Be bold, hire “A” list people

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Guy Kawasaki — ex-evangalist for Apple Inc. — once said that when you’re in the market for hiring people, hire people smarter than yourself, and don’t hire people like yourself.

It’s a bold move, and not without its dangers, but it’s something I’m having to contemplate in an attempt to move Under Cloud forward to the next phase.

The fact is — and it’s simple when you think about it — if you want to move the gain line forward, you don’t just need a different perspective, but also an alternate mental attitude, and a different set of strengths which compliment your own weaknesses and deficiencies. I know what my weaknesses and deficiencies, and that pre-qualifies the kind of person I’m looking for.

Want versus Need

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Sometimes, a little education goes a long way. What a client wants is not always compatible with what their customers need. Here’s when saying no could be crucial, perhaps even pivotal to moving the gain line forward.

Want is a bar of chocolate. Need is breathing. A huge difference, but so often it goes unnoticed and unaccounted for. In the words of the inimitable Henry Ford:

“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

Microsoft’s adCenter Editorial Guidelines rank highly for “arbitrary” and “spurious”

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So far, this week has been a swirling cloud of some very perplexing and challenging, comprised of the bizarre and the preposterous, and by way of Microsoft’s adCenter Editorial Guidelines, and I have the proof!

Welcome to Microsoft Advertising live chat, an Ad Specialist will be with you shortly.

Wayne: Hi [Agent name redacted]!

[Agent name redacted]: Thank you for contacting Microsoft advertising, how can I help you today?

Wayne: I’ve created an advert and received an message informing me it’s been disapproved: “As part of the editorial review process, we have reviewed your ads and keywords. Unfortunately, we were unable to approve one or more of them.”

Wayne: But there’s no guidance on why or for what reason. Do you have an specific advice there?

[Agent name redacted]: I’d be happy to assist you with that.

[Agent name redacted]: To confirm, your ad has been disapproved and you would like to know why, correct?

Wayne: Yes.

[Agent name redacted]: I’m going to ask you some questions, so that I can verify and access the account, ok?

Wayne: I can see there is a help topic on the subject, but I’d prefer to know specifically why.

[Agent name redacted]: What is your username, email address, and account number, please?

Wayne: [Personal details redacted].

[Agent name redacted]: one moment please

[Agent name redacted]: Thank you for verifying the account

[Agent name redacted]: Have you ever contacted us about this before?

Wayne: I’ve chatted with you guys twice this week, but not regarding this issue.

Wayne: This being the third time.

[Agent name redacted]: one moment please

[Agent name redacted]: Let me take a look at your ad

[Agent name redacted]: If you click on the little arrow next to the word disapproved, there is information there on why the ad was disapproved.

[Agent name redacted]: You can’t use an amazon site unless your are an affiliate of some kind

[Agent name redacted]: are you?

Wayne: I don’t see any arrow. Where should I be looking?

[Agent name redacted]: Are you on the page where you see your ad?

Wayne: Ah, right. The “Delivery” now says “Disapproved”, where it didn’t before.

Wayne: Hold on.

Wayne: Okay, so this is because of the Amazon link. Yes, it’s an affiliate link, but it doesn’t in any way change the visible behaviour of the page, in so far as what the potential customer would see.

[Agent name redacted]: Your landing doesn’t meet our quality requirements

Wayne: So you’re saying Amazon aren’t good enough?

[Agent name redacted]: One moment I’m going to send you a link

[Agent name redacted]: Relevancy & Quality Guidelines

[Agent name redacted]: We have a lot of information here on what is required to advertise with us.

[Agent name redacted]: If you are an affiliate of amazon you should contact them to get a usable url – you will not be able to use amazon.co.uk

Wayne: I’m guessing your interpretation concerns points 3.1-3.2, yes?

Wayne: Oh, so it’s not the website, it’s just the URL?

[Agent name redacted]: It is the url and the website. You must use a landing page that you own.

Wayne: I tried that with my own website via Google AdWords but they would neither let me use that or explain why, which is why I came to you guys!

[Agent name redacted]: I don’t know what your website looks like, but if Google disallowed it then I’m sure we would as well.

Wayne: Okay, let me quickly edit this advert with the URL for my own web page and let’s see what happens there, because even if it’s disallowed, at least I’ll know why.

[Agent name redacted]: what is the url of your website?

Wayne: [URL redacted].

[Agent name redacted]: one moment please

[Agent name redacted]: You are asking users to put in personal so you need to have a prominent link to a privacy policy that includes an opt-out statement.

Wayne: I’m not asking them to do anything other than click the link.

[Agent name redacted]: You have a form on your site do you not?

Wayne: No, it’s a comment box.

[Agent name redacted]: Name, email

Wayne: It’s a comment box for a web log.

[Agent name redacted]: If they can put that in, you have to have the privacy policy

Wayne: But what’s that got to do with the CTA, at the top?

[Agent name redacted]: CTA?

Wayne: Call To Action — “Buy NOW from Amazon Kindle.”

Wayne: Whether anyone comments is of no concern to Microsoft or anyone else.

[Agent name redacted]: I am pointing out what is required for you to advertise. If you meet the guidelines than you can. If you do not your ads will not run.

Wayne: So if I understand this correctly, because of a secondary action, that has nothing to do with the buying process in any way, shape or form, you won’t allow me to use any page on my web blog? Keeping in mind, that a principle purpose / function of a web blog is to solicit comments.

Wayne: This I find almost too bizarre to believe.

[Agent name redacted]: If you ask people for there information you have to provide them with a privacy policy

Wayne: No wonder Google wouldn’t tell me why!

[Agent name redacted]: It applies to all advertisers

Wayne: It’s arbitrary.

Wayne: I don’t think this is going to work out, if your guidelines are this spurious. Honestly, this is incredibly weird.

[Agent name redacted]: I can provide you with a generic privacy policy and you can plug in your information.

[Agent name redacted]: Do you know how to add a link to your web page

Wayne: [Agent name redacted], the point I’m making is, whether I have or have not got a privacy policy has nothing to do with Microsoft or anyone else. That has nothing to do with the buying process.

[Agent name redacted]: It has to do with you collecting personal information

Wayne: Which has nothing to do with the buying process. Look, if someone clicks the CTA, they go to Amazon. Yes, they go to the very website you also won’t allow me to use.

[Agent name redacted]: I’m am not here to argue with you. I am just here to show you how to advertise with us

Wayne: And I’m making it clear, either for your benefit, or for the benefit of whoever you’re beholden to, that your policies are both spurious and arbitrary, and I can’t proceed on those terms.

Wayne: You’re essentially interfering with my personal practices.

Quite why anyone would devise such bewildering guidelines is something of a complete mystery. But I shall not dwell, for fear of going mad!

Why I’m staring at clouds (cloud computing, that is)

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You’d be forgiven for thinking you’re falling behind, no longer at the sharp end of technology if, like me, you’re a bit bewildered by the idea of so-called cloud computing, drifting slowly by. For me, “the cloud” is just a new riff on an old way of doing things.

Before I begin, let me just say this isn’t going to be some in-depth analysis of cloud computing, simply because I’m not that IT literate. And, for the most part, I’m sure such a review would have an exceptionally narrow audience. Instead, I’m going to skip the technicalities and offer my opinion on the cloud.

I have various parts of my digital life and work on the web, scattered hither and yonder. Mostly, these electronic excerpts of my life are to be found in the form of profiles, bookmarks, portfolios, with websites and articles representing the more substantiative end of the electro-content-centric spectrum.

What I don’t have on the web is anything specifically work related, in so far as archived data. Why? Two reasons, the first of which being that I live in a rural area and sit at the end of what’s called the “last mile”, a telecommunication euphemism for having a rubbish broadband connection, while secondly, I just don’t trust the internet that much.

A security storm cloud for Sony

To some, that final statement must appear like an unusual admission coming from someone like me, a business owner who builds web applications for a living. But let me just quote a message I saw on Twitter earlier, written by Adi Kingsley-Hughes:

“Before everyone pours their financial information into Google Wallet, let me just say one thing … Sony.”

Remember the Sony fiasco, where, firstly 77 million user accounts for their PlayStation network were illegally accessed, followed by an additional 24 million? Yes, that Sony. And the truly tragic irony is, the attack was actually launched from Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform.

So, for myself at least, if the likes of Sony can’t keep customer data safe, I really don’t hold out much hope for anyone else, Google included. And that’s just the security side of things. Then there’s what I call the all-or-nothing aspect of cloud computing.

It never rains, but it pours. Even for Google?

Let’s say you’ve taken the Google shilling and you’re using one of their Chrome OS laptop computers, that shoves all of your stuff up into the magical ether. Now, while Google will claim they can keep you going while you’re away from an internet connection, storing some of your stuff on your computer, for how long can you work like this when that all-important spreadsheet is presently residing on a server somewhere in the North America Mid-West?

And this is Google, arguably the most well resourced company in the world. From this perspective, you can easily see the cliff edge at which most other companies offering similar services would immediately drop off when their vastly smaller resources are included into the equation of you requiring access to your stuff. In the world of cloud computing, you either have everything, or you have nothing.

But cloud computing offers another potential problem, because we have Google and Amazon offering similar cloud-based services for their music offerings, too. Apple have something similar lined up, but crucially, they have seen the potential problems with the cloud and have a hybrid in mind, where you keep your music and movies on your computer, but will also be able to access them remotely from some other location, away from your computer.

This all kind of reminds me of that real world all-or-nothing situation, when the power goes out.

“Hmm, no TV. Oh well, I’ll make a cup of coffee.”

And then you realize you need power for that.

“Okay, skip that. I’ll listen to some music.”

And then you realize you need power for that, too.

“Damn it! Right, I’ll read a non-electronic book of the paper variety!”

But it’s now dark, and you need power for the lights.

Looking back, from the future

In fifty years time, this article will probably be ensconced in academic literature, highlighting the quaint concerns of the early internet, before becoming self-aware and omnipresent. For now, it isn’t and it’s not, and I’m here staring at clouds, while I work on my computer, reasonably safe in the knowledge that I have access to my stuff whenever if not wherever I am.

What inspired me to start a web design agency

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Sifting through the updates on Facebook, a question caught my attention which triggered a flash of memories right in front of my eyes: “What inspired you to start a business?” This being a Sunday, I thought I’d walk through some of those early memories once more.

What inspired me to start a business?

The question posed by StartUp Donut prompted a reply from me, but I soon started to wander off-topic, meandering into the minutia of the why and the when. So I reigned in my thoughts and decided to put them all here, on Octane.

To answer the question, I just wanted to be the master of my own destiny. The thought of working for someone else simply wasn’t (and still isn’t) in the least appealing to me.

In the beginning…

Originally, the intention was to start up Octane with a couple of guys from college, but things just didn’t work out that way. I was, in many ways, forced into the decision by circumstances largely outside of my control.

At the time, I was working in Leeds, as a new media designer, which entailed designing and building interactive CDs, web design and elements of video and 3D production. The first 3 years were excellent, but then the last 6 months became utterly intolerable. I still don’t know what happened, but something had clearly changed in the guy I was working for. In the end, I had to go.

In hindsight (which is always 20-20 vision), I should have looked for employment elsewhere and built up my network. But I didn’t. I should have waited until I had someone who could partner with me to handle the sales and marketing. But I didn’t.

At the time, web design was very, very new. So I was striding straight into a completely new market, with all the perils and potential you’d expect. And even today, what I do is still widely unknown and new to many.

I also saw a lot of confusion on the part of businesses, business owners and marketing managers, who weren’t quite sure what the whole “web thing” meant. And inside that moment of perfect confusion, a circling swarm of web design agencies were visibly preying on the the confused and the bemused.

From the very beginning, I was determined to, firstly, do things my way, and secondly, to do things right by everyone I did business with, and to be as honest as necessity would allow, without harming my self in the process. That mentality and philosophy stood me in good stead, and I began to win the respect of not just clients, but of those other agencies who, over the coming years, would see me as a constant in an ever-changing industry.

So from 1999 to about 2004, I was more a fireman and a trauma councillor than a web designer — intervening in emergencies and then tending to the people burnt by one disaster or another. While that earned me a solid reputation and won me a substantial amount of referral work, selling directly was extremely difficult because I was guilty by association and constantly walking through dirty water.

The first 10 years really didn’t hit home until after the event, sometime in late June of 2009. Again, in hindsight, I ought to have done more to celebrate the occasion, but things were hard for everyone I knew and the moment just slipped by. But I did manage to scribble together a few thoughts on my time running Octane from 1999-2009:

“There have been trials. There have been tribulations. I’ve survived everything from the bursting of the Dot Com bubble to the current global economic downturn.

For any business to last ten years is a major milestone. But for a web design agency, I breath very rarefied air, shared by few others.”

A special kind of hell.

Running your own business is a trade-off between control and stability, and it’s a trade-off I’ve been a willing participant of since 1999.

I see so many businesses and business people fail for so many totally avoidable reasons, many of which are as a result of poor decision making, over-reaching self interest, an inability to say “no”, and a lack of vision and objectivity.

Conversely, a lack of success is not always the presence of those things, but an absence of good fortune and an array of friends and colleagues to assist wherever they feel able to. Those early decisions to go alone have proved to be instrumental in my relative confinement as an individual and not a team.

But the thought of giving in and working for someone else, to be beholden to their politics, and having to be a witness to all of those bad things is to me some kind of purgatory. I simply could not stand being a party to and being expected to be a participant in a failure of thought and deed, when I know for sure there are better and more viable ways.

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven” — Paradise Lost, John Milton

The future of Octane?

Right now, the future of Octane looks very bright! I’m presently working on a number of large projects, which I fully intend writing about in due course. Rather than tease, I can tell you about two in particular.

Qwiktax started out as a relatively modest bookkeeping web application, but has since grown into a more mature, feature-complete accounting package, designed to allow small businesses to manage not just their bookkeeping, but employee payroll, fixed assets and VAT, as well as view on-going trading results, loans and profit & loss accounts. So far, we’re making good progress, but there’s still much to do before it’s complete and ready for general release.

To Book is an existing web application that is to be re-designed and re-developed, taking it to version three. In simple terms, To Book is an accommodation management tool specific to the needs of one particular business. To Book 3 will be a generic system, which we can sell to just about anyone who wants to take control of their event management needs. To Book 3 will be, by far, the most ambitious project I’ll have undertaken so far, and I just can’t wait to get going. Right now, we’re moving through the various agreed stages of the project plan, having signed off the initial wireframe designs and flow diagrams, I’m now moving onto the actual design stage proper.

Here and now…

So, all in all, there’s much for me to look forward to and exciting times ahead. With winter just around the corner, and all of the attendant festivities in tow, there’ll be no let up for me, but that’s business!

StartUp Donut — What inspired you to start a business?