We are Wall Street

Wall Street
Image by jpellgen via Flickr

The market almost fell 10% today and one of my i-banker friends sends me this email chain…

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?

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Will.i.am is the Man – Creating a New Era of Music Media Platforms

Picture from the event

I always knew there was something super advanced and different about the Black Eyed Peas. My first sign was when I saw them perform at Intel’s private launch party for their Core 2 Duo processor at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (thanks to Marc Harrison – pictures below). It was the first time I ever experienced a collision of mainstream music, technology, celebrities, and media all in one room, at one major event.

Yesterday I read an article in the Rolling Stones by Chris Norris titled “40 Reasons To Be Excited About Music” and sure enough, coming in at No.1 was “The Black Eyed Peas – Will.I.Am and the Science of Global Pop Domination.”

The entire article is certainly worth a read for anyone that’s in to music, but the piece that really hit me was this…

“To Will.i.am, songs aren’t discrete works of art but multi-use applications – hit singles, ad jingles, film trailers – all serving a purpose larger than music consumption. Creatively, he draws no distinction between writing rhymes and business plans, rocking arenas and PowerPoint, producing albums and media platforms, all these falling under a cleareyed mission to unite the largest possible audience over the broadest range imaginable. It’s a mission he communicates with a combination of Pentecostal zeal and Silicon Valley jargon, suggesting a hybrid of Stevie Wonder and Steve Jobs.”

It’s the idea that media and music are really one in the same. That business and music are thought about the same way and are less complimentary but more interconnected.

Over the past year, the lines between technology, software, media, music, marketing and news has become increasingly blurry.

Here are just some examples:

  • Meredith Media, a company that used to be a traditional publishing company is now acting as a fully integrating marketing agency.
  • Global advertising holding companies like Havas, OMD, and Publicis are now looking to build their own technology units in house in an attempt to replace the need for Ad Networks and control the entire online advertising stack.
  • Software is Media, says Fred Wilson in a recent post –  “Media are the tools that are used to communicate. And software that runs on the web is part of the media landscape.”
  • NBC recently launched a new program called “Behavior Placement” which is “designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows.”

And even today there’s news about how Hearst, another traditional publishing company, is looking to buy the digital advertising firm iCrossing for $375M.

As are lives continue to digitize, the companies and artists that continue to take a longer, interconnected view on culture, technology and media, will be the ones that succeed. Will.i.am and the BEP are definitely on “that next shit now.”

Intel – Black Eyed Peas

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Nice’n Niche

A lot of people recently asked me about internet based businesses. Things like: How to start a blog or website, what is twitter, how to use twitter, how to increase followers and traffic, how to register a domain name, what is a domain, how to create a mailing list, how to use analytics, what is a good number of followers, how to obtain affiliates, how to create partnerships, etc.

These things may all seem trivial to anyone in the tech space but to those just entering, they seem non trivial, foreign perhaps, but very attainable.

Simply put, the evolving web has made things easy. The barriers of entry to creating an online business are much lower, but creating a long-lasting business under this premise is much harder.

It seems to me like this is one thing that is severely overlooked these days. I’m all for starting new projects and businesses, but if you plan to do so, you should also recognize that you are most definitely not the only one.

One way to overcome this obstacle, and perhaps the best way (without knowing how to write code) is to start a business with a very niche focus. If you are successful, you can certainly expand your focus, but to start, you probably want to try to build a loyal following first. And to do that takes hard work.

In the beginning, try to be the very best at something very niche. That’s what I would do.

Take it from this guy (Gary Vaynerchuk). He certainly has.

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Oreos are Good, Especially The Audience Layer

Photo of an Oreo cookie on a white table.
Image via Wikipedia

Doug Weaver wrote a great piece today titled The New Oreo, Part 3: The Audience Layer.

“Anyone mildly plugged into digital advertising in 2010 can’t possibly ignore the noise and energy around audience buying.

…

There are many people in our industry who can go a lot deeper on this topic than I…”

I’ll attempt to take it a bit “deeper” but will do so around his 4 premises.

  1. It’s a Different Marketplace: “Audience buying is happening, and it is going to happen more”, but today, the market is not transparent. There are many companies out there that can sell your data for a price (and if not tied to media its probably much less), but what value are you getting other than a new, arguably small revenue stream? Are you learning about data strategies for your own organization? Are you learning about audience data collection, segmentation and optimization? If you’re going to invest time and effort in a new partnership, understand how the “data” company can make you smarter and affect your business in a meaningful way. One that adds long term value. Remember what ad networks did to your business?
  2. Create a Trading Desk: “Segregating and centralizing the audience selling activity inside your organization is a good idea. Keep your ‘page sellers’ focused on selling the value of placement. Let your specialists manage the relationships and requests from DSPs and interact with your optimizers.” I would take this one step further..in the opposite direction. Publisher that can take the lead and sell audiences on top of their placement should see increased CPM rates and differentiation from their competitors. If this is where the market is heading, might as well start understanding it now.
  3. Demand See-Through Tags: If a company is tagging your site, you should not only understand who pays the freight, but you should have some visibility into the actual shipment. Simply put, you are entitled for more insights other than just a paycheck.
  4. If You’re a Data Enabler, Get Paid for It: Publishers should absolutely get paid for their data, but they should work to optimize the use of that data by looking at and leveraging the individual behaviors as well as applying that data towards multiple revenue streams. Companies that can offer revenue streams for media and data, using the same data source, can help the publisher over the long haul in establishing a meaningful, multifaceted business.

(Disclosure: The post can also be found at Lotame Learnings. Lotame is my current employer)

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When it comes to Online Advertising, Keep It Simple Stupid

When things get so complicated the best thing you can do is go back to the basics.

In today’s world of online advertising, the “basics” are changing so it’s important to understand what those changes are and how they affect a marketer’s business.

I wrote a piece that was featured in today’s iMedia Connection that discusses this very point.

Excerpt from the article:

We are at the cusp of a new age of online advertising. As news ways of thinking about the ecosystem emerge, so too are there new ways for advertising campaign deployment. Math now seems as equally important as creativity. Technology now seems as important as artistic ability. This evolving trend has spawned new companies and has required older companies to change their very DNA, and with that, their name or classification.

The entire piece is here.

Things used to be much simpler…

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Shaun White is Crazy Committed to Gold

Two years ago I was volunteering on ski patrol at the Winter Dew Tour at Mount Snow, Vermont.

I was stationed at the top of the super pipe for the men’s half-pipe competition, but my shift was for the practice session. There were a handful of competitors and they were all mostly between the ages of 15-30. One of those competitors happened to be Shaun White.

I remember sitting there thinking, “Damn, these guys just snowboard all day, every day, for a living and soak up all the media attention during events.”

Then I saw Shaun White walk up to the top of the pipe. I remember thinking, “this dude is going to crank on some tunes, have a couple of red bulls, BS with the cute mount snow employees and tear up the half-pipe with ease….”

But when he got to the top, I quickly realized I was wrong, mostly.

Once at the top, he simply sat down in a chair (barely making any hellos), strapped on his board, and dropped in the pipe for one of the most ridiculous run’s I’ve ever seen live.

When he finished that run, he came back up to the top and did the same thing. Said almost nothing to anyone and dropped in for a second run. He did this maybe 2 more times after that.

Meanwhile, all the other competitors were goofing around, talking to the fans and soaking up the media attention.

Well, this week Shaun White won a repeat Olympic Gold Medal in Vancouver and I imagine he did it with the same style I saw at the Dew Tour.

Total concentration.

No BS.

No Games.

Dead committed to be the very best at what he does.

Props to Shaun.

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I made $99,620.00 Yesterday Playing Poker

Well, not really. But this guy did.

I’ve been playing poker for quite some time now and what I used to consider a “gambling” game, I now consider a game of math, game theory, strategic thinking, science, risk assessment, and money management. I’m not the only one. In fact, there is an entire society called the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society that was founded on this very theory.

Jesse Linker, who is one of my good friends and is someone I have known for a very long time,  has been playing online poker as a full time job for the past 2 years. The fact that he has been playing poker full time is not what is amazing. What’s amazing is, if you look at his earnings over time (see image below), you’d notice a steady increase. No real losses. All consistent earnings. Key word here being: consistent.

In shedding some more light on this topic, Jesse agreed to share some of his secrets below by answering some questions. He is also the first person to be featured in a new series of posts called “Student Profiles.” These posts will profile individuals who are consistently looking to learn and get better at what they do. Jesse no doubt fills that profile.

Student Bio – Jesse Linker
Jesse Linker is currently 24 years old and graduated from the from University of Maryland in January of 2009 with a degree in Finance. Since graduating, Jesse has been playing poker professionally. He has tentative plans of attending law school and if asked, he would say his biggest accomplishment is being from the same hometown as The Situation (Manalapan, NJ.)

Dan Reich: How long have you been playing poker for?
Jesse Linker: I’m not exactly sure when I first started, but it was somewhere around 13 or so. I first played online when I deposited $50 into an online poker account almost exactly on my 18th birthday. One of my other good friends made close to $1500 in one night, which he used to pay for spring break. I remember thinking how incredible it would be to play a game that paid so well, and was hooked.

DR: How many hours per week do you play?
JL: It varies a lot, but on average it’s probably close to 35 hours a week of actually playing.

DR: Do you consider poker to be “gambling?” Why or why not?
JL: In the sense that nearly everything you do is “gambling” when your actions do not guarantee an outcome. As the financial recession has shown, there is huge risk inherent to investing. In poker you are immune to a much larger degree of variables, whereas in typical investing, you are exposed to the macroeconomic effects of the global economy and global events. Even taking a job in a large corporation which has traditionally been seen as a “safer” leaves you with little control. I engage in a zero-sum activity, where my income is directly tied into my work ethic and improvement, something that very few other jobs can offer.

DR: Is there a difference between playing poker in person and playing poker online?
JL: There is, but I rarely play in person so I’m not the most qualified to highlight the differences. In general I do not like casinos so I would much rather sit on my couch with a laptop.

DR: How do you minimize risk and maximize income?
JL: After I graduated in January of ’09 I began to exclusively play heads up (1 on 1). I used to play 10-12 tables at once of 6-max tables and would inevitably get sick of that grind and stop playing because I did not enjoy it. In heads up I can play 1-3 tables at a time and I do not burn out to the same degree.

There is so much information available, that it makes it easier to effectively minimize risk while not effecting your income to a large degree. There are websites that track players results, with relatively detailed information. The results are not exact, but they give you a good idea so even before I start playing a person I know the limits they usually play and how they do at those limits. In addition there is software that logs every hand I play on my laptop so I will have information on people I have previously played, which helps.

DR: Do you have a “secret sauce” for showing such steady growth in the amount you’ve made?
JL: I think a lot of people play as high as they can as long as they think they have an edge. It sounds weird but even though I just turned 24, I am old compared to a lot of successful internet players. At 18 or 19 I think it’s easier to take more risks, and I definitely did. Now with most my friends working and the economic recession, I have a greater appreciation for the opportunity that poker affords me. Personally, I have found a good balance where I can make an amount I am satisfied with without taking risks and experiencing downswings I am uncomfortable with.

DR: Do you use analytics tools to monitor your performance? Does it inform the way you play?
JL: Not really, playing heads up allows you to closely pay attention to an opponent’s tendencies and then tailoring a strategy that you think is most effective. I like to have basic information in order to have some ideas on how they play but past that I do not really use any. When playing 10-12 tables this was close to impossible, and your play is more robotic.

DR: Do emotions ever affect the way you play? Have you ever lost money because you were angry or upset?
JL: Of course, and its something that even the most successful players in the world are not immune to. You try to minimize how much it effects you, but pretending that emotions never affect you is probably more detrimental than acknowledging that they always will.

DR: What advice would you give to people that are currently playing, or are thinking about playing poker online?
JL: I think its considerably tougher now than it was a couple years ago to build up a bankroll. There are so many training sites out there such as cardrunners.com that have made it exponentially easier to improve and become competent. I think if you are intelligent enough to start poker today and become successful you are probably better off focusing your energies somewhere else.

For people currently playing I would say the most important piece of advice is to be critical of yourself. There is a lot of information to process, and even when you make the best decisions possible you will often get a negative result. Its easier to blame things out of your control, such as luck rather than realize that even if you were unlucky you should concentrate on your actions and what you can do to improve. In the same vein, when people make a poor decision sometimes they are rewarded and again they are not critical of the actions they control.

This is why poker will always be profitable because it is a flaw universal that people by in large are far too results oriented. An NFL coach who goes for it on a risky fourth down play is largely judged on the outcome of the play, regardless of how correct or incorrect the decision was. Investors are similarly affected with the outcome being the source of criticism or praise rather than the soundness of the decision. Most decisions have a myriad of outcomes that are out of your control and all you can do is make the best one with the available information. Being too concerned with results makes it impossible to best focus on improving your decision-making.

(Snapshot Below: One of Jesse’s online poker profiles)

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Negotiation Tactic #1 – Pretend Like You Never Heard Their Offer

This is a conversation I recently had with a NYC taxi driver, for the most part.

Because negotiating is just fun sometimes…

Me: Hey Taxi Driver. How much to go to Jersey City?

Taxi Driver: (thinking about it…) $50.

Me: Awesome, $25 is perfect. Let’s go.

Taxi Driver: What? I said $50. There is a toll and it is out-of-state….(hesitation… as I begin to back away from the taxi)…ok fine, $45.

Me: Ok, $25. Let’s do it. After all, it’s the same distance to Brooklyn and that fare only costs $18 dollars, so you are getting a sweet deal here.

Taxi Driver: No, not $25. $45….(hesitation..as I once more begin to back away from the taxi)…ok fine, get in, get in…$40.

Me: (I get in the cab thinking $10 discount off his original price wasn’t so bad. But I still wasn’t done…) Good deal man.You are a good businessman. You’re going to make $7 more for going the same distance you would normally go for a fare to Brooklyn. You are a smart dude. If you could only get $25 every time for this ride you’d be making some good extra coin. You’d be going the same distance to Brooklyn but instead of $18, you’d be making $7 more for the same time and effort.

Taxi Driver: No, I can’t do $25.

Me: Ok, pull over here and let me out.

Taxi Driver: Ok, ok, fine…$35..(he gives me a good explanation and I decide to flex on price a little bit..mostly because the guy seemed like a good guy…but I still wasn’t done..)

Me: Ok fine, $30. You win. You really are a smart businessman.

Taxi Driver: No, no..$35 my friend.

Me: Ok, that is better, but we are almost there. If we can do $30 then you have a deal. If you could give up $5 more than you’d be making $12 more instead of $7 for the same fare that it would cost to go to Brooklyn. Actually, if you did that, you’d probably be the smartest taxi cab driver ever.

Taxi Driver: Ok, fine $30.

Me: See, you are a really good businessman.

And after all that…I ended up tipping the guy back to $40 anyway because he seemed like a good guy.

M0ney Management Tactic #1 – Don’t give back the money you just saved from Negotiation Tactic #1.

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The “Do Whatever the F you Want” Decade – Past 10 Years in Review

After spending some time away from the computer over the past two weeks, I finally got some time to think back on the past 10 years and here’s what I’ve got.

The past 10 years have really just been about instant gratification. It has been the “I want it, and I want it now” mindset, thanks to a whole variety of toys (ie. Google, MySpace, AIM, Xbox, YouPorn, PartyPoker, iPhone, Investment Banks, TIVO, among many other things).

Looking back on the decade, here are a few things that really stood out in my mind as “game changers.”

  • Google – Obviously. I remember having to call 411 for information.
  • Call of Duty, Xbox Live, US Airforce, and Blizzard Entertainment – We used hover around Nintendo 64 in order to play Mario Cart and shoot each other with turtle shells. Then there was the emergence of Blizzard’s first online multi player forum which really set the stage for online gaming.  Now if I wanted to, I can sit back on the couch, load up Call of Duty on XBox Live and snipe Chad Ochocinco with an AK-47. And if the US air force wanted to, they too can sit back on the couch, fly some unmanned drones in the middle east and take out some Al Qaeda operatives.
  • Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Finance Degrees, and the collapse of the banks – I remember one of my engineering professors telling me a story about how his colleague spent years trying to invent new technologies in order to become rich. Well, after many years of failure, he decided the easiest way to get that paper was to hop on the Wall Street train, which he did. And now, according to my professor, he is very, very well off. Some of the brightest minds headed to Wall Street, and it is a movement that has already started to alter this country in a very bad way.
  • AIM, Skype, BBM, Twitter and iChat – Instant messaging and text messaging really took off this past decade. BBM officially lets us know when our friends blatantly ignore us while twitter makes you think your friends actually care and are reading what you have to say in the first place. Either way, this change has been all about real time communications.
  • ADD, Ritalin, and solitary confinement study sessions – “What, you have a test tomorrow and only 2 hours to study?” Cognitive enhancements have really changed things. Go to most major universities these days to see what I’m talking about. For some reason, it seems everyone has ADD. In order to deal with an extremely fast paced environment, as well as growing societal pressures, youth are beginning to turn to little white pills that make our minds focus better.
  • Party Poker, Sports Book, and online gambling – We don’t all need traditional jobs. In fact, many people make more money after work (or not working) gambling online than they do at their day job sitting on their couch. Years ago, if you wanted to gamble you’d have to consider bookies breaking your knees or would have to worry about large holes out in the middle of the Las Vegas desert (well, maybe some people still have to worry about these things).
  • Kaazza, Napster, iTunes, and MySpace – It used to be so easy getting music and it has only become easier. You could download it almost anywhere, at anytime, for free (and illegally). This dynamic changed music forever. In addition, artists no longer need record labels. When was the last time you actually cared about a record label? Today, music can be obtained whenever and however you want.

Bottom line is, the past decade has paved the way for mass, real time communication highways. In the coming decade, we will all be slaves to media and information. We will want, want, want because we can, and things will be so easy to obtain and access through these faster, more distributive digital highways. The next decade will be called the “Do whatever, however, and whenever the F you want decade.”

(although the video is a little dated, I think they were on to something)

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Exclusive Music: Yolks – Drive Wise Volume 1

When it comes to Hip Hop, there are those artists that stack up on the top of my list. Guys like Nas, Jay-Z, Talib Kweli, Common, The Roots, Notorious B.I.G, but one of my favorite hip hop artists is someone that most people have never heard of. His name is Yolks. A guy from Madison, Wisconsin who could freestyle and write lyrics with the best of them.

Check out some of his tracks below. My favorites are I’m Yolks, Trappin, Chop It Up, and Dem Boyz. 

Yolks – Drive Wise Volume 1 by danreich

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