Call it the Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay approach to business. The “Its not my fault if Im ignorant of whats going on ” defense. Ignorance is bliss.

Repeat after me, Ignorance is Bliss. Its the new shareholder credo.

If shareholders are ignorant of their responsibilitiesas owners of a company, then company management can do anything and everything “in the name of shareholders”

If shareholders are ignorant, then brokerages can do whatever they want with the shares of stock they hold for theircustomers, which in turn enables people like Patrick Byrne and hiscreepy followers toscream and yell about naked shorts.Shareholders have no idea what happens with their stock,so whenpresented with nefarious scenarios, they almost make sense.

So lets set some things straight.

Shareholders,there is a good chance, particularly if you invest in companies that have a large short interest, that your shares will be LOANED out to traders who want to short the stock.

This is not a loan that has no value to you, the shareholder. You are PAID for loaning the stock. In fact, for some stocks, you are paid quite a bit. So if you own a share a stock and you take money for it being loaned out, then you have to deal with the consequence that the person who borrowed your share may vote the share. In fact, your shares may not only be loaned to someone trying to short the stock, it may be loaned out to someone who only wants toVOTE THE STOCK.

You get paid for loaning the stock. Its your job to know what rights you have to the share of stock that has been loaned out. It is your job to discuss with your broker whether or not you want your shares loaned out. If you get paid to loan the share, and its voted in a way that goes against your interests, you can scream all you want, but you prostituted your rights. You is a corporate ho.

Shareholders, there is a good chance that a CEO, who lives in a totally different world than you do is telling the media that he is doing, what he is doing, in your name. Firing those people to increase earnings by 1c per share. Its for you. Outsourcing jobs. Its for you. Making windfall profits because oil prices are skyrocketing, its for you. Paying the last CEO who just quit on you tens of millions of dollars. Its for you. Paying himself tens of millions of dollars, and negotiating a Platinum parachute. Its for you. Is this what you, as a shareholder wants ?

Sharedholders are supposed to be the owners of the company. Shareholders are supposed toselect the board, which in turn hires the CEO. Shareholders are supposed to weigh in on corporate issues and direction. Are you exercising your rights as a shareholder ? Or are you a corporate Ho ?

Are you justhoping the stock price goes up ? Are youoblivious to the fact that the people running the company might be sellingout your personal ethics ? Are you oblivious to the CEO andofficers putting their own personal interests first ? Do you even notice when the CEO of your company does something that conflicts with your beliefs, saying “its for you, the shareholder”. Has it dawned on you that the CEO and board of the company you own shares in thinks you are so docile and clueless about whats going on they dont care what you really think ?

Its time for all shareholders to realize they have a responsibility as owners of stock. That if you dont fulfill that obligation, you are nothing more than a corporate Ho and your share of stock is nothing more than a baseball card, worth what the next Ho will pay for it.

Dont be a Ho.

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My daughter is only 2 1/2. Not old enough, yet, to have a myspace page. Not quite anyway. But I have some friends with kids who are right at the age where they are concerned.

They want to be able to find out if they are on there, if they are being talked about, if they are referred to in any way, or if their friends, schools or associates are.

Its always been possible to use search engines to search myspace.com or any URL using the site: command on Google or Icerocket.com, but few parents are search engine literate enough to know how to do so. I know RTFM has taken on awhole new meaning these days, but very fewread or try to understand the advanced features of search engines. Its the milleniums equivalent of the blinking 12:00 on VCRs. The advanced link stares you in the face all the time, but its just ignored.

To help them out, icerocket.com has added a Myspace tab. Any search defaults to myspace.com and you can search for anything and everything. Its fast. Its easy. Its not infallible. Its not a replacement for keeping an eye out for what your kids are doing when they surf the net, but it might make you as a parent feel a little more comfortable and arm you with a tool that can only help.

I suggest you check it out.

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I was perusing my Icerocket RSS feed on my name. (Got to see who is saying what about me right . Lo and behold, there was an article on click fraudsaying that it was lower than some, namely me and Henry Blodgett had predicted, from former Alta Vista-ite and current Microsoftie Don Dodge.

I have never given click fraud estimates, but I did say on CNBC that I thought it was the great unknown in the Pay Per Click universe. Despite proclamations to the contrary, we dont know what percent of advertising revenue is consumed by fraud.

Don referred to the Click Fraud Index. This index is provided by an analytics company which provides software to advertisers to help them determine how much they are getting hit by clickfraud.

The index suggests that 14pct of clicks are fraudulent. On their website, they make the point that this percentage converts into a very meaningful $750mm in fraud this year. All very interesting.

More importantly, Don defined clickfraud as companies clicking on their competitors ads or robots or clickfarms rolling up fraudulent clicks. Both of which are definitely fraud.

Personally, I think click fraud goes much further than these two examples so I responded to Don with

“CLICK fraud goes far beyond click farms, robots and competitors.

Its the new monthly allowance for I dont know how many college and high school kids. Take a look at this splog (spam blog)
http://blogger3.com/users/nba-ticket/article/113845/

MILLIONS of these are created EVERY day. Showing up in search results trolling for clicks through adsense. Not click fraud by your definition, but all pages created purely to draw clicks. Not what the advertisers had in mind Im sure, being on a spam page.

or this is popular, telling people to help out by clicking on the ads
http://blog.myspace.com/explorers_of_the_unknown

or
http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=myspace&q=ads+by+goo…

for more info.”

Don responded by saying that he didnt think my examples were click fraud since a “human was led to click by content”. Fair point, but it leads to the bigger question.

What is click fraud ?

Im going to offer my definition and let everyone else chime in as well in comments.

In addition to the examples Don gives and I agree with, robots, farms, paid clickers and competitive budget sabotage, Click Fraud is very simply:

A clickby a system or person on a page designed to circumvent the advertisers intent. In otherwords, advertisers are spending their money in order to get results. They have directed money to PPC advertising to get click throughs from their intended audience, to their intended destination.

If a kid on myspace says “click on the ads” to help me pay for XYZ, and they do, thats click fraud.

If an ad shows up on a splog and the advertisers doesnt want their ads on splogs. Thats click fraud.

If an ad shows up on a parked domain and the advertiser doesnt want their ads on parked domains. Thats click fraud.

If an ad shows up on a page thats part of an arbitrage scheme (buy clicks from a cheap PPC company, sell them using a more expensive PPC provider), thats click fraud.

The controls available from Yahoo, Google and others to advertisers are improving all the time. Yes, advertisers have the choice of only being on search engine results, or being on specific content site. But the reality is, more often than not the click volume is either not high or the cost of granularity is very high, so the advertiser chooses what could be called the Run of Schedule approach, trusting the ad provider to put their ads on legitimate sites.

Some may feel that Im over reaching in the definition, I dont.

The net is supposed to be an improvement over the old saying “i know half of my advertising is working, i just dont know which half”, not an extension.

The concept of “I know some percentage of my PPC advertising is click fraud, I just dont know home much” shouldnt be acceptable.

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A team loses last years MVP of the NBA.

Then it loses its 2nd leading scorer to a division rival.

Its coach is inhis firstyear as an NBA coach.

The team is successful in turning its approach to the game around 180 degrees from offense first, to defense first.

Four of its top 8 players are injured for weeks or months at a time.

This isnt a team of 4 all stars.

This isnt a team of 2 all stars, like the teams in the standings ahead of it.

this is a team of 1 All Star.

This is a team that most sportswriters picked to be in the bottom half of the playoff hunt with some saying they would barelymake the playoffs and could fall out with injuries. This is a team that no sportswriter I can think of, predicted would win anywhere near 60 games. This is a team that has clearly exceeded the expectations of everyone who follows the game.

Its a team carried by a player who has improved in every area that the team has needed him to improve. While some talk about making the players around thembetter as a sign of value, this player has made the team around him a better , more successful team. The true sign of value.

So what happens to this team ?

It can set a record for most wins in franchise history this week, 61.

Besides winning 60 or more games, what has the leader of this team accomplished ?

He has hit game winning shots.

He has blocked game winning shots.

He has made passes to game winning shots.

He has been a leader on the court and off.

He has taken the responsibility to carry this team on his back.

He isnt out doing endorsements, selling basketball videos, doing commercials, doing the interview circuit or promoting himself in any way. He just goes to work and busts his ass every single day.

He is a role model in every sense of the word, on the court and off.

There is no player more valuable to his team than Dirk Nowitzki.

Dirk should be the MVP of the NBA.

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You want ala carte, you got ala carte.

Its called the internet. Every single major cable and telephone company offers high speedaccess to the
internet and they allow you to pick andchoose the content you want to view.

The internetis the definition of ala carte program. Every type of programmingimaginable. All there for
you to find and choose what you want, when you want it. Some witha price tag. Most for free.

Openup your favoritesearch engineand put in the name of the program you want. Or put in the type
of programming you want. Its your Electronic Programming Guide. If its there and available you can find it.

Want to set up “channels” just so you can make it a little easier for you and the not so literate internet folks
to understand ? No problem. There have been standards to define programming channels on the net since IE 4.0.

Or you can just bookmark your favorite kids or family friendly websites and limit use to those sites.

Ala carte. Just the way you want it.

But its not on TV you say ? Well thats easy. Buy a

wireless RF transmitter for under 70 bucks. Plug it into the video out of your PC. Plug the reciever unit to the
video in of your TV. Start the video on the PC and boom, you are watching the video on your TV. Any TV. The old
black and white or the new plasma.

Its easy. I bet for another 50 bucks, you can get the cable company or any 17 year old to come set it all up for
you. There you have it. Unlimited choice. Complete ala carte.

The only thing missing is that traditional programmers havent flocked to create programming for this unlimited
choice universe.

its the beauty of capitalism. Where there is opportunity, you can find cash deployed to capitalize. But you
cant find it on the net. You can find inexpensive content. If its cheap and easy its created specifically as
programming for the net. But is there a single example of a million dollars spent on a show exclusively for the net
?

There should be. The potential customer base consists of 90mm broadband users in the USA. 100s of millions
across the world. Any programmerwith a high speed data line can reach any of them. Yet no one chooses to invest
an amount equalto even the least expensivebroadcast network show. Why ?

Because in an ala carte world, the cost of reaching an audience is outrageous. And consumers arent ready to
pay the freight to receive that programming.

As i have said before, the movie market is ala carte. Look at which content rises to the top in terms of
revenues from consumers and visibility. The content from the biggest companies who have spent the most money to
market .

Our movie from HDNet Films,
Enron- The Smartest Guys in the Room cost a relatively small $770k to
make, but we needed to spend millions to create visibility for the film. When we tried to get creative and
offer the film dayand date with its release on HDNet Films, the big theatrical chains got together and
decided they wouldnt carry it. Despite our unique offer to share in the revenues from the sale of the DVD. The
point being that if video distribution goes ala carte, the response from the powers that be wont be to embrace the
change. It will be to find ways to circumvent the change to their advantage.The movie industry is the perfect
example. Despite the fact that anyone with a videocamera and PC can produce a movie, the cost to get it to consumer
in an ala carte movie world, precludes all butthebiggest and/or very, very fortunate from reaching an
audience large enough to break even on a movie release..

Despite the fact that big movie studios could produce many, many movies for consumption, they produce a limited
number every year because they have pushed the cost to market a movieto such extremes. In their
alacarte movie market, they cant afford the risk. Is that where you want the TV business to go ? Do you want TV
production companies and networks to have to spend tens of millions ofdollars on each new show to make sure
that enough people watch and continue their ala carte selection of the network hosting the show ?

But wait, there is more to consider. There are technological considerations. Let me give you a phrase that you
will hear for the next 100 years when it comes to video distribution and I promise you , it will haunt you in an ala
carte world. That phrase is : “Bits are bits”

What that means is that digital bits dont care what type of data they carry. They are agnostic. Telephone
conversations. Ok. Video. Ok. Internet traffic. Ok. Video Conferencing. Ok. Medical Applications. Ok. Software
applications. OK.

Every video distributor is limited in the amount of bits they can carry to the bandwidth they have. The
valuation model of the cable industry is quickly turning into a revenue per bit maximization model. Which cable
MSO can sell the mix of digitalbits that maximizes the return on the number of bits available. Call it
Bit to Revenue Optimization.

If you muck up the video distribution side of the business so that video distributors, be they cable , satellite
or telco find that the return for bandwidth allocated to TV programming is less than bandwidth allocated to non video
applications, you got a huge problem.

You see, video bits require the most hand holding. They have to arrive with all the other bits that are part of
the TV show in a nice, neat continuous stream (net of some buffering of course). When those video bits are
part of medical or video conferencing applications, both the originators and the users expect to pay a little more.
When those bits are part of a TV show, they expect to pay a lot less.The model works today because the
aggregation of all those bits creates a price and experience that not only people are comfortable with, but that
consumers feel like they cant live without. Ask a politician whether his constituents will be happy if it turns out
that his/her push for ala carte results in less choice and higher prices ?

In an ala carte world, the ala carte applies not just to consumers choosing between TV networks, but distributors
choosing which applications to offer. Cable MSOs, Satcosand Telcos want their stock price to go up. They want
to make more money. There is the very real possibility, and I would say likelihood that as new software applications
come along, and they will, they could successfully compete for bits on distributors networks to the exclusion of TV
bits. Im not saying digital TV would go away, it wont. But could substantially less bandwidth be allocated to TV ? Of
course.

So, to all of you at the FCC, be careful what you ask for. That knock on your office door that today has people
saying they dont want to pay for channels they dont want, tomorrow could be people asking why you let them change
everything when it used to work so well.

And a word of advice to take or leave as you see fit. Its always a mistake to listen to your customers. The goal of
any organization should be to give their customers or constituents what they will want, not what they did want. Its
not the job of the customer to know their future consumption habits. Its your job.

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I was playing around with Eurekster to get a feel for it . Eurekster is a “wisdom of crowds” search engine. I want to discuss it briefly before I get to theBest Sales Ideabecause it could have some bigupside if they execute on their idea correctly

Theirs is a simple concept.

Add their search engine to your site. They will rank results based on what actions people who search from your site take. Makes perfect sense. There is usually some level of commonality between users of any given site. Sports sites get sports fans. Movie Sites get movie fans. They recognize this and show results that maximize relavance to thesites’ community. That should be a good thing. But its really not the key to whether Eurekster succeeds or fails.

The real question about Eurekster is whether or not they can successfully use the same approach to advertising. More relevant ads should result in more click throughs andhappier advertisers. Happier users and advertisers should result in more money paid to sites that use Eurekster.

That is the trillion dollar question. If sites start to realize that they can make some decent money hosting Eurekster search boxes, they will drop the more typical Google or Yahoo search boxes and quickly replace them with Eurekster.

If Eurekster does the same with an adsense like product and pays back more money to site owners. Well then the better idea will make them rich and upset the search applecart. Which quickly explains why the rumor is that MicroSoft is interested in acquiring them. It will be fun to see what direction Eurekster goes business wise and product wise.Will they be caught up in a”our search isbetter so use us” mantra. Or will they besmart and go for blood with a “our search is better and because of it, we pay you the site publisher much more money than the other guys” approach.

But I digress. The Best Sales Idea ?

Well I was doing a compare Google results to Eurekster results. As is standard with Google, the sponsored text ads show up above the results. Low and behold, what do I see, a link to something that some guy had emailed me about, trying to sell it to me.

Apparently the guy figured that I would be doing vanity searches on my name through Google. (I never use Google for search, I use Icerocket.com for obvious reasons)So when I saw the ad come up, I had to blog about it as the Best Sales Idea I had seen in a long time.

Most people, particularly those who find their name in media from time to time, search for themselves, their companies and whatever else may be personal to them on an ongoing basis. It may be daily, weekly, monthly, but its going to happen.

So if you want to reach that big shot that would never take your call, or respond to your letters, this is your way to do it. Buy their name as a key word.

If you want to reach Katie Holmes to sell her on your new Scientology friendly baby products, buy the keyword “Katie Holmes” across the search engine universe and there is a pretty good chance you will get to her.

How long before we see our first search engine ad Marriage Proposal ?

Hey baby, I think you better Google yourself tonight…

Cheap, easy, original. The hallmark to any great selling idea.

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So close, yet so far away.

I applauded Bob Iger for taking matters into his own hands and selling his content on ITunes. Brilliant. So why confuse things by streaming what turns out to be pretty much the exact same shows ?

Now i can understand the potential logic. If someone doesnt want to pay for Lost, et al, rather thangiving them a reason to steal this show,why not let them stream it for free and we get paid with advertising. Everyone is happy right ?

Yeah. That makes sense. But you missed the golden goose opportunity.

Now what Im going to suggest is not mutually exclusive. You can do both, but you know the way the media works. The first pass gets the press and thats what people remember. For a long time.

The first Disney streams should have been their soap operas. In real time.

Now Im sure there are probably licensing excuses somewhere in the chain, but lets set those aside and look at the opportunity.

The number one media device in the office? Not a TV. Not a radio. Its the PC. If you want to reach an audience during the day, you get them at the office.

Lets take a look at how ABC Soaps are performing. According to some recent reports, ratings for daytime soaps are down 19pct year over year and the network is looking at make goods for advertisers.

So why not stream the soaps into the office so viewers who like the shows can stay attached to them and check them out in realtime , or on demand at lunch time ? Same rules as youhave set now, but rather than having to find those make goods, you give them the spots in the stream runs. Nice, verifiable media that could have increased the number of viewers for your Soaps, helped with advertisers and reduced confusion about how best to acquire ABC programming offline.

Whats more, Fred Dressler of Time Warnerhit the nail on the head. If you give your best shows away for free on the net, how in the world can you charge distributors for them ?

Instead you could have made the argument that the toughest to reach audience for Soaps is at work and the net is the best way to reach them. Affiliates arent reaching them. Cable and Satellite arent reaching them. Only the net does.

No losers, only winners.

And for those who are going to argue about theimpact on productivity in the workplace…. get back to work

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There is one certainty in the TV industry. Thatprogrammers are going to be wrong 95 pct of the time. Lost, Desperate Housewives, American Idol had all been passed on by networks. Other shows have been cancelled on one network, prospered on another. Shows that have done well in one time slot, have failed in another and vice versa.

So riddle me this batman. If creating a hit TV show can be so uncertain that it’s success or failure can vary by timeslot and/or network, how difficult will it be to create ahitin a purely video on demand world ?

Cut to the movie industry.

The movie industry is non linear. Movies come out and essentially are available as PPV with the delivery mechanism being the theater or on DVD. But as with any non linear network, the user has to proactively choose the content rather than just turning to a channel and have it available to them.

On any given Friday, there may be3 to 10 movies released nationally, many morewith limited releases in mostly major markets.The curse of this system is that in order to get millions of people to choose your movie, enough to be considered a hit and to make money from the box office and down stream revenue opportunities, the distributor must often spend as much if not more on marketing and promotion than they did to make the movie. According to the MPAA , the average promotional spend was $36mm dollars.

$36mm dollars to hopefully get 10mm people to the box office who would generate around $80mm in box office. A good number for almost any movie.

Its difficult and expensive to get people to get out of the house to choose the one movie they are going to see that weekend.

Its going to be just as difficult and maybevery expensive in an all video on demand world, to get people to choose yourprogram from online or cable/sat/telco provided video

If you have just spent 1mm or more per eps on the first13 eps of a new TV show, how much is it going to cost to make sure enough people find it in a non linear VOD world to give it a chance to become a hit ?

Count viewers per episodein an hour. Count viewers ina day or week. Doesnt matter how you count viewers. Its going to be much harder to tell a potential viewer to finda show they have never seen before by searching the programming guide to find out where it is on your local video provider that it is to say, 8pm, this and every thursday on this channel.

We are so used to being blasted with promos for new shows on the networks we watch, that we take it for granted. Its called selling to the people in the church advertising. If you are already in the pews, you are predisposed to like the next sermon and you are certainly a qualified audience to promote the next sermon to. The same applies to TV shows. If you are watching FX, you have an idea of what to expect , and you are the perfect consumer to advertise to.

What if there are no linear channels ? With no linear channels, its a mess. Its an expensive mess to promote TV shows.ITs a mess to find them. Its a mess.

Right now networks and their production companies have the best of both worlds. The networks can program and promote and viewers can easily understand the choices and find the shows. And when there is a hit, the metrics are there so that everyone knows its a hit. The nets proclaim it, and the media talks about it. Which in turn helps drive more viewership.Which in turn helps drive complimentary revenues like ITunes, DVD, mobile, whatever.

Even the suprises, like DVD sales of Family Guy would not have happened had Family Guy not been a regularly scheduled show. Fox having to promote the Family Guy as the great show you have never seen or heard of, but need to watch would have made it prohibitively expensive and it would not have happened

On demand video. Unlimited choice. Sounds so good. Everything you always wanted , right at your fingertips. It doenst work.

I will giveyou 1 more example. music. every song ever made can be compressed on a hard drive that costs less than 1k dollars. Ondemand is incredibly easy. Yet radio, which is as linear as you can get for the play of music, thrives. When you combine sirius, XM , regular radio and internet radio stations, more people are listening to music from linear sources than ever before.

So when does on demand work ? When its limited. When we can trust the gatekeeper/distributor to go out and find things they know that I may like as a viewer . Create an area for my interests, and keep the choices every month limited, and you got me. I know where to look. I know i wont be so overwhelmed with choices i dont want to deal with it. Make it easy and breezy

TV is about getting away from hassles and relaxing. Its about choosing to be entertained, educated or informed. Its not about working to do any of these. Its lean back experiences.

The internet is about finding video for everything else. The internet is where the content that cost less than 100 dollars to createexists. Its where i dont expect alean back experience, butif i look hardenough, i can find content that isin a very finite niche.Its the home of long tail videowhereI will lean forward and focus on finding something unique.

FOr distributors that dont understand their consumers, its going to get very, very expensive

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The 30 second commercial is dead. Right ?

THe smart money is leaving TV and heading straight for the net, mobile, anything non traditional. TV money dumb. All other money smart. Thats is todays conventional wisdom.

I think the traditional commercial break will be the salvation of TV.

Crazy. How can I say that you say. What is my logic you ask.

Well, I would make one big change. I would make commercials live productions.

Thats right, live commercials. Straight out of the 1950s.

Its not a technical challenge. Its easy.

Its not a creative challenge.

Its just more work. A lot more work. But the possibilities are endless. The mutations, intentional or otherwise are endless.

It could be simple endorsement, actor talking to audience, but that would be a waste of the medium.

Call it Reality Commercials.

Give me a shampoo commercial that shows some good looking models talking about how Mandisa just got booted from American Idol, because of her hair. ” If she had hair like this” (model does obligatory shampoo commercial hair flip) full, shiny, beautiful hair like only Pantene offer, she would have gotten picked.” Models all pull out their Pantene shampoo, hold it to the camera and smile. Except for the blonde, who pulls out her fake tanning tube.

Or maybe after the kicker misses a field goa, and we cut to the Levitra commercial.. Cue former player “If that guy would have hit that field goal, his wife would have been all over him to celebrate, but this late in the season, performance on the field and off can be tough. When I played, Iused Levitra. And you know what ? When I had a 4 hour erection, I put that shit to work. I didnt call a doctor. Hell no. My girlfriend… I mean my wife, loved it ” scroll news ticker with disclaimers and warnings.

Would you ever fast forward through a commercial knowing that the next one could be a classic ?

And of course it would work for recorded shows as well.

The show Las Vegas goes to commercial. We see a bunch of guys sitting around the living room watching Vegas. We see Mary Connell, played by Nikki Cox paused on the screen. Guy 1 with the remote “Would Yeah ?” other guys in unison:”Hell yes”. Guy 1: “She wouldnt give you the time of day unless you were wearing Rave. The all over fragrance that women like Mary love. (He tosses Rave Spray to Guy 3. Guy 3 looks at it and smiles knowingly”

Guy 2: (direct to camera): “Hey you. Step away from the remote. The Pistons beat the Heat 95 to 82. The Steelers beat the Bucs 19-13. The game just ended. Cool ? Ok back to the couch , and when your girl comes back from the bathroom.. say something nice “

Now those are commercials that would keep peoples attention. You would never know exactly what would happen. 30 seconds of fun.

Bring back the 50s to TV

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We all want our dream job, or to run our own companies. In reality its a lot easier said then done. In reality we need a job that pays the bills and cant wait out the search for the perfect situation. Which leads to the question, what kind of job should you settle for when you cant or dont have the job you want ?

Not everyones situation is going to be the same, but for the recent graduate, the answer is pretty straightforward, at least I thought it was when I graduated. You continue your education.

Go back to school ? No. Get your MBA ? No.

For most recent college grads, you just spent the last 4 or so years paying tuition to get an education. Now that you have graduated, its your chance to get paid to learn.

When I graduated from Indiana, I certainly didnt dream of working for a bank. I wanted a job where I could learn more about computers. So I took a job working for Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. Ihelped on systems conversions. Taking old manual systems atsmall banks and helping them convert to automated systems.I wasnt that good at it. The job was fun for the first couple months because I worked with a lot of fun people. But as the months wore on, I liked it less and less, and I had to tell myself more and more,exactly why I was there.I was getting paid to learn about how computers work, how big companies work, how middle managers work and that wasa whole lotbetter than paying tuition to get a business education.

Ilasted all of 9 months at that job. I lasted about 8 months at my next job,working for a company called Tronics 2000. At Tronics 2000, our mission was to try franchise the TV repair industry. Thecompany was supposed to be entrepreneurial. It was supposed to be looking at expanding intofranchsing into the computer repair business.(They had me write an analysis of the opportunity in myoff time). As it turns out, it basically was none of the above. But I got paid my 18k per year and I learned a whole lot.

The company sold a total1 franchises. That I sold . Again, I was far from a great employee. I spent too much time having fun at the expense of doing my job to the best of my ability. Going to work hungover once a week isnt a good career move. So in some respects I cheated them. No excuses on my part.

The job was also frustrating. Calling and calling and calling on TV repair shops trying to explain the value of franchising wasnt an easy cold call. But l learned how to cold call.I learned not to be afraid of picking up a Yellow Pages book andmaking calls.

I alsogo totalk to an old industry veteranLarryMenaugh. Larrywrote the very first service contracts in the electronics industry. He was a wise old vet. Wedidnt talk much about the company or the industry, but after meetings we would sit in, we would talk about how to get the job done. He would give me honest critiques of things I was doing, and coming from Larry, Iknew they were right. I wish I could go back and thank him.

I lasted in that job about 9 months as well, and from there took off to Dallas, Tx in search of fun, sun, money and women.

I was 23. I hadno money. The 77 FIAT i was driving drank oil faster than I could drink beer and had a huge hole in the floor. I was going to stay on the floor of some friends who had moved from IU to a huge apartment complex in Dallas.

I had no idea what the future would bring, but I knew I had taken a few classes in real world business and got paid for it instead of paying tuition and I had every intention of continuing to do the same thing until things worked out.

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