interplanetary travel is overrated

Interplanetary travel is overrated - there I said it. I love space travel or in my case the idea of space travel, but unless we find a way to travel faster than the speed of light; I think we will be long limited to this solar system. So what does this have to do with me, eCommerce and business; plenty. The point here is one of vision and timing; while it is my firm belief that you have to have a vision and constantly work toward that vision, you must also be realistic and live in the now. Its a tough balance as no great breakthroughs have ever happened just by incremental improvement. As Tom Peter's says; "you have to fail forward fast". The key here is to recognize that you learn from every failure (duh), you have to realize this and move on.

eCommerce and failure; the web gives us a unique ability to measure, measure, measure everything we do; site visits, hits, conversion, etc. It is a living test bed for sales. If you aren't tweaking your commerce site daily or at least have some sort of A/B testing going on at any given time, you are leaving money on the table.

On a more practical note, the new firm is coming along well. I set up the website at www.steelhammergroup.com, I will have at least a front page done today. I am having business cards printed and I am working to close my first 3 month consulting deal in the next day or so.

To this point, no one has visited my blog yet, or at least has commented on on it. I guess it is like throwing a party and no one shows up. We will see...

Bob

the first post is always the hardest

To start a blog seems a bit risky. Writing your thoughts your dreams and feelings online and in one place while could be therapeutic, but could come back and bite you in the ass. So with this in mind, to borrow from one of my favorite media icons, David Letterman, here is my top ten things about blogs

1. what if I write and nobody reads (a bit vein don't you think?)
2. what if I don't have anything to say?
3. what would my mother say?
4. why should I spend the time?
5. who will read this?
6. what will they think?
7. where will this information end up?
8. what if I don't?
9. what if I can gain clarity?
10. what if I can make a difference?

OK a bit about me, Bob Steelhammer; 48 year old married eCommerce professional. Most recently I was the Vice President of att.com; yup used to run att.com; before that cingular.com, before that motorola.com/semiconductor, before that sgi.com and before that a large portion of ibm.com (sounds a little bit like the Bible with all of the begot).

I am just starting to launch my own firm; The Steelhammer Group. The goal is simple; help companies recognize their eCommerce potential. Most companies have huge investments in eCommerce and aren't getting the return they should. We can help companies get better return on investments through what I call web fundamentals. More on that later.

I did it my first post; will you respect me in the morning :-)

Bob