Answer Guy Central

I’ve always known I would have made a good billionaire. I’d give my money to people that need it. You know: charities, children’s organizations, the downtrodden in general. Even my wife.

Sergey Brin, founder of Google, and all-around-decent-if-incredibly-arrogant guy, loaned ten million dollars to his wife’s company, 23AndMe. This is a company that Mr. Brin’s wife started, and which is mapping the human genome. Not being a genetic scientist this leaves me unable to say much beyond “I’m sure that’s really important and will eventually lead to lots of amazing medical benefits”.

I’m guessing that the business change in this story is the very act of turning genome mapping into a business. Which also may be a good idea at some point. But Not Yet. 23andMe is laying off some of their staff. I find this amazing gven that they had to know right from the start that their business would takes years to be viable. And when Mr. Brin made that loan, no matter how great a guy he is he had to have understood that it was a long-term commitment to both science and business. So why not loan the company more money now? For that matter, given Sergey’s absolutely immense wealth and his very personal connection to 23andMe, why not just buy the company and finance it until Mrs. Brin gets bored?

Because it’s a bad idea.

Business Change can be engineered, but there has to be something to change from and something to change to. What did they think would happen; 23andMe would automagically make money at something with no practical application (yet) just because the founder of Google was married to its CEO?

Maybe I can change myself  into the next Perez Hilton by using this post to suggest that Sergey Brin is about to get divorced. Nope. Too creepy.

Even for Google, ideas aren’t good just because you say they are.

Is your web site yours? Does anyone disagree? Is your business change, business practice, or any other part of your business REALLY yours?

How do you know?

I was working on a few domain transfers this week for a client. And it wasn’t fun. There’s a process in place for doing this that’s supposed to protect everyone, and when it works it does its job wonderfully. When it doesn’t, though, business change becomes business impossible. And the clock is running, both on the client’s business change choices and on my “meter”.

I got through it, because making business change happen is what I DO. But not without some pain. I may write about this in detail some time, because having a road map of someone else’s pain is the kind of thing people can benefit from.

Here’s another: this, as well as the issue of communicating in a way that doesn’t infringe someone else’s rights, could come in handy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation talks here about the latter. Unless you’d prefer to hire a few lawyers it’s an important read.

Nothing about the work I was doing today or what’s in that document should be too much of a surprise. But it’s real. It stands in the way of doing business or changing your business. It’s what Business CHANGE means.

I talk all the time about managing the business change that social networking through sites like Twitter and Facebook necessitates. Well here’s a change: what if using Facebook or Twitter was illegal?

This week, Richard Ketchum, CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, suggested that social networking might be against the law at US banks. Facebook and Twitter? Not for them. And not for their employees, either.

If you’re a banker and this idea has escaped you, well, you’re welcome. Ditto that if you work in any kind of regulated environment. Insurance Company? Doctor’s Office? Uh-Oh.

Aside from saying that here at Answer Guy Central we’re very good at navigating regulatory red tape, I won’t make this about anything other than how important it is for you to understand all the ramifications of any business change you enact at your business. And I’ll go on to suggest that most of this issue boils down to the steps that you must take to protect your patients / customers / depositors information when you possess it. Listen, apply the same idea that Mr. Ketchum is talking about to your business: what do you do with credit card information? Is it safe and secure? Are you sure about that?

When it’s time for business change you have to be ready to move fast. But sometimes enacting business change needs to be a slow, careful process, affected by lots of things you might not have thought of when you had that “a-ha!” moment.

A-ha!

Question: What do you get when you ask a question and the answer just raises more questions? Answer: Pretty much nothing.

In fact, less than nothing, since it usually means you have to circle back, form a new question, and hope an actual answer comes out. Or give up and start on something else.

Have you noticed how often people avoid business change by just not giving an answer to direct questions? The answer guy says it’s time to stop that.

Here’s an example: you have a license to use a piece of software, and it limits you in some way. One computer. One processor. One site. Something. Business change happens. You have the software running on a computer with one processor and upgrade the computer to have more than one. Now what? Do you not do the upgrade? Maybe, but . . . I know lawyers, computer geeks and business people, all of whom will have different opinions on what you need to “do” (or more to the point, not do). So do you . . . just . . . stop?

Always keep moving forward. Business Change may be painful to deal with, but sitting around and waiting for things to just resolve themselves is not the answer. Ever.

Umm, No.

So last week, AOL’s latest CEO Tim Armstrong started talking about some plans afoot at the once-and-never-again online activity leader. And I’m glad to see that Tim has a plan.

And it isn’t going to work.

The good news: Mr. Armstrong has quite the media pedigree. Seriously, this guy’s the real deal, experience-wise. The bad news: this is the same plan AOL used in the 1990s. It created mediocre content then, and will do something even worse now. It is not business change.

AOL used to produce their own content and hoped people would buy/follow it. “Buy” is a reference to the position AOL once held as huge (paid) ISP to the non-tech-savvy masses, and “follow it” is about AOL’s total control over what appeared on their closed service.

The other thing AOL did was license content, and pay pretty solid commissions. I wrote IYM Software Review between 1989 and 1995, and in the final four years of that period watched both my readership and income soar under a deal with AOL. And then they proposed cutting what they paid me by 99%. And so I discovered the Internet

Back in the day content producers were on staff (or in the case of IYM contracted) and well-enough paid to be controlled . What is AOL going to offer content producers today?

So that’s the bad news. While business change can sometimes be repackaging of old ideas, this is an idea with nothing behind it. Journalists and media producers are paid less and less as the number of choices increases, and AOL is not going to magically create enough mass to get folks to write for them exclusively without paying them; and they can’t afford that.

Silk Purse/Sow’s Ear, understand?

I’m all about business change. This isn’t it.

OK, I pick on Twitter a lot, but now I take it back. Twitter does so have a use. Change comes in many forms:

If you’ve ever watched a student struggle over a piece of “classical literature”, only to shorten and simplify things by turning to Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes, you’ve . . . probably been upset. Good enough.

But what if you want to embrace change and go even shorter? Two students have taken on the task of converting already-shortened classics to a form even the attention-deprived generation can wrap their minds around. That’s right; literature 140 characters at a time!

I’d say more, but I’d probably run past your attention span . . .

I was resisting the impulse to say anything at all about Microsoft’s <ahem> lovely new operating system, Windows 7. And then I read this.

I really don’t care about the new version of Windows very much. I’m happy that I can buy it (we’ve actually paid extra at Answer Guy Central just to stay away from Windows Vista on computers purchased in the last couple of years), but I have no plans to upgrade any of our computers. I just don’t see the point.

But if the article above is any indication, it seems that Windows 7 is Microsoft truly enacting business change. The software may not be all that important, but the issues surrounding it sure are! Breathe easier, friends.

And now for something completely different:

Hmm . . . it’s just this moment occurred to me how brilliant the Monty Python guys really were. Business Change is sometimes about making the same old thing look different. And now, through new partners Google and Bing, Twitter is making their stuff matter. In a way that scares me. Don’t worry: I will figure out how to take advantage of that for you.

Yesterday, Google Goddess Marissa Mayer announced the search monster’s new deal with Twitter to use tweets in real-time search results (Microsoft’s Bing got a similar deal). Everyone wins.

Then, Ms. Mayer announced a new feature of Google called Social Search. It’s a way to look at YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK and see what the people you know are up to right now. Yikes.

Don’t get me wrong; you know I’m all about this business change thing. At the same time, I always recommend taking care while using Facebook, Twitter, and the like, lest your private business become more public than you intend.

Google’s about to make keeping your secrets secret just . . . about . . . impossible.

Manage your business change. Engage help if needed. This is about to become not fun.

File this under “Don’t let your kids . . .”

Google Founder Larry Page’s Too-Social Behavior

And I thought I had a problem with texting at the dinner table.

Did you hear the one about the CEO who wanted to create business change that would hurt his company?

No, I’m not talking about Miley Cyrus killing her Twitter account. Yesterday, Evan Williams, CEO and founder of Twitter, said that he wants, really, really badly to kill off the “suggested user” feature of Twitter. I say “hooey”.

Make no mistake: Mr. Williams doesn’t want to kill that feature; he just wants it to be of more utility to Twitter (and, I’m happy to say, to users).

If you think about who benefits from Twitter, it isn’t the “user”. It’s Ashton Kutcher. It’s the aforementioned Miley Cyrus. It’s anyone who can convince many, many people to follow them, and then somehow turn that into a marketing machine. So no, Evan Williams doesn’t want this feature to go away; he wants more people to get value from it so that they will keeping using Twitter.

Done right, this can be a business change that will help Twitter survive. To find the business changes that will help you, just ask yourself what has to happen to keep people coming back. If you like, you can even ask me.

Craig Newmark is a very smart man. Sure, you can be cynical and look at Craigslist as a fluke, or a ‘first-to-market’ that got lucky and think otherwise, but that would be a mistake. The guy continues to churn out one smart business change after another at the service that bears his name, and has become a featured commentator at Huffington Post, where that blog’s huge numbers give Mr. Newmark a very large platform for stating his opinions.

And wow, is he ever on the mark this week. Yesterday, Craig’s list of what he thinks is wrong with the publishing business started things off, and then he went one step further and skewered the music labels for the way they have mismanaged business change.

Have you noticed how little promotion goes into musical acts? It didn’t used to be that way, and with all respect to what even my kids agree is a relative lack of talent in their generations’ musicians relative to earlier acts it’s really about the way record labels handle artists. No, they don’t have much incentive to make big investments in acts that will get to at most three albums, but then . . . what IS their purpose?

In the era of iTunes and Internet Concerts more and more artists understand that they have no good reason to sign with a label. EVERYONE seems to understand this, except the labels, who hang onto the same old business models that used to work for them.

Lack of business change acumen will kill your business. Don’t let what’s happening to newspapers and record labels happen to you.

Once again, brilliant marketing dude Seth Godin has me thinking. Read his story about apples and experts.

Here’s what that makes me think of:

We act as our clients’ experts in various fields. The Computer Answer Guy fixes broken IT models. PC-VIP introduces a whole new one. And Answer Guy Central fills in the blanks for many different things, from business strategy to media creation to . . . well, pretty much anything that could improve in your business. People come to us and we fix broken things, and make things that are good, great.

There’s very little we do that you couldn’t do for yourself if you took the time to figure out how. Then again, that applies to brain surgeons, too, doesn’t it (other than how physically awkward it would be to cut into your own brain)?

The other side of this conversation, though, is that we EXPLAIN it better than you might be able to puzzle through on your own. We help you get your stuff done in a way you understand well enough that lets you move forward either with or without us. It’s change. It’s PROGRESS.

And progress is the matter at hand.

The next time you’re mulling over your choice in apples, computers, who to date, what kind of movie to see, or anything else, by all means ask the people you think bring enough expertise to the table to make their opinions worth requesting. Then decide for yourself whether to follow those opinions, or not.

Most of all, be smart about who you ask for help. The time savings alone will make for real business change.

Do you use Gmail? What about Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or any of the other “free” e-mail options? Wait; you’re surprised by my use of quotes on the word free?

You’ve probably noticed that when you send e-mail using the services I mention they get appended with ads. You may have noticed that the ads are smart, too; they aren’t random, but refer to products or services that you and your correspondents might be interested in. Well, hold on to your hat:

Gmail, Google’s free, previously-by-invitation-only e-mail service, has a very cool new feature built in: if you use Gmail, when there’s a link to something stored in Google Docs, hovering over that link will pop up a preview of that document. Cool. A time saver. Real Business Change.

See what isn’t free here? While giving you something that makes your day just . . . a . . . bit . . . easier . . . , Google is also roping you into using Gmail, which, while the best of the bunch, is stored in their servers, controlled by them, etc. They’re sucking you in. Again.

I don’t wish to go off on Google for this, and I use their stuff everywhere, all the time. I do want you to keep in mind just what you give up if you blindly start using Google’s every new toy.

Have a great weekend!

Part of my day is spent looking for new trends. How could I comment on business change otherwise?

Now I want Mrs. Brady to be my technical support guru. Yep. Florence Henderson — Carol Brady of The Brady Bunch fame — is in the technical support business. C’mon, Mrs. Brady, lay your hands on my computer.

I wanted to make fun of this idea, and I don’t for the life of me understand why the owners of Mrs. Brady’s Technical Support Company are using  flohclub.com instead of floclub.com, which they also own and is the pronunciation they’re going with. But you know what? It’s good stuff. And WOW is it “business change”.

Now let’s be clear. Wherever Mrs. Brady is in her real-world life, she isn’t on the phone handling your technical support requests. And from what I can see, Florence Henderson doesn’t even own the site; that honor, as of this morning, belongs to one Antony Hirsch. But the introductory video on-line at flohclub.com is Florence Henderson in all her Carol-Brady-and-Wessonality splendor, and it’s put together in a way that if I was an old person looking for technical support—I’m not being judgemental; they state that older people are their target customers— and happened to come across this video (uh-oh, business change plan execution flaw!), I might sign up. Seriously. Watch Florence Henderson Shill Flohclub.com Here .

And there’s more that makes me think flohclub.com could work:

There’s a system-check tool at flohclub.com created by the folks at support.com that does a quick check of your system, spits out a long list of suggestions (OK, many of them are wrong, but no matter), and if I were an old person looking for technical support it would impress me.

It also leaves a trail of gunk behind in your sustem, and I’m going to guess that this is by design; use the flohclub.com system checkup tool and I’ll bet you’re going to be hearing from flohclub.com again even if you don’t want to.

Is this the future of technical support? Will targeted groups pay $20 per month for the privelege of getting support advice from people they “know”?

Yes, it is. And that’s a business change that you can employ too. Get to know your customers and prospects. Now.

OK, folks, READ THIS, and then listen up . . .

I’ve said before that Seth Godin is a genius, and for me this just proves it, more, and again.

The one that stopped me in my tracks was this tip for holding on to customers:

You can create switching costs, so that the hassle and cost of moving to a cheaper competitor is so great, it’s just not worth it.

Yikes. And true.

We’re preparing a multi-part description of our recent odyssey with a service called Hubspot. These guys provide one of the most most amazing legitimate marketing opportunities you’re going to find anywhere. Oh, and: once you’re in, good luck getting out.

How good are they? If you’re just starting out, I’ll tell you something: they’re so good you shouldn’t let that last statement scare you away.

More business change tomorrow . . .