Jimmy Johns Subs – Freaky Fast and FANTASTIC Customer Service
We at Clareo eat Jimmy Johns sandwiches for lunch a few times a week. Their local franchise is a block from our office, they deliver, its good food, reasonable prices, and most of all convenient. Frankly, we get burned out on it every once in a while as we eat it with such frequency. However, they have now earned my business for life.
This story comes by way of my former trading partner, NIX.
NIX has a sister in law who attends school at Michigan State, but is home in New Jersey now for winter break. Unfortunately, for sister in law, its not much of a break – she is scheduled to have surgery. NIX being a somewhat decent guy (if he likes you,) asked her if there was anything he could do to make her convalescence more comfortable. Sister in law informs NIX that oddly (I never realized that they weren’t as ubiquitous as SBUX,) New Jersey has no Jimmy Johns and she really misses the sandwiches she is accustomed to from her college town of Lansing, Michigan. All she wants for her recovery is a #12 on wheat. Of course, NIX immediately replies that he will do what he can (he thinks it will be impossible – but you can tell where this story is heading.)
NIX subsequently gets off of the phone with sister in law, and immediately calls up his local franchise here in Chicago. The local franchisee is not empowered to do much about this situation, but has the desire to serve, and the knowledge that the corporate culture will want to do something about this as well. A promise is made to NIX that someone from corporate will get back to him within hours. Minutes later, NIX’s phone rings and someone (please tell me who it was Jimmy Johns folks, so that I can properly attribute this,) from corporate asks for clarification as to what the situation is.
NIX goes over his request, and of course as is his hilarious way, asks if they are freaking out yet… Nope, no freaking. Nope, no negative response. Merely a request for sister in laws order and the address where it will be sent. NIX gives the information and offers his credit card number – but the folks at Jimmy Johns know what passionate customers are all about – they went about the hard work of earning that passion, the harder work of maintaining that passion, and the foresight to see that doing something like this engenders a ripple effect (this blog writeup being a case in point.) The statement paraphrased was something along the lines of, “If your sister in law’s only desire for recovery is one of our sandwiches that aren’t available where she is, well then, we will get it to her so that she gets better and back to school that much faster.”
Jimmy Johns, I may order your food so frequently that I need an occasional change – but you have won my loyalty both as a consumer, and a passionate advocate, and for that matter NIX’s as well. You already had the sister in law!
Popularity: 49% [?]
Economist on Entrepreneurship / Intrapreneurship
As a followup to an electronic conversation I recently had with several folks, The Economist 11.22.08 says, “One reason why downturns tend to be good times to launch new businesses is because established companies abandon promising growth opportunities too fast. Oracle and Microsoft were both born in difficult economic times.”
In context, this quote came from an article discussing companies stockpiling cash, and how this can create an economic death spiral. Please do not take this posting as advice to be rash instead of rational with cash on hand. That said, it is also a contrarian time for some entrepreneurial optimism.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Fabulous Incremental Innovation
Amy and I were sitting on the couch, both working away on our laptops when something on tv caught my attention.
Apparently, Nicorette gum has coupled their quit smoking gum, with a teeth whitening agent. Smokers quit for any number of reasons, a small part of which might be to stop discoloring their teeth – but on a higher level, we as Americans are all conditioned to be somewhat vain and desirous of the “pearly whites.”
What a brilliant idea then, taking two otherwise unrelated products – and combining them into a single killer package!
Popularity: 17% [?]
Clareo Partners LLC 2008 Holiday Party Set 2
The second set of holiday party photos can be found here.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Experiment on Prediction Market Arbitrage – Finished… For Today
Well that experiment ended more quickly than intended, I assumed I would have a bit of time to monitor and develop some insight.
(Un)Fortunately, I picked a position to experiment with that was a bit to easy, and ended early with crude trading under the experiments $40.00 threshold today.
The trade was correct, I would have made money (and I made a disproportionately large amount in notional HubDub $$$s for the position I played.)
Here are a few simple observations for now:
-HubDub’s algorithm which I need to do more research into, offers some opportunities for disproportionate rewards on simple trades. While I conceptually understand that HubDub uses Robin Hanson’s Market Scoring Rule. The implementation seems to be static as opposed to dynamic. Yes, philosophically the market price should determine the risk as a built in component, but there seems to be a disconnect in between volatility, risk, and reward all in relation to time in trade. In a given market, with greater volume, I believe price discovery (and hence, risk) would be built into expected outcome. Unfortunately, HubDub seems to pay based on time of entry, not current/exit – great if you are playing for an anticipated outcome, not so good for active trade within the course of a product being open for trade. ***Lesson learned – this is a prediction market, NOT, a trading market!
-An inherent issue with HubDub, is that it’s traded products are in fact user generated questions, relying on self policing. Positives for HubDub in this methodology are that the content is not generated by staff i.e. free once a critical mass of users is seeded (love that from a business model perspective!,) and the fact that no real money is under question or possible dispute. Negatives for a trader are that the questions are not all of definable quality, i.e. commodities traded are standardized, HubDub questions may be precise or the other end of the spectrum to wacky in their wording.
An aside on the topic of notional $’s at risk vs. “real” money, this has LONG been a debate in the trading and train-the-trader community of which I have been a part. Many feel that play money markets are useful tools to be used in training a prospective trader to identify positive opportunities and to teach basic technical use of any software platform. There are others who feel that the proper training is to teach using a “simulator” only as long as is required to learn the software, then turning to real money in low risk, low volatility markets so that some version of pain is felt by the trader – hence teaching true positive and negative repercussions for their trades. HubDub by its nature may show skewed rewards and risks, due to the skewing of results by rash traders who know that no real pain is incurred by incorrect choices. In some of my research on the use of prediction markets within the corporate structure, often there is only a positive outcome in the form of reward – an area of thought for me to pursue is now brought forth, how can a corporate predicition market administrator introduce negative outcomes in parallel? Philosophically, corporate managers desire both accurate future indicators, and from a meta perspective don’t they want their employees to accept accountability for all their actions and outcomes?
End result of all this, I am still playing around and looking for insight on HubDub as well as other competitors.
Popularity: 47% [?]