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It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.
-- Vita Sackville-West
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A few months back, I had a conversation with someone about using 247Toolset to capture demographic and psychographic data from the passionate customer base of retailers, where the portal would be configured to the niche of the retailer. Interesting, but that's all it was - a conversation. Last last night, I processed and analyzed the web stats for Des Moines Amplified. After scrubbing search engine bots from it: over 200,000 page views per month, over 12,000 unique visitors, somewhere over 2,200 are loyal followers (came to the site on four or more days and visited more than 20 pages), and over 2,700 remain subscribed to the 17 email newsletters published through the web site (with an unsubscription rate of only 4%). All that, by the way, for a company 8 months in business that hasn't spent one dime on advertising. A national advertising firm has started a conversation with us, and one of their questions is this: what's your demographic? Given our very diverse community of people, that's a really hard question to answer. But what would happen if we worked with the advertiser to craft a survey using 247Toolset to provide incentive to our loyal followers and subscribers to create a profile for themselves that would give them access to great deals? Very interesting... |
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I've had three sales of 247Toolset this week, and a fourth is pending... here are some recent clients.     Traction. Next stop, momentum. To get there, I'll be shooting a video this week with the help of a friend, Jules. I hope to secure a good location tomorrow so that we can shoot it on Friday, and then I'll create the two videos I need from the footage and voiceover work. The videos will serve as an online demo, similar to the demo that I do for prospects. Once that's done, I send out hundreds of postcards and see if my effort attracts the market. But what I know is that the product and the price are right. Traction :) |
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I'd forgotten how much I enjoy working from home. I haven't been down to the DMA studios for about 9 days. I'm kinda spoiled now. I'm much more productive from home. Love the people down at the studio, but there's something of great comfort to me about sitting at my desk with the dogs at my feet and the fire going in front of me while wearing sweat pants and a henley, with nothing on my feet.  Yummy. |
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Project and Capacity Management |
Back in the summer of 2005, I worked as a consultant to Wells Fargo and did a barn burner project called OSOT. I received the request to build a project management web site from scratch in mid-June and ten 80-hour weeks later, I released it in August. To this day, it's still used in Wells Fargo Financial and Home Mortgage. One of my 247Toolset clients has requested the ability to use 247Toolset as a CRM tool. They want to use it to log all correspondence and from that correspondence, to create tracked action items. There are three types of people in 247Toolset: - Those who come to it of their own volition to create an engagement profile
- Those who are invited to create an engagement profile
- Those who will never create an engagement profile
Any one of those groups could call/write into the organization and prompt an action item that could be handed off to a resource.Further, that action item might be a simple task, or it might be a complete project, with milestones and multiple resources to manage through it. I'm actually not that far from completing that capability. It only took me about 800 hours to create OSOT from the ground up. I think I could probably finish this enhancement of 247Toolset from my running start position within a couple of weeks. My job, no matter what it is that I do, is to create such a compelling offering to the market that I instill the burning desire to purchase what I offer. The more valuable it appears to the market, the more in demand I am. That's the true essence of capitalism... to work my product or service into such a state of appeal that I earn a reward for my efforts. I invest my time into it all, with no certainty of reward. That's risk. So these enhancements will be my Christmas presents to myself - to strengthen the tool I've created to make it more appealing to the market. |
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So as my new clients for 247Toolset come on (got another one), the requests for tweaking comes in. Can it do this? Can it do that? Some businesspeople resent that. Some businesspeople stiffarm that. But it's not much different than wearing a great sweater to a soirée and having the cute girl come talk to you. Something you did had enough appeal to attract conversation. Should that just be thrown away? That would be kinda dumb - to ignore such a conversation with the market. If the pretty girl starts talking about herself and her likes and dislikes, that kind of flow is a very good and lucrative thing. The smart businessperson encourages that discussion with a seductive, "Tell me more..." That conversation is a form of brainstorming. If my response to the market is, "What if I did this? What if I did that?" then I am able to test the market's response to it. But if I don't engage in the conversation, I'll have no idea what I can do to help my product / service become more attractive. How stupid would that be? ETC: Question of the hour: how does a searching for someone to fill a contract position resemble searching for a volunteer to staff an event? Answer: why, they're almost the same. At least from the data that's captured. |
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On Friday, I got my first purchase of 247Toolset at the $19.95 per month price tag. I meet with my new customer Monday at 10 AM, and it's a state legislator. Earlier today, I created the mail pieces that will be sent to 1,000 non-profits and 1,000 politicians. Those will begin to be sent out by December 6th. I'll be interested to see what kind of response I get from the mailing. I've never tried postcards before, which is what this is. In Des Moines alone, there are over 2,000 non-profit corporations, and 10 times that number throughout Iowa. I bought a very specific domain for marketing to non-profits. In the US, there are 50 governors, 535 Congress critters, and 7,382 state legislators. I bought a very specific domain for marketing to politicians. Because enough people call it 247Toolkit, I bought the domain today. Domains are funny, because they're incredibly cheap, and if you know what to do, they're easy to setup. What you want is something memorable and meaningful to your purpose. I happen to own or manage 360 domains, so now I've got an executive account rep through GoDaddy. I like the personal service. It's helpful. I have a couple of other potential sales at the new price point. If I can snare a few more sales in the next two weeks, I'll call that traction :) |
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At long last, I finally watched Avatar. James Cameron writes movies pretty much like Meatloaf writes songs. The only difference I can find is that the plotline of a Meatloaf song is markedly less predictable than James Cameron's operatic use of cliches. |
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Quick note while I'm running from project to project. Interest in 247Toolset has picked up considerably... to the point where in the last month, I've worked pretty hard to make it easier to onboard new clients. Which is why I'm now releasing a new pricing model, which starts at the very affordable $19.95 per month. That's a crazy-low price, but it works for me, and I expect it will work for others. I revised the web site and created a demo portal. Better explanation and examples. Des Moines Amplified is going through a transition as we play with some options in the business model. I expect decisions to be made in the next two weeks. Looking forward to next week as Tamara's entire family will be here for Thanksgiving. How cool is that? I love my in-laws :) Now, off to Codeville, which is thankfully frequented by my beautiful wife. |
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Just in Case You Missed the Memo |
Three great examples of why hating on gays is stupid politics: It's a loser every time. It's dumb.Now, you might wonder why the three Iowa Supreme Court Justices were thrown out, when Vander Plaats was not the victor in Iowa's Republican primary. Easy - it's about self-determination. People want to choose their own direction, not have it decided for them. Iowans didn't want their definition of marriage thrown out by three judges, and they didn't want their governor to legislate his personal morality. |
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