If you run a subscription-based web service — or “software as a subscription” (SaaS) to be all fancy about it — you know that it’s not as easy as an inventory-based business to measure. If you’re selling widgets, you can figure out what your product cost is and then calculate your margins based on how much you sell and at what price.

Ultimately, subscription software is similar, but there are key differences. Since commitments are effectively open-ended — regardless of whether you sell by the month or year — you need to be able to calculate things like lifetime value and churn rates to figure out just how profitable you are. The nice thing about a recurring revenue business, though, is that you have ongoing revenue streams from a single customer without having to sell them more widgets. But how do you accurately forecast revenue and profitability?

As someone who has owned and operated a SaaS company for almost 13 years, these are issues that I have had to work through over time. When I started out, I had no clue what I was doing. Even today, I could be better at the measurement and metrics side of my own business.

That’s why I was excited when I clicked over to David Skok’s “SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters.” It’s more than a blog post. It’s actually a crash course in the economics and management of a subscription-based web service business. It includes fantastic charts, sample information and real world behind-the-scenes data and insight from two of the major players in this arena — NetSuite and HubSpot.

Thanks to Mukund Mohan for tweeting about this piece. It’s a must read if you are in the business or thinking about getting into SaaS.

Two of my New England social media friends had a bit of a debate about content marketing yesterday. Chris Brogan strongly argued that your writing needs to contain an “ask” to be marketing and CC Chapman just as forcefully disagreed.

First, let’s take a look at the actual argument. Then we can explore the more fundamental question about the role that content plays with both sales and marketing.

Chris Brogan:

And Never Waste Content Without Offering an ‘Ask’ of Some Kind

If you’re not putting some kind of potential hook to future business into your efforts, you’re not content marketing. You’re writing. And that’s great. But it’s not going to help your business, as such.

CC Chapman:

One of the rules that I share with audiences and clients all the time is to “share or solve, don’t shill.” Having an ask in every piece of content would become shilling in a rapid fashion and that is going to turn people off. But, if you share useful information, peeks behind the curtain or answer questions that are being asked you are going to be more attractive to the audience you desire.

Chris knows this. For years he has been creating content that isn’t full of shilling and yet today he is telling his flock to do exactly that.

In the simplest possible terms, I agree with CC on this issue. However, I think much of it comes down to understanding the difference between sales and marketing. What Chris says certainly applies if you are looking at a piece of content as a sales tool. However, sales and marketing are different, albeit related, animals.

Sales requires a clear call to action because it drives directly to a specific decision. Marketing, on the other hand, can be successful in building awareness and reminding potential buyers and influencers about the value you have to offer. Half of the battle for many businesses in simply being in the mind of a buyer when it comes time for them to make a purchasing decision. As a consultant, I know most of my prospects don’t need my services when I first talk to them — or at least may not be prepared to commit. Some of my marketing efforts, then, are designed simply to keep my name in front of them so when they have that “aha!” moment, they will remember to ask me for a proposal.

Let’s look at some real world examples of content that may have marketing value without including an explicit ask:

• When an artist performs the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, is that marketing or just singing?
• When Richard Blanco read his poem at President Obama’s second inauguration, was that marketing or just reading?
• When an inventor gets interviewed on 60 Minutes, is that marketing or just talking?
• When the head of an advocacy group gets an op-ed placed in the New York Times, is that marketing or just writing?
• When a fundraiser sends a congratulatory note to a potential donor, is that marketing or just scribbling?

Of course, the argument isn’t nearly this simple — otherwise CC and Chris wouldn’t be having a disagreement. There’s absolutely value in introducing sales into your marketing efforts from time to time. That’s where Chris’s demand for a strong call to action plays a role. But you need not ask for something every time.

In the era of content marketing and social media, so much of what we do is about building relationships. Those relationships require trust and mutual benefit. That’s where CC’s admonition to “share or solve, don’t shill” comes in.

Writing might be just writing if you put it in your journal, but once you distribute it to potential buyers or influencers, it usually becomes marketing. When you add an “ask,” now you have sales.

As media outlets scramble to find workable revenue models, they often focus on advertisers and lose sight of the consumers. Ultimately, a strong audience helps generate income, so that’s a mistake

An old friend of mine wrote on Facebook this morning about a minor New England snow event overnight:

That wasn’t so much of a storm as a little snow. Why must we hype every little snowfall into a named storm???

My response was simple: “media ad revenue.” Sure, the Weather Channel dresses it up as a public service. Here’s some of their official logic:

• Naming a storm raises awareness.
• Attaching a name makes it much easier to follow a weather system’s progress.
• A storm with a name takes on a personality all its own, which adds to awareness.
• In today’s social media world, a name makes it much easier to reference in communication.
• A named storm is easier to remember and refer to in the future.

But ultimately it allows the Weather Channel to increase readership and viewership since they “own” the name (it isn’t generated by a government agency, as is the case with hurricanes).

In fact, they admit that it’s not all about public service at the tail end of their justification:

Finally, it might even be fun and entertaining and that in itself should breed interest from our viewing public and our digital users.

Ultimately, that’s a mistake. Unfortunately, this is the same media outlet that took a perfectly usable one page digest of the day’s weather and broke it up into multiple pages, presumably to increase page views (and thus the theoretical revenue potential).

The Weather Channel does not stand alone. More and more media outlets have gone to the practice of breaking up news stories over multiple pages. This isn’t convenient for the reader, but it does allow more ads to be displayed. Other websites have become fond of “slide shows” where simple lists get turned into multi-page image galleries. Often the images add next to no value, but again they spike page views and the perception of a site’s traffic.

Successful media outlets will come to understand that the relationship to the audience must come first and revenue will follow. I’m a huge believer in the notion that content does not want to be free, but it’s important to deliver real value to attract a sticky and happy audience that will pay subscription fees, support sponsors, click on ads, or otherwise “pay” for the information provided.

I have been a devoted user of the Thesis framework for WordPress for some time now. I have purchased licenses to use their software for myself and my clients. In fact, this site is built on Thesis, as are most of the ones I have built over the past several years. I routinely recommend Thesis to friends, clients, and anyone else who will listen because it has some nice features to make creating WordPress sites easy and well-structured. It also makes it pretty simple to reuse bits of code from one project to the next without having to dig through complicated theme files.

Naturally, when I needed to build a new website for a marketing project for Franeo over the weekend, I turned to Thesis. I discovered that there was a brand new version of the product, which made me pretty excited. As a tech geek, I always enjoy playing with new features.

Unfortunately, I found the totally revamped Thesis interface to be much more difficult to use. Yes, it appears that it may give more flexibility than earlier versions, but it comes at the cost of a pretty steep learning curve. I even watched a Thesis power user’s unofficial video tutorial for what should have been a simple task — and it took him more than 5 minutes with repeated mistakes and confusion to get the job done. (Honestly, I would have reshot the video, but so be it.)

So I figured if I was going to have to learn something new, I should conduct a quick review of what else is in the marketplace today. In the past, I have used Genesis, but I never quite fell in love with it. I was about to take a new look at it when I stumbled across a WordPress framework that hadn’t really caught my eye before, although I had heard of it.

Headway seems to offer everything that the new version of Thesis promises — an easy, clickable interface that allows even non-designers to create pretty sites. Yes, it still requires graphic design and CSS skills to produce something more than a pretty vanilla site, but it does take a lot of the challenge out of basic layout and formatting. Bottom line: I found it to be a a nice product to use.

This isn’t a review of Headway vs. Thesis — I may do that at some future point. Instead, I’m writing about this to underscore the point that the web makes it easy for one product to disrupt another. Finding new product options is often as easy as typing something like “Thesis competitor” or “Thesis alternative” in a search engine.

With the ease of finding replacement products, customers become more fickle. Companies — especially those that depend on the web for business — need to be constantly aware of this. It cuts both ways. It can be a great way for upstarts to find customers, but it’s also a threat to incumbents who may become too complacent.

Disruptive ideas don’t always have to be fancy inventions or monumental scientific discoveries. Sometimes, it’s just some healthy common sense provided in a compelling fashion. Delivered to the right person at the right time, it can have a truly disruptive impact.

That’s how I see CC Chapman’s latest book, Amazing Things Will Happen. It’s got a nice combination of CC’s personal history, motivational stories, cautionary tales, and business insight. It’s not a business book or a self-help book, but it can fill some of those needs for folks who like such things. It’s not an autobiography, but I learned things about CC that I didn’t know after being his friend for a number of years now.

I guess that means that Amazing Things is everything that it is not. And that’s a good thing. It’s not trying too hard to be a “typical” book. Like CC, it blazes its own path.

It’s easy, enjoyable reading that can’t help but inspire you to reexamine what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. It contains practical pointers for maximizing your time and achieving work-life balance. CC really believes in finding ways to be happy, not just successful.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a worker bee, there’s something for you in CC Chapman’s Amazing Things Will Happen.

For many, the ability to drive represents a key milestone of freedom in America. The ability to grab the steering wheel and take your car across town or even across the country has been idealized as part of our society for more than three quarters of a century.

Dan Neil of he Wall Street Journal explores the ongoing effort to take manual control of the car out of the equation. There would still be freedom to get around, but the ultimate feeling of control might be diminished just a bit as computers take over the actual driving responsibility.

As someone who personally hates driving, I welcome that day. It simply cannot come soon enough.

My personal desires notwithstanding, here’s why the idea of computer-assisted driving is so disruptive:

The cost of automobile accidents in the U.S. (measured in death, disability, health care and property loss) totals $300 billion annually, according to AAA estimates. The cost of traffic congestion (lost productivity, wasted petroleum, among other factors) AAA reckons at about $100 billion. Taken together, the costs of automotive death and delay equal 2.6% of GDP.

If technology can help make us safer and more efficient in our travels, let’s get there sooner than later.

The premise of this blog is to share disruptive ideas and opinions. Sometimes they can be controversial, as well, especially on the rare occasions that I choose to tackle things like politics or religion. So be it.

In the United States, we had a tradition of presidents serving no more than two terms starting with George Washington and ending with Franklin Roosevelt. FDR’s decision to continue running for re-election after two terms led to the passage of a constitutional amendment that turned that tradition into a rule.

Most presidents have chosen to seek a second term. Indeed, only a small handful chose not to seek a second full term. LBJ’s famous “I shall not seek” speech was given after the 1968 presidential primary campaign was already underway, thus making it less than truly voluntary. The last president who proactively chose not to seek re-election was Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

In a 2005 article at the start of President George W. Bush’s second term, Susan Page of USA Today wrote:

Of the 15 previous presidents who have been elected and then re-elected, not one had a more successful second term than his first, according to presidential historian Robert Dallek. For seven, the second term was catastrophic: Felled by assassination or illness, or mired in corruption and controversy.

Given this track record, perhaps we should look to start a new tradition in America: the one-term president. Rather than treating that term as a derisive one as it is now (most use the term to dismiss a politician they dislike, “Oh, we was a one-term guy”), we should view those who voluntarily serve one term as those who go to Washington to make a difference and then move on.

The end of one presidential election inevitably starts the speculation for the next campaign. Who will challenge the incumbent? Presidents cannot help but factor in politics into their policy decisions. Since modern presidents who have failed to achieve a second term have all faced primary challenges, new presidents must typically cater to their party’s base to retain office.

We already have one branch of government inextricably tied to daily political considerations. Congress was designed to be responsive to the people, especially in the House of Representatives, and a good case can be made that it should be — despite the tumultuous results that often ensue.

We have another branch of government that faces comparatively little daily political considerations. The judiciary, with its life terms, enjoys a fair amount of insulation. Though this sometimes leads to judges veering substantially from the views they expressed prior to nomination and confirmation, this, too, is probably a good thing.

As a conservative, I’m not necessarily opposed to gridlock. Indeed, a “do nothing Congress” doesn’t sound that bad to me — most of the time. After all, if those folks aren’t enacting new laws, it’s hard for them to make things worse.

At the same time, there are things that need to be done. The economic and fiscal crisis facing the United States represents a real threat. The failure of our elected leaders to do anything other than kick the can down the road exposes all of us to the potential of a darker future.

As a partisan myself, I would prefer to see conservative policies adopted. But even more important is that we come up with a clear and convincing plan to get our financial house in order as a nation.

That’s where a one-term president could help. Second term presidents often lack the enthusiasm and vigor of a newcomer, despite the fact that they have become unshackled from the concerns of base politics. The media and pundits dismiss them as “lame ducks.” That’s much harder to do with a freshly elected president.

Although I have no reason to believe it will happen, I would love to see Mitt Romney announce in his convention speech that he will seek just one term as president. It would send a powerful message that the presidency is about leading and solving problems, not holding the ultimate seat of power in the world at all costs.

As I was perusing the November 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics (via the Zinio app on my iPad, of course), I came across a brief item about the British Antarctic Survey and the discovery of some active undersea volcanoes in the South Atlantic Ocean. “New species have been found nearby,” reports the magazine.

I have always been a big fan of space exploration, but over the past decade or so I have become much more intrigued by underwater exploration. It’s not as sexy as the search for alien life or the quest for an answer to the origins of the universe, but it can be just as exciting — and probably have more practical applications in terms of things like health, energy, and the environment. Plus we don’t have to travel for weeks, months or years just to get in a position to make observations.

There are practical implications to this way of thinking that impact us in our businesses and our lives. It is easy for all of us to get enamored with the idea of solving the biggest problems that get the most attention from the media and the public.

But some of the best ideas, the most successful companies, and the smartest life decisions come from not looking at the stars but at looking around us. What challenges and opportunities are within easy reach? Figuring out how to make a battery with longer life may not get the same attention as finding the ultimate cure for cancer, but it may well have more impact on more lives over time.

As a society, it is good for us to have people tacking the biggest problems. And you or I may be the one to do it. But there are lots of great things to be done closer to home.

I have found myself this week spending a lot of time thinking about what is in store in the future. I have been pondering this question from a number of different angles, including business, product, marketing, technology, and more. I’ve even been considering where I’m headed personally when it comes to things like running (do I try a full marathon next year?).

This has led me to a few observations:

The Future is Unknowable. So Don’t Try Too Hard. We can all make reasonable judgments about what is in store down the road for ourselves and our companies. But ultimately we don’t really know what is going to happen, so it isn’t worth getting too wound up about the possibilities, good or bad.

Stuff Happens. The Future Changes. Just when you think you have the full menu of options for the future in front of you, some new event or piece of information will likely crop up that switches up the dynamic. For example, many of my significant career path transformations have come out of left field and been executed incredibly swiftly. 

We’re All Working with Imperfect Information. Because the future is unknowable and facts can change at any time, we’re all forced to make decisions without a full picture in front of us. But so is everyone else involved in that decision-making process, so from that perspective we’re generally on a level playing field (unless, of course, others are deliberately withholding material facts, but that’s a topic for another post).

Sometimes You Hit Curveballs for Home Runs. If you make the wrong decision today, it might end up being the right decision months or years from now. As I look back over the past 5 or 10 years, there are plenty of decisions that in the immediate aftermath I thought may have been poor judgments, but today look pretty fortuitous. It’s all what you make of the course of events.

Exciting Changes Can Be Scary. Scary Changes Can Be Exciting. Since I like challenges, I like change. If it looks like bad news, I often like it because it forces rethinking things. If it seems like good news, I like it because it usually means some sort of growth.

We Overthink the Unfamiliar. I had a great conversation with a fellow entrepreneur earlier this week who passed on some great advice from a mentor. The first time you do something, you spend a lot of time worrying and planning. The second time, you trust your instincts and work more quickly.

So don’t worry too much about the future, but embrace the change that it inevitably brings.

Yesterday I completed my first half marathon. And that was goal #1: to finish. Check. My secondary goal was to finish in less than 2:30. I beat that mark by a bit more than 5 minutes, coming in at 2:24:44. So a successful experience.

Of course, I have lots of room for improvement still. I finished 872 out of 1031 overall and 116 out of 120 in the Men’s 30-39 division at the Seacoast Half Marathon in Portsmouth, NH. I suspected that would be the case since after about mile 3 the only men I saw seemed to be either those running with a female friend/spouse or a couple of older gentlemen. But, hey, it was my first half marathon, so I’m not displeased. And at least I finished before the 3 hour mark when they would have closed the course!

The final week leading up to the race was less than ideal from a preparation standpoint. We changed our clocks, then I flew out to Denver and did my usual bang-up job of adapting to time zone changes (so I got very little sleep). My training runs were all at altitude, something I haven’t really done before. Fortunately, I was smart enough to reluctantly pass up an invitation from Maggie Fox to join a small group from the Defrag conference on a 6 mile trail run on Thursday morning. Although I was tempted, the risk of injury was too high since I am not an experienced trail runner. (Side note: it was great to see Maggie in person for the first time in 4 years … real world interaction beats online every time.)

The course itself was nice for the most part. It included a run along the ocean and through historic New Castle, NH. There were mostly gentle hills, although there was a steep climb in the 13th mile — something that just seemed cruel to many of us who were talking about it before and during the race. The final 100 yards were all downhill, however, so it gave the illusion of finishing strong.

Since the start/finish line was at Portsmouth High School (where I graduated 20+ years ago) it was just a 5 minute walk from where I grew up. Since my parents still live there, my wife and kids and I joined them for dinner on Saturday night. Then my Dad, Jen, and the kids came out to the finish line to see me at the end of the race. After eating like a horse at a local pizza place, we headed home where I caught up on email and took a nap.

Today I’m still a bit achy. More sore than after a typical 10+ mile training run but not bad considering it was my first ever race at this distance. Of course, the remnants of last week’s travel, time change, and a nagging head cold have left me feeling pretty well spent today. I think after powering through race day, it is beginning to catch up with me.

After this race, I’m already looking for more to run. I have one or two 5k’s on the schedule for the rest of this year and then the next confirmed one is the National Half Marathon in March. I like the 13.1 mile distance so I may do a few others in the near future. There’s another one in NH in February (yep, that will be cold) and I also saw that there’s a Miami Half Marathon in late January. That could be fun!

I think I’m going to concentrate on improving my half marathon performance a bit before I attempt a marathon — if I end up doing that distance. We shall see.