Thanks for asking. Our Oregon Small Business Boost day (business plan software free for Oregonians) yesterday went even better than expected. I like this summary from our local newspaper, which tagged it as “frenzy” on its front page this morning.

And you can click here for our summary of it.

We distributed more than 17,000 cards through 85 locations. By the next morning, we’d had people logging in and registering their new software from more than 170 different cities and towns in Oregon.

When some locations ran out of cards, we got them more units, even though we’d run out of the formal preprinted cards. We made do. As far as we know, no adult Oregonian who went to one of those locations to get Business Plan Pro for free was turned down.

That was hard. One location had 80 people waiting when they opened the doors. Several locations ran out within the first hour or two.

Was it worth it? Well, just for the skeptics, this was not a light version, hoping for an upgrade. It was Business Plan Pro Premier, the more expensive of the two versions we have. And it was not an end-of-market version either; it’s our latest, and just in case anybody notices a later version within the next few months, if that were to happen, it would be upgradable for free.

So was it worth it? I’m big on planning, objectives, and metrics. Here are some values:

• We won’t know for a while how many people actually used the software to create new

I thought it was one of my better posts ever on Huffington, A Great Debate About Ideas, because it covered something really important — the battle of free vs. not — and tied Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and Ellen Goodman together.

But it wasn’t, it turns out, because of a dull deadline. Maybe I should have called it “The Battle of Free vs. Not.” Hmm, no, see, I’m not that good at headlines. Naked idea orgy?

1. Delete it
2. Start over
3. Make it a list of 10
4. Make it a list of 5
5. Insult somebody famous
6. Find a way to add one or more of the words “naked, brutal, violent, sexy, stripped, revealed, angry, face-off” … or something like that.
7. Blame it on the readers, the editors, or anybody else you can think of.
8. Take a walk, and think about a single sentence that would make you want to read the rest of the post.
9. Go browse a blog reader like Google reader set to show just headlines. 
10. Go back to point 1 and go right down this list again.

True story: when I was young, working with UPI in Mexico City — we’re talking about early 1970s, so seriously, a long time ago — the system we used to report Mexico news to New York Editors showed them the first sentence only; from that, they had to decide whether or not they wanted to see the whole first paragraph. And, with that, they had to decide again (push a button) whether they wanted to see the rest of the story. So I should be able to do this.

And something else, that

Scott says yes, and

Steve says no. 

Both pieces are well written and well researched. William Blake said, in Proverbs of Heaven and Hell, “anything possible to be believed is an image of truth.” I’ve always liked that quote.

Tozzie concludes:

I can’t argue with the entrepreneurship numbers. But as one of Scott’s commenters points out, you get different trend lines depending on where you start counting. I think there could be an inflection point around the beginning of this decade that reflects growth of new types of ventures. Curious to hear more thoughts on this in comments or on Twitter.

What do you think?

You know the phrase:

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Right? You hear it a lot.

But what if, in fact, invention is the mother of necessity. Once the technology exists,  we then complicate things, demand more, and use up the productivity gain in raising the quality bar.

Take budgets, for example. I realize it’s hard for most people to imagine a world without ready access to spreadsheets (you’d almost have to be a baby boomer, since spreadsheets and personal computing burst onto the scene in the early 1980s). But spreadsheets changed what we expect of budgets and budgeting. The invention changed what we define as necessity. We can do the numbers now, so we demand more numbers.

Or word processing, and then, a few years later, desktop publishing. The combination completely changed what we expect of business correspondence. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but there was a time when we wrote letters and memos and mailed them. Yes, I mean using the post office, and postage stamps. Back then, we didn’t get hundreds of letters to answer every day. The invention changed the necessity. We can email now (or tweet, or blog), so the world demands more communication.

And cell phones.  Ah yes, lots of us remember the world before cell phones. We didn’t bug each other nearly as much, back before cell phones, as we do now; we didn’t expect phone calls checking in, updating each other, nearly as much. Less communication was acceptable.

Are we more productive? Who knows? Do we have a choice on the matter? No. Technology goes one way. Whether we like it or not.

I hope it doesn’t seem like total self promotion — I’ve tried to avoid that as much as possible on this blog — but hey, tomorrow Palo Alto Software is going to give away thousands of copies of Business Plan Pro (and not a light version, the upscale, premier version) for free to Oregonians who want it. I would like to think that’s newsworthy, even if it’s my company.

The video here is my talking for slightly less than three minutes, my summary of what happens tomorrow. And if you can’t see it for any reason, then please click here to go to the Youtube source.

And for more information, here’s the link to the page at Palo Alto Software that explains what we’re doing, and provides a map of the 85 locations (mostly town halls and chambers of commerce, no commercial locations (it really is a free giveaway)) where people can go tomorrow to get the software.

It’s just for the one day, tomorrow, July 1. For any Oregonian 18 years or older who goes to one of those locations to collect a download card.

I spent a spare moment on twitter last Saturday afternoon. It had been a busy day, a long drive home in the morning, quiet time to myself in the car, then an explosion of small children, a beautiful summer day, a nice dinner in the garden.

And I discovered this:

Top 10 Things All Women Need To Know About Men. It caught my eye in twitter, I clicked, I read. I liked the intro. I’m not a church goer myself, at least not anymore, but the introduction, church or not, God or not, was pleasant enough and engaging. Thoughtful.

I even like the list. There’s something in the tone that makes me like the author. I browsed his blog, called Big is the New Small, and liked a lot of what I saw there. His name is Scott Williams.

But parts of it bother me. Maybe at 61, almost 40 years married, I’m getting tired of the stereotypes. For example, when Scott writes …

We are not mind readers, say what’s really on your mind.

… I can’t help thinking how different his view is from my world. My wife has never had any trouble speaking her mind, some of my daughters do automatically, others don’t. And I don’t always. I don’t think this is a gender thing, certainly no more female than male.

And on this one:

We need our time alone: guys night out, man cave…

My response to this is: “wow, no offense to guy friends, but no thanks.” What with business to do, kids, family, trying to have a life … I never understood the guys’ night out syndrome. I never wanted it. Is that

If for any reason you don’t see this video here, you can click this link to jump to the source as it was posted on Youtube.

I like serendipity. Not just because the word sounds like a refreshing drink in the shade on a hot day, but because when serendipity happens, it’s always good. Here’s the Wikipedia definition:

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. …

So I had a great Friday: a nice drive from Eugene to Portland on a bright clear sunny early summer day, then lunch with Pamela Slim (@pamslim on twitter) and the second half of her Escape From Cubicle Nation workshop, with me included for a short guest spot on business planning. Then dinner with Pam and friends.

So what’s the serendipity here? It’s a reasonable question. It’s not like I didn’t already know Pam through telephone and email, and a lot of twitter; so I knew she does an excellent workshop. No surprise there — it was. And maybe you already take this for granted, but for me, at least, an old guy, the process of finding the real people through the blogs and tweets is a very special thrill. I’ve never been that good at cocktail parties or networking. But, through the magic of this new world, I’m meeting new people, and loving it.

So on Friday, I met Pam and several of her good friends, fellow bloggers and tweeters. We had a dinner hosted by @chrisguillebeau of The

Of course that’s before the big economic crash, but still, that’s interesting to me. A personal business is a non-farm business with no employees. The growth in personal businesses fits right in with the research Steve and his company have been doing for Intuit, on the new artisan economy.

The individual experts, consultants, graphic artists, bookkeepers,  designers, programmers and bloggers, among others, are part of this trend. You might be, too.

Of course that’s before the big economic crash, but still, that’s interesting to me. A personal business is a non-farm business with no employees. The growth in personal businesses fits right in with the research Steve and his company have been doing for Intuit, on the new artisan economy.

The individual experts, consultants, graphic artists, bookkeepers,  designers, programmers, and bloggers, among others, are part of this trend. You might be too.

Very good reminder here about the way words get diluted, and then useless. In my early days in the PC industry all software was supposedly “user friendly.” And that phrase ended up mocking, humorous, a caricature of hype.

In this same vein, Steve McKee writes Five Words to Never Use in an Ad in Business Week. And they aren’t what I would have thought, but, as soon as I think about it, he makes a great point.

The words? Well, for example, he finds the same underlying problem with “quality,” “value,” “service,” and “caring.”

The above four words all fail for essentially the same reasons. Not only are they overused, they’re based on variables that will be different for everyone. There’s a quality/value/service/caring continuum in each person’s mind for every purchase occasion, and it is a continually moving target.

And the fifth word, “integrity,” is one that you have or you don’t; and you don’t get by proclaiming it.

A company either has integrity or it doesn’t. It’s either honest or it isn’t. And most people give companies the benefit of the doubt in believing that they operate with integrity. When a company talks about integrity in its advertising it’s for one of two reasons, neither one of them good: They’re either trying to cover up some lack of integrity (which never works) or they’re implying they live by a higher standard than their competition. That’s impolite, to say the least. Every company needs to have integrity. No company needs to advertise

You know who you are. You hate selling, but here you are, making your way as entrepreneur, having to sell or sink.

Me? I’m a terrible salesperson. I’m also bad at networking, cocktail parties, and small talk with people I don’t know. Do I seem stuck up, aloof? Not really, just awkward.

I’m probably still scarred from my miserable failure at selling encyclopedias when I was in high school. I spent all summer, never made a sale, never managed to convince even a single person that I was really conducting an educational survey, and not selling encyclopedias. That miserable summer might have been what led me to hippiedom, way back when … but that’s a separate story.

And yet, hating to sell or not, I sold myself to business clients well enough to support a big family on my business plan consulting for 15 or so years, while simultaneously starting to build Palo Alto Software as a product business.

And I’ve had the privilege of working with and watching some greats in this category. I watched, and I learned. It comes down to 5 points:

1. Really listen

Really. Shut up for a bit and listen to the other person. No, don’t half listen while your mind races ahead to the next point. Really listen, and absorb what they’re saying. I like this quote in a Time magazine interview with Larry King:

I never learned anything while talking.

2. Empathize

There’s no way to avoid it: you have to actually feel what this other person is feeling. Jump into their skin, or into their head, and look out from inside their head at the rest of the world. My mother used to call it putting yourself

• Scenario 1: Company goes to the bank in April with business plan output showing they’re going to need a bridge loan to finance an expansion over the summer.
• Scenario 2: Company goes to the bank on Tuesday needing a bridge loan to meet payroll on Friday.

I’m guessing that you’re guessing right. The company in scenario 1 gets the loan, the other one doesn’t. That’s about 10 times out of 10.

What brings this to mind is the New Intuit Future of Small Business Report-Credit Outlook, released last week, titled Where Small Is Going.

The report, the research, sponsored by Intuit and conducted by Emergent Research, comes up with some important (although not surprising) key points:

• Community banks and credit unions can be an excellent and accessible source of credit for small businesses that meet their lending criteria. They want the business and are ready to lend.
• Businesses that can demonstrate the ability to manage assets and cash flow will find credit is still available, although not unlimited.
• Credit availability will remain tight. Even though community banks and credit unions are looking to expand small business lending, they simply don’t have the asset base to

• Scenario 1: company goes to the bank in April with business plan output showing you’re going to need a bridge loan to finance an expansion over the summer.
• Scenario 2: company goes to the bank on Tuesday needing a bridge loan to meet payroll on Friday.

I’m guessing that you’re guessing right. The company in scenario 1 gets the loan, the other one doesn’t. That’s about 10 times out of 10.

What brings this to mind is the New Intuit Future of Small Business Report - Credit Outlook - released last week, titled Where Small Is Going.

The report, The research, sponsored by Intuit and conducted by Emergent Research, comes up with some important (although not surprising) key points:

• Community banks and credit unions can be an excellent and accessible source of credit for small businesses who meet their lending criteria. They want the business and are ready to lend.
• Businesses that can demonstrate the ability to manage assets and cash flow will find credit is still available, although not unlimited.
• Credit availability will remain tight. Even though community banks and credit unions are looking to expand small business lending they simply don’t have the asset base to replace the large

How does business planning change in this new world of instant media, short attention spans, and rapid change? Is it different these days? Can we plan at all? And secondly, from the point of view of the angel investor, what does an investor look at in a business plan.

I had a very friendly, fun, and I hope useful, radio session with Barbara Weltman earlier this week. We talked about how business planning is changing in the very fast-changing, short-attention-span world we live in.

Barbara has posted the interview online so you can access it now. The first part is a general review of business planning in times of change, can we plan, how do we plan, and how different is it in this brave new world:

And in the second part, Barbara asked me about my recent experience as a member of an angel investor group, reviewing plans and eventually choosing one for investment with my own money (as part of a larger group).

Each of these parts takes about 12 minutes.