Category Archives: Business

If it was easy everyone would…

November 5, 2014 6:50 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been getting an education these last couple of months into some of the inner workings of real estate and banking.  I have a real estate side project that has finally begun to get going after being stalled out for a couple of months.

Sure it looked simple and easy in my head.  Just sign a couple forms, a little paperwork, and suddenly all your plans will move ahead and before you know it you’ll be a real estate tycoon.

HA!

I thought some of the terminology in my line of work was esoteric.  Well.  It is.  But it turns out to be nothing compared to all the terminology used in the real estate game.  More than once I walked out of my realtor’s office with my head spinning from all these new terms that my realtor was throwing out at me.

Then there was the lovely business of securing a home equity loan.  Bouncing back and forth between lenders till I had them pinned down to their final and best offers.  Free hint.  They will never give you the best offer on the first go round.

Never.

Then you have to let go of one lender and they react as if you’re breaking up with them.  Not fun.

Then of course the reams of paperwork at the title office attesting to this that and the other thing.  Everything copied, notarized and duly delivered.  I sign and initial here, there, and everywhere.  In the back of my head a quote from the play Faust keeps repeating over and over.

“did we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?”

So finally it’s all in and now the fun part starts, right?  Now comes haggling with property owners, finagling with contractors, paying for a dozen little items here and there that you hadn’t considered.  Crossing your fingers that you find a tenant.  Doubly crossing your fingers you find a tenant that won’t wreck the place.

No, not that simple.  But is it worthwhile?  Ultimately only time will tell but I think it’s something I had to do and I wouldn’t have done it if I had not thought it wouldn’t succeed.

My hope for this first time out (besides the hope of making money) is that I will be better prepared for the next time that I do this and better mentally armored for this type of business.

 

Posted in: business, opportunities, thought, work

do your homework

September 30, 2014 6:18 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I find that when people complain about things at work going badly or not turning out the way that they expected it’s due to a lack of focus on fundamentals.

One production guy that used to work with me always complained that he was constantly behind and that he didn’t understand certain procedures or how the rest of the company did things.  I pointed out that he never took the time to do the extra reading and work necessary to keep up.

No matter what industry or specialty you are in one thing that is for certain is that things won’t stay the same.  Someone, somewhere will introduce changes, improvements, or just make what you do obsolete.  If you don’t put in the extra effort you will find yourself slowly losing ground till one day you’re totally out of touch.

Most people don’t get to that point of course but they do slack off from time to time and find themselves behind the curve.

Not only does this apply to work and business but I have found that it applies equally will to other facets of life such as books, movies, music, and culture in general.

We should all strive to keep up to date and spend extra time keeping up.  Now obviously everyone is different and we all have different priorities so you may want to keep an eye on one thing or a few things and let others slip from time to time.

Cancel one night out with friends or a night watching TV and catch up on your vital reading, research something you’re not too good at and see how others are doing it.  Find out something about current trends and what’s going on.  If you’re an artist or an athlete or do something physical take some time off and work on some of the fundamentals of your craft.

The main point is though that life doesn’t sit still and neither should you.

Posted in: business, standards and practices, work

rhythms of business

September 26, 2014 6:15 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Every aspect of life has rhythms and cycles that are evident if you think about them.  Even business has these cycles that run throughout the year and throughout the life cycle of a project.  The savvy individual will learn to follow and interpret these signs much like a hunter seek out and follow a herd of animals looking to pick off their own fair share.

This time of year is my favorite for more reasons than the cooling weather and colorful leaves.  End of the year budget spending.  That special moment when a department or project has excess funds and needs to spend them before the fiscal year ends.  Pet projects and extras are purchased and possible future work is arranged.  It’s something that comes round every year round this time.  Sales folk like me wait with bated breath hoping some big corporations have something left over.

Timing is crucial.  You don’t want to start pestering too early and become a nuisance but it is crucial that you are among the first to approach them. Keeping your ear to the ground and communicating with their personnel is vital.  Not just to see what projects are going that directly affect you but other projects that they are doing.  Maybe you can suggest some solutions that don’t involve you but benefit them.  Evolve that relationship.

Customize your pitch to match their needs.  Don’t just come out with a cookie cutter approach.  Ask questions and refine your product or service to meet their needs and most important to meet their budget.  You may not score a big victory but a small project now may lead to something big.

Work with your team.  It doesn’t matter who scores the contract as long as all your company benefits.

Be gracious if it doesn’t work out.  Maybe not this time but surely next time.  If however you’re not gracious then there may not be a next time.  Above all things, think of the relationship.

Remember this is not a singular event or just something that happens once.  Next year the same thing will happen and you want to lay the ground work for future success.

Posted in: business, plans, sales

The mobile revolution

September 6, 2014 6:42 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We’re getting there. This time it’s not just some wishful thinking or cheerleading on my part. The days that we were bound to a desktop or even a laptop to be productive are coming to an end.

But what will take their place then?  Difficult to say really. If one were to be taking bets back in the late 70s as to what the workplace of the 2010s would look like I would hazard to guess that no one would assume that the office typing pool would have disappeared or that the vast rooms filled with filing cabinets would give way to mainframes that would store magnitudes more data than they ever could. We were simply not ready to imagine this back then.

Will we ever be free of the physical office space?  I rather doubt it. Humans have a need for personal contact that no computer camera or office meeting software can provide.

Certainly the software and hardware aspects will become moot points in the discussion within the next 5 to 10 years. I am in fact typing this out on my smartphone and although it is a bit awkward, the auto-correct works well and the hardware can handle most of the productivity software on the market.  I could, in a pinch, work like this for an extended period of time.  Wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing, but it could be done.

I imagine with speech recognition and advanced touchscreen controls that we could make the experience less cumbersome and much more user friendly.

No, I think that the main argument will center round how can we leverage the producers of content and product. Does increasing a person’s personal comfort equate to higher returns or do producers need to have an overseer or peers to boost their performance.

Will we one day return to the old office model just from a need to bond with others? Who can say for certain.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: business, future, speculation

hectic holiday aftermath

September 2, 2014 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I love being lazy.

At least I used to.  Holidays, not vacations mind you but short one or two-day holidays, were opportunities to do nothing and to take delight in just being. I could linger in bed sometimes up to 11 in the morning sleeping, reading, or watching TV.  Once I discovered online games I could stay in my PJ’s till 3 or 4 in the afternoon sitting in front of my desktop involved in some online adventure.

But not anymore.  Holidays now mean extra work on the day back or work during the holiday to keep things from piling up on the day I return.  Even though I’m out of the office, my overseas customers aren’t.  Even my clients in the US expect to have replies to their queries and to pick up the threads of a deal from before the holiday immediately.

How was I able to ignore this for so long?  One answer is that I didn’t use to have so many responsibilities.  I’ve inherited or created responsibilities over the years and I know from experience how work piles up if I just let these sit till I’m back in the office.

My method of dealing with this backlog has changed over time.  I used to do some “pre-work” and address some issues before I left the office before the holiday.  A sort of pre-emptive strike.  But half the time the situation would change over the weekend and I just created more work for myself.

What I’ve switched to now is to doing little bits of work over the holiday.  I telecommute so my office is with me at home.  Since I’m always up before dawn I do some light office work.  I chase down old leads and contacts with emails, I update sales spreadsheets, I clean out directories and old files.  Things that need doing but aren’t heavy-duty work.  I also peruse the email traffic that’s come in during the holiday so I don’t get any nasty surprises when “I return”.

I swear I’m not a workaholic.  If anything this is my way of not having to work harder.  I think it’s a great way to keep the work load down and to use time that I might normally waste.

 

Posted in: business, holidays, work

please yourself

July 26, 2014 6:29 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was talking with an acquaintance the other day about various money-making schemes (and lets face it, who doesn’t need a little more extra money these days).  We were bouncing ideas off each other and she told me about the latest thing she was thinking about doing.  A friend wanted her to invest in his start-up manufacturing venture.  She showed me a video and a presentation that her friend put together.

After hearing the details I was not impressed.   The risk was high and the return on her investment wasn’t all that great and would take a couple of years to materialize.  So I told her so.  She wasn’t dissuaded and said she would probably invest in this.

But it was her decision.  All I could do is give my honest opinion.  Fingers crossed that I was wrong.

The thing is though that ultimately it was her money and her decision to make.  I’ve run into similar situations in the past where people try to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do and don’t offer any material support.  Back in college one of my friends had a rich relative that told him not to go to engineering college but instead apply to business school.  This relative didn’t offer any financial support of any kind but insisted business school was the best option.  My friend financed himself through engineering school and now works for a large corporation.

Opinions and advice are all great and always welcome but you need to keep in mind that when it comes down to it, that’s all that they are.  You have to do what you think is right and of course either reap the benefits or consequences.

I wish my friend all the best luck in the world and I hope I was wrong.  But I also applaud her for following her convictions.

Posted in: attitude, business

but the forest IS made of trees!

July 20, 2014 6:52 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“All politics is local”

“You don’t see the big picture”

“Won the battle but lost the war”

All phrases meant to explain our disconnect from viewing situations without respect to scale.  To one degree or another we are all guilty of this at some point in our lives.  We sometimes obsess so much on a particular detail or we look at the overall picture and forget to address  particular details and suddenly everything goes wrong.

Some examples?

Back when I used to be in production I would sometimes become so obsessed with some part of a map.  I would go over and over and over it so many times that I would lose track of time and suddenly I would find myself behind schedule.

And of course the opposite is also true.  You can create the best possible product and do your utmost to create something fantastic and suddenly one little hiccup and one little wrong or missing detail destroys days, weeks, or even months of precious work.

So how to balance this out?  I don’t think it’s so much  matter of striking a balance between being detail oriented and being aware of the broader perspective.  Neither of these is really a negative quality to have in your work.  Being detailed oriented makes your work precise and comprehensive.  Having a broader perspective let’s you keep an eye on what you are trying to accomplish.

Rather, I think it’s a matter of doing both but adding a third dimension to your work.  An independent arbiter in your mind that will look at the project objectively and step in when needed to make the necessary adjustments.  Quality control is often derided as a fussy and unproductive part of the work cycle and it is never appreciated until it’s missing in the final product.

A good dose of quality control will be an important facet of your work in the long run and give you a reputation among your peers as someone who can handle highly complex projects on time and with an eye for meticulous detail.

 

 

Posted in: business, career, work

interesting times

June 16, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last year I was interviewed over the phone for a piece in The Atlantic magazine.  The topic of this unexpected interview was a new company called Skybox.  They had a plan to place into orbit a string of low-cost observation satellites all around the world and to provide almost continuous image coverage over all the major cities of the world.

I should probably first explain that I have been in the remote sensing industry for the past 20 years.  I have been around since the time that 9-track tapes were state of the art and from the time that satellite images were being delivered as film negatives.  My career has taken place as the industry as a whole has seen ups and downs and has been rocked by takeovers and acquisitions.  One company that I have worked with has been taken over and renamed 4 times during my career.  So I’m not exactly  newcomer to this field.

People in business and government as well as private individuals have dreamed of or dreaded the idea of having a satellite overhead watching your every move for decades.  However it has been a fantasy for most of this time.  The technical hurdles were and to some degree still are quite daunting.  Satellites have to be in low orbit to get the level of detail you want but that means that they don’t stay overhead all the time.  This means that they can’t be watching your every move all the time.  You would need several satellite working together to do something like that.

But what really trips up this concept is the lack of ready capital.  Satellites have been the cutting edge of technical innovation for decades.  Components were custom-made for just one satellite and made to fine tolerances.  Entire new disciplines and programming languages had to be developed to make satellites work.  This of course required extremely well-educated and capable engineers and scientists to work with expensive production processes and as a consequence trying to put up a satellite usually depended on having a major corporation or often a large government to foot the bills.

Just the act up putting a satellite, really putting anything into orbit, was and still is extremely high.  On average it is about $10,000 per pound.  Normal observation satellites weigh tons.  Rockets can and do blow up, a tiny circuit can fail and render your satellite useless, a bit of space junk can crash into it.  The task of getting permission to launch something into orbit from a government is difficult in and of itself.  Overall it’s no easy or cheap task.

Skybox did a couple of clever things.  Borrowing from the NASA FBC (faster, better, cheaper) concept of the early 1990s, they created systems that were cheaper than the norm.  By using off the shelf technology and cutting down on many components that would be normally found on satellites they have designed a satellite that is around 100 kilograms and is the size of a small refrigerator.  A normal satellite would weigh tons and be the size of a car.

Still, the costs of launching just this small satellite were a stumbling block.  The second thing that Skybox did that was clever was that rather than trying to go for launching the entire system at one time they decided to do a proof of concept model.

Last year Skybox managed to raise some capital and launch one satellite into orbit (SkySat-1).  The satellite successfully deployed and relayed back images.  Not the best of images from a satellite but images nonetheless.  This proof of concept launch was enough to encourage Google to acquire the company for $500 million.

The acquisition is a perfect fit for Google’s mapping applications.  If implemented correctly it would mean that they can update any outdated map information pretty much on demand.  Road construction closures, new subdivisions, large outdoor gatherings could all be updated when and if the Google programmers wanted them to be.  This along with the aerial drones that Google intends to deploy gives them a potentially crushing edge over Apple in the mapping arena.

In addition to their own mapping revenue there will be the private and government markets that for a long time were ruled by aircraft companies and a small number of satellite companies that mainly did government contract work.

Now mind you this is all still a fairly long way off.  The whole scheme rests on the ability of Skybox to put into orbit entire squadrons of these tiny satellites and have them working in concert to provide coverage all around the globe.  Even Google will be hard pressed to provide the capital to do this but if anyone has the money to pull this off it’s them.  Of course after that they will have to maintain the chain of satellites, replace them as needed, and of course to manage the unimaginable amount of data streaming down from the satellites.  All huge technical challenges but with rich rewards.

This will also potentially bring about changes in my life.  With a centralized source of image data flowing out to clients from a ubiquitous single source this could mean the end or at the very least a radical change in my job.  I have worked in a fairly specialized and obscure field for the last 20 years and suddenly it looks like it may become fairly accessible and commonplace.

Interesting times indeed.

Posted in: business, career, technology , Tagged: , , ,

How to get and keep business

May 19, 2014 6:32 AM , Leave a Comment ,

If you only rely on old steady customers to keep your business going then you won’t be able to expand or grow.  Conversely if you only get new clients all the time and only do single projects for them then you’re really not fulfilling their needs and once the project is done they will go elsewhere.

Getting new business in the door and keeping existing clients happy and coming back for more is a huge part of sales and customer service and one of the keys to making your company successful.

You have to go beyond just selling your product or service and really becoming an adjunct to your client’s success.  Becoming that “go to” resource in your field is a huge compliment and will keep you in the thoughts of your client long after the project is finished.

But how do you connect with a potential client?  Firstly by answering their inquiry.  Astonishing but true, there are salespeople out there that ignore client requests.  A good example was when I first started working out, I gave my number to a gym staff person and they passed it on to a trainer.  2 weeks later and nothing.  I went back and verified that my phone number had been shared but the trainer never called back.  Something very basic but ignored is that you have to accommodate yourself to your client’s time table and if they come to you with an inquiry that timetable is now.

Next you need to listen to what the client wants, expects, and needs.  Three very different things.

The client wants what they think will solve their problem.  They may or may not have a good grasp of what that is.  They may get good or bad advice as to what to get.  You need to listen to them first to see what their frame of reference is.

They expect that whatever it is you sell will be a “turnkey solution”, something that will be easy to incorporate into their project and as foolproof as possible.

What they need from you is for you to use your knowledge and expertise to bridge the gap and give them your expert advice as to what you can provide and how that product or service will make their life a lot simpler and get their project off and running.

Once you have made the sale, your job isn’t finished.  You have to tell the production team what you’ve sold, what the client’s level of expertise is, and you need to discuss the client with the production or account manager.  Is the client an easy-going individual?  An exacting taskmaster? Do they have special requirements or needs that have to be met?  What sort of time line are they working on?

Here you enter a new phase in the sales process.  Maintaining the client.  Making sure that they’re satisfied with the end product and interacting with them to see if this met their expectations and needs.  You can’t just walk away after the sale.  This isn’t a grocery store or a fast food joint.  If you expect to have that client return when they need your product or service then you need to make that client think of you and only you when the need arises again in the future.

Becoming that go to person is hard work and it does take a lot of effort but ultimately this is the key to growing and expanding your footprint in whatever field that you’re in.

Posted in: business, sales

different worlds

April 23, 2014 6:39 AM , 2 Comments ,

I took another step into the social media world the other day.  I joined LinkedIn.  I can’t say that I did so willingly or enthusiastically. I’ve known about LinkedIn for quite a while but I’ve resisted joining for my own reasons.

The whole thing was precipitated by a serious inquiry that came into our website.  The client wanted to connect through LinkedIn.  Normally other people in the office would deal with this but they were busy so it fell to me and I had to register to begin the conversation.  The first thing that struck me is that I have never had anything to do with LinkedIn and yet I had over 200 connection requests already waiting for me.  What’s more LinkedIn wanted to take a peek into my mail contacts and social contacts to add more people.  I bypassed this option and cropped through the requests taking only the ones that looked familiar and ignoring the rest for now.

Some people might find it odd that I want to keep my professional and social lives apart but to me they have little intersection.  My professional life deals with many technical subjects that my friends and family don’t really know all that much about.  On the work side, the people who I deal with are mainly consummate professionals.   They eat, breathe, and sleep their jobs and don’t really like to share their home life.  In some cases I don’t really know anything about them.

To me social media has always been a more private affair that dealt with my life outside of work.  Something that was for family and friends.  To my peers I am someone who is interested in movies, writing, science fiction, and various other things.  To my co-workers and business contacts I am the guy that provides them reliable service and advice.

The only intersection between the two worlds is me.

So how will this play out in the long run?  My aim is to try to keep these worlds separate as much as possible.  I know that the two sides can be successfully integrated and can even enhance each other in some ways.  But I value my home life and I feel a line has to be drawn between the two.

Posted in: business, culture, life in general, relationships, social media