John's Music Blog

I had a call yesterday with a guy (I’ll call him Julio, because that isn’t his name) that is responsible for storage decisions at a very big company (I’ll call the company Acme, because that isn’t the company’s name).  I can’t name the company or the guy for reasons that are obvious to anyone who works in a large public company.   But I can share the gist of our conversation.  The part that is interesting to startups is the conversation we had around supplier management, environment complexity, and supplier support.

Julio’s at the end of a purchase decision cycle, and he told me which way he was going.  “We’re going with Sun, at least for now,” he said, “because they provide great service, we’ve worked with them for years, they understand our environment, and quite frankly, I don’t want to add another supplier.”  (more…)

As a fellow baby boomer, Denise Shiffman’s recent blog post really hit home.  She said, “Facebook is the new email.”  She wasn’t the first to make the connection.  In fact, the Scobleizer has a whole running debate here from October, 2007.  But because I know Denise, and implicitly trust her, she gets credit for getting my attention. 

As a boomer, I live on email, but as my blog readers know, I’m on Facebook now, too.  In fact, it’s about the only way that I communicate with Steve Zivanic, who created this viral campaign for very-traditional Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).  I just checked one YouTube posting of his video that reports 320,000+ downloads.  Good job Steve.  Steve’s left HDS and found a fitting home at myndnet.  He tells me they understand the value of viral marketing. (more…)

Mike Worhach, President and CEO of Sepaton, walked into the Starbuck’s where I was meeting  Paul Gillin this morning, and said, “Every time I see you, you’re taking notes.” Confirming once again that it’s important to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, I was having a follow-on to my meeting with Paul last week.  Paul has been amazingly generous with his time, given that he has started writing another book.  I’m eight chapters into his book from last year (2007, for those of you who are keeping track), The New Influencers, and I wanted to pick his brain on how he might be able to help one of our clients.  But I also got an added bonus, which was getting a few quick tips that could make a big difference for anyone.  Here’s one. (more…)

Paul Gillin was kind enough to meet me for coffee on Friday morning.   Paul and I go back a long way.  He played a key role in the success of TechTarget, and I spoke at one of his first conferences, the highly influential Storage Decisions conference.  When we met for coffee this week, Paul  brought with him an autographed copy of his latest book,  The New Influencers , which I am reading, while on a 3-day holiday in Syracuse, New York.   Who wouldn’t want to be in Syracuse, the land of lake-effect snow, in the middle of winter?  But it’s a great place to go to catch up on reading.

 As part of my New Year’s resolution, I’m determined to become more engaged in the “new social media.”  There are a couple of reasons.  The first is that, while I have an enormous network of contacts, I need a more effective way to maintain communication.  The second is that, I have several clients that need a more effective way to reach potential customers and influencers than traditional marketing approaches provide.  (more…)

I just finished re-reading “The Challenging Road, Nidec Policy and Nagamori-ism.”  Unfortunately, you probably can’t find a copy, at least not in the U.S.  I’ve checked eBay, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, and there are no copies available.  I got my copy from Crawford Del Prete, who befriended Yoichi Ichikawa, the former Executive Advisor to Shigenobu Nagamori, the CEO of Nidec Corporation, over the course of numerous trips to Japan. I assume that Crawford must have received several copies of Nagamori-san’s book,  because I know Crawford kept at least one, and I and several of my former colleagues each received a cherished copy from Crawford.  As I’ve started my own company, many of the policies and much of the philosophy have been very helpful.  But I would also like to share the ideas with the founders of some of the startups that I meet. So, Nagamori-san, if you are reading this, please let me know how I can get additional copies. (more…)

I ran into one of my acquaintances at Storage Networking World, and as we talked about the marketing needs of one of my clients, he suggested a book called “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.”  He promised it was a quick read, so, on his recommendation, I ordered it from the local Barnes and Noble.  It’s got a 4-stars reader ranking on Amazon, but in keeping with the theme of “you can’t please all people,” the 100+ comments range from, “If an entrepreneur or sales person reads only one book on marketing, this would be it.” to “…there are a few small pearls to be gathered, but digging through the muck to find them makes them difficult to spot.”  The book was published in 1994, so some of the examples are a bit dated, but it is interesting to see how the authors’ predictions played out.  My favorite was the decline of Sears, which in a bit of irony merged with Kmart.

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I’ve made more than a few mistakes in my various careers.  One of them was buying a near bowling-alley length automated tape library (ATL) with a robot whose size, if not speed, would rival any in Detroit.  I made the purchase based upon the promise of future enhancements that would ensure this would be the last tape library I would ever buy.  You see, the ATL was going to be upgradeable to a Virtual Tape Library (VTL), and all my backup and restore problems would be, if not solved, at least contained.   To be fair, it was a committee decision, but I was a strong internal proponent.  Suffice it to say that the VTL upgrade was late and more virtual than real, and the ATL wasn’t the last library the company had to purchase.  In fact, I heard rumors that a second ATL was  offered for free, since the VTL upgrade was late.  But I can’t verify the rumor.  By that time, I had moved on to a new company, where my job was predicting the future.  The irony is not lost on me. (more…)

I had the pleasure today of spending some time with Acopia, a leading supplier of file virtualization solutions.  For those of you who haven’t lived and breathed storage for the past 20 years, suffice it to say that file virtualization brings a number of benefits to file-server and storage administrators, not the least of which is flexibility for the buyer.  Which brings me to opportunity.  

If we’ve learned anything over the last 300 years, it is that flexibility can be just as valuable as capability.  The Revolutionary War in the British colonies more than 200 years ago showed the benefit of flexibility over the much more capable British Regulars.  I flew back from Europe a few years ago sitting next to a NATO general, and we spoke at length regarding NATO’s re-engineering efforts, as they increased focus on flexibility.  Prior to the re-engineering efforts, no one would have doubted NATO’s capabilities, but certainly NATO’s flexibility could be called into question. (more…)

I had a long conversation with one of my nephews, Mike, this evening.  He had a lot to report, including record sales this week at the restaurant he co-founded with his brother Chris.  The topic turned to one of my favorites, which is “personal brand.”  I’m acting as a part-time mentor for Mike, and I want him to start focusing more on his personal brand.  By that I mean he should begin to take an active role in determining what people think of when they think of Mike. 

One of the suggestions that I made was to consider starting his own blog to begin creating his personal brand, independent of his restaurant’s brand.   He could start it on the restaurant business.  I did a quick Google Blog search and came up with several interesting sites.  But then I asked Mike what he was really passionate about.  Mike is really passionate about cooking.  Certainly his restaurant, Black and Brew, gives him an opportunity to experiment some.  And he tells me they have been changing a number of things in their second year of operations.  These include evolving the drink and food items to appeal to a mixed, more-mature crowd, meaning, not only the local college students, but also the 25 – 45 year old age group.  This change enabled them to avoid the after-college-is-out sales drop they experienced last year.   On the culinary side, it is still a largely sandwich and soups place, however. (more…)

My brother, Ken, has often said, “If you focus narrowly enough and spend a few months researching intensely, you can become the world’s leading expert on a topic.”  The key here is focusing narrowly enough.  As you can tell, if you clicked on the link, Ken became, if not the, at least a leading expert on affiliate marketing. 

Because Ken focused on affiliate marketing, he created something else which is valuable for many of you who are trying to launch a new venture.   He created a community.  And from that, he also created a virtuous sales and marketing cycle.  Ken started with a service, which he developed, sold and delivered by himself. Later, he built training materials and supported the authoring of several books, which, indirectly helped promote the service.  He’s now developed a conference business that helps promote the training materials, which helps promote the service.  More than that, however,  he has built up a community of similar companies and actively promotes and speaks at the conferences of his competitors.  And I’m reasonably sure that he retains at least a small sliver of the revenue that passes through his affiliate program to a competitor.

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