Author Archive

To Charge or Not to Charge? That Is the Question…

July 13, 2009

We recently received a query regarding why MeetingMade would charge for its services while the competition is at least offering a free option for basic use. The person asking the question would tolerate ads and even pay a reasonable fee for a version that had additional, amazing options.

The question is one that we have asked ourselves many, many times and we view it as a question specific to how a company markets its product.  We’re aware that there are many people who are very happy to exchange either their privacy or security in exchange for a free service. We view unsolicited advertising as an invasion of privacy on the basis that most companies that offer free applications in exchange for free services are also selling private data collected from their customer base, without the customers knowing about it. Even in cases where it is spelled out in the terms and conditions, very few people actually read and are aware of what they are giving up in exchange for free services.

We also hold the opinion that there are not any other services on the market that can accomplish the task that MeetingMade performs and therefore, it represents a value proposition that is unique to the market. This may be considered a subjective statement however; our research on the competition has supported this opinion. 

At the end of the day, we know that our application and our pricing will not fit the needs of everyone and so if it doesn’t work for you, we understand. Again, we appreciate your time and interest in the application and we invite you to try MeetingMade out for 30 days free to see if it indeed, represents a valued service for you and your business.

Does Scheduling Meetings Feel Like Herding Cats?

July 7, 2009

Vince Thompson is a digital revenue consultant, author, speaker, host of the popular BNET show Dog and Pony and is the managing partner of Middleshift LLC.

Just today, Vince posted an interview at Smart Planet,  conducted with me from last week where we discussed what MeetingMade is, what it does, how it saves people time as well as a general discussion about meetings, busienss, and entrepreneurship.

Check it out, it’s entitled, “Does scheduling meetings feel like herding cats?”

How much is your time worth?

June 29, 2009

Although Ben Franklin was right about many things, he was wrong when he said that time was money. Our scarcest resource, time, is actually more valuable than that. Yet we’re more careful about spending our money than our time. [1]

So, how much is your time worth?

I get asked that question a lot, especially when speaking to others who have or have had successful consulting practices. As a culture, we even like to break down large sums of money into ‘hourly wages’ just to try and make them more tangible. Kevin Garnett, the highest paid player in the NBA earns about $129,000 an hour. Putting a huge number, like his annual salary of $27,500,000, into smaller bits can make it easier for us to comprehend.

I can’t claim to make as much as KG but in my world, I can say that an hour or two of my time is worth more than a fancy meal, a night at a nice hotel, or even a quick flight to Las Vegas.

MeetingMade personally saves me between two and three hours a month. I have heard claims [from our competition] of ‘hundreds of hours saved a year’ which is very hard to believe. I actually tracked the time I spent scheduling meetings from January 1, 2007 through to December 31, 2007 and spent a total of 32.25 hours scheduling meetings the traditional way. In 2008, I used MeetingMade, and saw that number get reduced down to about eight. Since my time is worth considerable more per hour than what we will charge for this application, we feel that the value proposition is pretty strong.

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[1] 2008 The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life By Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd

Recent Activities

June 16, 2009

Since our last post, Red Wolf Online has attended the Canadian Reinsurance Conference (CRC), the American Home Office Underwriter’s (AHOU) annual conference, and the annual general meeting of the Canadian Institute of Underwriting (CIU). All three of the venues were excellent for showcasing our work and we want to thank all of the companies and individuals that made this spring a truly fantastic one for Red Wolf Online. We’re still following up with the people that we met from those conferences and there are many exciting prospects and initiatives that are coming out of those meetings.


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