I just got this email from Kayak: Title: Finding the right hotel room shouldn’t be a journey all by itself. Body: Which is why we partnered with the experts to incorporate traveler reviews — including TripAdvisor’s unmatched content of millions of user reviews and opinions — into our hotel search. So now you can compare room rates from hundreds of travel sites at once. Then narrow your search results to show just the best hotels, as rated by actual guests. We know a lot more goes into finding a good hotel than just the price. We think these new reviews and recommendations will make finding the right room easier than ever. Try it right now and see … Continue reading →

I get asked from time to time whether I regret leaving Zillow in early 2010. I’ve even been called crazy over the decision. In fact, the reason I’m writing this post now is that it just happened again two days ago by a total stranger on an island tour in El Nido (whether I regret it, not that I’m crazy). After all, marketing for Zillow was the job everyone wanted for a well funded tech startup. The team was as good as they come, following a grand vision tackling an industry sorely in need of a wake up call in terms of the consumer web. I was making good money. I truly truly loved my … Continue reading →

To me, best friends are life’s greatest treasure. Those that know me so well that they can read my mind before I even open my mouth. Those that know when that latest “brilliant” idea pops into my head simply by the look in my eyes. There’s nothing I enjoy more than kicking back at a crappy dive bar with my closest friends in the world. And that’s precisely what I’ll be doing one week from today in San Francisco. I couldn’t be more excited.

Every city with a decent expat population and a thriving tourist scene needs a really good sports bar, at least in my opinion. But I’m still amazed at how few places seem to have one. Whether it be college football, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Giving credit where it’s due is likely something every successful leader and manager does well. If they aren’t good at it? Well, they probably aren’t that successful. I love this paragraph from James Altucher: 5)      Give Them Credit. At work everyone wants credit. At home everyone wants credit. “I DID clean the dishes today,” my daughter might say. People tend to hoard credit. They are afraid that if others get credit for what they did then they might get diminished in some way. So do the opposite. Give credit/appreciation for everything, even work you did. Here’s a ratio: for every piece of credit you give out, it comes back tenfold. How will it come back? We … Continue reading →

From Joel Runyon Stop Letting Excuses Steal Your Life Well said.

via Seth Godin: If you have a list of 1000 subscribers or 5,000 fans or 10,000 supporters, you have a choice to make. You can create stories and options and benefits that naturally spread from this group to their friends, and your core group can multiply, with 5,000 growing to 10,000 and then 100,000. Or you can put the group through a sales funnel, weed out the free riders and monetize the rest. A 5% conversion rate means you just turned 5,000 interested people into 250 paying customers. Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter’s numbers. He’s absolutely right. One pays (some of) the bills immediately. The other offers the possibility of paying (more … Continue reading →