Karen Rubin's Ramblings

I have had to work from home for the last couple of days. It's been an interesting experience. Do you love it? Or hate it? 

August 5, 2010

I have been thinking about not blogging, but video blogging. Honestly, I hate writing and I love talking, so video just seems to be a better medium for me. 

A couple of weeks ago, I gave it a shot. I've been scared to put them out there because it's hard to try something new! I think these are a little on the long side, but you tell me, should I keep trying on the video blog front? 

There have been times in my life, where I would have considered photography a hobby of mine. Then I moved to New York City and stopped. I just didn't find the city inspiring. The light is generally bad and I don't really do shots with people, so I stopped. 

When we moved to Boston, the technology had all changed (as these things do.) I couldn't manage and edit my photos the way I always had, and it annoyed me. So I never got back into it.

 A couple of weeks ago, my Dad asked if I wanted to buy his Canon Rebel XTi from him. He is in the market for a new one, and he is planning to sell his. It's a camera I have always loved playing with, but my initial repose was no. I don't do photography anymore.

 Then a week or two later, as I was planning our trip to Ireland this fall, I realized I am really going to want to take photos while I am there. That's half the reason we are going to Ireland! Lush green fields, rolling hills, sheep and quaint little towns. It's exactly the kind of place I get inspired. 

 So I asked Dad to borrow the camera from now through Memorial day to see if it gets my creative juices flowing. I promised myself I would learn how to use iPhoto and upload everything to Flickr. I spent a couple hours this weekend playing, and you can see the outcome here.

I'll keep you posted on my progress. So far, I have enjoyed having a camera in my hands again. I don't think my photos are anything special, but as I have always found with digital photography, if you take enough shots, you are bound to get one or two you can be happy with.   

As a HubSpot Product Owner I frequently have to test our software. While I can set up as many portals as I want, it's always most efficient to just test on my own blog. It's already up and going, all the pieces are put together and it's faster. Every time I do it, there is a little twinge as I realize I am probably alienating my few readers, but I still do it. 

 Today, to thank you for putting up with me, I will reward you with a photo of my brand spanking new kittens. 

A friend introduced me to Ill Doctrine and I find his work completely inspiring and completely intimidating. He is SO GOOD! Then I was watching his best of videos, and I got inspired by this one. 

My Little Hater tells me that I don't actually have interesting things to say. That the content I create is great for my parents and friends, but that it isn't actually relevant to the great folks I meet in my professional life.

 Then he continues by telling me it's not actually worth it to even create content for my family and friends. It's time consuming, and I see/talk to the important folks regularly, so why both blogging which is so impersonal by comparison? 

Then he comes back and reminds me that what I have to say, isn't that interesting, because I say so damn much of it - WHO CAN LISTEN THAT MUCH! So I shouldn't overwhelm them all with all my blah blah blahing about every single detail of my life.

This week, I am going to beat my little hater by posting TWICE! Ha! Take that!

What about you? What does your little hater say?  

Ah spring! It's been a beautiful week here in Boston, in fact it's been the first week where I was able to bike to work every day. You might ask, "Karen, what does this have to do with business cards?" Being the first week where I biked to work, also meant I moved from my winter bag to my summer bag, and thus cleaned out all the junk I had accumulated throughout the winter. 

 In that junk, was a pretty significant pile of business cards. I get, and give business cards everywhere. HubSpot.tv on Fridays, customer interviews, as well as various Boston networking events - they are more popular than candy on Halloween. 

As I took that pile of cards, and added them to the box in my desk with all my other cards, I realized I should just throw them away. I never, absolutely never, go back to my business cards to look up contacts. Business cards have become completely useless.

 If I meet someone at an event that I want to keep in touch with, I reach out to them on LinkedIn or Twitter. If there is someone I want to reach out to that I am not connect with, I Google them. I never pull out that box of business cards and go through it trying to find their contact information.

My question to you is, why do people still hand out business cards? Do they still add value to you in your world?  

For Christmas, my husband gave me a beautiful crimson cashmere sweater from Ann Taylor, a favorite store of mine. I was thrilled with the gift, but it was a little tight and so I wanted to try on one size bigger and see which one fit better. 

 I checked out the return policy on the back of the receipt, and it said something along the lines of, 

 "Ann Taylor will accept your return or exchange of unworn, unwashed merchandise. We will credit you for returns accompanied by an original receipt either in the original form of payment or as a merchandise exchange. Final Sale items may not be returned or exchanged."

This all sounded fine to me. There wasn't a 60 or 90 day policy so I didn't rush about heading into the store. January & February happened, and the sweater sat on my dresser as Jared and I spent the weekends in New Hampshire and Washington DC with family.  

 Then last weekend, we were home, we had nothing to do, so I grabbed the sweater and receipt and headed to the store. When I got there, I went to the counter to see about the exchange and learned two things. 

 1. Ann Taylor does not except exchanges or returns of items purchased on the website in their actual stores. 

2. If you return an item more than 60 days after purchase, they will only refund you the current selling price. 

 Now, neither of these rules is crazy. The problem is that Ann Taylor wasn't transparent about the rules on the receipt. The return policy that I checked out the day I got the sweater indicated that I could head to the store and made no mention of a time limitation. I even checked it a couple of times over the month of January to make sure I wasn't going to run into a problem.

 Is this the end of the world? No. But, it has ultimately resulted in a waste of my time and loss of money, as the sweater is now selling for 50% less than my husband bought it for. That is NOT a good customer experience, and it's enough to ensure that I don't buy from Ann Taylor any longer.

If Ann Taylor had been completely transparent, put the full details of their return policy on the receipt and made it easy for me to understand what the restrictions were, I would have happily sent the sweater back in December and would still today be a happy Ann Taylor customer.  Instead, I won't be shopping there any longer.  

Make sure you are transparent with your customers. It goes a lot further and things that might seem bad end up not being as big of a deal.  

Remarkable content is simply content that is worth remarking on. One store in New York is certainly being remarked about, with a window display that includes women taking your clothes off.  

I have to say, they have succeeded in making remarkable content. Taking your clothes off is certainly one way to go about it, but it's not the only way. There isn't a formula for remarkable content, but being unique and a little big controversial is a good place to start. 

Brian Halliagn (HubSpot's CEO) recently said that remarkable content is  "kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it." It looks like the folks at XOXO took this to heart, but to be clear it doesn't have to be pornography!

 Side Note: This video was sent to me by a former co-worker. This store is about half a block from my old office in NYC. I haven't wanted to go back this much in awhile!

The staff at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR knows what to do when it comes to dancing and to promoting breast cancer awareness. Medline Industries recently came out with a new style of latex-free gloves in pink, and said they would donate a portion of the proceeds to fund mammograms, to help spread awareness. The doctors, nurses, patients, cafeteria crew, janitors, technicians and business folk at St. Vincent took it one step further and created this video to help spread the word. 

 The video has been out for about 2 weeks and has over 1.7 million views on YouTube. Think about giving the folks at your company the opportunity to do something fun for a good cause and who knows what can happen. 

It's true there are things the White House can do that you can't. (Lunching a nuclear weapon, borrowing any painting from the national gallery and demand appearances from the Russian ambassador, to name a few.) But if they can launch unedited, on the fly videos of their people, why shouldn't you be able to?

@RickBurnes brought these videos to my attention and I love them. They are high ranking (well they seem high ranking to me, but it's not like it's the Chief of Staff)  folks from the White House talking about what's going on, sharing information about the President's trip to China, the people they are seeing and what the vibe is. 

 I have said it before and I will say it again, video doesn't have to be hard! It doesn't have to take hours in the editing room! It just takes a video camera (talk to the nearest new mom or dad) and someone who can talk without tripping over themselves. Try it out, you'll be surprised how easy it is. After all, just because the White House can do it, doesn't mean it has to be hard.