Money

A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin

Merlin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:31:36 -0400

Being a Parable for the Edification of Independents Seeking Independence

THE PARABLE

THE OSTENSIBLE CUSTOMER enters a deli and saunters up to the counter. The deli is tended by its rakishly handsome owner, THE SANDWICH GUY.

"Hi," says The Sandwich Guy. "What looks good to you today?"

"Slow down," says The Ostensible Customer, as THE LUNCH RUSH starts trickling in. "Lots of delis want my business, so, first I need to really understand what you can do for me."

"Well," says The Sandwich Guy, "I guess I can try to do what I do for everybody here and make you a customized version of any of the 15 awesome sandwiches you see on my menu. What're you hungry for?"

"Easy, easy, Ricky Roma! Before I make any decisions here I'm going to need to know a lot more about my options. Why are you so obsessed with 'what I want?'"

"Okay, sorry," says The Sandwich Guy, uneasily eyeing the growing queue of The Lunch Rush now piling up behind The Ostensible Customer. "What else can I do to help here?"

"That's better," says The Ostensible Customer. "Let's start by sitting down for a couple hours and going over all the ingredients you have back there."

The Sandwich Guy laughs congenially and hands The Ostensible Customer a menu. "Friend, I can make you whatever you want, but, if it helps, the 15 sandwiches listed here show all the ingredients--right there between the name and the price..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! The price?!? Already you're reaching for my wallet? Jeez, I barely just arrived."

The Lunch Rush is getting restless and grumbling audibly.

"Well. You know. I do sell sandwiches for a living," says The Sandwich Guy. "Did you have a certain budget in mind for your lunch?"

"Oh, God, no. I'm nowhere near that point yet. I still need to learn a lot more about how you work, and so, obviously, I have no idea what I want to pay. Obviously."

"Okay," says The Sandwich Guy, "but...I can't do much for you here without knowing either what you want to eat or how much money you want to spend. You get that, right?"

The Ostensible Customer is miffed.

"Listen, here. What I 'get,' so-called Sandwich Guy, is that you're not going to rush me into some tricky lifetime sandwich commitment until I understand precisely who I'm working with. And, so far, I do not like what I see. Still. I intend to find out more. So, meet me in Canada tomorrow to talk about this for an hour."

The Lunch Rush begins waving their wallets as they lob their completed order forms at The Sandwich Guy's face.

"Sorry," says The Sandwich Guy. "I can't do that. How about I just make you a Reuben. It's really good, it's our most popular sandwich, and it only costs eight bucks."

"WHAT! EIGHT DOLLARS! 'Dollars' with a 'd?' That's way too much!"

"I thought you didn't have a budget," says The Sandwich Guy.

"Well, I don't. And, besides, I don't really 'need' a sandwich at all. Now, kindly fly to Canada."

"That's not going to happen, sir."

"Also," says The Ostensible Customer, "if I do decide to get a sandwich from you--and it's looking increasingly less likely that I will--I'll absolutely expect your deeply discounted price to reflect the fact that I'm not particularly hungry right now."

The Lunch Rush begins lighting torches and chanting a guttural chant, not unlike the haunting overtone singing of Tuvan herdsmen.

"Look," sighs The Sandwich Guy, "it sounds like you need a little more time. Here's a free Coke and a complimentary bowl of pickles. Please have a seat, take all the time you need, then just come on up whenever you're ready to order, okay?"

"‘READY?!?’ TO...‘ORDER?!?’ Are you out of your mind?"

"Mmmm...apparently."

Presently, The Ostensible Customer turns beet-red.

"This is an outrage! I can't even imagine how you stay in business when you treat your customers like this."

The Lunch Rush grows silent as The Sandwich Guy slowly leans over the counter and smiles--his nose one slice of corned beef from The Ostensible Customer's nose.

"Sir. First off: you aren't my customer yet. Right now, you're just some dude holding a bowl of free pickles."

"Buh?" fumbled The Ostensible Customer.

"And, second, the way I 'stay in business' is by making great sandwiches and having as few conversations like the one we're having as possible," The Sandwich Guy coos.

"Because, the truth is, my real customers are actually all those nice people standing behind you. They're the people who buy my sandwiches with real money over and over again. I really like them, and so I give them almost all of my attention."

The Sandwich Guy waves at The Lunch Rush. The Lunch Rush waves back. The Ostensible Customer looks stunned.

"Sir," says The Sandwich Guy "enjoy your Coke and your pickles with my compliments. But, please step aside. Because right now, there's a whole bunch of hungry people trying to buy sandwiches that won't require me flying to Canada. Next, please!"

The Lunch Rush roars approval. The Ostensible Customer is still stunned. Which is unfortunate.

Because, several men from the back of the line spontaneously rush forward to drag The Ostensible Customer, screaming and grasping, onto the busy sidewalk outside, where they proceed to devour his flesh like those street urchins who eat Elizabeth Taylor's cousin in Suddenly, Last Summer.

Meanwhile, The Sandwich Guy goes back to making sandwiches. And, The Lunch Rush goes back to eating them.

THE MORAL(S)?

The Sandwich Guy can't do much for you until you're hungry enough to really want a sandwich.
Once you're hungry enough, you still have to pay money for the sandwich. This won't not come up.
Few people become "a good customer" without understanding both 1 and 2.
Few companies become "a smart business" without understanding 1, 2, and 3.
Basing his business on an understanding of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 doesn't make The Sandwich Guy a dick; it makes him a smart business.
If you vacation with Elizabeth Taylor? Seriously. Avoid provoking the cannibalistic rent boys.

THE HOPE

Me? I just very much hope it takes you far less than 15 years to see and accept these sorts of things. Both as a customer and as a business.

Guys, avoid working for anyone who's not hungry enough to compensate you for your sandwich. It literally doesn't pay.

THE RESERVE READING

Bloodhounding Budgets - Cognition: The blog of web design & development firm Happy Cog

Tell them nicely that your price is a sucky $200K. The key here is to do so candidly, like you’re sitting on their side of the table and have to approve the budget with them. Admit that you’re way over the mark, and essentially apologize for it. I’ve said, “If you want to tell us to get lost, we understand”.

Basement.org: Negotiation And Speculation: The Risk Of Selling Low

All those variables can change except your worth. That can’t change. It’s an undeniable fact beyond subjectivity and beyond the reality-bending rhetoric of your client-to-be. You are worth what you are worth and unless you’re feeling charitable something else has to give.

Project Budgets and Secrets (thedesigncubicle.com)

Within the first few minutes of contact — in my effort to be as open and detailed on how I work as possible — the client counteracted by lying about not having a budget to clearly having a budget.

Mule Design Studio’s Blog: Presenting Design Like You Get Paid For It

Unspoken expectations unmet lead to seething unspoken frustration which ultimately bursts forth in an ugly mess when you’ve run out of budget.

Don’t Be Afraid of the S-Word :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

Remember that client who said that we were “pretty expensive” for them? A qualifying question in the first phone call could have saved us many hours of working on this deal. If you decide that the deal is unqualified, you just save it under another bucket: the unqualified deals bucket.

”A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 04, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Philipp Lenssen's excellent AdSense tips

Merlin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:06:52 -0500

Google AdSense Tips

Having noticed Google's new "Newbie Central" site, Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen posted a swell pile of his own best tips for improving AdSense performance on your site. Linked here because (at least IMHO) it's depressingly rare to find useful, non-douchey advice about making money with a website.

Typical of the sage stuff from PL:

Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog.

Totally true.

I haven't tried every one of these, but I will say "hats off to Philipp" for sharing such sound and cheese-free insight on a noisy, hard-to-research topic. Figuring out how to make dough with your site can be a slow and painful journey, so if you're trying to make a go of it with AdSense, I'd definitely give this one a read.

”Philipp Lenssen's excellent AdSense tips” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Toward a hygienic credit card

Merlin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:06:06 -0400

You've probably heard the advice to photocopy your wallet's contents; in the event that you lose your wallet, this makes it easy to know what you need to cancel and replace. Smart.

I recently received a new credit card and had forgotten what a hassle it is to change the info across all my various online accounts. Here's a few suggestions based on things I did this time around that should make it easier (or at least more interesting) the next time this happens.

Write it down now

Create an OmniOutliner (or text or Excel or Google Docs) document, and capture the name of every account, site, or other location where you needed to update your credit card information. Also, create a second column where you paste the exact URL for the page you had to visit to make your change. (I'm already up to about 15 of these).

I really wish I'd already done this one of the other times I've gone through this; feels like it'll really be handy for the next time.

Related: consider also creating columns where you paste in URLs, email addresses, or phone numbers for each company's customer service department -- particularly in case you need to escalate your updating to a live human.

Get cheap

Feeling like trimming back your lifestyle? Try hanging back a day or two or ten, and just wait for vendors to contact you about your "invalid card." It can be astounding how many accounts you have set to run or renew automatically, and, believe me, merchants will let you know when they can't run your card for some reason. This gives you a nice opportunity to verify for yourself that you really want all that stuff people are running your card to buy. Hell, I'm feeling tempted to "lose" my card every six months, just for the personal audit it provides.

Obviously, you don't want to get critical services accidentally cancelled, but, at least in my experience, merchants are accustomed to users with multiple cards that sometimes just stop working for non-nefarious (if sometimes seemingly incompetent) reasons. Still, use this one with care.

One card for online

I'm tempted by the idea of using one credit card just for online purchases. I'm not sure this buys me any particular protection over mixing usage, but I'm attracted to the idea of making it a little easier to track down where abuse might have occurred, and "life" versus "the internet" seems like a satisfying taxonomy to start with.

I suppose if you're some kind of mogul, you could get really granular, although I'd stop at the point where you have, say, a dedicated "Thai food card," or the like.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of "Be Prepared" ideas like The Sick Box and The Blackout Box, but what do you think?

The Question to You

What’s your best practice for safe and convenient credit card hygiene? If you've had to go through updating your accounts tomorrow, what would you do differently from the last time?

”Toward a hygienic credit card” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Real Simple: Plugging money leaks

Merlin — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 06:10:06 -0500

Money-Saving Secrets: RealSimple.com

This article from the March, 2006 Real Simple has some handy tips on plugging the "money leaks" in your life. Leaks to plug include:

Paying bills by snail mail
Paying the minimum on credit cards
A cell-phone plan that doesn’t match your needs
Eating out on vacations
Frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw moderate amounts of cash

Nothing earth-shattering, but it's sound advice if you're looking for a modest change to get a bit smarter about money.

[Subscribe to Real Simple on the 43F Store]

”Real Simple: Plugging money leaks” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 02, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"