Business Development

Senator Ted Kennedy – On Leadership and Heath Care Reform

August 30th, 2009 By DavidChan 2 Comments

As a business development professional, I believe leadership is a fundamental quality required to succeed in this career. Senator Ted Kennedy demonstrated all of the qualities of leadership and then some, including vision, openness, and above, all, compassion. His tireless effort over four decades fighting for health care reform is a legacy that will transcend beyond his senate seat. I read with great interest the Newsweek article written by Mr. Kennedy himself The Cause of My Life, wherein he describes what has been his lifelong passion regarding universal health care.

Senator Ted Kennedy has had his share of sorrow and tragedy throughout his family’s legacy. I learned a tremendous amount about why health care reform was so important to him. In 1973 he learned firsthand how families had to make critical decisions about health care for their children because of their ability, or worse, inability to pay for medical care.

At that time, his 12 year old son, Teddy, had to have his right leg amputated because of an aggressive cancerous tumor. During the treatments to fight cancer, Mr. Kennedy met and interacted with other parents who were financially less fortunate than him to pay for aggressive, sometimes experimental cancer treatment.

That was a defining moment for Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform stand. He goes on to state that “That experience with Teddy made it clear to me, as never before, that health care must be affordable and available for every mother or father who hears a sick child cry in the night and worries about the deductibles and co pays if they go to the doctor.”

Mr. Kennedy talks about his son Patrick who had asthma serious enough to require hospitalization on numerous occasions. His daughter, Kara, was also diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. Thankfully, because of quality health care and chemotherapy, she has survived that insidious scourge.

Here is a man who has the wealth of the Kennedy family to afford the best medical treatment for himself and his family. Why should he care about those who cannot? There are certainly other legislative policies that Mr. Kennedy could have taken up that would have been much easier to “win.” But, he chose this piece of legislation because he is a leader of the cause and plight of the common people.

No matter what side of the political fence any of us sit, the cause for health care reform, or more appropriately, universal health care is one that is consuming our country’s attention. Many have asked to rename Barack Obama’s health care reform after Mr. Kennedy. This is certainly a worthy idea as many of the tenets of President Obama’s plan come from Mr. Kennedy’s four decades of work in health care.

I just returned from visiting one of my UC Berkeley school mates. He is also terminally ill with cancer. Over the last couple of months I’ve learned how our broken health care system has tried to initially deny his hospital stay and then his desire to live out the rest of his short life at home. It has been proven time and time again that end of life patient care at home provides a better quality of life than in a hospital setting AND it saves money!

If Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform policies and lifelong work succeeds in the hands of the current administration, he will have achieved what countless presidents and politicians before him have failed to do … not just universal health care, but a platform for a more fair and just society. After all, isn’t that why our forefathers immigrated to America in the first place?

How to Fix Amtrak Through Information Alliances

August 20th, 2009 By DavidChan Leave a Comment

I’ve been a long time Amtrak rider since moving to the burbs north of San Francisco seven years ago. I must admit that I hate driving and prefer to be driven. It would be great if I could own a limousine and hire a chauffeur, but alas, I’m limited to public transportation or driving my own car.

The problem with Amtrak and generally most public transportation is that they don’t really cater to their customers. The information alliances that they’ve built with partners are zero to none. For example, how often have you jumped on Amtrak, say from Sacramento, and got to your final destination in San Francisco, without missing some type of connection? An information alliance / business development effort with the San Francisco public transit system could solve this problem in a heartbeat.

I remember one day leaving San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf on Amtrak and arriving in Richmond, CA only to have missed my connecting BART service by 52 seconds. Yes, that’s how long it took to get from the Amtrak track to the BART track … down one set of stairs … up another. Again, an information alliance, an exchange of data … bits … would have helped me to make my connection.

The problem, I’ve been told, is that each transit authority is only responsible for their little fiefdom. Forget about customer service. Let’s just get our trains there on time … our time, that is. An information alliance with other transit authorities does not help individual company’s “on time” schedules, but it would help us, “the customer.”

I recently read an article about the slippage of Amtrak train ridership on the Capitol Corridor route. The story was written up in the Davis Enterprise. The article states that while ridership is down this year, on-time arrivals are at an all-time high. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see how easy that is to accomplish … ridership DOWN … on-time arrivals UP?

Amtrak, like so many other public transportation systems should consider themselves as being in the “people moving business”, as Jeff Jarvis would say, NOT in the train business. By building information alliances with BART, the San Francisco Muni, AC Transit, CalTrain, and countless other transportation companies, we all might take public transportation more often. And, after all, isn’t that what we all want for a greener America?

Here’s another information alliance that can be exploited. What if when you arrived at your final destination a rented bike rack was waiting at your disposal? Or, what if a Zipcar or heaven forbid, even another public transit system that was timed to meet up with a “foreign” transit system?

There is no easy answer to this problem. But, there is no way out without an answer. In other words, we have the ability to build information alliances and data exchange. Someone has to start this business development effort in order to change the “drive my car” mentality in California.

It’s outrageous to hear companies like Amtrak boast about on-time arrivals when the real end-to-end experience for the customer is what’s really lacking. An information alliance / exchange of data and a tad bit of planning would really enhance the experience for the customer. It might even perhaps raise ridership because customers would feel confident in getting to their final destination hassle free and timely, if not “on time.”

Real Estate – A Timely Business Development Opportunity?

August 17th, 2009 By DavidChan Leave a Comment

There’s a lot to be said, both good and bad, about real estate business development. For years the world of real estate business development made many people rich, allowed them to retire sooner rather than later and also helped families fund college educations for their children. Now, with the housing crunch and financial debacle, is business development in the real estate market still a good bet? Depends on which real estate market you choose to develop: OFFLINE or ONLINE.

Allow me to first explain the offline real estate market. By offline real estate market, I mean residential homes, apartment buildings, raw land and commercial office buildings … in other words, the physical world of real estate.

Developing business opportunities in the offline real estate market made a lot of people rich, but it also decimated a generation. If you had the good fortune of “buying low and selling high”, you made out like a bandit. However, like stocks, real estate business development is not for the “un-initiated”, nor is it for anyone who doesn’t do their homework. And, even if you do your homework, there are a lot of bad deals and crooked people out there.

Offline real estate development requires an understanding of demographics, local markets, finance, and much, much more. In addition, it requires plenty of money, especially these days, to finance down payments, mortgages, insurance and taxes. It also requires looking at the big picture. It’s all great and wonderful to think about the upside, but what about the downside? In other words, how can you get burned?

Let’s explore an example. Suppose a crooked real estate agent brings you a deal that just looks tremendous on paper. It only requires an investment of a few thousand or perhaps a few hundred thousand in order to make millions. The developer has a great track record and wants to bring low cost housing to people who need it. In fact, the real estate agent believes so much in the deal that he/she has also invested in the deal.

Keep in mind the old adage that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There are so many scam artists in the world of offline real estate. And, the biggest problem of all is that the stakes are very high, indeed. You can lose thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or your life savings in offline real estate business development. As a tip, one good tool to check for scam artists, like crooked developers is www.ripoffreport.com.

Contrast OFFLINE real estate business development with ONLINE real estate business development. What is this you ask? It’s the world of building businesses leveraging the Internet.

For example, buying and registering a domain name is analogous to buying a piece of raw land in the physical world. Creating a website, then, is analogous to building a house on that piece of physical land. And, adding content (images, text, video, etc.) on your website is like adorning your physical home with furniture, pictures and such.

How is business development executed in the online real estate market … by creating value for your online property. Let’s take an example. When www.PartyPoker.com first launched, it was merely a website for like minded people to pass the time playing poker. Today, it is the #1 gaming site on the Internet, as tracked by www.Alexa.com.

How did Party Poker become numero uno … through community and social proof. They built the best poker site, invited people, friends of friends and affiliates. How do they make money … through advertising and the cultivation of their subscriber base.

Compared to the cost of offline real estate, acquiring, building and maintaining online real estate is peanuts. Yet, the rewards can outstrip those of offline real estate by a thousand fold, if not more. One real life example is the sale of YouTube to Google for $1.65 Billion in 2006.

There are many more examples of online real estate business development opportunities. The key is to pick a niche, understand your demographics, put down stakes, build your dream site, and invite your flock. Sound familiar?