Flint's Blog

If Nate can do this, what's holding you back?

Nate Robinson of the New York Knicks won the NBA slam dunk contest this weekend for the second time.  Nate's been my favorite player since he entered the league.  He plays on my favorite team, is one of the quickest guards in the league, and he's 5' 9".  That's right - 5 foot, 9 inches - and that's probably generous.  There are only a handful of players in the NBA that are under 6 foot and Nate's winning the slam dunk contest with some vicious throw downs like the one shown here

Nate's been told his whole life that he's too small for high school ball, too small for college ball, too small for the NBA, too small for the dunk contest.  Apparently not!

I have two catch phrases that I like to use at work and at home.

For those that haven't been reading along on my blogging adventure, I run an outsourced billing company that specializes in helping companies migrate to electronic billing.  We've grown rapidly to be one of the leading billing service providers in the US.  One of the big reasons for our success has been that we've developed almost all of our technology solution in house.  It was hard, it took longer than buying off the shelf components, but it's paid off for one huge reason.

Co-workers often will ask me some question about what our technology can and cannot do.  My answer is almost always "We're Billtrust, we can do anything."  This is usually followed by the standard roll of the eyes when people think I'm not looking :]  However, I honestly mean it.  Not that we will do anything. But since we're a technology company at heart, we can make our software do anything we choose.  This is a powerful competitive weapon.

At home, my kids will sometimes tell me how they can't do something, or their homework is too hard, or they can't hit a reverse layup.  I'm obviously not big of "I can't".  So the routine at home is, I ask them their name and they have to answer  "My name is Tyler Lane, I can do anything I set my mind to".  They fight it sometimes when their being stubborn, but the point is made and almost always they accomplish what minutes earlier they said "I can't" to.

If Nate can win the slam dunk contest, if some geek from NJ can run a successful billing business (that would be me), if an African American can be President of the US, you really truly can do anything you set your mind to.

PS - My middle daughter Kacy was hoping that Hillary wouldn't win the Presidential race so she still can have a shot of being the first female president.  I love it.

Can the Post Office be Saved?

I blogged last year questioning whether the United States Post Office (USPS) would be around fifty years from now.  They are experiencing declining first class volumes coupled with increases in first class postage rates.  The increased rates make billers work harder to convince customers to receive electronic bills which leads to further postal volume reductions.  Which of course leads to increased rates.  And so on.

Well the USPS was in the news again recently.  The Postmaster General, John E. Potter, testified before a Senate subcommittee warning that they might have to stop delivering mail six days a week.  The full story is here.  There are also rumors that rate for a first class stamp will be raised from 42 to 44 cents in May 2009.  The USPS lost almost $3 Billion in 2008 and things aren't looking good for 2009.

I humbly submit my following suggestions to save the post office:

1. Don't just drop mail delivery from 6 to 5 days per week, drop it to 3 days per week - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This would mean longer mail delivery times by at most one day. Is there really anything that you can't wait an extra day for?  This would obviously create staffing challenges but nothing that seems insurmountable.  This could be phased in over five to ten years as first class volume continues to wane.  The post office is obligated to meet certain mail delivery times so these would need to be relaxed.
2. There are approximately 37,000 post offices in the US.  That's more than double the number of McDonalds.  That's a lot of redundancy.  I live in central New Jersey and there are no less than 10 post offices within 12 miles of my house (see map here).  Again, a phased plan to right size the USPS network over 10 to 20 years seems to make a whole lot of sense.
3. Drop money losing services.  The USPS web site lists almost 100 different services that they offer including delivery of live animals.  I'm pretty confident that 50% of these services are less profitable than the other 50%.  (Haha - math humor).  Seriously, are all of these really necessary?

I don't make these suggestions lightly and I'm not the first to make them.  Clearly a lot of people will be affected by these decisions.  However, the government, and therefore you and me, have to foot the bill for all of these losses and it's going to get worse unless concrete actions are taken.