I need some help.
I want to make some changes to my MT template and the RSS feed. I can’t seem to figure it out how to do that. For someone who knows what they are doing, it will probably take about an hour.
Email me if you have the expertise and the time. I will find some suitable way to compensate you. It may lead to some more formal work in the near future.
I don’t understand Google’s decision to launch Gmail yesterday. Google has a history of participating in the first of April tradition. You might say that the amazing size of the 1GB account plays well with April’s Fool Day.
My question is: Why would you ever want there to be a question if the new service that you are offering is really available or not?
I know Wayne at Blog Business World is normally the one talking about getting publicity for your blog.
I had to pass this one along. I found myself at the Yahoo! Directory a couple of days ago. This is part of Yahoo! that is staffed by people and still hand-select what gets listed. There is a directory location for business weblogs. You can find it at here.
What I found was that most of my fellow business bloggers are not listed. The Suggest a Site is located on the top right of the screen. All ya all need to get over there.
Kinja is going to get a lot of attention. Just enter the addresses of your favorite sites and it automatically pulls the feeds and creates a digest.
Nick Denton talks about the project here.
It is meant to be an aggregator for the masses and bring in the other nine out of ten people who haven’t read blogs.
I am trying it out. It’s still in beta, so it is a little rough. It looks like a weblog which is cool. More later.
[via Scripting News and Nick Denton]
Hanson’s “Penny & Me” debuted at #2 on the Billboard Singles chart. Besides the Penny connection, I think it is very interesting that this album is an independent release and getting this much attention.
Hanson opted out of their contract with a major label and released it on their 3CG (three car garage) label. The distribution is being handled by Alternative Distribution Alliance. ADA does distribution for independent labels. I ran across a few names I recognized on their site including Comedy Central and Sub Pop Records.
First, I want to introduce you to a new blog – An Entrepreneur’s Life.
It only been up a couple of days, and it is putting up quality stuff. I had to link to this morning’s penny post – “When Penny-Pinching Defeats Customer Appreciation – A Starbucks Tale of Marketing Woe“.
I remember Jackie at the Church talking about buying her Mini Cooper and getting crystal candlestick holders as a thank you gift. I thought the dealership missed the mark on that one.
AEL is unhappy because the Free Prize Inside (more shameless promotion for the next BBBT) was a mere 12 oz. cup of joe. I don’t think you can be too upset about not being able to choose the size of the prize. I won’t disagree that Starbucks could have knocked it out of the park by saying, “Anything off the menu, our treat”.
It is interesting though how expectations can change your perception of a situation. In this case, the customer thinks, “Wow, you guys really care about me.” and then opens the envelope to find something that makes them think “You don’t care as much as I thought.”
Instead of a resolution, I issued a New Year’s challenge.
Change one thing in your life and put all your energy into that one thing.
I said we’d check back on April 1st.
For me, it was the decision to leave the family business and stay home with my son. It has been an adjustment, but I am very happy with decision.
My next 90 day project is going to be starting the process of learning French. I don’t expect to be fluent, but I am looking for the “being able to get around” French. My next trip to France is in September.
Anyone else made a change?
I want to tell you more about KaosPilots. I first heard about the Danish business school in this month’s (April 2004) issue of Fast Company. Heath Row wrote a one page article about the school and their book KaosPilot A-Z. The book was published in Danish a couple of years ago, and recently translated into English.
I got intrigued with the school and contacted them to see where I could get the book in the U.S. The school principal Uffe Elbaek and I had some conversations. We decided to start selling the book here at A Penny For… I figured I had an audience that likes unique content.
I really liked the book. It is a great combination of innovative business thought and wonderful photos. I share with you some of those thoughts over the next couple of days.
I filed papers this week for my new company. I decided to form a single owner limited liability company. Since I was the only owner, the accountants pointed me in that direction. In Wisconsin, the forms are all online and for $130 you can have you own legal business entity.
I needed to come up with a company name for all of the paperwork. I always liked the name of the videogame company Rockstar Games, producer of Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne. I decided to look for another occupation with the same punch and a slightly cleaner image. The first thing that hit me was astronaut. It was probably all of the talk about the Mars rovers lately. I just liked the images it conjoured up – honor, adventure, pioneer, elite. The name for my new company of Astronaut Projects, LLC.
Your next question is going to be, “What are you going to do?”. Well, I have my fingers in a lot of different things and I am waiting to see what develops. The nature of the work is going to be project based. It is going to be a combination of business development, marketing, sales, and business strategy for people. You can call me a contractor who can perform those services.
My first project is working with KaosPilots (a Danish business school) and creating a wider audience for their book. To do that, I have created The Penny Store and we are going to start by selling it direct. I am going to talk more about the book this week.
There have been some great connections I have made through talking with other business bloggers and the Business Blog Book Tour. As more things develop, I will share them.
I am really excited to announce that the third Business Blog Book Tour will feature best-selling author Seth Godin and his new book “Free Prize Inside“.
What’s the Free Prize? Seth started to answer the question with this entry from his blog.
The tour will run from May 3rd to May 14th and you can find details about the tour this page.
marketingsherpa has a new interview with Baby Einstein founder Julie Aigner-Clark.
I thought this was another good example of customer evangelism. Aigner-Clark spent very little money on advertising. What she did was leverage the already established networks of mothers and their play groups. Somebody would mention how much their child enjoyed a video and the word spread.
Mothers in the media also took notice. Baby Einstein ended up with features in People, Time, and Oprah.
There are other good tips on product launches, balancing relationships with customers, and knowing when to sell your business.
I know I have been linking to Cuban a lot since he started his blog. I really like his latest post on business and passion.
The best team I ever worked on understood what Cuban is getting at. We would put ourselves into a conference room, close the door, and often scream and yell at each other as we worked out project details. After the meeting, we would all go out to lunch and life would go on.
It was tough because everyone needed to be in the same place for it to work. It required a lot of trust built over time. Team members had to understand it wasn’t personal. The primary objective was to come to the best solution for our customers.
It worked for us.
Crispin Porter & Bogusky look at marketing differently. This Miami-based agency is responsible for the campaigns for truth (anti-smoking), Mini, Ikea, and Molson. Business 2.0 has a feature in their April 2004 about the company. Fast Company had a one-pager on CPB in their March 2004 issue.
Favorite quote from creative director Alex Bogusky talking about products: “Get close to it; find out everything good about it; even try to improve it.”
I am working on a proposal this morning and was looking for the Latin dummy text you always see in Microsoft documents.
Lorem Ipsum will auto-generate it for you. You also get a little history to boot.
Lessons Learned the Hardest Way, by Going Belly Up is a piece that ran in the NY Times on Feb. 24th. It tells the stories of four business owners and the closure of their businesses. Take note of which failures came from factors that could be controlled (one dominant customer leaves) and which failures were beyond control (D.C. sniper shootings keep customers home).