“Erik, let’s be careful out there, and take care of your body” – My dad as he used to coin the phrase from the show Hill St. Blues and then add his usual sign-off.
Not really much to say right now. I have about 5 posts all ready to be sent out for this blog but I have been a bit distracted. It is always a tough time of year for me. This week marks 4 years since my dad passed away and every night when I run or before I go to bed my mind has been racing with memories of good times and thinking, “What would my dad do?” it has kind of been a distraction and as the week comes to an end, I think my week of reflection has helped me with clarity.
In many ways my solitude runs at night have been my conversations, my wake up calls, my time alone with my dad. In a way, I like to think the hooligans (a word my dad would have used) who tried to hit me with eggs as I ran the other night were just my dad having some fun with me. I think my dad would have laughed if I came home covered in eggs.
As kids we look at our moms and dads and never really think of them as children of other people and the bond that they have with their parents. I’m sure my kids don’t realize how much I miss him, but the photos of us playing golf and laughing are all around the house and I think there are enough memories for my children to let them know how important a relationship is between a child and their father and how lucky they are to have one.
As I head into the weekend to become a full-time dad for 48 hours ….my memories of dad might fade..but they will always make me smile……Thanks Dad for still being here in spirit.
Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.
– John Naisbitt, American Author and businessman
It’s the eve of our main annual Affiliate Marketing Industry conference (Affiliate Summit) and a couple of people have asked me how I see this next year and decade shaping up compared to the past 10 years in the industry.
On the surface there are many obvious changes, but we should look deeper. A decade ago (2000) BeFree and Linkshare as well as large merchants roamed the industry. Today there are many more networks and less merchants and less independent affiliates roaming the halls in my view. The era of banner creatives and tool bars have now progressed into RSS Feeds, widgets and APIs. The names Marciano, Messer and Gerace are now replaced by Collins, Ward, and Brogan. Online communities such as eCircles, Geocities and the Tribe have now been overtaken by Myspace, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. One thing is for sure the affiliate marketing industry has evolved and matured, certain vertical areas have consolidated ,and many in the industry have learned to fuse either their marketing savvy with their technology hutzpah or vice versa.
Some people such as Owen Van Natta have taken that prowess to the next level. 10 years ago Owen was was in Business Development having led the Amazon Associates affiliate program. Today he is the CEO of MySpace. 10 years ago, Todd Crawford was this upstart with a company called Commission Junction. He sold that network and is now starting the new decade with the launch of a new business which we will likely be hearing more about over the next couple of weeks and especially at this conference. I look forward to hearing the pitch from Todd and his partners.
There are other issues. Even certain industries within affiliate marketing are changing. In the music space, for instance, 10 years ago people would buy a $12.99 CD from Amazon and get an 8-10% commission. Today, more people are buying downloads of single songs from iTunes or $.99 and the affiliate commission is only $.05. This is such that recorded music has disappeared in the affiliate music space as an interesting option.
Okay, so the technology has advanced, the channels have changed, some industries have changed and if the faces haven’t changed they definitely have become a little bit older, but what hasn’t changed is that basic marketing and sales principles can not and should not be ignored.
What will the next decade have in store for the Affiliate Marketing Industry?
When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They’re very creative. – Reggie White, former NFL start and Hall of Famer.
Okay…this is totally off topic for me. Well not so much, but recently I’ve come across a couple of racial stereotypes about Asians. Nahhh, I’m not offput by either of them. They were both done harmlessly although one I found to be one I relate to and the other made me look at myself in the mirror.
So the first one has to do with the trailer for the new movie, “Up In the Air”. Have you seen it? There’s a part where George Clooney’s character says he likes to get behind Asians in line at the airport because we are fast especially since we all wear slip on shoes. I plead guilty! Although I grew up with lace-up shoes (my Chinese father told me , “Loafers are called that because they are for people who are too lazy to bend over and properly lace up their shoes!), ever since September 11th I have switched to slip on shoes. In fact, I have a real affinity for a particular pair of Johnston & Murphy Men’s Harding Slip-On shoes. LOL! Seriously though, it really makes it easy when you are trying to grab all of your bags off the short conveyor belt while the people around you are busy stripping down or falling over trying to tie their shoes and race through airports. Want another tip from Asians? For the business traveler it’s the Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Laptop Messenger Bag. Remember when we used to have to power on our computers and then spend a few minutes making sure that the computer powered on and off properly? Thank goodness those days are gone. But still, we have to pull out our computer and put it in a bin. With this bag, all we have to do is unzip it and flip out flat. It will save you another 30 seconds on both sides of the conveyor belt I guarantee it!
The other night I found myself watching Wanda Syke’s new show. It was crass chuckling humor and I was using it as background noise until there came a segment called “Know Your Asians”……now I am not someone who gets easily offended at pokes at my own ethnicity, but heck Wanda…what was up with the crack that Asians have flat “backsides”? We do have a little junk in our trunk. We just choose not to wear our pants around our bottoms because it simply isn’t a fashion we enjoy. I had to ask a few of my other Asian friends. We checked each other out. Japanese, nope. Chinese, not really. Phillipino, no way. Then came my Korean friend! Shyly she said she was to blame. There you go Wanda! You need to know your Asians! Seriously! We want a retraction and an apology! LOL! Again, this was all in jest and if you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh at others. I mean, here is Wanda, a black lesbian with a tranny as a co-host sidekick. We aren’t supposed to take this seriously.
Of course, if you really want to help me refute Wanda’s stereotype you can just check out my backside (my junk, my humps, derriere) or whatever you choose to call it. In fact, just get behind this Asian the next time we are at security at the airport. Just watch out, I’m pretty fast through the security area!
The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living.
– George Clooney, Up in the Air
It’s irnoic that line is the one that will be remembered most from the first big movie in 2010 or in this decade. Maybe that is why I’m running so much these days.
The new decade is here and what a decade the last one was. It is easy to look just back at 2009, but that would be a short-sighted and very depressing one. Wrought with health issues and a world economic crisis, even looking back 2 years might not even be what we need to be able to look back on the past decade with perspective. As I ran down 2009 through a series of runs through the Streets of San Francisco I tried to reflect a little on the past year, but kept pulling more memories out . As I looked farther back, I began to realize that I didn’t just need resolutions for the coming year (don’t like resolutions anyway). I needed to look ahead to the whole next decade! I haven’t written in a bit just because I wasn’t sure as to what to say as the thoughts kept flooding in. “Just put it to paper and let the rhythm flow without thinking” (to paraphrase the words of the lead character in Finding Forrester). So as I put my running shoes and headphones on and listened to my new favorite song, Good Life by One Republic, what I saw was a past that is shaping our future in new ways and some that we could never have imagined.
There’s so much to think about when looking back and trying to eliminate the macro-factors of societal changes and focus on only the things you really can control. For me it was about family, health, work, and friends. How can I proactively move towards making sure I better control these issues in the new decade.
In order to look ahead at the next decade and what it should look like for me, I found myself back in time in 1999 as we were selling our house and i was getting back into the venture business. Yeah, remember the Y2K craze and how much were were going to have to evolve when the computers came crashing down? It was a whole cottage industry for a doom and gloom that never came. We’re still here though. I think I had 3 jobs this past decade and hopefully won’t do that much switching in the next decade. I would never have expected in 1999 that I would end up doing what I do today, but my current job is one I’ve been at longer than any before. Is this my legacy?
Personally in 1999 I was a new dad in San Francisco wondering how I could move to a bigger place in the suburbs. Well we did do that, but we moved back to San Francisco. Not before we became ice cream moguls leaving a mark with a franchise in Marin County as well as purchasing another one in San Francisco. Anyway, now I’m a seasoned dad with a 10 year old and a 7 year old. So what does that mean? At the end of this decade I will just about be an empty nester as my two kids will hopefully be off to college. It doesn’t leave much time for me to think about how to afford their education and prepare for how I will prepare for my retirement if something like that would ever exist for me. If I thought my children dominated my life this past decade it will surely be a decade of building what will be a lifelong relationship. Maybe I shouldn’t even mention retirement as it won’t happen until after 2020 for sure.
The past decade also came with health issues as well. Losing a parent (which I could have predicted as my dad was already in poor health) was hard to take but reminded me of how important a parent-child relationship is and how fortunate I was to have my children meet their grandfather and develop a deep relationship with my own mother. Emotional preparation for the potential loss of another grandparent in this decade would be something I could easily see in my future. Cancer was something I never would have expected to be part of the last decade. In fact it was a large part with my mother and then followed by my wife and friends. Bad Health is never something you really plan or prepare for. I don’t know how much the next decade will be interrupted by health issues but age will not come without some aches and pains for sure. I have already started preparing myself. The last two years of training have built my stamina to a high level. I maybe not as strong or fast as I used to be, but if not getting sick at all for the past 18 months is any indication, I’ve definitely been fortunate in keeping healthy and maybe if I just keep moving…..
I don’t need to write much about friends and extended family and my expectations there given some recent posts, but this past decade has been about revitalizing past relationships. I only expect that to continue. It seems to be a natural processs as you get older and start to reminisce about times gone by. These are the people who will remind you about your past someday so its probably good to keep them close so that they remember it accurately. For sure their memories are already declining, not to mention their deteriorating eye sight. It just makes me wondering as the baby boomers will be moving into their 50s and 60s, will those people still be wanting to deal with small screens on their cell phones and buttons that don’t work well with arthritic fingers? Remember that this decade started with us using PDAs with a stylus. Now we just push things around with our thumbs. Will everything be voice-activated over the next decade? Will we see the first wave of brain cancer resulting from overuse of cell phones?
We now have a black President. Will the next decade bring a female President? An Asian President? A Hispanic President? A Gay one? Maybe 2 of those. We talk about national security as getting tighter given the terrorism that has started in the US. Is it possible this could get worse? Will the idea of being “green” work. What would people have thought if you used that term back in 1999? They would have thought you wanted to be a vegetarian and were giving up meat. For me all of this just heightens the urgency to show my kids parts of the world that they might never ever get the chance to see or at least the way they could see it today. The world is changing rapidly. How fast? The eco-system even in the SF Bay area was so drastic that one minute the sea lions that inhabit our piers had peaked at over 2 thousand last November yet today there are about 6. The plankton and the water temperatures have caused them all to move to areas up North where they can find more herring. A migration that grew over a 20 year period just disappeared in a matter of months. Will Alaska still be cold in 2020? Will there still be arctic glaciers?
As I continue my running regimen I’m not running from the past but running toward the future. It isn’t necessarily a bright one or even a better decade than the past. It will have its own challenges and we can only prepare ourselves for what will be more of the same yet with more intensity. Of course, we have a chance to shape our own path by planning it before the future comes and dictates our actions.
Perhaps while this decade might not mark the beginning of a new millenium that it might end up being much more important than the past decade This may be the decade where we take control of our destiny and start to dictate what history will be. Maybe Live Strong won’t be an attitude for fighting cancer, but to beat Father Time and prevent him from catching us.
For me the answer is to not prepare for the end, but prepare for the future. Don’t look back too far, but just remember to keep looking forward so that what you left behind stays there and what you want to take with you in the future moves with you. For me that is simple. 10 years from now I want to be standing there proudly with my wife at my side as we watch our son thrive in college as he prepares for the real world and a career of his choosing and our daughter moves off to college strongly independent such that her parents will know that she is prepared for that next stage of her life. Me? I’ll be cleaning out their bedrooms figuring out how I can convert their rooms into my own 3D home theater and 24 hr. fitness club.
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.” – C.S. Lewis
One of the more wonderful things I was happy about in 2009 was that I got out a few times with one of my best friends from childhood. We’ve started graying and maybe even have started to repeat ourselves so getting out again with each other and while we didn’t get to great events like a Super Bowl or a Cal-Stanford Big Game with miraculous plays, getting out and enjoying things together with someone and sharing in the joy, the laughter, the sadness, and the disappointment is what makes those events and memories even more special.
Jerry Rice #80 and me
My wife often asks me about what it is that makes my friendship so special and I said it is that it is the unspoken. It is that we don’t even have to tell each other about what we were tniking because “we just knew”. The stunned look we gave each other as if to say, “Could this really be happening to us?”
Recently we went to a Monday Night Football game which I have to freely admit is not what it used to be from a television experience, but in a day and time when we see a lot of football played on Sundays, I had forgotten how special a night game in December could be. Granted the 49ers are no longer a dynasty and ESPN does not replicate ABC and Howard Cosell or John Madden, but it didn’t need to.
Just sharing the night with a friend made a special night even more special. I’d forgotten how great and magical Monday Night Football could be. Even without the 49ers making the playoffs for the 7th straight season, the stars were still out.
With ESPN's Suzy Kolber
The cool thing about Monday Night Football is that it is just as big a sporting event as it is a media event. The sports celebrities are as big as the players themselves. ESPN personalities like Suzy Kolber, Michelle Tafoya, Stuart Scott and Matt Millen were all in attendance on the sidelines.
Matt Millen did play for the 49ers so he helped to add to the celebrity status. There were plenty of 49er alumni in attendance from the glory years, some working as media as well as just taking in the whole scene:
Steve Young
Jerry Rice
Keena Turner
Deion Sanders
Steve Bono
MNF Pre-Game Hosts
As a football fan though, the game was very entertaining as the 49ers beat the defending NFC champs, Arizona Cardinals for the second time this season as they hounded them for 7 turnovers.
More importantly, the game ended with more memories for a good friendship that will leave us with more moments that we will be able to acknowledge with a simple nod and a smile because of its uniqueness in both of our memories. From my perspective, taking photos of my friend both with the owner of the team as well as the 49er cheerleaders cracked me up. Hopefully 20 years from now we’ll look back and them and crack up at how silly we were. They will go in the pile along with the Polaroids (Wait, is it still 2009? No? Time to throw away the polaroids.) we took with Miss Universe 1982, Shawn Weatherly (yes, I still have old polaroids.) In fact it was 1982 when the 49ers were bringing hoe their first Super Bowl (1981 actually). Maybe it is coincidence that I went to the game with my friend Dave. It has been a while since the 49ers had a winning season (they’ve not had a winning season since 2002), so this turnaround is a great time to share with friends.
With ex-49er QB Steve Bono
Here’s to friends, football and pleasant memories. I know this might sound sentimental and mushy, but I watched the movie Finding Forrester with my son. The movie focuses ona reclusive writer who no longer wants to share with others because but a young kid from the neighborhodod shows him the joys of sharing and discovery again. I’ve seen several writings on the Moral Premise of the movie:
Ignorance and avoidance of the unknown
leads to fear, isolation, and despair;
but Knowledge and embrace of the unknown
leads to faith, friendship, and hope.
In the movie, the reclusive author rediscovers the joy of visiting Yankee Stadium and a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden with his new-found friend. This game was just a way for my friend and I to revisit some of those great memories and it just so happens that many of the heroes of our past were there. Seeing Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Steve Bono, Matt Millen and Keena Turner on the sidelines while watching an increasingly competitive 49er team play a game on Monday night brought back many fond memories and good times.
It should be said that fiendships are not only there for the good times. And that is why as we head into 2010 that I can only hope that many of the friendships of 2009 that were rooted in some not so fond times will get to rekindle some good times in 2010.
shoes. LOL! Seriously though, it really makes it easy when you are trying to grab all of your bags off the short conveyor belt while the people around you are busy stripping down or falling over trying to tie their shoes and race through airports. Want another tip from Asians? For the business traveler it’s the 
. Remember when we used to have to power on our computers and then spend a few minutes making sure that the computer powered on and off properly? Thank goodness those days are gone. But still, we have to pull out our computer and put it in a bin. With this bag, all we have to do is unzip it and flip out flat. It will save you another 30 seconds on both sides of the conveyor belt I guarantee it! 
