Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

By now you’ve surely heard the assessment of the US economy from the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke which was basically a two hour oration summed up best in these words: “We’re fucked.” Not to be outdone, Captain Chokes On Pretzels wasn’t far behind to join in by saying he plans to beg congress for more money for a stimulus package that (quoting Henry Paulson, another overcompensated banker):

“What he believes is that we’ve got to do something that is robust. It’s going to be temporary and get money into the economy quickly. It’s going to be focused on consumers, individuals, families — putting money in their pocket. And it’s going to be focused on giving businesses the incentive to hire people, to create jobs.”

Now, I hope you endulge me for a moment.

For a second, suspend your disbelief, assume that some 29 year old with a business/engineering degree from a fine school (by NCAA standards) can get into an argument with the guys that got their PhD’s in economics by writing lengthy useless papers on the economic expansion of third world kingdoms that discovered oil.

Allow me to translate what these guys are planning:

“ We have about ten months until this is no longer our problem. So, let’s do a quick fix and hope nobody notices.

Let’s give people more money back from their W2’s. $800 or $1000, whatever.. let them buy an iPhone or a Big Mac or a new TV. Americans are morons anyhow, if they see a lot of people at Walmart they’ll assume it’s all good and we rock out! Let’s hope nobody notices the big chunk of that tax break not going to create jobs, but shifting more wealth to the producing country (China) and then they’ll buy our banks and stock price goes up and nobody is the wiser.”

We suffer from the quick fix amnesia in this country, a retarded fiscal and spending policy on the government and population sides alike, that is obsessed with the instant result, get rich quick, consumer is the king mindset.

I wish I could run my business like that. But it doesn’t work like that in reality. Cash does not stimulate anything other than spending. Perhaps for the wiser crowd, it stimulates a payoff of debt, but overall the money just goes down the drain.

Here is the big picture. Stop letting retards talk about the economy. I know its a great news bit to stick a camera in the face of someone at the gas pump and let them cry about how a 200% increase in gasoline is making them weary of the economic outlook while they are towing a new 42″ HDTV in their brand new Ford Explorer, Eddy Bauer Edition, to the house they can’t afford. Really, we need to hear more from such geniuses that obviously got the economic pulse firmly within their grasp.

Thank you for your attention, and for playing along. Let’s just drop the economics now and talk shop.. for this one we don’t need to pretend, I actually run a business.

I intend to hire nobody as a result of this fix. As a matter of fact, I am more likely to focus on outsourcing the bump in the demand it may generate because you already told me this is just a quick influx that is going to end in a month. How stupid do you think I am?

Even if I were to hire someone, I would look to a temp agency with a slight premium, what kind of an idiot hires someone knowing they will be gone in a month, then fired resulting in an exponential increase to our unemployment insurance.

No way.

Meanwhile, for the labor I actually do need, I am left choosing between tweedledee and the tweedledumb with less education than the guy that plastered the drywall in my office.

What should they do

Economic program benefits are not instant. They are not a quick fix. The business that are building and growing in USA today are highly skilled, highly specialized roles / organizations. We can’t staff those. Why? Nobody can afford to go to college because since I left in 2002, the public school education cost has quadrupled in Florida. My state finances its education system through the legalized gambling (by the way, thank you for putting me through UF!) giving young people an option of getting into a get rich quick unskilled labor force of realtors, mortgage brokers, ITT flunkies and medical halfwits… instead of making it dead easy to get into college and sustain a high five or six figure salary for 30-40 years.

Is it any surprise our country and economy is going into the toilet when its in the hands of people that guide its expansion in the same way the elderly smoker in front of a slot machine does when he gets a small payoff – Ooo, 10 quarters, quick, let me put it back in and lose it all.

Update: In case it wasn’t clear enough, I hope someone in DC wakes up and says “Economic incentives need a long term return, so instead of feeding your debt-crack habit of cash back for new gadgets, we are going to give you an incentive to earn more money. Starting tomorrow, all community college education is free and you will get an incentive for completing a four year degree in a field that our country can benefit from in the long term. We’re up for a few tough years as our work force accepts that we’re in 21st century and we don’t intend to be a recycling country for cheap crap from China and only work in the consumer sector.”

This weeks Businessweek (page 17) is asserting that China must be over because there are so many books written about the bull market there. Apparently, a hot book trend is a signal of a “soon-to-burst bubble” or so they say. Truthfully, rarely has there been a get quick rich fad that has worked out for most of the participants. Biotech market in the 1980’s, .com bust of the 90’s, the housing market of 2000’s and so on and so forth.

Every time a message is repeated by enough people it leads to saturation and less people pay attention.

Which is why most blogs don’t get the traffic even though they report the same news as the larger networks.

Which is why your marketing, probably, has a sucky return.

Hitting the nerve yet? 🙂 Ever wondered why 99% of the direct mail goes to garbage? Because we’ve all seen the same thing over and over and over again. Aren’t you at the point where you no longer even look at the message, you can tell what its going to say just by the wrapper or the sender?

While I can’t help you much about your direct mail efforts, both because I am not a marketing genius and because I don’t have a cup size to qualify me as one, I can help you a little with your marketing efforts to existing client base. Yes, you do need to market to the people that have already given you money. I’ve discussed the success of OwnWebNow here so many times by now you can probably recite it backwards.

We write the software and provide solutions that we think our clients want to buy.

We discuss what we are working on with our client, what we intend to sell.

Our clients tell us what they like about our solutions, what they don’t like about our solutions, and what they want to buy.

We go back and we make the products and solutions our clients want to buy.

Yeah, I’m that big of a genius.

But what if you don’t have the luxury of creating your own software or tailoring your own solutions for the people you already sell to? The easiest way to make money is to make it a reoccurring revenue stream. But most people sell like this:

Ok, so your server is now online and you are all set. We got the system powerful enough so we can upgrade to XYZ when it comes out.

<Zzz… nothing happens for two years>

Hey, XYZ is out, remember we talked about it two years ago? How many can I put you down for? Zero? Your current stuff is good enough? No it’s not, look at ..

And then you lose a client.

It is much easier to have happy clients with inbound marketing, and those leading to the word of mouth references, than it is to spam the world which doesn’t want to hear from you.

Repetitive messages bring desire. Discussing a solution, bringing up a point of view and potential use, highlighting industry trends… those all lead to forming a concept in the clients mind that something is going on, that they can rely on it.

It gives them time to consider how they could use it, so they can fit it into their thinking.

I guarantee you that you will NOT be able to sell Cougar when it ships later this year.

I guarantee that SBS 2003 is not just good enough, but we finally got it to work and that is just too much money for something that, yes, looks pretty.

You won’t be able to sell Cougar in September.

But you can start to sell it now. Marketing differentiation: quick poll, how many of your newsletters have highlighted a feature of Cougar that your clients might have a use for, that they need to start thinking and expecting now? And how many of your competitors are talking about it?

Just because a project doesn’t make money does not make it an unprofitable project (especially if a project is a part of an overall marketing approach)

Just because you made money on something does not make it a business or a business line you should pursue (“I made a g today, but you made it in a sleazy way.” – Guess who said that and the random draw gets the “Mommy, Why is there a server in the house” book) particularly if it distracts from the business objectives, other projects or other opportunity costs.

Overall, building a sustainable and profitable business is not about making money (“I get paid for every OUNCE of my effort!“) but about making the right investments that pay off over the long term (“Pulled off a free weekend job in Y hours that lead to company visibility and X new clients“). The first one works great if you’re an apprentice to a plumber or an electrician, the second one builds a sustainable business.