If you operated a cake stand, which customer would you most want to keep—the one who pays you $5.85 a month for a piece of cake every day, or the one who pays you $44 a month for the same thing?

A no-brainer, right?

Let’s take it one step further. Say you are selling 100 pieces of cake a day for a dollar a piece. Then suddenly business falls off and you are now selling only 60 pieces a day. What would you do to get your revenues back up to $100 a day? Would you raise the price of your cake to $1.40 a piece to make up the loss difference?

I don’t think so.

And yet that is what The New York Times is trying to do with their new policy of charging $15 a month for access to their digital version of the newspaper--after one has read 20 articles in any given month. (For years, by the way, this version was given away free.)

However—now get this--if you take out a new home-delivery subscription to the Times for only $5.85 a month you can also have unlimited access to the digital version.

What a deal, right?

Here’s my problem with that. I don’t WANT the New York Times delivered to my front door—for a whole host of reasons. For one thing, I have tried it in the past and I found the delivery service unreliable. Two, if you’re going on vacation the papers will either pile up on your doorstep or else you have to remember to call and temporarily stop delivery. Good luck with that.

Three—and most important to me—the paper is not delivered when I want it. For example, in New York City one can always buy the Sunday Times on Saturday night. This is a ritual that many New Yorkers enjoy, myself included.

So let’s do the math. I buy four $5 Sunday NY Times a month on Saturday nights. That’s $20. Then I buy four $2 papers on Saturday mornings. That’s $8 a month. I also buy the Times on Wednesdays (food section that my wife likes) and on Fridays because it tells me what’s going on for the weekend. Add another $16 a month.

That adds up to $44 a month I’m spending on paper copies of The New York Times. And I’m not even complaining.

Now add $15 a month for the privilege of reading the Times online and I am up to $59 a month. That’s $708 a year. I don’t know about you, but that seems a little steep to me.

Which customer would you rather keep, New York Times? The one who is paying you $5.85 a month, or the one who is paying you $44 a month? More to the point, which one do you most not want to piss off?

The Times, like so many other brick and mortar old-school businesses just doesn’t get it. They tried this a few years ago with something called “Times Select.” When you read certain articles on-line—like Op Ed writers—you had to pay an on-line subscription fee. The program pissed everyone off, flopped, and was eventually cancelled. Now they are doing it again.

I complained (via email) the other day to The New York Times publisher, but of course I received the standard “Thank you for writing” form-email response.

Let me make a suggestion, NY Times. I’m no expert, but I know that people smarter than me can figure out a solution. You are still in the “push” delivery mind-set. Here’s our paper, take it when we give it to you—or else pay us a bonus for making it available to you when you want it.

Take a lesson from mobile marketing. I know the technology exists. Put a bar code or something on the front of every edition of your paper. Charge me $30 a month and give me an app for my smartphone. That way I can just grab a paper off the newsstand, scan it with my phone and be on my way. What’s more, you will know exactly when and where I bought my paper. AND, I will be able to read the paper on or off-line anytime I want to.

It’s a piece of cake.

The other day I asked my Facebook friends which TV game show they prefer, Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune? Most of them prefer Jeopardy.

I don’t really care for either show, but I have watched both for years. Here in New York Jeopardy comes on at 7PM and my wife is a big fan. So we sit down to dinner at 7PM with Jeopardy on the television. Since Wheel of Fortune follows on the same channel we watch it as well.

I say “watch,” but I really don’t pay much attention to either. Anyone who knows me well knows that I don’t like games—or sports for that matter. So while most of America is getting ready for this evening’s Super Bowl I am sitting here writing this little essay. I know, I need to get a life. But as I promised my Facebook friends, here is my take on Jeopardy vs. Wheel of Fortune.

If I had to be locked in a room and forced to watch one of these two game shows I would choose WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

Full disclosure. One of the reasons I don’t like games and sports is that I was never very good at either when I was growing up. I eventually developed a strong dislike for both. I know this puts me in a tiny minority, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

While I can tolerate Wheel, I don’t like Jeopardy at all. My dislike of Jeopardy begins with its format—responding to a clue with a question. What’s that all about anyway? I find it gimmicky and pedantic.

There are other things that I don’t like about Jeopardy, but after reading my first draft of this missive I realized I was just being mean—and probably offensive to my many friends who love this show. So I’ve decided to delete those paragraphs and will now move on to Wheel.

But before moving on, I’ll just say one more thing about Jeopardy. (Sorry, I can’t help myself.) Contestants are always guessing at the answers—and getting them wrong and losing their money. Why do you ring in, you knuckleheads, if you don’t really know the answer? Don’t Guess! Honestly, are these the kinds of people you would want on your project team at work? How would you like to have one of them doing open-heart surgery on you? Like, I don’t know, I think this is the left ventricle here but I’m just guessing.

Wheel of Fortune. You can hit Bankrupt at any given moment and damn it, it’s just not fair. While Jeopardy has a slight element of chance (daily double, the categories themselves), with Wheel you are at risk on every spin.

But aside from the chance element, Wheel is pure show biz. Lights, camera, action! I find the show more entertaining. It’s big, it’s brassy and it’s shameless. From Vanna White and Pat Sajak’s matching dresses and ties, to that colorful spinning wheel, it appeals to my senses of sight and sound. Click, click, click, click, click, click . . .

So thanks, dear friends, for participating in my survey.

Enjoy the game!

(It’s basketball, right?)

Who’s the Boss?

Some days you just get on a roll. You’re on top of the world, you’re in the zone and you’re making things happen.

I had just opened a seminar of about 23 people who had come to take a 2-day business writing class. I like to visit my classes occasionally to see who actually comes to take my courses. When I do, I usually kick off the session by welcoming everyone, telling them a little bit about what to expect, and then introducing their instructor to them. When I’m on a roll, I can usually bring the instructor up to the front of the room accompanied by enthusiastic applause.

When I left the classroom to go back to my “real” work, I passed by our customer service desk, which was fairly quiet now that all of the students were settled into their classes.

There was, however, one man standing there with his young son. They had just walked in off the street to inquire about our seminars. The woman at the customer service desk was still busy checking in a late-arriving student. So, still on a roll, I asked the man if I could help him.

What the man wanted was some literature. He came to the right place. Believe me, we have tons of literature. Anyone who has ever taken one of our seminars can tell you about how much “literature” they receive in the mail from us.

So I walked the man and his son over to our literature display while asking him what kind of training he was interested in. I determined that what he really needed was a general seminars catalog, but as luck would have it the display was out of them.

By now the woman at the front desk was free so I asked her if we had any catalogs left. She cheerfully said we had some down the hall at another display—and then ran to get one.

With his new catalog in hand, the potential new customer and his son and I headed for the elevators. While waiting for the elevators he asked me, “Are you the boss?”

“Are you the boss?” Hmm. Presumably he thought I was the president of the company.

This is not the first time I have been mistaken for being the big man. For one thing, we are both about the same age. We also both usually wear cufflinks. And on this day I was also wearing my favorite Italian double-breasted suit. So in these days of casual dress, I was looking my executive best.

But I dress this way pretty much everyday—except for Fridays. Yet people don’t mistake me for the president every day of the week. So what was so special about last Thursday morning?

In Arnold Patent’s book, You Can Have it All, he wrote a chapter called “Owning the Level.” I first read that book over twenty years ago and this is the one chapter in it that I still keep thinking about. The premise of owning the level is that once a person achieves mastery of something, he owns the level attained by that mastery.

People tend to stay at the level—or station in life—they have mastered. When they move around in the work world they stay at the same level. For example, when an administrative assistant needs a new job, she will tend to look for administrative assistant jobs because she owns that level. A marketing manager will look for another job as a marketing manager—or possibly a job as a marketing director if she feels ready for the next level. But eventually, the theory goes, we all settle into a level and then own it.

Accordingly, CEOs go from being CEO of one company to CEO of another—even though the businesses may be totally different. They don’t start all over again at the bottom of the ladder and work their way back up. They own the level of CEO.

What level we own, Patent said, is determined by how we feel about ourselves. I think what he was saying is that if we perceive what we are doing as being of great value, others will as well. And they will react to us at the level of the value they perceive. So the level we are projecting is the level that is reflected back to us.

Many days I feel like my daily routine is of little or no value. It consists of doing so many mundane things just to keep the business going—majoring in the minors, I like to say.

But on Thursday I was acting like a CEO doing the most important thing a CEO can do—helping a customer get happily involved with the product.

In 20/20 hindsight, when the man asked me if I was the boss I shouldn’t have said, “No I’m just  . . .”  I had already slipped a couple of levels.

I should have said, “Not yet.”

Maybe he had a headache. Perhaps his feet were killing him. Did he forget to use Preparation H? Whatever it was, Chuck Berry turned in a memorable--but lame--performance last night at BB King’s. Or maybe I just expected too much from this 82-year-old who is largely credited with inventing rock ‘n’ roll. After all, I grew up with his music. He is one of my idols. But after suffering the “hardly waits” for weeks to see this NYC performance, I was disappointed. And so were my three guests—so this is not just me commenting.

OK, our table wasn’t in the best location, but at least it was a curved, cozy, private booth. The four of us got to the club a full hour before showtime, yet already the joint was packed. Silly me, we should have arrived in the middle of the afternoon, I suppose. Our view was partially obstructed by a column, but at least we could get up and see the full stage whenever we wanted to. And there was a large video screen with excellent close-up camera-work of what was going on center-stage. So I really can’t complain about the venue. It was my fault for not getting us there even earlier.

After a so-so warm-up act, Chuck came out to thunderous applause. Hey, this was to be expected, no? The place was filled with Chuck Berry fans! My guess is that the club seated (and stood) about 500 people.

But right after the opening act things quickly deteriorated. I can’t even remember the first song—because it was unintelligible. His guitar was out of tune. Either that, or he was playing in a different key from the rest of his (local and unrehearsed?) band. It was embarrassing. We all looked at each other and said, “What the hell is this?”

So after a minute or two of this atonal mish-mash, the band stops playing and they proceed to tune their instruments--in front of 500 people. Mind-boggling. Chuck tried to make it a joke by saying, “We’ll be ready to start the show in just a couple of minutes, folks.” Not funny. Not at Broadway show prices

I think the next song was “Roll Over, Beethoven,” and it sounded reasonably close to the way we all know it. But for the rest of the hour, there was constant re-tuning and on-stage consulting among the musicians. A couple more songs sounded just flat-out awful. Not a good night for Chuck Berry—or his audience, although my sense is that most of them were forgiving.

I want say one thing about the so-called reviews of BB King’s that I read on the Internet recently. Most of the people panned the place. They complained about the food, they complained about the service, they complained about the prices. This was my first time at BB King’s, and while I don’t have any great desire to return anytime soon, the place is not that bad. It’s largely a tourist place. But it is not a tourist trap, as so many of these rubes suggest. What the hell did they expect? This ain’t the Café Carlyle, folks--not that any of you would know what that is. You don’t order dinner at a place like this. The appetizers and finger foods were as good as any you will find at any typical NYC  bar—but at hotel prices. Get over it.

All was not lost, however—at least for me anyway. I did garner a few benefits from watching this show. I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 11 years old—albeit mostly the same three chords. This year, however, I’ve made a real effort to expand my knowledge of music/guitar theory. One of the songs I’ve been working on for the past several weeks is Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” I’ve almost got the intro down. In two more years I may be able to play the entire song.

So it was, indeed, inspirational for me to watch Chuck Berry as he enters his twilight years. He plays with such relaxed confidence—not like he is killing snakes as so many younger guitarist do.

I can do that. Even I can play out of tune.