; at the time Vegas was run by the mob. He was also the person who sent me all the way through school to get a Ph.D. even though he wanted me to be a lawyer. He didn't care if I never got married, as long as I was a professional.
As a result, I am the girl from Hope! I always think anything can happen (and to me, it often does.)
But until recently, I was despondent about the direction of the country and worried about how little power I (or anyone like me) had to do anything about the two issues that really bug me: the economy and the war. All this other stuff, it's commentary. The war takes our young people and makes us look stupid globally, forces us into maneuvers like torture and wiretapping, and strains our resources.
Not that we don't need to protect the country. It's just that we need a paradigm shift in how to do it.
And the economy? Well, for me that encompasses all of every day life: gas prices, cost of food, health care, outsourcing, insourcing...everything everyday people worry about, one paycheck away from poverty.
I am a firm believer in the power of entrepreneurship. I have been an entrepreneur for forty years, and I'm still engaged. I take a broad view of entrepreneurship -- anyone who assumes responsibility for his own economic survival, whether by starting a business, helping one grow, or taking responsibility for his/her own employability is entrepreneurial to me. That's how I've learned to view it from my travels in India, China, Malaysia, Africa.
I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, so don't fall back on stereotypes. And I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an independent and I take it issue by issue, election by election.
But I cried last night, and this morning I laughed. I laughed because John McCain, whatever else I think of him, has continued changing the game. Maybe he had to do it, but he did it. Maybe it wasn't the right woman, but it acknowledged the sea change happening in our country.
America will never be the same after this election, and that makes me very happy. In a lot of ways, we can no longer afford to be the same.
