Entrepreneurship – Page 8

I’m sorry

30 September 202528 August 2007 by Terry Gold

I knew it was going to be an interesting day when my morning news alert said that I had been mentioned in a Denver Post article about Lindsey Lohan, Mel Gibson and Michael Vick. I had lunch yesterday with my friend Mike Gellman, CEO of SpireMedia in Denver, and he emailed me later to say that he had given my name to Al Lewis, a columnist for the Denver Post who he said was doing a story on "the value of apologizing" in business.

I probably don’t do it enough, but I try to say I’m sorry when I make a mistake. Being a CEO means I also sometimes get the opportunity to say I’m sorry when my company makes a mistake too. I vividly remember my mom explaining to me when I was very young that saying "I’m sorry" also means you will attempt to be better in the future. So I try to tie saying "I’m sorry" to some action or commitment to avoid having to say it again in the future. It isn’t easy though.

I’ve been frustrated as a customer myself seeing how a lot of businesses, small and large, just will not say "I’m sorry." It either doesn’t occur to them or they are afraid that they may be admitting liability for their mistake. When I say "I’m sorry" to a customer, I often will see a complete change in attitude and I think it is because they just don’t expect it. They were prepared for a fight and they didn’t get it because if I screwed up, I am really sorry, and because a fight never helps to fix a problem. Sometimes it turns out that I apologize for something that turns out not to really be my fault. That’s the nature of big, complex software systems and when it happens I just feel really good to have helped solve the problem. When it turns out it actually is my fault, I’m glad I didn’t waste a lot of energy and credibility pointing the finger at other people.

I once read about a study that a major hotel chain did regarding guests who reported problems with their rooms. They found that if a guest had a problem, they reported it during their stay, AND had it resolved to their satisfaction, then they were actually MORE likely to return to that hotel than a guest who didn’t even have a problem. How cool is that? I know it’s true for me. I placed my first Amazon.com order almost eleven years ago. I don’t remember the details now, but at some point an order didn’t arrive as I expected. I contacted Amazon.com, they apologized, took responsibility and jumped through hoops to fix the problem. As a result I’m a loyal customer who’s even more tolerant of future glitches that will inevitably happen because I feel like they will stand up and fix any problem that I have in the future.

When Al called to interview me about "the value of apologizing in business," I was enthusiastic. I thought I had maybe even written a blog post about this before so I used the built-in search tool in Vista (which I love) and discovered that the phrase "I’m sorry" appears on my computer over 500 times! I told Al that there were a lot of duplicates in that number and that I have a large archive of emails going way back. (If you have to say your are sorry in an email, it’s often part of a long string of emails, so one "I’m sorry" might show up 10 or 20 times.) Also, some of those emails were people saying "I’m sorry" to me. Still, that seemed like a big number and I joked that there was probably a curve where apologizing too much is probably just as bad a sign as not apologizing enough. (Note to self: Don’t joke with reporters. Everything is fair game to be quoted.)

As Sharon Linhart said in the column, "People are pretty forgiving." Thank goodness!

Coinstar – cool company, great service!

30 September 202518 August 2007 by Terry Gold

Coinstar places coin counting machines in grocery stores so that when you fill your pickle jar up with coins, you can go there and get spendable cash without going to the bank. I found out a long time ago that if I didn’t spend any change, I could save a pretty significant amount of money for new toys. The only problem was dragging my heavy sacks of coin to the bank, waiting in line and then waiting for the coins to be counted.

Along came Coinstar. When I first noticed them I wasn’t thrilled to pay a fee to have them count my coins so I didn’t use them. Then I noticed that they had partnered with Amazon.com and if you got your cash in the form of an Amazon gift certificate there was no fee. (You can get also get certificates from Circuit City, Starbucks, KB Toys, Cabela’s and many others.) For me, since the money was going to Amazon eventually anyway, it was a great thing. It’s even kind of fun to pour the coins into the machine and watch as it steadily counts the change, ejecting the odd video game token or Canadian coin that would get into my pocket. The first time I used them I had two big cloth bags and I got a gift certificate for over $400!

Now I cash in when the bags are a little less full, and the last time I did it I got a gift certificate for $109.69. Still not bad for spare change. I put the gift certificate in my wallet, and then forgot about it for about a month. To my horror, when I took it out a few weeks ago to cash it in, the gift certificate number was gone! It had rubbed off in my wallet. I tried everything to recover it – high powered lights (the paper was photosensitive and it almost worked), a magnifying glass – I even took it to a friend’s lab and tried a microscope. The numbers were just gone. The certificate from Coinstar clearly says if you lose it, it’s gone but mostly to satisfy The Person Who Prefers Not To Be Blogged About, I called the 800 number for Coinstar to see if they would replace my gift certificate.

Lara, the very nice person who answered the phone at Coinstar, made me feel better immediately even though I was well prepared to feel stupid and disappointed for losing all of that change. This has happened before she said, "just give me the certificate number and we’ll reissue it for you." "uh, that’s gone too." "Ok, what date did you use the machine." I thought hard – "Two months ago, maybe three?"

Lara seemed only slightly less confident that she was going to be able to get my money back, but then asked for the store number where the machine was located and the breakdown of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. That information was still legible. She put me on hold for about thirty seconds and then came back and asked for my email address saying she would email me a new amazon.com gift certificate number. Wow!

Three things happened here that Coinstar, or any other business, should be proud of.

They used an IVR system that got me routed to the right person very quickly. (It would have been better had it used speech recognition, but it was OK.)
Lara was very friendly, professional and competent. Coinstar’s brand went way up in my mind while I was talking to Lara. (Repeat after me – good contact center agents do not cost you money, they make you money)
Lara apparently had a system which she was trained to use, that allowed her to search the records of a particular machine based on the exact combination of coins that were dropped into it anytime during the last three months. (Someone at Coinstar could have decided it would be cheaper to just tell customers that they were screwed if their gift certificate got messed up, but they didn’t.)

I love seeing companies get it right. The new certificate arrived in my email after I got off of the phone with Lara and I very quickly added it to my amazon.com account before I had a chance to lose it. And next time I’ll put the certificate in my shirt pocket and go right home and add it to my account. Coinstar has a machine locater here that works for the US and the UK if you have a big stash of coins at home that you’d like to turn into a new toy or a month’s worth of lattes.

Testing adding a new page

30 September 202518 June 2007 by Terry Gold

this is a new page. Now what?

Resources for Entrepreneurs

30 September 202522 May 2007 by Terry Gold

Tonight is the TechStars reception where a bunch of local entrepreneurs are going to meet a bunch of (for the most part) brand new entrepreneurs. You can read more at TechStars.org or David Cohen’s description of the organization at Coloradostartups.com.

When Jim and I started Gold Systems, I think we knew approximately Zero entrepreneurs. I had email and access to Usenet, but there was no web, so information about starting a company came from the library or a kind soul willing to share their hard-earned lessons. My big break came when I landed on a prospect list for the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. Brad Feld and Vern Harnish had just moved to Boulder and they wanted to start a Colorado Chapter and lucky for me I opened the door when opportunity knocked.

Vern and Brad both spend a lot of time helping entrepreneurs, but it is mind-boggling how much information is available to this new batch of entrepreneurs just from their web browser. A reader recently sent me a link to an article he wrote on raising angel money at businessfund.com. Good stuff, and he has a lot to say about VoIP (Voice over IP) which I found interesting on his other blog, VoIPLowDown.com.

Now the problem is sorting through all the information and figuring out what is good and what isn’t so good. Another local company, Lijit, has come up with a solution. I’ve replaced my generic search box on my blog, with a Wijit from Lijit. It looks like a typical search box, except that it doesn’t just search the entire web, it starts with only the blogs that I subscribe to myself. If you type in "Raising Angel Money" into my Lijit Wijit like so:

You’ll first get the results from terrygold.com where I’ve mentioned "Raising Angel Money" but at the bottom of the page, you’ll also have the option of searching other sources that I would recommend (since I read them myself). In this case it returns four other places to look so you don’t have to wade through all the "get rich quick" ads that a typical search engine might return. Unfortunately it misses some great sources that don’t have RSS feeds, such as the Kauffman Foundation, BillPayne.com and JimCollins.com. (Hey Todd, how about it?) I hope these new entrepreneurs appreciate just how nice it is to have all this information at their fingertips!

UPDATE 1: Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, just left the comment below less than an hour after I mentioned his company. I have to ask – do YOU know what people are saying about your company as well as Todd seems to know? There are great tools that are available today for new entrepreneurs. Someone should package them up into a "CEO Dashboard" – but don’t sell them to MY competitors please!

Todd says, "Thanks for the nice writeup. We gotcha covered on the alternate
URL’s to search. First, as you know if they are listed on your site
(like a blog roll) we will find those all by ourselves and include
them.

But in case they are not on there just goto the "My Network" tab
within lijit. The bottom item on the list is "Add URL / RSS / OPML
feed". Add the url to the site and you got it!"

Thanks Todd! I’ll add a few right now.

Raising Angel Money

30 September 202510 April 2007 by Terry Gold

Def: Angel – a person who invests money in start-up companies. They may or may not help the entrepreneur ultimately succeed. They are often seen as a stepping stone to raising money from venture capitalists.

I get a lot of questions from entrepreneurs asking me about whether they should raise angel money and how to do it. While I’ve done it, I only did it once and I can hardly take credit for how well it went. One of my angels was Bill Payne (still is in fact) and he has done the entrepreneur community a great service by writing an eBook about raising angel money. He gave me a copy of the book and it is wonderful. It’s called "The Definitive Guide to Raising Money from Angel Investors" but it could have the subtitle of "Things you need to know, but don’t even know to ask" or "What no one will tell you about the realities of raising money for your start-up."

I would recommend the eBook even if you don’t think you are going to raise money and that you buy this book because there is a lot in it that applies to any start up regardless of whether you raise money or bootstrap.

Bill was on my board of directors for many years and he invested in my company, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by how honestly he speaks in this book. He once told me when we were looking for capital, "I know where you can get a million dollars with very little effort and no cost." I fell for it – "Where?" "Do a better job of collecting your accounts receivable!"

I can’t think of a question about raising money that I’ve heard that isn’t answered in Bill’s eBook. Bill has been a very, very successful entrepreneur and angel investor. You can buy his book for $37 at www.billpayne.com and save yourself a lot of time and energy trying to learn the lessons the hard way. From now on when I get a question about raising angel money, I’m going to ask, "Have you read Bill Payne’s eBook?"

Disclaimer: Bill was on my board, he’s still a stock holder in my company and he’s a very good friend. That said, I wouldn’t recommend his book if I didn’t think it was worth many times the price. I do not get a commission or anything else other than the satisfaction of knowing that maybe a few entrepreneurs won’t have to learn this stuff the hard way. Don’t take my word for it though – Brad Feld has also recommended it.

Boston Terror Scare

30 September 20251 February 2007 by Terry Gold

There’s lots of great coverage of the Boston Terror Scare available on YouTube. In case you are wondering what caused the scare, it is more or less this:

You can buy it at amazon.com here, and there is even a travel version, but I’m guessing you aren’t going to be able to carry it on a plane anytime in the near future. I can’t wait to see The DailyShow’s coverage of today’s events. The Zebro video is not work-safe, or I’d link to it here.

My favorite magazine, Make, has posted some good coverage of the events and pictures of the actual devices if you are interested. Warning – the photo in the Make coverage are also not work safe if your employer has a problem with LED cartoon characters making, as one correspondent said, "an obscene gesture." (If you are a techie, who does work for a place like that, check out my company’s help-wanted page. We have a sense of humor. New engineering postings will go up sometime on Friday.)

Calling all entrepreneurs – what was your biggest, ugliest challenge?

30 September 202529 January 2007 by Terry Gold

Hello my fellow entrepreneurs,

I’m going to be writing a series of posts over at the Kauffman Foundation and I’d like your help. We all know that being an entrepreneur is almost 100% an easy and happy existence. Right . . . . So, what about that 1% that really tests what you are made of?

I’d like to hear about the biggest, ugliest problem that might have some general appeal to other entrepreneurs. I won’t use your name unless you tell me I can, and you don’t even have to give me the answer to the problem although if you feel like sharing, or if it would just help to commiserate about what did or didn’t work, I’d like to hear it.

By the way, if you like learning from other entrepreneur’s mistakes and misery, check out Lessons from the Edge, by Jana Matthews and Jeff Dennis. Just don’t read it late at night. With subsections like "when disaster strikes", "picking the wrong guy", "starting with a bang, ending with a whimper" and "caught in the act", this is one book that might keep you awake at night. Confront your fears; the book has a "lessons learned" section and a "top 10 lessons" list after each section. If nothing else, you’ll feel very fortunate because I guarantee that there are people in this book who had it worse and who have bounced back.

Thanks in advance for your help. Email me, or if you want to share in public, leave a comment. Be sure and say if you want me to credit you by using your name if you email me.

Values in the Board Room

30 September 202527 January 2007 by Terry Gold

(This is an older post that I left as draft accidently. It still applies – I believe most boards are made up of decent people trying to do the right thing, despite what we see in the press.)

I don’t really have a board room but I have a great board of directors. (The only board member who reads my blog wasn’t able to attend today so I’m not sucking up) It was a great board meeting with a lot of energy, good ideas, good cookies and something the average person on the street probably doesn’t expect from a board – a discussion about values and integrity.

A topic was discussed and it quickly turned into a discussion about what was "right" as opposed to what was best for the company. Now I believe that what is "right" is also best for the company, at least in the long term, but I was very happy to see my board as committed to our values as the rest of us.

One good thing about snow

30 September 20255 January 2007 by Terry Gold

We’ve got another Winter Storm Warning in Colorado this morning. In Boulder people are driving a little slower but it isn’t that bad. The nice thing about it is that it’s easier to find a parking spot at Turley’s, my favorite Boulder restaurant.

Paul Turley is a great local entrepreneur and his daughter Sandy is carrying on the tradition. The service is always fast and friendly, and the menu is five pages of great food. You can eat Boulder-healthy, have breakfast anytime or go for the cheese burger and fries. Beef or buffalo if you prefer.

During the dark days of late 2001 Paul and I would commiserate on being an entrepreneur and what the future might hold. He was always quick with a smile and his optimism definitely rubbed off on me. Maybe that’s where my "keep smiling" mantra came from.

Think

30 September 202526 December 2006 by Terry Gold

One of the My Way blogs that I read is 2-Speed by Will Herman. Today he had a post called Think – A Good Reminder To Do Just That. I tried to leave a comment, but for some reason I couldn’t get it or an email to go through, so I thought I’d just share the story here.

Will tells the story of IBM’s "Think" slogan and he has a photo of the very same Think plaque that I have on my desk at work.

Update 1 The link to Will’s photo stopped working, so I’ll have to take a photo of mine and post it. Until then you can click here to see a great webpage of Think plaques and IBM collectables at IBM-Collectables.com.

My dad always had this plaque on his desk at home when I was growing up, and now I have the desk and the plaque in my office. Reading Will’s post reminded me of one of my early lessons in customer service.

My dad was an IBM’er and I have that exact Think plaque on my desk now. I grew up being reminded to "think" and I learned a lot about integrity and customer service by watching my dad. When my dad died, he had a printer in pieces at home that he was repairing for a customer. This was back in the 70s when printers were big mechanical things. It was long out of support and there was no one else locally who knew anything about it.

Since my mom had helped him disassemble and clean the printer, she offered to put it back together for the customer. I believe she could have done it too, but the customer insisted that the printer be allowed to pass. Even though my dad had just died, my mom wanted to keep the commitment that he made, which was to take care of his customer. I would never expect a Gold Systems person to be that customer-focused, but then IBM didn’t either – that was just my dad’s nature, and my mom’s too. They believed in keeping their commitments and helping others.

Customer obsessed and company values

30 September 202520 December 2006 by Terry Gold

I happened to meet a person from Amazon.com this week and when I was introduced to him and I said, "I’m a customer" the first thing out of his mouth was, "Are you happy? Are we doing a good job?" I love that, especially since it was pretty far from his job description to care about individual customers. (Or so I thought)

I’m a big amazon.com fan. It seems like they are always innovating and everything they do seems to be designed to make it easier for the customer. I made my first amazon.com purchase in September of 1996 – ten years ago – and in that time I’ve had two problems, and both were resolved not just to my satisfaction but each resolution exceeded my expectations.

A few years ago I bought a Wise Crackin’ Shrek and Wise Crackin’ Donkey from amazon.com. (They do speech recognition – it’s my job to understand this stuff.) Donkey was fine, but Shrek was stuck in demo mode. On Saturday I went to the amazon.com website and filled out a return request page. On Sunday I discovered an email saying that a new Shrek was being shipped on Monday to me, and that I should return the broken Shrek, postage paid by amazon. The new Shrek arrived on Tuesday as promised. I became an even bigger fan.

Thinking about my new amazon friend I did a little poking around on the website and found the company values. Sure enough, number one is Customer Obsession, and number four is Ownership. This person definitely fits the values. If you are a skeptic about the idea of company values, like I was once, think of it like this. Company values are the basic characteristics that you look for when you hire a new person. The person’s character really. And sometimes they are the characteristics that force you to fire a person. If you find yourself saying, "they just didn’t fit" then it was probably a values mismatch.

Jim Collins writes about core values in Built to Last, which of course is a bestseller on amazon.com. I see that he also now has a great selection of mp3s available on his website, including one one titled "Getting Back to Values and Other Lessons on IBM."

Disclaimer: Years ago I bought a few shares of amazon.com for my IRA, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Also if you buy anything I’ve linked to on the amazon.com website, I make a dollar or two, but trust me that doesn’t even pay my monthly hosting bill. I just really admire the company and it was fun to meet someone who works there and who really is customer obsessed.

Update One This is what I’m talking about. I just checked to see if I had the link to Built to Last correct, and I noticed something new. For some time, amazon has made it possible to view pages from a lot of the books they sell, but you could only view excerpts. Here’s what I saw today:

Online books? What online books? It turns out that I have nine books that I’ve purchased in the past that can be upgraded to "read online." The price to upgrade ranges from $2.49 to $10.59. What’s really interesting is that of the seven books, four are by local authors Jana Matthews, Richard Hackathorn and Theresa Szczurek. Cool!