Life, Local and the Pursuit of Advertising; My experience growing a local online guide.

A few months ago I finished Jeff Jarvis’s book “What Would Google Do”. It was a fascinating read with much good insight into modern ways of running a business/organization. Google unquestionably runs a great business, but I think at the heart of Google, is an algorithm that returns better search results than any of its competitors. Yes they run their business efficiently as well, but their products superiority is what lead them to success, and leads them to try new things through iteration and openness.

Bijan Sabet recently posted a thought about building an excellent product as a pre requisite to monetization and it sort of summed up my thoughts from WWGD (What Would Google Do). Transforming every industry the way Google does things is sort of like saying being really good at something will make you better at it. Which is true, but doesn’t really mean anything if you aren’t good at that something to begin with.

Google is a child in the business world, it is only 12 years old and hasn’t even been public for 6 years. Of course its a behemoth with Billions of dollars in cash and revenue, it is no doubt a titan of the Internet Industry. But the internet is so young, we’ve had roughly 17 years with a web-browser, look at the automobile after 17 years of the combustion engine - it didn’t exist. Samuel Brown patented the internal combustion engine in 1823, 50 years in 1879 later Karl Benz patented the 2 cylinder engine used in the first automobile, which wasn’t invented for another 7 years. From 1886 when the first automobile was patented, it took until 1914 for an assembly line to build cars for the common man, and not until the 1940s was there a car that resembled autos as we know them today.  So looking back at the history of our modern cars, it took about 100 years from the invention of the underlying technology until it became a useful mainstream product.

Yes we are advancing at a Moore’s Law pace, and using much more powerful technology than they were, my point is advancement takes time. Google right now is at the Model-T level, it has something great that people want and use, but in another 12 years who knows what we may be doing to find information (I don’t think we’ll be using search to find content). Google will probably be powering what ever technology it is that we use in 2022, but that is IMHO solely because its initial product was so excellent that it advanced upon its competitors so far they’ll never catch up and now any new technology that is developed anywhere on the earth, Google has the power to stick its hands in it.

Building upon that great product, Google built a great company - it wasn’t born as a great company. A great product was born around which a great company was developed, and ignoring that product would be to ignore the cornerstone of any great organization: the product that it creates.

Great companies are built around great products. Build a great product and you have a chance to create a great company.

Kudos to Mr. Jarvis for bringing a lot of great lessons to light from Google’s dominance, but my biggest lesson over the past year has been to build great products and let the rest follow. Google’s success is no exception.

I’ve been spending more and more of my time looking at all the data I have surrounding my life and my business. Its interesting to see whats going on at a very granular level, and then zoom out and see the forest itself.

Its also intriguing to see how other people use data. Some people use charts and graphs to tell a story that doesn’t necessarily play out with a closer look, while others take a close look and find something you wouldn’t necessarily see on the surface of the data.

Take for instance Business Insider’s Chart of the Day , they have all sorts of interesting charts compiled from all over the web. Sometimes they are completely outrageous, sometimes they are insightful (mostly they are just charts though). What is interesting is how the headline of the Chart often varies from the data in the Chart. Take this for example:

Yes the people who don't want one doubled, but the people who do want one tripled

Yes, the percentage of people who don’t want one doubled, but the percentage of people who “would like to buy one” tripled, and the percent of people who replied “No, I’m not interested” was cut in half.

Charts are fun ways to take a snapshot of some set of data and to quickly illustrate a point. But is really interesting to see what kind of crazy stuff comes out of the data, not the parts that complement the story you are telling, but the data points you had no idea you’d find.

Look at this chart comparing the last 4 weeks of traffic on one of our sites. The chart covers the exact same days of the week, from a year ago in January. There are no significant events that would drive traffic, other than a slight spike at the end from Valentines Day searches.

Look how each day lines up, fascinating to me

Look how the trend of the days of the week follows so precisely. The first thing I saw when I looked at this chart was the fact that we are down about 7% y-o-y, but then I looked closer and saw the parallel movement across the chart. Look how the dips correlate, and the spikes match up. I’m now intrigued enough to put together a chart of all the data from all our sites and see how this matches up.

I’m not sure what to takeaway from this type of find, but if you just look at the headline, you miss the real gems.

As a preface, the guys who started Twitter are brilliant, they created a service which no one realized they wanted, and turned it into hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and created an entire ecosystem based around sharing links, emotions, and whats happening right now. They have built a cultural phenomenon, I just don’t believe it will last, at least in its current form.

Twitter has been aggravating me of late.  It seems to be full of self-promoting and self aggrandizing on a scale never seen before. The annoying part is that almost none of the “social media experts” on Twitter are even slightly aware of their actions, and seem to be completely oblivious that their “buy from me” spewing is just a new form of spam.

Yes there are many people sharing useful information and generally contributing to the society that exists within Twitter, but they are getting fewer and farther between. What really bothers me about Twitter is not its populous, but its Soapbox promotion of these experts. That soapbox has people yelling very loud, and as PT Barnum learned, if you yell loud enough some people will listen.  See trending hashtag of the #shooturself - these people are not adding anything.

Twitter holds in itself what Twitter seems to believe to be a new version of Alexander Bell’s telephone. Only they don’t own the lines, or the devices, or even the technology that it runs on. It is just a set of protocols, basically serving as a communal text messaging platform. That observation isn’t news, but what I’m getting at here is that Twitter’s use as a business to its owners and investors is purely as a utility. If it tries to be a media company, it will fail, because it is a fad. A fad that didn’t even truly go mainstream yet, it just caught on with the people *trying* to be cool. Twitter is like the person who used to operate the local switchboard for the telephone companies, as soon as the telecoms figured out how to automate that process, those people were no longer needed. As soon as we figure out that real time sharing of information doesn’t have to all go through the same service, Twitter is toast. What I’m doing right now has nothing to do with Twitter.

There is significant value in the positive information that I garner from my daily perusing of Twitter. Links are great, and the people that I’m interested in the techworld share useful and valuable information daily. But all of that is information I could easily get from RSS feeds, friendfeed, facebook, or a multitude of other options (new services are appearing everyday - like Google Buzz). Right now Twitter holds the illusion of control over that data exchange, but in reality, Twitter is simply the latest iteration of information exchange via the web. First came email, then the http protocol, then instant messaging.  All of those are utility-type services that you can get for free and as soon as another service comes up and reveals that Twitters “control” is merely an illusion, users will shift, and along with them, Twitters value will - from ~$1 billion to zero.

Twitter is as much a business as email is a business. Making email better might be a business, and all of the great auxiliary companies built on Twitter are great businesses, but providing the protocols to send a message across the web is not a business. Well, maybe it was in 1997, but I believe we’ve moved on from that.

Sharing information that is valuable to me, is an important part of our open society, and I believe that Twitter has value, just as email and instant messaging have value - those services are still around today - and flourishing. Those services are not being monetized however, and are corollary parts tied into more extensive offerings.  Twitter has the ability to make it as a large company, but I don’t think its heading down the right path. Right now its walking down that path like its the cock of the walk, and I certainly doesn’t deserve that posture.

I spend about 3 hours a day reading stuff. Alot of that time is spent reading TechCrunch and Mashable and Business Insider and several other blogs about Technology and Business. But the really interesting stuff is found in the second level - the links and sources that those sites embed in their posts to attribute thoughts, ideas and specific data. Those links have a more focused approach to specific data points and thought patterns that give you a better insight into that line of thinking. A better insight into what is happening in the world.

I read an interesting quote today - “The beauty of the internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people.” ( - Jaron Lanier) Its very true. The value of the internet is in discovering what other smart and experience people have to say, and have to reflect about their world. Because our world is so interconnected, shared experiences are much more common - even if we don’t know each other or are on opposite sides of the globe.

Reading is a great way to focus your mind and absorb new information that inspires you. I feel like as I read, my unconscious mind is absorbing all the data I read and locking it away in my brain only to be accessed randomly at some other opportune (or inopportune) time. It brings the value of other people’s experiences, their thoughts and advice related to those experiences, it brings that all together and helps me better form an idea of what needs to be said or done here. Reading about how Google is positioning its new operating system, and how a brand new start up is unrolling its new location based social game. Those things matter, they are minute case studies on how to run a business in todays world. Real time case studies - this is happening NOW.

Of course the ultimate action is always up to me, but knowing that this company in Santa Cruz did this crazy thing when they were faced with this really bad situation and it worked brilliantly, or it was the last straw. Well thats not in you’re marketing textbook, or your finance book.

Its a little lesson you learn in the school of life, the school where you are the professor and you decide how well you do - but the rest of the world grades you. Do good things and you will do well.

Reading and absorbing is one of my favorite ways to relax, and it helps inspire me and focus on my ideas because I am always asking - “How does that apply to what I’m doing?” Always ask questions, and question the answers you get.

I just read an interesting post on Search Engine Land that got me thinking Its titled, Local Search, A Solved Consumer Problem. It takes an interesting perspective on local search, but Mr. Berk is right, from a consumer standpoint, local search is largely solved. But writing a blog post on that, is like writing a blog post announcing that email had taken over snail mail. Local search has been solved ever since the Yellow Pages first began to evolve 40 years ago.

If I want to find “Cantina Restaurant in Saratoga Springs” and I type in “Cantina Restaurant in Saratoga Springs” well, lets just say that Google isn’t in its infancy. When you search for the business you are looking for, you can be pretty damn sure that you will find the name address and phone number in Google (or Bing!) Thats not the issue, and there shouldn’t be a professional related to local search that finds this information enlightening. The issue in local search is finding information about local places, the businesses there, things happening, and what people are talking about. In other words, what are people talking about, what are they doing, and where are they doing it?

The golden triangle (coined from Fred Wilson) is in the answer to the who what where and why questions. If I already know where I want to go, the business I am seeking shouldn’t have to pay or jump through some elaborate hoop to get my business - they’ve already earned it. That problem doesn’t need to be solved. What is interesting to me, and what alot of people I know are working on, is how do I find out what is going on and where to go when I want to try something NEW, or find something I didn’t already know about. If I’m a local business and I’m having to spend time, money and effort reaching the people who already know about me and are looking for me, I’m in trouble. I want to reach the people who know about me but aren’t thinking about me, or the people who are thinking about what I offer but don’t know about me. In other words, I want to reach the consumers that AREN’T actively searching for me (obviously I still want to do business with those seeking me, but that should be inherently solved, and as Matthew pointed out generally has been solved).

There are a lot of potential solutions to this problem coming out. Foursquare,  Loopt, and others let me know where my friends are right now, maybe someplace I love, maybe someplace I’ve never been, but Gary’s there so I might want to check it out. UpNext, and Buzzd are all telling me what is happening near where I am based on my location - right now. Thrillist, FlavorPill, etc tell me where to go this weekend. There are lots of options out there, but there is no ubiquitous brand to seek out when looking for who, what and where locally. That problem is still yet to be solved.

Declaring a problem to be solved is often a silly thing, especially if it is not the incredible invention you just patented that solved said problem. Most of the time, the real innovations don’t solve a problem we even knew we had, they leap right over the prognosticators and create something nobody else even thought of. I didn’t know I had a search problem before I found Google, and that problem is solved (well Bing maybe doesn’t think so). There will always be better ways to organize information, and right now Google is the gatekeeper of information. Google created the solution to organize information, and make it easy to find when I am looking for something specifically. What hasn’t been solved yet, is a way to deliver me what I’m looking for before I even think about what exactly it is I’m looking for. The solution to that problem would be something worth writing about. What you don’t know might not be able to hurt you, but it could be really cool.

Maybe that Tarot Card lady outside my apartment is on to something

In the past year, I have had the best times, some not so good times, and some really bad times. I’ve hired and let go nearly a dozen people, all of whom I liked, and all of whom left me feeling down and like they had taken advantage of me. I am generally a kind and compassionate person, I almost always try to get the best situation for people on both sides of the table. But as I’ve heard before and was told recently, if you want a friend - get a dog.

I raised a small (by many standards) amount of Angel money in October last year. I took on a partner who invested time and money and committed to working side by side in the business with me.  He’s a smart and great guy, with a long history of managing successful sales teams. I thought it was the perfect partnership. But I learned the hard way that I gave up too much control of the company I had put so much in and our investors had invested in. So we set out to build a killer sales team.

And we took the right steps, we hired 3 new sales people. We purchased a massive license from Salesforce to manage our team, we did all the right things. Or so we thought. We were so psyched to get our feet on the street and bringing in new clients, that we forgot to build the product out to the specs it really needed. Our developer got behind on the new platform and all of a sudden we were 3 months, then 6 months behind schedule with the launch. But we had been training and building this sales team for those 6 months - and paying them. Not paying me, not paying my partner, but building our sales team; a sales team to conquer the world.

Lesson learned the hardway, if you build a killer product, you won’t have to “sell” it. It will sell itself. I knew we needed to focus on the product, from day 1 I knew it. Thats why I raised money, to build out this great product and then build out a great sales team to come and distribute it. We put the cart before the horse and spent all our time, effort and cash on this sales team, which flamed out and probably (in hindsight) wasn’t the right team to be working for us anyway.

So know here I am, a year later, with investors who still somewhat believe in us, a product that is halfway finished (but still great!) and a sales team 1/4 th the size it was 3 months ago. I’m stuck, because I know our idea will work, I know it does work. I have seen it work for 4 years now! But this economy turned a cold shoulder to our mediocre product, and I’m back where I started 14 months ago. Except much, much, dare I say, MUCH wiser for the experience.

I know this idea is going to succeed. Its just a question of when.

If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, or so the saying goes.

The past year has been a wild ride. I have gone through 8 salespeople now. Some people lie, some people cheat, and some people can’t do what you ask them to do (or just won’t). Dealing with people is hard, because when you demand a lot from someone and they don’t deliver, you’re disappointed in them, but when you don’t demand enough from people and they don’t deliver, you are disappointed in yourself. Managing is insanely difficult.

Being an entrepreneur requires you to have a close personal relationship with everyone in your company, and thats a great thing when times are good, but when times are bad - everything changes. All of a sudden daily tasks are questioned, Why do you want this from me? Well you were supposed to be doing it, but we let it slide. Well, I am the first to point the finger back at myself, and I’ve learned that discipline doesn’t make you successful sometimes. Discipline ALWAYS makes you successful, but you can’t be disciplined sometimes. Thats exactly what discipline is, its ALWAYS crossing Ts and dotting Is. Discipline is always doing all of the little things that make you great, that make you successful. Discipline is the toughness to make that extra phone call, write down that last request, finish the play all the way through the whistle.

Toughness makes winners out of players. Toughness makes good people great. Toughness allows discipline to come through and force you to succeed because you did all the right things. Not just some of them, or most of the time, but ALWAYS and EVERYTHING.

You have to be tough to be disciplined, and you have to be disciplined to be successful. If you can’t take some pressure, you will never be tough, and you will never be successful. Success is the overcoming of pressure through toughness and discipline, and it is the relentless pursuit of success that makes life awesome.

I’ve come on to several new products in the past few weeks; one is Clickable, a web based application to manage and optimize your PPC campaigns, and second is Outside.in for publishers. I love the fact that both of these great tools allow you to test their features, judge their value to your needs, and then make an informed purchasing decision.

One of the biggest fears I have, and most consumers have, is the fear of post purchase doubt. I don’t want to feel wrong, and I don’t want to fret that I’m making the wrong decision. I mean I have trouble clicking “Send” on emails some times because I’m nervous there is a typo or an ambiguous phrase somewhere, so I am ridiculously meticulous about any major purchases or commitments. So one of my favorite things, both as a consumer and as a marketer and creator of goods, is the ability to try it before you buy it.

How can I make an informed decision to purchase this x thousand dollar tool if I don’t know its going to work for me. Sure it works for them, but they’re not me, I want to see it work for me. You would never buy a car without a test drive (at least I wouldn’t), so why would I commit thousands of dollars and hours towards something if I can’t give it a whirl around the block first?

The ability to test something out gives the feeling of confidence in your product that both consciously and sub-consciously builds trust in your product. It gives consumers the extra bit of assurance needed to make a commitment. As a consumer it shows the producer is willing to stake the deal on their ability to deliver, and as a producer it makes me feel comfortable asking for a bigger sale. When everyone at the table is happy, the deal goes smoothly and everyone can walk out with their head up knowing they are confident in their decisions.

I understand why most companies don’t give their products out for free to try, because they are scared people will return them. And some people always will because its just not possible to please everyone at the same time. Sometimes its not the right fit, but if you’re willing to extend the confidence in your product to a test drive, its going to reap rewards, build relationships and ultimately end with bigger, better deals and happier customers.

In the beginning of July, my company decided to hire an SEO consultant to help us with a few problems we are having getting some of our content indexed. Since we launched a new version of our sites, we went from over 15k people a month to under 6k. Thats a big problem.

So we did the natural thing, started addressing the problem and after a good amount of frustration we got help. We spoke to a bunch of the best names in the industry, and chose a young company out started by a few people with varying degrees of experience in the SEO industry, but they were aggressive, defensive of the skills and passionate about what they could deliver.

We recieved an unbelieveably thorough site audit, which we were ecstatic about. Dozens of little tweaks, major architecture issues and some rather obvious stuff that we just needed a fresh set of eyes to notice. We implemented almost all the recommended changes, along with some other tweaks we unconvered as I began to implement them. They were a huge help and awesome to work with.

The thing is, I know SEO. I’ve been doing it for 3 years. I’ve been quietly attending conferences and workshops since 2005, I’ve built a company around getting found online, I know how to do this - successfully. (search “providence restaurants” - thats all me) But when crafting an entire Content Management System, from scratch there is so much to do. So much to keep in mind, and so many hundreds of little things that can screw up your rankings, or take you off the map completely.

We came off the map. We had some high profile rankings in the top 3 of Google, lots of traffic, only to fall out of the top 100.

Crawling back is an art. Crafting a site that the engines can dig is like making an elaborate painting. There is a proven technique to make the right brush strokes. There are certain types of paint and canvas that are better than others, but when its all said in done, you have to make the strokes, on the canvas, with the paint and bring it all together into something beautiful.

There is no secret forumula, it isn’t witchcraft but its certainly not a science. You have to do all the little things right, through some magic and hope in there, and wait for the bots. Its kind of like the invasion of Zion, only you want a nice picnic waiting for them.