http://wadearmstrong.com/ 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. en Copyright 2009 Tue, 12 May 2009 21:46:05 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I'm a big systems guy: I think that, if you're doing something repeatable and everyday, you should make it into a system that makes it easy to do over and over again without actually having to think much. I had such a system "on my PC":http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/easy_gtd_with_outlook_and_the_palm_treo.php. Remarkably, despite the plethora of pretty brilliant task- and information-management applications on the Mac, it's only now that I think I've gotten an equal-quality system on the Mac. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/getting_productive_on_the_mac.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/getting_productive_on_the_mac.php Productivity Tue, 12 May 2009 21:46:05 -0800 It's tax season, and I'm as interested in how much the government is taking out of my pocket as the next guy. So I was intrigued to learn of a new "small business-focused ranking of state tax burdens":http://www.sbecouncil.org/businesstaxindex2009/ from "_Wall Street Journal_ Small Business reporter Kelly Spors":http://twitter.com/WSJSmallBiz. Now, I've started two businesses in famously high-tax California, and I've never found taxes to be a big enough problem that any of my time was justified in thinking about them rather than running the other parts of the business. But I know that a lot of businesses that have been around longer and are in more of a sustaining than a growth mode have real concerns about tax burdens, so I was looking forward to reading and learning from this report. Unfortunately, the ranking is comically sloppy. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/whats_the_best_state_for_small_business_taxes.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/whats_the_best_state_for_small_business_taxes.php Business Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:29:23 -0800 Washington's all a-flutter over what the stimulus package to help us get out of this economic slump. Is it tax cuts? Infrastructure projects? Bank bailouts? Startups are a unique breed, and need unique tools to drive growth. Specifically, they need cash. Up front. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/stimulus_for_startups.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/stimulus_for_startups.php Entrepreneurship Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:13:32 -0800 Last Saturday, my girlfriend and I got some takeout, brought it home, and watched a DVD from Netflix. Kind of a rare event, actually - these days, it's more about Tivo and delivery; a craving for "Pinkberry":http://pinkberry.com brought us out for the takeout from the Asian place next door. It occurred to us that, ten years ago, movie and takeout would've been a typical weekend evening for almost everyone - how much business must the restaurants in the same strip malls as Blockbuster have done? And how much has Netflix killed these restaurants? http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/videos_main_course.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/videos_main_course.php Business Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:21:16 -0800 "Wagville":http://wagville.com is a Los Angeles doggie boarding and day care facility founded and run by Harvard grad and former lawyer "Julie Shine":http://www.linkedin.com/ppl/webprofile?id=18152133. Like the other WMB subjects, Wagville isn't making enough money. We quickly learn that: * The company does little to no retail business, despite having a large (and cluttered) storefront * Check-in takes minutes on a slow system * There are no facilities for people, just for the dogs * Employees are unmotivated and ill-tempered * Julie cannot motivate staff and may be a micromanager * There are 27 employees in a business that's caring for no more than 60 dogs at any time, and the costs add up - in one month, Wagville did $90,000 in sales but had $65,000 in payroll and so couldn't make a profit * Julie is focused on providing a service to dogs, not on making profit * Julie is carrying crushing credit card debt in order to keep the place running http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_wagville.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_wagville.php Entrepreneurship Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:48:07 -0800 For some reason, Tivo didn't pick up a We Mean Business episode this week, so I'm reaching back to earlier in the season, before I started my recaps. The team visited "Poka Dott":http://www.pokadott.com/, a party supply store north of Los Angeles. Poka Dott is deep in the red and just falling deeper, and, worse, owner Stephanie hasn't told her husband how much she's losing. Major problems they uncover include: * Too much merchandise in the store means a lot of money is tied up in inventory * Too much merchandise in the store means that customers can't find what they're looking for * Disorganized and poorly-merchandised displays don't highlight products and make it hard for customers to find what they're looking for * Outdated point-of-sales system is clunky * Too many employees means high cost of operations compared to sales possible in the store * The store's signs are hard-to-see from the street * Store is unknown in the area and gets little traffic http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_poka_dott.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_poka_dott.php Entrepreneurship Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:35:23 -0800 This week, the We Mean Business team takes on "Berry Elegance":http://berryelegance.com/, a store that makes berries and other desserts dipped in chocolate. Berry Elegance is stalled, with sales falling short and the two owners in disagreement on how to run the business. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_berry_elegance.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_berry_elegance.php Entrepreneurship Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:57:14 -0800 This week's _We Mean Business_ follows the makeover of "Out Back catering":http://outbackcatering.com/default.html, a Southern California catering company that serves down-home food at parties. Out Back has been successful for two decades but has recently seen its bookings and revenue drop. With the founder's daughter interested in taking a bigger role at the company, our heroes wade in to see what they can do to turn the business around. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_out_back_catering.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_out_back_catering.php Entrepreneurship Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:37:20 -0800 There's a fun new show on A&E - _We Mean Business_ a small business makeover show. With all the successful personal and home style makeover shows out there, it's nice to see one just for entrepreneurs. Since I had so much fun blogging about _American Inventor_ here a few years ago, I'm going to weekly summarize the latest _We Mean Business_ episode - and throw in an idea or two about what I think the entrepreneur *really* should do to make over their business. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_jazyhair.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/entrepreneurship/we_mean_business_jazyhair.php Entrepreneurship Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:58:28 -0800 So they voted down the bailout. Thank goodness! The last-offered plan was a bad one that would be expensive and not solve any problems over the long term. Let's hope that there's room for fast response to the crisis with a good, equitable, and market-based idea this time. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/good_news_bailout_voted_down.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/good_news_bailout_voted_down.php Business Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:12:48 -0800 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. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/what_i_learned_about_sales_from_a_timeshare.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/what_i_learned_about_sales_from_a_timeshare.php Business Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:19:01 -0800 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. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/can_abc_compete_with_tivo_by_making_a_worse_product.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/can_abc_compete_with_tivo_by_making_a_worse_product.php Business Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:35:25 -0800 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? http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/yahoosoft_where_does_that_45b_number_come_from.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/yahoosoft_where_does_that_45b_number_come_from.php Business Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:05:40 -0800 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. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/easy_gtd_with_outlook_and_the_palm_treo.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/productivity/easy_gtd_with_outlook_and_the_palm_treo.php Productivity Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:17:11 -0800 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. http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/macworld_2008_and_apples_strategy.php http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/business/macworld_2008_and_apples_strategy.php Business Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:20:58 -0800