It would come as no surprise to my loyal readers that my favorite football team is the New England Patriots. My first book read this year was Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi’s autobiography. As the Pats moved through the playoffs, I thought it would be appropriate to read the book This Pats Year by Sean Glennon.

This Pats Year chronicles the 2002 season as experienced by a variety of Patriots fans each week, as well as the author, who happens to be a fan of the Oakland Raiders, a team that has a storied history with the Pats. This book evolved from a column Glennon wrote for the Boston Phoenix. And yes, I did find a real, business-related takeaway from this book!

My one takeaway is that it may be your product or service, but your customers will experience it in a variety of ways. In This Pats Year, the product is the NFL football games played by the Patriots and their opponents, and the customers are the dozens of fans highlighted in the book. Some are extremely loyal, some are not. Some love everything the team and organization do, some do not. One fan even lost his season ticket account for selling game tickets on eBay, but remains a fan of the team.

A similar product that came to mind after reading the book is music, especially in the light of the record industry’s attempts to hold onto their old business models as the digital age keeps moving forward. When a musician or group creates a song or songs, it can be interpreted in many ways by their fans, in ways they may not have anticipated (listening to individual songs rather than whole albums) or may even want (Charles Manson and the Beatles!). However there is little they can do about it, and in the end they hope to make money while still maintaining their integrity.

This type of scenario doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Where it can be considered a lack of control by some, to others it can be a huge opportunity. Artists and record labels are slowly moving their catalogs online. A related opportunity to the Patriots is the development of Patriot Place, a retail and entertainment complex currently under construction around Gillette Stadium, where the team plays. Talk about a capitalization on your product!

Where This Pats Year may not be of interest to rabid fans of other football teams, it is a well-written observation of people in their consumption of something they believe in. I recommend people directly involved in the development and marketing of products and services to read the book, as it may help in the analysis of your own target markets. And if you are a Pats fan, I of course recommend it, and you may even know some of the people highlighted.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Book Take-Aways • (0) Comments • Permalink

Diversions • (4) Comments • Permalink

“It’s 10 o’clock, do you know where your children are?” This was a brief TV spot I recall from childhood every evening just before 10 p.m. (of course my Mom didn’t have to worry about where I was because I was always at home, but I digress). I would like to take a spin on this phrase and apply it to something near and dear to me, domain names:

“It’s right now, do you know where your domain names are?”

In the last couple of weeks, I personally heard of 2 cases where owners of domain names realized they no longer had control of their domain names as they had expired and were in the hands of other entities. As a result, their Web sites and email accounts were disabled.

How do you avoid this? There are 2 ways to do so – take steps to properly manage your domain names yourself, or hire a professional to do so. As a full service Internet consultancy, this is a service I offer through Dunkirk Systems, LLC. However, if you have the time and interest to do so yourself, here are a few basic steps you can do yourself to manage your domains.

Know what you own

This may seem obvious, but it is vital not to overlook. As it is easy to acquire multiple domain names, it is just as easy to lose track of them. Maintain a list of the domain names, and add to it as you acquire others.

Know when they expire

Next to each domain name on your list, note their expiration date. I recommend to my clients to extend their registration to the maximum 10 years in advance, so you don’t have to worry about it every year. You can also put alerts in your calendar software to remind you to renew them, ideally well before they expire.

Know where they are registered

Ideally you should have all of your domain names together in 1 or maybe 2 registration accounts – it’s always good to have a backup account. Add the registrar’s name to your list, and store the login and passwords in a safe location.

Ensure contact information is accurate

Lookup your domain names in your registration account or with a 3rd party service like Domain Tools and see if your contact information is completely accurate. If not, update it. All of your information, especially your email address, should be correct, as to this email address you will receive renewal and other notices from your registrar.

These are basic and vital steps to managing an important asset to your business. Follow them, and then you can go back to worrying about your kids.

Business • Domain Names • (5) Comments • Permalink

What makes a great leader? The answer is surely not quick or short. Commonly it is discussed if someone is a born or made leader. But what if it is neither and you or someone discovers you are a leader, and what kind of leader are you? This is the premise of Your Inner CEO by Allan Cox.

Your Inner CEO takes the reader through this discovery – literally. Stories of Cox’s own personal experiences with leaders he has met, know and consulted to are married with exercises throughout the book that take you through this journey. They are broken into 9 steps, each one building on the previous to paint a picture of the kind of leader you could be, the kind others desire to be and be around.

My greatest takeaway from this book is leadership is not just about you. Where the model has been and continues to be where workers follow what the leaders does solely to make the leader succeed, in reality we all gain from all of us gaining. The leader brings out the best in all of the team so that all of the team, including the leader, succeed. If it fails, the team fails, learns from its experiences and moves on. This is something I have always followed myself – and anyone reading who has ever worked with me, feel free to comment on that statement! As a sole proprietor transitioning my business to a true company, I need to shed the role of control-freak entrepreneur and be a true leader and mentor.

Speaking of mentoring, another takeaway is mentorship is not dead. In a world where it seems being a contractor is the way to go and all we should hire, mentoring people pays for both the mentee and the mentor, and this book gives several examples of how to do it well. Many leaders and managers and people in general do not follow this - they hired a specific set of skills where the reality is they hired a person.

A final takeaway is leadership may be in all of us. We need to want to and try to seek it. As I have written before that entrepreneurship may be in us already the same goes for leadership.

I recommend Your Inner CEO to leaders, people who are about to be leaders as well as people who work on teams. Read the book through once then go back and complete the exercises, which is what I am doing now. There are accompanying online resources to it, including a Web site, wiki and Facebook group, the latter is how I connected with the author and learned of the book.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Book Take-Aways • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

Diversions • (2) Comments • Permalink