Scott Klein - Yellow Crook

“Çhange in Control” is like saying, when I bail off the sinking ship, I get paid in full. He knows he will be gone. I am willing to bet the farm. This plan didn’t happen overnite folks. Have you seen the SEC filing, all of his cronies get paid while bond holders, retirees, shareholders, and employees get crap.

- 11 year olds get suite parties by Executives on the company dime.
- getting rid of honest and ethical Scott Laver, Klein’s only form of Executive competition and potential resistance. Laver should have been the companies CEO.
- Bill Brewer is a Klein puppet if you ask me. Although his ridiculous optimism stinks of Klein style narcissistic tendencies.

Scott Klein is on the Board of Directors as Chairman and not surprisingly he chairs the SuperMedia Human Resource Committee which determines bonuses and pay, so regardless of how or why he deserved it, he paid himself a bonus folks.

It is a fact that even with these “innovative ideas”, SuperMedia is ranked worse in class by all measurements. Very fitting of a CEO who deserves a self rewarding bonus of 2 million. He is also the highest paid CEO in his class from what I understand.

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Time for real change in Washington and in corporate offices everywhere!

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Obamacare Hazardous to America’s Health — David Limbaugh –

Crony Politicians needing to be paid off for votes. Crony Executives looking to use power and influence to get a leg up.

Aren’t you folks getting tired of all this? Wall Street and Capital Hill need to realize that Main Street Americans are tired of the bullshit!

The commonalities between Yellow Pages – A Prescription for the Future and the solutions to our Health care problem are very intriguing.

Senators on Capital Hill will do whatever it takes to shove health care “reform” (real health care reform fixes the insurance system and price of health care, such as fee for service costs etc, as well as builds health care awareness focus) which to me is another pay off. Instead of the banks, it is the insurance companies and doctors associations.

“Reforming” healthcare is one thing… paying off fellow Democrats simply to get the necessary votes to allow for debate is scandalous:

Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase.

On the eve of Saturday’s showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn’t secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.

And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote — and to trumpet the financial “fix” she had arranged for Louisiana. “I am not going to be defensive,” she declared. “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”

Even when she finally announced her support, at 2:30 in the afternoon, Lincoln made clear that she still planned to hold out for many more concessions in the debate that will consume the next month. “My decision to vote on the motion to proceed is not my last, nor only, chance to have an impact on health-care reform,” she announced.

“My vote today,” she said in a soft Southern accent that masked the hard politics at play, “should in no way be construed by the supporters of this current framework as an indication of how I might vote as this debate comes to an end.” Among the concessions she’ll seek: more tax credits for small business and a removal of the version of the “public option” now in the bill.

Democrats have shown they don’t care what they do to this country fiscally.  The $787 billion “stimulus” ($1.24 trillion with interest figured in) not to mention the nearly $1 trillion cost to “reform” and all of the additional costs that will hit individuals and businesses will result in less money in the pockets of taxpayers, less hiring by employees, and lower wages as companies seek to try and maintain some profits in our new Democratically managed economy.

Witness the recent statement by Emerson Electronics’ CEO regarding how Obama is treating American businesses:

One of the country’s most important industrial companies says the United States is not a good place to manufacture and it will continue moving its assets offshore.

The federal government is “doing everything in [its] manpower [and] capability to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” says David Farr, chairman and CEO of Emerson Electric Co., in a presentation at the Baird 2009 Industrial Conference in Chicago Ill., on Nov. 11. In comments reported by Bloomberg, Farr added that companies will continue adding jobs in China and India because they are “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something. I am not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.”

Expect this trend to continue as Democrats push for a more government managed economy.  The result is going to be rationed care, higher taxes, lower quality healthcare, higher unemployment, and more payoffs as we have already seen simply to buy votes.

The generational theft that the Democrats are perpetrating is criminal.

Meanwhile, Yellow Pages publishers want to shove phone books on you whether you want them or not. Then they hold the local government accountable for paying to remove the waste. I think they need to get your permission to send you a book. No OPT OUT… now that you are not regulated to send us one (the phone companies have said they don’t feel getting a book is now necessary) distribution needs to become an OPT IN based system.

The first yellow pages to announce that they are going green and creating a subscription based model will earn the respect of business owners everywhere and show that they want real change.

Prescription for the future

Clearly the advertising spend for SMBs is changing. This August, for the first time, the number of SMBs using the Internet to advertise (77%) was higher than the number of SMBs using traditional advertising (69%). However, the full weight and enormity of this has not yet been felt, as a disproportionate number of dollars were still attributed to traditional advertising. That, however, is about to change. In fact, Internet advertising, currently the third largest spend, is expected to surpass the newspaper spend before 2013 – newspapers being the biggest advertising spend overall today. Unless newspapers react with products other than print, we think this day will come as early as 2011 or 2012.

Much of this shift is happening as SMBs shift their advertising spend from traditional media  to their own online presences, pure-play verticals and Google Adwords. The YP industry is in a truly unique position to take advantage of this opportunity and potentially even grow their share of SMB advertising spend.

A successful future for YP will include evolutionary changes such as transitioning online to IYP, embracing transparency, pay-for-performance, user-generated content, publishing cycle changes, pricing model changes, and sales process changes. However, revolutionary change will need to be embraced to truly seize the opportunity. The YP industry will need to think back to their origins and rediscover the essence of what made them the most valuable source of advertising to their customers. Before the Internet the Yellow pages were:

1. The most trusted and complete source of business information.
2. A business model that was incontrovertibly the best ROI available.
3. The most convenient, fastest way to engage local businesses.

Here is our prescription for how Yellow Pages can attain the above:

1. Become the most trusted source by providing Social Context to consumers visiting the directory.
2. Become the most complete and richest source of business listings by allowing all businesses to provide complete and rich data and participate in the online directory for free.
3. Provide an incontrovertible ROI by embracing a new advertising model in which advertisers set their own advertising fee and only pay based on a successful transaction, and use this model to leverage the advertisers’ spend on their existing web presence.
4. Become the most convenient, fastest way to engage local businesses by providing consumers with an interactive system to communicate with advertisers on a one-to-many basis.

We would be remiss if we did not tell you that we have developed the set of tools that can help YP companies do exactly what we’ve described.

Using our platform, the Yellow Pages can once again attain this position of advertising dominance. Yellow Page companies have both the sales force and the means to take advantage of the shift of advertising dollars from traditional print to online models.

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Some gal on Mashable (a very informative internet geeky website that I enjoy) posted this video about a guy who was supposedly fired by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for not being enthusiastic about “Bing.”

According to Jennifer:

As the story goes, Ballmer was excitedly and repeatedly yelling Bing at the meeting, even pointing to staffers, putting them in the hot seat and telling them to say Bing. When the man in question didn’t exude the right enthusiasm, Ballmer fired him on the spot.

We can’t verify if the video is authentic in nature, but we have contacted the guy who uploaded it for comment, and we’ll update this post when we know more details. What do you think: real or fake?

(Warning: strong language)

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I can just imagine my old CEO doing the same.

I remember one morning meeting it was a “treat” to have Scott Klein come to our local offices to discuss “the direction of the company” after being delisted from the market. This was about the same time he was making excuses for the company’s performance and issues with bad debt (he also failed to tell investors that he was reducing credit restrictions on new accounts. There is a Lawsuit for That.) First off he is very picky with beverages. Want to get under his skin? Drink a COKE. LOL. He takes off his glasses for pictures. That is funny. He refused to eat what the rest of us were having for breakfast. He made a big stink about it. He sounded like a spoiled brat. (I was chatting with the person he had his EAA call to fix the problem. lol.) Next, instead of discussing the company’s path, he proceeded to lecture us on his “10 keys to success” or some form of lip service (How about giving your media consultants time to practice what you preach with clients?)  He is very  cocksure. Now he has his own talk show, wonder what that will do to his huge ego? You should have been to the national sales meeting earlier this year……

Look out kid. They keep it all hid. — Bob Dylan

Remember the Patrick Stephens Motorcycle stunts?

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I can totally see Scott Klein going around the office yelling at folks about SuperMedia, SuperView, SuperGuarantee, SuperSearch, SuperReps, SuperPowers, and SuperMcDonald’s.  It is just SUPER! Ya Know?

After over 9 years in corporate America……..

I think I prefer to be a consultant outside of “the office” (while saving the environment by not supporting saturation distribution and phone book waste, automobile pollution from not spending over 2 hours in traffic each day, all while continuing to work over 60hrs a week with greater productivity and getting to spend more time with my family to boot!)

All this talk about how much “the office” sucks…

Reminds me of “Where’s is Your Flair?” from Office Space. About 13 seconds in.

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And I can’t share that without the classic (around 55 seconds in): Red Stapler

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The office. World’s most unproductive means of doing business. No longer spend 2.5 hours per day driving to the office every morning. I work more hours on my business in one day than you can ever accomplish having to drive to the office.

I have totally lost all appreciation for the retardedness that is Corporate America.

It is all a joke. Those trips and awards make you feel important. Sales is important, but it is only 10% of the process. 90% of it is after the sale is made…..

Unless you just sell phone book ads. lol. That is like doing typewriter repair.

If you can do your own search engine marketing online, why not buy your yellow page book ads online? Might save a lot of gas if those sales reps don’t have to come out and bug you. Save gas from the commutes to the office. Save trees by not sending phone books to people who don’t want them. Naaah, that is just too responsible.

I know Klein is a huge Obama supporter. I am not. Too much cronyism for my taste. I just don’t like the crony corporate environment. My beliefs lean towards a different group.

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Why would Google pay up to  500 million for YELP, when Idearc is on the chopping block after bankruptcy? I know why. YELP is community and consumer based. Idearc’s Superpages is a product pitch. Think about this folks. Why would Google pay up to 500 million for YELP.com when Idearc sells to Paulson and Co. for only around 200-250 million? YELP is like Google. Idearc is like ? (the answer is….. Scott Klein.) Not very creative or innovative if you ask me.

I am not saying the company is horrible. I am must saying that I don’t trust what HE was trying to feed me. Now I have the ability to respond.

Let’s look at the recent failures:
SuperYellowPages.com (who wants to see a phone book online)
SuperLeads Multi-product
SuperView (less productivity due to documentation)
SuperGuarantee (gimmick that won’t work which was copied from ServiceMagic)
SuperMedia (not “Media” until you recognize that sales reps are not media consultants)
SuperMenuBundles
SuperSEO (doesn’t recognize that organic listings and maps is the largest share of click traffic from Google)
SuperVideo (have yet to see an Idearc client rank on Google results with SuperVideo…. it needs real Video Search Engine Optimization)

The internet is the bathroom wall of America. Folks can voice opinions and share ideas. I wonder if Scott Klein, the Idearc CEO, will ever realize that an open, honest, transparent, and creative environment is what people will invest in. Not corporate fraud, lies, gimmicks, lip-service, and cronyism! The Idearc’s CEO needs to be Scott Laver…. not Scott Klein! But Klein doesn’t want to keep the industry talents around apparently.

Does “Corporate America” suck due to the people, the attitude, the culture, or the politics? Is it just Idearc? I can’t imagine the atmosphere at Yelp or Google being as bad as Idearc. Is it just a “high performance telemarketing sales culture” that is so bad? I just can’t imagine that being good for clients? Where is the accountability after the sale? When does the real “strategizing” take place? How hard do you really think it is to sell something people need and that makes them money? How often do people get bad advice from yellow page reps? Why do some people have success and others don’t? In my opinion it comes down to what kind of people you work with and get your advice from. If I owned a local business, the moment some “FOOL” came in my office throwing out ridiculous promises, industry percentages/statistics, and prices for advertising, then asks me to sign a contract without having time to have my lawyer read the fine print……………

Let’s just say if this sounds like the way you want to market your business…… YOU DESERVE IDEARC’S SCOTT KLEIN & THE YELLOWPAGES.

That’s my .02