The Man from Scandinavia

New shoes

2007-02-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

New shoes,
originally uploaded by M. Johansson.

New shoes

2007-02-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

New shoes,
originally uploaded by M. Johansson.

Grodtävling

2006-06-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

Grodtävling,
originally uploaded by M. Johansson.

Grodtvling

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Grodtvling

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2006-06-13

Thoughtlessness

2006-05-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

Thoughtlessness,
originally uploaded by M. Johansson.

Thoughtlessness

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Thoughtlessness

I was thinking about something else, and suddenly....

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2006-06-06

Minna listening to apes

2006-05-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

Minna listening to apes,
originally uploaded by M. Johansson.

Minna listening to apes

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Minna listening to apes

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2006-06-04

. Party Product (iv) .

2006-01-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

. Party Product (iv) .,
originally uploaded by 3amfromkyoto.

nice picture!

PleasureCards

2005-10-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

Hah, my pleasurecards arrived today.

They are basically like business cards, but smaller, and more personal, with an online profile attached to them. See their web site for more detailed information. Not that there is much - they really need to work at explaining the concept better.

Insanely long shipping time (over two weeks) but they are very nice. They feel almost like they are made of plastic rather than paper, and are machine washable. They come in a plastic, not paper box, which is also very nice. I cannot wait to try them out on people!

Flickr

2005-10-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Emotional importance vs. Logical importance

2005-10-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

I had a discussion with my girlfriend (I adore her, even though she uses the lens flare filter) a while back, about the fact that we both are the kind of person that always tends to show up 5 to 10 minutes late to every meeting, and why we do it.

My general theory had (up to that point) been that, because of my positive attitude, I tend to underestimate the time required to do things. My dear lady friend had another theory, though – a more simple one, and one that was unfortunately less flattering on our characters. Simply that we don’t feel that it is important to get to places on time.

This is quite a problem. It’s often we forget that we are emotional, not logical creatures. I don’t FEEL that it’s important, therefore I don’t do it. I feel that I can get away with being 10 minutes late, therefore I try to accomplish things I feel are more important before going to the meeting or whatever. If there was a feeling of importance attached to being on time, I would be on time.

I had flown over 20 times before I missed my first flight – of course it was due to the fact that flying had become very ordinary and had less of an elevated sense of importance attached to it. I missed it, because I no longer had the nagging feeling that said “It’s important not to miss the flight, you should be there at least 30 minutes before the gate closes”. My logic had stayed intact, but my emotions about it had changed, which is what allowed me to miss the flight.

“Being on time” is not the only aspect of my life affected by this phenomena. Five other things that springs to mind are “Go to sleep early and get up early”, “Have good eating habits”, “save money” and “Exercise regularly”. We all *know* that these things are important – that’s good common sense - but we don’t actually always *feel* they are important.

Hmmmm. Expect more blog entries about this soon.

Helping

2005-10-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post.I'm not entierly sure why I haven't posted lately. Maybe it's because business has been doing reasonably well (although still feeling growing pains) but it has been dreary and repetitive. Not much new things seems to happen. That is not entierly true - we have some cool things coming up, but they feel too far off to get excited about.But...This morning, when I got out of bed after hitting 'snooze' almost 10 times, I didn't feel very motivated. My apartment still has a very temporary fell, with a cheap chair acting as my dinner table and clothing being strewn around due to lack of storage. I'm getting a few new bits of furniture each month, but it's still not a very nice apartment at the moment. Anyway, bottom line, my existance isn't exactly high-roller at the moment! I get a cup of coffee (without milk, because I was out of milk, grah) and sit down and watch the news. Doorbell rings.Who on *earth* could that be? Nobody rings my door at this time. I open the door, my hair standing straight up. I must have looked like Einstein on speed - haven't had a proper haircut in months. (Every penny saved...)A dark blonde teeny-tiny girl stands in front of me, dressed in pink. For a moment, my not-yet-caffeinated brain suggests that this is my landlord, shrunk down and dressed in a pink dress. However, I quickly deduce that this is not the case, when I see the taller woman (presumably her mother) standing behind her. They were both dressed in slippers.

Turns out that they had been locked out of their own building, and that she needed to borrow my phone. Being a nice and service-minded chap, I was quick to respond! (I’ve just gotten a new phone for renewing my plan with Vodafone – a flat rate plan – pretty much unlimited calls, SMS and data per month)

After I had explained to her how to use my Treo 650, she had to make three calls before anyone could come get her and drive her to the place where she kept her. She politely asked before the second and third call if she could make one more, and I explained that I didn’t pay anything for the calls, so just go ahead.

After she got hold of someone, she thanked me, and they went back to their house. And the strange thing – this event bloody MADE MY MORNING! I felt SO good! Helping people that directly really makes you feel great. When I got in this morning, after biking through the city with “I’ll take that as a yes” by Phil Vassar blazing in my earphones, I felt I had to blog this quickly.

It’s so easy to forget what business is all about: Helping other people. Sure, they pay you for your services, and it isn’t altruistic, but it’s still about helping people – making their lives better.
This is especially easy to forget when you are like me, running a high-volume ecommerce business, dealing with lots of customers, and doing customer support via email only. I simply don’t see our customers face-to-face, and mostly don’t talk to them. This makes them feel slightly less real, and some days, they are just numbers on the sales stats page to me!

I really should hold a contest to get some customer action shots, like ThinkGeek.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/69de/action/

I’ve previously only seen it as a marketing thing – something to have on the web site, but new I see that it has a really high value from a motivational standpoint. Watching a glimpse of the lives you improve really is a high-motivator for you, and a great source of energy.

Thank you!

Q: Did you like this post?
Q: Do you not yet own a copy of the book 7 habits of highly effective people?

If the answer to the above questions are yes, then buy it!
I cannot strongly enough recommend this book! Please throw a few bucks my way by purchasing it from my Amazon link on the left.

Luck and the universe

2005-04-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hi!

Sorry for not blogging for a thousand years. I guess I slipped out of the habit. I hope I'm not taken off too many trackers.

Anyway... I've recently read Good To Great. Fantasticular book. Read it. Briefly, it's a scientific study (or rather, summary of a study) that has studied correlations between companies that has beaten the average market by over 300% for over fifteen years straight. It's really, really good stuff. This blog entry is for people that has read the book, but some of you who hasn't might like it anyway. But seriously, read the book. Awesome.

One of the most "annoying" things in the book is the study of the CEOs. The CEOs of Good-To-Great companies are frickin' weird. The are very similar to each other, but very different from the most popular image of successful CEOs. When reading the interviews of the CEOs, one thing stuck in my mind really hard...

The CEOs of the Good-To-Great companies were asked “what was the most important factor that contributed to the success of their company?”. A stunningly large part of the CEO's answered... wait for it... luck!

When I read that, I had to get up and walk around a bit to calm down. Seriously. These CEOs all (almost) had taken their companies out of a slump, and kept it going for 300-700% the average market performance for 15 years. That is simply not a coincidence. "These CEOs are talking crap!", I thought.

The book attributes this "luck" phenomena to the fact that these CEOs simply have no egos in the normal sense of the word (this is more intricately described in the book, and I won't go into it in this blog) - they simply take responsibility when bad stuff happen, and when good stuff happens, they project that on others or circumstance. Quite the opposite of how most people react to success or failure, come to think of it.

The above is a plausible explanation, and I accepted it, as I hate the idea of a company being enormously successful for 15 years straight by coincidence. But, when shaving a few days later, a really disturbing notion struck me… what if it really was luck? What if these companies just had opportunity upon opportunity thrown at them? What if good things(TM) simply happened to these companies on a more regular basis than other companies?

That’s kind of a disturbing thought, because I’m kind of experiencing it in a project right now. The details are kind of secret, but suffice to say that it started out as a zero-budget project, and demands lots of people (well, lots of people for me – it’s like 10) involved. The project was (and still is) a bit of an excuse for me to collect some of the most reliable, creative, energetic and entrepreneurial people I’ve met under one “roof”. The way the project is working is just amazing. I mean, the people are productive and all, and their work is always spectacular, but that’s not the amazing part. The amazing part is how much luck we have.

We have received a huge amount of money (way more than we ever anticipated) from the county to do the project. Much of the stuff we’re building has been given to us for free (several thousand dollars worth of stuff) - very, very little actually needed to be purchased. And now we’re getting a ridiculously good deal on SMS payment services. I mean, I’m used to good stuff happening out of thin air, but this is simply a little weird. It gets us all worried sick, and we have been waiting for a disaster to happen to balance our luck out, but the luck just keeps happening.

I’m almost as if the universe WANTS this project to succeed. If anyone of you has read “Think and grow rich” you’ll recognize the above. I don’t recall what he named it, but it’s the “Powered Mind” or something corny like that. Basically, it kicks into gear when strong individuals subconsciously ask for challenges. I.e. if you really, really want to do something, and is strong enough to do it (and you believe you are), the universe will allow you to do it, and throw challenges your way. It’s almost like some council sits on a cloud somewhere and say “Well, this shit here needs to be taken care of – who can do it? That dude over there seems to think he can do it – hit him with it.”. I’m not a religious man, and I think most of the stuff in the bible is hooobamajoog, but one thing it really has nailed down it “Ask, and ye shall receive.”, which is what I’m getting at here.

What I’ve realized with this project is that this also works in groups. The effect is not at all limited to individuals, but it in fact enormously much stronger when a group of people all have the same objective.

Well, sorry for the new-agey post. I hope you know what I’m talking about. If not, keep your eyes peeled for luck that is too frequent to be a coincidence, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Keeping your cool

2005-01-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

I'm at my dads place on the country. I have just downed a glass of scotch, and I'm feeling much better about my situation. The company is putting a lot of pressure on me at the moment, and to be honest, it has been getting to me the last few days.

But in the end, you need to stay calm to handle things. It's absolutely necessary. Worrying about something more than once or twice will cause you to paralyze very quickly. When you have an inbox that is huge, phone calls from creditors, and people working in your apartment, a calm is your #1 priority.

Do what you need to keep your calm. Everything falls if you don't have your calm. Make time for the stuff that keeps your calm.

In my case, it is...

1. Sleep.
Go to sleep at a regular time every evening (sleep that you have before midnight is deeper and more efficient, btw) and get up at the same time every morning. This is tremendously important. Most people don't get how much compromises on sleep takes it's toll. Two hours less sleep means a 50% drop in productivity. Easy.

2. Food.
I eat crappy food, so I compensate that by eating a bunch of vitamins with it. Every day. The difference in energy between a day with bad food/no vitamins and a day with good food/vitamins is huge. Keep your body in shape. It's the base for your brain, which is the base for your business.

3. Exercise.
Best way to get your energy levels up and your harmful stress levels down is regular exercise. This demands a time investment (shut up with your "I don't have time" excuses), and it WILL pay off in productivity improvements. If you're feeling totally stressed out and disturbed with your situation, 40 minutes on the mill will do wonders.

4. Saturdays off
As I've talked about in an earlier blog entry, I always take my saturdays off. Always. They are sacred.

Stay calm. Stay cool. Take care of yourself. Until next friday, I remain

your serf and servant
Mattias Johansson

PS. Read Brendon Sinclairs blog, if you don't already. PS.

Why are drugs bad?

2004-12-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

This is a followup to my last post on disicpline.

I pondered a few days ago why drugs are bad. Sure, addiction, bi-effects, physical detoriation, etc. However, let’s assume an ultimate drug was created - with the aforementioned negative effects of drugs removed? I still would not make use of them much. Why? South Park said it best: They make you okay with being bored. It’s when you are bored that you should be creating stuff or learning new things. Drugs are super-easily accessible stimulation.

There are two things in my life that I keep very limited. Alcohol intake and TV.
I’m not ethically opposed to any of them or anything like that. I like getting hammered, and I like sitting in front of the telly when I’m drained. It’s just that they both make me okay with being bored, and it’s when I’m bored that I’m most creative and productive. Thus, I don’t keep alcohol or a TV in my own home, so that I become bored, and in turn creative and productive.

I have a few friends who basically drink alcohol every weekend. I don’t record their habits or anything like that, but from what I can gather from conversation, they also watch a lot of television. These people are very nice and I like hanging around them, but they are not creative or productive people. They are not restless. They are not bored. They use the easy fix, and it is preventing them from doing what I do.

TV is a fucking dangerous device. If you turn it on, you tend to be mesmerized by it, and just sit like some vegetable receiving constant stimulation. I’m gonna make a point of not ever, ever turning on the TV without knowing what I’m going to watch beforehand. Zapping KILLS creativity, productivity and your will to achieve.

If you listen to successful people in interviews, this advice is given out a lot. A while back, I listened to a speech by a guy who is a very successful actor here in Sweden – he also works a lot with music and event marketing. He said that he has always been driven by some kind of restlessness. He didn’t really ever play Nintendo all that much or watch TV – he went for new experiences instead. You’ll hear this from SO many successful people.

By all means, watch TV and get drunk as hell. They can both be great, and be rewarding experiences. But make sure you do it because you want to or need to, and NOT because you are bored. When you are bored, make new stuff, not old stuff.

Until next friday, I remain,

Your serf and servant
Mattias Johansson

PS. If you liked this post, please link to it. Here is the direct link:
http://themanfromscandinavia.blogspot.com/2004/12/why-are-drugs-bad.html
DS.

Discipline exercise

2004-12-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

I'm big on discipline. My old drama teacher told us on our last day of school that discipline is one of the most important things you can have. I’m quite confident that discipline is one of the few must-have traits in a successful business person (among such things as commitment and optimism).

Discipline is very easy to define: Discipline is picking large long-term satisfaction over small short-term satisfaction. Discipline is getting up from bed even though your body feels like lead. Discipline is not eating from the bag of candy when you are in the process of cooking dinner. Discipline is getting up from the TV couch to do the dishes. I.e. sacrificing gratification in exchange for a larger one later on.

Now, discipline is not a philosophy or emotion. It’s a rather a skill, in my opinion, one that is trained. A lot of people get this from their parents, and some do not. My parents spoiled me quite a bit, because I was fiercely stubborn with what I wanted as a child, which has resulted in low discipline skills that I’m just recently learning to combat efficiently.

My current favourite exercise is very simple. If feel hungry while I’m in the city, I find the nearest candy store and walk in. I stroll the store and look at all the delicious stuff, think about how good it would be to eat it, and then… I don’t. Basically, facing temptation and then choose not to give in to it. Very simple, and very efficient exercise.

(If you are a smoker, you can do what a character does in one of Dan Browns books - he constantly asks people for a cigarette, and when he is given one, he considers smoking it, and then always gives it back.)

Try it. If you’re like me, I promise that it will give you a sense of freedom. Until next week, I remain

Your serf and servant
Mattias Johansson

PS. If you liked the above post, please consider buying the SitePoint web design business kit. I still consider it to be the best piece of business literature I own (although Justin Heralds book, Would You Like Attitude With That, comes damn close.) Also, I get money if you buy it, so please do. D.S.

Why I love doing business.

2004-12-03T01:59:00.000-08:00

From now on, I'm gonna post on Friday evening (GMT).
So, for this friday, an oldie but goldie:

Why I love doing business.
A reminder to myself why I do what I do.

As always, you are strongly recommended to print this out when reading.

FIRST: I love making a good impact on people’s lives.
I happen to know a girl that plays guitar and sings in a very successful local cover band. They are amazingly good at what they do. One evening, I was watching them play at a club, and I found myself looking more at the audience than the gorgeous girls on stage. People were having a great time! At that moment, during the short time the band played, the band was really making the life of the audience awesome. I was absolutely mesmerized by it. I realized right then, that it is my destiny, my purpose, and my passion, to make that kind of impact on people. Help them feel better, improve their lives, let them have more fun.

I don’t feel the need to deliver some huge life-altering experience, or something that lasts for years. I am of the strong belief that it is the small things that makes up your actual life, not the huge ones. For instance, I remember a party at a good friend of mine. It was a great party! But the best part came after the party itself. You see, my friend has access to this huge house, and I and some other people spent the night. The morning after, we had breakfast. Hung over and tired, we all sat in my friends sofa, had coffee and bread that tasted like heaven. We talked about this and that as the spring sun started to fall through the windows. I’m pretty sure that it was the best time of my life, right there. A good breakfast with good people.
That’s why the best part of running my eCommerce business is actually sending off the envelopes with the merchandise in them. I love the fact that I touch several thousand people, even if it’s just a little in each case.

SECOND: I love interacting with people.
I love communicating. I love speaking to people. Every single business idea I’ve ever had came from a conversation. Every time I’ve fallen in love with someone, it was when I talked with them. I like people that communicate well, and people that like me like me because I myself communicate well. Without interaction, bad or good, humanity would halt to a standstill in a matter of minutes, and so would any business.

This is why I hate the customer service of so many companies. They grow so large that they are nothing but large, money-making blobs that are utterly impersonal. My local bus company is a prime example of this. Their customer service is total crap. They switch bus drivers like I switch underwear, and most of them are just as service-minded as your average cactus. The very way their company is designed makes it impossible for them to have a personal relationship with me. One time, I lacked the cash to pay for my trip (I lacked less than half a dollar) and they actually tried to throw me off the bus.

Even though I’ve made in excess of 5000 trips with them, they weren’t able to recognize me and say “Hey, Mattias, nice to see you. Sorry you are stripped for cash, this trip is on us.” Communicating with these companies is NOTHING like communicating with someone over a cup of coffee. It holds no resemblance at all. The company has been stripped of it’s humanity.
That is why I love providing FANTASTIC customer service. I mean beating-everyone-else fantastic. As consumers, we’ve grown very accustomed to companies looking upon us as a chunk of large meat carrying a wallet. We are no longer irritated by centralized callcenters, automated customer service, or pre-written email replies. While this allows companies to save a lot of money, it also means it’s incredibly lucrative to offer a more personal touch to your customer service, as customers will appreciate it so much more, because it’s so rare.

I’m going to quote an example from Brendon Sinclairs excellent blog. Let’s say you sell suits. A man walks in, and buys a suit. You will probably never see him again. But what if you did this: Two weeks after his purchase, you send him a letter and a tie. The letter shows that “hey, I remember your name, your skin colouring, and the suit you bought – I thought this tie would go beautifully with it”. Stuff like this is very cheap (compared to generating new customers) and is the kind of small thing that makes people into lifetime customers. It’s also a plain nice ****ing thing to do.

I love interacting with people, and that is also why I love marketing.I love marketing because it equals communication. Communication in it’s simplest, purest form. I love innovative marketing techniques, copywriting, printed ads, direct mail and the like. Good marketing is distilling the very essence and core of a message, into something that is so simple that you can understand it in a few seconds, and then firing it at your audience with incredible force. It’s an enormous communicative challenge, and I absolutely love it.

THIRD: I love the game.
I’ve been selling stuff since I was a kid. Back then, I didn’t do it because of the money (I didn’t really need any), but because I really liked to sell stuff. It’s not different now. I’ve concluded that it is because I love the game of selling. I’ve always liked games like Monopoly, Civilization and Theme Park. Running a business is a game of being smarter than other people. It’s just like a strategy game, but more complex and in real life. I remember a particular detail in Theme Park, where you could increase the amount of salt in the French Fries to make people buy more cola. For some reason, I found that detail to be incredibly cool. Not exactly something you’d do in a real business, but it reflects on what I consider to be the game – tweaking, thinking, creating, dreaming, brainstorming, and working hard to sell. It’s a lovely, lovely game, and it’s so easy to keep score.

FINALLY: I love working with other people.
Solitary work is all well and good, but I’m definitely happiest and most passionate when I am working with other, like-minded people. It’s a completely different kind of energy. But I don’t want to work for someone else’s vision. I have never been able to do that very well. It has to be for my own projects, my own organization. I want to create my own work environment, for myself and for people like me.

Really, really personal customer service

2004-11-28T01:56:00.000-08:00

We consumers have nowadays grown very accustomed to companies looking upon us as a chunk of large meat carrying a wallet. We are no longer irritated by centralized call centers, automated customer service, or pre-written email replies. While this allows companies to save a lot of money, it also means it’s very lucrative to offer a more personal touch to your customer service, as customers will appreciate it so much more, because it’s so rare.

Mind you, by “personalized” I’m not talking about direct mailing where your name is in the greeting phrase, automatically picked from a database. I’m talking about communication to you specifically, not you and 30000 others.

Mr. Johnson an the Fish Truck
When I was a kid, we still had a “Fish truck” come to our house every Tuesday, selling fresh fish, milk, and some other basic groceries. Nobody referred to this as the “Fish truck”, though, or “Fishcorp Inc.”. No, everybody referred to the fish truck as “Mr. Johnson” because he was the one driving the truck. Everybody knew Mr. Johnson, and he knew everyone, by name. Us kids freakin’ loved him, of course, since he would give us a piece of candy every time he arrived. Now, those days are past, and the Fish Truck no longer comes every Tuesday, but it’s still brings a smile to my face every time I think about Mr. Johnson.
Nowadays, the ice cream truck arrives every Tuesday instead. Unfortunately, it lacks any personal touch. I don’t know the person who drives the truck. It’s always a new dude/dudette every time it arrived since this is obviously a low-paying student job. The person driving the truck does not say “Hello, what’s your name?” to the kids, or give them free sample ice cream (which would in the long run make the kids of the entire neighbourhood storm to the truck when it arrived). I don’t even think he or she wears a name tag. Really boring - as this is the kind of service that would benefit enormously from a little personal touch.

The evil bus company
But the prize for worst case of impersonal service goes to the bus company in my county. I often get the same bus driver. I recognize a lot of them. This was especially the case when I was living outside of town. I used to see these people, on average, 5 days a week for 7 years or so, and I don’t know a single one of them by name. And they don’t know mine, although the probably have it on file. They do manage to say “Hi.” when I go onto the bus, though, which got to count for something. I guess it would be better if they said “Good Morning, Mattias. How’s stuff?” but I guess that it’s way too expensive for the company to pay for that many words.
I did get more extensive contact with a bus driver a few months ago. I was outside of town, at my parents home, and I was off to an important meeting. 5 minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive, I realize that I don’t have any cash on me (Damn you, VISA & MasterCard!) and quickly scour the house for spare change, so I can pay the $2.60 bus ticket. 30 seconds before the bus arrival, I find $.50 under the microwave and run off to the bus stop. Bus arrives 3 minutes late (I’ve never ever received an apology from a bus driver for being late, come to think of it) and I get on it.

Bus driver: “That’ll be $3.00.”
A chill of embarrassment shoots up my spine – I really hate these kinds of situations.
Me: “Oh, ah um, I was sure it was $2.60. It has been that previously.”
Bus driver: “That’s new pricing – it’s been that for a while.”
I realize that this can be true, as I had been using a bus card for the last month, and they only announce their new pricing on their web page.
Me: “Oh, I only have $2.60”
Driver: “It’s $3.00.”
Me: “I’m sorry, I did not know that. I only have $2.60”
Driver: *opens doors, implying for me to get off the bus*
Me: (Rather desperate at the moment, as if I miss this bus, I miss an important meeting, since the next bus would not leave until 2 hours later) “Um, can’t you please let me go along for $2.60? I really need to get into town.”
Driver: “Hey man, it’s not your job, not mine.”
Me: “Why on earth would I tell on you?”
Driver: “There’s other people on the bus, too.”
Me: “Well, I’m sure they are all nice people. Geez man, I’m sorry I’m poor at the moment. Can’t you just be a little nice?”
Driver: Yeah yeah.
Me: “Here’s the money. “
Driver: “No, I don’t need them – it’s all or nothing.”
As a walk down the aisle, he speeds up pretty fast, so I fall down, stripping me of my final sheds of dignity in front of the other passengers and spoiling my day.

Thank you, local bus company! Here I am - a loyal customer since many years back, who have probably generated thousands of dollars in revenue for you by this time. They could just have said: “Hey. I see here that you have previously made 5000 trips with us – I believe those 40 cents are on us. Have a nice day!” … and would have ensured me as a loyal customer for quite some time in the future. Instead, they chose to embarrass me and try to throw me off the bus. The worst part is that it didn’t earn them a cent – they actually lost money using that behaviour – instead of taking my $2.60, they just wanted to dump me altogether. Way to go, guys. Someone really needs to tell these people that it’s usually takes 10-20 times as much resources to get a new customer as it takes to sell to an existing one.

WTF! The host cares about me?
I’m currently hosting a little with ADEHost. The dude who runs it, Mike, offers an amazing level of personal support via ICQ. After I’ve signed up (via guidance from Mike via ICQ) he asked me what my site was about. I stared at the message before I could comprehend it. This host wants to know what my site does?! That had never ever happened to me before. Asking about my site was so simple, and took less than 60 seconds of his time, but you can bet your arse that it ensured my loyalty for quite some time in the future. An excellent display of personal service. It’s also a great thing to know the name of the person you are dealing with. When I open a support ticket at HostCorp Inc, I have no idea who is going to respond.

Andrew, the schmoozer
I’ve recently done a print design job for the local section of Sweden Nationwide Theatre in my town. When I asked what their printing costs would be, they answered that they had to check with “Andrew” (a sales guy at a local printing company). They did not ask for quotes from other local print shops. They just used Andrew right away, even though they would probably earn money by requesting quotes from other print shops. Why? Because he visits in person, knows them all by name, and is nice as hell. He’s personal.

My point of all this? If you are a small business, the personal touch rules supreme, as that is your main weapon against the bigger and cheaper guys, as that is the single thing they cannot offer.

Take saturday off... seriously.

2004-11-21T01:49:00.000-08:00

I don't do ANY work on saturdays. It's extremely sacred to me in this period of my life. If I dedicate that day to other things than work, I'm at least 50% more productive the rest of the days. I stupidly skipped free saturday recently, and the productivity in the following week went totally to hell.

It has a few advantages:

1. When your brain is focused on seemingly "unproductive" stuff, it has much more processing time to spin up new ideas and solutions to problems. It's mostly when I'm doing something like drinking beer with friends or playing Xbox that I'm struck with a new idea and run to find a pen.

2. A truly must-have day off, that you HAVE to take, creates a neat reverse-psychology effect. At sunday morning, you are so bloody eager to get your hands on some work, because you simply counln't earlier. It creates a reminder that your work is something you choose to do, not something you do because you have to.

3. You never worry about the old "I never have time to enjoy life because I work so much", because your time off is scheduled and immutable.

I'm of the strong belief that you have to take your time off very seriously if you are to take your work seriously.

Another take on perfectionism

2004-11-18T02:32:00.000-08:00

A book I have that deals with procrastrination (The Now Habit) talks a bit about perfectionism. According to the author, who treats procrastrinators for a living, pretty much all procrastrinators are perfectionists. Perfectionism is not inherently something that induces procrastrination. It's in combination with associating ones performance with ones self worth that it becomes a problem.

I had a talk with a good friend of mine about my upcoming birthday. I said that I did not intend to celebrate it, because I found the concept of a birthday a bit silly. When she asked why, I explained that since there is no performance associated with the celebrating, it feels kind of empty. It's like, "wow, you managed to get born. You're so great!". After listening to my explanation she promplty told me that she disagreed with me. She said that a birthday was a great way to be celebrated just for who you are, not for something you've done or some position your hold. Just celebrate the unique set of genes and events that lead up to the person that you are, without any need for performance on your part.

I realized that she was very, very right (in many ways, this girl is so much smarter than me). I actually had trouble accepting (as a concept) the notion of "reward without performance", even though that is something that we recieve in abundance as children. It's valuing yourself after what you ARE, not after what you DO.

The difference between the two (are/do) seems small, but it is one of the things that allows you to do like Steve Jobs. He was kicked out of Apple, an enourmous and humiliating defeat. After that, he started a new company called Next, which also failed miserably, and sqandered most of his personal fortune. He was ridiculed so much in the media that it would have cracked anyone. Yet, even after this, he got up, bought Pixar and turned it into the most successful animation company in the world. After that, he stepped up as CEO of a failing Apple Computers and turned it around into the worshipped company it is today.

Getting up after failures like that is simply not possible if you value yourself after your performance. You MUST see yourself for what you CAN achieve, not for what you HAVE achieved. That is pretty much the way you should handle all dark critisism yourself or anyone or anything else inflicts on you. If you don't, it will always hold you back on your way to your goals.

Don't let circumstances affect you. Know who you are, and more importantly, who you can be, and remain true to that. That way, circumstances (like failing multi-million dollar companies)won't matter all that much.

AdSense topics that pays the most

2004-10-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

Another of those questions came up on SitePoint today.

"Does anyone know what types of websites does Google Adsense pay more than $1.00 per click?"

One of the posters I respect the most, Kenneth L. Barbalace, (website) made a very good comment on the issue:

Its not about what types of websites, as much as what topics. Some pages on the same site may average $0.05 while other pages on the same site may average several dollars per click. On top of this the average ppc will fluctuate wildly for any topic througout the month and year.

Instead of asking what types of sites pay the highest amounts, you need to ask yourself what topic do you know the most about and are you most interested in. Then build a site based on this topic. While it may take time to build the traffic levels necessary to earn much money, it will be much more rewarding.

There are no shortcuts to making lots of money with Google AdSense or any other form of banner advertising.

I agree with KLB (as I mostly do, he's a very smart man), but I'd like to extend on his argument.How much clicks in a topic is worth is directly related to two factors:

How much competition there in in the relevant market.
How large the profit margins are in the relevant market.

I.e. If a market has large profit margins (i.e. low costs associated with each product/service sale) and has high competition (most likely due to the large profit margins), the Google Adwords ads will inevitably be very highly priced. This is, of course, because the advertisers can afford paying a lot, and MUST pay a lot to be seen.

Now, because the area is so competitive, that means the site you will create about the topic will also have lots of competition. The higher the cost per keyword, the more intense competition you will be facing. The highest paying keywords have so fierce competition that it is incredibly difficult to enter that market because competition is so fierce.

So, while shooting for the most profitable market might seem like a good idea, it is not, becasue everyone else and their mother also think it seems like a good idea.

Using others for working discipline

2004-10-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna do a quick entry on this, as todays orders are printing. I'm up at 9AM, even though I didn't hit bed until 3AM. For me, getting up under those circumstances is an act of will that is more or less impossible. If I tell myself this...

Tomorrow, I will go up at 8AM, even though I will be extremely tired.

I'm simply not going to get up. The feelings of tiredness are way too powerful. However, I do have one feeling that is very strong in me, and many others: Sense of duty. I.e. feeling very strongly about your commitments towards others.

Thus, I have a friend (or associate, if your will) of mine coming over in 15 minutes to do work with me. It's not absolutely necessary to do this work in pairs. It's a bit faster, but that is not hte point. The point is that it makes me go up in the morning. It makes me commit to a time where I'm definetly working. It's a very simple and efficient means to achieve high, maintained productivity. Consider teaming up with another person and working on the same place at the same time each day. If you're anything like me, it will kill procrastrination with swift efficiency.

Blocking ad-blockers

2004-09-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is another discussion raving on sitepoint today. It's about subverting pop-up blockers.

My stance on blocking people with ad-blockers has always been strongly and firmly:

If you have a lot of people coming to your web site, find out how to make money on them. Don't turn them away, you goddamn idiot.

It's not good business sense, unless you are shooting for exclusivity, which you are most likely not.

As a busienss owner, you should react to consumer trends and react to them as soon as possible. There is a very strong trend away from popups, and even from web advertising as we know it in general. In fact, the trend has been in-your-face-waving-with-lit-fireworks for the last two years. Sitepoint saw this trend quite some time ago, and has thus moved to the way more stable and profitable model of book publishing. While other webmaster sites are making peanuts, Sitepoint is making millions. They don't have skyscrapers. They don't have a fastclick popunders. They don't have banners. They don't use adsense. I remember Matt saying that the adsense revenue was pathetic, and not worth keeping on the forums, which tells a lot about what they make from their books.

Move your business model away from advertising as soon as you can. It's ridiculously competitive, risly and it's almost impossible to grow your business with it. As aspen so eloquently put it once, eCommerce is where it's at. As long as you are advertising other peoples products, you are just getting breadcrumbs. Go for the loaf instead.

Mattias Take on the Future of online advertising

2004-09-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

What I believe will happen with Online advertising.

Or rather, what the smart people will do.

Recently, Microsoft has released SP2 for Windows XP, which includes a popup blocker. Most likely, this will eventually lead to the demise of popups in the market. Now, what advertising formats will prevail in future?

Well, I don’t rightly know. I do know how to advertise well, though.

Why most online advertising is a waste of money
Answer: Simply because it’s delivered at the wrong time.

The problem: You probably know that a surfer is almost always looking for some specific piece of information (what is the name of the king of Uzbeigrablahan) or to perform a specific task (play an online game, watch a little movie, check email). When the surfer is on a mission, it doesn’t matter how much flash banners, interstials or popups you throw at her. She’s on a mission, and no advertising in the world is going to prevent her from accomplishing that mission, even if she is a little interested in your product.

If you place an ad in front of a surfer that is on a mission, she will, at best, take notice of your ad, and think “hey, that’s interesting, I have to check out that later”. She will then proceed on her mission and forget about even seeing your ad, because like the average citizen, she is bombarded by over 20 000 advertising messages every day, and can’t be bothered to remember your ad.

The solution is, of course, to deliver your advertising message just when the surfer is done with her mission. At the end of an article, after the highscore of a game, after the user have signed up for a newsletter, whatever. But DON’T try to interrupt a user when she’s on her mission. It’s a waste of advertising dollars. You want the interruption to occur when she’s not completely focused on something else.

As such, you can understand why I think the biggest stupidity in the entire industry is rotating ads. You know, the FastClick kind that appear randomly on web sites. I have countless times seen an interesting ad while I was looking for some other information, thought “Hm, interesting!” and then went on to find who’s the King of Uzbeigrablahan was. After I was done there, I clicked “back” to check out that ad I saw before, only to find out IT’S NOT THERE anymore, because the stupid idiot people who dares call themselves “marketers” ROTATES IT. Argh! They are simply just shooting their advertising wildly everywhere in the hope that is will hit someone. It you ever tried to advertise via this channel of advertising, you know how badly it works.

So, what do I think is the ideal kind of advertising? Well, the kind that follows the visitor around for the entire visit. Even better - for several visits. You need follow the surfer along her path, pacing her unobtrusively, until she is ready to accept your interruption. Amazon has done this with flash ads that pop onto the screen and then “minimize” themselves into the menu, so that the user can act on it when she is ready to do so. I recently purchased a simple GIF 468px banner on a community site. The unique thing about it was that it was there for the entire session of the surfer, and it was the only ad on the site. 12% CTR the first week. If you check out GameSpot right now, you’ll see that they have a “The Sims 2” ad heavily integrated into their design at the top, which follows you around for the entire visit. While you’re at it – check out the videos. They have a sponsor message in the beginning of the movie, and then have the ad sitting on the right of the movie, ready for clicking when you’ve watched the movie.

Ensight

2004-09-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

I just saw that Jeremy Wright over at Ensight linked to me, which is great, because he has 4 hojillion pageviews per second and he wields the power to summon Robert Scoble and have him attack at whim.

Ensight feed below. Subscribe.
http://www.ensight.org/feed/rss2/

iTunes Affiliate Program

2004-09-02T02:16:00.000-07:00

That's about time.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/

$.05 per sale is really crappy, but you've got to start somewhere, I guess. Since the purchase is so small and people already know of the service (they have iTunes and an account) the conversion and click-thru rate is most likely going to be very good.

I will eat my hat if this kind of affiliate programs don't result in a huge increase of music and lyrics directories.

Illusions

2004-08-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

5 minutes ago, I was lying in my bed, unable to fall asleep, mostly because I was worrying over stuff related to my business. As I tried to calm myself down, a revelation struck me:

It's all a game.

Society today constists to a tremendous percentage of intangliables, ergo, Illusions. Originally, every dollar was had to have it's equal amount of gold availiable for exchange at any time, but that is no longer the case. The value of money nowadays is nothing more than a collective illusion. Stocks are an illusion. The concept of the future is an illusion. Copyright is an illusion. Our view of time is an illusion. Collective illusions that we accept because it's convinient, so that we can continue to play the game of modern society that we enjoy so much.

But in the end, it's just a game that we choose to play. Some people take it very seriously, and some take it less seriously. Some are more concious about their choice to play it, and some are less concious about it. I myself like the idea of looking upon business and career as a game. It really lessens pressure and worry, plus I like playing games.

My cat doesn't play our game. She spends her time chilling out most of the time. And eating. And Cuddling. And playing with other cats. She spends her time in reality. She does not care for the illusions that I enjoy so much.

Don't get too caught up in the illusions. The game is great. I enjoy it very much. However, remember what is actually real: Spending time with friends. Watching the sun go down. Breathing fresh air. Taking a warm bath. Having a good cup of coffee. Kissing. Laughing. Cuddling with your cat.

Doubt and mission statements

2004-08-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Just had an interesting (and verry long) discussion with a good friend of mine over the phone about motivation. We both agreed that we had the same problem of not doing things unless we absolutely had to. After a bit of deductive reasoning, we concluded that we didn’t do these things purely because we were forced to, but rather because that in those cases, all doubt about doing it was removed. i.e. there comes a point where it is obvious that doing the task now is the best course of action one can take at the moment. A just do it-moment, if you will.

If you are certain that what you are doing is the best possible route to achieve what you want, worry and doubt is removed from your mind, and you’ll do the task in question with a clear mind. This is why mission statements and goals that you believe in are so effective. If you truly want something, the one best course of action is always to strive towards that goal, in pretty much all situations.

Re-Imagine

2004-08-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to Tom Peters book Re-Imagine. It's a pretty nice book overall that deals with the current trend change in how we market products. It's all nice, except for the chapter on female consumers. That chapter is not nice. It's not okay. No, it's mind-blowingly awesome. You really, urgently need to read (or like me, listen) to this book, if for nothing else, the chapter on female consumers. No, make that just the fricking statistics he cites in the chapter. The book is worth it by those stats alone. If you are not reading this book, you are missing out really, really badly.

Three little tidbits of info from it:
1. 80% of riding lawnmowers are purchased by women.
2. Investment club returns: All-Men: 8% Co-Ed: 19% All-Women: 22%
3. Average recommendations to friends for same company: Male Clients - 2.8 Female Clients - 21

Old school business lesson: Don't compete on price!

2004-08-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Well, this question comes up again and again. Someone posted on Sitepoint.com that he was sick of people selling their services so cheaply. This comes up very often, and every time, the opinion comes from someone unfamiliar with business economics and the basic principles of capitalism.

My reply was this:

Time for old-school business lesson!

Competition inevitably leads to lower prices.

Read the above sentence again. Seven times.

To counter this, you should, as a small business consultant, NOT compete on price. Ever. It will be your demise. You will always be crushed sooner or later. Always, always, always compete with other things than price. It’s one of the most basic business principles that you need something that sets you apart from your competitors. This advantage should be as close to unique as possible, make you as different as possible, and be EXTREMELY hard to duplicate. That last part is the most important one, since your advantage can be rendered useless over a night otherwise.

If I start telling you what advantages you should use, this will turn into a specific business philosophy and not an explanation of fundamental business principles, but I’ll give you a few examples…

Your customer service can be fantastic
By “fantastic”, I don’t mean “good”. I mean blow-people-out-of-the-water fantastic. So fantastic that your clients step back and say “Wow, I can’t believe they did that”, when you give them a new suit for free after they have had their old one shredded by accident. If you think this is easy to duplicate, think about the customer service of the last 10 companies you dealt with.

Your product can be of superior quality
Same thing here – it has to be MUCH better than your other competitors. Not only the product/service itself, but also the packaging, delivery and overall presentation of it. Everything about it has to ooze quality. If you’ve ever had an Apple Macintosh delivered to you, you know exactly what I’m talking about here.

There are much more possible ways to separate you from the pack, such as location or niche expertise (such as focusing ONLY to travel agencies). They are all good, as long they really clearly separate you from your (cheaper) competitors.

Make sure it is hard for your competitors to duplicate. If you are competing a lot with companies on the Internet or in India, counter that by visiting your clients in person and by having your offices in the client home town. If teenagers steal a lot of business from you, send your clients wine, be professional as hell, have a real office, and do stuff that teenagers simply cannot do for the client. If your competitors are cheap, send your customers gifts and use expensive binders.

In summary, be different from your competitors, and do it in a way that they cannot duplicate easily.

Project Power

2004-08-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of reminder for you people who work for yourself...

Yesterday, me and two team members of a project I'm working on tried something new. We took three laptops and planted our arses in my ugly kitchen, armed with lots of coke and an 8mbit ADSL connection via WiFi. The objective was to finish a screenplay script and some other documentation, and we made use of a Wiki to do this. I.e. we all sat around a kitchen table with our computers and edited the same Wiki. Very, very efficient way to work on documents, by the way.

However, that is not my point...

The plan was to work for two hours and thirty minutes. We started after work, at 5PM. At 8PM, we started to get a little hungry, and went over to McDonalds and picked up some grub. Then we went back and continued. At 4AM, we were finished. We were all horribly tired, but satisifed and pround of ourselves. 11 hours of work almost straight. I would NEVER have been able to do that kind of performance by myself. I simply wouldn't have the energy to work for 11 hours in solitude, but when you are part of a team, it's not very hard at all. I call this effect Project Power.

It's when you work with others toward a collective goal that Project Power appears and gives you a vitamin injection. It's almost magical. Try to find people to work with on your projects, and they will become much better.

Swedish lesson

2004-08-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I will teach you a swedish word, that also works in english. Kind of like "Gratis" or "Smorgardsbord". It is...

Fjortis.

It refers to young teenage girls that dress slutty, talks about makeup and clothes all the time, and/or is really really rebellious. 14, if you will. Fourteen = Fjorton = Fjortis. It can also be used towards anyone expressing these qualities, regardless of whether they are teens or not.

Meatballs and beer

2004-08-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

22:46. Tuesday.
I'm having a beer and eating meatballs. Life is good.

You know, when you start worrying about something, try to turn that negative thinking into positive. When you think "Oh, what if ninjas and mafia leaps through my window and kills me" you should immideatly think of how you can achieve the opposite. The opposite of ninjas and mafia is beer, cute women and video games, so you should think: "How can I get more beer, cute women and video games" instead of worrying about the ninjas and the mafia.

If you are too lazy to think and comprehend the hidden meaning in the above post, remember that Rich is the opposite och bankrupt.

Strindberg & Helium

2004-08-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with the works of August Strindberg? Then you will appriceate this:
http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/

First post!

2004-08-09T01:43:00.000-07:00

So, this is my first post in this blog. Figured that I really ought to have one.

Interesting link:
Have your cat cloned (contains extraordinarily cute kitty pics!)
http://www.savingsandclone.com/