Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Stations: How Building Community Leads to Happiness

    A few years ago, I discovered a positive correlation between having places in my life where people know me and my happiness. I call those places “stations”. I noticed that the more stations I have in life, the happier I am.

    What is a station?

    A station is going into your local coffee shop and having the barista know your name. It’s going to a restaurant and having the waiter know your name. It’s having friends that you can stop at by their house or running into someone you know at the grocery store or going to church and having people recognize you and want to shake your hand. In order for those things to happen, you have to have positive interactions over time (which is one of the definitions of friendship).

    A few years ago I started intentionally trying to build up my community. When i would go to a place that I knew I was going to probably visit a lot in the future, I would say, “Hi, my name’s Erich. What’s your name?” It seems simple enough, but you do it and then you try to remember it and say it eventually they they learn your name too. And the next time you’re there, you can start to ask deeper questions like, “How are you doing? How was your weekend?”, and then as time goes on you can get deeper and go as deep as you want to go. You get to the point where you can say, “Hey, that’s rough. If you want to talk about it, maybe we can go talk about it somewhere else,” and then you take that relationship from that place and you move it some other place.

    So maybe you start off by talking to someone at church but then after talking to them at church, one day you say, “Hey, maybe sometime we should go get coffee together,” and then you go get the coffee together. And then you can even start to combine these things when you have someone that you know that you’re bringing to a place where you know someone else, you can introduce to people and say, “Hey, this is my friend. I’d like you to meet this person.” Being a connector helps other people be happy as well. Because it’s not just your happiness, it’s their happiness too. It’s “community happiness”.

    You are knowing them, they are knowing you. It’s reciprocal.

    If you’re old enough to remember this show, Cheers, you know that when Norm walks into the bar, everyone yells, “Norm!” There’s been a couple of times in my life that that’s happened in real life. And it is an awesome feeling. You walk into a room and everybody goes, “Erich! Yeah!” They’re genuinely excited to see you. Everyone in the room is flipping out. It’s only happened like twice in my life, but I remember it vividly. And if you’ve ever gotten married, you know you’re walking down the line or you’ve gone to a wedding and there’s this receding line. and you’re walking out and everybody’s shaking your hand. After intentionally building up the community for years, one time I was just walking out of church (I needed to go to the bathroom or something) and I’m like, ‘just let me sneak out here’ and then left after right, people kept sticking out their hand and saying, “Hey, Erich,” “Hey, Erich,” “Hey, Erich”. It was like a freaking receiving line.

    I was like, ‘Wow, I did it. I created community. This is amazing. I’m so happy right now.’

    There’s lots of ways to become happy or have moments of happiness or be fulfilled in life. But community is one of them. It’s beyond happiness too. It’s about your life. Like literally. Like you’ll live longer if you have better relationships with people. If you have people that care whether or not you’re alive or dead. And they genuinely like recognize you. care about whether you exist you walk into a place and you’re just nobody and you go home and you’re alone and you never interact with anyone something happens on the physiological level and you just don’t live as long as someone who’s an active part of the community where people actually care that you are there or not.

    When i was young, my dad told me one time, “If you want to have friends, be a friend.” And so I’ve tried to be friends with people. And because of that, I have friends as an adult. I even make new friends. It takes effort. It takes being the one to reach out and ask. And I have asked people and they don’t always do stuff, but they have told me, “I appreciate you asking because not everybody asks.” And if you want to go into the world of dating, there are girls that just don’t even get asked out. In sales, people don’t get the sale because they’re not asking for the sale.

    Asking is such a huge thing.

    I know it’s not really what we’re talking about but it’s a human thing. Even God says to ask Him for things.

    Humans want to help other people. They want to be with each other. We are community-oriented people.

    If you take a bee out of the out of its hive and just leave it alone, it’s going to die. The bees need the other bees to survive. Humans are the same way. Humans need other humans to survive. If you leave the population, you won’t die on day one, but like eventually you will. Everybody needs each other. So it’s not just the physiological, it’s also the emotional.

    In summary, I have found that the more of them you have, the happier you are. And the way to cultivate stations is to reach out to people and build up your community over time.

    Third Place

    Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, made the term “The third place,” popular in his book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, but the “third place” is actually a phrase coined by contemporary sociologist Ray Oldenburg. Oldenburg postulated in 1990 that the third place is, “a public place where people gather for the social satisfaction that they can’t get from the first two domains of the home and the workplace.” Oldenburg argued that the availability of such gathering places in America was lacking. Schultz turned America’s ‘lack of place’ into a business opportunity encouraging loitering and turning Starbucks into that third place. In this post I will argue that their is a direct relationship between the number of third places and happiness (in life and work).

    Social Structure

    In Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell recounts the story of a town whose inhabitants rarely got sick. After a doctor named Wolf began looking into why, he “slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself.” The town’s social structure had multiple generations living under one roof, the townspeople talked to one another on the street, they cooked together in each other’s backyards, they went to the same church, and had “twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people”. In short, the towns people were a community and they had places they could go to congregate and interact. It’s these ‘third’ places that I call Community Stations.

    Community Stations

    If you went to a public school your teacher may have setup your classroom into stations. If you were in first grade there may have been a station for reading books, a station for building blocks or puzzles, and another station to watch an aquarium or greenhouse. These were all places you could go, sub-sections within the larger classroom to hang out with people like you doing things like you. When you grew up you may have been assigned a “work” station at your job and bought a “play” station for your home. In the 1800’s whole towns were built up around “train” stations and now every corner has a “gas” station for our cars. Third places like Starbucks are a “coffee” station – and like the stations set up around the classroom, is one where like-minded people gather to talk and share what’s going on in their work and their community.

    Personal Community

    Your community is more than the 2 square miles around your home. It’s made up of the various types of community stations, the most important ones being your home, your work, the stores you visit, and your friend’s homes. Each station in your personal community is like a node on a network and like Facebook, the more friends you have, the better the experience. This network value is called the Network Effect. But unless you live in a college dorm or in a close-knit community like Roseto, you have to travel greater distances to these different stations. But the more stations you have, the greater the chance you will be able to interact with these stations and the greater the value of the community. This is why density matters and it’s why more communities are choosing to infill instead of building sprawl.

    Walkable Neighborhoods

    Alex Steffen talks about infill in communities being used to build denser communities, but there are already places like that: cities. I recently wrote about how people under 30 are moving into the cities and driving less, what Nathan Norris calls The Great Migration of the 21st Century. More and more people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, places where shopping, fun, and friends are all within walking distance. There is even a website dedicated to judging the walkability of a neighborhood. But you don’t have to live in a city to have a walkable neighborhood. Suburburban “sub-divisions” like these in the Indianapolis area can be specifically built to be walkable.

    Business Networking

    In my post about working in Indianapolis, I wrote about how on Thursdays I would start out at the local BNI meeting, then go to Subway where the local Sandwich artist would remember me and ask me about my business. After breakfast I’d head to Starbucks where I’d normally run into someone I know and begin working. At night I’d attend a meetup or go to a friends house before heading home. After going full-time on my own business one of the first things I noticed was how lonely I was working from home (like right now?). I wrote:

    When I worked for other companies I was around other people all day long. We had meetings. I sometimes got to go places on the company’s dime. Some of these times were good. Most of them were not noteworthy. However, once they were gone, I started to miss that in my life. Sure, I met with clients occasionally, but for the most part I stayed in my office at home. While my family is a joy to me, there is a certain need to go beyond that and meetups can help with that.

    Work Communities

    My ex-wife used to work at a hospital with a man named Melvin whose job was to keep rooms stocked each day. He had worked at the hospital for many years and had developed a routine that involved starting out in the stock room and making rounds around the hospital, stopping to talk to various people in each location. These were his stations within the hospital and without them he would not have been as happy at his job. He needed the community that the stations provided him. As an IT and web consultant, my clients were scattered around the city of Indianapolis and it created many places I could go throughout the day. My clients became part of my community and added to my work enjoyment. It didn’t feel like work – it felt more like visiting a friend.

    Seeking Stations

    I lived in small, rural town where there wasn’t a whole lot to do. There was no coffee shop and none of my friends live around there. There was a bowling alley, a movie theater, and several gas stations. My kids liked walking to the gas station to get candy and occasionally I’d walk to watch a movie, but the only place for me to go to ‘work’ is McDonald’s or a local diner. One is depressing and the other won’t leave you alone. There is no place to ‘hang out’. It’s a walkable neighborhood, but where would I be walking to? I decided that there must be something to do there, it’s just that I didn’t have the information as to what that is. That’s when I got the idea for Seektivity – an app that lets you share activities and events going on around you – kind of like a Foursquare for activities instead of places. A lot of my friends thought it was a good idea. Shoutt has since come out with something similar, but it adds a ‘borrowing/lending’ feature. I shoutted in that town, but there was been no one listening (give me a shout out on Twitter).

    I take a drink of my coffee and get a text from a customer. The room seems brighter now. I feel like I’m a part of a community – and for a second I am happy.

  • Art Inspires Action

    Jack Dorsey, a CEO I admire, is the co-founder and CEO of Square (a service I highly recommend for solopreneurs and small businesses), spoke to a student audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business through the View From The Top series. Dorsey shares his story about how he came up with the ideas for Twitter (which he created and co-founded) and Square, which gives advice to the entrepreneurs and business students in the auditorium and thanks to Youtube, all of us.

    Jack Dorsey The Future Has Already Arrived - YouTube

    There is a moment in the beginning of this 44 minute video (around the 3:30 mark) where Dorsey begins to talk about about how he starts and thinks about a project. It’s not that he just begins with the end in mind, but that he specifically begins with an image or picture in his mind – and then creates images of all of the steps in between. He falls in love with the end product, but maybe more importantly, he ensures that he will enjoy the journey in between.

    If I could explore the world, if I could craft something and really learn how to build and how to build a vision of what I wanted to see in the world – I could do amazing things…always.

    The most important thing for me to do is to see a picture of where I want to go – see a picture of what I want to do in the world – and then figure out how to work backwards from that.

    William Gibson said, ‘The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.’ This is exactly how we run our companies as well…An idea that can change the course of the company can happen anywhere in the company. The future is already in all of your heads and your work, everything you have to do in your life is to distribute it.

    Realizing that picture and making sure that I am distributing my idea, distributing my picture…is the most important thing – it’s to have that strong vision – to have that strong sense of what you want to do in the world – to be selfish to build something for yourself and be able to convince others to do the same. -Jack Dorsey

    If you thought this was interesting, you might also like My CEO Heroes or 20 Serial Entrepreneurs – An Analysis.

  • My First eCommerce Company

    While I didn’t think of it as an e-commerce company at the time, I was buying books in real life and selling them on Half.com – something I’ve wanted to get back into for the last year. This is a story of my first e-commerce company, Blu Bukx.

    The Beginning of Blu Bukx Company

    Blu Bukx CompanyLike a lot of companies, this one started as a result of what my friend, Jason, was doing. He had visited a local library with his new wife and discovered they were selling off their old books by the bag. He looked up how much he could sell them online and quickly discovered he could turn a profit. He already had an eye for this type of thing as he was already actively selling antiques on eBay for his dad, a retired antique dealer. For those following along, this is the same dad that allowed Jason and I to have a booth in a closet in his antique store (hence the name Closet Collectibles Company).

    Not one to let this newly found arbitrage go unexploited, I soon found myself visiting every library in town, buying up as many books as I could find and posting them to Half.com. I found that children’s books and non-fiction books sold the best and although I was selling at least one book a day, the books were piling up in my bedroom. I was still in college at the time and during this process had just recently met the woman who would later become my wife and had recently just started working at a bank doing items processing. I would go to class in the morning, come home in the afternoon, package up books to ship, then take them to the post office on the way to work.

    It was a big process to enter in the ISBN codes for every book purchased into Half.com. My future wife would stay up late at night in her dorm room to help me out. I remember one time she entered in hundreds of books on the site and I did something to delete all of her work. I think she cried. As part of the process you would have to price your book. Half.com would let you see what other people were selling it at and you could price it accordingly. One book stuck out. It was a book about the mafia’s role in the oil business and someone had it posted for $150. My soon to be wife thought it would be a “great deal” at $120 off. It sold. She told people about that book sale for years. She was so happy.

    When the libraries ran out of books to sell I had to find another source to keep up my inventory. That’s when I discovered the clearance section at the local Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Half Price Books stores. I could buy a book there that nobody locally wanted to buy for say $3 and sell it online for $15. This was in 2001 when a lot of local booksellers hadn’t really caught on to the whole Internet thing. It wasn’t that there weren’t any websites selling books online: at the time, Amazon.com was still the biggest (and I even experimented with selling some of my books through them as a reseller), but there was also efollet.com and textbooks.com, which is part of one of the funnest nights of my life.

    One of the Funnest Nights of My Life

    The fall semester was about to begin and as was the tradition, Jason and I would walk around campus figuring out where all of our classes were before the first day of school. The campus was mostly empty at this point, but all of the building doors were open. One of the buildings we went into had a large dumpster in the hallway where professors had been dumping old papers and whatever else they didn’t want. As book resellers there was one thing Jason and I both noticed right away: a trunk-load of textbooks. They were the kind of books that textbook publishers would send professors to get them to buy their books, but if the teacher didn’t want to use them, they were of no value to them.

    We loaded all of the books into Jason’s car and drove them back to his house. After getting them all inside his office we began systematically looking them up on efollet.com and the total value quickly got into the hundreds of dollars. Needless to say we were getting giddy, but the real fun started when we “got serious” and started to cross-reference the different textbook buying sites on a per-ISBN basis to create the highest payout possible. Now that was fun. We ended up splitting the money which I no doubt put into food, rent, my computer payment, or more books.

    One of the Changiest Years of My Life

    2001 was the year I moved to Muncie, Indiana, changed colleges, worked four different jobs, dated two different girls, got engaged to one of them, bought my first cell phone, my first apartment, started my first ecommerce business, and watched our country go through September 11th. I was mowing that morning as there was a period of time when I would mow in the mornings, go to school in the middle of the day, and then go to work at the bank in the evening. The first thing I heard when I got back into the truck and turned on the radio was, “It’s an act of war!” My first thought was, “What was?” As I listened to the radio my first inclination was to call Jason and ask him what was going on. He filled me in and said he was recording the news in case I missed any of it. My next call was to my soon-to-be wife. I told her I loved her then called my parents and did the same. It was a weird year and one with a lot of changes, but things didn’t stop changing. They keep changing every year.

    The End of Blu Bukx Company

    Eventually local book sellers did catch on to the whole “Internet thing” and started competing against me directly. The market inefficiencies were gone and it became increasingly harder and harder for me to turn a profit as my margins continued to shrink. I tried to sell the business and it’s inventory to my mom, but she didn’t want to do the work involved. I had got laid off from my bank job in Muncie and got transferred to the same job in Indianapolis. I was engaged, but was now living back at home with my parents. I ended up picking out some books to keep for any future kids I might have, giving away some to friends and family members, and taking the rest to Half Price Books to sell. I still have two of the book shelves (I made one), but the others got sold to a guy at the bank I worked with. My kids do read some of the books I kept from Blu Bukx company, but mostly they just sit there.

    Although I walk by these books every day I almost forgot that I even had this company. Looking back I can see how much time it took (for both me and my wife) and how much it influenced a small part of my life. The one thing I find odd is that because of the way Yahoo! stores it’s mail and because of me switching computers over time I have no digital record of this company ever existing. I can’t find anything in any of my emails, on my hard drive, or on the Internet (via Google search). If I didn’t write this post, no one would have ever known it ever existed. And that would have been okay. I just wanted to write this for my own sake as it touched on a lot of different parts of my life that helped shape where I am today. Maybe I’ll start up another e-commerce company again – and maybe my wife will help me input product descriptions and pack up orders – and maybe we’ll be happy.

  • Presentation Secrets from Amish Shah

    “Some people have the uncanny ability to make more in a week than most will earn over a lifetime. What’s better, they do it all the time. Amish Shah is one of those people.” Below is a screenshot of his presentation secrets, which I have outlined below. Click the image to watch the full video from Mindvalley Insights.

    Presentation Secrets

    Presentation Secrets

    • You are not the hero, the audience is.
    • It’s not about just you. It should be a shared belief.
    • Tell Stories because it conveys meaning.
    • Facts don’t sell. Emotions do.
    • Stand out.
    • Be human and stay connected.
    • Talk to the audience personally.
    • You are the mentor.
    • Help the audience get “unstuck”.
    • Come from a place of humility and be selfless.
    • Combine two things: Facts and Stories.
      • Stories provide an experience.
      • Facts provide information.
    • First create the desire in the audience and then fill it.
    • Formula
      • Intro and unfulfilled desire – Relatable Hero
      • Presents dramatic actions held together by confrontation. Obstacle for the character – Roadblocks
      • Resolution – Transformation
    • Audience needs to change internally and follow you.

    This is similar to the advice Mimi Henderlong of Threadless gives about “telling a story about someone who works at your company and make your customer the hero.” In the following video Amish explains the basics behind his record-breaking launches, his tried and tested theory on how to humanize your work, and how to overcome the single biggest hurdle that all affiliate marketers face – credibility.

  • Video as a Marketing Tool

    Video is both one of the most powerful and underused tools in marketing, training, and communication.

    I think it would be wrong of any new endeavor in 2013 to not include video as an integral part of their marketing strategy. This is how I am going to include it this year:

    1. Work to create an “interview”-style of videos in a series where I talk about things that interest me published on Youtube and this blog
    2. Work to create videos where I go to events or to work for different clients as a way to showcase what I do in the field in my daily work
    3. Develop video for common IT helpdesk solutions such as how to add apps to your phone, how to setup voicemail, or search the Internet

    Just Get Started

    The best thing you can do is to just do something. You’re not going to get good at it until you try and fail. It’s okay to fail, it’s how you learn.

    Erich Just Doing ItThe video on the right is a perfect example of this. I have a stain on my [T-!]shirt, I didn’t shave, the lighting is horrible, there is no script, and the camera is wobbly. But what you don’t know is that I specifically bought paint and painted that part of my house AND bought a special light to make videos, but I only made them this one time. And the only reason I made this one was because I told someone that I would (she was supposed to make one too, but she did not). The fact is that I did something – and now I can do the next one better.

    Video as a Conversion Tool

    I ran across this article on video and it reminded me of how important video is in conversions. It encouraged and reminded me to keep developing video for my products, my services, and my clients.

    Video is a very strong conversion tool and one that is increasingly being used by companies to help customers learn more about their products or about the community you’re trying to establish around your products and company. Letting people know the ‘rules’ of your ‘tribe‘ and how to act in it will help your customers feel like they are part of something when they do business with you. It’s an intrinsic way to make each customer feel special. Video is one way to let people in on that culture.

    I’m not the best at making videos (SEE above), but it’s something I’m learning more of how to do this year. I’ve done some work for other clients (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) but for a professional, there are others I can recommend.

    Tools to Make Better Video

    Michael Hyatt uses a lot of video and talks a lot about the tools he uses to make video:

    I used a Canon 60D camera on a tripod. I did not use any special lighting. I also used an Audio-Technia ATR 3350 lavaliere microphone with a mono-to-stereo adapter from Radio Shack. I also used an iPad 2 as a teleprompter, using the Proprompter HDi Pro2 from Bodelin Technologies. I decided to invest in this gear, since I have a number of instructional videos I plan to shoot in the future. I edited the video in iMovie and then uploaded it to Vimeo, which I like much better than YouTube. It has many more options, including the ability to use a minimalist video player and custom thumbnail image.

    I have boiled Michael’s list down to a ‘bare bones’ and ‘all-out’ version:

    1. Camera: iPhone ($400) or Canon 60D ($800)
    2. Microphone: 2nd iPhone or Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier ($18)
    3. Tripod: Tripod Mount for iPhone: Studio Neat Glif ($20) and Vista Explorer Tripod ($25)
    4. Teleprompting: Paper and Marker or iPad with Proprompter HDi Pro2 from Bodelin Technologies ($1195)
    5. Lighting: Cowboy Studio Lighting Kit ($60) or Fancier Studio Lighting Kit ($160)
    6. Editing: iMovie on a Mac ($999) or Adobe Premiere Elements on a PC ($999) – both prices include hardware and software
    7. Publishing: Vimeo or Youtube – Why not both?

    You don’t have to buy all of this at once and can combine your resources with friends or clients who may have iPhones or iPads. Vimeo and Youtube are both free.

    Making Video a Habit

    If you make this a part of your marketing habits and start treating it as a must-do versus a maybe-should-do then you can start to do the things it requires to help make our business ventures a success. In this way, video can become part of your new Marketing Ecosystem. That’s my goal. What’s yours? And how can I help?

  • Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing Ecosystem

    You may have heard of “marketing platforms“, but I’d like to introduce what I’d like to call “marketing ecosystems”.

    What is a Marketing Ecosystem?

    While a marketing platform contains a ‘home base’ such as a web site and its corresponding marketing channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Books – a Marketing Ecosystem takes a slightly broader view and encompasses:

    • The Marketing Platform
    • The People Doing the Marketing
    • The Processes of the Platform & the People
    • The Technology used by the People
    • A/B Testing, Events, Analytics, SEO, Twofers

    Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing EcosystemA Marketing Ecosystem is a Customer Acquisition System that funnels traffic and buyers from the Marketing Platform into a trusted Onboarding System that has feedback loops to the Marketing Platform.

    The outputs are blog posts, videos, social shares, books, events, products, and services. The inputs are traffic, phone calls, email, email sign-ups, new clients, and revenue. I’ve written before about how books are the new business cards, but now books can be your advertising too.

    Licensing & Commercialization of Intellectual Property (Twofers)

    In marketing terms, this is referred to as “repurposing content“. Content is the energy that keeps this Marketing Ecosystem running. Content creates traffic. Traffic leads to revenue.

    The most effort should be spent on making the best content possible. Marketers will say “make it share-worthy” or “remarkable“, but let’s get back to basics. It needs to be quality. Quality attracts quantity. This is the core of Content Marketing.

    An Example of Content Flow Through the Marketing Ecosystem

    A trusted, knowledgeable person is mined for their insight. This insight is edited into a series of blog posts, a book, and several videos. In each of these marketing channels, backlinks are placed to buy a product or service and sign up for an email list. The same content is then sent to this email list with more links to buy products or services, but everything should be tested.

    Test Everything (Beta Title for this Section Until Further Tests Completed)

    Test Everything is a Marketing Ecosystem tenet. In SEO, conversions, and sales, the single most important element is the TITLE of the page, post, book, or sales brochure. In books, the cover is the second most important element. But how do you test? Using Facebook, Twitter, and Google Ads, test titles and covers until a significant improvement in sales is discovered.

    Don’t Forget About the People or the Products and Services

    Remember that this Marketing Ecosystem is made up of people talking to people who have problems that the products or services solve. People are messy, emotional, and rarely rational. They make decisions based on copy, design, urgency, FAQs, or personal referrals. And keep in mind that the people who answer the phone or emails also have emotions – so they need properly trained, but all of this cannot happen without quality products and/or services.

    The marketing ecosystem can be perfect, but it will implode if the product or service is awful. A Marketing Ecosystem Engineer must ascertain whether or not a product or service is worth supporting or whether the product or service first needs further developed.

    On Building a Customer Acquisition System using a Marketing Ecosystem

    Once a marketing ecosystem is fully understood and the product or service has been fully vetted, a Customer Acquisition System can be built. This system would provide the editing and implementation of the web and social design, content creation, distribution, events, referral connections, email marketing, onboarding training, and do A/B testing and analytics. This system could be offered as a service.

    An Example of a Customer Acquisition System at Work

    A dentist is interviewed for his dental knowledge. This is turned into a series of blog posts and videos. Each of these have the opportunity to directly sell or add to an email list. The blog posts are turned into a book, which is sold on Amazon. This book also has links back to his products and services + the ability to sign up for his email list. The dentist can now claim that he is a published author. Each title and cover is A/B split tested to ensure the highest ranking and payout – and ultimately increased conversions.

    How I Have Applied This System in the Past

    I have attempted to create and use a system like this by taking some of my most popular blog posts on Erich Stauffer figurines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) into an ebook on Amazon. However, I did not test the cover and feel that its design has hampered it’s sales. My Youtube channel is called “TheBlogReader” because it was meant to record me reading my blog posts as a form of repurposing content. I only did that a couple of times though, however I still recommend it to my clients, but they hardly ever want to do it. Maybe they are expecting me to do it for them. Video is one of the things I am going to be working on more this year.

    How to Create a Customer Acquisition System

    I’d like to say I have this all figured out, but I’m still learning and trying new things. I’m going to apply some of these principles to a new project I’m working on – one that I can’t share yet – but if you run a business in the Indianapolis area and want to talk about it, please let me know.

  • Intel Wireless Cards Blue Screening After Windows Update

    Lenovo Edge E420 and E430 laptops with Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1000 (Intel(R) WiFi Link 1000 BGN) and Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 cards are experiencing BSODs when connecting to a wireless network. These wireless network cards are included in Lenovo Edge types 1141 and 3254; and models 57U, BUU, and ALU.

    The computers operate just fine when the wireless card is disabled and the computer is only connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable. It’s only when the WiFi is being used that Windows 7 will crash and dump the results, pointing at the netwsw00.sys or NETwNe64.sys file, depending on the wireless driver. Computers shut down every 5 minutes.

    Windows Updates

    This began occurring after the Windows Updates installed on April 16th on eight different Lenovo 420’s with a Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1000 (Intel(R) WiFi Link 1000 BGN) card, and four different Lenovo 430’s with a Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 card.

    There was a “bad Windows Update” released that day called “KB2823324“, but it has been removed and the replacement for it, “KB2840149” has been installed. Despite this, all of the laptops continue to bluescreen for as long as they are on a wireless network.

    Driver Updates

    All eleven laptops are running Windows 7 and are 64-bit. They all have the factory-installed image provided by Lenovo with some of the Lenovo programs uninstalled. Drivers have been fully updated using both Intel’s Driver Update Utility and Lenovo’s ThinkVantage System Update. Despite all of this, all of the laptops continue to blue screen.

    Lenovo Edge Laptop Intel Wireless Card Latest Lenovo Driver Latest Intel Driver
    E420 / 1141 (57U, BUU) Intel(R) WiFi Link 1000 BGN (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000) 15.03.10, 3/28/2013 15.6.1, 3/19/2013
    E430 / 3254 (ALU) Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 15.1.0.18, 9/6/2012 15.6.1, 3/19/2013

    Forum Searches

    Intel forum posts (1,2,3, 4) suggest enabling FIPS, turning off ARM (Adaptive Radio Management), turning off the option “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”, turning off wireless-N, or only allow WPA connections. A lot of these are old posts and for other Intel wireless cards, but I know that turning off the n-radio did not work for me and enabling FIPS was not an option for security reasons.

    Lenovo forum posts (1, 2, 3) suggest using “legacy mode” instead of “UEFI” in the BIOS; updating the bluetooth drivers, turning off bluetooth, or turning off “bluetooth collaboration”. The mention of “bluetooth” made me think of this “Solved BSOD” solution from Seven Forums that involves updating the bluetooth drivers only after ensuring that the bluetooth radio is turned on. The following is a table of the latest Intel bluetooth drivers.

    Bluetooth Drivers

    Lenovo Edge Laptop Intel Bluetooth Latest Lenovo Driver Latest Intel Driver
    E420 / 1141 (57U, BUU) Intel(R) WiFi Link 1000 BGN (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000) 6.5.1.380, 3/25/2013 2.6.1212, 3/14/2013
    E430 / 3254 (ALU) Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 2.2.0.026, 9/4/2012 2.6.1212, 3/14/2013

    IT administrators might want to review Intel’s Intel PROSet/Wireless Software and Drivers for IT Administrators or the Intel PROSet/Wireless Software IT Administrator Links, both of which contain Wireless+Bluetooth combined driver packages that are meant for network distribution. As an IT administrator, I find these problems really frustrating, especially when it’s happening to a large amount of users at once. When a solution is found, it will be posted here to help others.

  • A Brief History of the Suggets

    Before the Suggett Daily News there was the Succat Downing Street, a daily in London, which was ran by Meawyn Succat, who later moved to France and then to Ireland to convert the Irish to Catholicism in the 5th century. You may know of him better as St. Patrick, which he was later named after being declared a saint. When the Succat family came to Virginia in the 18th century, their name was changed to Suggett and the SDN was renamed the Suggett Daily News.

    John Suggett and Mildred Davis of Virginia had Rev. James Suggett who married Sarah Redding, also of Virginia. James and Sarah moved to Kentucky and had John Pope Suggett. John married Mary Ann O’Rear of Kentucky, moved to Missouri, and had Daniel J. Suggett. Daniel married Elizabeth Boulds of Missouri and had Starling Greene Suggett who together with his second wife, Constance Eleanor Hopkins continued on the tradition of The Suggett Daily News.

    A Tale of Two Constance Hopkins

    Constance Hopkins (May 11, 1606 – October 1677), also sometimes listed as Constanta was probably born in Hursley, Hampshire, England. Constance was the second daughter of Stephen Hopkins, by his first wife, Mary. Some believe she was named in honor of Constance (Marline) Hopkins. Constance, at the age of fourteen, along with her father and his second wife Elizabeth (Fisher), accompanied by brother Giles, half-sister Damaris as well as two servants by the name of Edward Doty and Edward Lester were passengers on the Mayflower on its journey to the New World in 1620. Along the way her half-brother Oceanus was born, the only child born on the Mayflower journey.

    A Brief History of Rev. James Suggett

    In the war of 1812, he accompanied his cousin Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, (later Vice President of U.S. to Van Buren) who commanded the troops in the battle of Thames, which was decisive battle that helped end the war. Richard was and is the only Vice President to be elected by the United States Senate based on majority vote. He was popular primarily for killing the Indian leader at the battle of Themes.

    One day while James was tending to farming chores in Kentucky he heard a peculiar noise in his stable and upon going out to see what caused it, he found a large buck quietly feeding himself from the horse trough. He hastly slammed the door shut to fasten the deer in but he was not quick enough. The frightened animal plunged against the door and carried it off the hinges, It remained fast on his horns and while he was struggling with it, James laid hold of him, thinking he could hold him down, but the deer proved to be the stronger of the two, and dragged him to the lot fence. Seeing that he was going to jump over, he let go and the deer went over the fence ‘light as a bird’, the door still on his horns. The deer disappeared in the woods and that was the last he saw of the deer–or his stable door.

  • Back to the Future Part IV

    For fun I started writing the screenplay for the fourth installment of the Back to the Future series:

    Doc Brown’s kids are now 18 and 22. We see them acting like typical teenagers, hanging out in their cabin on the train, listening to their iPods and watching their iPads when the girl gets up to grab a snack. The kitchen area is lined with invented ways to make toast or cook hot dogs. Jules grabs a bottle of juice and steps outside nonchalantly. That’s when the camera shows where and when they are.

    Doc Brown, their father, is studying dinosaurs in a dense jungle. “Dad, how long are we going to be here?” Jules exclaims.

    Doc inches closer to the dinosaur and the camera switches to Verne, who is turning up the gain on his amp, which is connected to his 1974 Les Paul. He begins to play his guitar softly and the baby dinosaur who was asleep opens its eyes. Doc Brown inches closer.

    Jules goes in to talk to her mom, who is reading. Vernes music can still be heard in the background. Jules sighs so her mom asks Jules if she feels she missed out on having a normal life in one place.

    Just then the baby dinosaur sees Doc and at the same time the dinosaur squeels, Verne feedbacks his guitar and the song gets heavier and faster. Drum overlay also kicks in and now we see the mother of the baby dinosaur, a full grown T-Rex. Doc begins to run back to the train saying, “I’m getting to old for this!” He radios to his wife, “Prepare to move. I’m on my way.”

    The beat of the T-Rex’s feet match the beat of the bass drum playing along with Verne’s music. His mom moves into the pilots chair and sees the T-Rex approaching with Doc running in front. Jules sits down in the co-pilot seat, looks at her mother, then out the window and screams, “Dad!”

    They start up the train and float it into position just as Doc approaches the door and as Verne’s music reaches a crescendo. Doc jumps in and they all take off into the future, but not before the T-Rex takes a bite at the rear of the train.

    Update:

    So apparently Jules and Verne are both boys so the beginning will need to be a little different. Instead of having a girl and a boy, one son will be more interested in science and the other in girls. We’ll make Verne the geek and Jules the chaser.

    So now that we have these actors who are playing Doc’s sons, the one most like him, Verne, will play a young Doc Brown who in 1940  attended school with Strickland. His brother, Jules will be traveling back to visit them in the future. This is how he will get there.

    The dinosaur damages the train when they are taking off. Docs wife had set an emergency course for 2015, which is their safety year. They know they will be able to find parts during that time. While the train is getting worked on, Jules goes for a walk while Verne stays back to help his dad. That’s when he spots the Delorean. His dad had just had the upgrades made on it. He can’t resist getting in so he sits down…fill in reason to take car here…Jules arrives in 1940 in the Delorean.