"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind." F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech." Susan Sontag

"The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference." Henry Miller

Today's image: splash by nikond300. Very cool. Thank you for sharing.

Takes one to know one dept: Robert Feder calls radio legend Dick Biondi sui generis

Interesting conversations this week about the road ahead. Several client CEOs and COOs called to discuss revisiting their 2009 planning and budgets. Each year at this time we are involved in assisting clients with their planning. Concurrently we are deep into the process of developing our annual ad spend forecast. Because our firm also provides representation to talent we enjoy the advantages of a unique "both sides of the table" perspective. Recent events in the financial markets have caused us to rethink even our most conservative assumptions.

This morning, thanks to Fred Wilson, we viewed a slide show created by the folks at Sequoia Capital. On balance, we agree with many of the points made in the presentation and have emailed the slide show to our clients along with our suggestions with regard to next steps. This morning I would like to share selected content from four of the slides in the Sequoia presentation.

Our Take

• Manage what you can control. Spending. Growth assumptions. Earning assumptions.
• Focus on quality
• Lower risk
• Reduce debt
  

New Realities

1. Cuts are a must
2. Need to become cash flow positive

Increased Challenges

1. M&As will decrease
2. Prices will decrease
3. Acquiring entities will favor profitable companies
4. IPOs will continue to decrease and will take longer

The Solution

1. Perform situation analysis
2. Adapt quickly
3. Use a zero-based budgeting approach
4. Make cuts
5. Review salaries
6. Employ a heavily commissioned sales structure
7. Bolster balance sheets
8. Become cash flow positive as soon as possible
9. Spend every dollar as if it were your last

View the entire slide show via Fred Wilson's blog post here. My thanks to Fred and Sequoia for sharing.

Everything here is my personal pov and does not reflect the views nor the opinions of my employer. This has always been the case. Please use comments when you have a different opinion to share.

RIP: Financial engineering

The days of the financial engineer are, as a practical matter, over and that is a good thing. We are in this mess today no thanks to the leger de main practiced by too many self proclaimed financial engineers.

In my next post I'll share my thoughts on what must be done by media CEOs to prevail in 2009.

Have a great weekend. See you next week in a brand new show.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Emerson

"You have never really lived until you've done something for someone who can never repay you." Johnny Martin

Today's image: You've Heard Most of It Before by Thomas Hawk. Beautiful. Thank you!

700Mhz: Google filing their FCC Form 175 and officially enter the spectrum auction. More from Google's Chris Sacca here.

She said, they bought: comScore & The Kelsey Group study - Consumer-generated reviews have a significant impact on offline purchase behavior. Release here.

Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail - Fred Wilson offers up his take...

"Most venture backed investments fail because the venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered. That scale/burn rate becomes the cancer that kills the business."

Excellent points. Read Fred's entire post here.

She's a caster, he's a caster, you can be a caster too! But what kind? Dave Winer reviews the state of casting in late 2007. Kudos to Dave! Check out his post here.

Error messages: The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes - Alina Tugend writes...

"As we get older, many of us invest a great deal in being right. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, we focus on flagellating ourselves, blaming someone else or covering it up. Or we rationalize it by saying others make even more mistakes.

What we do not want to do, most of the time, is learn from the experience."

Read the entire article via NYT here.

Image credit: Always On
Thanks Tony.

David Carlick has written a two-part piece on marketing and advertising. Part one, Messy Online Marketing here. Part two, The Future of Advertising here. Kudos David!

Fred Winston blogs about the beauty of Cleopatra here, and stamps that tastes like pork here. As original a blogger as he is a radio star.

For the first time in school history Wisconsin hoops are #1 in the AP Top 25 poll. Booyah! Congrats to Bo Ryan and team.

"Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever in any material be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness, and not for excellence of workmanship, is the most frequent and certain cause for the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacture." John Ruskin

"The price of progress is trouble." Charles Kettering

"Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air." John Quincy Adams

Congrats & cheers: Jerry Schnacke promoted to Bonneville's Chicago market manager. Well deserved! Jerry is a gentleman, a mensch and a good broadcaster. Edward Sussman promoted to EVP of Mansueto Ventures and prexy of Mansueto Digital a new division.

Bruce Rave, maven of indie rock, offers up a new (2/13) Go Deep webcast here. Bravo Bruce! Enjoyed the tunes and your commentary too, thank you.

Thoughts on the business of music: Fred Wilson has written a thoughtful post on what's happening, and not happening, in the music business here. Fred also tips us to the Bob Lefsetz writing The End of Innocence here. Kudos to Fred and Bob. (Thanks Fred for sharing the new Modest Mouse track Fire It Up).

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank: The moment I first heard the title of the new Modest Mouse project - thanks to Tom Teuber on WSUM - my sense was this was music worth waiting for and so far the early reviews are strong. Love that title.

Miles to go before they sleep: This morning's call with Karmazin & Parsons - Ryan Saghir live blogged it here. The first buzz, as Borat would say, is "not so much." Jimmy Guterman rounds up the early bidding, Thumbs Down, here. Nice work Jimmy!

QE2 + QM2: Ron Fell told us, via his blog, these two ships would be in Sydney harbor at the same time this week. An event their respective namesakes last experienced during the 1940s. Certainly someone at NRO, for security reasons alone, must have been asked to task a KH or other EIS platform to provide imagery cover of this historic 21st century event. Perhaps Ron has images to share? LATER: Related story here - QM2 has set sail leaving her smaller sister behind. LATER2: Ron checks in from Sydney to say it was a spectacular event replete with first-class fireworks but, sadly, he has no images to offer up. Thanks Ron!

What he forgot to say: My thanks to Lee Arnold for his very kind words. The simple facts are I was the one that worked for Lee, he was one of my bosses. It was an honor, a privilege and my pleasure to serve and support Lee. The job of corporate staff is to serve those in the field, to help them to make things happen, to assist and support them in producing results. Corporate is nothing more than a cost center. Everything that's important in the enterprise happens in the field period, paragraph. Staff's mission is to serve the field. It's all about servant leadership. My first staff job required me to leave behind a good company and a field job in Chicago, I had to move to the city. I'm reminded of the words Eisenhower wrote after a week at his new desk job in the War Dept "There are lots of amateur strategists on the job, and prima donnas everywhere. I'd give anything to be back in the field." Early on in my new corporate post came a meeting with a consultant to the firm. Commenting on one of our station people, the consultant said to me "he can't be any good, he works for us." Unable to get him to understand why that kind of thinking was plainly wrong I let him go. He was later rehired after I left the firm. The lesson here is subjective issues are too often nothing more than issues of politics. I remain proud of the fine work that Lee and his Detroit team achieved during and after my watch. I am blessed he is my long-time friend, Lee is one very remarkable and gifted professional.

Really good red wine <$10: My love affair with Spanish wine continues. One of the best reds for the money is the 2005 Casa Castillo, Monastrell Jumilla. This is a 100% Mourvedre varietal (the Spanish call it Monastrell). The second leading Spanish grape variety after Grenache.