T-M-I from T-I-M

Nike's Kap decision was mostly about business

I saw the Colin Kapernick ad that will show tonight.  I support athletes right to protest in the way they are and don’t feel it’s disrespectful, but the truth for me is that’s beside the point.

I look at what Nike did as 90% business and 10% moral stand. 

The shoe deal market is extremely competitive for the elite athletes.  And of those elite athletes, in my estimation, more would want to join a team that backs Kap than doesn’t.  They aren’t all like that and it’s not the only criteria but it’s a competitive differentiator.  And it’s consistent with the newer version of athletes like LeBron James who takes a stand.  The MJ era of both sides buy shoes are over, it’s too narrow a view point.

The elite athletes that they attract have global not just national reach. 

Nike’s North America sales change 2017 v 2018?  Down 1% ($15 Bill in 2017 to $14 Bill in 2018)

Nike’s non North America sales change 2017 v 2018?  Up 26%  ($15 Bill in 2017 to $19 Bill in 2018)

I doubt most global buyers care about this debate but they do care about and align with the elite athletes.

My bet is the young people who the company cares most about won’t think twice about buying the shoes they want for the best players.  The top 3 sellers (LeBron, KD, Kyrie) are the athletes kids love most, except for maybe Stephen Curry who all the kids love (who actually placed 4^th for 2018). 

You might ask, wasn’t it courageous given the 10 year NFL sponsorship relationship?  I’d say no.  They are in control there and there is no way the NFL breaks the relationship.  And if I had to bet I’d say in 10 years the likely prevailing narrative will be more in favor of what Colin Kapernick stands for than what many of the owners and the President seem to think it’s standing for.

I read in many places about the stock “hit” that Nike took.  As of today, the stock is $4 off its 52 week high and $29 higher than its 52 week low.  The markets discount this stuff way quicker than you might think.

So people may end up burning their shoes and cutting their socks but the hard fact is Nike doesn’t care.  They are playing a much bigger game and that market that’s turning from them is not as attractive as the one they care most about. 

I have to admit it’s funny to see how the shoe burning and sock cutting and boycotts that are done in the “give them a taste of their own medicine” energy are likely to have somewhere between a nothing burger and zero impact.

I still think it took some courage to do what they did so boldly.  I saw the commercial and love it. 

But in the end, this was a business decision and I think it was a brilliant one. 

My trip to Qatar

I just got back from what I call a peak life experience in Doha, Qatar working with the Qatar Science and Technology Park Research to Startup program.  We brought an incredible group of entrepreneurs to work with equally incredible researchers of the Qatar Computer Research Institute. I was so blessed to be asked to be a part of it by my very close friend Chris Yeh.

Qatari leadership is visionary in that they realize they need to look beyond the oil and gas economy.  It’s a fascinating study in the intersection of business and humanity.  There is a lot culturally to break through to really shift to an entrepreneurial mindset for the investors and entrepreneurs to thrive but the vision and energy is there.

It was really invigorating to be a present part of a 20-30 year vision.  So much of what I’m surrounded with in business has a less than 5 year horizon.  That longer term vision gives importance and space for achieving lasting and meaningful impact.

It was so rewarding to see the researchers light up as they saw the possibilities roll out of how their years of work, their babies essentially, could be taken to market successfully by entrepreneurs who care.  I was totally blessed to bring my piece of the puzzle in helping them with their presentations.

The long term vision is to help shift the researchers into a commercialization oriented entrepreneurial mindset ala Silicon Valley.

It will be fascinating to see what comes of it.  More to come.

And, here are a few quite random reflections from my trip to Doha, Qatar:

There is construction EVERYWHERE.  So much so that they are actually running out of SAND!  So they are fighting against illegal importation of sand….in the desert.  They are building world class facilities and have a TON of capacity to fill.

I met the ONLY couple in the world that is a marriage between a Qatari and Norwegian and they were delightful.  In certain cases, there is an approval process for Qatari citizens to marry different nationalities.

I had a heartwarming experience when a totally likeable and brilliant engineer/researcher pulled me aside at an event and told me that I had given him the incredible gift of teaching him “how to laugh”.  My rather big and full laughter is unusual and he loved to laugh along with me and others as we joked around.

I LOVED the times when there was singing over the loudspeaker to remind those who observe it to pray.  I honestly wish that we could somehow do something like that here that would be free of denomination or even belief in God (plenty of my atheist friends meditate).  A reminder a few times a day for all of us to pause and reflect in some way would have a substantial beneficial impact. 

There is a GIANT yellow bear at the airport.  I found out it cost almost $7 Million.  That’s one expensive relative of Winnie the Pooh.  I only pray that they don’t open a honey store in the airport.

Their salt shakers are much better than ours because yield per shake is much higher (or put less business-y their salt comes out of the shakers faster with more of it each time I shook it).

They use Kleenex as napkins.  It took some getting used to but ultimately it’s good because it’s more eco-friendly as I didn’t find myself using more of them.  Oddly, for whatever reason I became more careful about how I ate so as to minimize my use of them.

Not surprisingly, without a shared pop cultural reference point my blue ribbon comedic material at times is met with confusing looks and crickets rather than laughter.

It’s hot.  Like REALLY hot.  I would go for a walk at 5:30 am and it felt perfect, by 6:30 am my walk ended luckily because it was already steaming hot.  One upside is the AC in all the buildings I went to was phenomenal!

I’m not particularly surprised by this but was comfortably reassured.  Parents there love their young daughters as much as I did/do, that made me really happy.

I played hoops with an international key and three point line on a wider court.  And oh my GAWD it was a lot harder to do.  Shots that normally drop were falling well, well short.  (Oh and as a bonus the court was blue so I kinda felt like I was playing football at Boise State.)

Finally, I was reminded again how to be awake and aware to visitors to the USA as I walk around throughout my day.  San Francisco in particular brings a confluence of all types of different cultures and perspectives.  I was treated wonderfully while I was there.

It reminded me to be a little more patient, tolerant and kind and that my friend is, indeed, what is all about.

Cobra first THEN Up Dog when you're ready

It's official, I'm totally Norcal just by the title of this post.  But the idea is really straightforward when I'm learning new things I'm better off going to kindergarten before I go to the Masters program. 

I'm in the middle of a career change wherein I want to leverage my very best skill sets.  I'm like, totally likeable and know how to develop really good relationships.  I'm a people person and I'm smart.  I like to be goofy at times as well.  So it makes perfect sense that I've been an accountant all my life right??

Not anymore.  And so as I embark on this journey of change I have to remember take it slow but keep moving forward.  Don't do cobra and move onto crow, I'm asking for trouble.

I know I want it and want it bad, but I also know that I'm not in charge of the results, I'm in charge of the action and for now cobra is working just fine. 

Outsourcing is killing the economy

I was thinking the other day about how, in these awful economic times, outsourcing is affecting the economy.  I'm not referring to manufacturing because frankly if the defect rate & cost is lower and the time to market is not significantly impacted, that decision is a no brainer.

I'm referring to the companies who have chosen to outsource, for example, their call centers.  The benefits of cost and 24/7 availability is clear.  However level of service and revenue generation are at most worse than the US, in most cases putrid. 

But the killer is that hundreds of thousands of jobs that would normally pay between $10-20 are gone.  I think those types of jobs are the ones that provide the foundation for our economy.  Those jobs are fuel for car purchases, mortgage payments, etc.

The # of jobs that it would bring back are not equal to what's been outsourced, but there is an opportunity to monetize the move.

I worked at a company where our head of sales (who is an absolute superstar) had a wild proposition:

• Provide world class service looking out for the best interests of the customer first (i.e., don't "jam" offers down their throats)
• The revenue will follow

He was right.  He's done on a smaller scale and a huge scale.  It can be done but most companies don't do it or worse don't even believe it can be done.

In the meantime, our economy keeps sucking wind and when it comes back, we still won't have the valuable foundation that these types of jobs provide.

Search Engine Marketing for Content Driven Websites WITHOUT Losing Money

I've spent the last several weeks knee deep into learning about the mechanics of search engine marketing.  I'm by far no expert in it, but the world is pretty fascinating. 

Where I'm a bit perplexed at this point is what role SEM should play for a site that is primarily content driven.  It's not much of a problem to get people to come to the site.  You pay Google for the adwords, people search, they click on your ad and voila you've got traffic!

However, how do you keep them?  Ultimately, if you are content driven site, you want your differentiation to be content that is so on the money that when they come once, they bookmark you because you are a resource.

But that's tough.  Most of the time, they come once, check out your article and move on.

I suppose the bottom line is that the way to make SEM work in the context of a content driven website without losing money has to have some type of high quality advertising campaign alongside it.  But even that doesn't seem to make sense.

If I get 100,000 clicks through Google at 0.25 a click, that's a $25,000 campaign.

Let's assume, just for fun that you have an ad campaign that's you're getting $5.00 cpm (a REALLY high #).  In order to break even off just that campaign, you have to generate 5,000,000 clicks, daunting indeed, even if you have a few running at that rate it's still high.

So, the question remains, even if you DO have VC money, what role should SEM play in the context of a content driven website?

The Career Road Less Traveled

I'm going through a soul-searching process to identify whether or not I can comfortably move forward in my career without a career path.  I majored in accounting, got my CPA and realized that I just wasn't to passionate about being an accountant.

Now, I could certainly tow the yoke and continue to walk the financial route, heck lots of people do it.  If I did that, there are all types of nice, safe paths I can take with clear paths for advancement (some of which I've already walked).  And as a father, sometimes I feel like it's the decision I "should" make.

But I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm just not wired that way.

However, I've been hired for several engagements recently that use some of my best skills.  Comparatively, the work is more...satisfying I guess, primarily because I always perform, I'm very well suited to the work.  The challenge is that most of the paths from these engagements don't have a clear progression and are loaded with uncertainty.

I'm really leaning towards uncertainty and it admittedly produces some unusual moments.  For example, today while watching You, Me and Dupree (God help me), I wondered if I could ever go in front of my daughter's classmates on career day and talk about what I do.  (BTW, you know you are going deep into soul searching when your guides in include Owen Wilson and Matt Dillon....)

What do I really do?  In essence, I make the complex simple.  It's where I shine most working with start-up CEO's when presenting to investors, writing business plans, building financial models, designing online strategies, etc.

Alas, there is no Department of Simplicity at any big companies I know so I can't walk that path.

But it feels more and more like I'm at another crossroad and I'm sensing that I'm meant to try this career road less traveled and (paraphrasing my man Robert Frost) I'm hoping that it will make all the difference.

Loving what I do and who I do it with

I recently left a company that had pretty much the best group of people I've ever worked with.  I don't think that I've ever worked for a company where I have genuinely liked virtually everyone I met and worked with.  I only hope that any of you will have the experience that I did.  The company has issues like any other, but I found the people are not it and that's unusual.

Now the tricky part was I wasn't particularly passionate about what I was doing.  What can you do?

I do have to share that my wonderful boss actually gave me the opportunity to try something COMPLETELY different that I expressed some interest in learning about.  It's worth noting that many bosses would say tough and give you no help, but mine did.  This (among many other things) is why I am very loyal to my former boss and the company.  It is a unique example of a company that lives its core values in my experience.

Ultimately I decided to leave.  My last day at the company, as I went around to say goodbye to a number of people, I actually cried.  I knew I would (and really do) sincerely miss them.  And I know that over the last year I grew more as a professional and a man as perhaps any year of my life.

For the time being I'm back to working for myself full time (I kept my consulting up, moonlighting while I was there, a good call in retrospect) and am finding my work to be more rewarding and invigorating.  I LOVE pitching in with really early stage start-ups and making a difference.  You get a chance to do a lot of different things when you prove you can add value.

So I REALLY like what I'm doing (I'm not ready to drop the other L-bomb just yet) and for now I mostly do it with.....myself.  I'm sort of half-kidding when I say that perhaps this is another opportunity to learn to love myself.  What better way to learn if I can handle myself than to be with myself virtually full time for a while?

One thing I took from my former company was the simple rule when hiring "No Jerks, No Idiots".  Directness can be beautiful, can't it?  I'll apply the same rule to who I work with as a consultant. 

I just hope that as a self-employed person that I can pass that test myself on a daily basis.  :)

Homestead gets bought by Intuit

Yesterday I learned that the company I work for, Homestead Technologies, got bought by Intuit for $170 Million.  I started working here in January and wrote about how I feel about the company and our people.  I still feel the same way.

It made me very happy to see good, nice people, like all the ones that work here at Homestead get rewarded for their efforts.  Justin Kitch, the CEO, in particular sets a really interesting cultural tone for the company.  For me it manifests in that I like everyone who works here and there are virtually no office politics (which I've NEVER encountered at other places I've worked, there's always some kind of politics).  You can see what Justin wrote about the acquisition here in his blog post.

One thing that also appears positive is that there is a cultural fit between the two companies.  The Intuit folks that I have met or know have a vibe that is congruent with the vibe of Homestead folks.  The cultural fit is an often overlooked but critically important to the long term success and sustainability of the merger.

I think the acquisition by Intuit is a game changer for our company.  I think their financial and operational muscle along with their proven, successful track record of attracting customers will be a boon for our company and ultimately be a win for everyone involved.

Wide vs. Deep: One Programmer's take on business

A friend of mine from work pointed me to a fascinating blog post about the complexity of turning a happy, productive, introverted programmer (which probably encompasses about 90% of programmers that I've ever met) into a slightly less happy, probably much less productive, begrudgingly sort of extroverted manager and back and forth and back.

The concept of a highly valued individual contributor is one that is hard to implement and reward I've learned.  I love the way he describes part of that dilemma:

Some people are naturally wide, some people are naturally deep. But the assumption is, in most business contexts, that you can — and should want to — jump between the two as the need or situation dictates. But this is a load of crap

One of the many things I love about the blogosphere is that any one of us can come up with something that is insightful and meaningful.  It often depends on the frame of reference of the reader.

Working amongst a large group of programmers this post hits it right on the head and I love it when writings like this one find me.

Keeping 9-11 alive...unfortunately

I purchased an airline ticket the other day and noticed that there is a 9-11 security tax.  How's that for a great way to keep that terrible event in our consciousness.  I think it's odd that we are interested in perpetuating it.

I also remember hearing a quote from some politician on 9-11 saying that he would make sure we would never forget about 9-11. 

I suggest this with all due respect:  Aren't we supposed to let stuff go?

Yes, it's still a little challenging for me to consider the families who lost loved ones in that senseless act.  But when we refer to it in a tax or ensure that "we'll never forget it" aren't we ensuring that we'll perpetuate the fear and hatred from the act?

I suppose that's in someone's best interests, I just don't know who.  I wonder if that 9-11 security tax is what pays for all of the new security codes and colors and checkers that have been implemented that still seem to be missing the key security point.

And isn't it SO ironic that this "tax" is implemented and transacted upon at the most vulnerable time possible?  It's like we won't show an airplane crash movie during the flight but we're happy to bring up one of the scariest scenarios of all during the flight purchase.

Regardless, I will still have to arrive 2 hours in advance to fly from SF to LA (real high risk flight) with my daughter who is six and take off our shoes and lose our 6 ounce plus bottles (like her detangler) because we might be the ones!  And so it goes.