Choose your business alliances carefully

Posted on by gianniponzi

As a lot of you will know, I recently became involved in a really exciting new Company called Ad Dynamo. My “job” is to make sure it grows in Ireland and that our clients a amazingly happy with the service.

With this in mind I’m leveraging (sorry, I have to use at least one buzzword per post ;-) ) all of my business contacts and looking for new ones.

In the best possible way for all parties, I hope!

I’ve recently been trying to decide on who I approach and with this in mind I’d like to share a thought I had.

Choose CAREFULLY. Yep, pretty obvious :-)

While a possible partner might look incredibly attractive, never forget what YOUR core values are and make sure you compare them to THEIR values and make sure they share at least some of yours.

In the end they are in business to promote THEIR services so your priorities will always be further down the list.

If you share common values, the risk of your company being incorrectly sold, should be decreased.

Lastly, if you were hoping for some scandalous accusations, sorry to disappoint you. :-)

Customer service – Is it that hard ??

Posted on by gianniponzi

The other day I clicked into a blog post on Customer Service by @patphelan

I don’t know the man personally but I do follow him on Twitter because of the company he started and my natural interest the type of people who start their own companies.

ANYWAY…

His post had to with the lack of Customer Service from a, wait for it,  Service Provider.

I agreed with his sentiment and nodded sagely at all the points he was making but as needs must,  went back to work.

Funny then, that a few minutes later, the ol’ Customer Service skeleton come out of the closet and bite ME in the arse .

Here’s a synopsis;

  • I have a very large and important customer
  • Said customer has lots of users on their website, aka mini-customers. 1500 of them
  • The digital (security) certificate of their website required renewal.
  • Naturally, I did my bit and renewed it.  Simples !
  • No, NOT simples it seems.

The payment to  “the hosting Company that shall not be named”,  was made on the 11th.

After MANY support emails, waiting on the phone and even having to goon Twitter to get attention (that didn’t work either), 5 DAYS later the SSL cert was finally applied.

I am ranting on, so to pick up on Pat’s theme, if they had communicated clearly with me and showed me that they were actually trying to resolve the request, maybe I would have been a little more patient.

Unfortunately, the support person was NOT very helpful with information and in fact blatantly lied when giving me the deadline by which the cert would be installed.

The net effect of all of this is of course that recommending them, WILL be avoided like the plague.

I’m so adamant, that I won’t even put the Company name in this post.

Needles to say it was NOT this crowd, they’re awesome :-)

So the question remains… Customer Service, is it THAT hard ??

Answers on a postcard or just leave a comment.

 

P.s Do NOT use a Hosting Company that ends with 365……

 

Theme of the day / week / month

Posted on by gianniponzi

I love design.

No wait.. I love GREAT design.

To me that means simple & functional.

Confuse the user and you’re toast.

To this end, this blog will change appearance every so often, as I find themes that I really like.

They may not be the blingest, coolest design, but they will be design that I think are worth looking at.

If you like a theme, the designer’s name will be at the bottom of the page.

If you don’t, that’s fine too.

Check back again soon, to see a new one you might like.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that…..

Hope you are having fun.

Posted on by gianniponzi

You’d think they were innocent enough words.
Used in a holiday or hobby context perhaps.

No, those 5 words, written in an email by a former work colleague of mine, have finally ignited the spark to start a new project which I have been thinking about for the last few years.

Yes, you heard me correctly, YEARS.

Why has it taken so long ?  Work, family, hobbies, the excuses are endless and I’m not really going to dwell on them, because they are only excuses.

Why now? Well, back to those 5 words.

I had emailed Joe, to see how he was doing and congratulate him on his achievements.  In his reply, he casually (I think), added;  “I hope you’ are having fun”.

Without hesitation, the answer in my head was;  “No, I’m not”.

Since the 14th, I have set about putting together my new project.

I don’t for one minute expect this to be a party. I know there will be hard decisions, tough times or whatever you want to call them, but the mere fact is that this is something that has been in the back of my head for a LONG time.

Most importantly, it feels right.

I’ve done more work on this project in 9 days than anything else I’ve worked on, and it did not feel like work.  To me, that’s a good sign.

Am I having fun ?

Yes!

I’ll be launching the project soon.

If you have a few seconds, please leave your email address and when the project launches, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Indoor Trainer Hell

Posted on by gianniponzi

Winter has arrived in all its glory and last Friday, I’m pretty sure I heard the collective wail of every cyclist in Ireland.

“Why?”, you may ask.

Well, in the words of those cuddly little Meerkats;  “Simples”.

The change in weather means that most racing cyclists will have to start using their indoor trainers. For those not familiar with the equipment, its a treadmill for the bike.

So basically, you are pedaling for 1 / 2 / 3hours+ without going anywhere :-)

For some reason,  I don’t have the same aversion to these contraptions as others, who will do almost anything to get away from using them.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t exactly love the turbo trainer but I also don’t mind doing my workouts on it and sometimes even look forward to it.

This got me to thinking (for a change, yes) and wondering why it’s such a source of pain to some people, or even better, how can you motivate yourself to using it with less hate.

I firmly believe that if you don’t like something, you won’t give your best. You’ll do just enough to finish the task.

So, how do you start to like something ?

Attach a goal to it.

If you can relate the indoor trainer to something more positive, like a personal goal, I’m convinced that the workout will “go faster”.  You will also most definitely be able to push yourself that little bit more if you have a concrete goal in your head and to try and make the most of the time spent on the IDT.

Practice your pedal stroke.
Practice your aero position.
Try and find your optimal cadence.
Learn to live with the constant pain of hard efforts, so you can recognize this during races and KNOW that you can handle it.

All of these things can help to pass the time and if all else fails, you will be left with the positive effect of having completed a workout, rather than put it off for another day.

The value of offline marketing

Posted on by gianniponzi

While online marketing is all the rage, today’s post brought with it a little surprise, which a) pleased me very much and b) reinforced my thoughts that offline marketing is still VERY important.

Today’s gift from Blacknight is the above keyring, promoting .eu domains.

While I don’t have that many, I was happy to be acknowledged by Blacknight (happy customer) and immediately started wondering which .eu domain I could register (a happy, BUYING customer).

Still think offline marketing isn’t worth it ??

Automating Invoicing the FreeAgent way

Posted on by gianniponzi

While creating and sending invoices is for obvious reasons an  important part of running a business, automating the process as much as possible can certainly help to free up time for more important aspects of your daily schedule.

When I look for a new way to automate a process, I like to stick to  a (short) list of requirements

1) Ease of use and setup

2) Globally accessible – it must be web based

3) Not cost me more in time (and money)  than it would if I completed the
task manually.

To this end, I recently found FreeAgent. A web based accounts system that is actually FUN to use.

I won’t go through the whole list of features but some of the most useful are time tracking, invoicing (of course!), automated reminder and thank you emails to customers (Love this!), importing of expenses from 3rd parties like PayPal AND there’s an iPhone app I can use while on the move.

I haven’t calculated the time savings yet but needles to say, being able to send an Invoice with 3 clicks, beats my old system hands down.

If, like me, you were writing stuff down on PostIt notes, then recreating invoices, entering a reminder in a calendar to make sure invoices are paid on time, creating and sending reminder and thank you emails, FreeAgent is the tool for you.

You can try it free for 30 days and if you decide to go ahead and use it full time, I think $18 / month is worth every hour saved!

If you want to try it, here’s a referral code which give you a  (and me :-) ) 10% discount once you have completed your free trial.

Funding for startups – what’s the obsession?

Posted on by gianniponzi

Over the the last few days there has been a lot of spotlight on the tech sector. Sorry, Minister Ryan, I meant knowledge economy.

The Dublin Web Summit took place over the weekend and some of the World’s biggest names came to town. People like Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Chad Hurley (YouTube) and many more.

Naturally this caused a stir and rightly so. People attended in large numbers, hoping I’m sure for inspiration for their own ideas. The event was widely followed on Twitter (of course :-) ) and some of the speakers & organizer, Paddy Cosgrave were interviewed on the Late Late.

To cut a long story short, a recurring theme caught my attention. A lot of the talk seemed to be about how one could find funding for a startup.

Even on the Late Late, the “Founders” were asked how, in these times, people could find funding for their ideas.

Now, I might be missing something, but if you’re going to set up some sort of web service (which is what most of the Founders’ products are), we’re not talking millions.

Hardware has never been cheaper, faster and more reliable.  Powerful software packages can be purchased or event rented at  very low cost. Outsourcing is common practice and  issues with  development no longer requires trips to the library for obscure books on sorcery, erm, software.

My point is, if the idea is a good one and you REALLY believe in it, nothing should stop you from making it a reality.

I should know, I’ve had 100s of ideas an NONE of them have seen the light of day :-)

When it all goes wrong

Posted on by gianniponzi

I recently received a plea for help from someone who is currently locked out of their hosting account and their site is down.

So, following on from a  post by James Larkin, I thought I would add my thoughts to his questions about WHY people should go down the route of engaging a professional developer who charges for their work, rather than “someone I know who is into IT gadgets” and “will do it for free”.

Quite simply, that person WILL one day, most likely disappear without a trace.

“What will happen to my site?”, I hear you ask.

Well, in most of the cases I’ve come across, you won’t know your CP login detail and to put it simply, your site is unmanageble.

In other words, you will NOT be able to update text, you will NOT be able to add new shiny sections to it and you will NOT be able to manage your domain / email etc.

So, here a FREE tip. If you have the choice between engaging the free services of a second cousin who is the next Steve jobs , or a person who does this for a living,  PLEASE chose the second option.

It will save you a LOT of stress and expense in the long run.