Those of you who read some of my posts may have bumped into my enthusiasm for Philip Kotler's "Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence."
If I had to pick the single most important business book that I read during all of 2008 (when I started it) or 2009 (when I finished it), it would be Chaotics. To be honest, people that read this book don't really finish it, they keep referring back to ideas and bits of it -- flashing through its pages so as to rekindle points raised within the book. As a tool for understanding the rapidly changing economy and world system, it is without peer -- in my humble opinion.
I have recommended this one to many key leaders in Creative COW and most of them have taken the time to buy it and have told me that they too, now consider this one of the most important books they have ever read. I also recommended it to one of the top sales and marketing people that I know at one of the major hardware manufacturers in this industry, and he called one day to thank me for telling him about it. We ended up talking for almost an hour about some of the key points of the book.
I could tell you about what's in it but then, many would roll their eyes and say that it would be boring. Well, let me put it this way: there's nothing quite as exciting and stimulating as the stress of watching your business and career crumble right before your eyes. Many people I know in this industry (and others), have no real idea what is going on in the world today. Just how truly all-encompassing and sweeping the changes are that are affecting the world, business, and the way we must adapt in these radically changing times. They are succeeding by luck and chance, more than by design.
Chaotics puts the world under the microscope and explores ideas that will change the way that you look at the world.
Do yourself a favor (or favour for my British friends), do your family and your career a favor, read this book.
You can thank me for steering you to it, later.
Posted by: Ron Lindeboom on Nov 16, 2009 at 8:21:31 am
Since the introduction of Creative COW Magazine back in early 2006, we have been asked repeatedly to make the print edition available to our friends and members around the world. Unfortunately, we were not set-up to accommodate international mailings and we had no way to bill them and maintain the record keeping -- well, unless our small team wanted to work around the clock! ;o)
But recently we have added the means to allow our friends worldwide to receive the print edition and we are delighted that the response has been beyond our expectations, with orders arriving quite regularly. It has become somewhat of a hobby here at headquarters to watch them and have the team ask: "Wow, did you see that one from Siberia? Amazing!" (Yes, we really got one from a producer in Siberia.) Our sincere "thank yous" to our friends and members around the world who enjoy the magazine so much that the PDF/digital version is simply not enough.
Watching a dream grow is always an amazing thing. I remember back to when we first launched our fledgling attempt at building a media professionals community back in early 1995. We quickly figured out that usenet groups were not going to be the future and that listservs were OK, but they were not very functional and in a visual medium such as we are in, listservs are far too limited to build anything that will matter over time. So, we elected to build a website, and having just passed the 2 million unique visitors a month threshold just this month, and to see the magazine grow to the level that it has -- becoming the strongest player in this arena -- we marvel at what can happen when a team dedicates itself to excellence.
We marvel at the people who come to the COW and who are signing up for Creative COW Magazine. We are humbled to see the work in our videos-reels section and to see various jobs that are represented in our magazine registrations. When we see people that work on some of the top shows and channels, as well as occupy places on some of the top film studio teams around the globe, it makes us want to work even harder to guarantee that the site and the magazine -- as well as the many other services we provide -- will be useful and serve the needs of our members.
It was said long ago, that if you want to achieve something that is great, serve. Therein lies the secret to the magic behind Creative COW.
You are our focus and listening to you and acting on what you want is our function and commitment here at the COW. Without you and your ideas and feedback, this would be little more than a tiny site among millions on the internet. (And it stopped being that, years ago.)
Thank you to all of our friends who are taking the time to tell us that the COW Magazine is different and is worth signing up to have it in their studios at the Vatican (yes, that one came in too), in Siberia, in England, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden,and a myriad of other wonderful places, as well. We are honored beyond belief that the COW Magazine will be finding its way to your studios and suites around the globe.
It's an amazing world, isn't it?
Oh, and because we want to make sure that our friends get them as quickly as possible, our magazine is being sent FIRST-CLASS to all of our subscribers. In fact we like to say that's...
BECAUSE A FIRST-CLASS MAGAZINE DESERVES FIRST-CLASS DELIVERY™
Seems many of you agree.
Posted by: Ron Lindeboom on Oct 31, 2009 at 10:40:10 am
In December of 2008, we hit the venerable Google Analytics 1,000,000 totally unique users a month threshold. In January 2009, we crossed over the 1.1 million marker. February found us hitting the 1.2 million level. Then, in March, the 1.3 million level was passed. And so on and so forth until, today, in September of 2009, we have reached the 1.7 million totally unique users a month marker. (Being that we serve a professional audience, we always drop during the Summer months but bounce back fast in mid-August or so, as vacation season ends and people get back to work.) At our current growth levels, we will hit TWO MILLION totally unique users a month by February 2010 or thereabouts.
We have been doubling every year for the last few years and this current cycle appears that it will be no exception. We will have doubled again, from one million to two million totally unique users a month, in a little over a year.
It's rough to keep up a growth curve like that, year after year. Especially when the technology behind all of this is quite expensive when you hit the level that we have hit -- not to mention that we compete against companies who, for the most part, are international publishing conglomerates that are mostly billion dollar enterprises.
Back when I used to teach business classes to active business owners and managers for a couple of the banks here in Central California -- as well as speaking at California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo's business classes -- one of the things that I pointed out regularly was that uncontrolled growth kills more businesses than under-capitalization. Surprised? Don't be, you can adjust and rescale a business to meet the level of monies available, far easier than most can figure out how to succeed with a business that is demanding more and more resources quickly due to the growth that is driving out of control.
Juggling these kinds of growth levels -- and the demands on both people and the technological backbone that supports it all -- is a real feat in a market wherein the number of available sponsors from which to draw support dwindles with each new acquisition. What used to be 10 companies a decade ago (in some cases), is now a single company.
Building something like Creative COW is a constant juggling act and it's one in which every ounce of both human and technological resources are constantly being drawn on and leveraged to maintain the kind of astronomical growth that we have to support here at The COW.
Sometimes, we have phone conferences and our team discusses the next phase of what we need to do to assure that The COW does not collapse under the weight of its own popularity. It isn't always easy but when you have a team such as we have built over the last decade, the job is doable and we look forward to early 2010 when the COW will in all likelihood be rolling past the 2 million unique users a month marker.
Posted by: Ron Lindeboom on Sep 4, 2009 at 12:33:03 pm
Well, it's been an incredible ride so far this year: the COW has grown remarkably, with many wonderful new additions to the site, both in the infrstructure of the site itself and the people who now make this site a part of their online home — sadly, there have also been some horrible tragedies on the personal front that have brought solemnity along with the great joy that we find in building the COW.
THE GOOD...
According to Google Analytics, we will soon exceed 900,000 totally unique users a month — a staggering number when we remember that when we started building media professionals communities online back in June of 1995, we were thrilled when we went over our first 100 members. If you would like to see how the COW now compares to other magazines and web communities, you can see the comparisons online.
We have added a new MOBILE interface to the COW. The new www.creativecow.mobi interface allows people that use an iPhone, a Palm Treo, a Blackberry and other 3G-capable cell phones and PDAs to surf the COW. And one of the great new features of this interface is that if you use an iPhone, it knows that you can't see our Flash-based content and so it won't display any of it to you. But for those phones and PDAs that do use Flash, you will find it available.
Franklin McMahon has returned to head the Creative COW Podcast. Franklin is a great host and his sense of humor and his ability behind the microphone are exemplary. If you have missed the podcast, check it out — there are a number of new episodes online now and also available at the Apple iTunes Store.
New enhancements have been added to both the SERVICES OFFERED directory and the EVENTS calendar. These enhancements allow our members to look up Services Offered based on your region and locale using Google Map technology, giving the Services Offered directory a usefullness that goes well beyond the previous incarnation of our directory. In our Events section, we have added a calendar interface that makes that area of the COW far more useful. Check them out, there is a new level of usefullness in each of these areas.
THE BAD...
We have added a number of truly bad (in a good sense)servers to the COW backbone over the last few months. In fact, we have doubled the amount of bandwidth throughput that we have available to serve to our audience. Our previous capacity was comparable to 128 T-1 lines running concurrently. Now, we have the capacity of 256 T-1s running concurrently. Into this huge amount of bandwidth, we have raised the number of servers to around a dozen. Most of them are dual and quad Opterons. A number of them exceed the power we have seen in some of the most hearty video servers. We have also added a hardware load-balancing router that has enabled the COW to keep up with the huge influx of growth over the last year. We had to, as in August of 2007 we were just over 250,000 totally unique users a month according to Google Analytics. A year later, in August of 2008, we were well past 800,000 unique users a month and will soon pass 900,000. So, while some people complain about all the ads in the COW, we would like to thank our sponsors as there is no way we could do this if they were not there. So, thank you sponsors! You keep the lights on and the dairy going.
THE UGLY...
As some of you might already be aware, we lost a son and grandson on Labor Day in an automobile accident. It was quite a sad day for our family and friends. But we were very proud of Ronnie and will miss him and Caleb greatly — though we trust that life goes on. So Ronnie, I tip the ole COW baseball hat to you and Caleb and know we will meet again. Those with less hope and little trust are welcome to their beliefs, these are mine.
So that has been my Summer report.
With the best to you all,
Ron Lindeboom creativecow.net
PS: Thank you to the many friends who wrote Kathlyn and me expressing their kind thoughts to us in the last couple of weeks. Your kind words have been truly appreciated and we are grateful to be your friends in the journey.
Posted by: Ron Lindeboom on Sep 19, 2008 at 5:20:08 pm
Someone sent me a link to a blog written by a writer named Karen who has her own blog at wordsforhire.blogspot.com. In it, she uses my article "Clients or Grinders: The Choice Is Yours" as the jumping-off point to show how some businesses suffer what she calls "welfare mindedness." Her article is quite insightful and I am honored and flattered that my piece inspired her to write her own ideas, found in the article you can read here.
In the article, she says:
Many small business owners are standing in the welfare line and not sure how they got there. They work hard. In fact they may be working longer hours than CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. They deliver high quality work. Yet, they are barely making ends meet. These businesses are well intentioned but are not appropriately targeting their market or pricing their services.
Other small businesses are locked into a mentality that says they can only compete on price. To win against the “more established,” or “the “larger competitors” they have to compete on price. Does this sound like you?
Still others believe that volume makes up for low pricing. These business owners proclaim “yes our pricing is low but our volume supports it.” These same business owners would like to convince you to work at a fraction of your normal fees because they’re going to give you a large amount of work.
Check it out here, she makes some insightful points regarding things that can mentally trap business owners and negotiators.
Best always,
Ron Lindeboom
Posted by: Ron Lindeboom on Jan 28, 2008 at 9:04:19 pm
But recently we have added the means to allow our friends worldwide to receive the print edition and we are delighted that the response has been beyond our expectations, with orders arriving quite regularly. It has become somewhat of a hobby here at headquarters to watch them and have the team ask: "Wow, did you see that one from Siberia? Amazing!" (Yes, we really got one from a producer in Siberia.) Our sincere "thank yous" to our friends and members around the world who enjoy the magazine so much that the PDF/digital version is simply not enough.
