When a homeowner decides to put his house on sale and calls the office of the top real estate agent in town…

When he calls the moving company the real estate agent referred…

When a family arrives in a new town and calls someone recommended as the family doctor…

When a wealthy couple calls their favorite fancy restaurant looking for a reservation…

Go down the list. Airlines, hairdressers, and yes, hotels.

When a new referral calls, all that hard work, money, and time you invested in earning those referrals, and then the phone rings and it gets answered by your annoyed, overworked, burned out, never very good at it anyway receptionist/agent, it all falls apart.

What is the business man thinking when he/she allows the neither pleasant nor interested in new business receptionist to answer the phone?

An idea set in place by Seth Godin…

It’s nearly 2:00 a.m. and my brain is spinning circles, so I want to get this idea out there before it’s gone.

In the hotel world, behind all the smiling faces, fancy decor, remodeling, and butt kissing (I mean that in the best possible way), at the end of our day, our jobs boil down to one thing – putting heads in beds.

Unfortunately for travelers (and everyone is a traveler at some point in life), hotels are not non-profit organizations.

Putting heads (or butts) in beds is the number one objective, this is especially true in the city I work in, Rochester, Minnesota.  Masses of people flock to our city each year (2.75 million), most of those (70%) to visit the Mayo Clinic.

New hotel, old hotel, remodeled, renovated – it doesn’t matter. Every hotel in this town has an extreme amount of competition, no matter the name brand.

So here is the thought process, there are a few parts…

Same-Day Rates

What if it’s late in the day and someone is in a pinch. What if it’s too late to use conventional hotel booking sites?

Why not offer discounted, same day rates for “walk-in” guests? Why not maintain your  “standard” room rates, and offer “suites” for an extremely discounted same-day rate? Get more, pay less (or equal). This would not only introduce guests to your nicer rooms that they normally would not consider, it will also showcase your best rooms that, chances are, unless already reserved, no one is gonna be walking in and asking for anyway.

The guests, especially if informed, will know this is a limited availability room type, and “count your lucky stars, it just so happens we have only one available…“, next time they’re coming to town, they won’t chance it and try to “walk-in”. They want to be guaranteed that room, and they’ll gladly pay RACK to get it.

If you’re concerned about your already overworked front desk, keep the increased walk-in stress off your desk and add in a stipulation that it must be booked through reservations to qualify.

This could prove to be a highly effective way to push short-term, last minute reservations.

Quoting Rates Using Anchor Points

The run of the mill front desk agent sales pitch starts at the lowest rate (which is then used as the anchor for all following prices), works it’s way up slowly, until eventually the guest makes a decision.

It’s kinda like a used car salesman: “Well, this one runs, has 4 wheels and a steering wheel. Want it? No? Okay, for a little more, this one has windshield wipers and A/C. Okay, okay… what about we spend a little more, we’ll give you the hatchback with a little more trunk space and leg room? Deal.“

None of those cars sound very appealing. The first car and price quoted is the anchor. It’s a sign of what the seller has to offer in terms of quality.

A good front desk agent knows not to quote the lowest possible rate and room type, and instead use a higher cost room as the anchor point. This in turn adds value to your property. You’re not quoting the rates that compare to Motel 6, you’re quoting rates that tell your guests that they’ll be treated differently. They’ll be taken care of, comforted, and they’ll have the peace of mind of knowing they’re in the right hands.

If a room is too expensive for someone, they’ll tell you. THEN, you quote the less-expensive rooms (notice, I didn’t say cheap, or cheaper, those are naughty words).

Use your most cost conscious rooms as your fall back when there’s rate resistance from the guest.

Think of it in terms of a fancy restaurants wine list. They have the less expensive wines, the ones in the middle, and then a few obscene, overpriced ones that they never plan on selling anyway, they’re just on the menu to steer you somewhere else. No one wants to look cheap and buy the cheapest options. No one will blame you for not buying the most expensive. So the obvious answer is to choose right in the middle.

The restaurants know this and set up their pricing to profit on this. They mark up of cheapest wines, say 20%. The most expensive wines are priced in fantasy land anyway, so their mark up doesn’t matter. They never plan to sell them, if they do – great, it’s to someone who doesn’t care about money anyway. But then, knowing you’re hand is forced, and you’re going to pick from the middle, they mark those bottles up 50%-60% and make a killer profit. The wine is probably the same wholesale cost as the cheapest menu options, but it will sell ten times more because of its price point.

Social engineering at its finest.

Social Media and Heat Mapping

You’re guests are on the go, and these days, where they are going is your business. (I stole that line from somewhere)

Mobile location applications, or “Check-in” apps, are taking off. GoWalla, Foursquare, Latitude, Facebook Places, etc.  They all do the same thing – they let users broadcast to their friends, where they are, and what they are doing there.

Look at it this way. When I “Check-In” at a restaurant (or anyplace), 500 Facebook friends, 200 Twitter followers, 50 Foursquare friends, 30 LinkedIn connections, not to mention my unaccounted for blog readers (through my Twitter sidebar widget), and my Ping.FM followers – all instantly know where I am, why,  and most certainly will see a follow up about how great (or bad) it was.

A personal friends recommendation beats an anonymous advertisement blast, 10 to 1. (I made that up, but it’s probably close!)

Enter, Geotoko.

Geotoko is a tool that, “we marketers“, use to find out who has checked in at our businesses. Geotoko centralizes everything, so instead of having a separate account on each different application, it allows you to set a single campaign that monitors each one.

It allows businesses with different locations (or hotels…) to develop heat maps, and see in real time where their visitors are traveling too.

Through your campaigns, you can also give your travelers incentive to “check-in”. “Check-in for a free cheesecake. Check-in for 10% off your room rate. Check in and receive a free beer here, and a free desert across the street at our other restaurant!” Use your heat map to see where you’re getting the most check-ins, and which campaigns are proving to be the most effective.

You can influence the decision making process of your travelers, and profit from it.

Conclusion

Okay, time for bed. I’ll proof read some other day.

But, I guess the idea is just to make you question yourself. Are you really doing what it takes to get a leg up on your competitors? I mean, we all work hard, we all get worn out, and drained, and feel like we’re doing everything we can to succeed, but… really? If you don’t have the time in your day to do it yourself, to learn all these new tools, follow up on them, optimize and leverage them, I bet you can find someone who does. And I bet the cost of him will be negligible in comparison to what he brings your business.

Are you doing everything you can to be on the absolute bleeding edge of technology and competition?

Worse yet to think about, are your competitors?

People either ignore your brand, or they judge it. When judging it, people usually judge with very little information or background surrounding your brand. When they do judge it, they will be judging it on the loudest, most brash, meanest, and selfish member of your brand.

When a waitress gives a customer poor service, suddenly the food is a little less appealing. The restaurant is a little louder, a little dirtier, and a little less likely to get a good review.

When a front desk agent over promises, under delivers, is unaccountable, unreliable, and unfriendly; suddenly the beds are more lumpy, the TV is fuzzier, the housekeeping is a little less than desirable, and the whole trip is suddenly forgettable – or memorable for the wrong reasons.

When a doctor rips off Medicare, suddenly all doctors are crooks.

When an individual, or small group, commits freelance violence, suddenly the whole nation is seen as violent and irrational.

When one Jack-In-The-Box employee spits on a burger, suddenly they all seem a lot’obit more unsanitary – and they nearly fold because of this one individuals actions.

Seems obvious, right? I wonder then, why loyal, and honest members of an otherwise outstanding service, company, or brand, hesitate to discipline, ostracize, or expel the negative members.

“You’re hurting us and the brand. This is wrong, you need to go.”

What do you stand for?

When the average end user only experiences 10% of your staff or product, yet judges the whole 100%, you can’t afford to be hiring (or keeping) people in the bottom 90% of candidates. Hire and train the top 10% of candidates available to you. A company should never be “not hiring”. There is always an opening for truly exceptional candidates.

Retain and reward passion and dedication – you can’t train someone to have that.

This is an unfinished blog post.  Just trying to brainstorm and outline some ideas.

Front Desk

• Every Front Desk “Agent” needs to understand they are your marketing department.  They are your sales team.
  • I’ve never seen a hotel desk clerk writing letters or making calls to generate new business—they stand at the desk waiting for business to arrive.  Why?
• Everyone must:
  • Take responsibility.
  • Pay attention to detail.
• Lose the “that’s not my job” and “our internet service is outsourced, it’s their fault.” type of attitude.  If you absolutely will not help, you can say essentially the same thing, but with a far more pleasant spin.
  • All the magazine ads in the world can’t undo one lousy desk clerk.
• Answer the “Why?” questions!  ”That’s our policy.” “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”  Quit trying to make the guests just go away.
  • Does that make any sense at all? The single most efficient (and lowest cost) technique for improving your operations is answering the why questions! You should embrace these people, not send them away.
    • “You know, sir, I have no idea why you have to do that. But I can tell you that I’ll find out before the end of the day.”
• Lose the script!  I understand the importance of everyone being on the same page and everyone relaying the same message, but I think in this day and age, we can toss the script out the window and talk person to person.  When you’re just talking person to person, a guest knows you’re actually putting thought and effort into what you’re saying; you’re sincere.
  • I know it’s more difficult, but hiring people who can think for themselves is usually a better long run strategy than scripting every conversation.  If scripting’s the plan, it’s probably better (and cheaper down the road) to get an automated system.
• How much extra for nice?
  • If I upgrade to the Super Duper Presidential Suite, I’ll get treated much nicer at check-in.  If I give the valet $50, I’d expect him to treat me much nicer.  If I tip the housekeepers $20 a day, they’d be much nicer.
    • What if the guest doesn’t request any special service, any special accommodations?  What if all they want is to be treated nicer?  How much does that cost?
    • I think there’s a huge gap between what people are willing to pay for nice (a lot) and what it would cost businesses to deliver it (almost nothing).  Smells like an opportunity.

Management

• Most hiring managers don’t understand organizations that go to extraordinary lengths to find and retain amazing people.  Most think “Pay market wage, run a classified, process the resumes. Done.”  It only takes 10% of their effort to hire someone in the bottom 90%.
  • Why not put 90% effort in, to hire and retain someone from the top 10%?
• Hire people who smile more.  Don’t hire the same look of failure, the same feeling of impending, slow, inexorable doom I see everywhere else I go.
• If you’re trying to be truly remarkable and groundbreaking, hire someone with no prior hotel experience.  It’s easier to instill your plan and message into a brain that has no previous idea of “how things are done.”
  • The training process may be longer, but the “long tail” will tell us it’s worth it.
• During the interview process, have an actual conversation with the potential employee, something completely out of left field.  Something they never could have rehearsed or seen coming.  Picture people as an iceberg.  90% of their personalities are hidden below the water line.  You might not see it in the interview, but trust me, when a guest is having a bad day and takes it out on the unsuspecting Front Desk Agent, you’ll see it.

Property

• Each room needs to have something people will talk about.  Something that demands Word-of-Mouth marketing.
  • A room at the ‘W Hotel’ in San Francisco goes for around $300 a night.  In each room is an Etch-A-Sketch.  A $300 room with a $2 Etch-a-Sketch!  If you stayed there, how could you NOT tell everyone about that???
    • Take it one step further.  Have your hotel name and logo embossed on the frame of the Etch-A-Sketch.  God forbid someone steals one, it continues to tell your story where ever it ends up.
• On the reverse side of that, if your room has something you don’t want people talking about, and they find it, they’ll talk about it.
• Breakfast needs to be exceptional.  The last thing people do before they checkout is eat breakfast.  It’s your last shot to leave an impression.  Whatever they feel when they get in their car and leave, is what they will feel when someone asks how their trip was.  It’s how they’ll feel when that e-mail survey shows up in their e-mail inbox.
  • The difference in cost between offering 6 different kinds of individually wrapped cereal packets, and 40, is close to zero.  Why offer just one kind of tea? One kind of bread that you toast yourself?
    • No, we don’t need it, but we don’t need to eat in the hotel either. And yes, you’d be sure to tell people about it. “Hey, you know what I had for breakfast? A mixture of Cap’n Crunch, Froot Loops, and Honeycomb!! And I had it with chocolate soymilk and M & Ms on top!”
• The hotel hallways and rooms NEED to be well lit.  I understand the tradition of keeping very low lighting to hide any wear and tear, or anything your housekeepers may have missed.  By turning the lighting up, you’re providing a safer, more convenient (I can see where everything in my room is without squinting!), and more uplifting experience. 
  • You’re also saying “We’ve got nothing to hide.  We have 100% faith in our housekeeping staff.”
• Why doesn’t the Coke machine take room keys?  With all the technology and information packed into a hotel room key, it’s not particularly difficult to imagine how this would work. Hotels have done almost nothing with this ability. Once they see how they can personalize and customize the visitor experience, there are countless ways both sides can profit.

Sales

• Every ‘Sales Director’ needs to have extensive training and knowledge of how the Front Desk works.  
  • Only when they understand the daily operations of the hotel, can they make accurate promises and negotiations.  I’ve seen too many Sales “people” end up doing the old “Over promise, under deliver” method.  That’s a real short sighted plan.
• Understand that gambling and overselling the hotel is an inherit risk, yet easily avoidable.  Everyone in the hotel world knows “Heads in beds” is the mantra.  BUT, having a 100 room hotel, and booking four wedding groups on a Friday night, with 30 rooms in each block, gambling that they won’t all book, is hardly a good way to do business.  You might win some times, but when you lose, you lose big.
• Understand the difference between “Sold out”, and SOLD OUT.
  • Handling an overbooked hotel by simply saying “Sorry we’re full, the hotel down the road has vacancy.” is not good enough.  The guest will not settle for that.
  • 1 upset guest cancels out 10 satisfied guests.
• Also understand that just because you aren’t there, face-to-face with the guests as they check-in, you’re still responsible for upholding the promises you made to that guest.

Web Site

• Looking at industry competitors, you’ll see all hotel web sites bend over backwards to be just like everyone else.  You can’t identify one hotel website from another if you delete the name of the hotel.  Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what’s cheap and close?
  • How about a site that says, “Here’s why we’re different.” And means it.

Marketing

• It’s 2010.  Your hotel absolutely can not afford to continue embracing “Old World Marketing”.  You can’t just get louder as the market place gets larger and more demanding.  You need to refine your market and embrace “Permission Marketing”. 
  • Flickr – Set up a Flickr account.  Post pictures of your rooms, pool, special events, (friendly) staff, etc.  The more information people can find on your hotel, the more people find your hotel.
  • Twitter – Set up a Twitter account and Tweet once every couple days.  Just a quick, less than 140 character Tweet about something in the area, a special event at the hotel, or even a special “Twitter only” room rate.  Post a direct link to a specific suite, etc.
  • Facebook – Use a Facebook page to post pictures of your hotel, very similar to Flickr.  Use the same page to post updates of the hotels “happenings”.  You can use Facebook as a combination Twitter/Flickr platform, but with 11 million users.

In October of 2010, a property I was helping manage asked me to outline areas I felt we could improve on. Below is a truncated version of what I provided the owners of the property with

Keep in mind, a lot of the ideas are property specific and don’t necessarily work everywhere.

Sales & Marketing

• Maximize repeat sales. It’s nearly impossible to build sales volume with new sales alone. With the technology we have available, it’s extremely easy to identify which guests have been the most loyal to us. We can send them letters in the mail inviting them back. Call them and see how they’re doing, see if they plan on coming to the area anytime soon, and if we can assist in making a reservation.
  • Initiate word-of-mouth marketing. Potential guests will take a referral from a personal friend, long before a Expedia  or Orbitz review. Send your most loyal guests a one-time use gift certificate for them to give to a friend to come stay with us. It can be something simple like 10% off. The guest won’t know 10% off is next to nothing, and they’ll be extremely impressed to know you singled them out and personally sent them a letter. You’ll earn all of their future business, plus their referral business.
    • What’s our market? Mayo Clinic patients. Generally elderly people in deteriorating health. Elderly people surround themselves with other elderly people in similar situations. What better way to market then have it done for us? Snowball effect.
  • This would be easy to initiate and build upon. This is something any Front Desk agent could handle with the tools they are already familiar with. Just using the tools within Choice Advantage, they’d be able to send a few letters a day, as well and print and sign their own names on the bottom building a personal relationship which each guest.
  • It’s the old saying – “80% of your business comes from 20% of your guests.”
• Maximize property revenue. I worked at a property in Scottsdale, Arizona where the GM had a popular saying of “I don’t want to hear change jingling in pockets when they walk out the door.” That might be a little extreme, but it’s a saying that holds substance.
  • All of our Local Rate Plans have a contract end date. Instead of simply renewing contracts on our end, at the contract end date, why not call to renegotiate our contracted rate? Tell them about the improvements we have made, our increased occupancy, and explain we now demand a higher rate. Worst case they refuse and we maintain the previous rate.
• Increase our network presence. We are not taking full advantage of the community we do business in. Rochester is a very unique market in the sense that it depends more so on who you know, rather than what your business is. There are nearly 6,000 hotel rooms in Rochester, so we need to take every step we can to be on the bleeding edge of self-promotion and building brand awareness.
  • While we might be attending the occasional RCVB meeting, and working with John Larsen on our sports groups, we aren’t using our connections with the community to drive our sales, and build our presence like we should be.
  • We aren’t participating in any of the Chamber of Commerce “Member to Member” advertising opportunities.
  • There is a monthly Chamber “e-mail blast” which goes to upwards of 10,000 e-mail accounts around town, which is free to include anything we want to say about ourselves in.
  • No one is representing us at the “business after hours”, “AM Espresso’s”, or the FUEL luncheons.
    • While it might appear trivial at best to take part in these, Rochester is the kind of market that you almost have to “play the game” to succeed in. Having a “face”, and someone there to shake hands at these events for us (which we are already paying for), would generate a great image for us in the community, and would really drive word-of-mouth sales around town.
• Cater to the “Gatekeepers”. Within the infrastructure of a company, especially our local companies, the CEO’s, GM’s, and big bosses aren’t the ones making the decisions where their employees, clients, and guests will stay. It’s the people further down the ladders that make these decisions. It’s the secretaries, desk agents, call centers, etc., who have to pick up the phone and book the reservations.
  • Sending these people cookies, donuts, flowers, a thank you note. Giving them a gift certificate, anything to recognize the work they continue to do for us will have an insurmountable return on the investment we make in having a relationship with them.
• Respond and take action on each and every Medallia and Guest Service complaint. This falls into the “above and beyond” category. While we’re not “required” to take action on the Medallia surveys, taking credit for, and showing concern for our guest’s complaints, shows that these surveys are being read by humans, and shows that we are dedicated to improving our property.
  • Send personally signed and addressed letters to guests addressing their complaints, even small complaints. We can offer a 10%-20% discount on their next stay. That minor, one time loss in revenue, is still profit on the alternative of them never coming back.
  • By addressing our guests concerns, and accepting the blame, we can earn back the trust of our guests, and earn a second opportunity to impress them.
    • 1 upset guest negates 10 happy ones.
• Guests, not policy needs to determine our services. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard sales people say “we can’t do that” or worse, “our policy is…” because they don’t want to take the time to find a way to fulfill a guest’s request. As long as one can make the task profitable for the hotel, anything can be done.

All of the above “Sales and Marketing” ideas can be successfully executed without a dedicated Sales Director, or Sales team of any sort. Our existing Front Desk staff could easily handle each of the above tasks with little cost to the property itself. Any inherit costs involved would pay for themselves tenfold.

Front Desk

• We need to make sure we are thoroughly interviewing and screening our Front Desk staff. If we choose to be a hotel of exceptional quality, we need to have equally exceptional Front Desk staff.
  • The previously mentioned resort I worked at in Scottsdale, ran with military precision. Every single staff member was trained on how to think, talk, act, and behave. There was no room for error, and nothing but perfection was accepted.
  • It starts with the hiring. We can’t be hiring people simply because they can handle the job; we need to be hiring people because they are absolutely perfect for the job.
  • We should always be interviewing people. Just because there are no openings, doesn’t mean we can’t make an opening for truly exceptional candidates.
  • Everyday you make decisions where you have two options, the safe decision, which offers comfort and warmth; or the risky decision, which offers growth and excitement. In the case of our property, we need to choose risk, and replace any under performing staff, or relocate them to a position more suited to their skill set.
• Our Front Desk needs to be retrained and broken of bad habits we’ve developed over time – myself included. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard and be accountable for shortcomings and things that go “unseen” in the hotel.
  • We need to instill some of original training materials and stick to them. We need to all be held accountable for what gets accomplished at the front desk.

Online Presence – Personal Web Site

• As I mentioned in our meeting today, there is a paradigm shift in the way the world is getting its information. While keeping in mind that we’re in a completely unique market (Mayo Clinic), and play by a completely different set of rules, New World marketing is quickly outpacing Old World marketing.
  • 50 years ago there were 4 channels on TV. To earn market share all you had to do was have a larger budget than your competition. This is no longer true. We are entering an age of infinite choice.
  • Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in; we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what’s cheap and close? In a world where our online identity is determined by our “Lowest Available Rate!” we have no choice but to choose to be exceptional.
• We should buy www.——-.com. (Have you ever attempted to send someone to our direct site?) It should have a welcoming appearance with pictures of our property, pictures of our actual staff including their first names.
  • We could include our staff pictures with tag lines like “Call Josh today to book your room!”
  • We could integrate a direct RSS Feed from our Twitter account, which would be updated by a staff member (any Front Desk) once a day. Just a quick 140 character or less update about what’s going on at the property or in town.
  • We could invite people to tell us about their experience on our Facebook “fan page”.
  • We could include more expansive details on our Mayo Clinic offerings, our Sundowner, meeting space, and group options.
    • Much more than our e-Brochure allows.
  • However, when it comes to booking online, the site would just act as a personalized portal to our main ChoiceHotels.com website sending all reservations through CRS like usual.
    • Imagine the personalized experience we could create. They see our faces online, come to the properties and all the same faces are standing right there waiting to greet them. You think name tags form a connection? Imagine that.
• We would be selling an experience, not just a $79.99 hotel room. People don’t go to Starbucks for a $10 cup of coffee; they could get better, more affordable coffee elsewhere – they go for the experience.  We would be building indispensable, long lasting relationship with our guests. They would feel comfortable and at home, which is what the majority of our Mayo Clinic patients care about. They want to come back from Mayo to somewhere that resembles home, not just a cold, brick and mortar, run of the mill hotel.

Everyone really needs to take a look at today’s economy. While most companies are getting scared and trying more and more to be like everyone else, they are failing to realize that the only thing that will save them in this period, is going above and beyond all expectations. The economy is giving us two choices – quit, or be exceptional. All of the things I have outlined above will make us an exceptional property.

People can stay at a ——- anywhere in the world, but we can choose to be the only ——- that truly stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Summary

These are just a few ideas I’ve come up with in the few hours since our meeting. I think there are many more opportunities in front of us; we just need to choose to see with new eyes, and take advantage of a market waiting for something new. How many great railroad companies got into the airline business? Zero. They were all afraid of change, and afraid to take the inherit risks to grow with the market.
I think you can see the passion, and desire I have to be successful in the hotel industry. I could sit here and write on the subject for days, writing about things we could try, risks we could take, opportunities that we could take advantage of, and ways we could leverage the “down economy” to work in our favor.

At the end of the day, the owners at this property picked a couple minuscule things from my list to attempt halfheartedly and I eventually went to a different, much more promising property.

Okay, I don’t have any catchy intro, or any staggering statistics to start this post off. Not yet.

I’ve got no real outline for this post. I’m just going to start brainstorming everything I can think of to start compiling an outline of a “better business model”. I have a notebook (like, actually a hand written notebook, who knew???) of a ton of business stuff I’ve picked up on my way. Whether reading online, reading a book, watching a movie, anything. If it stuck out to me, it’s in this notebook.

So here comes a collection of quotes, thoughts, theories, and any other random idea I can pull out of my short-circuiting brain before it’s lost forever. I’m not going to even try to compile and organize this information in a professional and compelling manner… bear with me.

What big companies have that I don’t

DON’T TRY TO COMPETE IN THESE FIVE AREAS!!!

• Distribution
  • Lot’s of sales people for lot’s of products.
  • Can afford shelf space, end caps, sales reps, etc.
• Access To Capital
  • The big guys can raise money – lots of it.
  • Big guys don’t have to worry about paying investors back in months or years. Big time investors are looking for the return much further down the line.
• Brand Identity
  • Don’t underestimate the power of the brand!!!
  • The consumer is FAR more likely to buy from the established brand, AND pay a premium for the comfort and warmth that comes with that feeling.
• Customer Relationships
  • Access to customers = HUGE advantage!
  • Big companies have the trust of other big companies. Other businesses are more likely to buy inventory from existing networks and relationships.
  • It’s easier for businesses to keep buying from the same businesses they’ve used for years.
• Great Employees
  • Great people are drawn to companies with a great reputation, that pays well, and that can offer stability.

If you try to steal the giants lunch, the giant will likely eat you.

What I have that big companies don’t

• Nothing to lose
  • How many great railroad companies got into the airline business? ZERO.
    • They were all too busy protecting old turf to grab new turf.
  • Smaller businesses are more agile and able to adapt to shifting demands.
    • If Chocolate covered hot dogs took off, it would take months before McDonald’s could roll out the inventory, menus, advertising, training materials, etc. to all 31,000+ locations.
    • You could have Chocolate covered hot dogs on your menu the next day.
• Happy with small fish
  • In the ocean, the first fish to die are the big fish.
    • Disney can’t be satisfied with a movie that earns less than $40 million.
    • An independent film that earns $100,000 can make a directors career.
      • FIND A NICHE NOT A NATION!!!
• Presidential Input
  • You’re not removed from the decisions. When the owner of 3M wants something done, he has to run it through board members, board members take it to the product developers, and so on down the chain.
  • If you want something done, it gets done.
• Rapid Research & Development
  • Larger teams do not equal better and faster results.
    • 9 women working together really hard, still can’t make a baby in 1 month.
  • Great ideas come from smaller teams far more often. Smaller teams have much more freedom and creative expression.

Home Bases, Outposts, and Passports (In an online sense)

Home Bases

• Places online that you OWN.
• You control what happens.
• No one can take your home base away.
  • The only way your home base goes away, is if you make it go away.
• You SHOULD only have one home base. However, depending on your business, you can have more than one.

Outposts

• Outposts are places you don’t own, but you build and maintain away from your home base.
• In the Military, outposts can be taken over, attacked, overrun, or burned down.
• Online outposts can also be taken away.
  • Facebook can delete your profile and company pages.
  • Twitter can delete your posts.
  • LinkedIn could (probably will) go out of business and shut down.

Passports

• Your online passport is the login and password information for each outpost. Your credentials.
• You can see some information while not logged in. But in order to communicate, make changes, update things, you’ll need your passport

Notes

• The lines between your Home Base and Outposts allow for communication and traffic to flow.
  • You can imagine two lines connecting the Home Base and Outpost if you’d like. One for communicating to, and one for receiving communication from.
• Don’t over market on one Outpost. Even if you can get away with it right now, it won’t last for long.
• Only sell on your Home Base.
  • Your Outposts are there only to extend your reach, and to interact.
  • If you’re selling on your Outpost and that Outpost is lost, you’ve lost a segment of your market.
• Provide a way for your users to go from your Home Base to your Outposts, and from your Outposts to your Home Base. Make this move EASY.
• You can extend your reach by participating on other peoples Home Bases. These can also act as your Outposts since they allow for you to extend your reach and bring people back to your Home Base.
  • Example: If you run Recording Studio like yours truly, you may be interested in posting on Recording.Org. By building a reputation and name there, you build clout and bring people back to your Home Base.

The key is the selling happens on your Home Base.

The Dip

I made these graphs and charts in, like, 4 seconds.  Lay off me.

‘The Dip’ is an idea originally proposed by marketing and advertising genius Seth Godin.  The idea is that every thing in life is controlled by “The Dip”, more specifically, your professional career.  The Dip, is the point where you are putting in a lot of effort, and not getting much return.  At this point, you either push on through the dip, or you quit all together.

Here are my thoughts on it.

“Quit the wrong stuff.  Stick with the right stuff.  Have the guts to do one or the other.”

“It pays to be the best in the world.”

Three Curves

The Dip

• • Almost everything worth doing in life is controlled by the dip.
  • When you start, you see immediate results (usually).  You put in effort, you get results.  As time progresses, you will find yourself putting in the same effort and getting less results.  This is The Dip.

The Cul-de-sac

• • Get off it fast!
  • The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that isn’t getting better is too high.

The Cliff (Probably the hardest to understand)

• An example being eBay.  eBay is supported solely by the fact that that’s where everyone is.  eBay was a losing business until all of a sudden everyone showed up on the doorstep and wanted to use it.
• When “The next big thing” comes and replaces eBay.  eBay falls off the cliff.  No amount of effort will yield the same results.

“The dip creates scarcity, scarcity creates  value.”

• The brave thing to do is tough it out and end up on the other side – getting all the benefits that come from scarcity
• The mature thing is to not even bother starting, because you’re probably not going to make it through The Dip.
• The stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in middle of The Dip.

Only a tiny portion of the audience is looking for the brand new thing. (The Cliff curve)  Most people are waiting for the tested, authenticated, and the proven. (The Dip curve)

But the trick is to not fear The Dip.  Don’t just survive it, use The Dip as an opportunity to create something extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and yes, choose it.  The Dip isn’t there to keep you from surviving.  The Dip is there for you to prove how much you want it.  It’s there to keep everyone else out, the ones who don’t want it bad enough.

Next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you only have two choices.

Quit or Be Exceptional

Average is for losers!

3 Questions to ask before quitting

• Am I panicking?
  • Quitting while you’re panicked is dangerous and expensive.  The best quitters decide in advance when to quit
• Who am I trying to influence?
  • If it’s a person, there are limits.  If it’s a market, the rules are different.
• What sort of measurable progress am I making?
  • You’re either moving forward, falling behind, or standing still.  Don’t stick to it when you’re lacking forward progress.

No matter our market, product, or profession, all of our successes are the same.  All of our failures too.

• We succeed when we do something remarkable.
• We fail when we give up too soon.
• We succeed when we are the best in the world.
• We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit.

Small

For 10 years, Digital Avenue has had exactly one employee: me.  This has kept my business different than many other start ups out there.

• The biggest differences are:
  • The kind of project that’s “interesting” is very different. It doesn’t have to be strategic or scalable or profitable enough to feed an entire division. It just has to be interesting or fun or good for my audience.
• The idea of risk is different:
  • I could write an e-book and launch it in some crazy way and just see what happens.
  • I can build a dot-com enterprise with a questionable business model and just see what happens.
  • Because my costs are nothing compared to those of a large organization, there are no boundaries in the way I can approach something (compared to, say, a publisher or public company, or multinational).

If you don’t have to bet the farm on every launch, you’re way more likely to launch more, and more randomly, which greatly increases your odds.

Don’t grow unless it gives you joy.

• Little companies often make more money than big companies.
• Small means the founder is involved in a far greater percentage of customer interactions.
• Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter, and can make them quickly.
• Small gives you the flexibility to change your business model when your competition changes theirs.
• Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
• Small means you outsource the boring low-impact stuff like manufacturing, shipping, billing, packing to others, while:
• You keep all the power because you invent something that’s remarkable and tell your story to people who want to hear it.

No reason at all to build a big company anymore. Since big companies are no more profitable than little ones, it’s the little ones that are most likely to spring up, make a difference, and then (without tears) disappear, only to reappear at some other time, in some other place.

That will do it for now… I’ll add more as I get more time.

The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is “Why in god’s name isn’t everyone creative?”  Where was the human potential lost?  How was it crippled?  I think a good question might be not “Why do people create?”  But “Why do people not create or innovate?”  We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything at all.

For a long time, I’ve been really interested in what makes a business work.  What separates one business from another.  Why some great ideas never materialize, and why some incredibly simple, and stupid ideas explode (The Snuggy). There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

So how do you know?  How do the owners of McDonalds, not only take McDonalds from a single location and turn it into what it is now, but then buy a single obscure restaurant in Colorado and turn it into Chipotle?  How come Barnes & Noble passed on buying Amazon before it become THE Amazon.  Why did American Express pass on PayPal, just to watch it get snatched up by eBay and turn it into what it is today.  Why would Rupert Murdoch (Fox) buy MySpace for $327 Million when everything pointed to a serious decline in revenue? (MySpace’s revenue has declined nearly 60% for two consecutive years since it sold)

Maybe most people don’t care, but to me it’s really interesting.

I am only one guy (obviously), but I truly believe the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas, and throw away the bad ones.  So here are a few of them I’ve had kicking around in my head for awhile.  I thought I would type them all out before they get pushed out of my head and replaced with other useless information.

I’m not scared of anyone taking these ideas and executing them before me.  I encourage it, and hope someone can pull some of these off.  I’d love to see them in action.

Artists Playground

What?

• Okay.  This one takes a bit of visualizing to get the full effect.  First, imagine a health club.  When you think of a health club, you think of sectioned off rooms that serve very specific purposes.  You have your spinning bikes in one room, weights in one, pool, tanning, etc.  Everything is in its own designated area.
• Now, picture that building completely stripped of everything inside of it besides the walls and floor plan.  In place of the weights and work out equipment, instead you have art supplies.   Each room serving a very specific purpose.
• Room ideas:
  • Ceramics
  • Painting
  • Silk Screening
  • Writing
  • Dance studio
  • Photography
  • Computer Graphics
  • Music Instruments

Why?

• A lot of people, especially middle aged people, want to take up new hobbies, or revisit old hobbies.  They never get/take the opportunity due to the fact that their lives are too busy to make that full time commitment.  It’s hard to justify re-buying a bunch of supplies, dedicating floor space, or even a whole room, to a hobby you’re not sure if you’ll even be able to commit much time to.
• We provide the supplies, you make use of them, we clean up.  Whatever you make, you keep at no additional charge.  All supplies are covered in the monthly membership fee.
• The business model partially takes on the “Long-Tail Economy” in the sense that they might sign up to use the ceramics, but they’ll keep their membership going because they fall in love with the drums.

Where’s the money?

• The money is in the same place as a health clubs money.  In the monthly membership fees.  You could also charge for classes.  To garner interest in getting artists to take classes, you could have on-site teachers offering assistance/tips for whoever is around working on things.  You could also have the “Standard” supplies available for free, then have “Premium” supplies for additional costs.

Rochester Restaurant 411

What?

• A over-simplified search engine that only returns results from local Rochester restaurants.  Think of Google for the simplicity, Bing for the results.  I stress the simplicity fact, because 70% of all travel to Rochester is for the Mayo Clinic, which a large majority of are elderly.  The “elderly” are that age group stuck in no mans land between the old world and new technology.
• Picture a single search input field (again, think Google…) where all it asks you is “What would you like to eat?”.  To which the visitor simple enters in keywords of what they are looking for; “Steak, Fries, Salad”.  Then up pops all the restaurants in town (that are listed) who have items on their menus matching those keywords.  Obviously it’s pretty easy to find a steak house.  But what if you were looking for a very specific Mandarin dish or something?  That’s when the average local person won’t be able to help you anymore.

Why?

• Rochester is a town of 100,000+ residents.  That’s cool and all, but the real bread and butter lies in the fact that we are home to the Mayo Clinic, St. Marys, and IBM.  I work in the Lodging Industry now, and have for almost 10 years.  Every single day, I have 15 people ask me where they can find a random food item.  Like I said before, every person in the Lodging Industry basically has one of two of the main types of restaurants down.  “Chinese?  Go here.  Steak?  Go here.”  etc.  They don’t put any thought into specifically what you’re looking for.  It’s just a canned response to get you to go away.  Believe me, I know.

Where’s The Money?

• This is the type of “While you sleep” business I’ve been really interested in developing.  Literally, while you sleep, you are making revenue.  This business would have a large amount of upfront work, but once that is done, it would require very minimal work moving forward.
• The upfront work would be building the web site, and creating a database to archive all the restaurants in town.  What they serve, hours, location, phone numbers, etc.  Once that is out of the way, you get into the “While you sleep” revenue.
• The money would come from offering “Premium Listings”.  For example, if you were to search Google for “Dentists”, you’ll see two to three listings on the top of the search results.  These are paid, or “premium” listings.  People pay good money to have their name stuck right on top.  I would offer premium listings to Rochester restaurants, basically as a bid.  Highest bidder gets the highest listing.  Aside from that, I would offer tiered monthly fees.  For example, for $10 a month, you can have a map to your location, for $15 a month, you can have a map, and phone number, for $30 a month, you can have everything, plus a menu, plus the ability to login and add your own specials to your listing.

Street Bar

What?

• Imagine a typical “party bus” that most bars offer.  It’s pretty bland, and more often than not, it is literally just an out of service yellow school bus.  It’s a “trendy” thing to get one for special events, and in reality, it just ends up being an expensive and inconvenient means of bar hopping.
• But what if you made the “bus”, the main attraction?  With the “Street Bar”, you’d have a full service bar, with bartender, for you and lets say, 15 friends.  The bus would be smaller than a full size yellow school bus, but a little more spacious inside.  More room to move, dance, drink and party.  It would have a full dance club light show built in, plus a booming sound system.  The windows would be large, run the full length of the bus, and see-through from the outside in.  If you’re on the Street Bar, you wanna be seen on the Street Bar!
• Instead of driving bar to bar, and leaving the Street Bar in the parking lot.  You drive around town all night partying the night away!

Why?

• A typical party bus, runs anywhere from $400 – $700 a night.  But look at it this way.  The people who rent out the party bus, just use it as a mode of transportation between the bars they visit every other night of the week.  I’d be willing to bet that if you rented a bus from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am (5 hours), you spend only one to two hours on the bus all night.  The rest of the night it sits in the parking lot of whatever watering hole you’re at.  That seems like quite a waste of money.
• By making the “Street Bar” THE attraction, your money doesn’t sit idling in the parking lot.  You’re enjoying every penny you spend.  The Street Bar is yours for the night.  We provide the bartender and driver, you decide when and where to go.  Then at the end of the night we get everyone home safe and sound.
• We would be providing a 100% unique experience which no one else is offering.  We’d be the first in our market, we would be the first to hit the bell curve of popularity.

Low Overhead

• Again, the key to this business model is keeping overhead extremely low.  The Street Bar “bus” is the bread and butter.  We don’t need to pay for a office building (and the utility bills it brings), we don’t need 40 hour a week employees.  The only cost would be routine maintenance to vehicle(s).  The bus drivers and bartenders would work for cheap, making their real money off of the tips.
• Advertising would be minimal.  With something like the “Street Bar” driving around, it would do the majority of its advertising on its own.  On top of that, word-of-mouth would be our biggest asset.

Cereal 7′s

What?

• The idea is to offer something quirky, like cereal.  Yeah, Cereal.  Offer every type of cereal you can imagine.  Offer it in dispensers.  Customers pick up a bowl, walk down a line of every kind of cereal you can imagine, (Think Hu Hot, Old Country Buffet, etc) mix and match whatever they want, pick from a selection of milk (whole, strawberry, chocolate, etc), and enjoy your own cereal creation!
• Also include “extras” such as sprinkles, gummy bears, chocolate drops, pretty much any type of ice cream sundae topping.

Why?

• Rochester has an extremely large population of 18-25 year olds.  This demographic will only grow when our own 4 year college opens.  College kids love “trends”.  They like fads, such as Starbucks.  Starbucks exploded because of college kids.  It wasn’t about getting coffee, it was about the experience.  You could get a cup of coffee anywhere, and for a lot cheaper.  But Starbucks turned the “Get a cup of coffee, leave happy.” experience on its head.  Instead of Small, Medium, Large.  Starbucks had Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti as well as drinks with names like Caffé Americano, Caffé Misto, and Frappuchino
• Someone in Rochester needs to “hit” on a trend, any trend with the 18-25 year old demographic in mind.
• This business thrives on two concepts:
  • “ Well rounded doesn’t cut.  Aim sharp enough and own your niche.“  Meaning, there is literally no one doing this.  We would be pioneering new ground.  We aren’t here to say, “oh, we offer this, this, and this.  Hopefully you like one of them.”  We are here to say, “We like cereal.  If you like cereal, this is the place to be.”
  • Low Overhead.  When you’re dealing with only cereal, you don’t need much of a kitchen, or kitchen staff for that matter.  You’re dealing with mainly dry goods, aside from the milk, so refrigeration (and in turn, electricity consumption) would be kept to a minimum.
    • The store would be designed to essentially run itself.  Only requiring 1 employee during most hours, 2 and MAYBE 3 during peak hours.

It’s all about the experience, baby.  Adapting Starbucks to cereal.

• Cool seating
  • Bean bags, rocking chairs, mismatched chairs of all types.
  • Hi-top bars.
• Free Wi-Fi
• Flat screen TV’s
• “Recipe of the Day”
  • Submitted and chosen by Cereal 7 “visitors”.
• Maybe “gaming stations” to pass some time?
• Computer Kiosks for people without computers
• Odd Hours
  • Open late at night/early mornings
  • Breakfast/Lunch specials
  • Closed during dinner hours

Bargain-A-Bagel

What?

• This would be an exercise in a business plan with extremely little overhead costs, capitalizing on the “long tail economy“.  This is also a similar business model to the “Cereal 7’s” above, except with it’s own unique “thing”.  We would typically operate as the average bagel shop.  Sell variations of bagels and spreads.
  • In this sense, think Panera, Brueggers, etc.
• The catch is, once a week, we will hold a “Bargain for a bagel” event.  Bagels would be assigned a monetary value (known to the employees but not the customers).  Customers will bring in all their useless junk and exchange it for an equal value in bagels.  We would obviously need a cap on this, or people will be trading old cars for 10,000 bagels or something.
  • …. and in this sense, think of a clothing consignment shop.  You (the seller) bring your old clothes in, exchange them for cash.  The people working the register (the buyer) know what their spending limit is (unknown to the seller).
  • Now exchange “clothes” with “junk” (We’d proudly exclaim the word “Junk!” too.  Again, finding a niche…), and exchange “cash” with “bagels“.
    • …. and you get…. “The Seller brings their old junk in, and exchanges it for bagels.  The Buyers know what their spending limit is, and the Sellers do not.“
• Say someone wants to trade a junked out (but working) TV.  An employee would estimate the TV to be worth $15 (this value is never given to the customer).  The employee also knows the arbitrary values on our bagels (again, the customer does not).  So the employee says “I’ll give you 6 blueberries, 2 plains, and 2 strawberrys for that TV” (a value equal to $15 which is what we valued the TV at).  Then the Customer can “bargain” and say he wants more blueberries, no plains, and wants us to kick in some spread, eventually reaching an agreement.
• Once a month, or maybe quarterly or something, we would hold a auction or “junk sale” and sell all the items we’ve collected for cash.  We would essentially come out even on the whole thing (or we could skew the values in our favor to turn a profit), but it would be a cool niche that would draw attention to our business.

Why?

• Why not just open a bagel store?  Cause its been done, and done again.  The key to being successful isn’t doing what everyone else is doing.  The more people do something, the less valuable it is.  So… Doing the opposite of everyone is valuable.  So we’re opening a bagel store, but we’re turning the model on its head and giving it its own unique life.
• One way to look at it is people are basically taking their items that would otherwise go in the trash (or to Good Will) and exchanging it for something that is of value to them (bagels).  We are then taking one mans junk and giving someone else an opportunity to own it, who may be in need of it.

High School Blogging Platform

What?

• A combination blogging platform / analytics package for high school teachers that would let students submit their papers/writing online.  The papers would then be available online for other students, teachers, parents to read.

Why?

• The idea is that the software would teach students to write something that people actually want to read.  No longer are they writing for one person (the teacher).  They are writing in essentially an open forum, for anyone, including their peers to read.  No longer will they have the mentality of “I gotta knock this paper out in 15 minutes, turn it in for a C, and move on to the next one.”  This will give students the incentive to put thought into what it is they are writing about.
• On top of that, the Analytics package will be able to track how many views a certain paper gets, how much time people spend reading it.  Students can then compare their writing with other students from other schools, and other school districts.
• The best student papers could be featured monthly, determined via something like a “Digg” or Facebook “Like” feature.  Or even just the most views/time spent reading.

Additional “Whys”

• Kids have lost interest in school.  It was never fun for anyone, but even the teachers have given up now.  Its just turned into daycare for older kids.  “Keep them out of trouble.  Keep them in line.  Get through the day.”  Instead of trying to make an impression on kids, teachers are letting kids fall through the cracks, even the kids who go above and beyond.
• I think the idea of typing up a paper, double spaced, printing it, bringing it to school and physically handing it to the teacher is an outdated idea.  I’m not a conservationist by any means, but think of how much paper a school district wastes in one year.

Money?

• This could go either way.  It’s kind of like having a super power and having to decide to use it for good or evil, although, maybe not that extreme.  You could sell the proprietary software to individual schools and school districts for a hefty sum.  Then sell subsequent versions, addons, modules, etc for even more.
• Or, you could set this up as a “Not-For-Profit“, and use any income as a way to develop further learning tools for high school level students.

Chips and Salsa Restaurant

What?

• This is the same concept as “Cereal 7′s” above, “Aim sharp enough, and own your niche.“  This would also be marketed to the immense 18-25 demographic this city has to offer.  This would be a very location driven business.  Place something like this near RCTC and you’re in business.
• It’s very simple.  Offer just Corn or Flour Tortilla chips.  Maybe only five types of salsa, two types of meat, two types of cheese.
• The trick is to sell one plate.  If you get the up-sell on the meat and/or cheese, even better.  After the first plate, offer FREE bottomless chips and salsa (not meat and cheese, even if they ordered it on the first plate.)
• Make the “plates” fairly cheap (which then includes the bottomless chips), this will encourage the 18-25 demographic to go often since it is affordable.

Where’s The Money?

• BEVERAGES.  That’s it.  It’s called “Chips and Salsa”, but the cash cow is in the beverages.  How could someone eat bottomless chips and salsa and NOT get multiple drinks?
• Tortillas are insanely cheap, and when turned into chips, make people incredibly thirsty.  That is the point of the free bottomless chips.  Its costing you nothing in chips, no matter how many they drink, the cost is still covered in the first plate you sold them.  Then on top of that, every beer/mixed drink they purchase due to the bottomless chips, is just multiplying your profits.

Petopia

What?

• A hotel specifically suited to the needs of travelers with pets.
  • 70% of all Rochester hotel traffic is Mayo Clinic patients.
  • Civic Center, Convention Center, IBM, College account for rest.
    • Yearly Jehovah’s Witness convention brings 10,000 additional travelers.

Why?

• If you’ve ever had to travel with a pet you know it’s a pain in the ass.  You get stuck on the top floor with all the smokers, you don’t get housekeeping service, you get charged extra, and often hit with a heavy cleaning fee.

Amenities/Services

• Indoor/Outdoor play areas.
• In room toys available.
• Day-care during medical appointments / business meetings (IBM)
  • Includes feeding, walking, bath, etc.
• Gift Shop for pets and humans alike.
• Hot/Cold continental breakfast for the humans, an equally delicious breakfast for the animals.

Band Bid

What?

• A service that allows venue promoters to make an online post saying when they need an entertainer, where, their ideal budget, and any other information that pertains to the event.  The bands/artists/entertainers can check out the post, and if it is something that interests them, they can send a private “bid” saying “We’ll play that venue for $500, plus  50% of the ticket revenue.”
• The venue promoter can then review all his bids, and options, as well as sample the artist, and find the deal that works best for both the venue and artist.  He can then “accept a bid” and just like that, have the night booked.
• After the event, both the artist and the venue would be able to post a “review” about each other and their experience working together.  Subsequent venues and artists can then use these public reviews to decide if they may be someone they want to work with, or avoid like the plague.

Why?

• A lot of “barking” is done by bands, and even sometimes venues, just to fill an opening.  “When things aren’t working, think ‘smarter’ not ‘louder’.“
• Most times this “barking” is done in all the wrong places.  You have metal bands barking at latin night clubs, you have country acts barking at dance clubs, etc.  As I’ve said in this blog post a few times already, and I’m sure I’ll say it a few more times…. “Aim sharp.“  Narrowcast.
• If you’re looking for a “Hillbelly Flamenco” band to play your St. Patty’s Party, put an ad up specifically for Hillbilly Flamenco!  If a bid comes through from a rap act, simply ignore it.

Where’s The Money?

• This could essentially be a “While you sleep” business model.  You could set it up a few different ways.
  • Monthly subscription fee’s for both the venue and the individual artists.
  • Take a percentage of each transaction.  Say, the venue pays the artist $1000 for the night, we take 5% of that.
  • Take a flat fee for each transaction.  We could charge $25 for each “connection” we make.  Which could either be split 50/50 between the venue and artist, or just charge $25 for each.

Unnamed News Feed Project

What?

• A few months ago I noticed a growing trend among many people.  Over the last few years celebrity gossip has absolutely blown up.  Do you remember 5 years ago when no one cared who was having kids, or who was seen leaving a shopping mall?  People have babies, it happens.  Now it seems everytime someone who has ever been in front of a camera is pregnant, its a national media event.

Why?

• Accompanying the growth of celebrity coverage came hundreds of celebrity “gossip” sites.  Now you could instantly see who was where, with who, and wearing what.  With so many of these sites online, people spend countless hours checking, and rechecking every site every hour, in an endless loop.
• RSS Feeds are becoming extremely popular for just this reason.  Except, for the average person RSS feeds can be hard to configure and use effectively.

How?

• I created a site which displays 4-6 of the most recent headlines from 18 hand picked celebrity sites.  I compacted the display into a small, yet informative window.  Aptly named, Celebrity Junkie (working title) allows “Junkies” to quickly browse for updates on each site.  The instant a “celebrity blogger” posts an update, it automatically puts the headline on my site.

Future

• Currently it’s only set up to display the 18 sites I’ve found to be the most popular.  Eventually it would be cool to expand this into other news areas such as Sports, Business, Financial, International, Art, Music, and so on.
• If “Old Marketing” is still in play, then “Content is King.”  Then, to me, the introduction of “New World Marketing” means “Consumer created content is King.”  (Damn, I should trademark that phrase….)  What I mean by “Consumer created”, is the ability to do something as simple as type in a web site URL and instantly add that feed to your favorites, then in turn, add your own categories, drag and drop, set up alerts, etc.

Ideas I still need to expand further on…

• Religious Credit Card
  • The only three certainties in life are Death, Taxes, and the Church needing more money.  So, how about a credit card, that when used, a certain percentage goes directly to the church of their choice.  So if you wanna spend $200 on a new purse, an additional 10% will go straight to your church.  That can be incentive both to buy, or not to buy.
• Mr. Potato Head Type Music Toy
  • You wouldn’t be using a “Mr. Potato Head”, but think of a toy with the basic plug in, fully swappable parts.  A toy that starts with a basic musical loop.  You add the “eyebrows” and a Shaker is added in.  You add a “Mouth” and the vocals start.  Add a “nose” and the synth’s start.
  • There could be “advanced” models which allow kids to “program” changes in instruments.  Or even something that allows you to route certain pieces through EQ’s, Compressors, Guitar Amp models, etc.
• Movie Theater For Live Sports
  • Picture a basic movie theater experience.  Popcorn, High Definition picture and surround sound.  Stadium seating.  Except now instead of sitting down to watch a movie, you’re sitting down to watch the Super Bowl.
  • There could be nightly showings of scheduled sports events.  Larger parties for things like the World Series, Super Bowl, Olympics, etc.
  • There could be smaller rooms, but still with the movie theater experience, for more niche events and private parties.
• Twitter / SMS Restaurant Ordering/Reservations
  • Why restaurants have not adopted Twitter and/or standard text messaging is beyond me.
  • Why not allow visitors to make reservations via text message?  Just send a text to a dedicated line (or Twitter) with your time, how many will be eating, and a phone number in case you need to be reached.  Then when the restaurant receives, and processes your reservation, they can text back a confirmation, or call you with further questions or changes.
  • In addition to that, pizza places have adopted online ordering, and some even accept faxed in orders.  So why not allow someone to place a to-go order (Not just pizza, but Chinese, Mexican, anything with a to-go service), and the same as the reservations, send back a confirmation with an estimated time of delivery, total cost after tax, etc.
• Friend Approved Match Making Service
  • This one could be as simple as, and possibly even thrive greater, as a “app” on Facebook.  Think of an online matchmaking service.  The problem with a typical online matchmaking service, is you just fill out a questionnaire, and it matches you based on that.  Who knows how truthful your match was, or even how truthful you were about yourself.
  • A “Friend Approved” match making service would only match you with people your friends deem as “suitable” for you.  No one knows you better than your friends, and a lot of times, especially in Rochester, your friend will even know a lot about your “match”.
• Pre-Packaged School Supplies
  • I don’t have any kids, thank you sweet baby Jesus.  But if I did, I could imagine how much of a nightmare school supply shopping would be.
  • Why don’t stores like Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, etc.  Just provide a all-in-one, prepackaged, school supply pack?  Of course all the schools put out the “list” prior to every year, and each school is a little different, but why not include the standard stuff?  10 pencils, 5 notebooks, erasers, crayons, ruler, etc.  You could charge the same price as buying individually, or even charge more for the “convenience”.

“Creative minds are rarely tidy”

You can find Dallas on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/DallasJoel

Or you can follow him on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/DJMac14

You can also keep an eye on his company, Digital Avenue at www.DigiAve.net, or become a fan at http://Facebook.com/DigitalAvenue

Radiohead

15 Step

Click the arrow to listen. Right click the text and “Save as…” to download.

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I’m not that big of a Radiohead fan.  Burn me at the stake.  They’re not a “jam band”, but I’m not into them for the same reasons I don’t listen to Jam music.  It just seems to drag on and go out on tangents that last entirely too long.  I can only listen to the same 8-bar loop of music for so long until my attention goes elsewhere.

What I do enjoy about Radiohead, is the technicality of some of the edits and mixes they pull off.  The “average” listener doesn’t notice the stuff as a guy like me notices.  I catch all the hyper-edits, reversed kits, gated kits, compression and EQ tricks, etc.  15 Step is a perfect example of this.  Right away you’re greeted with a drum kit compressed to shit (Nine Inch Nails style), which then loses the compressor, gains a telephone EQ, then a live drum kit gets layered on top.  It’s this layering of natural and unnatural sounds that makes this a pretty cool track.

I finished another poster!  This one was just for fun.  I did it over a week, while at work.  It’s not nearly as cool as “Velvet Hand“, or “Who Are You?“, but I like it!  I think I need to finally pony up some cash and get some of my posters printed.  Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think!

PS: The ‘fro is weird.  Ever try to draw a afro with 3 colors?  It’s not as easy as you would think.

Click below for the bigger sizes

Full size – 11″ x 17″ – 300 dpi – Textured

Full size – 11″ x 17″ – 300 dpi – No Texture

Half size

Beastie Boys

Paul Revere

Click the arrow to listen. Right click the text and “Save as…” to download.

Beastie Boys – check, Rick Rubin – check, drums played backwards – check, great storytelling – check.  What more can you ask for?  Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys opens with “Here’s a little story I got to tell, about three bad brothers you know so well.” and it’s just that, an awesome story, set in the old west about how the three of them became friends.  It’s obviously a fictional story, but it’s still pretty awesome.

Take a listen, and take note of the reversed drums, they actually sound pretty cool.

I think that the whole concept of trying the drum backwards was a mistake, and then it turned into a record. Everybody was congratulating themselves on how creative they were, but in fact, it was really a mistake. – Russel Simmons

It’s almost summer, so lets find a summery song!

Shwayze

Buzzin’

Click the arrow to listen. Right click the text and “Save as…” to download.

Shwayze is a relatively new band, in the last couple years atleast.  They’re formed from two guys, Cisco Adler of White Starr fame, and Shwayze, who hails from the only trailer park with a 90210 zip code.  Cisco is the brains behind the operation.  Cisco’s dad is Lou Adler, which means Cisco is set financially for life.  The entire album is recorded and edited by Cisco himself, who also lends his vocals and guitar playing throughout.

The song itself is pretty cool too.  It has the whole summer living, care free vibe, as does the entire album.  Take a listen and let me know what you think!