Category Archives: Strategy

Reformation Of The Self

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Lately, all my foundations have begun to collapse. My filing systems, both physical and virtual, aren’t functioning at a proper capacity to keep me organized. I’m overloading them with great stuff but it’s becoming harder for me to keep up with everything. At least until the New Year, I’ll be working on refiling and reprocessing pretty much every aspect of my life. Since, I’ll be working on this the next two weeks I’ll be putting up some (older) introspective pieces on myself to let you get to know me a little better, these are some of the defining moments in my short life, thus far.

Physical Filing Objectives that I’ll be working on is finding a way to organize my books and films so that I don’t have to dig through piles to find what I’m looking for; right now, I count 15 stacks of books scattered around my room. I’ll be going through and organizing all my bank and credit statements, balancing everything out of course.

Virtual Filing Objectives that I’ll be working on are setting up a better system for RSS feeds, right now I’m satisfied with the system but, with 3+ hours a day it’s just too much. I’ll be redoing my bookmarking so I can find web pages that I use on a more consistent basis and links from others saved for reading. I’ll be redoing the majority of my computers filing system as it has files scattered in random folders.

With the blog I’m working on a redesign that fits who I am and provides a cleaner interface than the one that your reading this on, even I find it hard to read on. I’m also debating on adding more content that fits the innovation theme. Originally I had planned on this being a more technology focused blog with a few political and philosophically innovative ideas; if you look back that’s not how it turned out.

So for the next few weeks I’ll be doing some introspection, try and clear my mind, and get set to roll out some better content in ’09. This is mainly for my benefit but hopefully it results in some positive effects for you also. I think I may continue this process every year if it turns out something that is effective. This idea of redeveloping your internal and external systems is something that everyone should try to force change on themselves.

Our Childrens Economy: Social Security

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The United States is growing ever closer towards bankruptcy and we just keep piling on more and more debt. People don’t blame Bush it’s the law of compounding interest and providing too many services. One of the more pronounced services that is out there is Social Security. I find that it is quite possibly the largest disservice for the future of the country.

Social Security is the funds that are taken automatically from workers pay for retirement funding, unemployment,  disability, spousal and children, and widow benefits. All of these, except for the retirement, unemployment, and widow benefits, were not part of the original bill and the widow benefits have changed from lump-sum to the continued monthly payments of the deceased spouse. The original bill proposal was highly controversial in and was opposed because it would result in the loss of jobs. However, some said that this was an advantage as it encouraged the elderly to retire, opening positions for the youth.

The problem is that now the elderly are working longer and are less encouraged to leave, resulting in harder positioning for the younger generations. The fact that this pay comes from the workers who should be the younger generation means that this is impacting their future coverage. The average age of workers is also beginning to go up and at ~15% per worker and at a 5.8:1 worker/retired we are slowly sliding into a Social Security deficit; projections show that the ratio will drop to 3.1:1 meaning that we won’t even be providing half the coverage that’s promised.

While researching this, I discovered that the Social Security spending for the ’07 Fiscal Year was $580 billion, this is annualized process that increases every year. Honestly, we’re worried about the government spending $900 billion just once, sure it was on bad loans, but it’s actually going to help stabilize the country while we prepare for the long run. Social Security is ripping off the future generations to pay for it’s promises.

I propose that we introduce a retro-active grandfather clause that will reduce the rates of which people are accustomed will be receiving.  You reduce funding to anyone who was born since January 1, 1963(45 years old as of 1/1/09) to 70% of what they where promised once they reach 67, regressing the rate by 5% for every subsequent year until age 35. Anyone between the ages of 35 and 30 shall receive 25% and anyone below 30 will recieve nothing.  We have this bill continue until the year 2100 and direct excess funding towards the federal deficit. I would not have a problem having the tax remain in my wages so long as it is going to help sustain the state of the country in the future. This isn’t even as drastic as what we need but, it is an initial idea to help us get it started.

This is just my two cents on my subject, and in fact this would actually be excluding myself(19 years old). Though it wouldn’t matter there is nothing left for my generation or future generations, either way. Please leave some comments on what you think of this subject.

Building Your Brand Like A Punk Band

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I’ve recently noticed several bands that I used to listen to, occasionally, back in the late 90′s have been coming back with hits on the mainstream radio. The single common denominator of them all is their genres the fusion of Punk and Hard Rock. This is stunning me because looking back on their origins they have been around a generation and their just hitting their mainstream strides.

I’ll list throw out a few names here: The Offspring, Pennywise, Weezer, Incubus, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, and Chris Cornell(Soundgarden and Audioslave). All of these bands originated in the period between 84-93, to very niche groups at that time. They also didn’t see huge growth in their fans like bands do now a day, but also grew slowly enough to handle the pressure, preventing premature collapse. They also forged new paths in the music industry. These are bands that are good to invest in but are hard to find.

Build your brand like you are a punk band. Don’t go big to begin with unless you know your going to be able to sustain the pressure. You want to start off with your niche and then expand slowly through trust and ability. This will give you time to develop a strong following that will stick with you through a flop to see a future success. You just need to keep cranking your stuff out and they will come.

Dealing With The Customer

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So, here it is almost Friday and I haven’t posted a thing in a week. So I’m going to discuss why that is. I would also like to mention some other things that I saw during this issue.

Last weekend, I purchased several domain names for a project I’m working on and decided to also get theinnovationist.com, this where my issues began. I redirected my blog there and then Sunday I noticed that my archives where down. I left a message for customer service at the site and then went about to fix the issue myself. I ended up working Sunday night and most of Monday on this issue, instead of writing.

Monday afternoon I get a call from GoDaddy thanking me for my purchase and ask me if I have any issues. This is great customer service, they preempt any issues that I may have and offer me advice. I thank them back for this as I was shocked at this level of gratitude coming from such a large company.

I also go to see if I have recieved a reply from the customer service of my blogging site, no reply. It takes until late Tuesday night before I get a reply and they also tell me that my comments aren’t working, hooray. So it took them two days to tell it’s even worse than what I had suggested, I reply back asking if they could explain the issue in further detail and had to wait until earlier today to get any confirmation on the issue. Of course, I had already discovered the issue late Wednesday night and everything was working again before they contacted me. So, I’m a bit miffed at the service provided.

This just shows that how you treat your customers is extremely important. Your customers are your lively hood, if you don’t treat them with respect how can you expect repeat business. GoDaddy came to me, someone who isn’t pulling in anything by measure to their revenue. The other place left me to deal with my issues, sure they assisted but the service was so damn slow. This is how to build and destroy your brand, GoDaddy left me with a great feeling and the other company left me to stranded and pissed.

So here’s me trying to be preemptive, you guy’s are my customer. I want to know who I’m talking to, who I’m providing information, and I want to know what you guy’s are looking for from me. You can give me suggestions on stuff to talk about, I’ll do it, I don’t mind doing the research. I write for myself, but I’m here for you, I could just as easily keep all this stuffed in a book on my desk or scattered around in pages.

“Tell me what you want out of me and I’ll step up and try and provide it.”

P.S. If you would like some really good advice on building your brand and dealing with your customers, I recommend GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Edit: Sept 22, 2008 No longer using the same blogging service (uber.com).

It’s Not About You

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I got to thinking earlier, “Why fight against another aggressor when it’s only going to elevate both parties aggressive stature?” Why not just sit back and let them remain aggressive and feed you with hints at weakness? An overly aggressive party could become reckless and divulge information because they became overly focused on landing a blow; however if you too are acting just as aggressively you may miss your chance. We all need to just slow the fuck down and listen to the clues.

Atheists get a bad rap because of the radical few, who vocally protest meaningless shit. If you look at the Newdow v Congress was it necessary to protest against the words “one nation under God”, yes it may have been his constitutional right; however is there any true harm to be brought forth from these words. His claim actually brings forth a stigma against atheists because he became vocal it added fuel to the fire of Christian aggression. The same amendment contains freedom of speech or the freedom to remain silent. I am just calling for a rescission of aggression in the atheists motion for the truth. Let the Christian’s aggression lead to there own gaffes.

This same principle can be applied to politics in broad or even warfare. You need to stay defensive and alert of your enemies tactics and where their coming from next. If your right-wing read The New Yorker and the Huffington Post; if your left-wing watch FOX, stay attuned to where their coming from be objective about it. This gives you the ability to strike them where their weak, or deflect their blows back.

“So just shut the fuck up and listen.”

This guy has been doing that for several weeks and it’s amazing what he overhears and quotes. He also is probably more knowledgeable about the strategic and religious flaws in this post.

P.S. I’m a right-wing Athiest.