tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1 2008-06-13T01:47:42Z Born in Baltimore. Grew up in the big city. Came out West to college at Pomona. Web since 1995; writer since even earlier. Strategic communications consultant, dot-com software project manager, entrepreneur and Web designer. Getting my MBA. Love cooking, photography, organization, the Web. Overall sunny outlook, matching sunny location in Los Angeles. Writing about technology, about business, about entrepreneurship, about individual productivity, and occasional other interesting things. Movable Type 3.33 tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.352 2008-06-13T01:19:01Z 2008-06-13T01:47:42Z

I’ve been gone for a while; mostly it was too much work, launching a whole marketing campaign. But some of it was fun — I went to the Hawaiian island of Kauai on a good week’s vacation, paid for substantially...

I've been gone for a while; mostly it was too much work, launching a whole marketing campaign. But some of it was fun -- I went to the Hawaiian island of Kauai on a good week's vacation, paid for substantially by attending a timeshare presentation. Now that was an education on sales. I have to assume that timeshares sell pretty darned well. With the big hotels playing in the sector, the standard sales presentations must have a solid conversion rate, despite the high price tag. And I'm always interested in learning sales tips, given how important sales is for my company. While I would have been surprised had we decided to buy (not out of the question, but unlikely), I figured I'd at least learn some good sales tricks. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/303651459_49o4W-M.jpg! That said, I was not impressed with the presentation I received. The salesman made a number of mistakes, and the presentation structure itself was flawed. Fortunately, there were clear takeaways. h3. Sales Mistakes h4. Don't argue with the customer When I suggested that there was a downside to paying for future vacations with current dollars, the salesman bristled and argued with me about the time value of money. A losing argument, as part of the standard MBA curriculum is a semester on the many ways to look at the value of a flow of money over time. I didn't feel like explaining NPV or any of the principles behind hedging to the salesman, and he didn't seem to want to learn; so we spent 20 minutes with him getting increasingly heated and me trying to change the subject. Not fun or convincing. Never assume that you can convince via argument in a sales situation, because your customer may know more than you. (Experienced negotiators may suggest that his aggressive behavior was a power play, which is of course possible, but that strikes me as a bad strategy against all but the weakest customers.) !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/305730709_cLWRT-M.jpg! h4. Don't get caught in a lie After the presentation, we drove up to the lovely Waimea Canyon to see the island. While I understand that the salesman was uncomfortable with us leaving his property, if we enjoyed our drive -- only 2-3 hours roundtrip -- then we were more likely to be sold on Kauai. Rather than turning this into an opportunity, the salesman decided to scare us with stories of the sharp drop-off alongside the road, and how few guardrails there were along the canyon drive. Of course, the canyon drive was beautiful and very safe, with trees and guardrails around all the difficult parts. We loved the drive -- and thought the whole time about how we'd just been lied to. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/305734398_5SGYZ-M.jpg! h4. Don't flim-flam In sales, there's lying and there's flim-flam -- the tall tales that salesmen seem to be happy to tell. One of the most common is the third-party story, in which you assert that some trusted third party thinks that your product is a good deal, for just the reason that the customer is doubting it. In my case, my financial doubts were supposed to be allayed by a story about a risk management guru from Merrill Lynch who'd just bought a timeshare. Likely, this was old-fashioned flim-flammery: there was no such person. If there was, he should've given me a name, because consumers today need more specifics to build trust. I certainly assumed there was no such risk management customer. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/305728928_BMJYD-M.jpg! h4. Don't hide who you are Our presenter was an ex-military guy, which might've made his wooden bearing and aggression more palatable -- both I and my girlfriend have family in the military (and I'm pretty wooden, while she's quite aggressive). But he only mentioned his service once, offhandedly, and made no real effort to introduce himself to us as a person. A salesman is always better off being a person, with all his or her flaws, than a sales Cylon. A lot of sales books recommend telling the customer about yourself, if only to model the level of openness you want them to show to you; our salesman should've taken that lesson himself. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/302242187_B6TUc-M.jpg! h3. Presentation Mistakes h4. Don't sit behind a desk when you have a sunny beach just out the door Seriously, it was a 90-minute presentation in a sales location with a beach 20 feet out the door, and the timeshare property 15 feet in the other direction. Why were we in a dark room behind a desk? Why did it take us an hour -- plus several specific objections that we couldn't even think about the deal without seeing what we were dealing about -- before we were taken to see a room. I remember when I did marketing for a premium apartment property that our salespeople always took people on a tour first -- to make them fall in love. We never even had that chance. Give your customer something to fall in love with, then play logic. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/302240084_dJ8Q3-M.jpg! h4. Don't hide the price tag Again, it took us about 70 minutes into the presentation to hear the price. There are two schools to telling the price: the one that says to hide it to not scare the customer, and the one that says to tell it to pre-qualify the customer. I'm in the latter group, because every salesperson's time is valuable -- the time you spend with one bad lead could just as easily be spent with a good one. Chuck the bad ones out quick. !http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/305724714_JbuqT-M.jpg! All of this is fascinating to me, as we're now formalizing our sales process (that may be our incredible sales ace summer intern's job, actually). I figure, if we can be beating a top hotel chain at the sales game, then we must be headed in the right direction. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.351 2008-02-28T05:35:25Z 2008-03-01T05:41:25Z

Bloggers like Marc Andreessen, John Gruber, and TechDirt have heaped scorn upon ABC’s decidedly feature-retro on-demand service. With ads you can’t skip, ABC’s offering gets rid of what everybody seems to agree is the most wonderful feature of the DVR....

Bloggers like "Marc Andreessen":http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/02/abc-thinks-your.html, "John Gruber":http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/february#mon-25-tivo, and "TechDirt":http://techdirt.com/articles/20080224/231143340.shtml have heaped scorn upon "ABC's decidedly feature-retro on-demand service":http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/media/25abc.html?_r=1&ex=1361682000&en=23079907c62f6977&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin. With ads you can't skip, ABC's offering gets rid of what everybody seems to agree is the most wonderful feature of the DVR. Is ABC stupid or brilliant? I'm almost tempted to argue the former -- this could be a clever business move. So why would those people pay for a fancy commercial-skipping DVR? In _The Innovator's Dilemma_, Clayton Christensen suggests that most disruptive products -- those that break up existing ways of doing things and take over the world -- are cheap products that give _overserved_ consumers _less_ than they'd gotten before. Less of the things they didn't value, anyway. Suppose Tivo is just too much for many consumers? ABC's offering could then be the lower-cost, feature-right offering that these people who don't care about skipping commercials could want. Of course, the catch is that these people aren't watching the commercials anyway, so preventing commercial skip will make no difference in the end. However, that prevention will satisfy ABC's existing business model, so at least nobody in a corner office will feel uncomfortable with it. That's good business, at least until the advertisers catch on!]]> tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.350 2008-02-02T19:05:40Z 2008-02-02T19:14:10Z

Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo for $45 billion is both unexpected and widely-foreseen. Pundits have, for some time now, suggested that might be a reasonable course of action. But the purchase price is clearly aggressive, at $31/share for a stock...

Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo for $45 billion is both unexpected and widely-foreseen. Pundits have, for some time now, "suggested that might be a reasonable course of action":http://watchmojo.com/web/blog/index.php/2007/04/18/yhoo-let-one-rip-and-everyone-in-the-room-heard-it/. But the purchase price is clearly aggressive, at $31/share for a stock that had closed at under $19 the day before. In fact, as "Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg puts it":http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/2008/02/dear_yahoo_shar.html, this proposal looks more like Microsoft is saying "Dear Yahoo Shareholder: How would you like to get Yahoo's share price from six months ago back, tomorrow?" Where's the logic behind this price? tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.349 2008-01-25T23:17:11Z 2008-01-25T23:21:48Z

Almost no matter what you want to do with it, it’s tough to bend Outlook to your whims. This goes double if you follow the precepts of Getting Things Done. There’s the high-powered but somewhat obtuse GTD Outlook Add-in of...

Almost no matter what you want to do with it, it's tough to bend Outlook to your whims. This goes double if you follow the precepts of "Getting Things Done":http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142000280/ref=nosim/wadearmstrong-20. There's the high-powered but somewhat obtuse "GTD Outlook Add-in":http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/buy/indexd.php of course, but that loses a lot of fidelity once you go to the ubiquitous smartphone. Because I can't be separated from my Treo, I set up my system to be low-fi, while still providing a reliable inbox and review set-up. h3. Inbox The first step, of course, is to get all of your info into Outlook -- that's the only way you'll trust it. I use "a series of keyboard commands":http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/boost_your_windows_productivity_with_launchy_and_autohotkey.php to capture all of my to-dos, contacts, and appointments instantaneously. h3. Tasks vs. Appointments, and The Dashboard David Allen makes a good point in Getting Things Done -- Appointments are for things that must happen at a specific time, tasks for things that can happen anytime. I find that adding one small wrinkle into this very sound approach really lets me take advantage of what Outlook offers: I have tasks associated with dates, too. It makes sense to associate some tasks with dates -- take out the garbage on Thursday if pick-up is on Friday, pay Sales Tax on the 15th if the Board of Equalization expects it by the 20th -- so, some tasks get dates. But they don't get alarms, because, if you have to do them at a specific time, then they're appointments, not tasks.[1] Dated tasks don't fall by the wayside, even without alarms. That's because Outlook provides a great dashboard for daily work: the Calendar. In the Calendar view, I turn on the TaskPad, and set TaskPad View for Active Tasks for Selected Days. By right-clicking on the TaskPad column headers, I set a Custom View that only shows with Due Dates that exist, and tasks that don't have the @Waiting or @Holding categories that I use to mark tasks that aren't active.[2] !/images/outlookgtd/dashboard.gif! The result? Every day, I can drop right into the Calendar and see what I have to do that particular day. If I get all that done, it's over to the Task view (more on that later). Most people live in the Inbox, but, if you're doing GTD right then that's empty! Living in the calendar helps make this compelling. h3. The Power of Notes Now, most tasks come from projects. I've tried a variety of ways to plan and track projects, but none has worked so well for me as just keeping them in the Notes. I have a template I use for every project: !/images/outlookgtd/project.gif! Note that every project has clear objectives -- always useful for focusing thought. Every project also has tasks. If the task has a "+" next to it, then that's a sign that task is actually a separate project, broken out in another note. While the exceedingly basic Notes tool in Outlook doesn't provide any linking or outlining tools, outlining projects like this is surprisingly effective -- and, best of all, makes it easy to create new projects and edit existing projects on my Treo. !/images/outlookgtd/projects.gif! By prefacing every project note with the word "Project:", I'm able to filter my notes to show only project plans, not other notes I've taken. h3. Categories & Contexts I like to break down my tasks, contacts, and appointments by category, so that I can know what part of my time goes to Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, etc. Outlook is totally freeform with its categories so I use them for both categories and contexts. Contexts are simply categories named with the standard GTD-style "@"prefix. Setting the Tasks view to group tasks by category lets me view tasks by context or by category. I additionally get a lot of mileage by coloring each category distinctly -- although Outlook is very weak at this, with the limited set of colors it offers compared to similar tools on the Mac. !/images/outlookgtd/tasksincontexts.gif! Outlook lets you assign multiple categories to a task -- use that. As an added bonus, my Treo supports multiple categories to a task too, so I can use each category as a view to find the right task to do when I'm on the road. However, since the Treo doesn't support more than 12 categories altogether, I can't have a single category for each project. Instead, I preface the name of the task with the name of the project. That's not as convenient as a link inside the task, but it does link the task to the project in my mind. h3. Filtering Tasks The key to making the Tasks view work is to filter what it shows into useful views. Outlook fortunately has very powerful, if somewhat obtuse, filters. !/images/outlookgtd/tasksfilter.gif! This shows a basic filter that I use: All Active tasks. As I said in the Dashboard section, the calendar is for dated tasks; the Task view shows only undated tasks. So I make sure that all of the views there hide tasks with Due Dates. Then I have a lot of ways to break it down from there. Since I assign multiple categories to each task, I can filter my view in multiple ways. Hide @Holding and @Waiting tasks, or view them; hide personal (@Home) tasks; even see only the Sales tasks that I can do @Office. This way, when I finish my daily tasks and look into my Task list to pick something to do, I can break down my view to show me only what's relevant right now. h3. The Review The place where filtering really shines is in the Weekly Review. I filter my tasks to show me what I completed in the last week, to see if there are follow-ups I missed; to review @Waiting and @Holding tasks; and even to look at tasks that have been sitting on my to-do list for a long time, to double check if they're worth doing. That's a little peek into my GTD world, and how Outlook helps me work with my Treo. Hopefully some of these simple techniques will help you too. fn1. Obviously, I think of tasks as "do sometime during the day" activities, and appointments as "do a specific time in the day" activities. What about recurring tasks? Some day-related activities -- for instance, take out the Garbage every Thursday -- recur on a specific day; those, you can set a recurrence on a specific day for (Outlook has pretty powerful tools for this). But many other tasks -- grocery shopping -- don't have to be done on specific days. For these, set the task to recur a certain amount of time after completion of the previous task. For instance, I set my plant-watering task to recur every two days after I finished the task the last time. That way, if I get behind and don't water the plants, I don't have several incomplete watering tasks; there's just the one, and, when I check it off, it appears again two days from now, just when my plants need another drink. fn2. @Waiting means it's waiting on someone else, @Holding means I've put off the task -- a worthwhile distinction to make. Of course, I have to sweep both in my weekly review. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.343 2008-01-18T07:20:58Z 2008-01-18T07:26:08Z

There’s nothing like a Steve Jobs keynote address for a Mac fan like me. For a lot of years in the ’90s, the Macworld keynote was just a list of products; but, since Apple’s turn-of-the-century rebirth, it’s been a window...

There's nothing like a Steve Jobs keynote address for a Mac fan like me. For a lot of years in the '90s, the Macworld keynote was just a list of products; but, since Apple's turn-of-the-century rebirth, it's been a window on the company's emerging strategy. In Macworld after Macworld, Apple has revealed products that represented long bets -- the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, Apple TV, iWork -- and, if you look at Macworld with the same strategic eye as Jobs, there's indications of the future there. h3. Channel Fever If Jobs has learned anything from Apple's dominance of digital music, it's the power of controlling the sales channel. The iPod drives iTunes Music Store purchases drives Jobs's vision of how the industry should work. Jobs clearly wants to do the same thing for movies. Thus, the Apple TV and the newest generation of Apple TV, and thus iTunes movie rentals. This play has nothing to do with a Microsoftian concept of dominance of the living room; Apple won't own the space in the entertainment center next to the TV, they'll own the way into the TV. The strategy behind this is compelling. Apple has played a key role in basically destroying the existing music industry with iTunes; for a well-capitalized, technically-skilled emerging player in an industry, like Apple in music, disruption is a good thing, almost regardless of where that disruption leads. If Apple can disrupt TV's ad-based model and movies' DVD-based model, then, as the owner of the emerging channel to the consumer, Apple will be in a position to build a new industry in which it can dominate. This is why it's ok for the Apple TV to be feature-light and developing, and for iTunes to offer movies that may expire too soon: the journey of a thousand miles always has to begin with that one step. h3. What Long Game? That's why the MacBook Air appears so odd. The mini notebook is a new segment for Apple, but it's a very competitive one, and the MacBook Air looks ordinary. Why would Apple launch such an obvious dud? One problem Apple has in notebook technology is that it doesn't really have a defined cutting-edge product. The MacBook needs to be affordable; the MacBook Pro needs to be powerful and capable. Neither can push the envelope if that means compromising on their basic value proposition. All the MacBook Air needs to be is style-forwards. Strategically, Apple has a number of technical needs. More environmentally-friendly components would be a great PR boost. A good way to get the MacBook's price down is to simplify its design by putting the whole system on a single board. Dropping overall voltage will lead to less heat and longer battery life across the whole laptop range. Making Intel design a new package for its chip just for Apple sets the relationship on the footing Apple would prefer. Multitouch may eventually be a super-efficient, well-loved interface tool that effectively differentiates the Mac OS from Windows and Linux. But all of these changes are expensive and technically challenging at first -- then cheaper as volume ramps up. How to avoid implementing such changes all at once across a high-volume line of products that are critical to your bottom line? Launch a new product that will ship in smaller volumes! Also, make no mistake: eliminating the DVD drive is part of the channel play. Jobs killed the floppy with the first iMac, and he's betting he can do the same with the DVD. And it's a smart strategy, because, if Blu-Ray and HD-DVD go nowhere, how else do you get your HD content? Oh, iTunes. Right. h3. Whence the iPhone? So the iPhone has been out for a bit now, with no update. Well, guess what, it doesn't need one! But there's a channel play here too: by making the maps' autolocation dependent on WiFi, Apple creates more demand for WiFi, which means more WiFi deployment, which means more places in which users can buy movies and TV on their iPhone. Oh, and they save money by not having to build in a GPS receiver too. That's nifty. h3. Time Capsule Time Capsule hearkens back to the days in which Apple was in the computer business and nothing but. Back in those times, Apple had to continually roll out new features for its computers just to demonstrate its value as a company. It's become clear that the main selling point of Macs is that they Just Work. Time Machine and Time Capsule are great examples of that: you plug in, you get a backup, and your data is kept much more reliably than with those other operating systems. That's a good definition of just works. But it's funny and nostalgic to see this small, progressive improvement in computer user experience in the basket with the big strategic plays. h3. So What's Next? Reasonably enough, scuttlebutt has it that the next big event -- Apples World Wide Developer Conference -- will be iPhone-centric. It would make sense to announce that the phone is open to new software then, but that's all part of another long-term strategy we didn't see from Apple here at Macworld. The channel strategy will continue to grow as Apple pushes the studios to allow more features. Longer rentals will come in the next year or so; Apple will also push for some simultaneous releases on iTunes, which will work great for many of the direct-to-DVD releases, such as the myriad American Pie sequels. Apple will integrate full 3G networking via AT&T's upgraded network in the next version of the MacBook Air, just because Apple needs to start somewhere. And DVD drives will go away on all new Macs by this time next year: Apple will offer some sort of software purchasing and installation system, perhaps via Software Update. That'll show the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD people! But AppleTV will never work with TV, because that's a different distribution channel. This means Apple won't buy Tivo; you heard it here first. Amazon, however... tag:wadearmstrong.com,2008://1.338 2008-01-10T08:02:01Z 2008-01-10T08:04:19Z

At my company, we send out a moderate amount of mail. There’s the bills, of course, and also reply envelopes to help get feedback from customers. Obviously, keeping mailing costs down is key, but so is having convenient access to...

At my company, we send out a moderate amount of mail. There's the bills, of course, and also reply envelopes to help get feedback from customers. Obviously, keeping mailing costs down is key, but so is having convenient access to postage and minimizing the amount of work I have to do (after all, there's only one of me, and I have a lot more than just sending mail on my plate). After trying out some options, I decided to stick with plain old-fashioned stamps, bought at the USPS Web site. h3. Cost Components As with any expenditure, it's important to look at all the pieces that end up contributing to costs. For postage, there is: * Startup costs, including memberships and investment in hardware * Cost of capital, if you're buying a lot of postage in advance of use (for instance, the Post Office will be happy to sell you "10,000 stamps for $4100":http://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10152&storeId=10001&categoryId=11831&productId=31953&langId=-1, quite a lot of money to put out there at once) * Convenience cost, which includes how easy it is to get and use the stamps (for instance, it's not convenient to drive to the post office to buy stamps every time you need new ones) h3. The Options I looked at four vendors: * The USPS, by buying stamps on their Web site * USPS Business Reply mail * Pitney-Bowes, the well-known (and, I believe, original) purveyor of postage meters * Endicia, which sells stamps online h3. Costs *Buying stamps from the USPS* is cheap; shipping is just $1. While you probably don't want that 10,000 stamp coil, a few 100-stamp coils are easy enough to work with. Of course, you do get stuck laying out all of the costs out up front. Assuming you're putting this all on your credit card at 17%, you'll be spending $0.57/month per $41 coil of 100 stamps until you pay that big debt down (that's a bit more than a penny a stamp). To match the $10 monthly fee that Endicia charges for stamps-on-demand, you'd need to buy 17 books of stamps a month. *Pitney Bowes* is by far the most expensive. To start, their cheapest plan is $19.99/month, although you do get a whole meter for that price. While you pay only when you meter a mailpiece, when you take into account supply costs you're paying about $0.52 for a $0.41 stamp with their "entry-level system":http://www.pitneyworks.com/meter/indexnt.cfm?ml=W1107KD000Q57A&mktpgm=M9AAARF6MC *Endicia* is an attractive service with the low monthly fee of $9.99 and no equipment costs for the "entry-level product":http://www.endicia.com/Products/Standard/, with which you can print stamps onto Endicia's special stickers via your laser or label printer. For the laser-printer product, you buy sheets that fit 25 stamps and end up paying $0.03/stamp. That's still 3 times the USPS's delivery rates, and it turns out that you never break even. *Business Reply* is theoretically the most cost-effective, since the money isn't deducted from your account until the imprinted mailpiece is sent; however, this means that this service can only be used for incoming, not outgoing, mail. Since most of my mail is incoming customer responses, that makes Business Reply relevant for me. There's a $175 start-up fee, which, for convenience, I've amortized over a year here. There's also a $550 fee when you get over 950 pieces per year. I made a pretty graph to compare all the possibilities: !/images/stampcost.gif! As you can see, the result is pretty surprising: ordering stamps is the cheapest option! Even assuming a 17% annual interest rate on the money you spend on stamps, buying the stamps outright is the cheapest option. Of course, if you assume you'll have only 50% of mailpieces returned to you, then the math is a little different: !/images/stampcost_responserate.gif! There, Business Reply becomes competitive at just under 300 pieces/month (obviously, the lower your response rate, the faster Business reply is competitive). We're not at that volume yet, so buying stamps online is the best choice for us. It's amazing how non-competitive meters are in this simple analysis! tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.326 2007-10-25T17:13:49Z 2007-10-25T17:15:28Z

Nothing ever goes right for my neighbor. His tires are flat, someone broke his cabinet (the one that he left in the driveway), and his car accidentally got impounded. The things he hopes for never pan out. For Steve Jobs,...

Nothing ever goes right for my neighbor. His tires are flat, someone broke his cabinet (the one that he left in the driveway), and his car accidentally got impounded. The things he hopes for never pan out. For Steve Jobs, "it's the opposite story":http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/22results.htm - Apple sold a boatload of Macs last quarter, more than anyone expected. It seems like, after years of hoping, Steve finally got some iPod users to make the big switch to the Mac. Of course, it wasn't really hope that got the switchers. Apple's been working on this for years. They built a crossover product and promoted that product until it was the definition of hip; but they also worked hard on the Macintosh. Apple moved us from the old System 9 to OS X, from PowerPC to Intel, from ClarisWorks to iWork; they developed and bundled iLife; they built compelling hardware and laptops that work well, especially in key laptop traits like sleep. They bundled a development environment with every Mac and watched an ecosystem of great applications bloom. Whenever people began to switch, Apple was going to be ready with the experience and tools the switchers needed. Back to my neighbor. When good things happen to him, he's never ready. That one time someone gave him the two brand-new flat panel TVs? Never got around to selling them. The fancy tires he got in exchange for some work? Sure, he was going to make a bunch putting them on some neighborhood kids' cars, but he never had the space to jack up a few extra rides and actually do the work. Sure, it seems mundane, but with a little planning, those finds - things that many an electrician, like my neighbor, might get in trade for work - could've helped support his family. Everybody gets breaks; Apple had planned and was ready. Of course, there's also overplanning. At a recent USC networking event, I met a man with a smart idea for a skateboard product. He'd been working for months on his project, and had planned out everything out, from the launch to how he'd handle thousands of orders. In fact, because he had everything planned so thoroughly, he was in a tizzy about the challenges of shipping hundreds of units every day - so much that he wasn't worrying about actually selling the first unit tomorrow. Of course, if he couldn't get the sales rolling, he'd never have to worry about hundreds in a few months. Sometimes you just have to solve the problems that are in front of your face. PJ O'Rourke, the _Rolling Stone_ political/international reporter and humorist of the '90s, once wrote that there were two kinds of roadblocks in strife-torn nations: those for which you absolutely must not stop, or you'll be shot; and those for which you absolutely must stop, or you'll be shot. The trick was that you never knew which kind of roadblock the one ahead was until you were at it. While the stakes for entrepreneurs are smaller - only going broke, instead of dying - the dilemma is similar. Some problems need to be planned for, others ignored until they become worth worrying about, and you never know which kind of a problem it is until after you've decided which approach to take with it. If you know which kind mine are, please tell me. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.317 2007-10-05T17:05:31Z 2007-10-05T17:07:55Z

In a former life, I designed Web sites for a living — I still do a bit of consulting here and there. For someone starting a new business, having a great Web site can make a big difference. But it’s...

In a former life, I designed Web sites for a living -- I still do a bit of consulting here and there. For someone starting a new business, having a great Web site can make a big difference. But it's not always clear how to make a site that really sells online. Here are some common mistakes that companies of all sizes make on their Web sites, as well as some tips and tools you can use to make sure these mistakes don't appear on your site. h3. 1. Sound The very first commandment of good Web site design is "fulfill your customers' needs." Sound can help your customers learn and carry out tasks -- but it can also disrupt. Think of the officeworker in a cubicle whose computer suddenly starts playing your music or pitch as they visit your site. Did you just make them look unprofessional to their colleagues? Rat them out to their boss as a slacker? Worst of all, did you make them close the browser window with your site in it, to make the sound go away? Only play sound when your user specifically requests it. That way, your demos and podcasts will stand out to potential customers as useful features, not inconveniences. h3. 2. Internet Explorer-Only Sites Fortunately, this mistake is less common than it used to be. With the rise of Firefox and Safari as alternative browsers, Web designers less often build sites that only work in IE on Windows and more often write code that works across a wide variety of Web browsers. That's good, because you never know what browser your potential customer will be using. Make sure that your site works well in all common browsers by using "standards-compliant design":http://webstandards.org/learn/faq/. If you aren't sure how well your site works, check using "Browsercam":http://www.browsercam.com/, a service that shows your site in a wide variety of browsers. If your developers are using the hot new effects called AJAX -- which change pages dynamically as your customers use your site, rather than requiring your customers to wait as a new page loads for every action they take -- make sure that these developers are using AJAX code that works in most common browsers and degrades gracefully in browsers that don't support it. There are a variety of high-quality toolkits available that do just that. h3. 3. No Analytics So how are your pages doing? Who's visiting? Are you getting more visitors or less than before? Are people who got your brochure visiting your site? Are the coupons you put out working? Do you know? You should. Even if you're not going to update your site, you shouldn't just let it sit there. Use it to get information on your customers. What products or services are they looking at? What pages are they arriving at, and after what pages do they leave your site? Log analysis software lets you answer that question. There are lots of powerful options for this kind of software, but if you're just starting out you may find that the free "Google Analytics":http://www.google.com/analytics/ work well enough for you. If you have a shopping cart on your site, the shopping cart software may also tell you what people are doing and where they're going. Great! Check out the reports to see which products get the most views. Get more value by assigning unique codes to the coupons you give out at different locations -- and analyze your coupon use to see which ones get the best response. You can learn about your customers from your site! h3. 4. No On-Page SEO Search Engine Optimization -- getting your site at the top of search results so that your customers can find you -- is a lot of work and, frankly, a bit of a black art. But being a top result can bring big business results. There are two kinds of search engine optimization (SEO): on-page and off-page. On-page SEO refers to optimizations you make on your site, while off-page SEO refers to optimizations others make on their sites that makes your site rank higher (getting links on other sites is a good example of off-page SEO). You are in control of changes on your own page; make them. Standards-compliant design doesn't just help users see you better, it helps search engines too, so a standards-compliant site will show up higher in search results. Another powerful took is good writing -- use the words in your copy that your customers will use when they search for sites like yours. Use clear headlines on all pages, using the same keywords. If you're using Flash or lots of images, make sure that your developers use the techniques available to make these tools search-engine friendly. h3. 5. Design by Vice President This is a mistake a lot of big companies make -- don't make it too! Have you ever visited a Web site that seemed to have a button for every division on the home page, but didn't help you accomplish your goals? That's design by Vice President. You can almost imagine each VP asking "where's the button for my division?" when they had a meeting to look at their new site. But of course a customer rarely cares about divisions -- they care about problem solutions. Make your site about solving specific problems, not about respecting specific boundaries within your organization. Your customers will love you. h3. 6. Generic Look It's tempting to keep costs down on your new site by buying a design template and using stock photography; I recommend against it. Your site needs to be about you. If you put your biggest competitor's logo at the top of the page, would your site fit them as well as it fits you? If so, then how can your customer keep you straight? How can you make a unique and lasting impression? Instead, spend a little more to get a design that matches your logo colors, or to take a few photos of your products or people. The result will be a site that speaks about you -- and that's key to selling. Your small business's Web site can help get it going -- or be a waste of time and money. By staying clear of these six common mistakes, you can get a lot more bang for your buck and sell more effectively online. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.308 2007-09-28T02:31:09Z 2007-09-28T03:12:26Z

Starting a company is a messy business. Things go wrong. Worse, things that you never thought could go wrong go wrong. You have to create everything afresh, and that always takes longer than expected. It’s a mess, and it’ll get...

Starting a company is a messy business. Things go wrong. Worse, things that you never thought could go wrong go wrong. You have to create everything afresh, and that always takes longer than expected. It's a mess, and it'll get you down. But you just have to believe. You can be the princess. You can go home again. It's like a Disney movie -- you just have to believe. The last few weeks, I've just believed. It's a critical time for "Dine to Thrive":http://dinetothrive.com, and, with a lot of balls up in the air, my faith has been tested. But I believed. Of course, it helped that I had my "Feasibility Analysis":http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial_tool_1_feasibility_analysis.php to tell me that there was a real there there, for my company. But Murphy's law had struck enough that I was completely "off my business plan":http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial_tool_2_the_business_plan.php. So I just had to believe. Every morning, I made calls and sent out letters, and I believed. When I went to meetings, I sat in my car and made sure I believed first. Now the clouds are starting to clear, and I dare hope we're on our way. In fact, I even dare believe. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.304 2007-09-19T19:21:39Z 2007-09-19T19:23:15Z

On top of their mostly-symbolic cut to the discount rate a month ago, the Fed has now cut the Federal Funds rate, hopefully lowering lenders’ interest rates and saving the economy from a Real Estate bubble-fueled recession. This is a...

On top of their mostly-symbolic cut to the discount rate a month ago, "the Fed has now cut the Federal Funds rate":http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/18/news/economy/fed_rates/index.htm?cnn=yes, hopefully lowering lenders' interest rates and saving the economy from a Real Estate bubble-fueled recession. This is a dangerous game: the added credit availability may not trickle down to homeowners or other consumers, and the new liquidity may simply allow predatory and irresponsible lenders to cover their own losses while not learning a thing. This cut is a gift to the lenders -- and shows that what we need is a policy solution to this housing crisis. h3. Who Did a Bad Thing There's plenty of blame to go around here. Sure, there are tens of thousands of homeowners who irresponsibly treated their houses like ATMs. But how many of these had advanced degrees in finance, like the wizards behind their mortgages? Maybe the borrowers should've known better (although, given that nobody teaches budgeting in junior high, maybe not). Certainly the lenders should have. They knew they were taking big risks by providing mortgages to sub-prime applicants. They may even have known about the "predatory lending":http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/12/real_estate/surprising_face_of_foreclosure_Olivers/index.htm?postversion=2007091711. The lenders have no excuse here. h3. Life Preserver, Anyone? And it's the borrowers who, right now, will pay the biggest price. Sure, sub-prime lenders have gone under, and bank stocks have been hit hard. But many times more Americans own houses than own substantial stock portfolios. In a downturn, every American homeowner stands to lose. And the money that American homeowners lose? That's what's currently keeping the economy going, with rollicking consumer spending on everything from Wal-Mart clothes to Japanese sedans to organic produce. Foreclosures -- and even a substantial, long-term housing market decline -- will directly impact consumers' ability to buy these products in the short-term, and willingness to buy them in the long term. For a borrower who has suffered foreclosure, the dark spot on their credit may prevent them from even trying for homeownership again for ten years; for a borrower who has lost years of savings, the disappeared cash my be unrecoverable and the dream of homeownership gone forever. The banks? They'll do fine, either way, writing down losses on taxes for years to come. h3. The Problem With a Rate Cut The problem with a rate cut is that it most immediately impacts banks; only if the banks then modify their lending policy, or their existing loans, then this impact trickles down to consumers. But why should it trickle down? Banks and lenders and hedge funds all desperately need cash just to keep from writing down their existing assets. It's a safe bet that a lot of the new liquidity will go not to homeowners -- who need refinances, or at least to keep the interest rates on their ARMs down -- but to hedge funds who need cash to cover redemptions, and to banks who want to keep portfolios afloat so that they don't have to report big losses on their balance sheets. This new liquidity undoubtedly will spare many lenders from having to feel the full consequences of the excessive risk they took on, while not saving many borrowers. h3. Let's Try Policy, Not Markets And that's a problem. We need both responsible borrowers and responsible lenders. That means both parties need to feel appropriate levels pain, such that they learn, but aren't ruined. It's not the Fed's fault we're here; they don't have many tools and are using the ones they have to try to do good. No, I'm with PIMCO bonds guru Bill Gross: "the Federal government needs to do something":http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2007/IO+September+2007.htm. The good news is that the Federal government has a lot more tools. They have, to some extent, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have the ability to raise new money through their own, very low-cost, debt. They can pass laws and mandate new behaviors. It's important to not bankrupt too many Americans, to not destroy the hard-earned dreams of too many. So, the government can capitalize Fannie Mae to buy distressed, exotic mortgages, and replace them with longer-term, less-volatile agreements. Homeowners will see how little they could actually afford, and pay the price for their overextension by spending their hard-earned dollars on a mortgage that they'll barely pay off in time for the rest home. Some will have to be foreclosed upon, but perhaps the terms can be managed such that the event is painful but not ruinous. Of course, Fannie Mae will buy the distressed mortgages at a discount, befitting the risk for default. In many mortgages, that's extremely high right now. So lenders will pay the price financially, but there will be a ceiling on their possible exposure. And lenders will learn that they don't want this to happen again, so they'll provide credit responsibly next time. We'll save consumers, we'll save lenders, and we'll end up with more responsibility on both ends of the equation in the end. That's much better than the Fed's current non-solution solution. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.298 2007-09-14T07:26:14Z 2007-09-14T07:27:36Z

I’m not much of an economist, but it’s starting to seem like I can predict recessions. Specifically, I start companies right before the economy goes in the toilet. I don’t know what I’m on to, but this is two times...

I'm not much of an economist, but it's starting to seem like I can predict recessions. Specifically, I start companies right before the economy goes in the toilet. I don't know what I'm on to, but this is two times around the track now that this has happened. It's a bit funny, but, if I'm clever, maybe I can figure out how to make money off of it. h3. Dot-com Bust 1999 I co-founded my first company back in the end of 1999, about a year before things really went sideways for dot-coms. It was a Web design company, and some of our clients went out of business in the bust as well. Revenues were slashed mightily, and the obvious question was: could we have predicted it? Well, we all knew the investment market for dot-coms was overheated and ridiculous. So, probably yes. But we went for it anyway. h3. Housing Bust 2007 And, to be frank, I knew the housing market was overheated when I started my current company back in November of last year. Heck, I knew things might be tough back in January 2006, when I started working on the concept. But I never expected things like "Fed can't stop recession":http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/13/news/economy/recession_risks/index.htm?cnn=yes or "Worst August for home sales in 15 years":http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-homes13sep13,1,3543473.story?coll=la-headlines-business or even "Wave of bad news drives up oil prices":http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil13sep13,1,5145067.story?coll=la-headlines-business. Could I have subconsciously decided to go for it right at the peak of the market? h3. Hedged? Thanks to my Web design experience, I was conscious of the fact that the overall economy could have a substantial effect on my company's potential for success. That's one reason why I decided to initially target higher-income customers: wealthier consumers are less likely to change spending habits in a downturn. h3. Correlation is not Causation. But, hedge or not, things look to be going south for the next few months. And I have to ask: could I have predicted it? Do I actually get in the game around downturns? One explanation might be that rising markets give me the confidence to start a business. That's not implausible, but I was conscious of that potential problem, so I tried not to concentrate on a rising market in my current venture. Another is that, when the downturn starts to get bad, I start long-term projects, like getting my MBA. These projects keep me from starting a company for years, maybe missing the upswing and getting back only in time for things to start going south again. Finally, the my entrepreneurial activity and the economy could be noncontingent. But that's a boring explanation. I like it better when it's spooky. So: how do I make money off of my uncanny ability? tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.297 2007-09-07T05:12:24Z 2007-09-07T05:15:16Z

A few weeks ago, I switched my company over to Intuit’s Quickboks Payroll, replacing ADP as our processors. Only two payrolls later, I’m already in a groove with the quick and easy system. Why, if it didn’t involve large amounts...

A few weeks ago, I switched my company over to "Intuit's Quickboks Payroll":http://payroll.intuit.com/payroll_services/index.jhtml, replacing ADP as our processors. Only two payrolls later, I'm already in a groove with the quick and easy system. Why, if it didn't involve large amounts of money moving out of my account, running payroll would be a joy! I've used all the major payroll processing companies -- ADP, Paychex, and Quickbooks -- and Quickbooks is really by far the best. As the owner of a small business I value ease-of-processing and completeness and simplicity of integration with my accounting package. Whatever makes it easy for me to run payroll and understand how much money it costs me and where that money goes is the right service for me. That doesn't describe ADP. Running payroll is a multi-step Web process (sorry, Internet Explorer only). Unfortunately, the three key functions -- running payroll, reporting, so you know what total liabilities with taxes are, and download into Quickbooks -- are found on different Web sites that require different log-in info. Security is complex, with reporting using a single general log-in for the whole company, payroll using an individualized log-in, and Quickbooks download requiring installation of a security certificate on your computer. Bizarrely enough, this makes download into Quickbooks -- which only puts a plain-text data file on your computer -- more secure than actually running payroll. The last time I used Paychex was four years ago. At the time, nobody offered payroll on the Web -- you called in and talked to a service person who helped you run payroll. One of the major downsides of their service at the time was that they couldn't tell you how much your employer taxes were until they ran payroll and debited your account. That makes it hard to plan payroll, especially when you're paying equity partners in a company, who may be prepared to defer salaries if necessary. I have no idea if this is still an issue, although I suspect not. I would've considered them again, because their techs are so nice, but it took them 3 months for a salesperson to respond to my inquiry on their Web site, and by then I'd already gone elsewhere. With Quickbooks payroll, everything works just as you expect it should. You enter your employees and pay rates, it figures taxes, debits the proper accounts, makes journal entries, and you can even print your own payroll checks - although, why would you, since they also offer Direct Deposit, without any waiting period? (ADP makes you wait 90 days before they do Direct Deposit.) That's quick and convenient. The fees are reasonable, given how much time you save, even though they are slightly higher than ADP or Paychex. For a start-up where one busy person has to do payroll too, there's no better choice than Quickbooks (I personally use the "Assisted Payroll level":http://payroll.intuit.com/payroll_services/assisted_payroll.jhtml). tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.296 2007-09-01T07:27:53Z 2007-09-01T07:29:41Z

Giving good customer service is tough. It’s easy to get 90% of it right and still leave the customer with a bad taste in their mouth — an unpleasant truth when your business model depends on delighting the customer, as...

Giving good customer service is tough. It's easy to get 90% of it right and still leave the customer with a bad taste in their mouth -- an unpleasant truth when your business model depends on delighting the customer, as does mine. I was reminded of the delicacy of customer service last weekend, when a major airline lost my bags. My sweetie and I were on a quick weekend getaway to Las Vegas. Now, I've traveled a bunch, and I've never had much trouble with my bags getting lost. So, with small planes and now the limitations on fluid container size, I just checked my little roll-on for our late-evening flight. Of course, it didn't get there with me. And that's when we had our first _good_ interaction with the airline -- oh, heck, I'll name it, our first _good_ interaction with Delta. Delta's baggage customer service rep at the airport was the picture of reassurance. He found our bags in the system, explained exactly what had happened and was going to happen, told us we could expect our bags by the very early morning, and really made us feel like there was no problem. So we went out and enjoyed the blackjack tables for a while. When we returned to our room, we called after the bags, and were told they weren't there. I called Delta's lost baggage number and got an outsourced operator. Now, this was what you'd call a _bad_ interaction. He promised us the bags sometime in the next 18 hours -- which hurt even more because he swore they were at the Las Vegas airport already.[1] Then he vastly mispronounced the name of the hotel I was staying at and asked me for the street address, which is hardly a morale-booster when staying in one of the more notable hotels on the Strip, Las Vegas's center of tourism and gambling. I couldn't even get an attempt to assure me that the bags would be delivered by the morning; of course, there's a big difference between getting your bags first thing in the morning and getting them in the evening, or at least there is for those of us who like to put on clean clothes daily. After I gave up on this conversation, we turned in, and, by the time we got up, our bags were at the hotel. Another good experience! But I didn't think "oh, yes, just as they promised!" Instead, I thought "wow! I guess Delta isn't as hopelessly incompetent as I thought. Somehow our bags did make it here!" So, despite a helpful person at the airport and prompt service, my impression is that Delta is hopeless. And most consumers set similarly high bars. So how easy is it for me to mess up one of several customer service interactions with a customer? And what are the consequences? It's a scary thought. fn1. If you haven't been to Las Vegas, the airport is maybe 15 minutes from the hotels on the Strip. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.285 2007-08-15T23:49:43Z 2007-08-15T23:50:55Z

Everyone expects free shipping, thanks to Amazon. Including my company’s customers. I can’t blame them; heck, I expect free shipping myself. But it’s tough when you’re sending 30lb boxes of perishable goods around the country. Shipping costs can be equal...

Everyone expects free shipping, thanks to Amazon. Including "my company":http://dineandsimplify.com's customers. I can't blame them; heck, I expect free shipping myself. But it's tough when you're sending 30lb boxes of perishable goods around the country. Shipping costs can be equal to product costs for some East Coast destinations -- and this cuts down on my sales. It's tough, but there is a silver lining. Once again, simply having a business plan has saved me. Well, that and making some phone calls. Here's how it breaks down: we pretty much have to deliver via overnight express to locations outside of LA County, in order to get our meals there safely. East of the Mississippi, these costs get quite large. Potential customers are simply turned off by the shipping costs and prefer not to order. Because I was explicit about my regional sales expectations in my business plan, I know exactly how serious this problem is -- it's inconvenient but not, by any means, disastrous. So I've been able to update my projections and know that everything will be okay. It's a small thing, but, if you haven't done your planning ahead of time, you may never know when that unexpected problem turns out to be the one that sinks your business. And there's a second silver lining: in researching how to get my shipping costs down, [1] I learned that, ground shipping gives us next-day delivery for local customers, at a much reduced cost. So customers within LA County should get much-reduced rates within the next few weeks, as we update our infrastructure to handle the new shipping method. That's savings that we can pass on 100% to the customer, which is always a good thing. I've also discovered that another carrier may offer services more convenient to our customers, at about the same cost, so I'm in the process of switching over there, as well. I never thought that shipping would be such an exciting part of this company, but it sure has been. One company that has really helped us out is "PA & Associates":http://paaa.com/, I'd recommend giving them a call if you need to manage your shipping costs better. Oh, and how'd I find a shipping broker in Baltimore to help out my LA-based business? Why, LinkedIn, of course. So, get a plan, know your costs, manage them, and join LinkedIn. And, when you're there, "say hi":http://www.linkedin.com/in/wadearmstrong! fn1. The way to get shipping costs down, in case you're wondering, is volume -- real savings become available at about $20,000/month in shipping expenses, which is quite achievable for us as our plan goes forward. tag:wadearmstrong.com,2007://1.277 2007-08-08T15:39:46Z 2007-08-08T15:47:20Z

I always fall down on my planned approaches to productivity when, at that moment, it’s not productive to be productive. I’m sure you know those times — I should do something, it’s actually kind of important, but it’s either inconvenient...

I always fall down on my planned approaches to productivity when, at that moment, it's not productive to be productive. I'm sure you know those times -- I should do something, it's actually kind of important, but it's either inconvenient or impossible and so I don't do it right then. And then the moment passes and the thought is lost or the task becomes even harder to do. For a while, recording my mileage, keeping up on my credit card purchases, and even capturing ideas on-the-go were all in this category. But, lately, I've been doing a lot better -- because I made the effort to set myself up to be productive in a moment, any moment. h3. What Happens In a Moment? Some of the tasks that I find myself doing in a single, small moment are themselves small - recording a credit card purchase for later entry into Quicken, recording my mileage or updating someone's contact information, for example. But others are quite important -- jotting down an idea that suddenly pops to mind, or adding a to-do based on an interaction. These are all actions that I find appear in a moment and pass just as quickly if I let my mind move on to the other things on my plate. For years, I was bad at these. Great ideas disappeared, contact got lost, and innumerable write-offs disappeared. That's because I always put off these momentary tasks until long blocks of time were available in which I could complete them; but the task was out of mind by then. h3. Building a System for a Moment I started carrying around computers with me because I wanted to be able to sync my contacts and calendars. First it was a "Nokia 3650":http://www.symbian.com/phones/nokia_3650_3600.html; now it's a "Treo 650":http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo650/. With both of these platforms, I found that I was able to add on new programs. Suddenly, my smartphone wasn't just my reliable look-up center; it was my reliable capture tool, too. And, because it was in my pocket, it was there in every moment. But just being there in a moment isn't enough -- the tool needs to be useful, otherwise it's still to easy to not get things done. For me, I find that there are a few specific things I tend to do in a moment: # Update contact information # Make new plans # Capture new thoughts # Update existing thoughts and plans # Track my mileage, for tax purposes # Track my expenses, for budgeting The others all require specialized tools. These are what I prefer; your mileage may vary, based on your particular needs and proclivities h3. Ideas and Plans and Contacts and Tasks and Events, Oh My! Sure, I could take care of numbers 1 and 2 using my smartphones' built-in software, but it takes too long to create a new contact or event or whatnot, as it takes too long to fire up the Notes application and write down an idea. I use the built-in applications to manage and update the data I already have in there, but to capture new data I use the completely indispensable "Slap":http://handshigh.com/html/slap.html. Very simply, Slap lets you enter free-form text and then automatically converts that text into a note, contact, task, event, or more. !http://handshigh.com/assets/images/SlapHiRes02.gif! Slap is good stuff, and, most of all, it's there in the moment. I hit the button on my Treo I've programmed for Slap, type in what I have to say, and then save it. The rest, I can sort out later. Of course, for plans and ideas I already have on my Treo, it's just a matter of opening the note (having a predictable naming scheme matters here). The last time I got my car smog checked, I spent 40 minutes waiting for it to get done and I spent all 40 of those working on projects, making calls and planning out tasks, based on the notes I kept on my Treo. (More on how I use Outlook and plain-text Note files to manage ideas and project plans in a later entry, probably) h3. Administrativa Administrativa is *only* convenient to do in the moment. That's why I rely on Palm applications for it as well. "Auto Slate":http://www.standalone.com/palmos/auto_slate/ is a reasonably nifty program that lets me track mileage, gas, and maintenance; best of all, it spits everything out into an Excel file when I sync. !http://www.standalone.com/palmos/auto_slate/manual/Auto_Slate_Manual_files/image047.gif! Programmed to one of my Palm's buttons, Auto Slate is always there when I park my car so that I can record my mileage right then. And just when I make a credit card purchase, "MoneyPlus":http://www.smartcell.com/Web/pc-26-3-moneyplus-for-palm-os.aspx is there. Like Auto Slate, it's a little too complicated, but it lets you input transactions and it outputs files you can import into most versions of Quicken. It's easy to enter a transaction when I make it, much more so than when there's a pile of receipts in the inbox. !http://www.smartcell.com/Web/screenshots/MoneyPlus/image002.jpg! I'm usually a Getting Things Done kind of guy, but I think all of this productivity in a moment stuff is pretty strongly linked to Covey's idea that you should just do any task that takes less than two minutes right when that task comes up. Go ahead, do a task right now, in this moment. That's a productive approach.