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A common marketing exercise tells us to list all the adjectives we want customers to associate with our company or product. The result often looks like this (real slide, source withheld to protect the guilty):

Already I’m cringing at the size and scope of the list, but the real problem comes when the marketing department plays Mad Libs:

Sun GlassFish™ Enterprise Server is easy to use, fast, and scalable … easy to download, develop, and deploy … facilitating robust, highly-available, and cost-effective services. (source)

The product description above is prima facie?false. In all your experience with computers and software, have you ever experienced a system that truly embodied every one of those attributes? No trade-offs, no compromise? A-plus-plus on every count?

Of course ..read more

Why did you cry when you heard 47-year-old ugly-duckling Susan Boyle sing?

“Because it was surprising to hear a beautiful voice come from an ugly person.”?

No. ?If “surprise” was all there was to it we’d laugh, we’d clap, we’d hold our chests in amazement, we’d be happy, we’d be heartened, but we wouldn’t cry.?We’d look at each other with knowing smiles and say “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” and then we’d move on to the next contestant. Proof? You won’t cry at?Hollie Steel.

“Because we realized we judged another human being unjustly; we felt guilty.”

No. ?If you prejudge someone as stupid because of a speech impediment, you do feel guilty, you do feel ashamed, but you don’t cry. ?You resolve ..read more

If you read blogs about marketing small companies, you’re inundated with “social media” advice about why you need a blog and a Twitter account and everything else.

Even my 90-year-old grandmother who doesn’t own a computer and reads my wife’s healthy cooking blog on print-outs asks “What’s Twitter?” because she read about it in the New York Times.

Still, most people and most businesses don’t think they need a blog.

In the next five minutes, I’d like to convince you that you have?to jump into the world of blogging and Twitter and Facebook.

Back in the late 1990s….

(Ew, don’t you cringe when you hear the phrase “back in the late 1990s?” Here comes a tale of hope and of disappointment, of “paradigm shifts” and of ..read more

You have to wonder at these folks who blog so confidently about how to run little companies.

I mean, on the one hand Joel teaches us everything we need to know about customer service while being funny and telling stories. But has Joel ever screwed up? If so, he hasn’t said.

Or 37signals, a company run by geeks with a unique vision about why products (not just software) should be simple and beautiful. They even wrote a whole book about it. Inspiration in every paragraph. Love it! But read their blog and all you get is ultimatums — unwavering confidence that their way is gospel handed down from Mt. Sinai.

Shoot, I’m also guilty of blasting my patient readers to?always be honest, never use the ..read more

This is Part 5 of a 5-part series: Joy of Honesty in Business.

During the first year of Smart Bear’s existence, my software was crap. How did I get customers, and why were they so vehemently loyal to what was clearly a wobbly, new product from a teeny tiny company-of-one?

Because of folks like Tom.

So Tom calls up one day…

Now wait, understand this is already a newsworthy event! Remember we sell software to software developers, legendary for their phone-aversion. (I’m no exception!) So let me try that again:

Tom?called me. On the phone.

Tom wants to talk about new features. What a relief — for six weeks it’s been nothing but bug reports. Real bugs, I admit. In fact, Tom had single-handedly ..read more