milliondare.com

So as I continue to work on launching my newest “venture” (which means I’ve put a few days of work and ~$200 bucks to get it started) I keep talking to people about it, trying to get ideas and get some feedback on the viability of the model.

What’s really interesting to me though, is that NOBODY has actually offered to help. Nobody has said “hey, do you need help in creating this?” or “are you looking for a partner to fund the site?”

I’ve gotten at least 3 people involved in one way or another - whether looking at the site or actually talking about the details - and not one of them has shown some interest. Perhaps it could be because I would be the owner and they wouldn’t have a say on what goes on. But, honestly, if that was the issue, why not be candid about it and say “If I help, are we 50-50?”

I’m really curious as to why people haven’t shown interest. Is the idea not good enough? Are people not self motivated enough to want to do it? Did the guys at Google told people what they were doing and nobody offered to help them?

Curious to hear what you think about this, so drop a comment.

We’ve been interviewing a few people to fill out an opening in my company and I’ve been thinking of a few things I would change from the way the candidates interacted with me to give them a better chance of getting the job.

Here are a few tips that might come handy if you’re new to the whole interviewing process:

Do:
• Research where you’ll be working. You should know this one from Interviewing 101, but please, research thoroughly.

Don’t:
• If you research thoroughly you’re bound to have questions – legitimate questions. Don’t ask generic questions to inflate my ego. Questions like “what is the most challenging thing you’ve ever done at your company” are a tad annoying, generic, and give me a sense that you don’t have a deeply rooted interest in the job or company.

Do:
• Ask questions. Smart questions (see above). Remember this: He/She who asks the questions controls the conversation. It’s not the person speaking (like we typically think it is) but the one asking the questions.

Don’t:
• Be afraid of talking about yourself. If you are a bad cultural fit you’re probably better off somewhere else.

Do:
• Send a “Thank you” e-mail

Don’t:
• Wait 24 hours. Discussions about you might take place right after you interview, so you want to be top of mind for the people you interviewed with.

Do:
• Bring you’re A-game on your salesmanship. Be passionate, project yourself, project your energy and enthusiasm. Drink a few Red Bulls if you need a boost, but please, show me that you’re interested.

Don’t:
• Be passive. Don’t just “sit” there. Don’t just go through the motions – you need to show that you care.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should allow you to focus on a key few differentiators that can tip the scale in your direction.

I’m a strong buy on:

AAPL
GOOG
NTDOY

I’ll save you the sermon. You’re welcome, Cramer.

From the Boston Globe:

“It’s much easier to obtain real estate and get things done. If today I signed a franchise agreement with someone to build a freestanding store here, it would take almost 18 months. Ten years ago, that was 12 months. Over in China, it’ll take 12 minutes. It’s a very different world. I went to the grand opening of the first store in Taiwan earlier this year. We did $62,000 the first week. Our average US store does $20,000 per week. Now it’s settled down to $32,000. But it’s huge volumes.”

So about $1.04 million per outlet. If we assume they are open for about 15 hours a day (6AM to 9PM) 7 days a week, that would average $190 per hour. If the average ticket was $ then there would be X many people walking in and out:

• $2 bucks = 95 people an hour
• $3 bucks = 63 people an hour
• $4 bucks = 48 people an hour
• $5 bucks 38 people an hour

Interesting, yes?

What could all this information be useful for?

I’ll give you my take over the next few days.

Is Stop and Shop changing their logo? I would much rather they:

• Train their employees
• Have more employees per store
• Improve store conditions
• Improve out-of-stocks
• Improve their pricing competitiveness

Once you do that, Stop & Shop, you can do whatever you want to your pretty colors. Here’s one of the logos:

Want to see all the new logos? Check them out at Retail Powerhouse

Summer time in Boston: Hot and disgustingly humid. Everybody complains from time to time, but I think my whining is slightly more legit and grounded given that I spent about 18 years of my life south of the border in a place where 110 degree days are not uncommon and that seemed like a piece of cake compared to this.

Regardless of the weather, I like to drink hot coffee in the mornings, and I get my fix at Dunkin Donuts here , since it’s right by my work.

The thing that really bothers me though is that they give you these crappy plastic cups with a flat lid. Other DD’s you get the typical styrofoam with the tall cap.

Are they not getting the styrofoam because they are more expensive? And if that’s the case, is it really worth saving a few cents at the expense of ultimately giving your customers a better product?

Not sure that it is or that it is not - that’s not my call to make. What I do know is that we are on a new business era where given the vast amount of choices that consumers have retailers can’t really afford to lose individual customers by saving a few cents on a plastic cup.

At $1.80 for a cup of Joe Dunkin Donuts has lost today a potential $432 dollars in future sales from this (ex)loyal customer unless I can get a styrofoam cup with a tall cap.

An interesting tidbit I ran into today that puts into perspective the fact that Apple just sold their 3,000,000,000th song on iTunes today (you’re welcome, Apple) and how much money that really means for everybody but Apple themselves.

Typically, Apple collects 99 cents each time an iPod owner downloads a song, with the company paying 70 cents of that amount to the recording label. The recording label, in turn, then typically pays 9.1 cents to the music publisher.

So, to make $1 million if you were an artist selling your music on iTunes exclusively (and assuming you get the same deal A list musicians get), you would have to sell 10,989,011 songs.

Good thing I never quit my day job.

Well, they’re not really dying or anything like that, nor do I wish any harm to the company whatsoever. But today I read an article regarding how AT&T is planning on making the Cingular brand disappear and instead replace it with all AT&T paraphernalia.

Why is this bad?

It isn’t bad per se. The company is calculating it might save about $2 billion dollars, net present value. But when you do things like that you alienate a lot of your customers. People that grew up with the orange looking funky stores with upbeat ads that drove you inside the store will not see that anymore. I’m not sure the AT&T blue has quite the same effect, but I sure hope they’re able to smooth out the transition.

When companies centralize (or integrate, or standardized) some of their operations, they tend to forget that it is more important to put customers first, and the company’s own marketing budgets second.

I just hope AT&T doesn’t loose touch with customers the way many other companies have in the past after doing what they’re doing. They seem to want to fade the brand away slowly, and I sure hope they do it that way, otherwise we might be facing some challenging times to come for AT&T.

Why can’t Anna’s Taqueria accept credit cards? (Those of you in the Boston area know what I’m talking about… rest of the world, bare with me)

I live within walking distance of Anna’s Taqueria, a very famous burrito place here in Boston. Yet, I usually walk for more than 7 minutes to go to Boca Grande (Anna’s competitor)

Anna’s doesn’t take credit cards. Why can’t they just provide the service and charge me a fee every time I use a card? Instead, I have to go across the street to an ATM, pay a $1.75 fee to withdraw money, and then go back to Anna’s.

Here’s a news flash for all you business out there who don’t put customers first: We have a choice, and we’re not stupid. We will drop your business if you don’t put our needs first.

I’ve been thinking about this one for a few days now. Am I an entrepreneur? Who is an entrepreneur? What makes an entrepreneur?
Obviously, people who have started their own businesses and have established companies are entrepreneurs. But is the girl with the lemonade stand an entrepreneur? If yes, is she only an entrepreneur while she’s at her stand selling lemonade, or is she an entrepreneur when she goes home at night? Here is a definition for entrepreneur:

S: (n) entrepreneur, enterpriser (someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it)

What difference does it make, you might ask. I don’t think it makes any. But when I think about my website (which nets me about $2000 a year), does that make me an entrepreneur?

“Hi, my name is Aaron. I am an entrepreneur”

Does it? I feel like I meet a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs, but don’t really have anything that makes them entrepreneurs. Then again, I’m not really sure what an entrepreneur is.
If you are a real entrepreneur, do you care that other people call themselves one? And if you’re not, why do you think of yourself as an entrepreneur then?

What makes an entrepreneur?

Reading an article today on the WSJ about the so-called ‘success’ of Coke Zero (a diet-soda that more closely replicates the flavor of the original Coca Cola) I had a flashback to a few years back when the company launched a product called C2 (which basically was hybrid of Diet and regular Coke – half the carbs and calories of a regular soda, remember?)

Back then I was still in college and highly addicted to regular soda (still am, but it’s Diet this time) I thought it would be a good compromise to test the new C2 (more taste, half the calories, I thought)

Well, soon enough I realized that even though I had plenty of soda at home, whenever I went out to a restaurant I couldn’t get a C2 for the life of me.

“Do you want Coke, or Diet Coke? Uhm, can you make that half and half, like the C2 I buy at the supermarket store but I can’t get anywhere else?”

Many brands don’t follow through.  A brand is a promise that needs to be fulfilled in three ways:

• Prior to purchase: advertising, internet, TV, magazines – you name it
• During purchase:  The in-store experience when you realize your supermarket is out of your favorite cereal
• Post purchase:  When you get home and unwrap your newly purchased $5,000 plasma TV and realize it doesn’t come with a $20 cable that you need to plug in your DVD.

How could I have become a loyal customer to the C2 brand if they didn’t offer an in-store (during purchase) experience?

There is a simple lesson to be learned from that for everyone out there.  It doesn’t matter what your product is  (a  multi-billion dollar brand  or a blog that gets read  by a few people) If you want your brand to fulfill a promise, please, just make sure you follow through.

• Sharing is good.  Ever heard of 1+1 = 3?  The math is simple: My idea + You Idea = A third (combined) idea.  Cris gave me tons of great recommendations that I might have not thought of by myself. 
• Do it early.  I got lucky and my idea seems to be sort of on track, but if I thought about some things Cris talked about I might have been able to better utilize the freelance I hired.
• Bring a notepad.  We spoke about lots of things.  Cris smartly brought some Post it notes which came VERY handy. If you don’t bring a notepad, meet at a restaurant/coffee shop.  Why? They have napkins.  Use those as note pads
• Sort your ideas beforehand.  Granted, a lot of times you meet to brainstorm, but you can be a lot more efficient if you sort your thoughts ahead of time. .

Hopefully we’ll have another one of these once the prototype is up and running, which should be within the next few days.

Here’s the deal: I’m going to share some of my AdSense and Analytics data from my website with you.

Why? I need your help and ideas to improve my business.

Here’s a snapshot of what my Google Analytics looked like this week:

That doesn’t tell us much now, does it?

This is what my page impressions and clicks have looked like for the past 13 months since I opened my website:

As you can see, I’ve added some trend lines with Excel (being an Economist I should know better, but this helps for illustration purposes)

And now for some earnings through AdSense:

Based on this information alone, what would you do different? Can you see the trend of how things are beginning to slow down?

In my next post I will address some of the things I’ve done over the past few months to try to capture more readers. In the meantime I’d be very curious to know what your recommendations are.

You know how you can set up alarms on your phone to remind you of doing things like picking up your laundry from the cleaners, or paying your bills on time, or taking your medicine?

Well, I think there should be a way of doing it faster.

If you write an SMS to a number you should be able to input stuff like hour, date, and type of reminder (SMS, call, e-mail, call a third person)

How cool would that be?

Your mom knows you’ll forget your cousin’s birthday.  She text messages that  you should be reminded by X day.  So you are. You call your cousin and you are the hero of the story.

Entrepreneurship is all about finding opportunities where other people see trouble.

Take a look at the images below.

Pretty interesting article with the CEO of Netflix which has this little chart as an add-on: 5 movies that the CEO of Netflix recommends as having leadership lessons. I know this is the second time that I’ve talked about Netflix- I’m not particularly obsessed with them but they’ve just been coming up a lot lately!

Hastings’ prediction from the article:

“We’re sure that we’re going to be buying cars in 25 years, whereas renting DVDs through the mail in 25 years? For sure that’s not going to exist.”  Do you agree with that?

Check out the chart after the break…

I have been looking on 3 different sites for a programmer to help me embark on my newest idea for a new site. I ended up working with somebody from Kathmandu, in Nepal. More learnings thus far:

• I can’t emphasize enough: be precise. I’ve been pretty loose on some of my instructions and it only creates uncertainty for both the programmer and myself. Give detailed instructions!
• Be patient. I’ve gotten a few offers from other people who seemed to have a really good grasp on what I was looking for, but I went for the first person that I thought would be best, disregarding the others. It’s better to wait a few days/weeks until you have evaluated all options.
• Time zones matter. I go to bed at midnight and they start their day at midnight. Not ideal for communicating. Are you prepared to deal with this?

Lots of good things will hopefully come out from this relationship and I look forward to being able to work closely with the programmer. It’s an interesting project and I will keep you updated on any happenings.

Happy Monday, Olga!

I’m currently trying to outsource the programming of a new Web 2.0 site I have in mind. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Learnings so far:

• Make a clear, concise proposal. Not 2-3 lines. A few pages explaining in detail what you need to get accomplished (timeframe, money you’re willing to spend)
• If you don’t do this, you’ll have to explain over and over your project to every person that bids on it. Waste of time!
• It’s probably better to do several smaller projects that one huge project. I want so many features that I go on a tangent. Be concise, be brief.
• Simple English. These people are very talented and smart, but they are not acquainted with many of the colloquialisms that we use day in and day out. Be concise, be brief.
  
• Be realistic. If it’s a project that takes 100 hours and you want to get it done in 10, it’s probably not going to happen.

By the way, any people out there have come up with an idea and reach out to VCs before it was even up and running? Or did you have the skeleton up first and then reached out?

I’m constantly coming up with weird ideas about things I’d be willing to spend money on but I haven’t seen readily available in the market.

For that reason, every Friday from now on I will share the wacky/crazy idea of the week with you so we can start a discussion on the pros/cons or future opportunities for whatever it is I’m thinking.

Business idea: Why can’t laundry machines text message you when your laundry is done, or when one of the washer/dryer is done?

I know I’m always frustrated when they are all taken - and sometimes they don’t have a meter to tell you how long they have left. Ideally, you’d get a TXT message telling you when they are about to be done so that you can put yours right on time.

Do you think this could work?

I’m a Blockbuster member and I haven’t rented a movie in more than a year. I live within walking distance of the store, and walk by it every other day, and yet, I still continue to get my movies through Netflix.

What puzzles me is that Blockbuster knows where I live. They have my email address. They know (if they look through their system) that I haven’t been renting movies in over a year. And yet, they haven’t sent me an email. They haven’t called me. They haven’t done ANYTHING to win my business back. Yet, they have all the data they need to be able to know what they issue at stake is, and one year later, I still haven’t shopped their store.

Netflix, on the other hand, keeps sending me emails to my old email account to which I subscribed to their service once. ‘We want you back’ they told me once. We know you were here, why don’t you come back? So simple. Just send an email. Pick up the phone and give me a call, Blockbuster. I might just come back if you were smart enough to utilize the terabytes of data you have in your system.

What other uses of day-to-day data are out there that are not being utilized by businesses? Can you bridge the gap? If you can, then you have yourself a multi billion dollar business.