The new refrain in business

I’m seeing an unhappy, but perhaps necessary trend in business relationships of late, one that may well be born of our troubling economic times. I can ‘splain best with an example:

Last year, Google approached my company about becoming an “Authorized Adwords Reseller.” The courtship, ramp-up and launch process was high-touch. We had lots of conference calls with lots of people. We had regular email correspondence with the support team– all real people with real names. Our business manager went to Mountain View for live training.

This week, we were unceremoniously dumped from the program via a canned email with no human being’s signature on it. I did get a response to my reply of complaint, but it came from the nameless, faceless, phone numberless “Google AdWords Reseller Team.”

To be fair, we hadn’t booked sales into the system yet, despite being live in the fall. There’s lots of reasons for that, but the point is that we got no warning or inquiry into how or if Google could help us ramp up. We’d invested, at my best guess, probably 800 manhours into the training process. Plus, the change in status will require us to incur cost by reprinting  business cards, letterhead, media kits, etc.

I don’t blame Google for cutting programs and partners that they consider unprofitable. Over the last few months, they’ve wisely been trimming off businesses that weren’t contributing enough — a lesson more traditional media companies might have learned a few years ago. And I get that they’re an 800-lb gorilla that won’t be hurt one little bit because I have a bad taste about working with them.

But the way you end a relationship says more about you as a business, or as a person, than the way you start it. And clearly, once you’re an unprofitable partner, a form letter brushoff and a pointer to the fine print in the contract is all that’s required to kick the sludge to the curb and move on. Given Google’s ongoing strategy of limiting personal contact, this wouldn’t be surprising if not for the high-touch that came before.

And this really isn’t about Google, per se. In several smaller situations lately I’ve noticed that people are a little quicker to point to the fine print. Business to the letter of the law is replacing business to the spirit of the law. I suspect that’s because fear replaces greed as the primary motivator in times like these. Long term relationships seem less important as it becomes clear that for more businesses than usual, there may not be a long term.

This mindset isn’t all bad — it certainly makes you more pragmatically evaluate business relationships. But I also find it a little bit sad.

Sadder and wiser — that may be the new mantra of business in the late aughties.

“Chelsea” offers a secret to my FB friends. We look up your FB pages during jury selection. Just sayin… 2:58pm – Comment

Saving the auto industry means saving car makers.

Saving the free press does not mean saving newspapers.

An underappreciated classic

Previously posted treacle aside, I like my Christmas songs like I like my humor– dark. Provides a nice place to whistle.

I went on a big Christmas song kick this year. Here are my current faves:

Buck Owens & Susan Raye: “All I Want For Christmas is My Daddy”: If you’re not driven to drink by the second verse, you’re not alive. (Hat tip to A Truer Sound.)

Ditto Ernest Tubbs & His Texas Troubadours: “Christmas is Just Another Day for Me” and Jimmy Martin: “Christmas is Everywhere Except in My Heart”

Ry Cooder: “Christmas in Southgate”: Appropriate for these hardscrabble days of layoffs and tight credit.

A new fave I don’t know how I’ve missed before is Bruce Robison: “Oklahoma Christmas”

Straightforward: The Legendary Tiger Man: “Fuck Christmas, I Got the Blues”

Nothing like domestic abuse at the holidays from Unknown Hinson: “Black and Blue Christmas”

There’s too many versions of “Blue Christmas” to count, so I won’t.

There’s a whole special subgenre of Christmas drunk songs:

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: “Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas”

The Red Hots: “Santa’s Too Drunk to Drive”

Dallas’ own Sutcliffes: “Alcoholidays”

Then there’s the granddaddy of all cynical Christmas Carols, The Pogues with Kristy MacColl: “Fairytale of New York.” So good I listen to it year-round.

And finally, to keep it on the bright side, April’s favorite Christmas rocker, which also became a Rock Band 2 track this week: Billy Squier: “Christmas is a Time to Say I Love You.”

If I've learned anything in the last four years...

I’m pretty firmly against the slew of bailouts being proposed or in process. It’s not that I’m insensitive to the impact of the fall of certain industries or the unemployment that follows. It’s that I don’t believe that the money, which is at some point finite, will make a difference in badly broken businesses. So why throw good money after bad? Let the bad businesses fail and use the proposed bailout money to help the displaced workers by using it to create jobs.

I had an experience today with a company in a troubled industry that reminded me how badly things can be broken…I’m an American Airlines AAdvantage Gold member. I hit that threshold for the first time in 2007, from traipsing about the country raising money for Our Little Business and then going back and forth to Seattle during the integration phase. Once I had reasonable resources to not quibble over $50 difference in pricing one way or another, the membership had its desired impact for American. I stopped shopping versus other airlines because the Gold privileges were worth it, particularly when the company was paying for the tickets and I knew I already used enough tricks to get far cheaper tickets than the average traveler.

By my standards, I flew a good bit this year too — a couple Seattle trips; a few conferences and a vacation. In all cases, I considered no one but American. Still, I came up 700 miles short of 25,000, which is the threshold to stay Gold like Ponyboy.

The vacation was with April, who rarely flies and has a total of 3,400 miles in her account. I knew AA had a program for sharing miles, so I figured I’d take her miles and be comfortably over the top. She doesn’t fly enough to earn sufficient miles to do anything useful with them. In fact, I signed her up specifically so I could get these miles later.

Here’s the choices I found available to me:

• Take April’s 3,000 miles for a transfer cost (including, of course, several tiers of fees) for $80.
• Buy the same miles for $82.50, leaving April her miles.
• Take only 1,000 miles from April, which would STILL cost $80.
• Buy $1,000 miles for $59.56, again including several mysterious subcharges.

Now 25,000 miles gets you a coach ticket. And let’s say the average ticket I’d use is, at most, $600. So each mile is worth roughly $.024. So the most I should be paying for $1,000 miles is around $24.

Now I know the argument here is that there’s a transaction cost. I guarantee you that cost, charged through an outside vendor, isn’t $36. It’s done online, with no human hands involved. If it does cost AA anywhere near $36, that’s another, even worse, problem.

So, my response should have been to forget the whole thing. Which would put me back on the open market for plane tickets and less likely to fly AA. For $36 in silly fees, they should and could have lost the monopoly on my travel. The only reason they didn’t, is that I live in Dallas, their primary hub and I know that they’re likely to be the best-priced direct provider for most trips.

BUT, if I lived anywhere else, I would have dropped them like a hot potato, making their vaunted rewards program a waste. I’m sure that happens for a lot of people, a lot of times. And is just one other way the dinosaur is devouring the very ecosystem that once sustained it.

It ain't no WPA -- That's for sure.

I’ve been writing about this for a while now, but with every passing day — even without media hype — it becomes clearer to me that we are in the early stages of hard times beyond the most devout Cassandra’s ken. You can say that people saying things like this are turning this recession depression holyshit into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say: “Mithridates, he died old.”

I’ve taken the existence of this thing (whatever you want to call it) as a given for a while now. The question increasingly on my mind is how are we going to handle it?I have a pretty good idea how April and I are going to handle it — the launch period of Our Little Business was like our own personal Great Depression, in terms of finance, stess and fear. We came through that tougher, stronger and more resolute on matters of Our Little Family. So, hopefully without hubris, I’m ready for whatever may come. April will plant our victory garden; we’ll both have or find work; and we shan’t want. Frankly, with my penchant for performing best (only?) in crisis, I’ve always had a latent sense that I was supposed to be around — and shine — during a time of great trial.

But when you ask “How long will these troubles last?,” I think that’s the wrong question. The question is how we as a society are going to respond. Because that’s what’s going to determine the duration.

I’m not optimistic.

Now I’m traditionally a positive guy. But as I’ve watched our generation grow up, I’ve seen a lot of privilege and entitlement and little test of our mettle. And as I see the response to the challenges now, whether in my own industry or in others, I see lots of finger-pointing and whining and little fight.

I look at the so-called “greatest generation,” and while I see some hype-erbole, I also see a lot of differences. The U.S. pulled itself out of the Great Depression with a Great War and lots of blue collar industry and manufacturing. I’m not sure how that translates into the War on Terror and the Information Age. We’re overall such a net importer and have such a shortage of skilled labor and such a glut of middle managers.

Years ago, Will Rogers said that “We’ll be the first nation in the world to go to the poor house in an automobile.”

I wonder if the New Shantytowns will have wi-fi.

Believe me, I want to believe in the pluckiness and resolve of The American People. I want life to be a Frank Capra film.

I just hope we’re up to it. Whether it’s a heroic turnaround or finding our new groove.

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

(Audio: Uncle Tupelo: “No Depression” from their final show.)

“So, when you say that I’m saying mean things, you’re violating my right to free speech, so your right to free speech by criticizing me should be shut off right now, goshdarnit.”

Some New Orleans official re: Katrina:

“The worst natural man-made disaster in human history.”