Marketing & Dentistry

By JoshPetersel in Josh for Business, Words 0 Comment

I think Dentists are the best marketers of the health world.

Off the top of my head:

  • There are only two checkups that you’re generally expected to get on at least an annual basis, regardless of your actual state of health: Go to your doctor, and go to your dentist. They’re the only two medical professionals who send cute little reminder notes out in the mail which say “don’t forget your checkup, it’s been six months!”
  • I think far more than any other specialty, there are a prolific number of substantial, expensive, and increasingly common procedures that dentists perform. Everyone gets braces. Everyone gets cavities filled. Plenty of people get wisdom teeth pulled.
  • It’s common knowledge that you’re supposed to devote 5-10 minutes, twice a day, SPECIFICALLY to taking care of (brushing) your teeth. Innuendo aside, there’s no other part of your body that receives this kind of dedicated attention.
  • Of the library of possible medical maladies, I think having serious tooth trouble is by far the least embarrassing. Which means I’m both most likely to talk about it with my friends, and I’m also most likely to actually do something about it when I see a dentist. Think about how different your reaction would be if you heard that a friend is seeing a dentist regularly versus seeing a psychiatrist regularly. Think about how likely you are to respond if you’re advised to see a dentist for a mouth problem compared to seeing a psychiatrist for a brain problem.

Which leads me to the following line of questions: Why not annual checkups with your family psychologist? Why not nightly 5 minute stretch routines prescribed by your long-time physical therapist?

And more centrally: Are we really just that poor at taking care of our teeth, or were the founding fathers of dentistry just really exceptional businessmen?

Launching Tech Ventures: Sales Sucks (Or at least, why you think so)

By JoshPetersel in Josh for Business, Words 0 Comment

(Another cross-post from my Launching Tech Ventures class. Original here.)

Ultimately, ironically, you might argue that salespeople have done a terrible job of selling “sales” as a concept. In my best estimation, here are the four biggest reasons why you, why schools, and why the business community at large all think that sales sucks.

First problem: It’s not “sexy.” Heck, it’s not even “neutral.” We look down on salespeople. We use descriptors like greedy, untrustworthy, you name it.

My two foremost experiences with sales professionals really stick out in my head. On the one hand: Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, whose job leaves him lonely, delusional, lacking many real skills, and altogether out of touch with reality. On the other: Mr. Wormwood, the dad in Roald Dahl’s Matilda, who is slimy, dishonest, and basically the worst dad ever.

Who’d ever want to be a salesperson with this as a foundation? I don’t think I’ve even once read a story where a salesperson saved a life, was a hero, or even just did something remarkably creative and fun in their line of work.

 

Second problem: There’s a notion that sales is kind of exclusively for people who really, really care about money. You can aspire to pretty much any other job (even ones that pay exceedingly well) without money being your number one priority. Does every Private Equity financier care exclusively about their bottom line? I think the majority seek this line of work because it’s a language and a setting they’re comfortable with.

Sales jobs all seem to all rely very, very heavily on commissioned compensation structures, metrics, and quotas. It seems like it’s very hard to just do sales because you love to work with customers and love to uncover and solve their problems.

 

Third problem: The notion that it’s hard to teach sales and far more effective to just go out and practice. I really don’t see how this is any truer for sales than it is for marketing, for entrepreneurship, for strategy, for coding, and probably for finance, too.

For sales, you have frameworks and tools which you can teach and can help guide students’ thinking. How to write a call script. How to do an elevator pitch. How to go from cold call to initial visit to closed deal to follow up. How to write emails that prompt readership and timely response. All theories which are admittedly sort of half baked. They’re effective in a vacuum, but only applicable in a limited capacity in any real-world environment—for sure, you wouldn’t create the same sorts of scripts whether you sold kids toys or financial planning.

Isn’t this the same stuff as the 5 C’s and 4 P’s of marketing? All we’re missing is for somebody clever to come up with neat acronyms. (Better than Alec Baldwin’s A.B.C.)

 

Fourth problem: The notion that you’re either a born sales person or you’re not. The reality: nobody is a born salesperson any more than they’re a born doctor. Just like everything else on the planet, you learn how to do sales through exposure and practice. Probably for months or years. Some people seem like natural salespeople because they practiced on the playground in grade school. I think it’s natural for us to be afraid of sales, for much the same reason I’d be terrified to perform surgery in an operating room.

 

Conclusion: I guess if you were to take the above at face value, you might think I’m suggesting we need to blow up the entire sales ecosystem. We’d need to write children’s stories, create completely new compensation structures, and develop entire lines of academia so that we might begin to award sales doctorates.

I’m not that crazy.

For now, all I hope that we might take away is a better understanding of why sales is given the rough shake that it is. From that new perspective, I hope we might become more open to learning and working with an incredibly powerful set of trade skills.

Forget “sales” as you know it. Learn how to be a Customer Problem Solver, instead. Start by picking up Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People or Spencer Johnson’s One Minute $alesperson.

Screen Lock Protection on Phones and Laptops

By JoshPetersel in Josh for Business, Words 1 Comment

i use samsung which has this neat drag the finger thing. same idea.

You know this screen. If you’re like many smartphone users, you probably see it hundreds of times a day. This is the protection that your smartphone affords you from friends, strangers, and general miscreants who want access into your phone for who knows what.

And I think it’s a huge waste of time and energy.

First, a few questions:

  1. What on earth are you hiding? Are you married and checking up on your AshleyMadison account? Take considering a screen lock as an easy wake-up call: You don’t need password protection. What you DO need to address the source of the problem: the fact that you’re doing something totally inappropriate.
  2. Are you worried that a friend or significant other might want to peek in for some reason? Please. None of your friends care about your email history. Even if they did (or, even if you’re just paranoid of as much), you’re again not addressing the source of the problem. (Hint: Your friends are creeps. Time to find new ones.)Alternatively, assuming we’re in some bizarro world and they do want to have access, you think a 4-digit code is going to stop them?Here’s what your obsessive counterparty is thinking: A) I can probably just figure out your phone unlock key by hanging out with you and peering over your shoulder (in fact, I can prompt this by just sending you a text message while I’m standing in front of you). B) I could probably just ask you for your code. What, you’re hesitant about telling me, your trusted friend/significant other what your phone unlock key is? What does that imply about what you’re actually doing on there? (See #1 above.)
  3. You’re worried about a burglar or something? Stop watching so much CSI. You’re not that important. If your phone gets stolen, the thief probably doesn’t care at all who you are. He’s probably going to factory reset the phone and then sell it on eBay. And if he really wanted to get inside, I’m sure there are an infinity of ways to bypass this lock by Googling the problem.

A few other observations:

  1. Imagine doing this with other personal identity things you own. Would you want a 4-digit unlock key for your credit card every time you wanted to buy some groceries? I mean, theoretically the same burglary/identity theft issues still apply. How paranoid would you need to be?
  2. You know what else is generally four digits long? Your pass key for your ATM card is usually four numbers. As is the answer to many identity-verifying questions used when you’re talking to credit card / banking / etc. companies on the phone (for example (obviously), “What are the last four digits of your social security number?”).Many people don’t have the mental capacity to hold on to more than one important 4-digit number in their life. So now, with your screen unlock, you’ve created the opportunity to telegraph something that may ACTUALLY be sensitive and valuable to an identity thief / maniacal S.O.

Let’s look at how much this is destroying your life.

Here’s an article  that says the average person checks their phone about 150 times a day. I’m sure this figure fluctuates wildly depending on whether or not you’re a psychotic teenage girl (though, given our understanding above, it’s likely that you are). 150 might sound high at first, but if you think about it, given ~19 waking hours (~7 hours of sleep), that’s checking your phone 7.9 times an hour. That’s entirely plausible. If not conservative.

We’ll say it takes, what, all of 2 seconds to pass through the unlock screen? Fine. That’s 5 minutes (300 seconds) you spend unlocking every day. Or 1.27 entire 24-hour days (109,500 seconds) every year that you’re exhausting just by nonsensically punching your 4-digit security code into your cell phone.

(…By comparison: I wrote this entire blog post and managed to only waste about 75 minutes.)

Risk Strategies

By JoshPetersel in Words 2 Comments

The Game of Global Deception

I love Risk. Not everyone does. But for Risk lovers and haters alike, here are two of my favorite strategies to guarantee success.

Strategy One:

  1. Talk up a really big game. I LOVE RISK. IT’S THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME. AND I AM THE GREATEST. Employ liberal amounts of bravado and swagger. Get everyone full of frustration and angst before you’ve even decided who’s got which countries.
  2. Unlike most any other Risk strategy guide out there: Put your armies down anywhere you want. Doesn’t matter where.
  3. Continue to berate relentlessly. Attack everyone on your first turn at least once.
  4. Everyone takes turns attacking you and wipes you out. The fun in Risk pretty much all occurs in the first four rounds, anyway. Now your enemies are stuck dealing with this goddamn game for like the next seventeen hours.
  5. Go watch something cool on TV. You win!

Strategy Two:

  1. Similar to Step 2 last time, pick whichever countries you want. It doesn’t really matter. You’re pretty much guaranteed to end up with at least one Asian country. But generally, for this strategy, it’s most fun if you proactively pick up an Asian country that has a silly name like Irkutsk.
  2. Once you’ve settled on your countries, dump your entire starting military into Irkutsk. Given 4-6 nations, this should net you a starting Irkutskian military of between 14 and 20 soldiers.
  3. Never attack anyone the entire game. You’ll invariably fold every fringe country in your command. You still get a minimum of three new soldiers every turn; put them all in Irkutsk. Never swap out for horses or cannons—make your single country overflow with humanity.
  4. Since you’re in Asia, your stronghold generally has absolutely no strategic importance. Since you never attack, you never gain any risk cards—so there’s no real benefit for any other player to try and eliminate you.
  5. Also, since you never attack, you never really have to pay attention. Go watch something cool on TV.
  6. Eventually everyone knocks each other out until you’re the only other nation left to defeat. Congratulations! You came in 2nd place!

Two Hundred Posts

By JoshPetersel in Words 0 Comment

Whoa. 200 is a really, really big number.

Important milestones since the last check-in:

 

I guess that doesn’t really leave much room for fun in the next 100, does it? Maybe we’d better pack it in now.

…nah.

“Wow, that guy can write.”

By JoshPetersel in Words 0 Comment

Overheard in an email from a complete stranger:

“Collier – I just read [Josh’s] declaration, and wow, that guy can write. I guarantee you that they are going to claim that the lawyers drafted that declaration. Good job getting that one!”

Further proof that I’m the best. Precisely what the world needed.

A Guest Post Approaches!

By JoshPetersel in Words 0 Comment

[This is my blog’s first-ever guest post. And my mom wrote it. Enjoy!]

I know I’m supposed to write you something about being a better Mom in 10 (or so) easy steps, but I’ve been thinking about it, and realized that the concept of “better” Mom is very subjective. Personally, I think I’m the greatest Mom, b/c I ended up with three absolutely fabulous kids–bright, ambitious, loyal, considerate, adventurous, fun-loving, respectful and devoted to family. In other words, I think you’ve all grown to exemplify the values that I treasure the most–real mensches.

But it occurred to me that others might define “better” differently—frankly, none of you are super-star athletes, artists or musicians which (according to that new book Tiger Mom) makes me a failure for not forcing you guys to practice mercilessly at something. You guys are also not particularly strong at doing chores at home (my fault entirely b/c I took them all on for myself) but to lots of Moms that’s the essence of good child rearing. And who the heck am I anyway to be giving parenting advice to anyone other than my own immediate family????

So maybe what I can offer you, to do with as you wish, is some stuff that I’ve learned along the way–not necessarily about child rearing either. For example, I’ve recently learned:

How to Paint the Bathrooms in Your House and Only Come Close to Killing Yourself

1.  There’s a reason that you’re supposed to shut the electric current before changing light switches or fixtures: I got away with it the first time (just lucky, I guess) but got a big enough shock the second time to totally curl my hair (wait, my hair is already curly). A corollary to this premise is that sometimes other people do actually know what they’re talking about, and are worth listening to…but only sometimes.

ProTip: Find the main circuit breaker for the house. Ours in the basement, in an elecrical cabinet with about 30 other switches. It took some trial and error to find the right switch, but it paid off later in the time saved when actually doing the electrical work without fear of the (sometimes very painful) electric shock.

2.  Preparation is key to success. An hour spent preparing a room to resemble Dexter’s kill room is worth at least 3-4 hours later spent is cleaning up spilled spackle, paint drops and general sloppiness. I now finally get what all that studying was about in school–not to remember the subject matter, but to understand the concept that success comes from preparing, proven to a small degree by the Kaplan-type prep courses and to a lesser degree by the Zachary Petersel do it yourself version.

ProTip: This one is easy: Either watch an actual video demonstration on an episode of Dexter, or get a drop cloth (paint/hardware store) or enormous plastic trash bags and cover absolutely everything in the room that doesn’t move or can’t be replaced.

3.  Using the right tool makes all the difference in the world, or, as a surgeon might say, don’t use a hacksaw when a scalpel will do. This is the same philosophy that lies behind the famous expression “The pen is mightier than the sword.” In the context of construction and/or repairs, having the right tools (or power tools) clearly facilitates the job. But, even in the context of child-rearing, having and using the right tools (hugs, kisses, flattery and occasional bribery) is far and away more effective than the wrong tools (yelling, screaming, belittling, berating and the out and out ridiculous “I’ll give you something to cry about” smack-down).

ProTip: For most of the basic renovation stuff, the basic household tools will do: pencil, ruler, light weight hammer, flat head screwdriver, phillips head screwdriver and drill. It really helps if the screwdriver and drill are power tools with adjustable size bits (loser points for using a 1″ size drill bit to make a hole for a 1/2″ size screw, and vice versa). If working on more than one room at a time, it also helps tremendously to keep the tools in one place and, at my age in particular, to remember where that place is. I can’t tell you the amount of time I’ve wasted on Now where did I leave that ******* screwdriver this time????

Okay, that’s it for the moment. Better get back to work. G-d help me if I ever get a real job where the boss actually cares about what I’m really doing at the computer.

///

[If you want to say hi, leave your comments below and I’ll be sure that Mom gets the message.]

Airlines

By JoshPetersel in Words 3 Comments

Being Mark Cuban would be great.

I recently read that Cuban is starting a rival company to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the current system for determining the year’s best NCAA football team. Everyone hates this system (the structure is stupid). Cuban hates this system. So, he’s doing something about it.

I’m not fortunate enough to have silly amounts of capital floating around at my convenience. All I get to do is rant about the annoying things I’m exposed to.

More often than not, I’m annoyingly exposed to airline travel. So here’s today’s idea: I’d like to start an airline and introduce a massive reconfiguration of the current pricing system.

Think about this: Isn’t it a little funny that indirect flights are cheaper than direct flights? Granted, from the simple consumer’s standpoint, an indirect flight is a lesser good (more time, stress, probability of delay, etc.) and thus should cost less. But aren’t indirect flights a lesser good from the airline’s point of view, too? You’re looking at what’s essentially two flights—two tanks of gas, two sets of pilots, two racks of salty snacks and sodas, the innumerable customer service disasters that occur when (*ahem*) one flight’s delay leads to missing the second leg—but the price of a direct flight to Chicago is priced about the same as a two-pronged flight from St. Louis to Chicago to Portland?

So, on that note: I want to start an airline that only sells direct flights. That’s it. I hope you weren’t expecting something terribly complicated. My costs are lower because all of my flights are direct. So my prices are lower, too.

And here’s how we’ll add fuel to the fire:

  1. No checked luggage. Nowadays, half of the airlines take your second carry-on and throw it underneath the plane anyway. And this airline flies domestic, only. If you can’t fit all your junk in two carry-ons, too bad. Sorry. There’s always Delta. (Try to) Have fun! Lighter planes (less fuel needed), smaller planes (less cargo space needed), quicker turnaround (fewer personnel, less airport real estate needed). Costs plummet, prices plummet.
  2. Flight routes leave at the same time on the hour, every time. Say, the St. Louis-Chicago flight always leaves at HH:43. I think of this as a calling card. People in the know could request “the 43 to Chicago at 8pm.” It’s also easier to remember when your flight takes off—I know my flight’s at 3-something, but 3:13 or 3:48? Do I need to head to the airport at 2:30 or 3:00?
  3. Flights every other hour. Well, ideally, flights every hour. Again, I like the idea of a calling card, but also, I’d hate for anyone to have to miss a flight. And I can’t imagine it being necessary to fly from city A to B every hour—that might create congestion.
  4. You can still get from St. Louis to Portland—there’s no indirect flights, you’ll simply have to buy two tickets. Two hours for a layover is tolerable (you’ve got your laptop, don’t you?), and understandable (you only paid $49 per ticket. Again, if you’re unsatisfied, there’s Delta).
  5. Buying a ticket is simpler. First, by eliminating vague, cloudy pricing. This ticket is $136 today. It could be more tomorrow. It could even be less. Who knows!? C’mon, we’re better than this, now. We’re good at the internet. We’ve got Travelocity, Kayak, Bing. We’ve seen how successful Groupon is. Here’s my deal: This flight is $49 until April 4th. Then, it’s $79 until April 14th. Then, it’s $99 until departure date. Or alternatively: This flight is $49 until 50 seats are sold. Then, it’s $79 until 50 more are sold. Then, it’s $99 until all seats are gone. You could, if you were daring, even evoke a Groupon model for flights: For the next 24 hours, all flights to Miami the first week in April are 60% off. No matter what, pricing is clear and easy to follow. And by the way: Naturally, when I’m searching for a flight, my dates are a little flexible. I don’t understand why you should have to click a checkbox every time to say “yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing just a few other options that might make my trip cheaper.” This becomes the standard.
  6. Buying a ticket is fun. See: Groupon model. Also, instead of presenting a bunch of dropdown menus on the landing page, put a treasure map there. Drag a green O to where you’re starting, and a red X to where you’d like to end up (and of course, watch as a black dotted line marks the trails you could take to get from A to B). Skyscanner.net does this, and while I was studying abroad in Europe, I’d drag my marker across all the different destinations I was curious about to see what was affordable in the next two months. I loved that. My airline changes the game from I need to get to Indianapolis in the middle of May for my brother’s graduation to Maybe I’ll travel next month. I wonder if there’s anywhere I haven’t been that’s affordable?
  7. Of course, anything in the ticketing department—from pricing to deals to flight delays to weather updates—is linked to appropriate Twitter accounts that are specific to my airport.
  8. Personally, I rarely use the affiliate links to help find hotels and rental cars for the weekend. However, I do frequently dash over to Yelp to see what I might like doing once I’ve landed. So merge Yelp to the site, and use what I’ve reviewed in the past to make suggestions for junk to do.
  9. Free WiFi at the terminal around your gate. The lady at the desk can turn on an airport/hotspot/whatever, which you get the password to when you show her your ticket. Because I’m tired of these giant banners that promise me unlimited Wifi throughout the terminal, and then redirect me to a landing page that charges $9.95 for all day access as soon as I open a browser. That noise is intolerable.
  10. A little red/green tab on my seat in the plane that I can flip to let the flight attendant know that I’d like a drink, I’m sleeping and don’t want a drink, or I do want a drink even though I’m sleeping so please wake me up. In fact: maybe the lady at the desk has all the cans of Coke, or has vouchers for me to go pick one up at an airport vendor. That way I don’t have to stock a cart, or carry a cart, or perhaps most importantly, hire an extra flight attendant who I only really need to help shuffle the cart down the aisle without running over people’s feet. But I could see airports getting annoyed by this.
  11. No seatback/upright positions. Upright position never bothers me unless I’m in seatback position and the pilot requests that I go back to upright position as we’re preparing to land. Then, and only then, am I thinking man, upright position totally sucks. But maybe this is only me.
  12. Anything that Herb Kelleher did in that famous Case Study (heads up: this links to the .pdf) for Southwest Airlines that I read about a thousand times in every college marketing class ever.
  13. I’m on the presumption that the annoying instructional video at the beginning of every flight that teaches you step-by-step how to buckle the same seatbelt you’ve been using for the past hundred years is a requirement by some asinine bureaucratic/governmental/nonsensical organization that I’m simply not going to want to deal with. So in absolute, positive, utter spite of that, the seatbelts on my planes are all fucking complicated. And you’re not guaranteed to get the same type of seatbelt from flight to flight—so you better listen up as the stereotypically Black man, Asian woman, White guy with a grey beard, and guy with a pilot’s hat explain to you how to open all of the latches, pinch on both ends, press all the buttons in unison, turn the knobs, and tug on the loose end in precise order to ensure a snug fit.

Finally, we’ll need a name. I’m leaning towards Squareline. Primarily because I love puns. Secondarily because I think you could have a lot of fun, and do a lot of creative work with a logo set based on the contrast of squares and lines. And finally, because the name embodies the product: You’re getting a square deal.

Eat your heart out, Cuban.

2Bar

By JoshPetersel in Words 0 Comment

Here’s something I learned this week: The US $2 bill is actually currently still in production. I thought I’d heard some time ago that the government stopped printing them. I think I’ve still got a few $2 bills in some piggy bank in my room at home that grandma gave me some dozen years ago—collectors items!

It appears as though my beliefs were misguided. At least, so says the 2003 $2 bill currently in my wallet. And the Wikipedia page. I was elated to receive the bill in change from a beer. Not only because I got a beer, but because $2 bills are awesome.

Then I learned that you can actually go to a bank and request stacks of $2 bills. Whoa.

That all got me thinking. There’s an opportunity here. The $2 bill has a number of really valuable characteristics. They’re scarce—you can’t get one just about anywhere. They’re novel—it’s fun to have! They’re accepted everywhere (well, for the most part).

So here’s an idea: 2Bar. A bar concept based entirely around the $2 bill. A totally unique, remarkable, fun, and buzzable theme (see: St. Louis’ latest cool bar that everyone gushes about, the Silver Ballroom). A bar that has its own (awesome!) currency—and not the frustrating kind like Disney Dollars that you get stuck with and can’t use anywhere else.

The gambit:

  1. Load the register with $2 bills to give out in change. Encourage cash transactions. Maybe even eschew credit card processing entirely.
  2. Every time someone buys a drink, they get a few $2 bills in change. They paid $10 for a $3 PBR? Give three $2’s and one $1 back. They paid $20 for a $4 Schlafly? Give a $10 and three $2’s back. Now, both patrons have three of your calling cards with them at all times in their wallet. They’re going to stare at them the very next time they make a purchase. And because $2 bills are goofy-awesome, they’re going to share ’em with friends.
  3. Now, the totally beautiful part: drink specials for anyone paying with $2 bills. Stuff that other bars couldn’t afford to offer—but you can, because you’re rewarding your loyal customers. A $2 Bud Light, or a $4 Founders Centennial IPA looks like a steal. But the only people with access to that menu are your loyal customers.

Still plenty of room to get creative from there. Someone wants giftcards? Just give out $2 bills. Host events with a $2 cover. Make sure you pick a location on Jefferson Avenue. Money themed cocktail and menu items. Do you even need to buy business cards? Let your money work for you.

T-Shirts

By JoshPetersel in Words 0 Comment

Think about this:

I only think your funny t-shirt makes you look funny if I don’t know the place you bought it from.

This shirt, for example, I used to love.  But anyone can buy that.  It doesn’t make you funny anymore, you’ve just picked a place to shop with a funny design team.

Maybe I’m the only person who thinks that way, though.

In a highly related but totally unplanned tangent – Eleven Magazine T-shirts are only $11 now if you don’t have one yet.  Cool T-shirts are cool no matter where you buy ’em.