Archive for August, 2008

Marketing to Stan & Fran & Jan

You’re a billion dollar firm putting out a web site to position your company before the entire English-speaking public. Your marketing people are armed with formidable demographic research that, after weeks of culling and analysis, is oriented into a dozen “models” - virtual consumers that will be users of your web site.
Another 25% of your […]

Boycotting as Business

One of the most helpful things about both the David Ramsey method and running one’s own business (imo), is that you begin to see everything as business. Who you do business with, what your business can afford, when your business is open for business, and so on. And along with that, for me, comes a […]

When in doubt, Blog.

I’ve spoken with a number of people over the past couple of weeks that are searching for their work-lives - for what to do with themselves and, typically, like a Bordertown, they’re drawn to the internet. Partly by stories of heady profits made by people who don’t treat work as a source of meaning - […]

The Joy of Postage

This article has several key points that are barely but still related - despite recent criticism that this is not an acceptable approach to composition.
The poor pay more for everything. Walmart isn’t really mitigating this: First off, there’s the obvious fact that Walmart shoppers are propping up a work model that keeps their […]

When it has to be there Tomorrow

You’re filling a sudden order to bang out a Powerpoint presentation for 500 people by morning, and need to walk in looking rested and in control. You need to launch a web site yesterday, because your new client already mailed out their secondary marketing, and their own servers just died. The mobile headquarters of your […]

Business phone under $40

The Motofone F3. For one thing, it’s an act of dissidence, like entrepreneurship, so I like it a lot in that way: it’s been called the anti-iPhone. It’s the opposite of the culture obsessed with texting and constantly communicating with little of substance to say beyond the kind of thing we all hate when someone […]

The Chickens are Finally Here!

I’ve been watching with interest the discussions in real estate news of the suburbs drying up, with vast numbers projected for empty homes and developments going into the future, and little market to fill them. This will be called overbuilding, and there is that, but I think it’s something else.
Similar news for rural communities goes […]

Swerving into Reality

Half of fearing something will fail is the fear. But fear *is* failure. Fear convinces us to chart a course so devoid of adventure, of risk, of originality, that success is replaced with mere survival. I don’t mean success as in living in the right neighborhood, driving the right car, and having the right job. […]

The News of Snooze

The biggest non-issue of the day, using up millions of dollars of airwaves and bandwidth in chatter, is whether or not we’re in a recession. Does x=y? Is this thing that thing and vice versa? It’s an exercise in absurd tautologies, and the single clearest example of masturbatory pseudo-news currently at hand.
The real question is […]