There was a constant tug-of-war between the travel business and media business fighting from prominence and positioning on the web pages, as what was good for one, was bad for the other. I actually thought having the two business lines fighting with each other would create a good balance on the website, in terms of not letting the user experience get too gummed down by too many ads on the page. I really wanted to stay focused on being a travel revenue business only, as I thought the ads were going to clutter up the site and hurt the user experience. Organizations are very quickly going to have the revelation that for every action there is a reaction and the “Age of the Employee” creates “the Age of the Manager”. Continuing with another story from iExplore, there was a major pivot point in our history, when iExplore began to sell advertising on our website.

Once iExplore made the decision we were shifting our focus to being a media business, from a travel business, that changed everything from a website design perspective. And, this example from my iExplore days will pound home the point. The entrepreneur that can keep the team focused, and not easily distracted, is the one that will most likely and successfully get to the finish line. Gone is the time when marketers used to follow different traditional ways of calling in order to keep themselves ahead of their competitors. And, once the plan is set, your job as the CEO is to make sure your entire management team is staying focused on hitting those goals and not running down any new rabbit holes that come along over time. Attempting to get into the corporate incentive business for iExplore, was the equivalent of me leading the team down a rabbit hole. So, the point here: don’t let your “flavor of the month” lead you down any rabbit holes, as those rarely bear fruit long term. The point here is: innovate or eventually die. Here is a link to how to run a strategic planning process like this.

Explore was a consumer portal to research and purchase adventure tours, where our primary strength was consumer marketing online, relying on ground operator partners to run the trips. But, in chasing that business, we quickly learned that the corporate incentive business is driven by a B2B sales team, not consumer marketers (and we didn’t have the right team with meeting planner relationships to be successful). Once we learned that 30% of our revenues were driving 75% of our bottom line profits, the team shifted directions on what we saw as the future of our business success. And, the result was a new found revenue stream and a 75% profit margin business that far exceeded the 10% profits margins we were getting from our travel revenues. This afforded them the ability to charge premium prices and maintain rich margins. They started losing clients, were forced to lower their prices (which materially impacted margins and profitability) and had to start paying refunds for the product that was breaking more than ever. And, the skillsets required for customer success, were a lot more than marketing; we need professional event planners and boots on the ground to be really successful.

And, they would do whatever was necessary to make that happen. While I enjoy going to garage and estate sales for the thrill of the hunt, it’s always nice when I can make a little scratch from my finds. An inspection can be helpful if you have owned your property for many years that will help in identifying problems and recommend solutions. This information will help you to understand the customers effectively. But, in our early days, we got lured into the corporate incentive travel business by one of our customers. Until they woke up one day and realized several new competitors had launched with cheaper, faster products and their customers were complaining that the company had gone stale and was overcharging them for what they were selling. In this case the proper divisor at the Day level is the number of business days in the last 365 calendar days, taking into account weekends and holidays. It’s a very graphical software, which appeals to the current day video gaming audience.