“Tim, I can tell you have a really great Dad.” This disarming compliment was given to me by someone who out to know. Larry Bilotta helps save marriages for a living. We had just met at a marketing meeting in Green Bay.

So as I reflected on why Larry said what he did, Oprah’s words gave me pause because my Dad spent a lot of time with me. Her words resonated further because I’ve been having the feeling I was getting sucked too far “working in” my business, rather than spending time “working on” my business.

Anke and I just attended our first Parent-Teacher Conference at Kid’s Express, a milestone to be sure, and my comment to Anke afterwards was, “If they all go like that, then we’ll know we’ve done a good job with G.”

Seeking answers, I was referred to Tim Ferris’ excellent “4-Hour Work Week.” Two tiny tweaks I implemented were to set my email to check for messages every 4 hours and to return calls only twice per day. Now that I’ve taken back some control, what happened? People are complaining—Including the person who referred me to the book in the first place! Oh well, they will learn and a balance will be struck.

I’ve also committed to reading less. I realized that although I’m a sponge, I didn’t have the time to execute all the great stuff I’m absorbing. So (and this is really hard for me), I will have select my reading even more carefully or else my stack of books will get too tall. I’ve done this once before when I cancelled “recreational” magazine subscriptions to MIT’s Technology Review and Small Times, a nanotechnology rag.

So if I’m trying to define my business self, it’s getting back to that more strategic role and becoming a worker bee only in carefully screened circumstances, where the opportunity is maximized.

I often work from home and my “14 step commute” isn’t often a transition that works for me, so what I’m trying to accomplish as a parent is to be a dad whose mind is clear enough from “work detritus” that I can focus 100% on Griffin when we are together.

What I’m trying to accomplish as a spouse right now is to spend more time with Anke doing fun things.  At last report I was succeeding.

So that’s some of my thinking on time and what you can do with it. What do you do with your time and who does it say you are?

The average Tennessee home consumes only 15,600 kilowatt hours in a year.

This is definitely one for the Republican’s quiver.

However, I view it a bit differently. It’s like this. As someone who helps companies recycle, those projects have a heck of a lot more impact than the recycling Anke and I do at home.

So I don’t sweat it, when I occasionally chuck a plastic container or can in the trash.

By the same reasoning, Old Al has definitely earned the right to burn up all that extra energy, don’t you think?

The good news is that Gore signed up for the Green Power Switch program through the TVA, so he is using renewable energy.  Reportedly, solar panels are being installed as well.

All in all I gauge it a success. We had 31 people register for the call and 14 actually attended which is a very strong percentage! Three begged off due to the California wildfires and one newly hired IT leader at Dow requested a private briefing.

Martin loves to negotiate and prior to becoming leader of a team of “hired IT guns,” he had over 700 employees reporting to him in his role of the CIO of a public $8 billion global company.

Industry statistics tell us that nearly 50% of IT budgets are consumed by depreciation and maintenance costs and anecdotally, a lot of clients are bellyaching about questionable IT ROI.

Most IT CapEx is also conducted in the 4th quarter, but by and large companies are not aware of the outrageous pricing discounts that they can achieve during this time. Simply put, technology companies are so earning driven that buyers have amazing leverage during the 4th quarter.

Now I use the term 4th quarter loosely. Not all IT companies use a calendar fiscal year. Oracle is a great example. So step one is to determine your vendor’s fiscal year so you can apply the proper tactics at the right time.

So without further ado, here are a baker’s dozen of Martin’s tricks of the trade.

1. Create as much doubt as possible that the deal will close this year.
2. Get the vendor’s sales person to be your Champion.
3. Lock in future purchase pricing for additional licenses or upgrades NOW at the current rates
4. Ensure that any deal requires approval from vendor’s corporate management. If it’s not then it’s not good enough yet.
5. Maintenance price reductions will save money for years to come – negotiate it now. Cost should be in the 16-20% of purchase price (NOT list) range.
6. Only allow annual increases to be at CPI and keep first 2-3 years frozen.
7. Ensure that the coverage hours for maintenance support are no more or no less than what you require (e.g. 8×5, 7×24, 12×5). Negotiate reduced rates for reduced coverage.
8. If “premium” support is offered seriously consider its need. It’s very rarely a good deal.
9. Concessions on “acceptance terms” can often be traded for better pricing – especially at year end due to revenue recognition issues for the vendor.
10. Do not accept SARBOX as an excuse for not reducing pricing beyond a certain level. SARBOX does not preclude them from doing this – it just means that they have to knowingly go against their guidelines and document it.
11. If consulting services will ever be needed – lock in the rates now and freeze them for 2-3 years.
12. At the last minute – try to get some free training thrown in to finalize the deal.
13. At the last minute – use the “spending limit” tactic. i.e. “my spending approval is only $250,000 and your price is $270,00, if we’re going to get this done by the deadline I need to avoid having to take it up the chain for approval…….”

We recorded the call and it will be available on CD shortly. If you’d like a copy, then just let me know.

DistributionCenterRecycling.com is making two special reports available for Companies who are looking to establish world class recycling programs at their distribution centers and warehouses, in order to reduce costs, create profit centers and get the company good press. 

One report is an Information Kit on Warehouse recycling and distribution center recycling.

The other is a recycling roadmap for Senior Executives at transportation companies, logistics companies, manufacturing companies, supply companies and retail companies with the catchy title, Unpleasant but Necessary.

Distribution Center Recycling makes better business sense than ever because of… 

·        High, sustainable shrink wrap recycling prices driven by near $80.00 per barrel oil futures.

·        China demand drives cardboard prices, West coast prices are now $125 per ton, on the East coast it’s $167 per ton.

·        “Green” initiatives create good PR, satisfy shareholders, suppliers and distribution partners.

 Here’s a sample of what’s revealed in the reports…

• 24 questions your “in-house” waste “experts” must know how to answer. Do they? (pg. 25) 

• Why relying on haulers for “best-practice” advice is like letting the “fox guard the henhouse.” (pg.

• Why “National” pricing leverage is an absolute myth! (pg. 11)

• Revealing analysis of 3 different models for cost containment (pgs 14-21)

• Nine Case Studies from nine different industries illustrating successful programs by early adopters (pgs. 15, 31-33) 

• Six key elements of a good solid waste and recycling program (pgs. 22-27)

• (Plus plenty more…)

 To get a complimentary copy of the special reports, visit www.distributioncenterrecycling.com today!

Well, lately I’ve been moving mountains and working in my business. I just got to the 100% stage on one project and am the 90% done stage on a second and it feels good.

I’m tempted to jump into the next ones that I have mapped out, but I don’t think that’s wise.

So what are the big projects? Well taking the advice of several individuals, an information marketer, a direct marketer, a realtor a mortgage broker, and a management consultant, I managed to put together a direct mail piece for a supply chain consulting company that I do some business development for. It drops in the mail tomorrow and I’m proud of the piece and I hope that it gets the phone to ring just once or twice.

This is my first attempt to “write myself a payday” that you see all these guys selling copywriting courses talking about - and yes it did take a team to put together. Props to Tony Millet, Joel Heyn, Cort Howard, Chris Monge and Tom Ribar! Props also to Thad Haderlie the CEO of this particular outfit for his belief and support of the project.  The folks at SquareOne Printing also did a great job in getting the piece assembled and mailed in just one week! That’s great.

The other big project is my new site, DistributionCenterRecycling.com. Tony Millet was the inspiration for this and again provided a lot of coaching and technical advice. I have a great widget, in terms of helping companies implement world class recycling programs at their warehouse and distribution centers. This site will be my 24/7 direct response vehicle to promote that vehicle. A little SEO, maybe some Adwords, will drive traffic, but definitely some PR for the Trades and some postcards to targeted individuals and we’re all set.

OK it’s late, time to clear the mind and veg in front of the TV for a while….

I was going to write about Griffin starting Preschool and the thoughts I was having on the way to Orientation tonight, and how we did our good deed for the day by calling the Police when we spotted a pickup truck that had rolled out of a driveway and was blocking a street - a street without any streetlights, but I just had a real live worm in my mouth and that’s pretty darn disgusting!

OK, now I know how easy it is for the media to trump true news with sensational drivel.

I’m working away on a sales letter I’ve been pouring my heart and soul into for the past week or so, and I’m like “Damn, something’s biting me!”

So I lift up my shirt and look at my stomach and nothing’s there. To get a closer look, I put my shirt in my mouth and take a closer look. Nothing.

I spit my shirt out of my mouth and OHMYGOD! There’s something in my mouth! I jump to my feet and spit it out and it’s a worm!

The kind of worm that lives in corn.

I just got done putting all the vegetables away that we get each week from our CSA Farm (Community Supported Agriculture). It’s all organic and it’s been raining a lot, so one of the ears must’ve had a worm in it that got on my shirt.

This is just gross. I’m gonna go brush my teeth.

I can grab information the same way from PDFs, from Spreadsheets, from web sites, it is really great for building mail merge lists.

I just got my affiliate link for Anagram.  It’s cheap and you can check it out in the Blogroll under “Productivity Tools.” Proceeds go to my favorite charity - Griffin’s college fund.