Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

The marvelous product called the NFL

I love the NFL. I think they are the only major sports league in America that understands what they have to do to be successful. Outside of NASCAR, they are the only league seeing their viewership increasing. They understand the importance of revenue sharing and real salary caps.

I think they also understand drama. They have pulled together this amazing combination of rules, players, and rivalries to create compelling stories. Could you have written the script that put the Packers in the playoffs?

Brett Favre's father passes away two weeks ago. Favre decides to play and has one of the best games of his career. He passes for 399 and throws 4 TDs. Packers win on Monday Night.

As start time approaches on the last game of the season, the cards are not falling in the Packers' favor. Because of Dallas' loss, Seattle's win, and Cleveland's win, the Packers lose control of their destiny. The Packers must win and Minnesota must lose. The Packers' take an early lead in their game and are in complete control by the third quarter winning 31-3.

Minnesota is winning against mediocre Arizona 17-6 with a little over two minutes left in the game. Arizona drives and scores to close to 17-12. Arizona recovers the onside kick, drives, and scores on the final play of the game to win 18-17.

Packers are in the Playoffs.

I'll leave you with a quote from an EPSN.com article:

The turnabout was so extraordinary that Favre, still struggling with his father's death, suggested something spiritual was taking place.

"I've been around people who have lost a family member or have lost someone close to them and they say that person's there watching or angels, whatever," Favre said. "I would say two weeks ago I didn't really believe in that, but I think we'd better start believing in something."

Year End COTC

This week the American Mind is hosting Carnival of the Capitalists.

You can find everything from year end tax tips to rise of the gift card.

Dreaming of Collaboration

I had a dream a few nights ago. I was watching a episode of a reality TV show. The premise of the show was General Motors had partnered with Trading Spaces to create a concept car.

The idea was they were going to create a vehicle that matched the needs of the Trading Spaces viewer. Some of the designers from the show were involved to make everything aesthetically pleasing. There were viewers from past episodes who were brought in to give their opinion. My dream didn't outline all of the details that would be the program compelling and watchable.

I thought it was a clever idea though. Trading Spaces has an audience in the millions. The show expands their brand and create more programming. General Motors (or whatever automaker) would get a lot of free advertising and have a built in market for the evolving vehicle. Ford already builds the Ford Harley Davidson F-Series. Why not the Toyota Trading Spaces Sienna?

Merry Christmas!

Like most, I will be enjoying the holidays with friends and family over the next week. I doubt there will be much posted here.

Happy Holidays to Everyone!

No celebration allowed

I guess it was too much.

Packer receivers Donald Driver and Robert Ferguson were fined $5,000 for excessive celebration during Sunday's victory at San Diego. The players pretended to take pictures of each other and posed for them. [startribune.com]

New Year Prognostications

Adam Hanft writes a monthly column for Inc. In December's issue, he makes some forecasts for the New Year. Here are the ones that caught my attention:

• Open Sourcing - "Why can't business users join with, say, Steelcase, to create a new line of furniture". I think this has huge implications for society. It raises all sorts of issue about what is property and who owns it. I have just started to get my head around this. Expect more on this...


• Reverse Consolidation - "In 2004, nimble entreprenuers will emerge in a host of industries to create a more complex purchasing ecosystem." I think you are starting to see free agents pulling together to compete on projects they individually couldn't do. I think you have to be very creative and identify strong compliments to your business. 20% of my business now comes selling services that partners provide.

Hanft ends with a comment near and dear to my heart:

Lastly, here's a trend we won't see-but should: a new focus on manufacturing. America's smarter-than-thou elevation of technology and knowledge-based products over stuff that gets produced in factories is reaching the crisis point. Our ability to "make" anything globally competitive- other than pharmaceuticals and enterainment- is an underexamined economic cancer, and it's high time we embark on the race for the cure. The world's most powerful economy can't exist solely on bits, bytes, and rap.

I have been seeing a lot of economists try to explain how globablization is going to be good for the economy. Those same economists told me in school that there are three ways to create wealth - make it, mine it, or grow it.

Everything else is playing with money.

Experience Economy II

Earlier this week, I talked about the book The Experience Economy.

A Penny For... reader Mike DeWitt comments:

You should add the final evolutionary step, transformation. As the speed of creative destruction of jobs accelerates, people will be looking (and willing to pay) for acquiring new capabilities.

I was remiss, so let's talk about transformations. The example Pine and Gilmore use is fitness clubs. Currently, clubs charge clients through membership fees or time spent in the facility. The authors suggest a different approach:

Think about what such a business would do differently were it truly a transformation elicitor. First, it would spend much more time up-front, before it agreed to accept an individual as a member - on the understanding the individual's true aspirations and, more important, his or her current capabilities, both physical and mental. Many people do not have the temperament to stick to a physical regimen and cannot sustain progress toward a defined goal. Indeed, we suspect that many fitness centers dervive much of their revenue from people who pay their money but rarely encounter pain on the machines. Signing up such people may be profitable for one period, but surely it leads to the costly churn of constantly replacing expiring memberships...

Once the fitness center determines that an individual can both physically and mentally achieve a specific aspiration, then and only then would it lay out the charge for a specific achievement, including interim goals along the way. And the amount would be two or three or perhaps even ten times what such places charge today for mere machine usage. Who wouldn't pay more for a guarantee that he would lose those 30 pounds, gain those 5 extra inches of pure muscle around the chest, [or] bench press 250 lbs...And once it made such a commitment, the fitness center would be sure to deliver the right set of experiences to make sure the aspirant achieved his goals- and therefore paid in full. Personal trainers earn so much more that fitness center instructors precisely because they ensure their patrons follow the proper regimen. [pg.192-193]

To Mike's point, I think this is the tactic of the return-to-school education market. Schools are targeting people who never completed their degree or are pursuing a master's degree and they promise new careers with greater income.

Home Shopping Madness

Did you see the segment on Primetime tonight about the Home Shopping Network?

I have never bought anything from a shopping channel. It seems some of you out there do.

Consider this: Suzanne Sommers sold 50 million dollars worth of products last year on HSN.

Oh my God.

The Primetime piece followed three people and their new products. The main story was about Jim Song and his Germ Terminator. He has bet eveything on this idea and has 300,000 Germ Terminators sitting in a warehouse. His challenge was to sell 300 units in 12 minutes. He managed to sell double that and received an invitation to return.

There was a similar article in the November issue of Inc. about QVC. The takeaway from the Inc. article was that getting your product on a shopping channel is a huge step towards getting picked up by the Big Box stores.

Choosing Biz Books

I have been reading a lot of books lately. I am searching for new ideas. With books, the writer has room to expand on a thought and give it substance. I am finding I don't retain much from the popular snippet style of journalism in most newspapers and magazines.

The next problem I run across is which books to read. The number of business titles published in 2002 was in the thousands (8000?). I don't have the money or the time to get through all of them. I am sure many of you have the same problem.

Here are my thoughts:

1. I buy almost everything from Amazon. The reviews give you an idea of what people think about the book. As they get to know me, they start to give better suggestions for other things I may like. I also like that I can purchase either new or used books. Check out the best biz titles for 2003 as rated by the editors and the customers.
2. Check out Jack Covert Selects from 800-CEO-READ. This Milwaukee-based company specializes in business titles for corporations and individuals. I find Jack's reviews are through, honest, and outside the mainstream. This month he recommends:
   
   • Every Move Must Have a Purpose: Strategies from Chess for Business and Life by Bruce Pandolfini
   
   
   • American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and the Making of the World's #1 Bourbon by F. Paul Pacult.
   
   
3. If you are a regular reader, you'll know I am partial to Fast Company. They started a book club in October and each month they let readers vote on five books. Here are the choices thus far:
   
   • October - Authentic Leadership by Bill George
   
   
   • November - The Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen
   
   
   • December - Gray Matters - Rosner, Halcrow, and Lavin
   
   Also, John Moore posted a Best of Marketing Books list for 2003 on FC Now.

4. Check out All Consuming. The site is a combines of data from Technorati, Amazon, Weblogs.com, and Alexa to show the popularity of books on blogs. Since business blogs are still relatively new, there isn't a ton of feedback yet. I think it will grow into another word of mouth source for recommendations.
5. Finally, I hope the Business Blog Book Tour becomes another trusted source for reading suggestions. We have lined up a great set of stops for the tour. I plan to annouce the first author after the holidays.

The Experience Economy

There are a number of books recommended by Tom Peters in his new book Re-Imagine. The first book I have read from the list is The Experience Economy by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine. The ideas are great.

Consider the evolution of the birthday cake. Fifty years ago, you probably had the ingredients in your house to bake a cake and their value was somehwere between 10 and 30 cents. To simplify life, Betty Crocker put all the stuff in a box and charged a dollar. Soon, baking became a hassle and supermarkets collected twenty dollars to deliver the completed cake. Today's birthday cake is a $200 trip to Chuck E. Cheese. [pg.21]

On a generic level, this has been the evolution:

Commodity->Good->Service->Experience

The authors argue that companies that can deliver experiences will capture larger sales from their customers. They make comparsions between these experiences and theatre. Companies need to consider casting, scripts, and backdrops to create compelling experiences for their customers.