Pete Gombert

2011 is behind us now and I for one have mixed emotions.  

On a positive note.  There is something refreshing about a new year that helps people to re-align, gain perspective and gear up for a whole new year.

On the negative side I am a little sad to see 2011 go simply because Balihoo accomplished so much this past year and in nearly every regard it was a breakout year for the company.

2011 saw Balihoo grow at an impressive rate for a fourth year in a row (80% year over year) and add some tremendous new clients to our already impressive roster.  We pushed our clients to think more about local digital and introduced the concept of the Local Web to the world.    

2012 is set to be another explosive year of growth for Balihoo and we have some extremely interesting new features and concepts we will be releasing so make sure to follow us, like us or sign up for our resource center to stay on top of the latest developments with Balihoo and local marketing.  

The local marketing landscape is changing at an unprecedented pace and only time will tell where 2012 will take us, I for one am looking forward to a very big year.

I took a small break last week with my wife and went down to the Four Seasons in Scottsdale ( http://www.fourseasons.com/scottsdale and @fsscottsdale ) for some R&R.  We have been to the resort several times in the past and have always gone in celebration of either my Birthday or our Anniversary (which fall fairly close together).  

In this case my birthday is right around the corner and it happens to be a fairly big one, so we decided to go back because the resort is one of our favorite places.  In the past I have always let the hotel know if there was a special  occasion for them to take into account.  In most cases they will welcome us with a bottle of champagne or a nice desert, which is a very nice touch.  However, on this occasion it slipped my mind to remind them that we were coming for my Birthday.  Despite my omission, someone or some marketing system recognized our name and made it a priority to welcome us in grand style.  

This is a picture of the welcome gift that was waiting in our room for us:



And this was the card:



The Four Seasons went out of their way to make sure we had a wonderful start to our vacation and this little touch of thoughtfulness is now being spread both by me verbally to all my friends and by me socially to all readers of this blog and my Twitter followers.  Now that is effective local marketing.  

While Balihoo focuses on local marketing automation, it's always nice to see local affiliates going the extra mile with service to round out the efforts that can't be automated.

Today’s marketing environment is one which we have all been dreaming about for years.  We have more data, more targeting opportunities and more engagement than ever before.  However, one BIG segment of the marketing population has been left out of this revolution, the local marketer. 

The reality of today’s marketing environment is that we have moved from art to science, and technology plays a significant role in this new era.  The problem is that most of  your local partners –do not have the time or the technical expertise to take advantage of this brave new world.  In the past this was not a big deal because audiences were concentrated and the local marketer did not need either strategic or technical sophistication to be successful.  Today that is not the case.  With our highly fragmented and technical marketing landscape, it is much harder for your local partners to be successful in their marketing efforts. 

That leaves you with one massive issue.  How can you, as a national brand, leverage all of this sophisticated technology at the national level and then knowingly risk losing the customer at the final stages of the buying process because your local partner is not able to meaningfully engage in the process . 

If you are not highly focused on local marketing, that is exactly what you are doing.  You are leaving the most important part of the sales process up to chance.  The last mile has always played a key role in the sales process – but it has never been more important for you to be focused on helping your channel partners be successful in this age of technical marketing.

A couple of months ago I was asked to sit on a panel at a fabulous conference in Vail, Co which was put on by Pacific Crest (the investment bank).  The subject was "local marketing", which is right up my alley, so I accepted.  

The conference was held last week and my panel started off with a simple question - "what is local marketing?"  I was struck by the simplicity of the question and as people on the panel started to answer I noticed a certain bias both in the panel and in the audience.  When people think about local marketing they typically think about small/medium business (SMB) marketing, and that is a massive mistake.  Local marketing is not defined by the size or geography of the marketer, it is defined by the geographic reach of the message.  

In fact, according to this BIA/Kelsey report nearly 80% of all ad dollars spent in local markets is spent by National brands - a whopping $105 billion.  This is critical for anyone focused on Local to understand.  

The key to unlocking the $130 billion spent in local markets is not in enabling the local SMB to market effectively. The answer lies in providing solutions to national brands which enable them to more efficiently and effectively vary their message, mix and cadence at the local level.  Often times this execution involves the participation of a local channel partner - distributor, dealer, agent, franchisee, and that relationship must be facilitated seamlessly, but just as often the execution is completely independent of any local involvement.

On the flip-side, solutions which focus on SMB marketing, must not be limited to local.  SMB's often sell their products all over the country or the world.  Marketing solutions targeted at SMB's should facilitate the execution of messages nationally or internationally, not just locally.

Use these equations from now on:

SMB = (Local + National + International Marketing) done by a small/medium sized business
Local = (SMB + National Brands) marketing on the local level








 

This is the fourth post in my series called Local Marketing Mondays. The previous posts covered the topics of:

• Education
• Great Creative
• Providing Guidance

This post will cover the topic of providing tools to local marketers.

Tools should be seen as just that - tools. They are not silver bullets. They are are not magic marketing pixie dust. They are tools. Now that being said, anyone who has used a spoon to dig a ditch or a saw with a dull blade can tell you just how important it is to:

1. Use the right tool
2. Make sure the tool is high quality
3. Make sure the tool is in good condition

Tools vary widely in the local marketing arena. You have e-mail marketing tools, ad builders, printers and their on-line ordering platforms, local pay per click providers, direct mail tools and the list goes on and on. In each category there is a wide range of features, quality and cost to be considered.

When evaluating solutions to offer to your affiliates, you must balance your desire to have a highly functional, feature-rich, high-end solution with the actual needs of your affiliate base, and with the cost of the solution.

NEEDS
Striking a balance between functionality and usability is a very difficult thing to do. The more functionality you add, the more complex the tool is likely to be, so make sure the feature you are looking for is really a necessity for your affiliates. When considering the purpose of the tool, ask yourself, "do we need a pneumatic jack hammer or will a good old fashion sledge hammer do the job?" If your affiliates are going to be banging away all day on concrete, then get then the jackhammer even if it is more expensive. If they are only breaking up a couple cinder blocks once or twice a year, then a manual sledge hammer will do the job.

COST
You need to be willing to pay the appropriate amount for the solution that best fits your needs. All too often, we run into brands that are in desperate need of a solution that we provide, but they are not willing to pay for it. They would rather pay less and get a substandard solution than to invest more into the right tool. While this may save money in the short term, it becomes very expensive in the long run.

In summary, consider the functionality you need and be willing to pay the appropriate price once you find the right tool. Doing anything less or more and you may be chopping wood with either a robotic axe or a dinner knife.

This is the third post in my series called Local Marketing Mondays. The first post covered Education and the second focused on Great Creative. This post will cover the topic of providing guidance to local marketers.

Guidance is a tricky subject because knowing what to do and when to do it is a tremendously difficult task when it comes to local marketing. However, with the correct approach this becomes a much less daunting task, and can deliver amazing value to your local affiliates.

Guidance can be best described as providing signposts that help your affiliates to navigate through difficult situations. This is different from providing education which I covered in an earlier post.

Think of it this way; if you were to spend a bunch of time training a new accountant, they should come out of that educational process knowing the basic rules, and technically how to enter the appropriate credits and debits into the accounting system. Now, imagine a difficult situation arises which falls into one of the many gray areas in accounting principles, say revenue recognition. This newly minted accountant could really use some guidance on how to best handle the situation. Typically guidance will come in the form of a mentor who has been through this type of situation in the past. The guidance should not provide the new accountant with the exact answer, but it should give them a direction to head with an increased sense of confidence.

That is the critical take away from this post - guidance should provide a direction and confidence, not the answer.

If you focus on implementing a guidance system that answers local marketing problems, you will fail. There are too many intricacies and circumstances that influence the right answer, and often there is more than one correct answer.

There are a couple of different approaches to providing this level of guidance:

1. A services-based approach which leverages a team of knowledgeable and experienced marketers who are available for consultation. This type of service can be difficult and expensive to maintain, but will most likely provide the best experience for your affiliates.
2. An automated system which allows the affiliate to enter the circumstances they are dealing with, and then responds with the appropriate guidance. These automated solutions are also expensive to invest in initially, but have a lower cost of ongoing maintenance over time. The downside to an automated system is that the information tends to be more generic in nature, and not quite as helpful.

Both approaches can be implemented either internally or through a third party vendor or system. The important thing to do is to ensure that you are very thoughtful about the level of guidance you are looking to implement, and the type of user experience you would like your affiliates to have. Just remember, in the end, you are looking to provide guidance, not the answer.

This is the second in a series of posts I am calling Local Marketing Mondays. Today the topic is on that of creative. My first post covered Marketing Education.

Around Balihoo we like to call creative the "gas in the engine". Creative inspires. It defines brands. It speaks to your audience, and truly great creative actually drives people to take action. Unfortunately, a great many national brands with local marketing programs simply re-purpose their national creative to be used at the local level, which is generally a bad idea.

There is a very defined process behind developing local creative that when followed can lead to big success, and when abandoned can lead to dire results, and frustrated local marketers. Consider these two rules and you should be off to the races (assuming you have a great creative agency, but that is a topic for another day).

Step 1—Consider Intent. This is probably the single biggest problem with local creative. We often see national brands that have spent hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on beautiful creative which has been designed by a high-end agency for use on the national level to either create or reinforce a brand image. The brand is so proud of the creative that they really want to make it available to their local channel partners.

However, the problem is that the channel partners have no need for the brand-developed creative. Instead, they are looking for something to drive demand. The channel partners have their own brands, and are not looking to promote your brand just because you may be paying for part of the ad. If you really want to help your local channel partners, take that beautiful creative and turn it into a demand generation piece that the channel partners can leverage. Give them enough space on the piece to promote their own brand and let them change the call to action to meet their local market circumstances.

Step 2—Make it local. The second issue is localization. To many brands, their idea of localized creative is an address and maybe a map. In contrast, today's technology allows for drastic changes in creative elements to allow for true localization of creative. Consider this: a national flooring manufacturer (Manufacturer A) is providing creative through an ad builder to its reseller partners. Since they want full control and continuity over the piece, they only allow the address to be changed along with a logo of the local store.

While, the piece is very nice, it shows an image of a woman standing on white tile. Now consider the frustration a dealer in Montana faces when they access the ad builder, select the piece, and notice that they cannot change the image. Everything was perfect with the ad, except that the dealer is frustrated because he knows that nobody in his area buys white tile; they buy slate. So, he decides to not run the ad with Manufacturer A. Instead, he logs on to the ad builder for Manufacturer B, and in this case, the dealer can change the image along with the logo and address and ends up with an ad that he knows will move some product. He runs the ad and Manufacturer B gains exposure, share of wallet and a happy dealer.

Implementing these two simple rules will help you to avoid the big pitfalls that most brands step into as they attempt to provide great creative to their channel partners.

This is the first post in a series of posts that are intended to help marketers better understand how to build an effective local marketing program. I am calling the series Local Marketing Mondays. Today I am going to cover the topic of marketing education.

Picture this, a young adult, lets say 18 years old, walks into a state of the art operating room with every imaginable instrument and resource available to her. There are assistants, nurses, manuals, computer screens, medical devices, and a single patient lying on the table. The young adult is highly intelligent and very physically capable of performing surgery, but she has no medical training whatsoever. Would you want this individual to operate on you, or a loved one? I doubt it. Yet, this is what we see day in and day out when it comes to local marketing. We see brands focusing on the tools that are available to their affiliates rather than teaching them when, and how to use those tools to achieve the results that are desired locally.

This cart-before-the-horse approach is extremely common in the local marketing space for the following reasons:

1. Having the systems in place allows the marketing department of the national brand to check the box and say that they have fulfilled their obligation to provide the tools necessary to run a local marketing campaign.
2. There is generally a great deal of pressure to get the tools in place first and then worry about execution. This pressure comes from both above (the CMO or CEO), and from below (the dealer, distributor, or franchisee).
3. The pressure exists primarily because very few people recognize the need for education before execution. Most people do not recognize marketing as a discipline or a science. They think of marketing as that simple business function that young kids out of college who did not work particularly hard perform, because they can't get any other job. While there may have been a grain of truth to that sentiment 10 or 15 years ago, it is very far from the truth today.

Today's reality is that marketing is much more science than it has ever been and achieving marketing success at either a national or local level requires specific fundamental skills that can only be acquired through a combination of education and practical experience.

Therefore, the first principle of a strong local marketing program is to educate. You must provide training and ongoing education in the discipline of marketing, if you expect your affiliates to become successful local marketers. There are several approaches to developing a comprehensive education program for your affiliates:

1. Develop the program and the content in house using your own expertise. This can be very time consuming and if you are not competent in developing educational curriculum you could end up doing more harm than good.
2. Bring in a specialist that will help you to develop an education program for your affiliates. This approach will probably result in the best overall experience, but can be costly.
3. Create a relationship with an existing local marketing education program to make the training available to your affiliates. In this approach, you are getting a more generic curriculum that may not apply directly to your circumstances, but it will probably be the least expensive option.

No matter what your approach is, I would highly recommend making an investment into marketing education. It will pay off more than any other single aspect of your local marketing program.

One of the questions that we get asked the most at Balihoo is, “how can I make marketing easy for my channel partner?”  The simple answer is that you can’t.  You can make it EASIER than it already is, but you can’t make it easy.  The reason is that marketing at a local level is very difficult and getting more difficult every day.   Local marketing includes advertising, PR, customer service, sales materials, in store materials, and much more.  Local marketing is a mindset, a commitment, an approach to business, not a tactic to be flipped on or off.

In response to the difficult nature of local marketing we are seeing a big increase in national brands wanting to provide marketing packages to their affiliates (distributors, dealer, resellers, franchisees) so that all the affiliate is required to do is select a package and sit back and watch the leads roll in.  While I commend the brands on attempting to make life easier for their affiliates, I have a great deal of concern over this approach to local marketing.  The main reason is, by creating these packages brands are often selling an easy marketing approach which results in a false sense of security for the local affiliate.  Don’t get me wrong, a marketing package could be beneficial for an affiliate so long as it is taken in context of the overall effort that is required to be successful in their marketing efforts, but as a silver bullet, the marketing package approach is a dud. 

While no silver bullet exists for local marketing, there are several fundamental practices that brands can employ to make their affiliates more successful and make their marketing lives easier.  In order to assist brands in implementing these building blocks I will be writing a series of posts on Mondays that will detail the specific steps to building a better local marketing program.  These posts will cover:

• Providing marketing education/training
• Providing great creative
• Providing guidance
• Providing  tools
• Providing services
• Reducing overhead in co-op programs
• Leveraging economies of scale

There will certainly be some additional topics that come to mind over the coming weeks, but these should keep us busy for a while.

 There was a really interesting article in the NY Times yesterday that describes how people are using their smart-phones these days.  It is based on a survey that Nielsen just released on Monday.



What I found interesting about this article is where the divergence occurs between "smart" phones and "feature" phones.  If you look at the chart above you will notice that at the top of the list there is little divergence in how people are using the devices.  Sure the smart-phone users are slightly more active, but that is most likely due simply to the availability and the vast improvement in user experience that smart-phones provide.  The divergence occurs further down the list and I believe this represents the largest area of growth in the smart-phone business and the largest opportunity for local marketers.  

Take a look a the chart below which I created based on the data above.



This chart shows the % increase by category in the number of smart-phone users over the feature phone users.  In other words over twice (120%) of the smart-phone users are using their phones for productivity when compared to feature phone users - this is divergence. The chart also shows how each category ranked in the Nielsen graph above; this is shown in the column called Usage Rank.  For example Games was the #1 ranked use in the Nielsen survey.

When I take a look at this chart from a local marketing perspective I get really excited.  Notice that 3 of the top 5 growth categories are related to consumer spending at the local level - dining, retail and food and drink.  Combine this growth with the growth of the smartphone penetration in the US (see chart below) and you have one monster opportunity on your hands.  



Never before have marketers had such a connection to a consumer near the point of a purchase.  If you have not considered how you or your channel are going to be approaching mobile as a medium, might I suggest that you get right on that.

 I love being in the software business.  I believe that really smart people pulling together in the same direction can solve really difficult problems with software.  

However, one issue you run into when you are solving a difficult problem is making the solution simple and elegant.  We struggle with this issue daily here at Balihoo.  Local marketing is hard work and it is also complicated.  So designing a software solution to be as robust as necessary, yet as user-friendly as possible, is a challenge of monumental proportions.  As a result I am always looking to other software companies for inspiration in our product design and how we communicate with our users.  

This morning I was going through my e-mail routine and read a mail from the CEO of Tungle.me, a very cool social calendaring tool that I use.  The CEO was announcing a new design for their product.  The interesting thing was that he did not describe one feature or change in the product, instead he just said "go check it out" - so I did. 

When I logged in I knew why - this is a screenshot of the page that welcomed me.

 
You see, the CEO did not need to take the time to go through a bunch of detailed explanations that nobody was going to read, because they had taken the time to create a really elegant and engaging overlay for their product that explains their new design.  

I have seen this done with another great software product that we use here called Smartsheet, and we will be implementing something similar soon, I can promise you that.

Thanks for the inspiration guys.

So designing software is hard, just like local marketing, and as a result we are always looking to others to gain inspiration, to see what is working, and to learn how we can improve.  I recommend that you do the same with your local marketing efforts.  Watch what others are doing, talk to local media reps to find out what is working for other marketers, read voraciously it will make you a much better local marketer in the end.

One of the things that I regularly address with clients and potential clients is the phenomal pace of change in local marketing, and that dealing with these rapid shifts is extremely challenging as a local marketer.  

As an illustration of these rapid shifts, Beloit College in Wisconsin publishes an annual Mindset List.  This list is intended to give its faculty a reality check to ensure that they are communicating in a fashion that is commensurate with the way incoming students communicate.
Read through the list and as you do, imagine yourself as a local marketer in a college town trying to reach the freshman class.  Are you going to use:

1. Newspaper - Nope. They don't read it.
2. Radio - Nope. They don't listen to it.
3. TV - Nope. It is too expensive for the few channels that students watch.
4. Online displays - That has to be a good fit, right? Well maybe, but if you are too intrusive or disruptive to their online experience, they will be gone in a flash.
5. Email - That is the ticket, right? Everyone uses e-mail, right? Nope. Try again. E-mail is "too slow" for this generation.

The reality is that the best way to reach these students is to use the evolving mediums that have only been around for months or at most a few years: 

1. Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp
2. SMS Text
3. Mobile Apps

So how many local marketers know how to execute well over these new and emerging media channels? Based on my experience, not many.

That is where a local marketing automation solution like Balihoo can make all the difference.  We take the pain out of staying up-to-speed on these technologies. We then identify the best channels to be utilizing according to your target and then execute your campaigns.

Contact Us or Download a White-paper to learn more 

 I was riding my cruiser to work today on another gorgeous morning in Boise and was appreciating how wonderful the experience was.  As I thought about why I enjoy riding into work every morning I went through the usual list:

1.  It's a really nice ride down the old tree lined streets of the North End
2.  It's great to get fresh air in the morning
3.  The weather is usually amazing
4.  Nobody can bother me :-)
5.  It is super relaxing

But then it struck me that the one thing that made all of the above possible was the bike that I was on - the cruiser - its purpose built to be a relaxing ride for short distances.  I have two other bikes, a Mountain Bike and a Road Bike, but the cruiser is what I take to work every day.  The road bike is faster and would get me to work quicker.  The mountain bike is better in the snow, but I greatly prefer the cruiser in all conditions and that is because it is purpose built to be relaxing and the ride to work is my time to relax.

Now you may be asking "how does this relate to Local Marketing Automation?" - well the reality is that other than Balihoo, there are no other platforms that were purpose built for local marketing automation.  There are ad builders, and there are co-op platforms, that are all purpose built to facilitate parts of the local marketing continuum, but no other solution that can deliver all of the required elements to drive demand in local markets.  

So when you are looking for a solution, no matter if it is a bike or a LMA platform, my take is to ensure that you find the one that is purpose built for your needs - it makes all the difference.

Start by downloading one of our whitepapers or case studies.

I read this article today at AdAge.com and found it quite interesting.  While it is not focused on Local Marketing, it is representative of the changing nature of advertising in general.  

Old Spice created a campaign called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like".  The spot ran on television and then created quite a stir on YouTube.  In fact the response was so strong that Old Spice decided to capitalize on it and create some very raw responses from the actor - including this one:  
This series of responses has generated more than 42 million views on YouTube - essentially for free.  The combination of paid and viral media is difficult to get right, but when you do the effect is powerful.  

In today's economic climate, Return on Investment (ROI) is more important than ever.  Companies are running so lean that every penny is being examined to determine just how much it is contributing to the bottom line - and that is just as it should be.

So it naturally follows that when a company is evaluating a local marketing solution they should be heavily focused on ROI.  

At Balihoo we think that there are several factors that contribute to the overall value of a local marketing program, and all need to be considered when calculating ROI:

1. Reduction in local production costs - This is the value that is most attributable to Ad Builders that allow a local affiliate to customize an ad template without the use of a creative resource.  By leveraging these tools affiliates can reduce their local production costs by up to 90%.
2. Increase in brand integrity - This is the secondary benefit of a good Ad Builder.  Because ads are templated and the customizations can be designed to be in compliance with brand guidelines, the brand can rest assured that their investment into developing their brand is not degraded through rogue local implementations.
3. Reduction in local execution costs - If the LMA solution allows for execution across all media types, the brand can leverage their scale to greatly reduce execution costs across different media.  The economies of scale reach across transactional mediums such as direct mail, e-mail, SMS, Newspaper Circulars all the way to negotiated traditional media costs on a local level.  If the LMA solution selected does not offer full execution across all media types, this element of the calculation can be eliminated.
4. Improved local marketing execution - A great LMA solution will help to guide the users through a combination of training, professional assistance and in application education to become a better local marketer.  While the first couple benefits of the ROI calculation are great opportunities to reduce costs or negative impact on branding, this element can have the biggest impact on a local marketer's business.  So much of marketing today is waste, and the marketing landscape keeps getting more confusing, which is adding to the waste.  If your LMA platform can help to remove some of the confusion, and direct your affiliates to more effective marketing techniques, the impact on ROI can be dramatic.
5. Affiliate adoption - The final component of the ROI calculation is determining affiliate adoption.  All of the factors listed above are dramatically impacted by how many of the local affiliates take advantage of the opportunities afforded to them through the LMA platform.  You can create the best program in the world, but if the program is not adopted, then it will have almost no impact on your business and will certainly not deliver ROI.  This is typically the largest missing piece of any LMA effort.  In order to drive adoption the brand must invest in training, useful templates, strong co-op programs, and education.  

By building a model with these factors, it is fairly simple to construct a well-defined and easily understandable ROI model for your LMA program.  If you are interested in some sample ROI calculators and the methodology behind them, please comment on this post and I would be happy to provide you with the information. 

Balihoo is in the unique and very fortunate position of having more than thirty thousand local marketers that work with our platform.  We have earned this privilege by creating a completely unique solution to a very vexing problem.  

However the one thing that we hear consistently is that no matter how elegant our solution is, the fact remains that most local business owners are quite confused about what to do with it. We hear questions like:

• What tactics should I be using and when?
• What is social media and how should I be using it?
• Should I still run ads in the yellow pages?
• What is a GRP?
• What is SEO vs SEM?

These are all great questions and are important considerations in determining local marketing success.  However, the real question all local marketers should be asking is - what is my strategy for success?  Without a full marketing strategy the tactics are meaningless.  

Our goal is to make marketing easy and effective for local marketers, and as a result we have implemented a number of products and services to complement our local marketing automation platform; however, over the next couple of months we will announcing the most significant change to the strategy portion of our platform to date.  Look for this announcement this summer as we fully expect that it will change the way that local marketers develop their strategy.

 One of my favorite sayings is "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".  In a lean start-up or small business trying to be perfect can simply bring you to your knees.  

In most cases being good is more than enough.  However, sometimes this gets taken too far and people settle for less than good, they provide products or services that are mediocre or even bad, and that is equally as dangerous as striving for perfection, and not nearly as noble.

Good should be the enemy of mediocre in everything that you do.  From your products and services to your local marketing.  Our mission here at Balihoo is to "revolutionize local marketing" and we are well on our way to achieving our goal.  I believe that one of the ways that we can accomplish our goal is to educate our customers on how to stop executing mediocre or bad local marketing.  In other words we need to make good local marketing the enemy of mediocre local marketing. 

Through a combination of education, our local marketing software and our execution services we firmly believe that this goal is achievable and while we will not let perfect be the enemy of good, we will let good be the enemy of mediocre in everything that we do.

Being the founder of three start-ups in my career as an entrepreneur there is one thing that I know with absolute certainty - I don't know jack shit.

The reality is that I continue to learn more everyday working with the smart energetic people that surround me (clients, investors, employees and mentors) than I could have ever imagined on the day the I incorporated my first business.  I look back on that day and realize just how little I knew and how far I have come and it thrills me to know that there is so much more to learn.

That is why I am so excited to have two premiere learning events come to Boise in a single week.  The first is happening tomorrow night at the Watercooler at 6:00 PM.  David Cohen and Andy Sack from TechStars will be speaking about their experiences in the start-up world.  More information can be found here.

The second has been spearheaded by our very own VP of Product Management - Kevin Donaldson.  On Friday we are helping to host a simulcast of the Start-up Lessons Learned conference from San Francisco.  Details can be found here.

Boise aspires to be a technology/start-up town, so lets see just how packed these events become.  I for one will be there, as I am sure that I will learn something new.

Pete