The Hammock Blog

Patriotism is a regular topic in many of the magazines we publish at Hammock Inc.: Semper Fi, the magazine for the Marine Corps League; American Spirit, the magazine for the Daughters of the American Revolution; and Foundations, which we publish for the families of the Army National Guard. Now we can add one more title to that list.

In the October/November issue of MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for the National Federation of Independent Business, we honor small business owners with a military background in the feature Heroes of Small Business. They share how serving their country has helped them serve their customers.

For example, in a typical year, we will work with around 150 freelance writers, photographers, illustrators, videographers and web developers. We also outsource a long list of administrative and technical support services ranging from managing payroll to keeping our color printers humming.

Being a customer of outsourced services has taught us a lot about being a provider of outsourced services. For the most part, these lessons have come from taking what works in one experience or relationship and applying it to the next similar challenge. I'll admit, with much regret, that some of these lessons have come from our being "bad clients."

Recent research from the Yankee Group estimates that nearly 7 billion mobile apps will produce $4.2 billion in revenue in the next five years. The number of smart phone users is expected to quadruple during that time, to about 160 million.

Ah, back-to-school time. Nothing says "new school year" like the smell of new school supplies, the rush of college students coming back into town—and music, for some of us here at Hammock.

We were hunting for nine items:

• It's 5 o'clock somewhere
• Print
• Hammock
• More than one
• Blue
• Caffeinated
• Fresh
• Digital
• Only in ...