LessThanHumble.com

It is indeed a funny story - I was born in this state, moved around the country, and somehow end up right back here. I love Arizona, the diversity, the people, the weather, and most of all the vast opprotunity that the state has to offer in the professional sector. We have a hugely booming real estate market (as much as I hate it), large amounts of Fortune 1000 companies, including high profile tech companies like Intel. We have a pretty large entertainment sector - thanks in part to the weather, and most of all, we’ve got a vastly diverse landscape, and the best sunsets in the United States.

Arizona is hugely diverse, in the fact that there’s not only a huge cultural diversity here because of the multitude of ethnic backgrounds, there’s a huge diversity of economic classes likewise, and not in the sense of rich/poor, but a whole span in between. 

The People
We also have some of the most genuine and friendly people around - why’s that? Because everyone is happy. There’s a reason celebrities stake claim to the stay - and it’s not just because of Arizona’s Wild West Heritage.

The Weather
I don’t think there is any other place quiet like Arizona in the sense of the weather. Take a city like Tucson for example, you can literally drive to the mountains, play in the snow (during the wintertime), drive home, all in less than two hours, and be back enjoying the 85F weather and swimming in the pool. 
There’s also not many other places where you can be in what part of a small town (take Sierra Vista - 45,000 people) where it is raining, hailing, and causing a ruckus, drive 3/4s of a mile and be in the midst of the sunshine - sheer craziness.

The Opportunity
It’s funny, I’ve always viewed California (more so So-Cal) as the land of opportunity on the west side of the United States, but over time, I’ve learned that Arizona, is another area dense with opportunity. I don’t mean just in the entertainment world (though California has definitely beat Arizona and most other places at this), but in the professional world. Some of the largest corporations in America have taken roots in Arizona. 
And for that, I’m proud to say, I rep AZ.

I must admit that it has been quiet a while since I have made a post or update. This is almost entirely attributed to the fact that I have been working nearly non stop to get several projects finalized as well as my increased involvement with the company I work “part-time” for. I’m planning on getting things back on track and going again after the 1st of October as I will have a lot of exciting news to report about.

None the less, just to give a brief overviewing of my progress. I am finally in the completion phase of our hosting management software (and billing system interface) and am looking to launch it into a beta phase at the end of the month. We are also finalizing another nearly year-long project, Altenta.com, a property management application, that will hopefully be launching before the end of the year.

Until next time - I’m out.

Well, first off, it has been a while since I’ve posted an article. I’ve been busy completing a three-month long project that has unfortunately been extended several times. Initially I started it in April and was planning on rebuilding the web hosting platform that I support my customers with. Thankfully I’m finally getting towards the end. Of course though, the last 5% is the most painful portion.

But none the less, I wanted to drop a post regarding the heated ‘Overselling’ delimma. For starters, I am a comfortable fan of overselling my services to my customers (to an extent) and I don’t find any company who follows this same ideal, within reason, at fault - even if I’m their customer.

Why are people so afraid of it?

I’m not really sure why soap box’n people are so afraid of it, but this is especially noticed around the web hosting industry. A market that has been trashed by price wars, yet continually you hear people on their soap box’s complaining about company X or company Y who is clearly overselling their services. Now I must admit, the occurence of overselling in web hosting does continually pose a problem because many of these companies, aren’t companies. They are simply websites setup in haste to sell web hosting services by people who do not know the first thing about providing services to customers let alone maintaining and supporting those services. But there are plenty of honest companies - my self included - who oversell our services to a reasonable extent. Why? Why not let your customers take the cost benefit of a the fact that 90% of customers will never use anywhere near 50% of their alloted services. 

When is too much - too much?

As my example, the web hosting industry is a great example of where people are overselling way too far. It is obvious that Joe Blow’s Hosting cannot support nor facilitate 300 15Gb (all paying $1.95/mo - what a joke) web hosting accounts on a single server (with say 60Gbs of storage), nor can a “Dedicated Server” company provide a customer with 2000Gbs of bandwidth on a cap’d 5Mb connection (for those of you who are not aware that 5Mb x 320Gbs = 1600Gbs). All of which occurs all so frequently. However a reasonable web hosting company could easily support 200 200Mb web hosting accounts on a 60Gb drive (please note these figures aren’t exactly literal).

Who else oversells?

Besides the web hosting industry, numerous other markets are covered with legitimate companies overselling their services. A perfect example is cellular providers, I do not need literal figures to show that if every customer used their 1500 monthly minutes (or whatever they are allowed) it would be obvious that the cellular provider would not be able to support it. These companies bank on the fact that they know their customers aren’t going to use anywhere near 100% of their services. But if course if they do, there’s a huge chance that the customer will have overages to which the provider will make up for the use.

We’ve all heard it, but not enough can be said for this mantra. In reality, it means focusing on the quality of your deliverables, rather than the quantity (or price) of said services.

What does it mean?
Take the web hosting “industry” for example, there’s been a huge price war going on in past years. This is apparent by the fact that Web Hosting Companies, for example, pop up and dissolve on a near daily basis due to a juvenile price war. That companies that stick around for the long term, are generally cost-competitive, yet striving for quality, not a constant attempt to undercut their competitors. Price really goes hand in hand with quantity; because a customer striving for quantity is striving to get the most for their money doubly a person striving for striving for price is striving to get X amount for the lowest price.

The principle really means that consumers, and producers for that fact, value quality over quantity (or price in this case) in the long run. Sure there are customers who float around constantly looking for the best deal, but most of the time these people are smart enough to figure out how things work after getting burned a few times.

But if I don’t keep my prices the lowest around I’ll lose customers?
That may be the case, but generally you’ll lose the bottom dwelling customers. The customers who are too cheap to pay for better services, yet are trying to get the most out of you. I notice something about Web Hosting customers, the cheapest customers are generally the biggest pains for support, billing, and usage. In my experience, most customers paying a fair amount will use adequate amounts of expendables, but never do it in an attempt to cost the service provider (you) money - they pay fairly for what they receive.

In the end, the Internet is really a global market, someone is always going to be able to undercut your prices, but it takes a decent company to undercut you in quality (support, service, product quality, etc) and this is where any company, in my opinion, can pull ahead of their competitors.

For many of us, including myself, who are in business relationships with “previous friends” (meaning you were more than an associate of the person previous to the business) and business relationships with family, there is a great need for seperation between the personal side and the business side of things.

This could not be more evident for myself considering the fact that I am in the middle of a business relationship that has the potential to go bust in the very near future because of the fact the other party does not share the same value for our business as I do and he previously did. In this day and age you need to stay mobile and always give yourself an out as I do. Not that I do not trust people, but people change and most of the time you cannot force someone into changing into how you would like them be. Instead if the relationship is to the point where it is no longer productive to the business or to one or both of the parties there comes a point to which you need to figure out if it is worth it anymore. On the same note, a partnership split can sometimes be a great opprotunity to rebound and take your business to the next level.

Conflicting Goals

A genuine, true busienss relationship should have different goals than a personal relationship. Not that the two will not work well togethor but more so that they should be held seperately from eachotheras not to harm the business relationship.

For myself, I value the effort and enthusiasm a person has for something, in most cases, above their personal knowledge. Because afterall, it does not matter how much you know, it really matters what attitude you have towards getting something done.

To The Point…

This is really where you have to remember that in a business relationship, whether it include personal implications also, business should be business - for the good of the business. You cannot let a person drag yourself down to the breaking point, and just like my previous article, you need to know what that breaking point is.

So I leave you with this tid-bit of advice, remember to always seperate your personal relations from your business relations from someone as they both have very conflicting goals.