Smart - Search - Engineering

Back from the depths.... GOD, it's been too long !

If for no one else than myself.... I gotta put this all to pen and move to the next step (next blog will be the ideas this all stirred)

On March 26th, 2006, Matthew Ives announced his intent to force termination of my written contract (complete with well defined termination and exit instructions) to serve as his Managing Director of Internet Search technologies for Ivestech, Inc... citing his internal business money troubles related to his other expansion, as well as my failure to deliver on a guaranteed 400 major influential blog or other similar reference contract he pressured me into agreeing to support, unsatisfied with my IBM-like analysis and detailed delivery plans (more a best efforts project for a few months, engineered in that time to a well-defined process with feedback).... interesting.

While others may view this to have two side to an argument, in a ruthless, immature and totally unprofessional manner, he also put a stop payment of the last check he issued to me for services performed two-weeks prior, refused to pay for the week prior, and refused to pay the contractor (my son) for over four (4) weeks of backpay, as well as a week that was still unpaid on another invoice. This created hundreds of dollars of overdraft for me, as well as affecting my son so much, that he nearly got kicked out of his student residence in Colorado. Thank you Matt - for being so foolish as these are unjustifiable to almost anyone. save outright theft.

A day later, he misdirected another client to see only my apparent (??) oversight that allowed a doubling of the contracted budget in the management of a PPC campaign, prior to remembering that he was the one who ordered me to not comply with the customer's requests as a matter of conflicting interests with the web development side of the business. Until ordered to shift full attention to the project cited in the previous paragraph (requesting deliverables immediately for the 2 weeks prior????), we were still running a little rich (? - 30-40% over) in the these PPC campaigns, but a unique thing happened:

• As managed expenses dropped by pausing all non-productive AD Groups, the productive ones kept increasing in productivity, albeit slowly at first.
  
• On the weekend prior to all this, I'd reviewed the 3rd week stats to find we were on track to nearly double our goals related to high closure leads and a bit more.... and with about an equal rise in additional expenditure.
• Perhaps things fell apart in that last week, but the history of this business tells another story.... Car dealers do most of their business towards the end of each month, related often to promotional manufacturer related price arrangements with the manufacturer's related finance practice...... and if things were still the same.... the closing rates should have increased the most in the last week of any month.
• More that double the business for double the investment... and all some other folks see is what they spent... go figure... It shook me so that I called my other PPC clients (all whom I've been recently let run a little rich for promotion... provided it shows good return)... no one else questioned my judgement... Still, I could have been wrong.

Perhaps this is all well and best in the end.

• Funny things about Intellectual Capital:
• Many times you never realize what it is and it could be beside you
• It's hard to claim ownership if you never realized you had it
• My landing page generator got much better (soon another story)
• I've came out of it all, in the midst of calamity, with a startling service that can get hundred in hours and thousands in a few days of micro social-networking parties (spawns) to focus on discussing an opinion actively. .... like stirring the pot.... Considering the dynamics of social networking (that are based to a certain extent on 2-4 degrees of separation,,, and the use of very short single thought chatty message info-bytes (leaving lots of room in type of responses to attract)... oh, I've already said too much for public record on this one.....
• Best of all on the last idea was that it came within days after these irreconcilable differences made it clear that my best interests (nor consideration to just ask first) were not to be served by maintaining that relationship.
  
• More on this in future posts.....

Here's an interesting close to this post:

In my second life with IBM, I once met a dynamic professional hire VP (not internally grown) who told me that if you always lookout for your customer you'll have a job for life (they remember and most recognize your best intentions) ,,, but if you work only for 'the company' that pays you (and often has their own set of internal conflicts), you're just a number and sooner or later you'll lose yourself. That is how I choose to live my life!

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Well, perhaps not..... I keep forgetting that Matt also causing me a lot of pain this last week by dishonoring his verbal agreement for services contracted to my son.... to the tune of some 5 weeks.... that's a lot for a student to bear.,,, Some Christian he is, eh?....

Labels: Back from the depths, Moving on..., Off my chest

posted by SearchEngineer_eBizGuru @ 10:33 PM