Wandering Into Wisdom

This blog chronicles the knowledge, insight and wisdom I encounter every day as a leadership consultant, executive coach, educator, father, friend and citizen. This site is dedicated to my father, Louis (Jack) Laughlin, who passed on to me an appreciation for wisdom. A special thanks to my friend Isaac Cheifetz, a businessman and journalist, who helped me understand the value of blogs and encouraged me to write one.

The Payoff*

Craigslist is a website for classified ads that has reached $100 million in annual revenue. As amazing as that may seem, national revenues for classified ads in newspapers have dropped by $10 billion in the last eight years. If we assume that Craigslist took 10% of those revenues, some speculate it’s significantly more, that would account for $1 billion of those losses. Since Craigslist’s annual revenues are only $100 million that’s a 90% decrease in cost. It’s one of the best examples of doing more with less on the Internet. It’s also a major headache for the newspaper industry.