Knowing When To Stop
Ian Lurie Nov 20 2006
Last night my family and I climbed into a Towncar for the ride from Newark Airport to the grandparents’ house.
About 15 minutes out, the car’s engine started racing and the ‘check transmission’ light came on. A sure sign that the car’s transmission was about to fall out.
The driver, not wanting to lose the fare, kept driving. I finally turned to him and said ‘are you going to call for another car or am I?’
He didn’t. As it turned out, I couldn’t. We had a very, very long trip to our destination, and I’ll never use that car company again.
When something isn’t working, it’s often tempting to just press ahead, regardless. This driver has an excuse, I guess: He doesn’t have another car. If he’d called, he wouldn’t have been paid, and he might have lost his job.
Online, though, you can change the direction of a marketing campaign in a few minutes.
So what’s your excuse?
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Ian Lurie
CEO
Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent Inc. He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Forbes.com and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, SIC and ad:Tech. Follow him on Twitter at portentint. He also just published a book about strategy for services businesses: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle. Read More