Erich Stauffer

Author: Erich Stauffer

  • Indianapolis Dentistry Embraces Twitter

    An Indianapolis dentist has begun using Twitter to reach out to his patients in a way that he has never done before.  “I didn’t even know what Twitter was until I started using it,” said the dentist.

    Twitter is a micro-blogging service founded by some of the same people who made blogging accessible to millions through Blogspot. The catch is that each blog entry is limited to 140 characters.  Users can post from their cell phones, email, directly on the site, or through third-party applications or websites.

    Our client now has 623 followers and is one the top-followed dentist in Indianapolis according to the Twitter directory, Wefollow.  A follower is someone who opts-in to hear what you write or “tweet” about.  We have seen traffic to their website coming from Twitter so we know it is working as a promotional tool.

    How can we help you promote your business online or around Indiana?

  • Using Google Apps with Microsoft Outlook

    One of our clients wanted all of their staff to have email access through Microsoft Outlook on each PC, but they didn’t have the need for a Microsoft Exchange server.  Instead, we configured their domain to install Google Apps, created email accounts and distribution groups for the staff members, then configured Microsoft Outlook on each staff member’s PC to allow them to have access.

    “The difference between Exchange and Google Apps is transparent to the user, ” said Erich Stauffer, Business Consultant at Erich Stauffer, Inc.  “They don’t know and they don’t care – as long as it works.”  And it usually does.  Google Apps sports a 5-nine’s uptime which means they are up 99.999% of the year.  This means they can statistically be down for up to 8 hours a year, but uptime is significantly higher with Google than with your own standalone Exchange server.

    However, cloud computing like this is not for every customer.  Some would not be able to keep secure data on remote servers and Microsoft Exchange does offer the ability to keep all email stored locally, but even so, only the email kept internally stays secure.  Once it leaves your organization, unless the email is encrypted, it is prone to eavesdropping.  Another reason for an Exchange server would be for backup’s, but with Outlook, you can download Google Apps mail as a PST, then store the PST as your back-up.

    What unique, money-saving technology can Erich Stauffer help you with today?

  • The Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park: Mirror Matter Moon

    I always looked up to Zac at college.  He was cool and people liked him.  I can only remember talking to him once my freshman year.  He and I were both standing in line to make our own omelets.  I was wearing a Plank Eye shirt at the time and somehow we started talking about the band.  Plankeye - SparkI was amazed to find out that he was best friends with the drummer, who had quit the band to go to college.  I had seen the band for the first time, sans-drummer, in Chicago with The Prayer Chain during a reunion tour.  That is where I got the t-shirt.   I don’t remember ever talking to him again, but I do remember his role in John Mann’s play our sophomore year.  It started with Zac tilting his head all the way back in class as if he was asleep or bored.  Mann had the play start in a freeze-frame.  I later went on to study film with Mann at Milligan, but that is another story.  This one is about the Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park.

    In June of 2008, our friend Brian Reid, was killed in an automobile accident along with his wife, Jenna.  I and some friends had posted some video of Brian Reid on Youtube, which is actually how we found out he died.  People who went to church with Brian started writing comments about how much they would miss him and how they were glad “they went together.”  One of those to comment was Zac and I ended up striking up a conversation with Zac really for the first time.  Zac was actually in one of the Brian Reid videos, entitled Never Let You Go (which audio has been removed from for copyright infringement).  I don’t know if I ever told Zac this, but I was really upset to find out that Brian had been living less than an hour from my house and I didn’t even know it.  Brian and I had lost contact over the years.  The last time we spoke was in 2001.  It had been seven years.

    The Mirror Matter Moon theory is one of the most prominent theories on LOST to explain what the island is and why it might behave like it does.  Essentially, the island is a moon made of mirror matter.  There are two types of matter, the matter we know and love, and the opposite.  We can exist in either habitat, but one can not see the other.  This is why the island can not be seen until you cross into area around the island – into the mirror matter moon.  This website does a much more extensive job explaining it, but I wanted to use it and LOST as an allegory for my relationships with both Zac and Brian.  At college, Brian and I were best friends, and then I left to go to Milligan.  Zac and Brian stayed and graduated at Kentucky.  8 years later, Brian dies and Zac and I become friends when we had never really been friends before.   Brian’s car wreck – the “plane crash” – separated the world in which Zac and I lived in before the crash and the one we lived in afterward.  Prior to the crash, I couldn’t see Zac, nor did I know he existed, but after the crash, we were in a mirror world where Zac and I could both see each other and that’s when things started getting weird.

    The day I found out about Brian’s death I was contemplating running away.  I was going to drive to a farm house in rural Missouri, leaving my house, my job, and my lifestyle behind.  I was furiously hoeing my garden when my wife came out to talk to me.  She calmed me down and I went inside.  Upon checking my email, I saw the message from my friend about the comments.  By the end of the month I would have hernia surgery and a new job working as a business analyst.  I would be working with my best friend from that same college in Kentucky.  I would also begin communicating with Zac who was going through his own set of changes.  A set of changes that would eventually lead him back to someone he too met while at college in Kentucky.  What was it about this “island” in Kentucky that would not let us go?  Was Third Eye Blind speaking from Brian to Jenna in the video, from us to Brian, or from the college to us?

    The bigger story is how we all descended upon Kentucky in the first place.  Each person has their own unique story about what drew them to that place.  Just as in LOST, the characters both had a series of events that lead them together and a string of influence.  In me and Zac’s case, it was Eric Barnes.  Barnes made an impression on not just Zac and I, but on my friends who also attended Kentucky.  I remember Zac speaking to the entire campus during chapel saying how Eric impressed him so much by flying out to Arizona to meet him.  My friends and I would actually drive down to Kentucky on weekends during our senior year in high school just to hang out with Eric and eat in the cafeteria with Brad Green for free.  Eric was a critical “cog” to the systematic recruitment of students to the college, but the biggest factor was probably their summer program, which brought droves of high school students to the college each summer.  It was so influential that the dean of student life made it a point to tell us on day 1 that student life there was nothing like summer camp.  This should have been my first clue.  There are good cogs like Barnes and there are bad cogs like this dean.  And there were many bad cogs at this college, which is part of why I left, but this post is about the Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park.

    The Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park stands among several houses and other log buildings in a cleared plain in the middle of a large wooded area.  The terrain is crossed by a babbling brook (which cleared up within a couple of days after the rain turned the water a chocolaty brown).  This brook powers the mill, given the lever is pushed to allow it – and the cog is in place to accept it.  A lot of things have to come together for the whole system to work.  And one day, one of those things stopped working.  Why is it that this mill and these buildings are still in the same fashion they were in the early 1800’s?  Because the village was a failure.  The reason? The person who ran the mill died – taking with him the knowledge of how to run it.  Without food or a way to process their crops, the villagers left, leaving the log buildings as they were.  If the village had continued, the log houses would have been torn down and replaced in the name of progress long ago.  The park partly exists, and is named after a failed startup, but we wouldn’t have had the park unless the startup failed.  If it were successful it may have looked something like Gatlinburg, which has less log cabins, but more “cogs”.

  • LOST: From James Ford to Sawyer

    One of the easiest mysteries to solve on the pilot episode of LOST, was the question as to who would be “the bad guy” or “the outsider” in the group.  Josh Holloway‘s brooding looks and sneers of disgust when asked to help made it clear to the audience, that this guy, “Sawyer”, was not going to win any congeniality awards.  Whether it was his dimples, his sense of humor, or women’s tendency to be attracted to bad boys, the audience began to root for Sawyer.  Even fellow actor Jorge Reyes’ mother was more worried about Sawyer being killed off of the show than her own son.  Whether we loved to hate him, or loved him in spite of his shortcomings, he was loved.  Now, about those shortcomings….

    His name isn’t really “Sawyer”.  Through flashback, we learn that Sawyer’s parents died when he was just a boy.  His father shot his mother in the next room, and then horrifically, shot himself on a bed that the young boy was hiding under.  In a way we do not yet know, the boy found out who was responsible for scamming his parents out of their savings, leading to the murder/suicide of his parents.  This man went by the alias, “Sawyer”.  Our island survivor’s real name was James Ford.  Little James Ford thought of little else than finding the man responsible, and doling out justice for the loss of his parents.  Writing a letter to read to Sawyer just before killing him, James Ford was focused on revenge.

    Now, even as a young boy, James Ford could identify that what had happened to his family was wrong.  While Sawyer had not pulled the trigger, his scamming left the blood on his hands.  Why oh why, did James Ford end up growing up to become just like him?  Not just in taking his name, but in taking up scamming people out of their savings, just like the man he had hated for most of his life.  The simple answer may refer to a principle of cognitive psychology:  We move towards, and become like, that which we think about.  Our thoughts, whether they are lifting something up or tearing it down, get imprinted into our subconscious.

    This is also similar to Jack not wanting to become an alcoholic like his father, and by thinking so much about it, brought it into reality.  Mr. Eko’s thoughts of his brother as a priest eventually led him to become a legitimate man of God.  There are many elements of LOST that testify to this truth.

    As James Ford becomes Sawyer, he doesn’t even believe that he has any choice to be anything else.  “A tiger doesn’t change it’s stripes.” he tells Kate after a scheme to take all of the guns in the camp has commenced.  Only after he has killed the real Sawyer, and completed his task, is he free to let his thoughts move on.  The island gives him an opportunity to be a man of love and a man of leadership.  This new goal changes his thought patterns, and his behavior follows.

    What are you thinking about most of the time?  Do you see your actions as a result of your thought patterns?  Changing your life is as simple as changing your mind, but changing your mind takes the right kind of fuel.  Garbage in, garbage out.  What are you reading?  Who are you talking with?  What do you talk about?  If you are fixated on what you despise or hate…. be careful.  You just may turn into that same thing.

  • The Art of Gardening

    While pulling weeds in my garden this afternoon, which I am accustomed to doing after church on Sundays throughout the summer, I began consciously trying to free my mind from everything outside of the relationship between me and my garden. And the moment my mind was free, I was able to find the answer I was looking for.

    In the recent past I have been viewing my life in sections, what you might call roles.  I am a business analyst by day, a business consultant by night, a blogger, an entrepreneur, a father, and a husband (and yes, I fear I prioritize in that order, but that is a subject not covered in this blog post).  I preferred calling the roles “sections” because I could better categorize in my mind how to act in each area, while remembering my character – who I am makes up a large part of how I act in each section.  A value I set on myself, the whole of all those sections, was to prioritize things that are revenue generating over those that are not, least most being cost-centers (expense generators).  And since my biggest client was my day job as a business analyst, that gets highest priority.  In the same way, my family is a cost-center so they get lowest priority.  My wife costs more than my children so she is ranked lowest.

    However, I have a garden.  I chose to plant a garden last fall and actively have been working on it since.  This garden is roughly 200 square feet, of which half is corn and the other half made up of strawberries, green beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, and sunflowers (subconsciously I even listed the plants in the order which are most expense-saving to aesthetic-only).  In the fall I turned over shovels of weeds.  In the spring, I brought over compost-rich soil, and a neighbor helped me plow and till.  My wife bought seeds and my daughter helped me plant them.  At least once a week I go out, get on my hands and knees, and pull weeds.  It takes about 5 minutes per corn stalk because the weeds are so thick.  Each corn stalk will create roughly 80 cents worth of corn – if any corn comes at all.  There is no fence around my garden so there is also a risk that some one or thing will harvest it first.  I’m thinking all of these things while pulling weeds and then this question hits me, “How can I put so much effort into something non-revenue generating?” to which I intuitively knew the answer, “Because it’s exactly like starting a business, which you love to do.”

    The Art of the Start

    Starting a business usually involves many hours of preparation and toil for little or no return – all in hopes for the big payoff at the end, the harvest.  Buying the seeds is easy and clean.  Preparing the bed is a little harder, but at least the weeds aren’t growing then and you can ride the results of your preparation for a while.  Planting is not so much difficult as mentally challenging and sometimes stressful.  It’s no longer just churning up dirt, you’re dealing directly with product development now.  Plant too deep or space to unevenly and you’ll get waste.  There is no way to know how the decisions you’re making now will affect the harvest, but they will – tremendously.  You water the seeds through promotion and pull weeds by dealing with all the little problems until the harvest comes in.  But if you don’t stay on top of the problems, the problems keep growing.  Just because you ignore the problems doesn’t mean they stop growing.  The funny thing about weeds is, individually they are easy to pull.  The problem is in their magnitude.

    Like in Getting Things Done or any other personal productivity program you can think of, the key to projects or problem solving is defining the next step and taking action.  Projects can sometimes seem like what author Jim Collins calls “big hairy audacious goals”, but if you break them down into “next steps,” big goals can seem manageable.  Author Jack Canfield tells an allegory about driving to California from New York at night: you don’t have to see all the way to California, you only need to see the next 200 feet in front of you.  So if your project is 200 square feet or 200 feet, define the next step, but of equally importance: take action.  The weeds, or problems, will not stop coming.  You must develop a system for dealing with them, stay on top of them, and you just might enjoy a bountiful harvest.

  • The Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park

    This is a guest post written by Zac Parsons:

    On June 22, 2009, Erich and I decided to meet in person to do some hiking, planning, and bonding at Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, IN.  It was also Erich’s birthday, the second official day of summer, and a beautiful day to be outside.  By the end of the day, we realized that our experience itself was actually interesting enough to write about (and hopefully interesting enough to read).  We decided to write about our accounts separately, to see where our perceptions of the same days events would take us.  What would I write about?  What was meaningful and impactful to him?  Where would we be similar?  Where would we differ?  Erich’s thoughts, (which I have not read, at the time of this writing) can be found here.

    We grabbed a map, and headed out on the trail closest to where we had parked.  As we walked and talked about the future of our business, we crossed a bridge over a muddy river.

    We mused over what could have caused it to become so dirty, and  never really came to a conclusion.  What we did conclude was that in order for the river to become clean again, the dirty water would have to run its course.  If we were to dam up the river, then we would have a dirty lake.  Not much of a solution if we got thirsty (which we were starting to).  It was an interesting object lesson for us on the messes of life that we find ourselves in.  Even when we decide that the water is dirty, we have to let life keep running while we allow the clean water to slowly come back in and take over.

    Continuing on down the trail, and continuing with our conversation, we eventually found ourselves in the middle of an early 19th century village, restored and preserved for visitors like us to observe and explore.  It was a welcome surprise for me, as I just expected trees, rivers, and trails like in the picture above.  There was an old school house, sawmill, leather mill, tavern, pottery shop, and more.  In the middle of it, we came across a huge water wheel next to a three story building.  Erich wondered how long it had been since the wheel was in operation.  Well, we were about to find out.

    httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NgHaWvm86c

    Watching the man slide the cog into the system was fascinating.  Not the physical act itself, but just realization that this huge machine absolutely depended on this small piece in order to function properly, if at all.  The power of the water was being used to grind corn into meal for the rest of the village.  If the little cog broke down, the people wouldn’t starve, but they would have had to work harder for their corn meal.  I immediately applied it to other situations in my life and business where things were not optimal.

    It’s a question that we all have to deal with:  Is there a piece damaged or mission, or is the entire system broken?  Sometimes, we make huge changes in our lives, and we throw out a system that seems to be broken.  Often it is just a cog, or a gear that needs to be tweaked or replaced, and not the whole thing.  You may have heard this being called “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.  Just because you have identified a problem, does not mean that that problem is systemic.  Look closely at the gears, cogs, pulleys, levers, and tools you use in your life.  Your thoughts, habits, experiences, expectations, beliefs, relationships, attitudes, etc.  Perhaps more attention being paid to just one of these “cogs” count significantly change your system, whether it is your life, or your business.

    Erich and I continued discussing the gristmill as we hiked around the park.  We saw an astronaut memorial, some caves, a graveyard, and got a nice little workout in the process.  My relationship with Erich was good before.  We email constantly, comment on each other’s articles, and speak on the phone.  But, this face to face meeting added a new dimension to our relationship (system), bringing in new pulleys and sinews that connect us.  Everything is a system.  Everything is a balancing act.  Everything has a tipping point.  By the end, we relaxed with some Cherry Coke Zero and let our bodies recuperate.  It’s all a part of the system.

  • Economy 3.0: Employees as Owners

    As we start to climb out of the recession we were in and enter into what some are calling Economy 3.0, a new trend is emerging. More and more bankrupt companies are being bought or given to their employees.

    The Times of Northwest Indiana reported on June 26, 2009 that unionized workers at the Gary Post-Tribune want to purchase the newspaper from the bankrupt Sun-Times Media Group. The Gary Newspaper Guild has the support of its national union and a Massachusetts consulting firm that helped an employee group purchase some of Maine’s largest papers from the Seattle Times Co. The Sun-Times Media Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March of 2009.

    The UAW, a union of automobile manufacturing employees, now owns 55% of Chrysler/Fiat and 39% of General Motors, according to USA Today. Both car companies underwent bankruptcies in the Spring of 2009, both helped along by the Obama administration. So is this trend one of the people or are the people following the government’s example?

    Maybe the government learned it from the people. In 2007 a group of former employees in Culver City, California bought their employer Small World Toys Inc. out of bankruptcy for $12.5 million.

    It would be hard under normal circumstances to get enough employees together to do anything singular with thier money, but having their employer go bankrupt seems to have a rallying effect amoung the people. If this trend turns out to be good for the employees over time, maybe more employees will band together before their employer goes bankrupt and have a larger stake in their employers future – as part owners.

  • Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill as Stimulus Package

    The climate bill currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives tackles global warming with new limits on pollution and a market-based approach to encourage more environmentally-friendly business practices. With all the new rules and reallocation of money, this bill essentially equates to a stimulus package for businesses involved with energy creation or preservation.

    The legislation is intended to reduce the gases linked to global warming and to force sources of energy to shift away from fossil fuels, which when burned, release heat-trapping gases, and toward cleaner sources of energy such as wind, solar and geothermal. This means that any company currently producing solar panels, wind mills, or geothermal pumps will surely get a boost in revenue if this bill passes.

    The idea is to try to reduce the overall level of pollution, regardless of whether a particular factory reduces emissions or not using a cap and trade system. This system is another way for included businesses to make money because if one business already does not pollute, they can sell credits to a business that does. Eventually all polluting businesses will have to reduce their pollution and the market will reach an equilibrium, but before then, there will be a market for capping and trading.

    In addition to energy producers, businesses that help with energy efficiency will also see a boost with the Waxman-Markey bill. In fact, these companies will probably see it first as measures to boost energy efficiency in buildings and appliances are the low-hanging fruit that does not require major infrastructure changes or new technologies. Other changes are decades off and probably will come when the cap gets more stringent and permits get more expensive.

    Even if this law does not pass another one like it may pass before the end of the 2009 calendar year. The Obama administration clearly thinks something has to be done about preventing pollution and reducing our dependencies on foreign sources of of energy. While this plan ignores nuclear energy, a future bill may include this as a more comprehensive way to look at our country’s energy policy. Regardless, there are clear winners here in the energy sector.

  • Flat is the New Up

    As early as July 2008 Newsweek was reporting that “flat was the new up.” NPR reported it again in December of 2008, and AMNews has again used the term as late as June 22, 2009 in describing medical offices remaining steady against other types of commercial real estate. When corporate earnings estimates are released, it is considered good news when they are not announced lower than expected. No bad news is good news. Flat is the new up.

    In markets that are all, but rational, the human emotional element plays a large part in shaping the events of the economy as a whole. Before the recession hit, everyone was saying, “a recession is coming,” and as if on command, a recession came. Now we are starting to hear the opposite. Warren Buffet, the second richest human on Earth, has said “Not off the bottom yet”, but John Bogle, the legendary 80-year-old founder of mutual fund giant, The Vanguard Group, suggests otherwise believing that stocks already have hit their low point for 2009.

    Business Week is doing its part by starting a weekly column it calls “The Case for Optimism.” Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler is, “looking past the financial turmoil and economic unrest gripping the globe to focus on the promising future that lies on the other side of this storm. We’ll chronicle the forward thinkers investing in R&D, launching promising new products, entering new markets, or implementing management and leadership…BusinessWeek is optimistic about the economy amid the sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.”

    People matter. Everything begins as an idea. One man’s change in thought can change the economy. Change the way you think and you can change your reality. If we keep telling ourselves that things are going to get better, that we have hit bottom and there is no where to go but up, then that is what will happen – and may be happening. Bloomberg reports consumer spending was up in May of this year.