07/07/18

I hope you had an awesome holiday. I did, thanks for asking.

Partly because we had a monster second quarter.

I usually don’t boast about business stuff – especially in this little email. I’ve done the entrepreneurship thing for too long. I know tomorrow might suck.

But right now, we’re crushing it. We nearly doubled the business in 2017 and just blew last year’s Q2 out of the water. I would tell you about our new customers but I can’t. Big companies, it turns out, are real sticklers about people using their names or logos. It’s the bane of my marketing existence.

We have almost all of the tech giants, most big TV networks, mobile carriers, health insurers, and banks. If you wear a smart device on your wrist, took a DNA test, or have a mobile banking account, there’s a good chance we provide intel to the companies behind it. All from an old building in the humble (at least until Amazon HQ2 comes here) city of Pittsburgh.

We’re going to start yelling our story from the rooftops, finally. We just hired one of the biggest PR firms – holy hell are good PR firms expensive – and have a few high-profile deals coming that you’ll probably hear about whether I mention them or not. We’re hiring more writers to publish more stuff, releasing an app, and hosting our first conference, all before the autumnal equinox. If all goes as planned, you’ll be sick of hearing our name by Thanksgiving.

And that will be good. Because I won’t have to use this email to brag ever again. You all seem to find much more joy in my stories of self-deprecation and misfortune.

I’ll get back to that next week, I promise.

Here’s what we’re seeing right now:

Harley-Davidson is in a spot of bother. I’m a week late sharing this because I played hooky last weekend but Harley-Davidson has one helluva Trump-induced mess on its hands. Negative sentiment over HD’s decision to move some production outside of the U.S. outweighs positive sentiment by over 4:1. Almost all of the negatives come from current and/or prospective motorcycle owners. Tribalism is not to be trifled with right now.

In other week-old tribalism news, ABC’s new Roseanne-less spinoff will be a fascinating Trump-era case study. We looked at audience interest for the Conners and found some huge question marks. The likely viewership is substantially more likely to be comprised of Democrats than Republicans, a big reversal of what we saw for the original show. This could mean several things. Rs could boycott the show because of ABC’s handling of the cancellation or Ds will flock to it as a means of support and solidarity. It’s probably some combination of both. Whether that adds up to sustainable ratings is the biggest question mark of all.

Trends in breakfast-eating make almost no sense to me. I started obsessing about this when I pulled those random stats about breakfast a couple weeks back. The percentage of people who eat breakfast daily is in slight decline, though it rebounded over the past 6 months. But the numbers don’t follow any obvious pattern, seasonal or otherwise. Women/men, whites/non-whites, rich/poor, all eat at similar rates. The only significant demographic differences are around age (old people eat more often) and education level (likelihood increases with education). The cool stuff was “psychographic.” Breakfast eaters are more diligent financially, more socially-conscious, and – obviously – health conscious. There are interesting patterns in media habits, but I haven’t decided if I want to share those yet. Still scratching my head…

Stunner: It’s better to be tall and good-looking, for the most part. Tall people are more likely than shorter people to earn higher incomes and achieve higher levels of education. But they’re also more likely to report higher levels of stress. Meanwhile, people who think they’re more attractive than their peers attain higher job levels, live healthier lives and claim to be happier overall. Oh, and for good measure, tall people are more likely to think they’re good-looking.  Don’t shoot the messenger if you’re neither of those things. There are always outliers.

Almost everybody in America gets burned out by their job. And, no surprise, the rate of burnout is highest among my fellow Gen Xers, who will forever have the short end of the stick. It’s worth noting that the people who make the most money are the ones most likely to be burned out. Especially people in sales or ops. So, if you’re in your 40s, making over a buck fifty, and waiting for a contract to get signed, take a bow. Then take a vacation. Or a Xanax.

Even though women are just as likely as men to suffer from job burnout, they’re much LESS likely to heed that vacation advice. Disturbingly, working women are much less likely than working men to take all of their available vacation days in a given year. That stinks. Just another way that women are getting a terrible deal. Oh, and this:

Some Random (Vacation) Stats of the Week

Here’s hoping you have a stress-limited, work-limited, diet-unlimited vacation of your own planned this summer.JD