I have three places where ideas get fleshed out for me: bed, bike, and bath. Taking a shower tonight after converting all of the 247Toolset sites to the current codebase, I realized that based upon conversations I've been having and the features I've been creating, 247Toolset is becoming an organizational productivity suite.
In the Call Center module, I built it so that despite misspelling someone's name, you can still find the person you need.
Rodgers will find Rogers. Pierceson will find Pearson. Johnson will find Jonassen.
You get the idea.
Creating ease of use and anticipating points of "failure" before they happen is hard, but worth it in the end.
I hear a lot of people bashing the "rich," which is both ironic and funny. So from the highlight reels here at beatcanvas, I give you again Cookie Jar Mentality.
Everybody's heard of the proverbial "home run." It's where someone succeeds to a degree that by any measure, it was more than a hit.
I have my own system of scoring the baseball metaphor.
Strike: no sales. Foul ball: you're selling, but you're still losing money. First base: you're making money on the deal. You're in the black, but it's not enough to make your living doing it. Second base: you're making your living from it. Third base: you no longer worry about money. Home run: your kids no longer worry about money.
One of the coolest things in the world is to have a conversation with my children.
Last night, Nick called me from St. Paul, where he's buried in snow and occasionally steps out to participate in the Iditarod of traffic in the Twin Cities.
He and I got into a long discussion about the likelihood of life on other worlds. Nick mentioned the life that scientists find in the extreme temps of the ocean floor near lava vents. I told him that, in my observation, there is a tendency toward life and growth. I believe that if the basic building blocks of life are present, it's just about impossible for life not to form.
Once life forms, I believe that organisms do what they have to do to sustain and reproduce, but generally not much more than that.
There are those organisms though that push toward thriving. They are, by nature, dominant.
And then there are those that just don't quit existing, such as Nick's example of the very recognizable Trilobite.
At the end of the hour-long call, after going in and around and through a lot of it, we both had to go.
1 pot of boiling water 1/8 tsp baking soda 12 Lipton tea bags with the string pulled off 1 3/4 c of sugar
Boil the water, put the soda in the boiling water.
Put the tea bags into the water, reduce to a simmer for 1 minute, then turn off the heat, but leave the pot on the stove to steep for 15 minutes.
The tea bags should be descended into the water, not really floating. Put the sugar into a 1-gallon container, pour the liquid into it and dissolve the sugar, but leave the tea bags in the pot.
Refill the pot with cold water. Squeeze the tea bags as you remove them from the water and dispose of them. Pour the cold water into the container until the container is full.
Yesterday, I got a 99% yes from a politician. Answer Monday. He wants to use the upcoming email newsletter feature in 247Toolset. He has an email list of 16,000 people.
And I did a demo for a church last night that has over half a dozen sister churches nationwide. They want it locally, but we demo'd later last night to the executive director in Florida via GoToMeeting. This would be my first group sale.
I'm going to start pushing myself to aim for two demos per day, which will require some follow-up on the postcards that I sent this past week.
This weekend, I hope to finish the enhancement that allows the admins to record correspondence, create action items, and find resources to track the action item to completion.
I also got a call in the last week from one of my clients who needed to get a snail mailing list from 247Toolset, so I built that functionality into it as well.
The market's talking to me... I'm replying back as fast and as thoroughly as I can.
Oh - almost forgot. This same client that needed the mailing list is a recruiter in southeast Iowa. They told me in the last week that they want to move ahead and resell 247Toolset to economic development folks in a 75-county area. Might have a conversation about that this week, so I potentially have a few dozen sales from that.
I snagged my second recruiter today who plans to use 247Toolset. Kinda cool because it's a validation of what I originally intended to do with it in marketing it to recruiters.
And I did my walk-through with the Des Moines Public Charter School. What was great was a comment at the end, when Travis, a teacher there, said that every school should have 247Toolset. I agree. For the price of a pizza per month, teachers could reach out to willing parents and grandparents and engage them in the needs of the kids' school activities.
The next month is going to be very busy with implementations and enhancements, responding to the market's requests and searching for the next sales.
Next week, I have two conversations with regional managers in national non-profits. One is already using it locally but wants to look at expanding its use, so as always happens, we'll see how it goes :)
The postcards begin to go out this week, which direct people to a page that features this video. Jules did a fabulous job in the shots we took, and my good friend, John LaMarche, provided the space for the shoot.
