Doug Elwell, Inc.: News: Doug Elwell, Inc. on the Channel 2 News (WBBM-TV Chicago)

Monday, May 12, 2008

January 29, 2001:
Doug Elwell, Inc. on the Channel 2 News
(WBBM-TV Chicago)

This video is slightly shorter than the full version. Complete text is available in the following transcript, from the Jan. 29, 2001 airing of the "Dot-Com Layoffs" segment on the WBBM-TV Channel 2 News at 10.

Dot-Com Layoffs

Channel 2 News at 10 WBBM-TV Chicago
January 29, 2001

John Kerley, Channel 2 Anchorman

Layoffs have been the story of many Internet companies for nearly a year now. Tens of thousands of jobs cut. So what's happened to all those workers, who had dreams of making it rich in the New Economy?

John Kerley (Voice Over)

The late '90s were a dot-com boom.

Doug Elwell

It was a fantastic experience.

John Kerley

Startups counting down the days to their IPOs in millions.

Doug Elwell

We were all counting on it to make ourselves filthy rich, of course.

John Kerley

But the boom went bust, with investors losing money, and workers losing their jobs, and stock options.

Doug Elwell

They herded about 20-30 people into a room, and said, 'Okay, you guys are all fired'. [Note - this was referring to USAtWork.com, where DE left, by his own decision, to work for divine, where he was laid off a year later on 11/8/01. That layoff was handled in a professional manner.]

John Kerley

This happened all over the country - shut downs, layoffs, the 'dot-com bomb'. Last year, about 40,000 jobs were cut nationwide, about 1,000-2,000 jobs here in Chicago. John Challenger's firm tracks those numbers.

John Challenger, Challenger, Gray & Christmas

In many ways, the dot-com movement was the greatest youth movement since the '60s. That youth energy landed on an economic movement, but now we're seeing some of that exuberance, some of those high hopes, just how unfounded those were in reality.

John Kerley

The Superbowl was a good example. Last year, 17 dot-com commercials - last night, only three. One made fun of the dot-com ghost town, but the other two were for Internet job placement firms. So, while 40,000 jobs may have been cut, those workers have not had a lot of trouble finding a new job.

John Challenger

The technology people in these dot-coms are very, very hirable. One study showed that we are 850,000 people short in the number of technology people needed in the economy.

John Kerley

That's why those Internet placement firms are advertising - there are plenty of jobs to fill.

Mike Johnson, HotJobs.com

Resume traffic is definitely up a bit, the demand for them is still out there, by all means.

John Kerley

The days of the instant stock-option millionaires may be gone. But Dan Rippy, who's written a book about the dot-com job market, says these days there are still plenty of opportunities for those with the right approach.

Dan Rippy, Author,

It's not just about the stock options. It is now much more about what will my experience be in this company, how will I be able to leverage that in the future....

John Kerley

Doug Elwell is one of those people, he maybe joined a startup, but nows he's turned himself into an independent consultant. And he asks a lot more questions.

Doug Elwell

People are beginning to realize that it's just another form of business. It's not a New Economy at all, it's the Old Economy with a different channel to work through.

John Kerley

In addition to becoming consultants, many laid off workers have returned to working for old-line companies. The best advice of the author of that book on startups? Listen to the company's pitch. If it doesn't sound like the startup can make money, you may want to stay away.

Tracy Townsend, Channel 2 Anchorwoman

And some of them did make a lot of promises, and everybody thought, 'Get a job at a dot-com'....

John Kerley

...and get rich, make your million like people did a couple of years earlier, but, the balloon burst, definitely.

Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand
David F. D'Alessandro
Rating:

Powerful lessons on how to build and sustain your own "killer brand". Creating and sustaining a good brand is the most complex and perilous task any business will ever face, yet nothing is as misunderstood. Under the direction of marketing wizard David D'Alessandro, John Hancock transformed itself from a sleepy old life insurer into a leading financial services giant, with a sustained 20% annual rate of growth. In Brand Warfare, D'Alessandro draws on his personal experience as a brand-builder and examples from America's smartest and most foolish corporations, developing principles that you can use in any market. At the same time, he creates an entertaining picture of the marketing business with anecdotes that convey a keen sense of the absurdities of corporate life, balanced by a tremendous respect for the consumer. This tough-minded, funny, and refreshingly candid book gives you a proven roadmap for marketing success as you learn:

Why every business needs a good brand to compete

Why consumers need good brands as much as good brands need them

Why sycophancy from the agency and meddling from inside the company will sink your campaign every time

About sponsorship: how to avoid being taken, and how to make the investment pay for your brand

Why it's as important to market your brand to your employees as it is to your customers

Why every business decision should be filtered through the prism of the brand

Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
Christopher Locke
Rating:

The coauthor of the no-more-business-as-usual blockbuster The Cluetrain Manifesto — which basically told Net-age marketers to stop talking at their markets and start conversing with them — follows up with a book that's more a highly entertaining, nimbly erudite screed against our current mass-market, mass-media culture than it is a recipe book for e-commerce marketing success in the post-cyberboom era. Writing in a paler imitation of the profanely irreverent, freely associative "gonzo" journalism style pioneered by his obvious idol Hunter S. Thompson, Locke starts with the by-now-familiar idea that old-style mass-marketing "broadcast" advertising just won't work on the Web. Indeed, he says, conventional print-ad tactics as embodied online by banners and pop-ups might actually generate more ill will than sales, and that's why companies must use the Web to somehow enjoin their products and services to the quirky niche interests of the gazillion individual cybercommunities (or "micromarkets") whose greatest advantage for marketers is how freely and speedily their members talk among themselves, touting a brand when and if it's truly deserved.

The Virtue of Prosperity:
Finding Values In An Age Of Techno-Affluence
Dinesh D'Souza
Rating:

In The Virtue of Prosperity, former White House policy analyst Dinesh D'Souza offers the first in-depth analysis of the spiritual and social crisis that has been spawned by the New Economy and new technologies. The chief problem societies have faced "since the time of the Babylonians," writes Dinesh D'Souza, has been the problem of scarcity. "But now that age has passed, and America has a new problem: coping with prosperity." It's a good problem to have, but also a serious, even debilitating, one. "The moral conundrum of success," the author continues, means that all too often, "the body is flourishing, but somehow the soul still feels malnourished." D'Souza is well known for his bestselling conservative books Illiberal Education, The End of Racism, and Ronald Reagan. On these pages, however, he seems to set politics aside to ask deep questions about the meaning of life in a world of material abundance. (Review by Amazon.com)

The Monk and the Riddle:
The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
Randy Komisar, Kent L. Lineback (Contributor)
Rating:

Prospective entrepreneurs may think they know everything there is to know about starting a business in Silicon Valley. They can draw up business plans, have meetings with venture capitalists, maybe even get funded and actually launch a start-up. However, in The Monk and the Riddle, Silicon Valley sage Randy Komisar reasons that's only half the equation for success. And it may not be the important half. Komisar has worked with a number of companies — Apple, LucasArts Entertainment (the gaming division of George Lucas's empire), and WebTV among them — and has come to a rather startling conclusion: if you can't see yourself doing this business for the rest of your life, don't start it. In other words, he wants to see passion and purpose in business, not just spreadsheets and a by-the-numbers business model.

To illustrate, Komisar takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up, with an eager entrepreneur named Lenny trying to get funding for an online casket-selling business. As Komisar helps Lenny find the real purpose of the business, the passion behind the revenue projections, he reflects back on his life as an entrepreneur. Komisar emerges as a master storyteller, the kind of guy you'd feel honored to share a bottle of wine with. And you believe his conclusion: "When all is said and done, the journey is the reward." It's great if you've made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into. (Review by Amazon.com)

Burn Rate
Michael Wolff
Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognized pioneer in the business of cyberspace, meaning he has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the intervening years, however, not all the activities he engaged in, nor all the people he dealt with, left a pleasant taste in his mouth - although, to be sure, his cumulative adventures certainly have been very lucrative.

In Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, Wolff pulls few punches as he candidly and methodically recounts the single steps forward and multiple steps back that marked his experiences while trying to transform a fledgling print media enterprise into a towering New Media colossus. After developing a series of "NetGuide" books that proved hugely successful, he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in so doing connected with Wired magazine, Time-Warner's Pathfinder, the late Robert Maxwell's media empire, AOL , assorted venture capitalists, sundry competitors, and numerous would-be partners. Burn Rate is a fascinating tale that might best be characterized by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it." (Review by Amazon.com)

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