John Linton .......appear to have serious psychiatric problems.
I am reaching the end of the 365 days of writing this daily rambling of what I'm involved with each day of my business life and have nearly won my bet - only the logistical difficulties (and the lack of understanding of a traveling companion) from July 14th to July 26th stand in the way of 'victory'. When I was first appraised of why anyone in their right mind should attempt to write a regular blog on the boring aspects of the operations of a business the benefits (to the business) were very clearly set out and very well argued by the writers of the two articles an old friend gave me but I couldn't see how this could happen for Exetel.
I can say, after 11+ months of writing a daily blog, that each of the seven benefits:
1) Increase in sales across all products/services
2) Better pricing offers from current suppliers
3) Offers of better pricing from new suppliers
4) Lower personnel 'turnover'
5) Higher number of useful/practical suggestions from people unknown to you
6) More press coverage
7) More invitations to join other 'boards/entities'
have materialised for Exetel and for me personally in exactly the ways, and the quanta, stated in the articles. It has been a very interesting, and for Exetel a very rewarding, result for a minimal effort. The rewards are so large and so measurable that I still have trouble accepting that someone, actually two people, in 'academia' could provide such valuable guidance on such a difficult to grasp set of commercial concepts. In purely monetary terms Exetel is better off financially to the tune of North of $A2 million and that amount is directly quantifiable and is conservative.
So, my advice to anyone who runs a business, or someone who would like the business they are associated with to do better financially and in many other ways is 'invest' in the 20 minutes it takes daily to write a few words about any aspects of your business that are current - I can personally add my 'testimony' to the claims made by other people that you'll never make a better time/financial return 'investment'. My blog is not 'advertised' in any way other than providing a link half way down an 'inside' page of the Exetel web site and this conforms to the advice I was given that absolutely no 'promotion' is required for the blog to achieve the stated benefits. It does take time for the 'readership' to grow and even more time for the 'correct' readership to grow but it did happen for me in the time frames suggested and the 'results' also happened within the suggested time frames.
The one down side of writing a blog that is left 'open' for comments and questions by the readers of the blog (which, in my opinion is essential to get the most benefits) is that you have to read some 'communications' that are written by psychotics who sometimes manage to pack a really surprising amount of 'hatred' in to a few sentences - and this has happened on a linearly increasing basis over the past 11+ months. Lunacy is clearly on the rise in Australia based on the sort of communications I have been receiving. I seriously wonder at what state of mental deterioration these people must have reached to actually bother to read what some obscure individual writes on an obscure web site more than once as what I write seems to so deeply offend such people.
I would have thought any, even relatively sane person, who found a writer on an obscure web site to be annoying would exercise the simple decision not to read what was written after the first time. Not the case with some of the psychos who clutter my inbox - they seem to read every word I write in depth and then write in abusive detail about every aspect of what has been written embellished with scathing appraisals of every aspect of my physical and mental attributes. Based on some of the emails I've received it seems that they are badly in need of remedial English schooling and a much better vocabulary as their successive emails are drearily repetitive (why do they find it difficult to spell even their swear words correctly?).
I didn't bother to either keep the emails from such people or a record of the number and 'classification' of the content in the early stages but after the volume and frequency began to increase I kept a spreadsheet of these poisonous communications from December of 2007 onwards. Some of the 'statistics' from this record show:
1. an 'incidence' of 5 per week in November increasing, almost linearly, to 25 a week in the week ending 29/6/08.
2. an increase in repeat senders (more than 3 'hate mails' per month per sender) from none in December 2007 to 6 in June 2008 (one demented soul has written a vitriolic assessment of my morals, ethics and stupidity each day except Saturdays since February 2008)
3. it's impossible to be sure but over 50% of these 'hate' missives appear to be written by 'employees' of other ISPs
4. it appears that 50% are written by people for whom English is a second language
5. 75% of repeat writers include increasingly vituperative accusations of 'cowardice' on my part from not allowing their 'comments' to appear on the blog
I think I'm a fairly thick skinned person who has dealt with 'anonymous' abuse sensibly for a long time and has never been affected in any way by the sort of people who write such things other than to marvel at why they waste their time doing it. However, perhaps because I'm very tired at the end of another very difficult and demanding year and I am certainly physically and mentally 'run down', I am becoming 'irked' by some of the more persistent 'serial abusers' and the hysterical level of abuse they resort to.
So it's the only down side I have found in writing a daily rambling which is completely overshadowed by the enormous benefits of making the effort to set aside 20 or so minutes each day to express your views on something(s) that are in the forefront of your mind at the time of writing.
My advice to anyone involved in running a business - write a blog on a consistent basis and watch your business significantly improve.