The Agile Scaleup

What's the Secret

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

HEADLINES: (vacation week thus the short insight) Print-Friendly Version

Dell Gets Leaner -- it's no big secret that I'm a Michael Dell fan and so far his turnaround is beating Wall Street expectations. Yesterday they reported 9% revenue growth from last year and their earnings were higher than expected (operating margin of 5.6%) as they've taken advantage of cost cutting measures and consumers/companies wanting lower-priced PCs amidst the downturn in the U.S. economy. Here's an excellent summary of their efforts and results -- Dell is increasing margins while facing increasing costs and price pressure -- it takes real management discipline to pull that off. AND the Dell problems you report to me get sent right to a top guy at Dell for him to respond -- they are trying to increase customer service at the same time (see John DiJulius's new customer service book What's the Secret noted below).

Questions About Pricing and Wage Pressures -- please share your quick feedback. I'm getting called almost daily by the media asking what I'm hearing from the mid-market segment of the economy. With increased food and fuel costs they are asking two specific questions: 1) are you feeling the pressure to raise your own prices and by how much; and 2) are your employees asking for increased wages to offset their own increased costs of putting food on the table and commuting to work? I'll keep your responses anonymous unless I get your permission to share with the media that contact me.

Do You Have Any Quirky Ways You Measure the Health of the Economy -- FORTUNE Small Business magazine is looking for rather quirky, unusual metrics any of you might use to gauge the health of the economy i.e. one CEO noted "I like to attend boat shows to see the ratio of new vs. used boats for sale. It shows the outlook for the market. At the recent Palm Beach Boat Show it was mostly used. Makers are afraid buyers won't be able to get loans." Please send ideas to [email protected]  with the subject line: My Economic Indicator.

WHAT'S THE SECRET: TO PROVIDING A WORLD-CLASS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE -- this is the title of John DiJulius's new book released just a few weeks ago.  It's a sequel to his best--selling book Secret Service and is timely given that we're in the midst of a customer service crisis given cost pressures. The key is delivering this customized service (which creates an "experience") for little or no cost! What I particularly like is John's new format driven around his X Commandments:

 

1. Having a Service Vision that articulates why your business exists
 
2. Creating a World-Class Internal Culture: Attract, hire, and retain only the people who have the Service DNA
 
3. Having Nonnegotiable Experiential standards everyone must follow
      
 
4. Secret Service Systems: Utilizing customer intelligence to personalize their experience and engage and anticipate their needs
      
 
5. Training to Provide a World-Class Customer Experience: Systems and processes that remove variation and provide a consistent customer experience
      
 
6. Implementation and Execution: How to go from ideas on a paper to being consistently executed
      
 
7. Zero Risk: Anticipating your service defects and having protocols in place to make it right
      
 
8. Creating an Above-and-Beyond Culture: Constant awareness and branding of how to be a hero
      
 
9. Measuring Your Customer's Experience: What gets measured gets managed
      
 
10. World-Class Leadership: Walking the talk

There is also a demo of John's new four hour training DVD -- perfect for reviewing one commandment per week at your brown-bag learning lunch or weekly meeting. And the DVD includes his famous opening piece about his son peeing in the pool and his closing video where his son wins his first national wrestling championship. Go to www.gazelles.tv and scroll down the left column -- the DVD demo's are in alphabetical order thus his is last.

Do I Want to Feed the Media Frenzy -- entrepreneurs are optimists (and the profiles in our IntroNetworks community support this) though we're also realists. The key is to keep making forward--moving decisions that take advantage of the higher fuel and food costs (entrepreneurs find advantages in EVERYTHING!) while using this period to tighten up expenses while pushing hard on strategy to drive revenues. "Going Global, Getting Lean" is our mantra for 2008 -- and a key focus of our Growth Summit this fall.  It's time to grab market share!!!  Go, Go, Go!!

Life Crisis Survival

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

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Co-creation, Latest Buzzword from C.K. Prahalad -- this is the article to read this week. It builds on the idea I've been pushing the last year "whoever taps into the most brains wins" and emphasizes the importance of tapping into the creativity of your broader customer base. The article will take less than five minutes to read and might spur an important idea or two for your own company. FYI, C.K. Prahalad is also the creator of the famous "core competency" terminology along with Gary Hamel. We've added a spot on the new Gazelles One-Page Strategic Plan to list your own firm's core competencies and we've highlighted their famous HBR article. Both the new One-Page form and link to the article are on My Gazelles. Quick registration required for these valuable resources.

Power of the Monthly Management Meeting -- any positive stories from those of you successfully running a 3 to 8 hour monthly management meeting with your broader middle and upper management team? This is part of the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annual meeting rhythm, yet it seems to be the one meeting many of you have yet to initiate. I want to write a more extensive column on the importance of this meeting as a way to 1) get senior management DNA passed down to the next level of management so changes you make "stick"; and 2) a way to guarantee buy-in from and increase the knowledge of your broader management team so they can more successfully lead the rest of your employees. Please email me at [email protected] or respond to this insight if you have a successful monthly meeting -- I'll call and interview you.  Thanks!

Fingers in the Dam/Chasing Your Tail? -- maybe you're not focused on the root cause.  John Ratliff, CEO of Appletree Answers, whose firm was the fastest growing Private Company Index (PCI) firm in the U.S. last year, emailed me re: the quarterly themes to say "I kind of feel like the kid with his finger in the dam. We get pretty good at plugging the big leak and then set out to focus on another leak next quarter, and the original comes back in some form, and then on to the next and now two big leaks and I have an impending sense of doom that I am chasing my tail." BTW, John's firm is doing extremely well, but I empathize with him. So I gave him a phone call -- here were my thoughts:

To Stop Chasing Your Tail -- 1) make sure the #1 priority/critical number you're going after is the root driver i.e. the first domino in the series of domino's you're trying to knock down -- often if dominos keep popping up you need to look for a more root (or earlier) domino to knock down first; 2) he has a core group of 35 managers that need to be more involved in the setting and driving of the quarterly theme -- and the monthly meeting is key! 3) it is critical, as part of the quarterly theme, to pick the one process that supports your #1 priority and make sure it is designed/re-designed so it supports and maintains the positive changes i.e. we're redesigning our nurture marketing process to support a focus on marketing in 2008.

Life Crisis? How to Survive -- Lauren Hefferon, founder and CEO of Ciclismo Classico, pointed me to a poignant interview Guy Kawasaki did with Jerry White, founder of Survivor Corps, who recently released his book I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. The interview does a great job of capturing the essence of White's recommendations (having faced getting his own leg blown off in Israel). Step #5 "Give Back" is especially important. When I almost lost my own company (and home) in 2001 I pledged the largest three-year donation I had ever committed to in my life and not surprisingly, it all worked out. Please take a moment and read Guy's interview and pass along to anyone you know that is facing a life crisis.

Tour of a Lifetime -- and congratulations to Lauren and her firm. Ciclismo Classico was just named as having one of 2008's "Tours of a Lifetime" by National Geographic Traveler, one of the premier active travel publications, with nearly 8 million readers annually. The publication's editors selected their "Sardegna Multisport Adventure," a family trip combining cycling, hiking and watersports, out of hundreds of submissions in the family category. If you're still wondering what to do this summer or fall, get some exercise and join one of Lauren's many singles, couples, or family bike trips throughout Europe and New England. I was a beginning cyclist and had a blast when I took my family -- trips designed for all levels of biking experience.

Giving Back: Another FORTUNE Small Business Makeover Needs Your Help -- an ex-HR executive with GE has launched an HR consultancy firm and could use some advice on her website, marketing, and running the business now that she'll be moving it from Atlanta to Denver. Here's a link.

What Recession? PCI Index up 4.93% Over Last Month -- and the Private Company Index (PCI) is up almost 50% over the same time last year. And the Gazelles segment of the index (firms growing over 20%) is up 12.88% over last month. This supports what surveys are showing, the mid-market privately held firms are carrying the economy! And next week Entrex releases a 300-page book highlighting 25 of the Private Company Index companies. I say it each month -- consider joining the PCI -- no cost, just report your monthly revenues confidentially -- the numbers are amassed and only reported in the aggregate. Sign-up at www.privatecompanyindex.com and see the full PCI results.

Sleep Challenges

DETAILS:"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

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Sleep Challenges?  FORTUNE Small Business magazine is looking for entrepreneurs who either:

1. HAD sleep problems (most likely insomnia, but could be anything else, including sleep apnea) that damaged/ruined their businesses and who saw business grow/rebound after they fixed the problem (perhaps by going to a sleep lab, taking sleeping pills, doing whatever worked to fix the sleep problem). Ideally, we need sales numbers to back up the damage to, and recovery of, business.
2. Took sleep aids (Ambien, Lunesta, whatever else is out there) and had a bad side effect such as: sleep eating, sleep driving, making a phone call they regret, setting a fire (these things apparently happen!), etc.

Please email Anne Fisher [email protected]

Koch Industries is Largest Privately Held Company -- with over $98 billion in revenue, Wichita, KS-based Koch Industries is once again at the top of the list of U.S. privately held firms.   Just over a year ago, CEO Charles Koch published a book entitled The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built The World's Largest Private Company. I've known Charles for over two decades and I offered this endorsement "The same exacting thought, rooted in the realities of human nature, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put into building a nation of entrepreneurs, Charles Koch has framed to build an enduring company of entrepreneurs - a company larger than Microsoft, Dell, HP, and other giants. Every entrepreneur should study this book." The book IS worth studying!

Skill and Will -- as Charles Koch's book highlights, the free market economy helps create the "will" to succeed, which is the main reason, I believe, our public education system is failing our students. Reflecting back on the Milken Global Conference, I heard education leaders speak from Singapore, Korea, and Japan -- and the common theme is that the key to educational success was having children not only with the "skill" but the "will" to learn. More importantly, the parents need the "will" to support their children ("more is caught than taught"). From their viewpoint, the American children they've taught in their international schools generally lack this will. So right after the conference I sat down with my oldest son and discussed the need for him to have both the will and the skill to succeed. He seemed to understand. Will and Skill. Heart and Head. Make sure it's present in your people and your company.

Youth Leadership Development -- yesterday I toured the facilities and had lunch with Richard Rossi, co-founder of Vienna, VA-based Envision EMI. To date they've provided leadership and personal success education to almost a half million high achieving young people in seven countries on five continent -- life skills not typically taught in elementary and secondary schools. And research shows that when students learn basic leadership and personal success skills, their academics improve as well. Students are nominated to participate by their teachers. BTW, they were just named a third time in 2007 as one of the best places to work in the DC region and they've been recognized as one of the top places to work in the U.S.

The Most Brains Wins -- my latest monthly "Growth Guy" syndicated column brought together many of the ideas you've heard me write and speak about over the past few months -- that whichever companies tap into the most brains, win! Called "Emergence Theory," I encourage you to take 5 minutes and scan my column under DETAILS below. BTW, the brains have to be awake!!
 
Jeff Booth's Blog -- CEO of BuildDirect, a direct supplier of building materials for less, is "controlling the ink in his industry" with the launch of his blog. And he was kind enough to blog about his experience bringing his team to our Rockefeller Habits workshop in Seattle a couple weeks ago . Entitled "The Best Leadership Course I've Ever Attended" Booth notes in his blog "I recognize that a small part of me didn't think we could afford the time for the entire management team to attend the retreat -- there was so much to do to take two days away from the business. After spending the time, I cannot believe we did not do it sooner." Booth was also kind enough to thank his good friends Pascal Spothelfer, president of BCTIA and Roger Hardy, CEO of Coastal Contacts for "giving me the 'gentle' nudging to attend. You have made a difference."  Thanks Jeff, Pascal, and Roger!

DETAILS:

  Most Brains Wins!
  By Verne Harnish "Growth Guy"

What do Google, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, eBay and Wikipedia have in common? Besides being six of the fastest growing organizations in history and making several of their founders billionaires in less than a decade, they all utilize a new reality of the information age -- whoever leverages the most brains wins! Figure out how to do this better than your competition and you win big.
 
The subtitle of James Surowiecki's best-selling book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations is another take on this new strategic weapon. It's no longer sufficient to have just a smart executive team. You need to launch initiatives to access the collective wisdom of your employees, customers, and the broader world around you.
Besides reading Surowiecki's book (quicker yet, just read the collective wisdom of Wikipedia's overview!), read Steven Johnson's breakthrough book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. It's Emergence Theory that drives the success of the organizations listed above. You not only have to understand and apply this theory to your business, you need to start doing it immediately -- so jump on Amazon, another Emergence Theory company, and place your order.
 
In past columns I've touched on several approaches to tap into the collective intelligence of your marketplace including the systematic gathering of customer and employee feedback and the use of wikis to capture and organize this information. There is also some innovative new "community" or "networking" technologies that aid in helping your customers connect with and help each other and in the process, help you.
 
  4000 Pages in One Year
 
Lee Rosen, President of Raleigh-Durham based Rosen Law Firm (disclosure: they are a client) knew he needed to capture the intellectual capital of his employees and find a way to efficiently organize the information necessary to run his thriving law practice that specializes in divorce cases. Launching an internal wiki, Rosen notes "I used a $1000 contest to encourage our lawyers and staff to contribute to the wiki and within a year we had over 4000 pages of intellectual content!" For more details, Rosen pointed me to a February 2008 FORTUNE Small Business magazine article about how companies are using wikis featuring his firm (Google will help you find the article).
 
My company recently launched a public wiki devoted to collecting examples of quarterly themes. Within a few days of announcing the website, many of our long standing clients took the time to populate the wiki with past quarterly theme ideas, photos, and detailed write-ups. This, in turn, is now a valuable resource to the rest of our clients which strengthens our market position as a source of tools and ideas for helping executives grow their businesses.
 
And we decided to house our wiki on a large public site called AboutUs.org. Founded by one of the top five thought leaders in the wiki space, Ray King, we were advised to avoid becoming a wiki-island onto ourselves. Why is this important? A significant and powerful aspect of wikis is the ability to link to other wiki pages. And it's this rich-link environment that helps raise the profile of your information on search engines. So it's important that your wiki, if you want it to be found by others, is housed where it can connect with many other wiki pages. If you want to check out the wiki, go to AboutUs.org and search for "quarterly themes."
 
IntroNetworks "community"
 
We've also ventured into the community building aspect of our business. Whereas I can see teenagers spending a great deal of time on community websites like Facebook and MySpace, it's been hard for me to imagine our network of 15,000 executives of growth firms taking the time to visit and benefit from a networking site. In turn, I know there is a tremendous amount of shared experience and talent among these executives if only they could efficiently tap into this reservoir of knowledge.
 
Spending $15,000, we licensed a system called IntroNetworks -- the same system the famous TED conference uses to network their attendees. What their system does is help the people in your network build specific profiles and then through the magic of various algorithms, determines who should talk to whom. Think of it as a matching/dating service for your customers where they can reach out and help each other. And since they are your customers, they likely have various common points of interest.
 
Within a week of our IntroNetwork's-supported community, one of the 15,000 executives in our network contacted me to say he might be able to help with a business challenge I personally posted on the network site. And it was someone I didn't even realize was in the network!
 
We did connect and he was able to help me determine two concrete courses of action to solve my challenge. For me, that's knowledge I would have never accessed had there not been the technology to facilitate the introduction.
 
At your next executive meeting, tackle the question "how can we dramatically increase the number of brains we can access to drive our business." Then do it and let me know what you create -- I need your brain as well!

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Jim Collins Latest Article

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
 
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Jim Collins' Latest Article in FORTUNE -- is worth taking five minutes to read. Here's Jim's key line that sums up his position on enduring greatness "Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves."

Milken Global Conference -- Michael Milken, the king of junk bonds, hosts an annual conference for 3000 focused on education, health, and finance. I was invited to speak on the importance of small to mid-market firms going global as a way to insulate themselves from local downturns. With developing countries growing at 3 to 4 times the rate of developed countries, it's imperative that mid-market firms take advantage of these growth areas. And it's been THE topic of discussion in Malaysia this week as I co-host our 7th annual "Taipan: Making of Asian Giants" conference. More and more of the local firms have found it necessary to expand regionally, venturing into Vietnam and Thailand as well as India and China. I recommended two books: Doing Business Anywhere by Tom Travis and Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenaars (which Tom Peters called "...a masterpiece").  BTW, both authors will speak at the Growth Summit Oct 21-22  along with the famous and irrepressible Tom Peters.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google -- keynoted the Milken conference. One of his main points was the importance of setting aside email and taking time to think, read, and come up with ideas! He particularly sets aside time each weekend for reading books, a routine critical for keeping himself and Google relevant in today's global marketplace. And he admitted that he has to discipline himself to do it since the pace at Google is grueling.
   
T. Boone Pickens, who also keynoted the Milken conference, explained how he recently turned a $4.3 million investment into over $5 billion! The key? -- a disciplined routine that includes four daily huddles with his team and the equivalent of a mini-CEO Council meeting each morning over breakfast (hey, I'm just asking you to do a single daily huddle and a CEO Council meeting each week!). At 5:30 a.m. his top two traders arrive and begin assembling information about what's happened in the global oil industry in the past twelve hours. Pickens then gets on the phone with his traders at 6:15 a.m.where he's briefed. He then works out with a trainer, allowing him to process what he's just learned while energizing his brain and body. Next is a 7:30 a.m. breakfast (egg white omelet already prepared) with his team where they informally discuss their trading strategy. This is followed, throughout the day, with two or three additional team meetings, including one at 4:30 p.m. to wrap up the day. It's these constant focused synchronous conversations, vs. endless emails, that have driven the success of Pickens portfolio. He must have used the words "discipline" and "routine" a dozen times in his presentation.

Wind and Solar -- BTW, T. Boone was bullish on wind and solar power. Just this past week his firm placed orders for $2 billion worth of wind turbines to be installed near Sweetwater, Texas. Expected to be fully operational by 2015, his wind farm will generate 4000 megawatts of power. And he laid out a plan whereby the U.S. could become energy independent; eliminating the $600 billion paid annually for foreign oil. It involves building a series a wind farms running from Texas north through Oklahoma and Kansas, all the way up to the Canadian border. A similar solar power belt would run west from Texas to California. This would generate enough power to replace the contribution natural gas makes to the production of electricity so it could be used to power our trucks and cars with liquid natural gas (LNG). He pointed out that the distribution system for this is already in place given the extensive network of natural gas lines that run into almost every home. It's a small device that each home could have to convert the natural gas into LNG. It was some bold thinking.

Profitability of the FORTUNE 500 -- the latest list was recently published and the first thing I did was calculate the overall profitability (after tax) of this $10 trillion economic engine. You might recall that historically profit has run around 3%. It almost doubled to 5.9% in 2004 and 2005 and reached a historical level of 7.9% in 2006. Therefore, I was wondering what happened in 2007 with all the bad news. Yes, it did drop, but it still beat 2004 and 2005, coming in at almost 6.1% after tax. We're still looking at profits over twice historical averages! And the companies that performed best had a large share of international business. BTW, Wal-Mart reclaimed its lead as the largest company, surpassing ExxonMobile. Wal-Mart, through clever pricing, managed to grow 7% in 2007 reaching $379 billion in revenue. And the best performing stock for the past five and ten years? Apple, providing an annual return of over 50% per year for the past ten years!!!

Vikram Pandit, New CEO of Citigroup -- was featured in the latest FORTUNE 500 issue. Noted FORTUNE "(Pandit) insists that his schedule include time to think" to which the writer noted "how refreshing!" The article also noted that the first thing Pandit did after taking over in December was announce three priorities for 2008: raise capital; protect earning power by paying people as well as he can; and get their risk assets under control. If the CEO of Citigroup can name three priorities, we all can get this specific in our own companies.

Godin & Ries iPhone Slap Down

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

HEADLINES: (Marketing Tips from Sales and Marketing Summit) Print-Friendly Version

iPhone "Slap Down" Between Laura Ries and Seth Godin -- as an update from the 2007 Sales and Marketing Summit, you might recall a debate was initiated between marketing gurus Seth Godin and Laura Ries over whether the iPhone was a fad or lasting product -- the iPhone was to be launched shortly after our last Sales Summit. Seth, in his blog, took on Laura Ries and predicted 2 million units would be sold in 2007 with more in 2008. The iPhone ended up selling 3.7 million in 2007! Seth wins!! However, to Laura's point about convergence, most iPhone users still need to carry two devices and two chargers since it's much easier to use the iPhone with some kind of Bluetooth headset -- so Laura also sort of wins. Note's Seth "it's nice to be right!...but it's important to be willing to be wrong."

When You Customize a Service it Becomes an Experience -- Jim Gilmore, author of The Experience Economy, walked us through the progression of commerce: the agrarian economy was about "extracting" commodities; the industrial economy was about "making" tangible goods; the service economy was about "delivering" intangible activities; and he maintains that the experience economy is about "staging" memorable events i.e. Case Tomahawk building a huge sandbox where prospects can come play with the huge earth moving equipment they intend to purchase. His point -- we should look at the key service points of interaction with our customers and figure out how to make it more of a memorable experience.

"...ing" the Thing -- the key is looking for "..ings" in your product/service offering. Case Tomahawk focused on "playing" with the earth moving equipment; Steinway did something similar by focusing on a "piano-playing" experience (if you purchase a Steinway they host a party in your home, provide a professional piano player, and allow you to invite your friends. It becomes an experience that normally results in two additional sales!). Gilmore even showed how Coca-Cola Fountain "...ing'd" their briefcases (he explains in his book). It's why we focused on "networking" at the event using the IntroNetworks system (see who you match-up with among the 727 that have entered profiles!) -- a way for the attendees to identify the five people they must meet at the event. And from the feedback, it looked like it worked for most of the attendees, helping to customize the experience for each attendee.

Identify a Place of Sacrifice -- Gilmore also suggested looking at some existing "ings" in your business and seeing where customers are not receiving a customized service i.e. the paying process, invoicing process, etc. We're looking at our "registering" process to see how we can make it more of a memorable experience -- and one place where attendees have to sacrifice is picking where they are seated at our events. It's decided by order of registration -- those that put down earlier deposits get the best seats (BTW, almost 100 are already holding seats for our Growth Summit October 21-22 -- the infamous Tom Peters is headlining! -- reserve a seat now) but for some they might prefer to be further back or closer to the door, etc. We're looking into this. Where are your customers sacrificing and how can you fix it?

Most Brains Wins -- this is my latest mantra and what is underpinning the drive to create customer communities.  Dell's IdeaStorm website has received feedback from over 600,000 customers and garnered almost 9000 ideas, including the need to standardize power cords for laptops! Starbucks has followed suit. Jim Fowler, founder of Jigsaw, showed us how companies like ours are using Jigsaw's collective rolodex of over 300,000 sales people to update and clean-up our customer databases. Our own Gazelles' Quarterly Theme wiki now has 23 quarterly themes submitted by the readers of these insights -- and we suspect we can get that to over 100 by the end of the year -- that's a significant database of knowledge well beyond what I could contribute myself. What are you doing to tap into the collective knowledge of your customers and allowing your customers to help each other?

Most Brains Frees Journalist from Jail -- using the micro-blogging site Twitter, a young American journalist sent out a one-word message "arrested" to alert fellow users of Twitter and other bloggers what had happened to him in Egypt. They immediately sprung into action, alerting others in their community and providing the journalist with contacts that helped him secure his freedom. Here's a posting of his story.

What's Your Biggest Challenge? Identify the five people in our network that can help you. Take ten minutes to complete your profile (the more detailed the better the system can help you) and then take a look at the relationship map to see who are your top five matches -- then send them a note. Les Rubenovitch shared how our system matched one of his clients up with someone else in our network and now the two of them are doing some significant business together. Take ten minutes to "find your match" in our network of top executives of growth firms.

Protecting your IP internationally -- Brett Kingstone, founder of public company SuperVision (now Nexus Lighting), shared his grueling story of having his IP stolen by a Chinese firm and how he had to utilize his own private investigators to gather the evidence necessary to gain a conviction and judgment award of $41 million (while the Chinese defendant used U.S. taxpayer provided legal services to defend himself!). Kingstone has yet to collect a penny of the judgment, but his story did bring to light the issue within Congress. He mentioned a publication called Start-It that is tracking the issue with positive suggestions on how you might protect yourself. Here's a link to the Part 1 and Part 2 articles -- worth reading if you're doing business in other countries.