Business in General Archives - Page 25 of 25 by Mark Murnahan

Medical Consulting Websites by Unskilled Labor

This was just such an absurdity that I had to share it with you. It is a particularly disturbing instance of ignoring good business principles of using the right tool for the job. It is also a perfect instance of gross underestimation of the value and cost of proper Website development and secure Web hosting, especially where it relates to the medical profession.

Let us say that you have a medical consulting business and you need a Website. You provide your medical consulting services with an emphasis on electronic delivery and hosting of the doctors’ Policy and Procedure Manuals. This is a highly important and legally required facet of a medical practice, so common logic would dictate that you want to do things the right way when it comes to your Website. After all, the Internet will be an integral asset to your business model.

Although your Website is highly important to your consultancy, you want to keep as much profit as possible. One way to do this is cut cost. This is fine so far, but here is where the plan shatters to pieces. You assume that Web developers and Web hosts are basically all the same. Your logic and experience has told you that the main difference is in their cost. After all, a Website can be saved from a MS Word document.

Fine, I will continue the humor, for now, that Website developers are the same thing wherever you go, but medical consultant services are different, for certain. I can prove that to you in the next few paragraphs. Let us test this medical consultant agency in Topeka, Kansas.

One may imagine that the medical practice would not think it very responsible for their consultant to cut corners with their data, but some people find saving a dime more important than serving their clients’ needs. In this case, it was so extreme that while sitting at the table with me, he pulled out a Blackberry and took several minutes to try and find the email that another company sent because he thought their Web hosting was a couple dollars cheaper. I tried to explain that the time he spent doing that was more costly than he stood to save. Just my time alone was ringing up at hundreds of dollars per hour, and from the way he talked, his must have been worth thousands, because he towered over me in business savvy.

Now, I gave him the benefit of my doubts while he tried to be frugal. Normally, that is a perfect oil and water mix in the medical community, but we are not talking about medicine. We are talking Websites, so pretty much any unskilled labor can handle this … right? Well, that is just how I heard it from the man himself. I will probably be called a bully and put down for this, but it is just exactly how it happened, so I am just the messenger. I am the unskilled labor who wasted a few hundred dollars worth of my consulting time with a guy who had criticized others in my field for misspellings in one breath, but yet wanted to be cheap in the next. Notice his comment about using an “unskilled laborer to continue doing this manually using word” . Below is the verbatim content of the email I received after our meeting. Be sure to read my reply to understand how the cow really eats the cabbage. You are welcome to contact me with your replies before contracting with a medical consulting service in Topeka, Kansas for hosted Policy and Procedures manuals.By the way, the cost two of his brilliant manuals would cover the cost I quoted him for the Website. He expects to sell 6,000 of them!

Mark,

I am quite confident that Phase 1 of this project will consume more than 50MB of space. There is nothing in the contract that says what the price will be if it exceeds that amount. As I stated during our meeting I have no need for search engine optimitization. This is a form bid and in my opinion does not reflect the conversation that we discussed today. Second, if this is cost of the first phase I am quite wary of the second phase you will present. For phase one as a straight informational site I have bids much lower than this from reputatable companies in town. The second phase of this is the only part that I am having difficulty managing virtually and at this expense I am assuming that I will be able to hire a unskilled laborer to continue doing this manually using word. I understand that you are not the loss leader but this is far overpriced for what my needs are.

At this point it is up to you to decide whether or not you are willing to try to gain my business. If not, Thank you for your time.

I am not the vision of the perfect salesman, and I never hope to be. I am, however, at the top of my field in Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and many related technologies. I really wanted to take this on the chin, but I realized that others could benefit from the understanding I share here. My verbatim reply to his email is as follows:

Douglas,

An average disc space estimate for a well produced marketing Website without ecommerce would not be expected to exceed 10Mb, and 50Mb is quite an oversubscription. Otherwise, I would have written it as more space, because space is not a matter of a lot of cost. As a wholesale Web hosting company, we have a quite broad view of this. If you needed 300Mb, I would not flinch to offer it at the same price, so to this, we have an answer. We will host gigs for less than most people will host megs, if that is what is needed.

You are correct in that this is a form bid. That is because it represents an advertised price leader of nearly half of our standard minimum job for custom development. This is also a price dramatically lower than the industry average for the same thing. Perhaps you have found lower offers, but that also comes with its own hazards. I have only encountered one other reputable professional in this field in Topeka, and that is Spinnaker’s Mike Burgess (http://www.spinnakerweb.com) whom I would also recommend visiting with before you make a decision.

I do not believe in delivering a product that is sub-par. I simply will not bastardize my industry or harm my client’s interests with bad results. I gain a lot of business from former clients of developers who do things the wrong way. In an instance of this, I recently had a call from a man with a lawsuit from a rights management company because he could not produce proof of his right to use the images he had on his Website. They were suing him for many times what he paid for his Website. This is the site owner’s responsibility, so be aware of this and other potential liabilities by hiring unskilled labor. If you Google the term “image copyright infringement” you will find my article right about the top of the page … it is a worthwhile read. Unskilled labor produces unskilled results, and you cannot expect professional results by hiring the first kid who raises his hand. That is good for hammers and shovels, but not so good where your business interests are at stake and legalities matter.

My reputation for producing quality results is far more important than my reputation for generosity, or even for being the most likable guy with a great sales pitch. You work with professionals every day, so I hope that you can appreciate my emphasis on quality and professional results. Just as there are people willing to produce Websites for the salary of a store clerk, there are also those of us who do so for a specialized surgeon’s salary. When business results are expected from a hobbyist developer, the aftershock is often similar to hiring the store clerk to perform your surgery. I am a skilled professional, and if or when you ever find yourself in need of such, I will be delighted to assist you. Alternately, we provide do-it-yourself Website templates at no additional charge with any hosting package. I simply had the impression that we were discussing a custom Website solution.

Best regards,

Mark Aaron Murnahan
YourNew.com, Inc.
Direct: *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*
http://www.yournew.com

Let’s call it a lesson learned, Douglas. if you want to sell a hosted policy and procedures manual to the medical field, you may want to take the Website and Web hosting more seriously before you take it to your clients.

For my readers, be very concerned when you go to the doctor. Ask questions! Although there are many laws to protect you, the truth is that medical privacy is limited by the doctor’s office understanding of technology, which too often comes from people like the guy I met today.

Author Mark Murnahan is the Chairman and CEO of YourNew.com, Inc. and provides SEO consulting services to companies and non-profit organizations. Mark Murnahan may be reached toll free at 866-A-Web-Guy (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) for consultation.

Is GM Bailout Like Giving a Fish?

I do not support the mentality of a free-for-all “bailout” as has been so commonly sought these days. This comes down to the old “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day” mentality. Whether a loan is appropriate, I do not know. I wish I had the right information and know-how to form a fact-based opinion on this. Maybe I am not that smart, and maybe it is above my pay scale. Read on and I will give you some opinion and insight to my opinion. Don’t get me wrong. I struggle right along witht the best of them. I lost millions of dollars in 2008.

I learned a long time ago that I have been able to perform much better with the understanding that when I fail to achieve my requirement of sustaining an income, there is nobody around to save me. I believe this to be among the most valuable business lessons I ever learned.

In my youth, I had parents with some money. They could have bailed me out and made life a lot easier for me on many occasions. I think this was in the back of my mind for a while as I grew my first couple companies. I never let those thoughts take over, but when I was 17 years old and off on my own and running a marketing company along with three to four jobs to support it, I suppose it was easier to think that if I failed, there would always be a warm bed and something to eat back at Mom and Dad’s place.

I have failed like GM, only worse. I remember some really hard times when I was all alone with nothing in the cupboard. I am not here to pluck your heart strings, so I will not get too far into the details, but I will say that there were times when I lost a lot of weight without trying.

I was not lucky, and I did not have huge windfalls. I took on as many as five jobs at a time and I developed my product better. This is the part that GM neglected. Jimmy Carter begged for cutting dependency on overseas oil 30 years ago, but GM had enough money back then to ignore the market. Over the following decades, there have been many indications of GM weakness, but they did not hear the call. It is not just about gasoline … it is about many other business and marketing strategies that have hurt them. They made a bed over decades, and allowed ignorance and arrogance lead them.

I believe that it is time for GM to do what I did in the face of catastrophic failure … work harder and work smarter. If their plans and ideas have failed, there is a reason.

As I write this, I would like to note that just in the past three years I have purchased two Hummer H2, three Corvettes, and one Escalade for a total of about $325,000. This makes the contents of my garage predominently GM in origin. I am certain some of you readers have sent some dollars their way, too. Yes, I am a fan of GM products, but what did they do with all of that money?

Relationships and Internet Marketing

Relationships come in many types. The relationship we are sharing as author and reader may seem to be very casual and even a bit superficial. I want to explain how and why it matters.

Since statistical data tells me that it would be nearly impossible in my lifetime to even shake hands with all of my readers, I always find it important to try and reach out in my, can I say, “authorly” way. We will probably never do business together, and for now I am just another guy on the Internet. Of course, I welcome your business, so don’t get me wrong. I just want you to know that I am not selling you anything more than some thoughts right now. So just relax and hear me out about relationships and the Internet, and how it all ties together to make you more successful and happy.

I have noticed for some time that each time my wife is pregnant I see a dramatic increase in new business. It has puzzled me for years exactly why this happens. I have always had my ideas on this. Of course, there is a lot that probably comes down to instinct. Doing all the right things just somehow sinks in and I find myself making better judgments, thinking more clearly, and most importantly developing better relationships. I know that having a new baby may be a little too extreme for increasing your business, but there are substitutes to help you emphasize building better relationships.

I find the relationships I build on the Internet to be absolutely crucial to my success. Just consider our new relationship as an example, you and me. Perhaps if I give you valuable information that helps you, and if I help you to feel good about me and my knowledge, you may become a regular reader. Eventually, if you grow comfortable with our relationship, you may call on me for advice or to hire my services. Notice how this is a process. By the time you call me, you will have many opportunities to know me on your terms. You can read hundreds of articles that I have authored, learn of my background, and know just who you are dealing with. It all comes back to the same reasons why social networking Websites have had such amazing success. People are there to actually interact with other people, and not just some corporate giant or sketchy small business. They are building relationships, right here on the Internet.

I hope that I do not insult you if I group you with “most people”, but in many respects, we are all “most people”. What I know about most people is that they want to feel good about the people in their lives. We can say that this does not apply to “those people on the Internet”, but let’s face it … it matters. In case you have not heard, Facebook has over 120,000,000 users in under five years of business. It has been built on relationships. Social networking sites are some of the most successful Internet businesses ever created, and that should teach us all some lessons. “Those Internet people” are you and me. The Internet is where I communicate with many friends, and it is even where I met my wife about eight years and two-going-on-three three kids ago, so you cannot convince me that what I am telling you is false.

People want to know real people. To set a picture for you, it is 6:00am and I am sitting in my kitchen where I just happened to plop down my laptop to make this entry. I have been working since early yesterday morning, and I have a meeting with a new client in just a few hours. As I thought about my morning meeting, it really hit me why this meeting feels different than so many others, and it inspired me to write you this blog entry.

In a short time, I will meet with somebody with whom I have already laid the groundwork of a personal relationship. He is a fellow member of a business networking group where we have both been members for some time. I see him every Thursday morning, and we have a mutual friendship and respect. You may be thinking that it would be great if every meeting could be so relaxed as this. The good news is that they can. It all starts with a relationship, because behind every business person is the person. Be certain that you express this in your business.