The Think eBiz Blog

The Grey Hair Economy - Hire Experience

The unemployment average hovers just under 7% Nationally. The U-6 (includes those that have exhausted their unemployment or stopped looking) is at 12.2%. Worse, if you are an older unemployed worker, it can take a long time to find a new position.  Yet these workers bring with them extensive experience and knowledge that can have a strong positive impact for your business.

Age discrimination is real; it is subtle, yet it happens. The reasons span from the cost of the employee, the perceived threat, doubtfulness of loyalty and the inexperience of younger managers to manage older workers.

For these experienced workers, consulting has always been an alternative. We believe it can be a great avenue where experience can be deployed, creating an effective situation for both parties. In a start-up, where the entrepreneur has the business idea - they might not have the business experience - or connections. In a fast paced start-up; who will manage and optimize the finances? Who will create the brand, perform the marketing - create an effective sales organization? Who can help you learn the business of business; so your idea can reach the marketplace successfully?

The specifics are different; yet two highly energetic entrepreneurs hired an experienced manager to oversee their fast growing company. Eric Schmidt was the adult brought in to help manage the growth of Google. This model could be effective for your start-up - whether as a full time hire or consultant.

Consider a grey hair when you need experience in managing your company or guiding it through uncertain waters. Contact Cross Sea Partners - we know some very experienced professionals that could be the key to your business success.

Who are the Entrepreneurs Today? Over 40? You Are!

When you think about entrepreneurs today, who comes to mind? Young Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Biz Stone? Perhaps Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Young "kids" that barely graduated from college... right?

Think again! The average age for an entrepreneur is 40, and nearly 75% of have worked at another company for 6+ years. Most (again 75%) are married (or divorced), and have at least one child. Surprised? Most likely you are within the demographic for being a business owner / entrepreneur.

A detailed study ("The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur - Family Background and Motivation"),  reveals a wealth of statistics that should encourage anyone over the age of 40 to consider living their entrepreneurial dream. In fact, the economy depends on new businesses to fuel growth. And the internet helps us to even out the playing field; so there are many factors that weigh in your favor. And of course, a few that may stack against you (we will discuss these in a future article). But don't be discouraged!

We at Cross Sea Strategy Advisors have long felt that our experience provides us with unique advantages when creating a business. We look back at some of our best and worst managers, best/worst companies and can use this experience to make us better executives. We understand (and expect) high levels of customer service and are frustrated by poorly designed products. Some of us have the capital behind us to leap into the unknown; or we just feel the gravitational pull towards being our own boss. Our message; you are never too old to start  your own business.

We can continue to cite more interesting statistics that support our viewpoint, however instead, click over and read their study. However... we will share one last very important statistic.

Only 4.5% started their own business because they were unable to find traditional employment.

We absolutely believe you should create a business based on your passion, your excitement for bringing to market a great idea. Not because you faced defeat and frustration in seeking employment. Starting a business based on a positive mindset will help tilt the balance towards success over failure.

Search Engine Wars: The Murdoch Gambit

Haven't we learned that online wars do not achieve value. Browser wars - mobile fragmentation, and now the Murdoch gambit. We will come out and say this is a bad thing for the internet-sphere.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation, has stated that he wants to pull his content off of Google. Naturally, this makes Microsoft's Steve Balmer salivate. An interesting strategy unfolds; if you can't beat Google - bribe the content providers to block their material from Google. Pay Murdoch to shut off the Wall Street Journal content from Google and anyone else. Then of course, Google would counter by having the New York Times remove their content from Bing - and on and on. And who loses - You Do as you content with content fragmentation.

Two articles that state the pro/con case:

Forbes Magazine' Velocity "How Murdock can kill Google"

New York Times Opinionator "Murdochs Google Gambit"

with interesting comments by:

John Battelle, “Just give Google summary text and headlines to index (like the W.S.J. does now). Then do your best to convert would be readers to your paid model. That’s it. What’s the big deal? The rest is bluster."  Yes yes, provide great content found no where else that consumers will want to buy...

Mark Cuban, "I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place."  Sounds like he enjoys stirring the pot..."

Mr.Cuban goes on... "TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand."  We agree, Twitter could be the best source of breaking news and quick ready access to the content...  Leverage these platforms instead of rattling swords at Google.

Jason Calacanis, however, says "Murdoch is savvy." and goes on to imagine Bing advertising that states,

"Want to search the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and 3,894 other newspapers and magazine?" "Well, then don't go to Google because they don't have them!"
"Go to Bing, home of quality content you can trust!" We can't imagine a worse case -- trust? More likely it is content that we paid for...  which does not lend credibility to content.

We believe that any means of blocking content from one search engine, in favor of another will ultimately backfire. Google won't die from this gambit and Microsoft won't win. Some savvy entrepreneur will develop a super-search engine that sits above the others helping us - the consumer of information to access content...without having to play favorites. And this gambit will not sell login access either. And if Murdoch thinks this will help save his "pulp" based product... and although we think this is sad...  it won't. Newspaper subscriptions are declining (as are magazines) - so let's find better ways to monetize the content online...  no one really wins a war.

Is Google Evil? Too Powerful?

BusinessWeek posed the question, Is Google too Powerful (April 9, 2007)? It is a very interesting and indepth read about a giant in the advertising industry. Are they huge - you bet - with a market cap that dwarfs many of the long standing media/ad organizations... combined. Are they powerful - well of course they are. Are they "too" powerful? Think-ebiz does not think so.

As we read the BusinessWeek article, our thoughts turned to IBM and Microsoft… and probably Standard Oil and AT&T in its day. Even the Romans! And we came upon this paragraph, which addressed this thought:

If this talk of corporate dominance sounds vaguely familiar, it should. As firmly as IBM ruled mainframe computing and Microsoft the personal computer age, so Google has the potential to rule the Internet. To some people, Google's position today, while clearly far from identical to Microsoft's in its heyday, nonetheless shares some striking parallels. "Google feels a lot like Microsoft in the mid-Nineties," says Silicon Valley startup adviser Dave McClure. "Right at the height of its power, getting a little arrogant, and challenged for the first time by some powerful people."

Perhaps In 10 years there will be some other dominant entity, pushing Google’ together with this list of past champions. In a capitalist economy, there will always be a dominant company in the marketplace. Dominance doesn’t last forever.

Does that make Google evil? Too powerful?  Instead of the naysayers tossing stones at them, those that have the brainpower should try to think ahead at what is next. I am sure if you looked back at Standard Oil and then AT&T, their dominance lasted much longer then IBM… which lasted longer than Microsoft.  One misstep, and the Google’s empire could collapse… or be greatly minimized. And perhaps it is already.

Be honest, who uses anything other than Google search? We don’t see corporations racing towards adopting the Google spreadsheet. PayPal is still the biggest online transaction partner. eBay still rules supreme in the auction space. Google Earth is fun… but not yet strategic. Maybe Google TiSP will catch on - or maybe not. Even Gmail hasn’t forced Hotmail nor Yahoo out of the game.

We believe it is all about search when it comes to Google. If search consumers decided they hated or feared Google, there still exists Yahoo, MSN and Ask.Com.  Choice still remains.

Think-ebiz does not think Google is too powerful, however we think they are terribly unfocused and may simply collapse under all their beta products while others figure out a better way to promote content and informational search.

Where choice remains, power in the marketplace can be blunted. Google is the most adopted search engine in the world, not necessarily the best. What will come next? We wish we knew...  but there will be something else that we fear and hold in awe.

Google TiSP, networking while you sit and think.

Leave to the boys at Google to come up with a new means of networking (you don't think the women would come up with this do you?), and it was right there under our seat all along. TiSP, the new going-with-the-flow networking innovation is designed to leverage your existing pipes and toilets.

Clearly Google has spent a lot of sitting and thinking about this new means of connecting people at a time when many are viewing more traditional offline vehicles like magazines and newspapers. Now you can easily and quickly surf with others in a similar position.

And we at Think-eBiz are now providing a new service, Septic Engagement Optimization (SEO), which will increase your PR (Potty Ranking). More on this new service when we return from the john.

Hello,
We have just opening a new service agency, Septic Engagement Optimization (SEO), to help people get the most of their TiSP experience. For instance, although we do not know the inard workings at Google, we have found that there is a higher level of thru-put when the toilet has a Thousand-Flush tablet in place, rather than using Tilex cleaners, which can dampen signal and reduce relevane.

And using a 2-Ply Toilet Paper can impede signal strength but there may be issues with to much 1-Ply usage as well, a spamming situation perhaps.

Our services also can help improve TiSP Linking to garner higher PR  (potty ranking).

Thank You

Stephen Harris
www.think-ebiz.com    where you do your business, we do ours!

One warning however from the Google TiSP FAQ

Why is TiSP in beta?
When things go wrong with TiSP, they go very, very wrong. Let's leave it at that.

See other press and product released that Google made on April 1st ( this one did. And this one. And this one, and this one, and this one)  Hey wait a minute! This is an April Fools joke??? Oh, we thought this was a new technology breakthrough. Damn they tricked us again!!

2006 Online Spending Jumps, Channels Shift

Online buying jumped 25% on the second week of December (2006) to over $3.75 Billion, which is reported to be one of the busiest of the year - and nearly $700 million on Dec 13 alone! (Reported in the WSJ on Dec 23, 2006). These kind of numbers serves as a wake up call to those not leveraging online and to those that are find their site under-performing. We believe that 2007 will be a year where online advertisers take a hard look at their ad spending and web assets and make critical long term adjustments. Even this selection of channels will come under scrutiny.

In 2005 (2006 statistics not yet available), affiliate programs, pop-up ads and email all took a spending decrease (-27.3%, -97.5% & -25% respectfully). Contrast this to the 193% increase in search engine optimization (SEO) and 8.4% and 10% increase in search engine and banner placement.

And we continue to believe that online offers the smaller brands the opportunity to compete effectively with their bigger breathen. According to Safa Rashtchy (Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Piper Jaffray); "In the offline world, it's impossible for any company to beat Home Depot and Wal-Mart. In the online world, it's possible..."

We couldn't agree more fully; online marketing evens the competitive playing field.

Online buying jumped 25% on the second week of December (2006) to over $3.75 Billion, which is reported to be one of the busiest of the year - and nearly $700 million on Dec 13 alone! (Reported in the WSJ on Dec 23, 2006). These kind of numbers serves as a wake up call to those not leveraging online and to those that are find their site under-performing. We believe that 2007 will be a year where online advertisers take a hard look at their ad spending and web assets and make critical long term adjustments. Even this selection of channels will come under scrutiny.

In 2005 (2006 statistics not yet available), affiliate programs, pop-up ads and email all took a spending decrease (-27.3%, -97.5% & -25% respectfully). Contrast this to the 193% increase in search engine optimization (SEO) and 8.4% and 10% increase in search engine and banner placement.

And we continue to believe that online offers the smaller brands the opportunity to compete effectively with their bigger breathen. According to Safa Rashtchy (Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Piper Jaffray); "In the offline world, it's impossible for any company to beat Home Depot and Wal-Mart. In the online world, it's possible..."

We couldn't agree more fully; online marketing evens the competitive playing field.

Nestles Shifts Ad Spending - tilt towards online

Nestles announced that it has cut back TV Advertising spending from 68% to 60% of it's overall budget - in favor of digital.

"The advent of the digital age continues," announced Nestlé Australia's Ian Alwill. "Nestlé has legislated that we will spend more in the digital space."

The article, from the Sydney Morning Herald, goes on to state how accountability is becoming an even more important theme in advertising. Many of us who have been in the online space for awhile know this to be true - and it makes sense. Spend where the conversions occur.

"If you cannot prove that your media is delivering something, and more often than not these days it's sales rather than brand health, then you have a right to be concerned," Mr Camplisson said.

If this is true, then we will see even more of a shift from the traditional media (newspapers, tv, radio) and into the digital world. Stay tuned (or will this now be.. stay online?).

Nestles announced that it has cut back TV Advertising spending from 68% to 60% of it's overall budget - in favor of digital.

"The advent of the digital age continues," announced Nestlé Australia's Ian Alwill. "Nestlé has legislated that we will spend more in the digital space."

The article, from the Sydney Morning Herald, goes on to state how accountability is becoming an even more important theme in advertising. Many of us who have been in the online space for awhile know this to be true - and it makes sense. Spend where the conversions occur.

"If you cannot prove that your media is delivering something, and more often than not these days it's sales rather than brand health, then you have a right to be concerned," Mr Camplisson said.

If this is true, then we will see even more of a shift from the traditional media (newspapers, tv, radio) and into the digital world. Stay tuned (or will this now be.. stay online?).

3Q Online Spending up 33% over 2005

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced today that online ad spending has increased 33% over 3Q 2005 to $4.2 Billion. In 2005 for this same quarter, ad spending had increased 33.9% over 2004 ($3.1 Billion).

Sheryl Draizen, senior vice president, general manager of the IAB, says the online ad market is robust... "My sense is that there's going to be a very strong fourth quarter here," adding: "we're actually seeing marketers increasing their budgets."

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced today that online ad spending has increased 33% over 3Q 2005 to $4.2 Billion. In 2005 for this same quarter, ad spending had increased 33.9% over 2004 ($3.1 Billion).

Sheryl Draizen, senior vice president, general manager of the IAB, says the online ad market is robust... "My sense is that there's going to be a very strong fourth quarter here," adding: "we're actually seeing marketers increasing their budgets."