NateKartchner.com

The phrase “lipstick on a pig” generally means dressing up something unsexy, but despite the dressing, the thing remains unsexy.

A lot of people work in industries or sell products that could be considered unsexy. Are your marketing efforts doomed to be mundane and vanilla because you market something generally not considered to be sexy or cutting edge or cool? After all, maybe you make ugly green widgets. Or maybe you make ketchup.

Andy Sernovitz, speaking at the Buzz2009 conference, talked about how you could make marketing for even the most boring products interesting. He cited an example where Heinz Ketchup ran a campaign where people created their own ketchup commercials. All of a sudden, hundreads of thousands of people were watching videos about ketchup- not necessarily because ketchup was interesting but because the campaign was interesting. Ketchup merely piggybacked on a great idea.

Let’s look at another example: Apple vs. Dell. While you can quibble over the finer differences of the two brands, the bottom line is that they both make computers. Dell buyers are generally subdued about their new purchases, and they hardly say a word about their Dell after that (unless it breaks). On the other hand, Apple has somehow managed to convert their customers into disciples who harass every PC user around them to get them to switch. So what’s the difference? Apple has taken something mundane like your personal computer and shrouded it in the cloak of “cool.” They’ve put the lipstick of suspense, hyperbole and popular musicians at product launches; clever commercials; hip stores; and ultramodern product design on the unsexy pig of personal computers. And the funny thing is, to talk to any Mac user (myself included), that is one hot pig.

My point is this: it turns out that generally people like to be told what to think about your product. If you tell them your product is boring by creating typical or unoriginal advertising and marketing, that’s what they’re going to think. On the other hand, if you create the expectation that your product is cool by surrounding it by cool ideas and campaigns, be it Twitter or video contests (think this Klondike Bar contest), viral video campaigns (Will It Blend, anyone?) outrageous stunts (Ruby Tuesday) or any other  number of possible ideas, you’ll find that your product is more remarkable than you think. So get some lipstick on your pig and you just might be surprised at what’s under all that dirt.

Warning: The following post may come off as a bit cynical, but I feel like the advice is sound, so I’m going to say it.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately talking to one of my friends about a new business he’s starting up in partnership with another company. He’s basically offering consulting services that his partners can offer as part of a larger package that they sell to clients. Things are going well, with one major exception: he has yet to sign a contract with his partners. To illustrate why this is a major issue, let me share another story.

Another friend of mine was hired to work as a contractor for a small startup. As part of his compensation package, my buddy was promised stock options “once things start to go well.” Things started to go well, and when my friend decided to have that conversation about the shares, which he described as “uncomfortable” at best, the earlier conversations about equity had been forgotten and at the end of the day my friend was left with a fraction of what had been promised him.

The moral of the story is twofold:

1. Contracts are great because they allow you to state the conditions of your business relationship at the very beginning. This allows for conversation that results in clearly-set expectations on both sides. And at the end of the day, those clear expectations can save you some uncomfortable, relationship-rending conversations down the road.
2. People will make deals for things: help, money, goods, services, and probably a lot of other things I can’t even think of/categorize. But the fact is, unless those deals are on paper, they never happened. Sure, your partner/employer/associate might still make good, even without a contract. But you’re throwing yourself at their mercy, and it seems that when a lot of money gets involved, people become a lot less merciful. Want a good example of this? Just look at how many families get torn apart by estate disputes when a wealthy relative dies without having a solid will in place.

Keep in mind that a contract still might not be enough to insure that the agreement happens. But it at least provides some extra protection for you, and more importantly, it provides a common frame of reference for your business relationship.

The moral of the story is this. Next time you enter a business relationship, get a clear, solid contract in place. LegalDocs.com has a good, free contract outline that can help you create your own contract, or you can hunt down something more specific in FindLaw.com’s extensive list of contract examples.

My Honda S2000 (I call her Jezebel) has been having a hard time as of late. Her ride has been a lot rougher than normal (!), her clutch has been slipping really badly, I just got my registration stuff so it was time for emission and inspection, and a couple of weeks ago, she developed a rattle near the front of her engine. Obviously she was long overdue for a trip to the mechanic, which always makes me really nervous.

To give a little background as to why I get uptight- aside from normal fears of shady mechanics- allow me to explain. When I first got my S2000, I had a recurring problem with my wheel studs shearing off, and despite numerous visits to the Ken Garff Honda dealership down here in Orem, they didn’t figure out what the problem was (it ended up being simple and obvious in the end) until I had already paid hundreds of dollars for repairs that were basically worthless. That problem was compounded by the fact that every time I took my car into them, she would always have something new broken when I got her back. One time it was the map lights, the next time it was a side marker light, etc. etc.

So needless to say, I wasn’t too stoked about taking my car into yet another sheisty mechanic or another incompetent dealership. I spent literally hours researching mechanics and dealerships online, running down recommendations, and placing phone calls for quotes. I started to see a pattern emerge, and after several glowing online reviews, a strong recommendation from a longtime UT Honda owner and a feeling in my gut, I took Jez into the Ken Garff Honda dealership in downtown SLC. It was a great decision.

The experience was pretty great from the get-go. When I called the dealership to get a quote, Erin, the service manager helping me quoted a price that was a little higher than other places I had called. When I told her as much, she cheerfully offered to price-match any dealership in the valley; and when I found cheaper prices at a rival dealership,  she was true to her word. And what was even better, she had the parts in stock, which is great because S2000 clutches aren’t that easy to find.

I dropped off my car and virtually everybody I talked to about the necessary repairs was polite, helpful, and informative. The repair bays were busy (which is a good sign) but everything was really clean and neat. I walked away feeling confident that my car was in good hands.

Over the next few days, I received courtesy updates on the status of my repairs (apparently an S2000 clutch job is a fairly significant endeavor) but at no point did they attempt to upsell me or apprise me of other ticky-tack repairs that “needed” to be done. In fact, they even saved me money.

Finally, the long-awaited time came for me to be reunited with my car. I showed up at the dealership, where Erin walked me through the repairs that had been made, along with their cost, line by line. I was amazed when they came in under the quoted cost for the clutch job, even with the price match, and all the other repairs were reasonably priced. (Also, there was no upselling! I can hardly describe how great it was to not be harassed about other “needed” repairs. Apparently that’s a pet peeve.) They also took care of my inspection and even renewed my registration for me so I wouldn’t have to mess with mailing anything in or waiting for my stickers to show up.

I’ll stop gushing, but first I wanted to drop just a quick word about Erin – she was incredibly friendly, professional, and took extra good care of me. She even went so far as having the tech she uses personally with her own cars work on mine! Oh yeah, and the car? Jezebel runs better now than she has as long as I’ve owned her. Her clutch works like a charm, the ride’s back to normal, and the rattle is completely gone. She’s a joy to drive again!

I really can’t say enough about how great my experience with this dealership was. It’s no wonder that they’ve won the prestigious Honda President’s Award for almost ten years running. I’ll be taking my Hondas to Ken Garff Honda Downtown from now on. Kudos to you guys for running a great business.

(Disclosure: I was not paid for this review, nor was I given any other kind of compensation for it. I’m merely a satisfied customer who wants to share about how awesome this dealership is.)

I just read a story in this month’s Utah Valley BusinessQ entitled “When All Else Fails.” It was a great article about entrepreneurship and persistence, and it made me think a lot about the value behind failure. After mulling it over a bit, here are a few of the things that I came up with that I think make failure such a valuable experience:

1. Failure is humiliating. When you crash and burn, suddenly you realize you’re not quite as smart, not quite as talented, not quite as creative as you thought you were. You don’t have all the answers. And that realization makes you a lot more likely to listen to what your experiences, your friends, and your mentors have to say by way of advice and help. There’s something to be said for not thinking you know everything, and nothing proves that you don’t know everything like a big, fat failure.
2. Failure is motivating. The sting of failure and the desire to avoid it in the future can push you to examine the failure for lessons so you don’t make the same mistakes twice. After all, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And who wants to keep failing because of repeated mistakes?
3. Failure is an effective teacher. Turns out, the lessons learned from failure much more likely to stick with you: “I could have read what I learned from my failures in a text book, but I wouldn’t have internalized them,” says Alan Hall, one of the entrepreneurs quoted in the article.
4. Failure separates the men from the boys. While relatively few people get up the guts to try something once, even fewer get back up after a crippling failure to do so again. But consider this: every time you get up after falling down and try again, you build mental toughness and confidence to weather hard times without panicking. After all, if you’ve already hit rock bottom and survived, you know you can do it again. That coolheadedness could make all the difference whenever things get tight.

At the end of the day, the old adage applies: the greater the risk, the greater the reward. And while the timid may never fail, they’ll never achieve anything remarkable.

About a month ago, somebody hacked my server and injected a nasty malware redirect into the code for a couple of my sites (including this one). This caused a few problems for me, not the least of which was that my Google traffic was getting hijacked. But aside from that and the pesky Google malware block that followed, the other problem was that this blog was linked to from my Twitter account.

Once Twitter figured out that my blog had the malware onus placed on it by the almighty Google, they suspended my Twitter account faster than a cat on a hot tin roof (or a poorly mixed metaphor jumping into my brain. There, better).

Anyways, that was three weeks ago, and I’m still shut down, despite having taken the offending link out completely, even though the site is now clean. Which brings me to my point: as much as I want to hate Twitter for taking my account out, I just can’t, and here’s why:

First of all, I get Twitter for free, and I just can’t shake the saying that you get what you pay for. I paid for nothing, and, well, now that’s what I’m getting. Sucky, but strangely just.

Second, they had a pretty good reason to disable the account. The link was bad, no two bones about it. The only thing that would have been better would be if they had notified me first via email and given me a chance to fix the issue. And of course, it would have been way better if they had turned me back on when I fixed the problem.

Third, I love the service. I love it so much that if I ever get my account reactivated, I’ll jump right back into it (after tweeting the obligatory complaint about my long suspension, of course) without any reservations. Honestly, I just want it back.

It’s remarkable to me how addicted I’ve become in the past little while. I miss my Tweeps. I miss being able to hit up new people I just met. I miss the open forum. So anyways, hopefully Twitter will get over hating me so we can be friends again. In the meantime, you can always find me running Mozy’s Twitter account.

In my experience, software engineers tend to be a relatively insular group who don’t give respect easily. Also, it seems to be a pattern that engineers hire the best engineers. So how can you  approach top-flight programmers with a pitch if you don’t have a strong tech or programming background? Josh Coates, who has some serious street cred when it comes to hiring good developers, shared some of his strategy:

1. Learn some programming languages – Sorry, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty with some coding. Just keep in mind that you don’t have to become a crack programmer, you just need to know enough to hang out with guys who are crack programmers.
2. Go where these good developers are – This means attending Ruby and Python meetings, developer conferences, and open source events. This is where you’ll put that programming knowledge to good use. Being at least familiar with the languages your prospective programmers are speaking lets you participate in the conversation and start forging some relationships. And if you’re not ready to approach anybody, use these events as an opportunity to brush your coding up even more. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
3. Polish your pitch – Make sure that when you make your big pitch to your developer contacts, you’ve thought everything through a hundred times, and then think it through one more time on top of that, just to be sure. You really really don’t want to look dumb. Could be the difference between “yes” and “no.”

So if you’re looking for developers, crack open those Python, Ruby, and PHP books and get studying up. And remember, you don’t have to be a good programmer, you just need to be good at talking to good programmers. Good luck!

I remember “Field of Dreams” pretty vividly from my childhood, possibly because it’s a good movie, but probably because I was creeped out by the ghosts. Either way, the phrase “If you build it, they will come” has kind of stuck with me. In fact, it stuck with me so much that when I started to work on my company’s social media strategy, I took that approach to all of them. I figured that I could use the same content on all the social media sites, and as long as we had a presence there, people would flock like the salmon of Capistrano. Turns out that Field of Dreams was full of crap, in this case (seems like a no-brainer now, but at the time, it was a revelation). Since then, I’ve come to realize several reasons why that approach failed.

Account For Your Audience

You see, each one of these social media sites has a slightly different value proposition for its users, and a one-size-fits-all strategy is ineffective. What’s good for Twitter is not necessarily great for Facebook. Facebook users are looking for something different than Twitter users, and YouTube users are definitely looking for something that can’t be found on Twitter. Basically, I’m just saying you have to account for your audience.

Create Unique Value

Another issue with the one-size-fits-all strategy is that if you’re providing the same stuff on all your channels, what’s the incentive for a user to follow you on Twitter, fan you on Facebook, and subcribe to your YouTube stream? None. It’s all the same. So what if, instead, you provide each platform with its very own tailor-made value proposition? What if you have videos that are exclusive to youTube, insider information that can only be gotten as a Facebook fan, and coupon codes that can only be found on Twitter? All of a sudden, you’ve created a very real value for each of your channels that will encourage customers to connect with your brand on each of them.

Signal, Not Noise

This may seem obvious, but I have to say it anyways. Make sure that the value you’re trying to provide really is valuable. Hopefully you know your business and your market well enough to know what your users would consider valuable. This could be as simple as understanding the humor of the group you’re trying to reach so you can make YouTube videos they would enjoy, or as complex as researching your target userbase in-depth and developing an app that ties into your product and addresses a major need your target userbase has.

So anyways, for future reference, unless you live in the Midwest, have a close friendship with James Earl Jones and you’re building a baseball website, the “If you build it” approach might not be for you. Trust me on this one.

I have several Twitter accounts I keep track of on a daily basis, and with the dearth of good multi-user applications for Twitter, I find myself using all sorts of different clients to meet my Twitter needs. As I’ve done this, I’ve found a few favorites. So without any further ado, and no more fanfare, here are my top three Twitter clients!

1. Tweetdeck

This app is number one for several reasons, not the least of which is because it’s my favorite. After using Twitteriffic for months, I heard about Tweetdeck and signed up, and for me, Twitter changed completely. Now instead of trying to drink from the firehose of tweets that were shooting into my face through Twitteriffic, I had a way to manage the stream of data coming at me. Since then, I’ve looked at a lot of other clients, including the ones that I mention hereafter (obviously) but to me, while a few clients come close, Tweetdeck is still the gold standard of Twitter applications. Things I like about Tweetdeck:

• Multi-pane setup – This lets me see multiple streams of information at the same time. I can keep track of what my friends are saying, what they’re saying to me, and my direct messages, all without having to click so much as a button. And the best part is that I can reorder them whenever and however I choose. Priceless.
• The ability to add @ replies to multiple people at the same time. Most clients delete whatever was in the tweetbox when you hit reply, meaning if you want to reply to multiple people at the same time, you have to cut and paste, or manually type it in. Sometimes it’s the little things.
• Groups – If you’ve got a subset of people you follow because of the specific kind of tweets they give (for example, web designers who tweet) you can just stick ‘em all in a design group so you don’t have to sort through all the other users tweets to find them.

2. Nambu

Nambu is a native Mac client (not Adobe Air) so if you’re a Windows user, just skip on down to number three. OK, that said, Nambu is a great piece of software, and not the memory hog that Tweetdeck is. In addition, it has all the functionality of Tweetdeck, and even allows for multiple account management. It’s been a little bit since I last used it, and even now, the only thing I don’t like as much as Tweetdeck is that I think it’s uglier. Lame reason, I know, but hey, aesthetics count for something, right? Here’s a few things I like about Nambu in particular:

• Multiple view options – You can go multi-pane, single pane, and uniquely, you can go with a sort of Mail-style layout with folders for @replies, searches, etc and a viewing pane.
• More than Twitter – You can also set up FriendFeed, Facebook, Identi.ca, and a couple of other services to your panes. Pretty awesome.
• Easier searches – There’s a search box in the top right corner, and as soon as you hit enter on a search, a column appears with the results. Less clicks=happier me.

3. DestroyTwitter

I don’t remember how I came across DestroyTwitter, but it’s the next closest thing to Tweetdeck. It offers the same multi-pane setup, and gives you a lot of the same functionality. While it struggles with the whole @repy to more than one person at a time thing, and you can’t reorder panes or create more than one search pane, it’s a great app. Here’s a couple of things that DestroyTwitter has that Tweetdeck doesn’t:

• The ability to page through older Tweets – You can go back as far as you want, unlike Tweetdeck, which cuts off at a certain point and won’t go back further.
• Profile Control – You can edit your profile directly through the app; you don’t have to log into Twitter to change your description anymore.
• Twitter API Control – You get finer control over use of the Twitter API, particularly with how often your search results are updated.

Bonus – Tweetgrid

While not necessarily a client in the sense that the other apps I’ve mentioned are, Tweetgrid is still notable for its ability to provide multiple real-time twitter streams, which is indispensable when participating in Twitter events like #GNO or #smbiz.

There are a couple of things I love about Twitter. One is the opportunity to meet new people. Another is the awesome ability to play pranks on said new people.

So this last Friday, startup enthusiast, supermom, and one of the aforementioned new people @StartupPrincess announced that she was taking a weekend-long sabbatical from Twitter. Shortly thereafter, @RyanSMiller showed up with a direct message, enlisting my help to create a @startupprincess appreciation event over the weekend to create a torrent of tweets that she would have to wade through upon logging in at the end of her weekend hiatus. Because that’s what you get when you ignore the Twitter!  After laughing about the awesomeness of the prank, we got to work, and here is the fruit of our labors:

http://wemissstartupprincess.blogspot.com/

But wait, there’s more! We enlisted several of @StartupPrincess’s fans and had them contact their networks and mutual friends, all of which started to tweet with the oh-so-attractive hashtag #spaw.

At the end of the weekend, the joke had spawned over 100 tweets and a large amount of goodwill.

Unfortunately (and fortunately as well, I suppose), it also became not a joke, but rather, a genuine outpouring of appreciation to a major contributor to our Twitter community out here in Utah. Needless to say, @StartupPrincess was thrilled about it and invited a bunch of us over to her house for a movie night. And they all lived happily ever after. The moral of the story? Sometimes it feels good to do something nice, even if it’s inadvertant. The end.

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite books, partially because it still seems so relevant, even though it’s almost 20 years old. While I used to be more interested in the gory action, the philosophies behind the book have become far more intriguing to me as I’ve gotten older. In what is probably my favorite part of the book, the eerily prophetic Malcolm explains why genetic technology is so dangerous:

Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can’t be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won’t use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won’t abuse it.

Now this from a blog post entitled “Entrepreneurs Need To Suffer”

Too much attention has been focused on raising money in an age where “capital-light” startups are a reality. Entrepreneurs need 1-2 years of suffering while they build their businesses to sustainability.

The interviewee also stated that, had be been given millions for his startup as a 20-year-old, he “likely would have misspent it.”

So what does this mean to you? Well, there are a couple of things. First of all, when you’re going through your times of stress, it can be some consolation that this suffering is teaching you the discipline you’ll need to be a wise manager when success finally does arrive.

More importantly, it tells you that the harder you work to learn the principles of management that allow you to master your enterprise, the less suffering you’ll have to endure. That’s why getting to profitability ASAP should be your chief goal. It’ll teach you what you need to know to be successful, and the faster you can learn that, the better off you AND your company will be.