In the course of running a small business it often becomes necessary to ask for advice. Small businesspeople tend to be very good about giving it, because we all know that at times we will need to ask for it as well. Giving informal advice is a great way to network.

But you can go too far, as a correspondent of mine recently demonstrated:

To: Important Biz School Alumni Email List
From: Small company CEO

Is there anyone out there with SAP experience and how to do implementations.

SOS

Small company CEO

Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I have some experience with SAP, and this guy is in my area, and I'm looking for clients and references right now. So as a fellow alum I got back to him right away:

To: Small company CEO
From: BTC

I've been through several implementations. What do you need to know?

And I got an equally unclear response:

To: BTC
From: Small company CEO

We are in need of lots help. Please call me, if you may.

Regards,

Small company CEO

He subsequently sent out another general email clarifying what he was looking for, but not really:

To: Important Biz School Alumni Email List
From: Small company CEO

Further clarification -

We are a Human Resource Outsourcing firm and are looking for implementation professionals with extensive knowledge of Human Resources (Outsourcing) and SAP Implementation.

Small company CEO

As it was right before the holiday weekend, I decided not to pick up the phone and start a call. Instead I sent a very polite note stating:

To: Small company CEO
From: BTC

Based on your clarification, I'm not sure I have that much to offer as I haven't touched the HR side of things in more than a decade, and in truth have not been a hands-on guy for several years, as I've moved up the chain into project management. But if you'd like any general thoughts, project assistance, or overall guidance, I'm always happy to have a conversation with a fellow alum, and if it leads to doing business together great, if not then no big deal.

I'm working from home at xxx-xxx-xxxx, but am wrapping up for the day and about to head out. I can speak with you early next week, either by phone or in person. Would that be OK? One of my clients is about five minutes away from you and I hope to be over there on Tuesday.

BTC

I received no reply, but followed up on Tuesday.

To: Small company CEO
From: BTC

I have not heard from you. Just returned from my somewhat extended weekend and would be available to talk if you like.

Thanks

BTC

I did not hear from him by the end of the day and figured that there was no interest. Fair enough. What he's talking about isn't really my expertise anyway. It would have been nice to get a note saying "thanks but no thanks." Unfortunately, some would-be businesspeople seem to regard simple courtesy as an optional matter, even when corresponding with a fellow grad-school alum.

So I was sort of floored to receive the following today:

To: BTC
From: Small company IT Manager

I am the IT manager at SmallCo, and I have been asked by Small company CEO to contact you regarding this email. First I would like to thank you for the quick response. We are currently in the project planning phase and we would like to gather as much information as possible. We will be formalizing our questions and send them to you via email within a week or so.

Again we would like to thank you and appreciate your assistance.

Small company IT Manager

How many ways is this fucked up?

• I offer to have a brief conversation with a fellow-alum and am instead passed off to some IT manager, without so much as an introduction or a request that I speak with him. Since when is a personal offer of assistance translated into an offer to do work for your whole company?
• I offer to answer some quick questions this week, yet the response presumes me to be available to answer detailed questions at some indefinite time in the future, without even asking if I expect to have the time.
• I am presumed to have expertise to answer their questions, even though I pointed out that my detail-level expertise is limited. In fact, I still don't even know what kind of information they are looking for.
• The sig line on my emails makes clear that I'm in the consulting business. While the line between "friendly advice" and "professional services" is vague at times, generally speaking if you're sending somebody lists of questions, you have probably crossed the line into the "services" area, in which case it's appropriate to first ask about establishing a formalized relationship. Yeah, that includes paying me.

-btc

In response to my Sad Lessons Of Casey Serin, Casey posted the following on his blog:

I don’t agree with all of it, but you make some good points and observations. Your list of entrepreneurs is good, I’m reading through each one to see what lessons I can glean.

Perhaps you can come on this Friday’s show and say a few words.

Sorry Casey. No deal.

Real businesspeople who want to have a discussion don't invite each other to "say a few words." They put together an agenda for discussion. I won't waste my time on a discussion with no agenda, which is what you propose.

So here's an idea, read through my piece and come up with:

• A list of three things that hit home, and how you plan to address them
• A list of three things that you disagree with, why you disagree with them, and what you think you can do to correct everybody's poor perception.
• A list of three things you have learned by spending a little time reviewing the histories of the entrepreneurs I listed.
• The name of the entrepreneur that didn't really belong on that list, and the reason why.
• The name of one additional person who you can emulate who is not a seminar-teaching guru, but rather is a full-time businessperson. (Anybody who teaches seminars other than during occasional appearances as a guest lecturer at major accredited university is disqualified.)

Do these things, and put together an agenda around them, and you'll have earned a few minutes of my time.

Personally, I'm expecting you won't.

-btc

I've been cleaning out the garage this weekend. In the past few months I've replaced a car, purchased a new mountain bike, moved all my old wine (some of which is sadly over the hill) out of storage and back home where it can be drunk, and worked on a number of small projects that have caused me to accumulate a lot of junk. Since my garage and my office are really one space with a half-wall and some bookcases between them, this has gotten quite annoying.

As with any major cleanup effort, it started with total destruction. Move everything off the shelves, move everything out of the closet space under the stairs, move everything that isn't delicate or a book off the bookcases, and leave a pile on the floor.

Then what do you do?

With many business problems, it's tough to figure out where to start. Prioritizing the tasks, the items, and the junk seems almost impossible. Some of the stuff is important, some isn't, some takes consideration, and some will need to be put away in a location to be determined. If you try to think about it too much, you end up like my "buddy" Casey Serin: overwhelmed with the choices and unable to get anything going.

Readers of this blog know that I have some training in wilderness emergency medicine, search and rescue and general emergency response. All of these have a simple approach to dealing with an overwhelming situation that is equally useful when cleaning a garage or deciding what to do next in a highly-stressful business situaiton.

Start where you stand.

There's really no better solution. If you're dealing with 100 wounded people all around you, you have no way to know who needs the most critical care without looking at every one of them. There's no way to guess, no way to know until you check each one. If you start anywhere other than just where you are, you'll just waste time and won't (on average) do any better at getting to the most critical folks first. So you start where you stand. Assess the situation, give everybody a quick once-over (triage) and then, as needed, go back.

That's how I approach business situations. Focus on the next thing in front of you. Get it done or at least take a good enough look to assess how critical it is. Then on to the next item. Do it carefully, systematically, and ensure that you do go back to the things you decided could be skipped right away. It doesn't matter if I'm figuring out a project plan, considering my next trade, or assessing any other problem, you've got to start somewhere and there's usually very little point in debating the starting point.

That's how I started the garage. With one screwdriver on the floor next to me. I put it into a drawer in the tool chest. Yes, I may need to reorganize the tool chest later, but that could wait. Then some antenna wire on the floor. Put it into a garbage pile. Next item, and next.

Right now, I have much of the big work done, a large garbage pile and a couple of smaller piles to be sorted through with greater attention and consideration. Those will be done by the end of today. I'll still have to re-organize some of the shelves as well as the afformentioned tool chest, but those are seperate smaller projects. Everything that needs to be on the shelves is, and all the tools are nicely put away.

And all because I decided to start, not debate. And for lack of any better idea, I started where I stood.

-btc

Listening to Casey Serin’s webcast Friday made me a bit queasy. The thought that kept going through my head was “this thing is going to end very, very badly.” And maybe not just with a bankruptcy or even a jail sentence. It made me reconsider whether I should continue to follow his story or participate in any way.

So I’m taking a bit of time out to stop hating the guy’s guts quite so much and make something constructive of it as well as to answer the question he asked this morning: "How do other entrepreneurs do it?". I doubt any of this will matter to him. He’s so far ignored even the most basic advice given to him, about the most basic things, like the need to open his mail. ("I’m trying to get better about it," he says.) But there may be lessons here for somebody else.

It may be the last thing I have to say about him.

"An interesting plainness is the most difficult and precious thing to achieve"

- Mies van der Rohe

OK, I saw it in the window of the local Design Within Reach showroom.

Perhaps the fact that it resonated so well with me explains my aversion to so much of the ostentatious BS that masquerades as "design" these days.

-btc

Bill Ackman's presentation at the Ira Sohn investing conference earlier this week was exactly what you would expect from him. 64 slides, going into excruciating detail about why he is short mortgage insurers MBIA (NYSE:MBI) and Ambac (NYSE:ABK).

In order to get there, he first takes us through an overview of current credit markets. The standout slide is the one on page 26 of the presentation, which I have duplicated below.

Note where we are. The implications are clear.

click to view larger image

-btc

Justin Rohrlich makes a fine point or two on Minyanville this morning.

I used the term "middle ages" intentionally. 1963 might as well be the middle ages as far as geopolitics are concerned.

Of course, there's only one reason we continue this policy while changing policies regarding China, Vietnam and even (ever so slowly) Iran. There's a block of voters in South Florida who have made the embargo a litmus test for any candidate, and neither party is willing to pisse them off.

One of these days, somebody will get elected without South Florida. Could even be 2008.

And it'll be a good day when it happens.

-btc

And it's even harder to do if you're an asshole.

Stephanie J. found this prize:

It seems obvious that Bill Gurley's "AboveTheCrowd" website is pretty much dead, as it hasn't been updated in more than a year.

Too bad. I always liked his stuff, even when I was lampooning him during the dotcom implosion. Of course, he's a partner at a major VC firm and I'm not. Guess the joke's on me.

I think it speaks to the times. There was a time back in the late 90s when anybody putting out a newsletter -- blogs didn't exist -- stating vauge and wonderful things about our technology-laden future was idolized and read by everybody. As Toddo is fond of saying, in the absence of water, sometimes people are so thirsty they'll drink the sand.

As a tribute, a link to his website will remain here for as long as his domain is live.

-btc

I've been following the Casey Serin story for a while now. Been a bit too busy to be a particularly active critic (aka one of the haterz™) but some slow times the past couple of weeks have given me the time to follow the saga of his continuing implosion, and even to edit sections of the CaseyPedia.

I find the whole story fascinating in so many ways:

• OK, let's face it, train wrecks are fun to watch.
• On a more serious level, I have always been somewhat fascinated by people who develop unrealistic expectations and the circumstances surrounding them. Immigrant entrepreneurs and their suceeses or failures have always been particularly interesting, especially since I've worked for several of them over the years and I descend from one. In watching Casey I think of one in particular, a guy who I'll refer to as "J," who also only had a high school education and no formal business training, who built and then lost a $120m company.

  Like Casey, J was a bit of a looney tune. Completely impulsive, he often wore hats and other items custom-made with his own motto: Success is 1% inspiration and 99% last-minute changes. He would fire and hire people for no reason at all. He would page the entire company just for fun at 4am while drunk. He was active in at least one cult-like organization and gave them lots of money, but fortunately whatever he got from them didn't include the business-miseducation that Casey received at his seminars. J ignored virtually every aspect of running a business except for the one he was good at, which was sales. And somehow he made it work.

  Unlike Casey, J had the good sense and fortune to jump on a business trend when it was starting rather than when it was ending, and rode it for 30 years. Unlike Casey, nobody could ever accuse him of not working hard, though one might have questioned (and many did, though not to his face) whether he worked particularly efficiently. And unlike Casey, J clearly understood the potential downfalls that come with debt. In fact, the company had virtually no debt other than trade receivables and a small bank credit line to help get through slow sales periods. This actually prevented the company from growing as fast as it might have.

  But like Casey, J never quite "got" the reality of running a business in the United States, or understood that while Americans generally love entrepreneurs who make good and are willing to foregive a lot, they don't give such folks a complete pass. He lost the company because he failed to observe basic tax formalities. The IRS decided that his company-provided housing, limosines, wine cellars and other assets were not reasonable "marketing expenses" and went after him for years of undeclared compensation. To pay the bills he was forced to sell the company.

  Another thing I've noticed in all this is the obession with real estate. My uncle and grandfather were that way too. Every piece of promotional material we have from their old companies features some sort of photo or graphic representation of the company's headquarters building, even during the period when they were renting a small office, their marketing materials prominently featured a photograph of the rather modest downtown Manhattan build. J followed a similar practice of including a photo of his completely unremarkable office building in all company promotional materials. And Casey, of course, is obsessed with the stuff. Not sure where this comes from. Is owning a piece of property something that defines the American experience to so many, particularly those who are new here? I know few American-born individuals who define themselves in terms of a physical structure, yet I see it again and again with recent immigrants.

• I find it fascinating how things can explode on the web. The ongoing Casey saga is a great example of how things just feed on themselves. The fact that a bunch of people would go so far as to create a wiki describing events, dedicate entire messageboards to discussing it, and really put more resoureces into the whole thing than the guy who created it says something about how we like to spend (or waste) our time and how viral promotion can work, or boomerang back at you.
• I do not believe that any publicity is necessarily good. I think Casey will join Paris Hilton in proving that point. The implications to this long-forgotten bit of wisdom are significant, as I've noted before.

• I'm sure this will all die out, and probably not because Casey pulls the plug, as he has often threatened to do. There'll be a lesson for viral marketers there too.
• I think I'm in love with Aspeth, foul mouth and all. This is consistent with my bizarre habit of falling in love with the various heroines of Carl Hiaasen novels.
• I think the most interesting thing about Casey is that he's attracted so much publicity and managed to do nothing to capitalize on it. I mean, even murderers and rapists get book deals these days! A friend described Casey as "the anti-pud," refering to Phil Kaplan, the founder of FuckedCompany.com, who during the dotcom implosion managed to turn just about every bit of silly publicity into a revenue stream and ultimately used the publicity to gain venture capital funding for one of his ideas.

-btc

Posting about my grandfather the other day got me thinking. The fact that we're currently going through old family photos in preparation for my mom's upcoming move has made the thoughts even more poingnant.

So I thought I'd pass on an off-topic item that I've always loved because it's a perfect one-line summary of the right way to think about any of your vices or (truthfully) anything else you enjoy doing.

My mom's cousin N, who many years later would be the one to go Jaguar-shopping with my grandfather, had also worked for him for many years. Like many entrepreneurs, my grandfather and uncle knew both success and failure in their early years. N's first job was at one of their early ventures, which failed shortly before World War II. He was the one who stayed with my grandfather on the last night, to shut down and shutter the store.

At the end of the night, my grandfather asked N if he would join him for a drink. N had never been to a bar or had a drink before. Truth is, he was probably under-age even by the rules of the time.

So my grandfather took him to a neighborhood bar, ordered two scotches, raised his glass and said to N:

I never drink unless I'm alone. Or with people.

In my earlier comment today, I discussed Kevin Depew's commentary on Minyanville. (Specifically item 5 of his Five Things You Need to Know.)

The most provocative part of this comment is at the end, when he wonders aloud:

• The credit-fueled view of absence as deprivation shifts under this weight of material possessions, so that absence becomes its opposite, the presence of some thing conspicuous by its invisibility, and attractive by the difficulty of measurement at a glance, void of design, label, price tag, categorization.
• This is not anti-capitalist.
• It is capitalism evolved, pushed toward the commodification of the intangible, the priceless, involving the exchange of that which defies external measurement.
• In that view of capitalism what are the modes of production? What is being exchanged exactly? What is it that is being commoditized and valued per this invisible exchange mechanism?
• Think about it.

OK, I've got to admit it, I've been thinking about such things for a while.

The first, and most obvious thing to note is that "stuff" doesn't go away. We still need shelter, food transportation and energy. It is also human nature that we will want some form of entertainment or other diversions, though they may come in very different, much less conspicuous forms.

This actually fits nicely with Jeff Saut's theory (also often espoused on Minyanville) that "stuff" stocks will do well. We may not need all sorts of conspicuous consmption, but we sure will need "stuff," and particularly the basic stuff that sustains us.

But some of our other needs will change.

In keeping with Kevin's preference for lists of five things, I'll focus on the five things that Aristotle said nobody could have too much of:

Health will be one of the most valued possessions, as it has been since Aristotle first noted it as one of the five things nobody can have too much of. It will become the world's largest business. It is the ideal "nothing" business, because it's absence is far more notable than it's presence.

Knowledge, will be the key to success, far more than citizenship, physical location, material possession or any other physical attribute. Other than health, the "knowledge" business -- or more to the point, businesses that are based on unique knowledge -- will be another great place to be. Like other "nothing" businesses, it is not obvious, except to the owner and those with whom the owner chooses to share it. (And it's worth noting that in a world where the most important bit of knowledge is likely be contained your own DNA, "health" and "knowledge" are very much related, if not one and the same.)

The opposite side of knowledge will be privacy, or to put it otherwise, the ability to control and limit others' knowledge about you. I expect that today's crude "identify theft prevention" services will evolve into "personal information control" services. Privacy will be paid for and the permission to intrude will be a marketable commodity. Publicity will be easily achievable by anybody willing to do something outrageous enough in some easily-accessible and free medium. Being unknown will be hard and probably expensive. The field of "private information control and commercialization" will be born. Talk about a business in which success will be measured in terms of invisibility. My grandfather would probably approve.

Friends are the third item Aristotle noted. If I generalize this to "relationships" then Aristotle's thought aligns well with another of Jeff Saut's hypotheses about where we're going. I expect that relationships will become far more important as "currency" than they are even today. The monetization of all relationships is already happenning, as anybody who has tried to build a professional network, or who has looked for a date above the age of 40 already knows.

Monetization of relationships will become far less taboo and possibly routine for individuals. Just as marketplaces for physical and financial assets proliferated in the past decade, "marketplaces" for relationships and connections of all kinds will mushroom. Imagine a network in which the organization or individual that facilitates relationships takes a "cut" of the value created!

Love is one which I have a much harder time dealing with as a marketable commodity. Not that there aren't plenty of folks who claim to be in that business, but I suspect that Aristotle had something else in mind. (No, not this either!)

In an increasingly dispersed and virtually connected world, I think great relationships will be tougher and tougher to come by. Does this mean that there's a generation of services and value creators that go beyond the capabilities of current offerings like Match.com and eHarmony? Will helping people find and then manage those relationships over increasingly long lifetimes and complex geographies be a real business? Part matchmaker, part marriage counselor, part nanny, part Jewish mother-in-law...

Aristotle's fifth thing is self-esteem. I have a real tough time wrapping my mind around commercial possibilities tied to this one, particularly since self esteem would seem to be largely a derived commodity -- the product of the four above items and many, many more. This also suggests that whoever cracks this one probably will have something really powerful to sell. Ideas?

-btc

Today Kevin Depew commented on Minyanville about the increased chasm between what we need and what we want, and how often "what we want" is focused completely on ostentatiousness rather than on any sense of real need. (His comments were inspired by a piece in the New York Times cooking section.)

Made me think about the experience of helping my brother buy his new condo recently. Came with a gorgeous kitchen, with lots of inessentials and plenty of just plain "show off" items. For example, it came with a 36", six-burner stove. Looks great, until you look inside and see that it has no overhead broiler, just the cheap "drawer" broiler found in the cheapest ranges. And no self cleaning. And no high BTU burners. In fact, it was nothing but a slightly oversized "builder special" range from a no-name manufcturer.

Of course, since the kitchen was built for a 36" range, replacing it with a normal, good quality range is impossible. He's going to be limited mostly to ultra-expensive professional ranges to fit the space. (Yesterday we finally found one that will fit the space that is under $2500.)

The conversation with the developer was counterproductive. Of course a 36" range is better, he says. It's 36" rather than 30". And it's stainless steel. And looks really cool.

Broiler? The drawer broiler is "good enough for him."

Self Cleaning? You really don't need it unless you cook a lot.

Why would you care about a 36" range if you don't cook a lot? Because it's so much better.

I gave up.

I also gave up on the discussion of the utility of a huge electric fireplace (aka a light show with a small electric heater in it) that is encased in a huge mantelpiece/hearth/surround in such a manner that it makes much of the living room useless. Obviously it's "better" to have one than to have the open space, or wall space for pictures. Or for a far-more-useful 60" TV. I did convince my brother to rip that one out completely. The developer can't understand why.

But of course, all this is indicative of the change that has happened in our society in the past 40 years, which Kevin suspects is peaking.

About 40 years ago, my grandfather, who was a successful entrepreneur and made enough of a fortune to give me a great start in life, wanted a car. Not any car. He wanted a Jaguar. Presumably one of those really cool classic 1960s models.

My mom's cousin, who worked for him at the time, occasionally went to the showroom with him to look at them. Clearly he had earned it and could afford it. But he never got the Jaguar.

Why? My mom's cousin told the story of his simple answer:

"What will the neighbors think?"

My grandfather was a creation of the great depression whose business ventures failed more than once before he succeeded. He knew the meaning of money and he didn't waste it or show it off. It was too important for that. I suspect that the "neighbors" were an excuse. He just didn't think it was appropriate to show off, regardless of the neighbors, most of whom were family and old friends, many of whom also did quite well for themselves over the years.

So what do the neighbors think today?

They couldn't believe it when I sold my Audi convertible and traded down to a fairly subdued 4-cylinder Acura.

They can believe it even less now that I've traded for a Prius.

They are amazed when I inform them that I often ride the bus and that I use my bike for the 15-minute commute to work. (Takes about as long on my bike as in my car.)

They simply can't believe that I wouldn't want to show off.

Fortunately, I don't care what the neighbors think.

-btc