Jeremy Goodrich's Blog

I've had a few issues this past week when dealing with some companies customer service. They didn't do it right and since I"m paying them...well, I demand better. I ask for improvement. I ask to be *satisfied* with my hard earned money when making a purchase, paying for a subscription or similar.

For me, I have two classes of books that I read. One being intellectual - to learn things, grow my capacity as a business person, etc.

In this bucket, there are guys like Malcom Gladwell, books like the Innovator's Dillemma, The World is Flat, From Good to Great, etc, etc. All of these books I read with the intention of learning something, getting a single spark of concept and growing my capacity to build businesses.

"Call me when you're up for an even exchange", Pitbull, one of his songs...I gotta say, the context of the quote is all about relationships. Let's swap that out, and substitute "knowledge"...is knowledge transfer an even exchange? Nope. But...can it be? You give something, you get something.

That's the basis for insituting points systems....meaningless, vapid numbers to attempt to trick you into doing something of commercial value, for the entity that created the "game".

Pretty simple, really. How hard is it to get everybody on board? Make a decision? If it's too easy...you're on the wrong track. Nothing worth doing is ever easy...it's hard, difficult and near impossible to reach out into the ether and make things happen.

If the team is honest, if the team really wants change to happen, it will. It's a long slog, but you'll get there.

Stuff to ask yourself:
Does it really matter - that link, that button, that action?
What do we want people to do here, and is it easy?
Are we making it overly complicated, if so, start chucking stuff out the window.

I've been pondering what it means to read things, online - or books, really. When you consistantly give yourself over to an experience of learning, of listening and contemplating what somebody else has to say...that voice is *inside* your head. Is that good? Or bad?

Well, it depends on the voice. I can't imagine that my posts, here, life to date are the stuff that you'd WANT to have inside your head :) Too much frustration, angst and well, it's not what I'd read, either.

It's been over seven years since my wife and I first bought the domain name...and, the last site we had there was an eyesore. This one isn't perfect, nor is it finished...but, I'm probably most proud of this project out of all the various ones we have had together.

I'm living in Maldives now, of course...if yo want to visit sometime, try travelmaldives. :)

I think this should perhaps be rather titled, "great expectations" for mine are very big. Of course, I'm not realistically expecting a sea change as we're working through the product requirements and mocks for our latest re-hash. Nearly seven years into it and we're still not 100% sure that the product is what it needs to be...but, the new version will bring us closest to what we imagined nearly three years ago the first time we set about redefining what we were trying to do and enable.

Does your product serve a neeed?
Yep.

Does it enable others to achieve their goals?
Yes.

First let me say that I love Seth Godin. If you haven't read his blog do so, as it's amazing, wonderful and makes me think daily. It makes me want to do better.

Next...the point of this writing. I aim to write more this year...and first, I wanted to say something that Seth inspired me to write down so I can remember it later. During 1995, I got internet at college...I didn't have broadband at home until 1999, via ADSL.

At some point, I plan on doing a video. At Copenhagen, many less developed countries are bitching about the US, my home country. I've met the government officials many times, they all seem like they mean well and universally intelligent, well spoken and everything you wouldn't typically expect from a politician.

However, as a consultant, I've always advocated a singular approach to doing business, since moving to a less developed country, I've also noticed that this approach can easily be applied to government and international relations.

Over the past few months I've been on the computer only a bit more than before...but, the ergonomics of my situation have changed dramatically (no, we didn't import the $2,500 office chairs to Maldives...that's a big loss, while we're here, and I miss it daily).

In tandem, we had our worst business disaster...ever, in August, for one of our businesses (November was the new date for shutting down one business to focus on the one that is now finally in recovery mode from the crash).