1. Don't be that guy who always arrives late to meetings.
2. Don't be that guy who walks past someone he knows without saying hello and smiling.
3. Don't be that guy who brown bags his lunch on the company barbecue day.
4. Don't be that guy who knocks on the executives office door and forgets the reason they wanted to talk to them.
5. Don't be that guy who checks his blackberry during a meeting about improving communication skills.
6. Don't be that guy who calls the person on the phone an idiot, thinking they are on mute.
7. Don't be that guy who accidentally deletes the only copy of his slide deck the morning he has to give his presentation.
8. Don't be that guy who gets carried out at the company Holiday party.
9. Don't be that guy who drops the f-bomb in a sales pitch to prospective clients.
10. Don't be that guy who charges his monthly trip to the salon on his Corporate credit card.

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It can be argued that the true face of Apple is Steve Jobs.

Although he has great people that work for him, from the designers who first prototyped the Apple ipod, to the sales force that pushes these one of a kind products to the masses; when you mention Apple, the first person that comes to mind is Mr. Jobs. He is a visionary leader who will be written about in history books for quite some time.

 The Apple product line consists of the Macbooks, Ipods, Iphones, and Operating systems to name a few. Each product has the Apple design quality of standard built into it from inception. Needless to say, when you pickup an Apple product, you know it is from Apple. With consumers bragging to their friends about the Apple product line, and how it is so cool to be an Apple user, why is Apple in trouble?

Today Apple announced that Jobs will not be presenting at the opening keynote address at the 2009 Macworld Conference and Expo. It will now be handed over to Philip Schiller, the SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing.

The problem I have with this transition is that people know Steve Jobs. They know what he is about, and that is user interface and design; he breathes it like a fat kid likes cake. We know nothing about Mr. Schiller. For all we know he is a guy in a business suit just trying to push the Apple products because it's his job to do so. Mr. Schiller will have to earn the trust and credibility that took Steve Jobs a whole career to build up. This also raises questions about the image of Apple. With the lingering rumours about Steve Jobs' health, how will Apple look like with Steve Jobs playing a lesser role to the forefront of Apple consumers? 

Apple needs a leader who is as passionate and genuine about its products as Steve Jobs. To put someone at the helm of these consumer addresses without the public knowing who he is will be very risky. I am anticipating that the keynote that Mr. Schiller delivers will have mixed reviews and will raise even more questions of the strategy to replace Mr. Jobs in consumer product addresses. They set the standard with Mr. Jobs and his black shirt. It's extremely difficult to walk in his shoes. Apple is in trouble until further notice.

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In Canada:

Financial Post article on Baystreet job cuts

"It is estimated that more than 100,000 jobs have disappeared from the banking and brokerage industry worldwide since the credit crisis began last year."

Report on Business Article : "Canada job cuts looming"

"In fact, Canadian employers shed 70,600 jobs in November, the most since 1982, Statistics Canada said Friday."

The Windsor Star

"The list of announcements of forthcoming plant closures and layoffs is being expanded almost daily, and it is clear that the worst is yet to come on the employment front, with the unemployment rate creeping up steadily towards seven per cent," warned CIBC World Markets economist Krishen Rangasamy. He said the economy could easily lose a further 100,000 jobs over the coming few months."

In the States:

Times online : Massive Job losses hit Canada, U.S.

"The Labour Department reported that 533,000 workers had been laid off in November, 183,000 more than expected."

"There are now 10.3 million Americans out of work, two million more than the population of New York City. America’s jobless rate is now at 6.7 per cent, and employment figures are widely expected to worsen next year after a number of banks implement plans to cut thousands of staff."

 “In the past six months, the United States has lost 1.55 million jobs, almost as many as were lost in the whole 2001 recession, which included 9/11 and the two months after. The pace of job losses is accelerating alarmingly.”

The Boston Globe: Bank of America to cut up to 35,000 jobs

"Bank of America said yesterday said it plans to cut up to 35,000 jobs over the next three years, about 10 percent of its workforce, as it absorbs its $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. and a rapidly weakening economy."

"In November, Citigroup said it would reduce its worldwide employment by more than 50,000, and Sun MicroSystems disclosed plans to cut 6,000 workers, 18 percent of its workforce."

"Since November, other major local financial firms announced sizable layoffs, including 3,000 by Fidelity Investments, and up to 1,800 jobs by State Street Corp., about 6 percent of its total workforce."

These are certainly tough times for everyone, with things only about to get worse! If you liked this post, please feel free to subscribe to my rss feed here or visit another post  at www.ragobeer.com

I need to ask your opinion on something. Would you read this blog again if you didn't find value in what you were reading? In addition, if you obtained a bread loaf of value by reading this post, would you return if you did not trust what I was writing about? The answer, with high probability, is no, you would not return. The same is true with respect to how people form relationships with products and businesses: if there is no value, and no trust among the two parties, no connection and no relationship is built.

Outside of the value proposition that must exist from day 1, the often overlooked characteristic, trust, is a huge component to staying power in any industry. As a result, there is a key concept of trust that I would like to discuss, in particular: how does one build trust?

How to build trust

It is no secret that trust, both in our personal and professional lives is a very important asset. It takes time and trust to build trust. As I believe, there are several levels of trust that can be built:

1. Based on the mistrust of others in your discipline, I am willing to trust you. (The forceful trust based on limited options)
2. Based on what I know and what I have been taught, I will take a chance and trust you.
3. Based on what people whom I trust tell me, I can trust you.
4. Based on my past experience with trusting you, I can trust you going forward.

"It takes time and trust to build trust"

-Christopher Ragobeer

Top 4 ways to establish and maintain trust with someone or something:

1. Be truthful. Trying to trick people to land a sale or to extract value in your favour can prove to be dangerous. The "trick" is only good for short-term gains and can come as a sacrifice to long-term success. If you are truthful with someone they will remember it, and often reciprocate with you.

2. Communicate possible pitfalls that people should know about. I don't know what I don't know. However, if you know something that can help me make a better decision, and you are helpful in bringing awareness to these facts, you will be thought of as a person who is looking out for peoples best interests. Establishing a track record in this space will be a huge benefit and a key component to your longevity.

3. Do what you promised to do.  If you have promised someone to do something, do it! If you think you are unable to deliver on your promise, be honest about it, and try to make up for it by delivering something else at a higher magnitude. It's about managing expectations. People are going to gravitate to you because they EXPECT good advice, great quality, and to solve the puzzle they are confused about -- and you WANT them to come to you. Deliver on or exceed their expectations every time and create a consistent track record.

4. Do what you promised to do. See #3 - This is a very important point.

There you have it, you are on your way to establishing and maintaining trust with people.

I am an early student of "trust" theory. Please let me know if there is anything that I have missed in this post. In addition, if you liked this post, please feel free to subscribe to my rss feed here or visit another post  at www.ragobeer.com

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n²).

The theory was first introduced by Robert Metcalfe around 1980 in his research in the field of networks and ethernet.

While this law can be attributed to telecommunication networks, it can be applied to the web, computers or even personal relationships. The central idea of the law is that value increases as more and more nodes are introduced into the network.

However, there are some articles that argue that Metcalfe's law is wrong. Could it be? Let's dig further into this subject:



The foundation of his  law is the observation that in a communications network with n members, each can make (n–1) connections with other participants. If all those connections are equally valuable—and this is the big "if" as far as we are concerned—the total value of the network is proportional to n(n–1), that is, roughly, n ². While the cost to sustain the network grows linearly. It is at the crossover point where the value of the network becomes profitable -- some people call this "critical mass".

However, instead of the network growing at n ^2.  it is believed to be closer to n log(n). One thing is for sure: It must be between linear and exponential growth.



As there are negative factors that come with growing networks ie, security, spam, noise, it is hard to estimate the "true" value of the network as a function of its growth.

The fundamental flaw to Metcalfe's law is that an equal value is designated to each node in the network, a key important flaw. The maximum connections in the network display the potential amount of connections that can be made. However, there are often cases where a connection between two nodes, people, computers etc. have no relationship, therefore, the value of that connection should equal 0.

If Metcalfe's Law were true, then two networks ought to interconnect regardless of their relative sizes. But in the real world of business and networks, only companies of roughly equal size are ever eager to interconnect. In most cases, the larger network believes it is helping the smaller one far more than it itself is being helped.

Bottom line : Metcalfe's law is severely flawed.

I recently had the opportunity to vist the n49 booth at SES Toronto a week ago. Before I get into talking about the product I would like to mention the friendliness of the n49 team. Specifically, Tina A and just the video guy (I lost his business card, but he knows who he is). They richly informed me of the service that they are offering but in a non-salesman like fashion. I always appreciate people talking passionately about a product that they believe in.

What is n49.ca?

(As described on their site)

n49 is about sharing thoughts, opinions and experiences about local businesses. n49 allows you find and review local businesses, make friends with other n49ers, and create and share your personal business directory. n49ers rate and review restaurants, nightclubs, auto mechanics, spas, and just about anything else!

Businesses generating buzz- those most reviewed and favoured by members- find themselves comfortably at the top of search results. n49 lets you decide what the best businesses in your area are!

Features that the site has

Search for local businesses, and friends.

Rate a review on a system of 5 stars.

Review a local business.

Listyour business on n49 adding all types of media to it such as video, text, blogs etc.

You can think of it as a Canadian version of Yelp.

Business Model

I believe n49 makes money on sponsored listings that are on the top of search results.

My two cents

1) I don't get the name n49? It doesn't describe anything about what the business does: local business reviews.

2) I noticed by looking at profiles, that many people don't have any friends. A cool feature that they may want to add is a contact importer where someone can enter their gmail or yahoo email and see what friends are on the site already. Maybe I have a couple friends on the site and I don't know?

3) I noticed a bug in the software. When I received my notification e-mail it said my "  Your username is: " without printing my username.  :)

4) It's impressive that n49 donates $1 for every review you make on the site. Based on their revenues, I wonder if that would be hard to scale. Setting expectations at the beginning of the service is very important and could be detrimental. Good job with the charity feature!

5) I find it weird that in a local review site, you have the ability to put your relationship status. Local review business and dating site perhaps?

The n49 team definitely has put together a great service for people looking for reviews of local businesses around them. Let's hope it's a success!

My page is at http://ragobeer.n49.ca . If anyone decides to check out the service, look me up! (since I have no friends that I'm aware of :) )