Business

From his blog:

Call me crazy, but when given the choice of developing new applications for a deterministic platform connected to a specialty application box connected to a high definition TV with a remote control or a best efforts internet platform connected to who knows how fast a connection to a PC running who knows what operating system connected to a monitor and a keyboard, I will take the first option.

Duh?

But it's not about what is easier. Sure, it's easier for newspapers to keep the same business model as the last 100 years, but that's not working so well.

It's about leveraging the strengths of a given platform, not comparing it apples-to-apples against something completely different. It's about getting viral views, and having content worth spreading. Sure, that's much harder than controlling a network and forcing shows and ads into people's eyeballs, but the alternative is much worse. I can assure you there are people willing to do the hard work.

Yesterday was a good day. I got dressed and drove to my local branch of Commerce Bank.

"I'd like to close my account", I said.
"Did you experience a problem?", the teller asked.
"Commerce Bank is the worst bank I've ever dealt with. I've never been treated so badly," I said.
"This branch?", the woman asked.
"Especially this branch," I said.

Switching banks is difficult. With Direct Deposit, ACH, Automatic Bill-Pays, and Debit cards, getting out can be a challenge.

But they had to go. They have the worst customer service of ANY institution I've had to deal with. They make the DMV look like the Ritz Carlton.

If you go to the lobby of any Commerce bank, you will see a poster of how Commerce won the honor of being one of America's top 10 banks from Bank Director Magazine.

What they don't tell you is the criteria for winning. Customer Service? Ha! Customer Loyalty? Right. Account holder Satisfaction? Hardly. These are greedy bankers, after all.

No, this rating is strictly on profitability measures. Which comes down to taking more of your customers' money. Indeed, they do that well:

...Assuming that profitability is the single most important performance measurement of any public company, the Scorecard gives the two profitability metrics a full weighting in the final score for each institution.

...In recent years, the bank has also grown its payments systems business—including a variety of credit, debit, and corporate purchase cards—and the resulting fee-based revenue has helped boost its profitability despite the effects of a flat yield curve.

This means that the only area Commerce Bank is growing is in fees. If you're a victim customer of Commerce Bank, I'm sure you already know that.

I'm just happy to no longer count myself in your ranks.

Have I mentioned this week how awful Fedex Ground is (Note: FedEx Air is very reliable)? Seriously, why do people use them? Our hours are posted on the door. The driver never even checks. Then, after too many "delivery exceptions", we have to drive halfway to Lawrence to pick up our packages.

It's come to the point that if I have a choice, I will choose a vendor that ships UPS over one who uses Fedex Ground. We know our driver's name. He's friendly. He buys from us. HE KNOWS WHEN WE ARE OPEN.

We do not ever get delivery exceptions from UPS. The packages get to us when they're supposed to. I can't imagine they are that much more expensive than Fedex ground.

DO NOT USE FEDEX GROUND!

I wrote about the impending banking crisis on this blog, on March 9, 2007. This was not exactly a surprise to anyone watching.

How quickly we forget the past.

My friend and coach Jeff Miner now has a blog on the Mental Aspects of Golf. If you are interested in such topics, please give it a look.

I'm all for people showing their true selves online, but this is how a bidder responded to a project I posted on an outsourcing website:

Thank you for the opportunity to bid on your project. My name is John Doe (ed: name changed to protect the guilty), I am the Dragonslayer.

Great, if my project requires DragonSlaying...

Seth Godin riffs on being indispensable, and says:

If Jeff Jarvis quit, though, all his readers and clients would notice. Immediately. He's indispensable.

...

Five years later, it seems to have sort of snuck up on us. Now, there are tens of thousands of people out there where being "that" person is the career, is the business, is the next job. Not just micropreneurs and freelancers... but employees and experts and programmers as well.

This is a factual statement that takes no position, so I will. A successful organization requires people that are masters at becoming dispensable to succeed. Supposedly, those huge salaries and bonuses are paying for the future benefit to the organization that the person provides. The only way to provide future benefit is by being dispensable.

Since Jeff Jarvis's organization requires Jeff to be successful, he has created nothing that lives past himself. He has not built an organization. He has built a job that will stick to him and hold him back for the rest of a lifetime.

Take on the other hand the Entrepreneurial Master Michael Gerber of E-Myth fame. Gerber has taken his ideas and turned them into a world-class organization that will fulfill his vision well beyond his lifetime.

Indispensable = Handcuffs

Therefore the only truly valid way to become indispensable is to be the master at moving into a role, then making the role so airtight that you're dispensable. You'll do nothing but move up. On the other hand, business models based solely on you do not scale very well.

I created a lens over at Squidoo on setting up a Merchant Account. Also, you can set up a merchant account here.

I put up a page on how I assembled my Canon W8400 wide format printer.