Mobile Marketing

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If you ever watched a NASCAR race, one question quickly comes to mind: Was this sport created by car enthusiasts or by brilliant marketers? This is the only sport (and I use the term loosely) where the souvenirs and even the sport itself represent the sponsors more than the people involved in the sport.

Pit row - 1

To my knowledge, this the only sport where people would actually purchase an orange $500 leather jacket covered with Home Depot logos, while the term “NASCAR” is hidden on the inside tag. The sponsors of this sport have an ulterior motive in selling this paraphernalia than say the average Fortune 500 company buying a sign out in center field. The NASCAR sponsors are literally “allowing” people to pay to become walking billboards. In fact, it’s no wonder the drivers are awarded points for being in first place the most laps. Guess which car, I mean logo, is shown on TV the most?!

Racing

Why haven’t companies pushed other professional sports onto this strategy and to this extent? While the target audience might seem restricted to some, it’s actually quite diverse. I can’t speak for all readers out there, but I can’t wait to start wearing my Southwest Airlines blazer to the next family dinner.

Cables of gold

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While running cables through the wall for my new TV, the decision about which cables to buy came up again. Every time I hook up any new audio/video equipment, there is always this moment at the electronics store trying to decide if a $200 Monster Cable will really make a difference. First it was the optical fiber, then came the component video, and now the all-inclusive HDMI cable.

Thanks to my good friend Brandon, I subscribed to the online version of Consumer Reports (CR) more than a year ago, which provides all the information from the magazines in a searchable online format. As luck would have it, CR had an article titled “HDMI: the new jack on the box”, and in the article, they strongly recommended against purchasing “premium-grade” cables for hundreds of dollars. Good to know, I thought and headed to local bricks-and-mortar electronics store not wanting to wait for the cables to be shipped.

TV Remote

At ~$200/cable and needing 2-3 cables, the premium grade cables were going to add quite a bit to the project, so I asked the friendly sales rep at Best Buy what he suggested. As you might have guessed, this guy knew more A/V acronyms than I know computer acronyms, and that’s saying a lot. I mentioned the CR recommendation, and he bluntly said that CR was dead wrong. He explained a bunch of experiences with interference and how the TV actually becomes an antenna, attracting even more imperfections for that perfect high definition picture.

Knowing that rewiring all of this was not worth the effort, I caved and bought a fancy HDMI cable and went middle-of-the-road for the other cables. Everything looks great, but I wonder if I was taken or if I got lucky. Thoughts?

Saving $1000’s on your next home purchase? – Part II

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I’m guessing many dear readers have been waiting day and night for the details on the money saving method mentioned in Part I, and some may have delayed their closing date. (OK, I’m being delusional that anyone even read Part I, much less believed it could be true.) Well, I wouldn’t spend those saved $1000’s before finishing the rest of this post.

Panhandle Holidays 2002

As it turns out, my friend was able to enact this transaction and actually did save the purported $1000’s mentioned in the original story using a little known discount called a reissue rate, which can save up to 50-60% of a full policy. This effectively involves using the existing owner’s insurance company to “reissue” the policy to the new owner. It makes sense that a discount would be in order since the insurance company has already done a significant portion of the work for the existing owner and won’t be starting from scratch. Many brokers won’t mention this due to existing relationships with certain title companies, and there’s no motivation for the insurance company to mention it either, so the catch is to know the discount exists and to ask for it.

In the end, the reissue method was adequate enough for my friend’s mortgage company to endorse the mortgage, but whether this is the case in all mortgage applications can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. As more of the deed and mortgage processes are handled by computers, the risk afforded by title insurance will continue to decrease, and it’s likely title insurance companies will have to look for other ways to generate revenue. That’s when we can really start saving.

Saving $1000’s on your next home purchase? – Part I

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A friend was recently explaining how he saved thousands of dollars purchasing his new (yet previously-owned) home. Knowing there was a strong likelihood I would someday upgrade my own home, I listened intently to the story and was amazed by the simplicity.

Effectively, my friend described a loophole in the Texas title insurance system, where the owner’s previous title insurance company can sign over the title insurance to the new owner for a nominal fee ($100’s), which is much cheaper than purchasing new title insurance ($1000’s). The argument for this makes a lot of sense since most liens in Texas have to be registered with the state and easement issues in well-established neighborhoods are virtually nonexistent. Great, I thought to myself. I’ll use this in the future to save a few bucks, or at worst, it’ll make a great conversation piece at parties. Before any bragging rights could be claimed, I wanted to do a little research to verify the method.

The first person I mentioned this story to was a recently licensed real estate agent from my neighborhood. She began to explain why someone would be crazy to avoid purchasing title insurance, but I was still skeptical of this advice knowing she probably gets a cut of the insurance fee. This put my curiosity in a whirlwind, and after many additional conversations and a couple hours of research, the facts behind this fee-saving method have been uncovered. Stay tuned for an exciting second post explaining the particulars of this loophole. In the meantime, if you have any insight to offer on the subject, comments are welcome.

The Pillow Test

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As a wise accountant once told me (i.e. my CPA mother), all financial decisions should be first weighed against one thing: The Pillow Test. What do bedding and money have in common you might be wondering at this point. I had the same question, when I first heard it, but after many years of managing my own personal finances, I have come to fully understand and appreciate its simplicity.

The Pillow Test is a simple measure of a person’s capacity for handling risk. Plainly put, if a new financial transaction is going to cause a person to lose sleep, the investment or venture is most likely not worth the time, regardless of its potential. This measure of one’s tolerance for risk is not only a litmus test for going into new transactions; it can also serve as a wake up call for getting out of transactions. In other words, if money woes are creating sleepless nights, it might be time to consider unwinding some financial risk, because the best test is how well you rest.

What vacations and piranha have in common

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This Men’s Health article on fatigue in men mentions that men typically fail to take even 4 days of vacation per year. It seems hard to believe, regardless of the industry, but it does bring up an issue discussed quite often. The issue revolves around the idea that vacations are often more stressful than not taking vacations. The core concern doesn’t involve the stress of dragging the kids across the desert with a rabid dog or the back pain of sleeping on the in-law’s foldout couch.

The real apprehension around taking vacations often deals with (1) the amount of work piling up while gone, (2) missing important decision making process, and (3) not being able to defend against a work bully. To avoid these pains, people will give up unused vacation time and show up for meetings while on paid time off. Some might argue this shows real dedication, but as the article above proves, this is most likely creating a situation where the lack of a recharge will start to slowly take little bites from your mental health. (And hence, the weak piranha analogy is revealed.)

Some people deal with this by hooking up to the corporate email on vacation and just checking important emails while gone. (Absolute time boxing is essential.) This may seem counterintuitive, but for some, the decreased pressure can make the vacation more relaxing. I’ve seen others setup a designated substitute (possible a trusted peer or senior employee) while gone, who can make decisions and defend against a tear-down artist. This method has the added effect of building trust relationships with others in the group, which can ease the pressure during future vacations.

Another tactic for those having difficulty with time away from the office is to schedule vacation time when others are likely out of the office. While somewhat limiting to the family schedule, the chances important decisions are being made are lessened, and the amount of work piling up is often significantly decreased. Along the same lines of adopting one’s schedule, I’ve seen people take a series of 3-5 day vacations (ex. Fridays off for Nov and Dec), such that some time is spent in the office every week. Granted, short stints of time away may not completely clear one’s mind; it’s better than taking no time away or being tormented while sitting on the beach.

The Inertia Challenge

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It seems like the term ‘inertia’ has become washed-out in The Noughts, just as the term ‘paradigm’ was overused late in The Nineties. I often hear inertia as the key culprit for nearly every business problem encountered in the past 25 years. Inertia in this case can be defined as the force that keeps people and processes behaving in the same ways, even in light of superior methods. While there’s no doubt that changing the behaviors of 6.5 billion people isn’t going to happen overnight, not all problems can legitimately be blamed on this mystery force of forward momentum. In fact, as a general rule, one should question and further scrutinize any situation where the basis for some problem has been associated with ‘intertia’.

For instance, I’ve had several conversations where the creation of various roles in a business has been deemed questionable and mostly likely a product of corporate inertia. While this may be true in some aspects, especially with the standard approach used in handing out titles, there can be no denying the power of specialization in this process. If enough individuals existed with all the abilities to engineer, market, sell and support a product, market forces would soon push this new wave of white collar workers to the top of the food chain. Unfortunately/fortunately, these superhuman workers do not exist in significant numbers; thus, the need for most existing job roles continues.

Another similar situation often blamed on inertia is the existence of management within large institutions. Is the existence of VPs and CxO positions at Google a product of inertia at the enterprise level, or is this approach just the reality of not having a better system of organizing large numbers of people to accomplish a similar goal? If there has ever been a chance to rethink common ways of doing things, I believe Larry and Sergey would have found and promoted a different way. If innovation is the nemesis of inertia (and I believe it is), Google would be the Jedi force facing the Sith-based corporate mandate.

In general, pinning the responsibility on the ‘inertia effect’ will typically provide little help in solving a problem. In fact, blaming inertia will most likely provide a red herring excuse for giving up on attacking a problem due to the overwhelming nature of tackling such a mystic force. Looking for smaller solutions to problems and taking baby steps to tackle a larger problem will lead to much more productive solutions, and in many cases, these smaller solutions may lead to the generation of superior methods which alter the state of the bodies in motion.

The Power of Self

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This short article in Men’s Health has an awesome list of five reminders in boosting self-confidence. Every person has areas where he/she may be lacking in confidence, and if left unattended, these feelings often develop into harmful insecurities that can hurt personal relationships or an entire career. In fact, I would venture to speculate that the vast majority of interrelationship troubles can be attributed to some sort of insecurity in one or more of the individuals involved. My favorite bullet point in this article is:

“Self-image is the mental picture you have of yourself. It is not fixed, it is not objective, it can be changed and you can change it.”

Even as a firm believer in trying to find the objective part of any problem, I believe this cannot be said any better. It reminds me of something a friend recently told me about a recent blind dating encounter, where it was mentioned that the other person became magnitudes more attractive as they conversed. Granted, this story didn’t come with a visual reference point and may sound a bit superficial, but the point is proof in the power of changing one’s persona.

My second favorite bullet in this article deals with the issue of boredom in developing a lack of confidence. While I’m not a fan of busy work or delegating work for the sake of image, there is a good memento for managers hidden in this idea, because people with nothing to do or with mundane work will often become paranoid about their value to the organization and ultimately themselves.