Category Archives: Success Factors

General writings on building a successful business.

Shut Up and Listen

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I have been enjoying the past few months as I have had the opportunity to shut up and listen.

We started on FastFigures because we saw an opportunity to support a wider array of smartphones than ever before, in particular the iPhone. When we started FastFigures, Apple was steadfastly claiming no third-party applications. The only way was in the browser. Far into the project — too far to turn back — and Apple changed their mind. But it gave me the opportunity to look at what we do differently. What does it mean when we can not only run the numbers but we can save them and share them? And that led me to…

It got me to thinking back over years of customer feedback. And it got me to go listen to a bunch of our customers and it got me to talk to potential beta users. And it has led me to get excited about the opportunities in front of us again and it has led me to see a way to take calculation and make it far more meaningful for both our customers and our customers’ customers.

Where does this go? I don’t know exactly. But what do I do now? That’s easy and obvious. Talk to more potential customers. I like how it’s shaping my thinking so far.

Financial Discovery

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Over the past couple of weeks, I have been asked to compile a couple of presentations here in Portland. I thought I would share those with you.

As those who know me know, I have extensive background in creating and preparing financials for both investor readiness and day-to-day corporate use. I learned a lot in college (I have an undergraduate degree in accounting and a master’s in management), have done it for Infinity Softworks since 1997 and helped numerous other companies do the same.

The first presentation, delivered to the Oregon Entrepreneur’s Network, focuses on the fundamentals of financial statements and how to prepare financial projections. Please feel free to review that presentation here:

The second was delivered to OTBC Technology Incubator, which Infinity Softworks resides at and I am an advisor. This presentation delved into an investor’s perspective of those financials, what an investor is looking for, and what it says about the preparer. Please feel free to review that presentation here:

Please feel free to contact me via About Me if you have questions or need help.

Doing The Right Thing

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If you didn’t catch this amazing story about the softball player who injured her knee after hitting her first career home run, check it out. She was so excited when she reached first that she missed the bag and ripped her ACL when she tried to stop. She couldn’t walk let alone run the bases and, as rules go, her own team couldn’t help. So two players from the opposing team, a team that was fighting for their playoff lives, picked her up and carried her around the bases. Home run!

Too often, it is easy to do what is expedient and not what’s right. Too often, it’s easy to do what benefits me no matter the impact on them.

Business, like sports, is a lot like this. It can be us win and them lose. It would have been easy for the opposing team to leave her there with a single. Hey, that’s the breaks after all. That’s how the game is played. No one said anything when the ump missed the call at second. What goes around comes around.

Except what goes around comes around in both directions. I can only guess how much good mojo these two opposing players picked up with that one. And I can only hope that my two young girls grow up to be the kinds of people who would pick an opposing player up and carry her around the bases.

Email Is Not Communication

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I was once fired via email.

On my first day of college after transferring to Pacific University here in Oregon, I decided I needed a new computer. So I went down to the campus store and found a woman struggling mightily with managing the store. She was all alone and the orders were just pouring in. I thought here is a situation where my business abilities and organizational skills could help, so I volunteered.

Over the next couple of weeks, everything calmed down and between the two of us, everyone got their computers and the phones got answered. Over time, the store started looking like a financial success for the University and I got to pitch the Finance Provost (CFO) the financials of the “company” and show why it should get further funding.

Success! We did and it got me work study and got us an additional full-time employee.

Well, everything went well for a while and then I started to sense a disconnect between me and the woman I worked for. While we had been friendly before, she now barely talked to me.

And that’s when the email came in that, because of the extra money and this new employee, my services were no longer needed.

While I was upset, it taught me a very valuable lesson. When I really want to communicate with someone I better do it face to face, even when it would seem email is easier. See: email isn’t communication. It’s me telling someone else and then them telling me something back. Communication is about feeding off each other to come to a mutual understanding.

So when I read this post over at 37Signals this morning, it reminded me of this story. As Osmo Wiio points out, in any communication there are multiple ways to interpret it. This only gets worse when you can’t see the communicator at the same time.

Tech Support: Key Indicator of Company Success

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I hate lousy tech support. At Infinity Softworks, we work really hard to provide fast, prompt responses that solve the customer’s problem. So when I experience bad tech support somewhere else, it is really glaring.

I have been using Yahoo! Mail for years for my personal email. Lately, a bunch of my regular emails have been redirected to the Spam folder. Mind you, it is all kinds of mail, stuff like personal emails from friends as well as newsletters from companies that used to go to my inbox and now to my spam folder. On top of that, Yahoo’s spam filtering software ignores me. When I say a message isn’t spam, it always throws the next message from the same person and email address back in the spam folder. Annoying!

So I finally emailed Yahoo! to tell them that this is going on and see if they had any suggestions. This is the response I got less than 24 hours later:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care. We like to provide you with fast, efficient support. And the best way to get straight to your issue (and to get it resolved!) is to start from a topic in Yahoo! Mail Help that’s similar to the problem you’re experiencing.

So, please take a moment to browse Yahoo! Mail Help for a question like yours:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/

If the answer doesn’t clear up the issue, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Contact Us” to open a form where you can write to us about what’s going on. Please be detailed and give us as much information as you can about your issue.

Thanks! With your help, we can get Yahoo! Mail working for you as quickly as possible.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail.

Regards,

(name removed to protect the guilty)
Yahoo! Customer Care

Now, I’m a smart guy and know how to use the web. If I had found an answer on their site, I probably would have tried it first and told them I tried it. And it’s not like they knew there was a solution to the problem otherwise they would have directed me right to it.

This gives me a key piece of insight into Yahoo’s struggles. I find companies that give good technical support do well and those that don’t are either on the rocks or about to be. Yahoo used to give good support. Dell, too, used to be one of those companies with great support until about four years ago, right before the company started struggling. A trend? I think so.

So here’s my hint for understanding whether a company is worth buying from or not. Next time you want to know whether a product or service is worth it, send support an email message. Not sales, who are programmed to give you answers so they can get your money, but support, the folks who you will interact with once the company has less motivation to help you. Do you get a response in a reasonable amount of time? Do you get an answer to your question? Is the response kind and courteous? If it is all of these things, no matter what the question, then that company is worth working with.

If they can’t do this bare minimum in two tries or less, move on.

[Note: I sent a response back to Yahoo! asking them to try again. The second time I got an answer back on the issue, one that would solve the problem. As I mentioned above, I usually give a company a mulligan on the first one. After all, everyone has a bad day every once in a while.]