A story

A fellow has it rough. In spite of his situation, he sees others that have it worse. He treats the disadvantaged well. The fellow's situation deteriorates from there and he suffers. He looks to those with more (swallows his pride), for help - as he would have given willingly to others previously. He is denied. He shakes his head. He fights on.

One of his kids / girlfriend / wife / friend / coworker / some one else has a problem that requires his help and he has to find a way to get it done.

After several attempts, he is further away form what he hopes to do.

There is a moment (this moment lasts a long time - because it's the good part), when he figures out what to do and simultaneously gets the will to do it.

He goes about his business - just as he had imagined. There are a couple of small unexpected obstacles along the way, but he gets clever in one instance and lucky in another.

Tension, yada... Almost blew it yada... The kid's expectations fall (he has no idea what's going on)

Our guy wins (what a surprise) in the end. There is a moment when everyone sees him as the hero. All the good guys are impressed. The bad guys are taught a lesson. The innocent are rescued.

Our guy lives happily ever after, or he died when he did his hero thing.

The end.

used net

There are a several ways that you can accomplish this, and here are a few basic things that you can do.

One of the most basic practices that will help you is to make sure that you have good quality photos on each vehicle.

Prospective customers like to see the details on the vehicle and the condition of the vehicle before they come in. Having photos on your pre-owned vehicles really helps build the trust with your customer and builds value into the vehicle.

The only thing that is worse than not having pictures on the vehicles is having poor photos on your vehicles. Here are a few tips that you can use to improve your online photos:

—Be mindful of your background. I would suggest using the same background for all of your pictures. It doesn't take that much more effort to pull the vehicles to a common point to take pictures of it. Some dealerships have actually set up a "studio" to take their pictures.

This is as simple as hanging a curtain in the background so the focus is on the vehicle. You can also take the pictures that will be positioned so that your dealership name is in the background. This will help them remember your dealership name and will keep another dealer from trying to sell your vehicle to their customer.

—I tried to make sure that the pictures were in the same basic order for each vehicle as well. This will give the customer consistency and will give them a sense that you genuinely care about earning their business.

—Take your exterior pictures from the corners of the vehicle. Taking these angles gets two sides of the vehicle and shows the customer more than pictures straight on from the back and the front.

—Take a picture of the odometer, this verifies the information that you have listed with the vehicle. Customers do not like it when they come in and the mileage is a misprint on the Web.

—Make sure that you have pictures of the seat condition, especially the driver's seat. This is one of the first things that customers look at because comfort is so important.

The other big factor is something that most dealerships don't take the time to bother with. Take the time to write a description for your pre-owned vehicles. It doesn't need to very elaborate, but having a paragraph about the vehicle does build value into the vehicle and shows the customer that you don't have anything to hide.

Here are a few tips that will help you with your descriptions:

—Make sure that whoever is writing them knows how to write with good grammar and that the spelling is checked and double-checked.

—The best way to write a description is to write what you think that you would tell a customer if they were in front of you. What qualities of the vehicle would you most want to deliver to your customer?

Here are a few items that you will want to include in your description:

—Let them know if the vehicle was a trade-in or not. Also include anything that you learned from the previous owners (i.e., one owner, mostly highway miles, traded for a newer model, needed a larger vehicle, etc.).

—Let them know about any certifications the vehicle has gone through in your service department.

—Let them know if there is still a manufacturer's warranty left on the vehicle or if your dealership has put a warranty on it.

—Mention any equipment the vehicle has that will add value to the vehicle.

—I also added a sentence letting them know that we had checked the Carfax history and that they would be eligible for the Carfax money-back guarantee.

These ideas seem very simple, but many dealerships do not pay attention to these details and will give the customer a reason to eliminate you from their search.

For more information, visit www.kainautomotive.com.

RE Agents should Quit

Advice for real estate agents (quit now!)

Seth Godin

Plan A: You should quit selling real estate.

I’m serious.

Quit being an agent. Get a job doing something else.

Some of you have been waiting to hear that. My pleasure.

...

Now, if you’re still with me, you’ll be glad to know that the competition for attention just got smaller. The agents who built their business on low interest rates, easy money and speculation (the order takers) have left the building.

The ones that are left, that’s you, can consider Plan B:

If you’re not going to be able to make a living by taking orders, by selling houses the way everyone else does, by using the never-ending rise in real estate prices to make sales, then what are you going to do? Whining is not an option.

In fact, I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for you.

Without a frenzy, without short-term competition, you can actually build assets that will pay off for the long run. I have two in mind:

The first is to become the expert in what you do. Which means micro-specialization. Who is the single-best agent for condos in your zip code? Or for single family homes for large families? Who is the one and the only best person to turn to if you’re looking for investment property in this part of town?

As I wrote in The Dip, you’re either the best in the world (where ‘world’ can be a tiny slice of the environment) or you’re invisible.

This means being Draconian in your choices. No, you can’t also do a little of this or a little of that. Best in your world means burning your other bridges and obsessing.

The kids at Squidoo just built a promotional tool that lets you get started. Mayor of your zip code is a way to start a discussion group/info page about what’s happening in your slice of the world. You become the source of information, the watercooler, the person to turn to. Of course, if you spend ten minutes on it and then move on, it'll fail. But, if you spent 30% of your time working on your page (building it, curating it, promoting it), what do you think would show up in Google searches? What sort of interactions would you start having with people thinking about your little part of the world? Even better, what if you built a blog about your town, as good as any local paper, with high school sports and tax controversies and everything... don't you think the right people would read it?

"I have no time!"

Of course you have that time available. Remember nine months ago when you were three times as busy with incoming calls as you are now? Invest that time in building up your expertise and becoming the person people who don't even like you turn to for insight.

Or, consider this: Take half your office (the half made vacant by the people following Plan A) and turn it over to local groups. Let the active (and nascent) clubs and organizations meet in your office. Not once in a while. Regularly. All the time. Become the hub. Because, after all, you’re the mayor.

The second asset to build is permission. It turns out (according to the NAR) that 91% of all Realtors never contact the buyer or the seller of a home after the closing. Not once. Wow. Someone just spent a million dollars with you and you don’t bother to call or write?

The opportunity during the current pause (and yes, it's a pause) is to find, one by one, the people who would benefit from hearing from you and then earn the right to talk to them. Earn the right to send them a newsletter or a regular update or a subscription to your blog. NOT to talk about what matters to you, but to give them information (real information, not just data) that matters to them. Visit dailycandy.com to see an example of what people like to hear.

The opportunity is to reinvent the way you interact with citizens, with prospects, with the mildly interested and with your past clients. The opportunity, in other words, is to stop waiting around for the phone to ring and instead figure out how to do what you do best... connect buyers and sellers in a way that makes them both confident.

Some of you will stick with the standard business card with the standard photo, the standard office and the standard ad strategy and the standard approach to making the phone ring. It's going to be a long haul if that's your route.

I'm betting, though, that the best of you will end up with a business model that will survive, thrive and prosper. Best time to start is right now.

Golf is pooped

February 21, 2008
More Americans Are Giving Up Golf
By PAUL VITELLO
HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. — The men gathered in a new golf clubhouse here a couple of weeks ago circled the problem from every angle, like caddies lining up a shot out of the rough.

“We have to change our mentality,” said Richard Rocchio, a public relations consultant.

“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”

William A. Gatz, owner of the Long Island National Golf Club in Riverhead, said the problem was fundamental economics: too much supply, not enough demand.

The problem was not a game of golf. It was the game of golf itself.

Over the past decade, the leisure activity most closely associated with corporate success in America has been in a kind of recession.

The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

More troubling to golf boosters, the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000, a loss of about a third.

The industry now counts its core players as those who golf eight or more times a year. That number, too, has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.

The five men who met here at the Wind Watch Golf Club a couple of weeks ago, golf aficionados all, wondered out loud about the reasons. Was it the economy? Changing family dynamics? A glut of golf courses? A surfeit of etiquette rules — like not letting people use their cellphones for the four hours it typically takes to play a round of 18 holes?

Or was it just the four hours?

Here on Long Island, where there are more than 100 private courses, golf course owners have tried various strategies: coupons and trial memberships, aggressive marketing for corporate and charity tournaments, and even some forays into the wedding business.

Over coffee with a representative of the National Golf Course Owners Association, the owners of four golf courses discussed forming an owners’ cooperative to market golf on Long Island and, perhaps, to purchase staples like golf carts and fertilizer more cheaply.

They strategized about marketing to women, who make up about 25 percent of golfers nationally; recruiting young players with a high school tournament; attracting families with special rates; realigning courses to 6-hole rounds, instead of 9 or 18; and seeking tax breaks, on the premise that golf courses, even private ones, provide publicly beneficial open space.

“When the ship is sinking, it’s time to get creative,” said Mr. Hurney, a principal owner of the Great Rock Golf Club in Wading River, which last summer erected a 4,000-square-foot tent for social events, including weddings, christenings and communions.

The disappearance of golfers over the past several years is part of a broader decline in outdoor activities — including tennis, swimming, hiking, biking and downhill skiing — according to a number of academic and recreation industry studies.

A 2006 study by the United States Tennis Association, which has battled the trend somewhat successfully with a forceful campaign to recruit young players, found that punishing hurricane seasons factored into the decline of play in the South, while the soaring popularity of electronic games and newer sports like skateboarding was diminishing the number of new tennis players everywhere.

Rodney B. Warnick, a professor of recreation studies and tourism at the University of Massachusetts, said that the aging population of the United States was probably a part of the problem, too, and that “there is a younger generation that is just not as active.”

But golf, a sport of long-term investors — both those who buy the expensive equipment and those who build the princely estates on which it is played — has always seemed to exist in a world above the fray of shifting demographics. Not anymore.

Jim Kass, the research director of the National Golf Foundation, an industry group, said the gradual but prolonged slump in golf has defied the adage, “Once a golfer, always a golfer.” About three million golfers quit playing each year, and slightly fewer than that have been picking it up. A two-year campaign by the foundation to bring new players into the game, he said, “hasn’t shown much in the way of results.”

“The man in the street will tell you that golf is booming because he sees Tiger Woods on TV,” Mr. Kass said. “But we track the reality. The reality is, while we haven’t exactly tanked, the numbers have been disappointing for some time.”

Surveys sponsored by the foundation have asked players what keeps them away. “The answer is usually economic,” Mr. Kass said. “No time. Two jobs. Real wages not going up. Pensions going away. Corporate cutbacks in country club memberships — all that doom and gloom stuff.”

In many parts of the country, high expectations for a golf bonanza paralleling baby boomer retirements led to what is now considered a vast overbuilding of golf courses.

Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years, most of them in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina, according to the foundation.

(Scores more courses are listed for sale on the Web site of the National Golf Course Owners Association, which lists, for example, a North Carolina property described as “two 18-hole championship courses, great mountain locations, profitable, $1.5 million revenues, Bermuda fairways, bent grass, nice clubhouses, one at $5.5 million, other at $2.5 million — possible some owner financing.”)

At the meeting here, there was a consensus that changing family dynamics have had a profound effect on the sport.

“Years ago, men thought nothing of spending the whole day playing golf — maybe Saturday and Sunday both,” said Mr. Rocchio, the public relations consultant, who is also the New York regional director of the National Golf Course Owners Association. “Today, he is driving his kids to their soccer games. Maybe he’s playing a round early in the morning. But he has to get back home in time for lunch.”

Mr. Hurney, the real estate developer, chimed in, “Which is why if we don’t repackage our facilities to a more family orientation, we’re dead.”

To help keep the Great Rock Golf Club afloat, owners erected their large climate-controlled tent near the 18th green last summer. It sat next to the restaurant, Blackwell’s, already operating there. By most accounts, it has been a boon to the club — though perhaps not a hole in one.

Residents of the surrounding neighborhood have complained about party noise, and last year more than 40 signed a petition asking the town of Riverhead to intervene. Town officials are reviewing whether the tent meets local zoning regulations, but have not issued any noise summonses. Mr. Hurney told them he had purchased a decibel meter and would try to hire quieter entertainment.

One neighbor, Dominique Mendez, whose home is about 600 feet from the 18th hole, said, “We bought our house here because we wanted to live in a quiet place, and we thought a golf course would be nice to see from the window. Instead, people have to turn up their air conditioners or wear earplugs at night because of the music thumping.”

During weddings, she said: “you can hear the D.J., ‘We’re gonna do the garter!’ It’s a little much.”

Sell / buy biz article - From WSJ

“As Buyers Get Pickier, Owners Must Do More to Spiff Up Companies”



by Arden Dale of the Wall Street Journal


A lot of entrepreneurs think they have the perfect retirement plan: They'll sell the business for a bundle and live off the proceeds. But many of them may be in for an unpleasant surprise when they're ready to sell: They haven't done the work they need to do to get the company ready for a buyer.

Small businesses often lack key elements that buyers look for -- such as proper financial records or detailed documentation about how the business runs. Moreover, lots of owners go into the selling process without researching the market, so they have unrealistic ideas about the price their business will fetch. The result: It can take much longer than expected to close a sale -- sometimes years.

• The Hope: Many entrepreneurs figure they'll sell their business and retire on the proceeds.


• The Problem: Most of them don't take steps to ready the company for a buyer.


• The Solution: Several years before an anticipated sale, entrepreneurs should start keeping audited financial records and cutting expenses to improve operating profitability and cash flow, among other steps.

In fact, a recent study by the Alliance of Merger and Acquisition Advisors found that many advisers believe seven of 10 midsize businesses will transfer ownership during the next decade, and that at least 90% are now ill-prepared. In many cases, the problem is that small companies, with limited resources, haven't kept up on the record-keeping and documentation that buyers demand.

A Tough Market

For their part, buyers are getting more demanding than ever. Faced with increasing competition in all industries, and the threat of an economic slowdown, they're doing exhaustive research on acquisition candidates, trying to catch potential problems.

"What Wall Street has been used to is now coming to Main Street, in that the same type of care is taken with these transactions. Now to do a $5 million transaction requires due diligence similar to larger public companies. It's the same questions, they're just stripped down to a simpler level.” says Michael Hoesly, a small business owner.

So, where should a small business start?

Experts suggest that small firms get organized three to five years before they start to think about exiting the business. Some experts recommend a longer period -- say, seven years before. Why the long lead time? Prospective buyers often look for a long history on the business, including financial records, business plans and other documentation. It can take years to make sure a small business is leaving the right kind of paper trail.

Financial statements are a good place to start. Small businesses take a range of approaches to keeping financial records. Those with $20 million or more in sales are likely to have some form of audited review; some smaller ones keep records that don't even conform to generally accepted accounting principles.

"My sense of the value of the company will go up if I have confidence that the statements have been done by a well-known accounting firm, rather than your brother-in-law, and that they preferably are audited," says Mr. Hoesly.

What's in those statements is just as important. Records should show the best operating profitability and cash flow possible -- so small-business owners should cut back on unnecessary expenses if they expect a sale in the next few years.

"If personal expenses are a little on the generous side -- trade shows in more exotic places, the number of vehicles for business use, for example -- you might want to see if you could scale those back," says Neil Lerner, director of the Small Business Development Center at the business school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "You also want to make sure that the owner's compensation was realistic."

A Hard Look

Moreover, small firms should take a tough look at manufacturing, safety or other processes essentials to the business, and clean them up as much as possible.

"A board of directors can help you do this," says Andrew D. Keyt, executive director of the Family Business Center at Loyola University Chicago. "A lot of small businesses don't have one, but they should think about it. A board can be an umbrella that continues to look out for you." He advises that board members must have solid knowledge of business in general and be independent enough to naysay the owner at times.

"I wanted to retire when I was 60, and now I'm 66," says Mr. Norb Kaiser when discussing the sale of his plastics business: "It took longer than I thought; everyone thinks it will be quicker than it is."

Finally, when entrepreneurs are ready to sell, they should get professional help to figure out how much the business is worth and how to handle the sale. Owners often think the company is worth more than it will really fetch in the market, which makes them ill-prepared to sell.

"Business owners have a terrible problem there; it's not their forte," says Mr. Hoesly. "The question is, who do they trust?"

The posture of a communicator

If you buy my product but don't read the instructions, that's not your fault, it's mine.
If you read a blog post and misinterpret what I said, that's my choice, not your error.
If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my failure.
If you are a student in my class and you don't learn what I'm teaching, I've let you down.

It's really easy to insist that people read the friggin manual. It's really easy to blame the user/student/prospect/customer for not trying hard, for being too stupid to get it or for not caring enough to pay attention. Sometimes (often) that might even be a valid complaint. But it's not helpful.

What's helpful is to realize that you have a choice when you communicate. You can design your products to be easy to use. You can write so your audience hears you. You can present in a place and in a way that guarantees that the people you want to listen will hear you. Most of all, you get to choose who will understand (and who won't).

Buy-here, pay-here plans may attract more dealers

Growing customer base, higher standards may outweigh risks


Rosland Briggs Gammon

Automotive News | February 11, 2008 - 12:01 am EST




At the 103 DriveTime used-vehicle dealerships across the United States, buyers with less than stellar credit scores still have an opportunity to drive away with a used vehicle.

That's because DriveTime finances 99 percent of its car sales itself. With about 65,000 cars and trucks sold in 2007, it's the largest buy-here, pay-here dealership group in the United States, according to the National Alliance of Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers.

Buy-here, pay-here dealerships specialize in selling older vehicles to consumers with bad credit. The dealerships finance the loans in-house instead of turning them over to outside lenders. Because the loans are riskier, the dealerships charge higher interest rates than other stores. Rates average between 12 and 25 percent to people whose credit scores don't qualify them for traditional financing.

As lenders tighten their credit standards and the subprime mortgage industry fallout increases the number of people with blemished credit, more buyers may be headed to buy-here, pay-here dealerships to purchase cars.

And with average profit margins of 15 percent compared to 2 percent for new cars, according to the alliance, the buy-here, pay-here model may become a more attractive option for dealers.

Used-car dealership Credit Country Motors in Summerville, S.C., launched a buy-here, pay-here operation about a year ago, says Stan Borkowski, the dealership's treasurer. Buy-here, pay-here now represents about 20 percent of total sales.

"We were looking to generate another stream of revenue," he says. "We're taking a risk, but we want them (customers) to grow and get into our new-car franchises down the road."

Credit Country operates three new-car dealerships in South Carolina: McElveen Pontiac-Buick-GMC-Hummer in Summerville, McElveen Chevrolet in Mount Pleasant and McElveen Hyundai in Charleston.

Franchised and independent dealers are turning to buy-here, pay-here to offer customers more options, says Mike Sheridan, president of Global Debt Exchange Automotive. The company is an online marketplace that allows dealers and finance companies to buy and sell auto loan portfolios.

"It's just like when franchises started to get into used cars," Sheridan says. "The burden is falling to dealerships when traditional lenders tighten the lending criteria."

Higher standards

Industry professionals say the old buy-here, pay-here model associated with predatory lending has gone by the wayside. The industry previously lacked consistent accounting, reporting and analytical tools, says Kenneth Shilson, founder and president of the National Alliance of Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers. Lawsuits against dealers accused of selling overpriced, faulty cars also didn't help the industry.

Gerry Parker is COO of Integrity Capital Management in Alamo, Calif., which purchases loans from buy-here, pay-here dealerships. He says: "The traditional BHPH I grew up with 20 years ago — short-term, low-balance, high-interest notes with biweekly payments — has gone by the wayside. Changes in technology made a significant impact.

"Along the same lines, the years of the $3,000 automobile are gone. Used cars are more expensive than they used to be."

Also, Sheridan says, buy-here, pay-here dealers act in better faith because they realize illegal loans will raise the eyebrows of attorneys general and put the dealers out of business.

The industry also has come back into favor with financial institutions that lost money in the 1990s because of high-growth-rate requirements, Shilson adds.

"In 1999, the quickest way to end a conversation with a banker was to say 'buy-here pay-here,' " he says. "There was a tremendous credibility gap."

Better training

Today, established auditing standards and educational options for dealers have helped turn the industry around. The National Alliance of Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers and other companies offer educational conferences covering underwriting and collection tips. The alliance's annual conference typically draws about 2,000 people who come to learn about the latest regulatory and legal changes, Shilson says.

"There's more training because dealers realize the mistakes are better made by their competitors than themselves," he says. "If you make a lot of mistakes, it will cost you millions of dollars."

J.D. Byrider, which has 130 franchise and company-owned buy-here, pay-here stores across the United States, last year released an advertising standards manual that provides legal guidelines, spokesman Jim England says.

J.D. Byrider has had some legal problems. It was sued by the Kentucky attorney general and by the Ohio attorney general when those states received numerous consumer complaints, including grievances about pricing and condition of vehicles. Both suits were settled with terms that included the company reimbursing customers.

"We're focused on making sure our franchisees and company-owned stores adhere to strict standards on how to be effective operators," England says. "We're in a business that is extremely competitive and need to make sure is built on consumer trust because of so many operators who may have not dealt fairly in the past."

J.D. Byrider, which plans to open 15 locations this year including its first in California, also launched a Web site, www.jdbfacts.com, that provides daily customer feedback based on calls to 400 customers. As of Feb. 4, its 313,310 surveys resulted in an average customer satisfaction sales rating of 95 percent and service rating of 88 percent.

Still risky

But even with the return of investors, more standards and a growing customer base, the industry still faces challenges.

Today's vehicles are more expensive, and down payments have dropped. That means dealers who previously risked only $300 to $500 when the car drove off the lot now have $5,000 on the street, Shilson says.

Benchmarks compiled by the National Alliance of Buy Here Pay Here Dealers show the average default rate was 26 percent in 2007 compared with 26.2 percent in 2006. While unpaid loans remained steady at 17 percent from 2000 to 2002, they rose to 20 percent in 2007.

"It takes a tremendous amount of capital and an infrastructure with good systems to control it and make sure you don't get into financial trouble," Shilson says.

Some dealerships use starter-interruption devices to encourage their customers to pay. The devices allow the dealerships to disable the cars remotely if payments haven't been received.

But they don't always work. Credit Country Motors installs the devices in its cars, but in one week it lost three vehicles when customers disabled the devices, Borkowski says. The loss cost about $22,000, he says.

Buy-here, pay-here dealers also could face credit tightening, which would affect their sales, says Jon Ehlinger, a spokesman for DriveTime, of Phoenix. DriveTime finances its sales by pooling its loans and having bonds issued that are backed by those loans, he says. The loans are purchased by banks and companies such as Integrity Capital Management.

"If you don't have credit available, you're unable to sell a car," Ehlinger says. "As we go into 2008, how much will lenders pull back?"

Soggy - More Godin stuff

New organizations and new projects are so crisp.

Things happen with alacrity. Decisions get made. Stuff gets done.

Then, over time, things get soggy. They slow down. Decisions aren't so black and white any more.

Why?

Here are some things that happen:
1. Every initiative, post launch, still has a tail of activity associated with it. Launch enough things and over time, that tail gets bigger and bigger.

2. Most projects either succeed or fail. Successful projects raise the stakes, because the team doesn't want to blow it. There are more people watching, more dollars at stake, things matter more. So things inevitably get more review, more analysis and slow down. Projects that fail sap the confidence of the group. They want to be extra sure that they're right this time, so, ironically, they slow down and end up sabotaging the new work.

3. The paper isn't blank any more. Which means that new decisions often mean overturning old decisions, which means you need to acknowledge that it didn't used to be as good as it was.

4. And the biggest thing is that there is a status quo. Something to compare everything to.

I'm not sure you can eliminate any of these issues. But, you can realize that they're there. And you can be really strict about priorities and deadlines... it's so easy to let things slip, rather than confronting the fact that you're stuck and probably afraid. Speak up, call it out... and ship!

How do you decide what to make / do next?

Seth Godin writes:

Over the last few decades, I've probably launched 500 products and services. And I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about how organizations go about deciding what to make and what to shelve. How do you decide where to invest your scarce people and promotional resources?

If there’s anything that can have a significant impact on you and your team, it’s this decision. If marketing is the product, then choosing which product to market is your most important moment. Here are some of the reasons I’ve used (and have seen others use) to make this decision:

It’s something a major customer wants
It’s something our technology can do easily
Someone with a lot of power and authority in the organization really wants it
It’ll be fun
If we don’t do it, our competition will
It’s important to our community or society
It's cheap
It's easy
It will increase our margins
It appeals to our competition’s base, thus growing our market share
It's Bob's turn
It locks in our base, making it less likely they'll be stolen by the competition
We didn’t launch this one last time, so its turn has come around
It will make us look smart
It’s the next logical item
I love it
It responds to an RFP
It will burnish our reputation
It adds a feature that our CEO really, really wants
We have a salesforce to support, and this fills in their grid
Our investors tell us that this is a must-have
It will increase traffic to our site
I can sell it to customer X
It’s a copy/improvement over something our competition is doing
Our current stuff doesn’t meet regulations and this does
The critics will respect us
We've come this far and quitting now costs too much
A huge market dominator promises to promote it if we build it
A big retailer says they'll carry it
A key employee is bored and this will keep them busy
We have unused capacity in the plant
There are legendary stories about how Lorne Michaels made decisions about this on Saturday Night Live, about how Microsoft and AOL picked their future by doing (and not doing) certain launches and of course, how our political parties do it. It's almost always done poorly and it's almost always important.

When there are infinite copies

When there are infinite copies of something, charging for one is almost impossible.

Here are his eight ways of making something worth charging for:

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.

Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.

Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.

Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.

Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.

The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.