dantiernan.com Blog

Oh yeah! Hold on. Sure, your stock holdings are down - but if you hold long enough, that might all work itself out. However, job losses will cause real near-term pain and the reality is: the job losses are not there yet.

This is one stat that is really easy to measure and fairly reliable: non-farm payroll figures are released by the government on the first Friday of every month and these numbers frequently kick off a frenzy of speculative trading in the foreign exchange markets.

Interestingly, the unemployment rate in September stayed steady at 6.1%. About a year ago, the unemployment rate was 4.7%, so it has grown, but there have not been any recent surges. I am not sure of the typical lag, but I have to believe the job losses are coming.

The unemployment rate has not hit 10% since the government reported it in it’s current form in 1942 - - the highest being 9.7/9.6 in 1982/83 respectively. Those were the only years it ever rose above 9%. When people start losing their jobs, this will be a lot more painful than the loss of homes from bad loans (which should not have been made anyway).

The unemployment rate reached almost 25% during the depression in 1933, but I can’t imagine that we will screw up that bad this go around. So, things are not that bad yet. I am sure they will get worse, but confident they would be nearly as bad as they have been for those before us.

What a great post. It includes some really critical concepts that I embrace:
1. The job requirements vary for the same position depending on the situation (startup, growth, turnaround, etc.,)
2. Focus on people’s strengths, not weaknesses
3. Understanding past behavior on the job is key to predicting future performance

If you are not careful, you could end up with employees like this one that my 11 year nephew recently pointed out to me. I think I met her sister at USAir check-in last week. Bon Qui Qui at King Burger:

Must read: Demo Tips from Jason Calcanis on Techcrunch.

I saw a few good April Fools pranks floating around the net.

Josh Kopelman’s UNfunded
Michael Arrington’s $25 million suit against Facebook
Jason Busch’s departure to the analyst world

Sports Illustrated set the standard over 20 years ago with their story about Sidd Finch

He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga — and his future in baseball

Google generally does a good job, but no one has matched Sidd Finch.

I am an engineer at heart. I like to solve problems.
I know how to sell, because I have studied and practiced sales with an engineering mindset. So, I am not a great salesperson, but I get by. If you are an engineer that is starting a business, you have to learn to sell.

However, I would not recommend you try and stretch too far on the marketing and creative side. I am not an artist or visually creative, so I look for help or formulas and shortcuts. For example:

It is very important to have a professional appearance and powerful messaging for your business and your product. Here are two good tips that can help.

1. OUTSOURCE. You will likely need a good logo/image to represent your product or business. Some people are really good at this. You are probably not one of them. You can waste countless hours trying to create something that presents the image you are looking for. Or, you can spend $100 to $200 and have a lot of different people create a logo or image for you and pick the best one.
A friend of mine turned me on to this service (I am sure there are others).

99 Designs

10 years ago, we paid $1,000+ for a good logo and a lot more for Version 2.0 (post funding). This service is great and fills a real void.

2. OPEN SOURCE. Don’t forget my prior post about delivering powerful presentations
One of the key points is to use pictures more than words. However, a big challenge is in FINDING THE PICTURES. I have tried using google image search in the past, however, Seth’s Godin has a great tip about searching and using “open source” pictures from Flickr.

10 years ago, we used crappy powerpoint art packages that cost hundreds of dollars. Now we get to leverage artists from around the world, for free.

To me, this is what the networked economy is all about. Cost effective outsourcing to specialists. Better, cheaper and faster.