Half Your Waking Hours I just came back from our annual Board/Management ski trip (and Board meeting) — we had about half of both groups join, which is typical given the time commitment. We had a great time, and the conversation for the three days was a nice blend of business and personal. The thing that struck me during the weekend — and I am reminded of this regularly in the office and at other work events as well — is how much I genuinely enjoy the company of the people with whom I work. Whether it’s my senior staff, my Board, or anyone I can think of in other roles within Return Path, we can manage to have a…
Archives / January, 2007
Half Your Waking Hours
Half Your Waking Hours I just came back from our annual Board/Management ski trip (and Board meeting) — we had about half of both groups join, which is typical given the time commitment. We had a great time, and the conversation for the three days was a nice blend of business and personal. The thing that struck me during the weekend — and I am reminded of this regularly in the office and at other work events as well — is how much I genuinely enjoy the company of the people with whom I work. Whether it’s my senior staff, my Board, or anyone I can think of in other roles within Return Path, we can manage to have a…
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business is a fun read if you’re a New Yorker who eats out a lot; a good read for entrepreneurs around scaling leadership skills as the business grows; and a great read for anyone who runs a serious customer service-oriented organization. I’ve eaten at all of his restaurants multiple times over the years except for the new ones at MOMA (perhaps a few too many times at the Shake Shack), and while I like some more than others (perhaps the Shake Shack a bit too much), they all do have great hospitality as a common theme. While there are a lot of good lessons in…
ROI Radio Interview
ROI Radio Interview Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory and a client of ours, runs a podcast series on his blog called ROI Radio. Last week, he interviewed me. It’s a bit long, but feel free to listen or download here. We mostly cover things related to Return Path — our products and how we do things — but we also talk a bit about the growth and development RSS/feed technology and FeedBurner.
Help Me, Help You, Part II
Help Me, Help You, Part II Thanks to the nearly 100 readers who responded to my reader survey this past week. While I’m not sure it’s a truly statistically significant base of OnlyOnce’s audience (I’ll have to ask my friends over at Authentic Response), I’ll treat it like it is. Here’s what I learned. First, the general results: Satisfaction levels are good – 46% are regular readers and love it, 48% read occasionally and think it’s ok, and only 6% gave it an “eh – wouldn’t miss it if it went away” Entrepreneurship is the most popular topic, with 86% interest, and Leadership/Management is a close second at 82%. Online/Email Marketing came in at 61% and Book Reviews at 43%. …
Help Me, Help You
Help Me, Help You I’m conducting a really short reader survey about OnlyOnce. There are about 10 questions, half about the blog, and half about reader demographics. Please take 2 minutes to complete it for me so I know how I’m doing! All responses are anonymous, as you’ll see. Click here to go to the survey.
Use Your Powers for Good
Use Your Powers for Good Neil Schwartzman, our compliance officer for our Sender Score Certified whitelist program, wrote a great post on the Return Path blog entitled How the Sender Community Can Help Fight Spam. If you’re a commercial mailer, I’d encourage you to read it. It’s a great perspective from a long-time anti-spam leader.
OnlyOnce is Ok
OnlyOnce is Ok Fred and Brad from Union Square Ventures have a great post today about the kinds of entrepreneurs they like to back and why. I particularly like it because almost half their portfolio is made up of companies led by first-time CEOs, which as you probably know, is one of the founding themes around this blog.
Book Short: Unsung Heroes
Book Short: Unsung Heroes If you like “entrepreneurship by analogy” books, you’ll like The Innovators: The Engineering Pioneers Who Made America Modern, by David Billington. I have to admit some bias here — Professor Billington was my favorite teacher and senior thesis advisor at Princeton (I almost majored in civil engineering because of him), and this book is one of a number he’s written that are outgrowths of his most popular courses at Princeton. And while there’s no substitute for the length or energy of his lectures, the book works. The book is basically a person-focused engineering history of America from 1776-1883. Billington talks about four classes of engineering product: public structures (mostly bridges), machines that produced power, networks like…
They’ve Destroyed Both Companies
They’ve Destroyed Both Companies Just when you thought Verizon was in fact the worst company in the world to do business with (see my post here if for some reason you’re not on that page), along comes FedEx/Kinkos. I used to be a huge fan of both companies. I was even a fan of the merger and felt like it particularly made sense in light of UPS purchasing Mailboxes Etc. And I don’t know if our experiences are representative, but Mariquita and I have had nothing but bad experiences with both FedEx and Kinkos for the past couple of years. Kinkos is the worst — most of the people are surly, unhelpful, not smart, have massive attitude, and ignore you…
Book (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure
Book (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure I couldn’t get the catchy jingle from the 80’s commercial for Sure deodorant (you remember, the one with the Statue of Liberty at the end of it – thanks, YouTube) out of my head while I was reading the relatively new book, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. Written by HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Confidence is one of the few business books I’ve read that’s both long and worth reading in full. The book has scores of examples of both winning and losing streaks, from sports, business, politics, and other walks of life, and it does a great job of breaking down the core elements…